’My plan is to have Psalms, with reading and singing to suit each day, regarded as commemorative of the great facts and doctrines, so that every week we read in chapel about forty Psalms, and sing about twelve hymns.  These are pretty well known by heart, and form already a very considerable stock of Scriptural reference.  The Resurrection and the Gift of the Spirit, the Nativity, Manifestation, Betrayal, Ascension, Crucifixion, Burial, with the doctrines connected with them, come in this way every week before their minds.  I translated Psalms chosen with reference to this plan, and wrote hymns, &c. in the same way.

’I wish you could have been with us yesterday.  It was really a strikingly solemn service.  Then our fortnightly 7 A.M.  Communions, our daily 7 A.M. and 7 P.M.  Services, our Baptisms, yes and our burials too, all are so quiet, and there is so much reverence.  You see that they have never learnt bad habits.  A Melanesian scholar wouldn’t understand how one could pray in any other posture than kneeling.

’The evening Catechumen classes, so happy.  And then the dear fellows at their private prayers.  The Chapel is always open, you know, and in the early morning and late evening little knots of three and four, or eight and ten, are kneeling about, quietly saying their prayers.  The sick lads—­dear Clement and Richard who died—­as long as they could move, knelt up in hospital to say their prayers, and all but quite the new comers did the same.  It was touching to see them, weak and in much pain, yet I did not of course tell them that they might as well pray as they lay on their rugs.  Better for them even if it did a little exhaust them.  It is no mere formal observance of a rule, for there never has been any rule about it.  I have given them short simple prayers, and they first learn to kneel down with me here in my room, or with Codrington in his room, &c.  But I merely said (long ago at Kohimarama), “You know you can always go into the Chapel whenever you like.”

’Sometimes I do wish you could see them; but then unless you could talk with them, and indeed unless you knew the Melanesian mind and nature, you couldn’t estimate these things rightly.

’But never did I feel so hopeful, though my old text is ever in my mind, Isaiah lx. 5:  “Thine heart shall fear, and be enlarged.”  That’s exactly it.

’July 18th.—­To-morrow I baptize Taroniara, of San Cristoval, a young man full of promise.  He has a wife and little girl of about four years old.  He may become, by God’s blessing, the teacher of the people of his island.’

(From a letter of the same date to myself, I add the further particulars about one who was to teach by his death instead of his life, and for whom the name of the first martyr was chosen):—­