’About Semtingvat, you must be comforted about her.  For a poor child who, two short years before, had assumed as a matter of course that a woman simply existed to be a man’s slave in every kind of way, her fault could not, I think, be regarded as very great.  Indeed, there was much comfort from the first; and since that time they not only have gone on well, but I do believe that their religious character has been much strengthened by the kind of revelation they then obtained of what Christianity really does mean.  Anyhow, all notice the fact that U——­ has improved very much, and they all sing Semtingvat’s praises.  I had no difficulty about marrying them after a little while.  I spoke openly in chapel to everyone about it.  Their wedding was not as other weddings—­no festivity, no dressing of the chapel, no feast, no supper and fun and holiday.  It was perfectly understood to be in all respects different from a bright, happy wedding.  But it was quite as much for the sake of all, for the sake of enforcing the new teaching about the sanctity of marriage, that we made so very much of what (as men speak) was under the circumstances a comparatively light fault, less than an impure thought on the part of such as have been taught their duty from their childhood.

’I am almost confused with the accounts from England.  All seems in a state of turmoil and confusion; all the old landmarks being swept away by a deluge of new opinions as to all matters civil and ecclesiastical.  I don’t think that we ought to refuse to see these signs of a change in men’s mode of regarding great political and religious questions.  A man left high and dry on the sand-bank of his antiquated notions will do little good to the poor folk struggling in the sea way, though he is safer as far as he is himself concerned by staying where he is than by plunging in to help them.

’It is a critical time in every sense.  Men and women can hardly be indifferent; they must be at the pains of making up their minds.  As for us clergy, everywhere but in Norfolk Island, we must know that people are thinking of matters which all were content a few years ago to keep back in silence, and that they expect us to speak about them.  How thankful I am that we fortunate ones are exempt from this.  Yet in my way I, too, try to think a bit about what is going on; and I don’t want to be too gloomy, or to ignore some good in all this ferment in men’s minds.  It is better than stagnation and indolent respectability.  There is everywhere a consciousness of a vast work to be done, and sincere efforts are made to do it.  I suppose that is a fact; many, many poor souls are being taught and trained for heaven through all these various agencies which seem to a distant and idle critic to be so questionable in some ways.