A STRANGER WITH MANY FRIENDS
1816-1822.
“He gave to God his manhood's prime,
With a stout heart and true.”
“And his own heart was still so young,
It lighted up his cheek;
Some lovely story charmed his tongue,
When he assayed to speak.”
PAXTON HOOD
JOHN WILLIAMS, during his voyage to the South Seas, carefully examined every part of the vessel in which he sailed. He probably did not know, at that time, how invaluable was the knowledge which he thus acquired. As little could he have imagined the great enterprises which this information would suggest to him. This exercise of his powers of minute observation and the consequent training of his memory, were undoubtedly of incalculable value to him. Thus unconsciously fitting himself for his peculiar form of service, the voyage to Rio de Janeiro was made with profit, and happily without a storm. At Rio, Mr. and Mrs. Threlkeld— his future colleagues at Raiatea-joined him. Here, also, Mr. Williams was deeply affected when he observed the abject superstition and degradation of the people. At Rio, he saw for the first time human beings exposed in booths for sale like cattle. He was so distressed at the dreadful spectacle that he went home and wept bitterly. His sympathy with this "human soot" nearly cost him his life. The freedom of his utterances respecting slavery enraged one man so much that he attempted to stab Mr. Williams. The latter, however, happily eluded the blow, but he was too prudent to venture upon shore again in such a place as Rio. The mission party, after leaving Rio, sailed for Sydney, which port they reached on the 2nd of May, 1817. After re-shipping, they sighted Tahiti on the 16th of the following November; and landed at Eimco, a neighboring island, which was the missionary settlement, on the 17th. Like all visitors, Mr. Williams greatly admired the natural beauties of the island, but he was still more delighted with the people, who had so recently been steeped in heathenism. Like Robert Raikes, he chiefly delighted in botanizing on human nature; imperfect as the people necessarily were, an immense improvement had been effected among them in a very short space of time. But Mr. Williams was too unceasingly active and practical to be satisfied with interested observation; his every-day working sympathy detected the fact that a vessel was the first requisite of the natives. One had indeed been laid down three years before, and it was resolved to complete her at once. Mr. Williams undertook the iron work, and by eight or ten days of energetic labor she was finished. Pomarc, the king, named her the Hawies, and employed her to trade between his island and New South Wales. This Hawies was the first of five vessels that were constructed by Mr. Williams during his missionary career, a truly wonderful achievement when it is remembered that not only had he never received instruction in shipbuilding, but that he had not even examined a ship previous to his voyage in the Harriet. It is not only a proof that "things out of hope are compassed oft by venturing," but it is an example of concentration similar to that of the ancient king, who "in every work that he began in the service of the house of God... did it with all his heart, and prospered.”
Nor was Mr. Williams less successful in studying the native language. He chose, it is true, a method of his own; for, instead of poring over grammar and lexicon, he moved freely among the people, talking and listening to their conversation. To the great astonishment of his seniors, who assigned three years as a reasonable period for the acquisition, he was able by this method to preach in Tahitian before ten months had elapsed. During this season of acquiring the tool of language, his eldest son John, afterward British Consul in Samoa, was born. This was on the 9th of January, 1818.
While John Williams was thus studying, and by working preparing himself for his as yet unknown sphere of work, events had been as certainly making ready a place for him. Several chiefs from the Society Islands had long before come to assist Pomare to recover the sovereignty which had been wrested from him. They had, during their absence from home, acquired some knowledge of the Gospel. After their return to their native islands, a vessel had been driven by a tempest from its moorings at Eimeo, and had reached Raiatea. The missionaries who were on board had taught the people, already disposed to listen by what their chiefs had heard at Tahiti, and in consequence a chapel had been erected at Raiatea for Divine worship. These chiefs now came to Tahiti and asked for teachers, and, in response to this delightful request, Messrs. Ellis, Williams, and Orsmond, with their wives, removed from Eimeo to Huahine. This island is the most easterly of the Society group; and as, therefore, by the trade winds, it is accessible from all the islands, it became the headquarters of the new mission.
