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The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1925, Page 181

Concordia Seminary Library, St. Louis (scholar.csl.edu/lutheran_pioneer/47)

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER. 181

A View of the Interior of New Guinea.

John G. Paton is even better
known than the other two “mission-
ary Johns” mentioned above. In
his remarkable autobiography, than
which nothing more readable, noth-
ing more romantic, nothing more
graphic or pathetic was ever written,
Paton has described the experience
of himself, his wife, and his asso-
ciates. After working unsuccess-
fully for four long: years, under -the
most tremendous difficulties, on a
certain small island of the New
Hebrides group, he was compelled
to transfer the field of his labors to
the island of Aniwa. Here, too, at
first all seemed hopeless; but finally
God’s grace was triumphant, and
Dr. Paton was permitted to see
the former murderers and cannibals

turned into humble and loving
_ Christians.

Santa Cruz Islands.

The names of two other famous missionaries are
connected with islands belonging to Melanesia —
Bishop Palteson and James Chalmers.

John C. Patteson, a young man of great promise
and singular Christian virtues, came to Melanesia
in 1855 and in 1861 was made the Anglican mis-
sionary bishop of the Pacific. For ten years there-
after this young apostle worked indefatigably in
his chosen field. His worst opponents were un-
scrupulous white traders, who carried on a fiendish
slave-trade among the natives, whom they carried
off into bondage on the plantations of the larger
islands. He met his death at the hands of natives
shortly -after landing on one of the Santa Cruz
Islands in 1871, who, wholly unaware that they
were killing their best friend and champion, mur-
dered him as an act of revenge for the kidnaping
and death of five natives at the hands of white
traders a short time before. Since Patteson’s death
the work has been vigorously pushed with great
success by native laborers, who have been trained
on the Norfolk Islands.

Papua, or New Guinea.

The name of another missionary apostle and
martyr will ever be associated with Papua, or New
Guinea. If Australia is classed among the conti-
nents, New Guinea has the distinction of being the
largest: island in the world. ‘This island has an

Former South Sea Cannibals.