A CITY OF GOD.
When, in the course of years, everything had been completed to our
taste, we lived practically in the midst of a beautiful village,--the
Church, the School, the Orphanage, the Smithy and Joiner's Shop, the
Printing Office, the Banana and Yam House, the Cook House, etc.; all
very humble indeed, but all standing sturdily up there among the
orange-trees, and preaching the Gospel of a higher civilization and of a
better life for Aniwa. The little road leading to each door was laid
with the white coral broken small. The fence around all shone fresh and
clean with new paint. Order and taste were seen to be laws in the white
man's New Life; and several of the Natives began diligently to follow
our example.
Many and strange were the arts which I had to try to practise, such as
handling the adze, the mysteries of tenon and mortise, and other feats
of skill. If a Native wanted a fish-hook, or a piece of red calico to
bind his long whip-cord hair, he would carry me a block of coral or
fetch me a beam; but continuous daily toil seemed to him a mean
existence. The women were tempted, by calico and beads for pay, to
assist in preparing the sugar-cane leaf for thatch, gathering it in the
plantations, and tying it over reeds four or six feet long with strips
of bark of pandanus leaf, leaving a long fringe hanging over on one
side. How differently they acted when the Gospel began to touch their
hearts! They built their Church and their Schools then, by their own
free toil, rejoicing to labor without money or price; and they have ever
since kept them in good repair, for the service of the Lord, by their
voluntary offerings of wood and sugar-cane leaf and coral-lime.
The roof was firmly tied on and nailed; thereon were laid the reeds,
fringed with sugar-cane leaf, row after row tied firmly to the wood; the
ridge was bound down by cocoanut leaves, dexterously plaited from side
to side and skewered to the ridge-pole with hard wooden pins; and over
all, a fresh storm-roof was laid on yearly for the hurricane months,
composed of folded cocoanut leaves, held down with planks of wood, and
bound to the frame-work below--which, however, had to be removed again
in April to save the sugar-cane leaf from rotting beneath it. There you
were snugly covered in, and your thatching good to last from eight years
to ten; that is, provided you were not caught in the sweep of the
hurricane, before which trees went flying like straws, huts disappeared
like autumn leaves, and your Mission House, if left standing at all, was
probably swept bare alike of roof and thatch at a single stroke! Well
for you at such times if you have a good barometer indicating the
approach of the storm; and better still, a large cellar like ours,
four-and-twenty feet by sixteen, built round with solid coral
blocks,--where goods may be stored, and whereinto also all your
household may creep for safety, while the tornado tosses your dwelling
about, and sets huge trees dancing around you! We had also to invent a
lime-kiln, and this proved one of the hardest nuts of all that had to be
cracked. The kind of coral required could be obtained only at one spot,
about three miles distant. Lying at anchor in my boat, the Natives dived
into the sea, broke off with hammer and crowbar piece after piece, and
brought it up to me, till I had my load. We then carried it ashore, and
spread it out in the sun to be blistered there for two weeks or so.
Having thus secured twenty or thirty boat-loads, and had it duly
conveyed round to the Mission Station, a huge pit was dug in the ground,
dry wood piled in below, and green wood above to the height of several
feet, and on the top of all the coral blocks were orderly laid. When
this pile had burned for seven or ten days, the coral had been reduced
to excellent lime, and the plasterwork made therefrom shone like marble.
On one of these trips the Natives performed an extraordinary feat. The
boat with full load was struck heavily by a wave, and the reef drove a
hole in her side. Quick as thought the crew were all in the sea, and, to
my amazement, bearing up the boat with their shoulder and one hand,
while swimming and guiding us ashore with the other! There on the land
we were hauled up, and four weary days were spent fetching and carrying
from the Mission Station every plank, tool, and nail, necessary for her
repair. Every boat for these seas ought to be built of cedar wood and
copper-fastened, which is by far the most economical in the end. And all
houses should be built of wood which is as full as possible of gum or
resin, since the large white ants devour not only other soft woods, but
even Colonial blue gum-trees, the hard cocoanut, and window sashes,
chairs, and tables!
Glancing back on all these toils, I rejoice that such exhausting demands
are no longer made on our newly-arrived Missionaries. Houses, all ready
for being set up, are now brought down from the Colonies. Zinc roofs and
other improvements have been introduced. The Synod appoints a deputation
to accompany the young Missionary, and plant the house along with
himself at the Station committed to his care. Precious strength is thus
saved for higher uses; and not only property but life itself is
oftentimes preserved.
I will close this chapter with an incident which, though it came to our
knowledge only years afterwards, closely bears upon our Settlement on
Aniwa. At first we had no idea why they so determinedly refused us one
site, and fixed us to another of their own choice. But after the old
Chief Namakei became a Christian, he one day addressed the Aniwan people
in our hearing to this effect:--
"When Missi came we saw his boxes. We knew he had blankets and calico,
axes and knives, fish-hooks and all such things. We said, 'Don't drive
him off, else we will lose all these things. We will let him land. But
we will force him to live on the Sacred Plot. Our gods will kill him,
and we will divide all that he has amongst the men of Aniwa.' But Missi
built his house on our most sacred spot. He and his people lived there,
and the gods did not strike. He planted bananas there, and we said, 'Now
when they eat of these they will all drop down dead, as our fathers
assured us, if any one ate fruit from that ground, except only our
Sacred Men themselves.' These bananas ripened. They did eat them. We
kept watching for days and days, but no one died! Therefore what we say,
and what our fathers have said, is not true. Our gods cannot kill them.
Their Jehovah God is stronger than the gods of Aniwa."
I enforced old Namakei's appeal, telling them that, though they knew it
not, it was the living and true and only God who had sent them every
blessing which they possessed, and had at last sent us to teach them how
to serve and love and please Him. In wonder and silence they listened,
while I tried to explain to them that Jesus, the Son of this God, had
lived and died and gone to the Father to save them, and that He was now
willing to take them by the hand and lead them through this life to
glory and immortality together with Himself.
The old Chief led them in prayer--a strange, dark, groping prayer, with
streaks of Heathenism coloring every thought and sentence; but still a
heart-breaking prayer, as the cry of a soul once Cannibal, but now being
thrilled through and through with the first conscious pulsations of the
Christ-Spirit, throbbing into the words--"Father, Father; our Father."
When these poor creatures began to wear a bit of calico or a kilt, it
was an outward sign of a change, though yet far from civilization. And
when they began to look up and pray to One whom they called "Father, our
Father," though they might be far, very far, from the type of Christian
that dubs itself "respectable," my heart broke over them in tears of
joy; and nothing will ever persuade me that there was not a Divine Heart
in the Heavens rejoicing too.