Mr. Ellis at once erected a printing-press at Huahine, and this naturally became one of the most important departments of the operations conducted in the Society Islands. The books printed at Huahine circulated freely; some of them reached Raiatea, and, falling into the king's hands, induced him to visit Huahine and solicit teachers for his people. The island of Raiatea is both the center and chief of the group. Its kings had, for a long time previously, exercised sovereignty over their neighbors, more or less acknowledged, as the king of Raiatea was a strong or a weak one. It was, moreover, the religious capital and the abode of the gods; a kind of Polynesian London and Rome combined. The center of the island was a huge mountain pile, in some parts swelling up to the height of two thousand feet; around this majestic mass a fertile belt of land fringed the water's edge. The population at this time did not, it is computed, number more than 1300 persons. Realizing the immense importance of Raiatea, it was resolved that, though Mr. Ellis and Mr. Orsmond must remain at Huahine, Messrs. Williams and Threlkeld should accompany the King of Raiatea to his beautiful island.
Tamatoa, the king, had already endured some suffering on account of his new faith. While at Tahiti he had justly expected a conflict with the votaries of the old superstition, and had asked, "Suppose the idolaters reject my offers and are obstinate for war, must we carry peace until the spear rests on our heads?" He had been advised to act merely on the defensive, and upon his arrival at Raiatea he followed this wise counsel. The idolaters, enraged at his having forsaken the worship of idols, stimulated and excited each other to expel him, using such expressions as, "Let him not have a landing place for his canoe;" "Let us expel the Word of God from our land while it is young.”
Tamatoa, while cautiously avoiding all interference with the religion of his under chiefs, started upon a tour through his kingdom. During this journey he permitted his wife and some of her attendants to eat pork, which food the heathen regarded as sacred food, and therefore unfit for women, who were esteemed polluting and vile. The excitement which this act caused induced some of the heathen to poison a pig in order to destroy the Christians. This vile project happily failed, and the leader of the heathen party, thinking that the time for war had not arrived, quieted his adherents by saying, "The fruit is not yet ripe." Tamatoa's wife then ventured so far as to eat turtle, a yet more sacred food, but even this enormity only evoked the remark, "The fruit is not yet ripe." At length some of the king's servants, while making a canoe, took shelter from the rain in an idol house. Being cold, they helped themselves to the cloth wrapped round the idol. The king was unaware of this adventurous act, until he saw written upon the sand, "We were warm in the devil's cloth." When he discovered the meaning of the phrase, Tamatoa was extremely angry, but his followers pacified him by saying of the cloth, "Perhaps it was given to us by God." One of these men afterward sold a piece of the idol cloth to a man who was ignorant as to whence his purchase had been obtained. He, putting the cloth around him, walked through a heathen district with it displayed. The heathen chief now said, on hearing of this act, "The fruit is ripe," and took up arms immediately. Notwithstanding their numbers, the heathen were overpowered, and though they had openly threatened to perpetrate the most vile cruelties upon the Christians, after the easy victory that they had anticipated, they were treated with great kindness by the victors. This predisposed them to regard the Gospel with great favor, and, without doubt, rendered the task of the missionaries much less difficult than it would otherwise have been. When, therefore, on the 11th of September, 1818, the mission party landed, they met with a cordial reception. Mr. Williams often said, "Kindness is the key to the human heart," and he saw a proof of it when he reached Raiatea; and he himself supplied many illustrations of this truth in his after work there and in other islands. It struck him when landing as a little singular that one of his native companions, feeling hungry, entered a house, and without ceremony snatched away the food which a Raiatean was eating. This was permitted, and was even considered good manners in Raiatea, so singularly do nations differ-as to what constitutes propriety.
The spirit in which Mr. Williams undertook what was to be a work developing into greater enterprises, may be seen in a letter that he sent home soon after his landing: "My dearest parents," said he, "grieve not at my absence, for I am engaged in the best of services, for the best of masters, and upon the best of terms; but rather rejoice in having a child upon whom the Lord has conferred this honor.”
