’I want to hear men talk on these matters (the Eucharistic question) who represent the view that is least familiar to me.  And then I feel, when it comes to a point of Greek criticism, sad regret and almost remorse at my old idleness and foolish waste of time when I might have made myself a decent scholar.  I cram up passages, instead of applying a scholarly habit of mind to the examination of them.  And now too, it is harder than ever to correct bad habits of inattention, inaccuracy, &c.  I am almost too weary oftentimes to do my work anyhow, much less can I make an effort to improve my way of doing it.  But I must be content, thankful to get on somehow or other, and to be able to teach the fellows something.

’It is quite curious to see how often one is baffled in one’s attempts to put oneself en rapport with the Melanesian mind.  If one can manage it, they really show one that they know a good deal, not merely by heart, or as matter of memory, that is worth little; but they show that they can think.  But often they seem utterly stupid and lost, and one is perplexed to know what their difficulty can possibly be.  One thing is clear, that they have little faculty of generalization.  As you know, they seldom have a name for their island, but only names for each tiny headland, and bay, and village.  The name for the island you must learn from the inhabitants of another island who view the one whose name you are seeking as one because, being distant, it must appear to them in its oneness, not in its many various parts.  Just so, they find it very difficult to classify any ideas under general heads.  Ask for details, and you get a whole list of them.  Ask for general principles, and only a few can answer.

’For example, it is not easy to make them see how all temptations to sin were overcome in the three representative assaults made upon Him in the wilderness; how love is the fulfilling of the Law; or how the violation of one Commandment is the violation (of the principle) of all.

’Then they have much difficulty (from shyness partly, and a want of teaching when young) in expressing themselves.  They really know much that only skilful questioning, much more skilful than mine, can get out of them.  It wants—­all teaching does—­a man with lots of animal spirits, health, pluck, vigour, &c.  Every year I find it more difficult.’

To another of the New Zealand friends who had returned to England there was a letter on Jan. 31:—­

’My dear Mr. Lloyd,—­I must send you a line, though I have little to say.  And I should be very sorry if we did not correspond with some attempt at regularity.