Already he had often felt and spoken of himself as an elderly man.  Most men of a year or two past forty are at the most vigorous period of their existence, generally indeed with the really individual and effective work of their lives before them, having hitherto been only serving their apprenticeship; but Coleridge Patteson had begun his task while in early youth, and had been obliged to bear at once responsibility and active toil in no ordinary degree.  Few have had to be at once head of a college, sole tutor and steward, as well as primary schoolmaster all at once, or afterwards united these charges with those of Bishop, examining chaplain and theological professor, with the interludes of voyages which involved intense anxiety and watchfulness, as well as the hardships of those unrestful nights in native huts, and the exhaustion of the tropical climate.  No wonder then that he was already as one whose work was well-nigh done, and to whom rest was near.  And though the entrance into that rest was by a sudden stroke, it was one that mercifully spared the sufferings of a protracted illness, and even if his friends pause to claim for it the actual honours (on earth) of martyrdom, yet it was no doubt such a death as he was most willing to die, full in his Master’s service—­ such a death as all can be thankful to think of.  And for the like-minded young man who shared his death, only with more of the bitterness thereof, the spirit in which he went forth may best be seen in part of a letter written in the January of 1870, just after his Ordination:—­

’The right way must be to have a general idea of what to aim at, and to make for the goal by what seem, as you go, the best ways, not to go on a course you fixed to yourself before starting without having seen it.  It is so easy for people to hold theories, and excellent ones too, of the way to manage or deal with the native races, but the worst is that when you come to work the theory, the native race will never be found what it ought to be for properly carrying it out.  I am quite sure that nothing is to be done in a hurry; a good and zealous man in ignorance and haste might do more harm in one year than could be remedied in ten.  I would not root out a single superstition until I had something better to put in its place, lest if all the weeds were rooted up, what had before been fertile should become desert, barren, disbelieving in anything.  Is not the right way to plant the true seed and nourish it that it may take root, and out-grow and choke the weeds?  My objection to Mission reports has always been that the readers want to hear of “progress,” and the writers are thus tempted to write of it, and may they not, without knowing it, be at times hasty that they may seem to be progressing?  People expect too much.  Those do so who see the results of Mission work, who are engaged in it; those do so who send them.  We have the precious seed to sow, and must sow it when and where we can, but we must not always be looking out to reap what we have sown.  We shall do that “in due time” if we “faint not.”  Because missionary work looks like a failure, it does not follow that it is.