oof that
worldly wisdom may be safely transcended is the saint's magic gift to
mankind.[215] Not only does his vision of a better world console us for
the generally prevailing prose and barrenness; but even when on the
whole we have to confess him ill adapted, he makes some converts, and
the environment gets better for his ministry. He is an effective
ferment of goodness, a slow transmuter of the earthly into a more
heavenly order.

[215] The best missionary lives abound in the victorious combination
of non-resistance with personal authority. John G. Paton, for
example, in the New Hebrides, among brutish Melanesian cannibals,
preserves a charmed life by dint of it. When it comes to the point, no
one ever dares actually to strike him. Native converts, inspired by
him, showed analogous virtue. "One of our chiefs, full of the
Christ-kindled desire to seek and to save, sent a message to an inland
chief, that he and four attendants would come on Sabbath and tell them
the gospel of Jehovah God. The reply came back sternly forbidding
their visit, and threatening with death any Christian that approached
their village. Our chief sent in response a loving message, telling
them that Jehovah had taught the Christians to return good for evil,
and that they would come unarmed to tell them the story of how the Son
of God came into the world and died in order to bless and save his
enemies. The heathen chief sent back a stern and prompt reply once
more: 'If you come, you will be killed.' On Sabbath morn the Christian
chief and his four companions were met outside the village by the
heathen chief, who implored and threatened them once more. But the
former said:--

"'We come to you without weapons of war! We come only to tell you about
Jesus. We believe that He will protect us to-day.'

"As they pressed steadily forward towards the village, spears began to
be thrown at them. Some they evaded, being all except one dexterous
warriors; and others they literally received with their bare hands, and
turned them aside in an incredible manner. The heathen, apparently
thunderstruck at these men thus approaching them without weapons of
war, and not even flinging back their own spears which they had caught,
after having thrown what the old chief called 'a shower of spears,'
desisted from mere surprise. Our Christian chief called out, as he and
his companions drew up in the midst of them on the village public
ground:--

"'Jehovah