After a long tramp along goat tracks on the edge of precipices, down precipitous mountain sides, up rough ridges on hands and knees, the Lord’s Gospeller would reach a village tired and hungry. Or it might be, after crossing a river with wet clothes and wearied frame, the desired object of the long journey was reached. But in no case was the great work to which exploration and all else were but as handmaids allowed to fall into the rear. To preach the Gospel of God, concerning His Son, was what they were there for, and the work to which their lives had been yielded. Under the shade of some widespread tree they would tell in a few words the object of their visit, and speak of the true God, the God of heaven and of love, of whom they had never before heard. It was wonderful to mark the different expressions on the faces of that circle of barbarian men, as they stood listening for the first time to the “old, old story” with which we have been familiar from our earliest years. Some were serious, others frightened, and a few laughed. Then at the close they would come and ask the name of “the Great Spirit” and “His Son,” and forgetting, return and ask again and again. In other villages, order and reverence marked the people from the first hearing of the Word, sitting at their doors, listening with the greatest interest to the preaching, and especially to the singing. But here, in the villages of New Guinea, and among the Maori “pahs” in New Zealand, in earlier times, as elsewhere in heathendom, the greatest enemies of the Gospel are the sorcerers, whose power over the natives is very great. There are three principal deities whom they consult in times of war. These men often stir up the natives against the missionaries, and are accountable for many of the tragedies which have occurred.
But in the midst of all these drawbacks, the light has penetrated into the thick darkness, and a few have been truly turned to God from idols. In 1881 the first fruits were gathered at Port Moresby, where two native women openly confessed their faith in the Lord Jesus. This was the beginning, others followed, and although there has been but little progress in regard to numbers of truly converted souls, the work goes on. The natives have been wonderfully changed in outward appearance and in the habits of daily life, so that they say, “Now that the Word of God has come we can sleep in peace.” Pirates, robbers, murderers, and cannibals all live in peace together. The pioneer missionary was permitted to see and rejoice in the fruit of his labor in several places, and in one especially, where he had left a native worker to follow up the work begun, he found on his return a fine group of native Christians, with whom he joyfully kept the feast of the Lord’s Supper, shedding tears of joy as he handled the memorials of the Saviour’s body broken and blood poured forth, with men and women now saved by grace and happy in the knowledge of Christ, who had, a few years before, been cannibals seeking his life. Writing of this visit, he says— “What did it? It is the old story of the Gospel of Christ.”