In his new station, he displayed his enviable talent of rapidly acquiring and retaining friends. His sunny, affectionate nature exerted an influence as attractive to the Raiateans as it had been in England; indeed the work that he accomplished would have been utterly impossible without the mighty leverage of himself. There was much need for love in his heart, even to remain among the natives; and much more was, of course, required to work for them, for they were unspeakably degraded, and appeared incurably indolent. A huntsman, whom a minister once met in a railway carriage, accounted for his many difficult leaps by saying that, before jumping, "he sent his heart over first, and then a ditch was no difficulty." John Williams adopted a similar method, and thus was able to accomplish what otherwise would have been impossible and intensely repulsive. The physical labor that visiting the natives involved was also extremely exhaustive, and added much to his difficulties. The natives lived apart in jealous isolation; small families being scattered in irregular patches throughout the island, with no means of communication except dangerous mountain paths. Knowing that men can only improve in communities, and that the force of bad customs cannot be broken, nor can teaching be imparted successfully without the aid of fellowship, Mr. Williams endeavored to gather the people into a society.
As a preparatory step towards this end, he induced them to form themselves into a settlement; and, after a site had been agreed upon, he set them an example by commencing to build a house for himself. This house he intended to be as an education of the people, an appreciable illustration of the practical benefits of the Gospel. It was, therefore, as well built and as well furnished as was possible under the circumstances. Happily, the labor thus bestowed was not lost; the house accomplished all that Mr. Williams expected from it. It appealed to the self-respect of the natives, and presented the most ignorant with an evidence of Christianity that they could understand and appreciate. The king and others commenced to build houses in imitation of it; without a doubt this building was of great service in the training of the people.
This remarkable structure was sixty feet long, and thirty feet broad; and its seven rooms were arranged -four in the front of the house, with three rooms behind them. The wooden framework was wattled and plastered; and, from the coral, Mr. Williams obtained an orange and gray coloring to beautify the walls. The furniture within the house was also entirely the product of his own skill; and the sofas, chairs and tables, which he himself made, suggested wants to the people of which they had been previously ignorant. Under his stimulative energy the settlement grew so rapidly that, at the end of twelve months, the houses extended for two miles along the sea-shore, nearly a thousand natives being thus brought together, to their no small advantage.
John Williams' insatiable appetite for work now prompted him to build a boat, which he intended should be sixteen feet long. This boat, when finished, had scarcely a nail in it, the planks being tied together by native cord. Mr. Williams intended using the boat in order to visit Tahaa, a small island near Raiatea, and within the same reef. His achievement showed the natives that they could also build boats without nails, and many of them accordingly resolved to make the attempt. In order to encourage them, Mr. Williams promised fifty nails to the man who first laid down a boat. It was a great pleasure to see the natives working at all; for besides being naturally indolent, the fertility of the land induced sloth; their few wants had been easily satisfied without any more toil than was required to pluck the fruit from the trees, or in setting a few taro or sweet potatoes.
But being induced to work was not the only, much less the chief, benefit that the Raiateans derived from their teachers. Of the spiritual part of his work, to which all other efforts were subsidiary, Mr. Williams-said, "My work is my delight. In it I desire to spend and to be spent. I think and hope that I have no other desire in my soul than to be the means of winning sinners for Christ. My anxiety is that my tongue may be ever engaged in proclaiming this salvation, and that my words and actions may be always pointing to the Cross.”
His pointing to the Cross was happily not without saving results, for many of the natives became interested in the Gospel. Some of their questions are rather singular, but also deeply interesting as showing the first action of the mind under new and saving, truth. For example, one man inquired, "Who were the scribes?" and wondered if they were secretaries of a Missionary Society. Another man, who sought comfort from the missionaries because he was harassed by evil thoughts, mentioned the fact that he had said mentally, "If Satan would approach me in the likeness of man I would fight with him, and stone him to death." He was afraid that he had committed sin in entertaining such a thought. Another man found that his religious difficulties were chiefly in respect to prayer; and he asked if it was quite right to say as he did, "O Jehovah, give Thy Word into my heart-all Thy Word; and cover it up there, that it may not be forgotten by me.”
