’As for openings for men of the right sort, they abound.  Really if I were free to locate myself on an island instead of going about to all, I hardly know to which of some four or five I ought to go.  But it is of no use to have men who are not precisely the kind of men wanted.  Somehow one can’t as yet learn to ask men to do things that one does oneself as a matter of course.  It needs a course of training to get rid of conventional notions.  I think that Norfolk Island may supply a few, a very few fellows able to be of use, and perhaps New Zealand will do so, and I have the advantage of seeing and knowing them.  I don’t think that I must expect men from England, I can’t pay them well; and it is so very difficult to give a man on paper any idea of what his life will be in Melanesia or Kohimarama.  So very much that would be most hazardous to others has ceased to be so to me, because I catch up some scrap of the language talked on the beach, and habit has given an air of coolness and assurance.  But this does not come all at once, and you cannot talk about all this to others.  I feel ashamed as I write it even to you.  They bother me to put anecdotes of adventures into our Report, but I cannot.  You know no one lands on these places but myself, and it would be no good to tell stories merely to catch somebody’s ear.  It was easier to do so when the Bishop and I went together, but I am not training up anyone to be the visitor, and so I don’t wish anybody else to go with me.  Besides Mr. Pritt and Mr. Dudley are bad swimmers, and Mr. Kerr not first-rate.  My constant thought is “By what means will God provide for the introduction of Christianity into these islands,” and my constant prayer that He will reveal such means to me, and give me grace to use them.

’What reality there is in such a work as this!  What continual need of guidance and direction!  I here see before me now an island stretching away twenty-five miles in length!  Last night I left one sixty miles long.  I know that hundreds are living there ignorant of God, wild men, cannibals, addicted to every vice.  I know that Christ died for them, and that the message is for them, too.  How am I to deliver it?  How find an entrance among them?  How, when I have learnt their language, speak to them of religion, so as not to introduce unnecessary obstacles to the reception of it, nor compromise any of its commands?

’Thank God I can fall back upon many solid points of comfort—­ chiefest of all, He sees and knows it all perfectly.  He sees the islanders too, and loves them, how infinitely more than I can!  He desires to save them.  He is, I trust, sending me to them.  He will bless honest endeavours to do His will among them.  And then I think how it must all appear to angels and saints, how differently they see these things.  Already, to their eyes, the light is breaking forth in Melanesia; and I take great comfort from this thought, and remember that