I am currently in Birmingham, AL at The Church at Brookhills at the Radical Intensive for pastors and church leaders. I appreciate your prayers. During the break, I wanted to post part 6 of quotes and notes.
If you haven’t read the first 5 installments, it would benefit you to do so before reading this installment.
Paton steps foot on one of the most depraved islands in the world in order to preach the gospel and call cannibals to repentance and faith in Christ. He begins describing his encounters with the Tannese at this point in his autobiography. The challenges were many. To summarize his findings in a sentence we read, “The depths of Satan outlined in the first chapter of the Romans were uncovered there (on Tanna) before our eyes in the daily life of the people, without veil and without excuse” (66).
Here are some excerpts….
We were informed that war was on foot. One day two hostile tribes met near our station; high words arose, and old feuds were revived. The Inland people withdrew; but the Harbor people flew to arms and rushed past us in pursuit of their enemies. The discharge of muskets in the adjoining bush, and the horrid yells of the Savages, soon informed us that they were engaged in deadly fights. 67
We were afterwards informed that five or six men had been shot dead; that their bodies had been carried by their conquerors from the field of battle and cooked and eaten that very night at a boiling spring near the head of the bay, less than a mile from the spot where my house was being built. 68
It is said, that the habitual Cannibal’s desire for human flesh becomes so horrible that he has been known to disinter and feast upon those recently buried. 89
We were informed that one of the wounded men, carried home from the battle, had just died; and that they had strangled his widow to death, that her spirit might accompany him to the other world, and be his servant there, as she had been here. Now their dead bodies were laid side by side ready to be buried in the sea. Our hearts sank to think of all this happening within earshot, and that we knew it not! 69
Oh how sad and degraded is the position of Woman, where the teaching of Christ is unknown, or disregarded though known! It is the Christ of the Bible, it is His Spirit entering into humanity that has lifted woman and made her the helpmate and the friend of man, not his toy or his slave. 90
It was to flesh and blood weary work, and in many ways disheartening—no responsive faces and hearts there to cheer us on and lift us up into fellowship with the Lord. 91
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