After much prayerful deliberation with my brethren and with my own heart before God, I somewhat reluctantly felt constrained to undertake the task. If my story was to be the means of providing more Missionaries for the Islands, and of providing a commodious Ship for the service of the Mission alone, to keep open their communications with the outer world and with Christian influences, not to speak of carrying their provisions at fixed periods, or rescuing them when in troubles and perils from the jaws of death, I was not unwilling to tell it again and again, if the Lord would open up my path. God knows my heart, and any one who really knows me will easily admit, that no selfish or egotistical motive has influenced me in reciting through all the Australasian Colonies, New Zealand, Scotland, and latterly in many parts of England and Ireland, the incidents of my career and experience, first of all on Tanna, and thereafter for nearly twenty years—as the Second Part of my biography will relate—on the neighbouring island of Aniwa; an island entirely given to me by the Lord, the whole population of which became Christian; and they and their race will be my crown of joy and rejoicing in the day of the Lord Jesus.
With regrets, and yet with unquenchable hope for these Islands, I embarked for Australia, having received the solemn promise of my brethren, that in entering upon this great effort I was to be left absolutely free of all control, and empowered to carry out the work as God might seem to guide me, and open up my way. I had only spoken to one man in Sydney; all the doors to influence had therefore to be unlocked, and I had no helper, no leader, but the Spirit of my Lord. The Second Part of this Autobiography, should God spare me to write it, will record His marvellous goodness in using my humble voice and pen and the story of my life for interesting thousands and tens of thousands in the work of Missions, and especially for binding together the children of the Sabbath Schools of Australasia in a Holy League of help to the New Hebrides, which has already borne precious fruit to His glory, and will continue to do so for ages to come.
Oftentimes, while passing through the perils and defeats of my first years in the Mission field on Tanna, I wondered, and perhaps the reader hereof has wondered, why God permitted such things. But on looking back now, I already clearly perceive, and the reader of my future pages will, I think, perceive, that the Lord was thereby preparing me for doing, and providing me materials wherewith to accomplish the best work of all my life—the kindling of the heart of Australian Presbyterianism with a living affection for these Islanders of their own Southern Seas—the binding of all their children into a happy league of shareholders, first in one Mission Ship, and finally in a larger and more commodious Steam-Auxiliary, and, last of all, in being the instrument under God of sending out Missionary after Missionary to the New Hebrides, to claim another island and still another for Jesus. That work, and all that may spring from it in time and Eternity, never could have been accomplished by me, but for first the sufferings and then the story of my Tanna enterprise!
Some unsophisticated souls who read these pages will be astonished to learn, but others who know more of the heartless selfishness of human creatures, will be quite prepared to hear, that my leaving Tanna was not a little criticized, and a great deal of nonsense was written, even in Church Magazines, about the breaking up of the Mission. All such criticism came, of course, from men who were themselves destitute of sympathy, and who, probably, never endured one pang for Jesus in all their comfortable lives. Conscious that I had, to the last inch of life, tried to do my duty, I left all results in the hands of my only Lord, and all criticisms to His unerring judgment. Hard things also were occasionally spoken to my face. One dear friend, for instance, said,—