The Story of John G. Paton: Chapter 60 - A City of God
When, in the course of years, everything had been completed to our taste, we lived practically in the midst of a beautiful village,--the Church, the School, the Orphanage, the Smithy and Joiner's Shop, the Printing Office, the Banana and Yam House, the Cook House, etc.; all very humble indeed, but all standing sturdily up there among the orange-trees, and preaching the Gospel of a higher civilization and of a better life for Aniwa. The little road leading to each door was laid with the white coral broken small. The fence around all shone fresh and clean with new paint. Order and taste were seen to be laws in the white man's New Life; and several of the Natives began diligently to follow our example.
Many and strange were the arts which I had to try to practise, such as handling the adze, the mysteries of tenon and mortise, and other feats of skill. If a Native wanted a fish-hook, or a piece of red calico to bind his long whip-cord hair, he would carry me a block of coral or fetch me a beam; but continuous daily toil seemed to him a mean existence. The women were tempted, by calico and beads for pay, to assist in preparing the sugar-cane leaf for thatch, gathering it in the plantations, and tying it over reeds four or six feet long with strips of bark of pandanus leaf, leaving a long fringe hanging over on one side. How differently they acted when the Gospel began to touch their hearts! They built their Church and their Schools then, by their own free toil, rejoicing to labor without money or price; and they have ever since kept them in good repair, for the service of the Lord, by their voluntary offerings of wood and sugar-cane leaf and coral-lime.
The roof was firmly tied on and nailed; thereon were laid the reeds, fringed with sugar-cane leaf, row after row tied firmly to the wood; the ridge was bound down by cocoanut leaves, dexterously plaited from side to side and skewered to the ridge-pole with hard wooden pins; and over all, a fresh storm-roof was laid on yearly for the hurricane months, composed of folded cocoanut leaves, held down with planks of wood, and bound to the frame-work below--which, however, had to be removed again in April to save the sugar-cane leaf from rotting beneath it. There you were snugly covered in, and your thatching good to last from eight years to ten; that is, provided you were not caught in the sweep of the hurricane, before which trees went flying like straws, huts disappeared like autumn leaves, and your Mission House, if left standing at all, was probably swept bare alike of roof and thatch at a single stroke! Well for you at such times if you have a good barometer indicating the approach of the storm; and better still, a large cellar like ours, four-and-twenty feet by sixteen, built round with solid coral blocks,--where goods may be stored, and whereinto also all your household may creep for safety, while the tornado tosses your dwelling about, and sets huge trees dancing around you! We had also to invent a lime-kiln, and this proved one of the hardest nuts of all that had to be cracked. The kind of coral required could be obtained only at one spot, about three miles distant. Lying at anchor in my boat, the Natives dived into the sea, broke off with hammer and crowbar piece after piece, and brought it up to me, till I had my load. We then carried it ashore, and spread it out in the sun to be blistered there for two weeks or so. Having thus secured twenty or thirty boat-loads, and had it duly conveyed round to the Mission Station, a huge pit was dug in the ground, dry wood piled in below, and green wood above to the height of several feet, and on the top of all the coral blocks were orderly laid. When this pile had burned for seven or ten days, the coral had been reduced to excellent lime, and the plasterwork made therefrom shone like marble.
On one of these trips the Natives performed an extraordinary feat. The boat with full load was struck heavily by a wave, and the reef drove a hole in her side. Quick as thought the crew were all in the sea, and, to my amazement, bearing up the boat with their shoulder and one hand, while swimming and guiding us ashore with the other! There on the land we were hauled up, and four weary days were spent fetching and carrying from the Mission Station every plank, tool, and nail, necessary for her repair. Every boat for these seas ought to be built of cedar wood and copper-fastened, which is by far the most economical in the end. And all houses should be built of wood which is as full as possible of gum or resin, since the large white ants devour not only other soft woods, but even Colonial blue gum-trees, the hard cocoanut, and window sashes, chairs, and tables!
Glancing back on all these toils, I rejoice that such exhausting demands are no longer made on our newly-arrived Missionaries. Houses, all ready for being set up, are now brought down from the Colonies. Zinc roofs and other improvements have been introduced. The Synod appoints a deputation to accompany the young Missionary, and plant the house along with himself at the Station committed to his care. Precious strength is thus saved for higher uses; and not only property but life itself is oftentimes preserved.
I will close this chapter with an incident which, though it came to our knowledge only years afterwards, closely bears upon our Settlement on Aniwa. At first we had no idea why they so determinedly refused us one site, and fixed us to another of their own choice. But after the old Chief Namakei became a Christian, he one day addressed the Aniwan people in our hearing to this effect:--
"When Missi came we saw his boxes. We knew he had blankets and calico, axes and knives, fish-hooks and all such things. We said, 'Don't drive him off, else we will lose all these things. We will let him land. But we will force him to live on the Sacred Plot. Our gods will kill him, and we will divide all that he has amongst the men of Aniwa.' But Missi built his house on our most sacred spot. He and his people lived there, and the gods did not strike. He planted bananas there, and we said, 'Now when they eat of these they will all drop down dead, as our fathers assured us, if any one ate fruit from that ground, except only our Sacred Men themselves.' These bananas ripened. They did eat them. We kept watching for days and days, but no one died! Therefore what we say, and what our fathers have said, is not true. Our gods cannot kill them. Their Jehovah God is stronger than the gods of Aniwa."
I enforced old Namakei's appeal, telling them that, though they knew it not, it was the living and true and only God who had sent them every blessing which they possessed, and had at last sent us to teach them how to serve and love and please Him. In wonder and silence they listened, while I tried to explain to them that Jesus, the Son of this God, had lived and died and gone to the Father to save them, and that He was now willing to take them by the hand and lead them through this life to glory and immortality together with Himself.
The old Chief led them in prayer--a strange, dark, groping prayer, with streaks of Heathenism coloring every thought and sentence; but still a heart-breaking prayer, as the cry of a soul once Cannibal, but now being thrilled through and through with the first conscious pulsations of the Christ-Spirit, throbbing into the words--"Father, Father; our Father."
When these poor creatures began to wear a bit of calico or a kilt, it was an outward sign of a change, though yet far from civilization. And when they began to look up and pray to One whom they called "Father, our Father," though they might be far, very far, from the type of Christian that dubs itself "respectable," my heart broke over them in tears of joy; and nothing will ever persuade me that there was not a Divine Heart in the Heavens rejoicing too.
