In the Wrong Paradise | Page 2

palter with no compromise, where the Truth is
concerned. Papists, Puseyites, Presbyterians, and Pagans alike, found in
Mr. Gowles an opponent whose convictions were firm as a rock, and
whose method of proclaiming the Truth was as the sound of a trumpet.
Examples of his singular courage and daring in the work of the ministry
abound in the following narrative. Born and brought up in the
Bungletonian communion, himself collaterally connected, by a sister's
marriage, with Jedediah Bungleton, the revered founder of the Very
Particular People, Gowles was inaccessible to the scepticism of the age.
His youth, it is true, had been stormy, like that of many a brand
afterwards promoted to being a vessel. His worldly education was of
the most elementary and indeed eleemosynary description,
consequently he despised secular learning, and science "falsely so
called." It is recorded of him that he had almost a distaste for those
difficult chapters of the Epistles in which St. Paul mentions by name
his Greek friends and converts. In a controversy with an Oxford scholar,
conducted in the open air, under the Martyrs' Memorial in that centre of
careless professors, Gowles had spoken of "Nicodemus," "Eubulus,"
and "Stephanas." His unmannerly antagonist jeering at these slips of
pronunciation, Gowles uttered his celebrated and crushing retort, "Did
Paul know Greek?" The young man, his opponent, went away, silenced
if not convinced.
Such a man was the Rev. Thomas Gowles in his home ministry.
Circumstances called him to that wider field of usefulness, the Pacific,
in which so many millions of our dusky brethren either worship owls,
butterflies, sharks, and lizards, or are led away captive by the seductive
pomps of the Scarlet Woman, or lapse languidly into the lap of a
bloated and Erastian establishment, ignorant of the Truth as possessed
by our community. Against all these forms of soul-destroying error the

Rev. Thomas Gowles thundered nobly, "passing," as an admirer said,
"like an evangelical cyclone, from the New Hebrides to the Aleutian
Islands." It was during one of his missionary voyages, in a labour
vessel, the Blackbird, that the following singular events occurred,
events which Mr. Gowles faithfully recorded, as will be seen, in his
missionary narrative. We omit, as of purely secular interest, the
description of the storm which wrecked the Blackbird, the account of
the destruction of the steamer with all hands (not, let us try to hope,
with all souls) on board, and everything that transpired till Mr. Gowles
found himself alone, the sole survivor, and bestriding the mast in the
midst of a tempestuous sea. What follows is from the record kept on
pieces of skin, shards of pottery, plates of metal, papyrus leaves, and
other strange substitutes for paper, used by Mr. Gowles during his
captivity.

II. NARRATIVE OF MR. GOWLES. {6}
"I must now, though in sore straits for writing materials, and having
entirely lost count of time, post up my diary, or rather commence my
narrative. So far as I can learn from the jargon of the strange and lost
people among whom Providence has cast me, this is, in their speech,
the last of the month, Thargeelyun, as near as I can imitate the sound in
English. Being in doubt as to the true time, I am resolved to regard to-
morrow, and every seventh day in succession, as the Sabbath. The very
natives, I have observed with great interest, keep one day at fixed
intervals sacred to the Sun-god, whom they call Apollon, perhaps the
same word as Apollyon. On this day they do no manner of work, but
that is hardly an exception to their usual habits. A less industrious
people (slaves and all) I never met, even in the Pacific. As to being
more than common idle on one day out of seven, whether they have
been taught so much of what is essential by some earlier missionary, or
whether they may be the corrupted descendants of the Lost Tribes
(whom they do not, however, at all resemble outwardly, being, I must
admit, of prepossessing appearance), I can only conjecture. This
Apollon of theirs, in his graven images (of which there are many),
carries a bow and arrows, fiery darts of the wicked, another point in

common between him and Apollyon, in the Pilgrim's Progress. May I,
like Christian, turn aside and quench his artillery!
To return to my narrative. When I recovered consciousness, after the
sinking of the Blackbird, I found myself alone, clinging to the mast.
Now was I tossed on the crest of the wave, now the waters opened
beneath me, and I sank down in the valleys of the sea. Cold, numbed,
and all but lifeless, I had given up hope of earthly existence, and was
nearly insensible, when I began to revive beneath the rays of the