MELANESIA AND ITS PEOPLE. 193 
victims of sin, mainly of impurity, and though not formally excom- 
municated yet self-judged, as their absence proved. Or he would 
hear of family quarrels, or of the petulancy of the chief and his arbi- 
trary tabu of certain things and of a consequent staying away from 
church and school. Or a Christian girl or a catechumen may have 
been given in marriage to a Heathen and so lost to the church, or 
perchance a Christian man had taken a heathen woman to wife and 
was living with her unmarried or even had taken a second wife and 
was living with two women. Or it might be that some promising 
Christian lad had gone off to live with heathen relatives. Or he 
might hear of cases of exorcism, of approaches made to the spirits 
of the dead, or of trials by fire or of adjuration of the spirits of the dead 
on the part of the Christians. At times he would find a village pre- 
paring to go and avenge the cruel murder of some Christian or school- 
man wantonly murdered by the heathen. In addition to the moral 
failures which occurred in his absence, he might find that the school 
and church required roofing, that the fences were down, and that the 
village pigs had made a shelter inside the buildings and that his own 
*““prophet’s chamber” was uninhabitable. 
What would happen were the white missionaries removed is made 
plain by the history of what has occurred in places that have had to 
do without the services of a white man for any length of time. Left 
to themselves and without the help of a native deacon or priest, the 
people tend to become very slack in church attendance and in the per- 
formance of their Christian duties, and the recent struggle that Bishop 
Wilson had against the secret societies in the northern Banks Group 
shows that Christianity there failed to alter fundamentally the original 
native view of life. 
The Banks Islands in particular have lacked for many years past the 
services of a white priest and with a few notable exceptions it may be 
said of this particular group that wherever the native teachers have 
been left to themselves the work has languished. Since Mr. Adams 
went to Vureas the Banks Islands have seen very little of the presence 
of a white missionary. Of the work at the Torres Group, once so 
promising, but little is heard now, and there can be no doubt that the 
continued absence of a white man or of a native priest has had a dele- 
terious effect on the work there. 
Where the people are strong in character and community life is more 
developed, as in the northern Banks Group, a native teacher alone can 
not make much headway, but a man in orders exercises a great deal 
more power and will be listened to. When the white man is present 
matters that had been wrong right themselves very quickly and there 
seem to be far fewer cases of wrong-doing. This is doubtless due 
partly to respect for his presence. The ordinary native teacher does 
not inspire this respect, and unless he were a man of strong moral fiber 
