Understanding why so many Aboriginal people at Mapoon adopted notions of moral transgression similar to those of the missionaries first requires an examination of the missionaries themselves. To have any comprehension of the importance of Jesus and his suffering and resurrection which bridged a degraded humanity and glorious God, to understand the extent of Jesus’ love, and to develop one’s own love for Him, all fundamental pursuits in Moravian Christianity, one must start with the knowledge that humans are, at base, sinful. Like many European Christians of the day, the missionaries sought to avoid sin in their own lives and save others from sin, in no small part because of what they believed awaited sinners in the afterlife. This emphasis on sin had important consequences for the missionaries.
The word guilt has at least two interrelated meanings. The first definition is what a judge looks for in a criminal trial. It is a violation of a law. This idea took on particular significance for the missionaries who believed that God had created a divine Law. No violation could escape His notice, and all people would be called to account during the Judgement. For the missionaries, guilt was having committed a sin. The second definition is closely related; it is the feeling aroused in a person by the knowledge he or she has done wrong. As a result of the missionaries’ belief in an omnipotent Judge watching for transgressions of His absolute moral law, they were acutely aware of any of their own transgressions of this law and felt guilty for what they perceived as their guilt. Rev. Nicholas Hey closely associated the two meanings of guilt when he wrote that the missionaries tried to ‘impart a sense of guilt or sin’.[3]
The concept of sin and preoccupation with the feeling of guilt influenced the missionaries’ use of this emotion as a lever. For most of the period examined in this article, Nicholas Hey was the senior male missionary and thus had the most influence over the ‘official’ definition of Christianity. Hey’s life was directed by feelings of guilt from a young age. His father, who was unable to fulfil his dream of becoming a missionary, wanted his sons to become missionaries until he died (when Nicholas was 13). His mother had great influence on Nicholas and his siblings.[4]
Arthur Ward’s brother, JG, died at Mapoon and Arthur’s response was to write a book about the mission. He seems to have obtained much of his information from the missionaries and probably possessed a thorough understanding of their motivations. He writes about Hey’s mother, ‘She spent hours in prayer for them, and they knew it. She saw that they did not, as was natural, think as she did, and she would have willingly suffered the loss of all things rather than that the soul of one of her children should be lost’.[5] Nicholas rebelled against some of the stricter religious elements of her household, such as not being allowed to dance, and eventually ran away.
But he found he could enjoy nothing. Pleasure was not pleasant. Go where he would, he felt himself encompassed by his mother’s prayers, and at last he gave up the struggle to emancipate himself from her influence, returned home, and quietly settled down to the old strict routine. Not that he was satisfied with it. The Puritan air stifled him, and he began to feel the uncomfortable sensation that there was no chance for him because he was not good enough. He took to reading his Bible systematically, in the hope that some good might come of it.[6]
Guilt was clearly one, if not the, motivating factor in Nicholas Hey’s young life. His studies eventually convinced him that the fate of his soul had not been predetermined and that salvation was possible. Yet despite his apparent break with the religion of his mother, ‘the best theology he ever learnt was taught him at his mother’s feet’.[7] That his parents’ lessons made their mark is evidenced by the fact that two of his brothers became preachers while the third became a medical missionary. The effects of Nicholas’ upbringing lasted well beyond childhood. Years after the mission had been founded, Arthur Ward could still write, ‘The home influences are as strong as ever, though it is years since his mother died’.[8]
Nicholas Hey’s ‘home influences’ were what kept him behaving as he believed a good Christian ought to behave. Even such core elements of his personality as his devotion to Christianity itself and his general way of thinking can be traced back to his early home: ‘If one tries to get at the secret of Nicholas Hey’s resourcefulness, his earnest piety, and his broad-minded common sense, one is always led back to the days when the boy of 13 left school to become the bread-winner, and to learn from his mother the importance of little things, and the doctrine of stewardship’.[9] As a young man, the missionary path was blocked for Nicholas Hey because he had to care for his sick mother, who was largely confined to bed for the last seven years of her life. By the time she died, he no longer had the same desire to become a missionary but he still felt it was his duty. He wrote to the Moravian Mission Board to put his guilt about the matter to rest, believing that he would be rejected because at 24 he was too old and, further, because he was unworthy of the position. He saw his acceptance by the Board as a sign of God’s will which he did not dare transgress.[10]
Guilt was an important part of the other missionaries’ lives, too. It is striking that Arthur Ward, while attempting to praise the missionaries and work at Mapoon, portrayed Nicholas Hey as being racked by guilt. This indicates that Nicholas Hey was not exceptional and perhaps even fairly similar to Arthur and JG Ward. In a diary by one of the European females at Mapoon, virtually the only discussion of the author’s emotions was written every new year in a prayer to be a better person in the coming year.[11] The missionaries passed along religiously motivated feelings of guilt to Aboriginal people. Many of the Aboriginal people felt as though they sinned against the missionaries when they sinned against God and sinned against God when they sinned against the missionaries.