The joy naturally inspired by this new interest in the Gospel was somewhat checked by the sudden death of Mrs. Orsmond. She had come with her husband from Huahine to stay for a time at Raiatea, when she was thus unexpectedly removed to the higher service of heaven. The solemnity of this bereavement probably incited the survivors to more earnest efforts. The missionaries much lamented the lawlessness and want of social morality among their people. As their object was to render life more worth living, they attempted to remedy these evils, but they found that the task was a most difficult one. At length, in September, 1819, the chiefs were induced to hold a meeting in order to consider the question. After much deliberation, the meeting agreed to insist upon the sacredness of the marriage bond, as being the basis of social and national order. To some persistent offenders, the chiefs said, "You had better go and serve the devil again. Let not this land be stained with sin." The arrival of several hundred copies of the gospel was of great benefit at this juncture; and the natives, in beginning a new life, incited one another to learn reading. As an instance of the craving for instruction, it is related that one day after the school-bell had rung, a Raiatean found a man sitting idly at home. He said that he had not been able to get beyond b-a, Ba, and that he did not mean to try again. His friend thereupon reminded him that while fishing he always concealed the fish-hook, and observed, “The devil has a fishhook in that evil thought of yours. Therefore have nothing to do with it, but let us go immediately and learn.”
In addition to this desire to learn, several encouraging and important events occurred during this year. The first, and most important of these, was the formation of an auxiliary missionary society. At the end of twelve months it was found that £500 had been contributed by the natives for the purpose of "causing the Word of God to grow," to quote their own expression. This liberality was general; the king himself, and his wife, prepared arrowroot with their own hands, as a contribution for this purpose. "We would not give that to God," said Tamatoa, "upon which we bestowed no labor; but would rather prepare it with our own hands, and then we can say as David did, Of our own proper good have we given unto Thee.'”
Thus ended, with signs of progress, the first year of missionary work at Raiatea.
But while John Williams thus threw himself with his utmost ability into the work that was nearest to him, he was not content with the work in Raiatea. "Our hearts comprehend all the ends of the earth," he said, and his life becomes deeply interesting from this time, as the work grew into higher service, until all the islands of the Pacific became his diocese and care.
In consequence of the prosperity now crowning his work in Raiatea, John Williams commenced the erection of a new chapel for his congregation. This edifice was 191 feet long, and 44 feet broad, but 40 feet of the length of the building was partitioned off as a courthouse. Every part of the building amazed the natives, but they were especially astonished at the turned chandeliers, which were, of course, the production of Mr. Williams. In them, cocoa-nut shells were employed as lamps. On the 11th of May, 1820, this chapel was first opened for Divine worship, when 2400 persons assembled within its walls. The next day witnessed an equally important triumph of missionary labors; for in a national assembly a new code of laws was formally adopted by unanimous consent, and the king's brother was appointed as chief judge to enforce the observance of these edicts. Stimulated by this reform, to obtain which he had long been steadily working, Mr. Williams turned his attention to promoting profitable employment for the natives, who were now secured from robbery. He commenced the cultivation of the sugar cane, which is indigenous to the islands, and also erected a sugar mill for native use.
But as no man can hope to continue good-doing without thereby arousing the enmity of the wicked, Mr. Williams found that some of the heathen had formed a plot against his life. After a visit to Borabora, an island about twenty miles south of Raiatea, he experienced one of the many remarkable preservations which he regarded as a proof of the watchful care of God. Every second or third Sabbath he spent at Tahaa, an island eight miles distant, going thither on the Saturday. Four of the men who rowed him agreed, when about four miles from Raiatea, to throw Mr. Williams into the sea, while their comrades killed Mr. Threlkeld and Tamatoa. But on the Wednesday previous to the date fixed upon for this murder, Mr. Williams repaired the boat and painted her. Owing to an accident, the paint was not dry on the Saturday, and, notwithstanding the entreaties of his men, Mr. Williams decided to defer the voyage. The murderers now determined to kill him at home, and the next day, a man wearing a pair of trousers as a jacket, and brandishing a carving knife, came to Mr. Williams' house and shouted, "Turn out the hog! Let us cut his throat." The door fortunately was locked, and the victim did not feel inclined to move. When at length he opened the door, a friend arrived just in time to prevent his exposing himself to peril: "You are the pig he is calling for," he said, "you will be dead in a minute." The four ringleaders in this plot were sentenced to die, but at the intercession of the missionaries their lives were spared. The distress of Mrs. Williams, when she discovered the danger to which her husband had been exposed, caused the premature birth of her second child, who died the day after it saw the light.
