’Kohimarama:  Jan. 1, 1863.

’My dearest Sisters,—­The first letter of the year to you!  Thank God for bringing us to see it!  It is 1 P.M., and at 4.30 P.M. six dear children (from twenty-two to fourteen) are to be baptized.  Everything in one sense is done; how very little in the other and higher sense!  May Almighty God pour the fulness of His blessing upon them!  I sit and look at them, and my heart is too full for words.  They sit with me, and bring their little notes with questions that they scarcely dare trust themselves to speak about.  You will thank God for giving me such comfort, such blessings, and such dear children.  How great a mercy it is!  How unexpected!  May God make me humble and patient through it all!

’What a sight it would be for you four hours hence!  Our party of sixty-one, visitors from Auckland, the glorious day, and the holy service, for which all meet.

’I use Proper Psalms, 89, 96, 126, 145, and for lessons a few verses, 2 Kings v. 9-15, and Acts viii. 35-9.  After the third Collect, the Primate may say a few words, or I may do so; and then I shall use our usual Melanesian Collect for many islands, very briefly named; and so conclude with the Blessing.

’What this is to me you must try and realise, that you may be partakers of my joy and thankfulness.  To have Christians about me, to whom I can speak with a certainty of being understood, to feel that we are all bound together in the blessed Communion of the Body of Christ, to know that angels on high are rejoicing and evil spirits being chased away, that all the Banks Islands and all Melanesia are experiencing, as it were, the first shock of a mighty earthquake, that God who foresees the end may, in his merciful Providence, be calling even these very children to bear His message to thousands of heathens, is not it too much?  One’s heart is not large enough for it, and confession of one’s own unworthiness breaks off involuntarily into praise and glory!

’I know, my dear Sisters, that this is most likely one of the great blessings that precede great trials.  I can’t expect or wish (perhaps) always to sail with a fair wind, yet I try to remember that trial must come, without on that account restraining myself from a deep taste of the present joy.  I can’t describe it!

’Then we have now much that we ever can talk about—­deep talk about Mota and the other islands, and the special temptations to which they must be exposed; that now is the time when the devil will seek with all his might to “have” them, and so hinder God’s work in the land; that they have been specially blest by God to be the first to desire to know His will, and that they have heavy responsibilities.