’There are many little works usually going ons which I don’t consider it fair to reckon among the regular industrial work of the Mission.  I pay the young men and lads and boys small sums for such things, and I think it right to teach the elder ones the use of money by giving them allowances, out of which they buy their clothing, &c., when necessary, all under certain regulations.  I say this that you may know that our weekly offertory is not a sham.  No one knows what they give, or whether they give or not.  A Melanesian takes the offertory bason, and they give or not as they please.  I take care that such moneys as are due to them shall be given in 3d., 4d., and 6d. pieces.

’Last year our offertory rather exceeded £40, and it is out of this that my brother will now pay you £10 for the Mackenzie fund.  I write all this because you will like to think that some of this little offertory comes bond fide from Melanesians.

’...You take me to mean, I hope, that Christianity is the religion for mankind at large, capable of dealing with the spiritual and bodily needs of man everywhere.

’It is easy for us now to say that some of the early English Missions, without thinking at all about it, in all probability, sought to impose an English line of thought and religion on Indians and Africans.  Even English dress was thought to be almost essential, and English habits, &c., were regarded as part of the education of persons converted through the agency of English Missions.  All this seems to be burdening the message of the Gospel with unnecessary difficulties.  The teacher everywhere, in England or out of it, must learn to discriminate between essentials and non-essentials.  It seems to me self-evident that the native scholar must be educated up to the highest point that is possible, and that unless one is (humanly speaking) quite sure that he can and will reproduce faithfully the simple teaching he has received, he ought not to teach, much less to be ordained.

’All our elder lads and girls here teach the younger ones, and we know what they teach.  Their notes of our lessons are brought to me, books full of them, and there I see what they know; for if they can write down a plain account of facts and doctrines, that is a good test of their having taken in the teaching.  George Sarawia’s little essay on the doctrine of the Communion is to me perfectly satisfactory.  It was written without my knowledge.  I found it in one of his many note-books accidentally.

’As for civilisation, they all live entirely with us, and every Melanesian in the place, men and women, boys and girls, three times a day take their places with all of us in hall, and use their knives and forks, plates, cups and saucers (or, for the passage, one’s pannikins) just as we do.  George and two others, speaking for themselves and their wives, have just written out, among other things, in a list which I told them to make out:  plates, cups, saucers, knives, forks, spoons, tubs, saucepans, kettles, soap, towels, domestic things for washing, ironing, &c.