NOTES CONCERNING THE MELANESIAN MISSION. 203. 
ance of that religion which has presented itself to him as modifying every 
part of his life and character, social, moral and spiritual. 
“It is useless to suppose that the 78 islands already visited by the Bishop of 
New Zealand can be permanently supplied with English missionaries. It is 
indeed beyond the bounds of all probability to suppose that even the twenty- 
one islands which have already yielded scholars to the Mission can be pro- 
vided with resident English teachers. While India, China, and Africa are 
now at length opened to us, and need every help which Christian zeal and 
love in England may supply, we can not expect any large number of mission- 
aries from home for the work in Melanesia. The only method now open, as. 
we have said, is to avail ourselves of the strange curiosity which induces 
native men and lads to trust themselves with us, and to hope and believe 
that out of these some will be led to return again and again to New Zealand 
to receive direct Christian teaching. 
“In every case the attempt would be made to raise up a staff of teachers 
for each island from among the inhabitants of each island, and the English 
missionary, or any native teacher qualified for the work who might be asso- 
ciated with him, would not be regarded as permanently attached to the 
particular island with which they were at any given time brought into relation, 
but only until such time as the teachers trained up by them in the island 
during a part of the year, and in New Zealand during the remainder of it, 
could be taught to carry on the work under the superintendence of the 
Bishop making his rounds in the mission vessel. If each group of islands 
should be hereafter placed in charge of an English missionary, whose duty 
it would be in his small boat to be watching over the native clergy in each 
part of his district, and the Melanesian Bishop should be for six months 
visiting the islands, bringing back and taking away teachers and scholars, 
and for the remaining six superintending the missionary college in New Zea- 
land; some five or six active working men would constitute the whole of the 
necessary English staff.” 
It was really Bishop Selwyn’s strong personality and his vigor of 
mind and body that caused this new and hitherto untried method of 
evangelization to be adopted. The Bishop’s method was a new one 
in the history of modern missions, though in a measure it might be 
regarded as an adaptation of the method adopted by St. Boniface 
in founding monasteries and in using them to educate missionaries 
gathered from the neighborhood. The ordinary way of starting and of 
carrying on the work to be done in Melanesia, viz., by residential 
missionaries, was difficult enough at that time owing to (1) the short- 
age of men, (2) the lack of regular communication other than by the 
Mission ship, (3) the difficulty of climate, (4) the multiplicity of lan- 
guages. But it must not be forgotten that the other missions in Mela- 
nesia, by their policy of settling residential missionaries from the very 
inception of their work, have proved that (1) men will offer for the 
work and (2) climatic conditions can be overcome. Of the other two 
difficulties, that of communication has already been solved and the 
language difficulty has not been found to be insuperable. 
The native teachers of the Melanesian Mission trained in a fairly 
cool climate at Norfolk Island and surrounded by the things of civil-- 