In the same eventful month of May, 1820, the first annual meeting of the Native Missionary Society was held, in the new chapel. At this gathering, one convert remarked, "A little property given with the heart becomes big property in the sight of God." Another exhorted his friends thus-"Let us now hold fast the Word of God, and die with it in our hands.”
At the end of May, the first baptism was administered; at this service seventy persons professed their faith in Christ, and their resolution to serve Him. Yet-as no worker, however successful, is without his seasons of depression, we find that, on the 7th of the following July, Mr. Williams wrote to the Directors, expressing his desire to leave Raiatea. He was very popular there, but, conscious of as yet dormant capacities, he felt himself cramped by the smallness of the island, and complained that he had not enough work to do in Raiatea. This restlessness did not arise from waning zeal, or from mere craving for change. "I have given myself," he wrote, "wholly to the Lord, and desire to spend my entire life in His service. I have no other desire in my soul but to live and die in the work of the Savior." This consecration probably prevented his quitting his post, and when, five months after the date of this letter Mr. Orsmond removed to Borabora, more work necessarily devolved upon Mr. Williams.
At the commencement of the year 1821, he arranged a conference for the purpose of deepening the spiritual life among the people of his charge. Three hundred school children were then examined as to their religious knowledge, and afterward they were provided with a substantial dinner. Before partaking of the repast, the children marched in procession, carrying flags of their own making, upon which they had written such mottoes as, "What a blessing the Gospel is," and, "Had it not been for the Gospel we should have been destroyed as soon as we were born." Previous to the adoption of Christianity, infanticide had been common in the islands. It was indeed a trade or profession to destroy newly born children, and some of the methods employed were almost incredibly cruel. At the examination of the children, an old chief rose, and said to the King, "Let me speak. I must speak. Oh that I had known that the Gospel was coming! Oh that I had known that these blessings were in store for us! Then I should have saved my children, and they would have been among this happy group repeating these precious truths. I shall die childless, although I have been the father of nineteen children.”
Two months after this gathering, in March, 1821, Auuru, the chief of Rurutu, an island 300 miles south of Raiatea, reached the mission station. A pestilence had broken out in his land, and the two chiefs of Rurutu had each built a canoe, in which they had fled with as many people as their boats could contain. Auuru spent three months with Mr. Williams, and then returned home, taking two teachers with him. In a few weeks, the discarded idols of Rurutu were brought in triumph to Raiatea. Encouraged by this fact, the contributions of the Native Missionary Society increased so much that in May they realized, after paying all expenses, the princely sum of £1800, the gift of those who so recently were without any property whatever. About this time the converts in Raiatea were united into a Christian Church, being associated together upon Congregational principles.
Mr. Williams had now lost all desire to leave Raiatea, but a distressing malady seized upon him, which defied the medical skill of his friends, and rendered a change imperatively necessary. His people were deeply grieved at the idea even of a temporary separation, but to their amazement and delight, in answer to prayer, the malady subsided without the use of any means. The news of the death of John Williams' mother reached him soon after this event. She had passed away, rather suddenly, on the 23rd of September, 1819. "You seem to me," he wrote to his friends, “now like a ship tossed about in a tempest without a pilot. Oh thou brightest of examples, thou lover of Christ, thou most affectionate and beloved of mothers! My dear mother is no more! Oh she’s gone, she’s gone, never to return to us again! Shall we then wish her return? No, we dare not. But not to feel bitterly for one we so much loved, not to give vent to the ardor of our affection for so kind and excellent a mother, would require the hardest and most unfeeling heart, which none of us possess. My dearest mother's portrait is an inestimable treasure. The large one hangs in our bed-room, but since I have heard of her decease, I can hardly bear to look at it. I am endeavoring to overcome my feelings, and let it continue to hang there, as a faithful monitor to remind me frequently of her bright example, but I fear I must put it away. Our precious mother! Our dearest mother!... Another thought that has occupied my mind is that we shall see our dear mother again; and I have no doubt of our mutual recognition. Now, if we are found in Jesus, with what ecstatic joy will our beloved parent join with the redeemed of the Lord in welcoming her children into the regions of the blessed, to go no more out, to part no more forever! Oh that this may be our happy portion!”
