’By God’s grace, I trust that some little simple books in Lifu will soon be in their houses, which may be useful.  It is even a cause for thankfulness that in a few days (for the “Southern Cross” ought to be here in a week with 500 more copies) some 600 or more copies, in large type, of the Lord’s Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments will be in circulation; but they won’t use them yet.  They won’t be taught to learn them by heart, and be questioned upon them; yet they may follow by and by.  Hope on is the rule.  Give them the Bible, is the cry; but you must give them the forms of faith and prayer which Christendom has accepted, to guide them; and oh! that we were so united that we could baptize them into a real living exemplification, and expression—­an embodiment of Christian truth, walking, sleeping, eating and drinking before their eyes.  Christ Himself was that on earth, and His Church ought to be now.  These men saw to accept His teaching was to bind themselves to a certain course of life which was exhibited before their own eyes.  Hence, multitudes approved His teaching, but would not accept it—­would not profess it, because they saw what was involved in that profession.  But now men don’t count the cost; they forget that “If any man come to Me” is followed by “Which of you intending to build a tower,” &c.  Hence the great and exceeding difficulty in these latter days when Christianity is popular!’

In this state of things it was impossible to baptize adults till they had come to a much clearer understanding of what a Christian ought to do and to believe; and therefore Coley’s only christenings in Lifu were of a few dying children, whom he named after his brother and sisters, as he baptized them with water, brought in cocoa-nut shells, having taught himself to say by heart his own translation of the baptismal form.

He wrote the following letter towards the end of his stay:—­

’September 6, 1858:  Lifu, Loyalty Islands.

’My dear Miss Neill,—­The delay of four or five days in the arrival of the “Southern Cross” gives me a chance of writing you a line.  The Bishop dropped me here this day three months, and told me to look out for him on September 1.  As New Zealand is 1,000 miles off, and he can’t command winds and waves, of course I allow him a wide margin; and I begged him not to hurry over my important business in New Zealand in order to keep his appointment exactly.  But his wont is to be very punctual.  I have here twelve lads from the north-west islands:  from seven islands, speaking six languages.  The plan of bringing them to a winter school in some tropical isle is now being tried.  The only difficulty here is that Lifu is so large and populous; and just now (what with French priests on it, and the most misty vague kind of teaching from Independents the only thing to oppose to the complete machinery of the Romish system) demands so much time, that it is difficult to do justice to one’s lads from the distant lands that are living with one here.  The Bishop had an exaggerated notion of the population here.  I imagine it to be somewhere about 8,000.  The language is not very hard, but has quite enough difficulty to make it more than a plaything:  the people in that state when they venerate a missionary—­a very dangerous state; I do my best to turn the reverence into the right channel and towards its proper object.