An additional bitterness was imparted to this grief, because the surviving parent was not a Christian. John Williams wrote an affectionate letter to his father, pleading earnestly that he would not delay, and earnestly adjuring him to repentance and faith. It proved to be a word spoken in season; seven years after the date of this letter, John Williams' father, then dying, exclaimed, "The father is saved through the son's instrumentality.”
Soon after the arrival of the mournful tidings of his mother's death, Mr. Williams baptized nearly five hundred persons. His malady returned again about this time, and his wife also became seriously ill; it was, therefore, evident that medical aid must be sought, either in England or in Australia. In September, 1821, the ship Westmoreland, bound for Sydney, touched at Raiatea, and Mr. Williams and his wife took passages in her. The Westmoreland called at Aitutaki, on October 2nd, leaving two native teachers in that island. The natives of Aitutaki were hideously tattooed, their bodies being smeared with pipeclay, red or yellow ocher, or charcoal. The chief of the island heard, with great astonishment, of the abolition of idolatry in Raiatea, and rubbed noses vigorously with the teachers entrusted to his care. Here the only child of Mr. Williams, a boy of about four years of age, attracted much attention, and the natives begged hard that he might be left with them, promising to make him a king. When the parents declined this offer, they began to talk angrily among themselves, looking first at the child, and then over the side of the ship, as if arranging to carry him off by force. Mr. Williams at once sent the child below into the cabin, and took leave of his somewhat troublesome friends. In Sydney, he speedily regained health, and immediately began to seek for a ship to trade from the islands to New South Wales. The London Missionary Society's agent at first opposed this scheme, but finding that Mr. Williams was resolute in his purpose, he relented, and assisted him. A new schooner of 80 or go tons burden was purchased, and called The Endeavor; a name that the natives afterward changed into The Beginning. While in Sydney, Mr. Williams also engaged a gentleman, whose salary he himself guaranteed, to teach the natives the profitable cultivation of sugar and tobacco. He also loaded The Endeavor with shoes, clothing, tea, and other articles for the Raiateans. To these articles, the Governor of New South Wales added several cows and sheep, as presents for the chiefs.
On the 23rd of April, 1822, The Endeavor left Sydney, and, after touching at New Zealand, and Rurutu, reached Raiatea, on the 6th of June. On landing, Mr. Williams heard that, during his absence, another conspiracy had been detected, the object of the conspirators having been to dethrone the king. Ten men had been tried for this offense, and sentenced to die; this sentence, however, had been commuted into hard labor for life, at the intercession of Mr. Threlkeld.
Tamatoa, the king, was much gratified when he saw the ship, and he wrote to the Directors of the Missionary Society, expressing to them his great pleasure. "A ship is good," he said, "for, by its means, useful property will come to our lands, and our bodies be covered with decent cloth. But this is another use of the ship, when we compassionate the little lands near to us, and desire to send two from among us to those lands, to teach them the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Good Word of the Kingdom.”
In the following October, a deputation sent out from England by the Directors, visited Raiatea. These gentlemen, among other objects, endeavored to introduce the spinning and weaving of cotton among the natives, but unfortunately, without success. With Mr. Williams, they were much pleased; they wrote home to England speaking of him and his work in the highest terms of commendation. But they lamented the feeble health, both of himself and his wife, which seemed to threaten an abrupt and speedy termination to his labors in Raiatea. He himself wrote home, "Oh, for health and strength—not to give to the vanities of the world—not to amass the riches of the East—but to spend and to be spent among the perishing heathen. My God, give it! I think we want this, only that we may devote it to His service. His cause lies near our hearts." But the prayer was not immediately answered; for Mrs.
Williams became so dangerously ill that her recovery was despaired of. By God's mercy, however, the fever gradually left her, and, before the New Year dawned, she was mercifully restored to some degree of health.
The Endeavor was dispatched to New South Wales with her first cargo, and no less than 150 plantations were more or less cultivated. Three or four tons of salt had been prepared by the natives. Thus the year 1822 did not close in gloom, as at one time it had threatened to do.