The Supreme Disposer withheld permission even for their ultimate employment in the young country in the years yet to come; for his first and last service to his dusky charge consisted in the giving out of a hymn from the pulpit in the Maori language.

Mr. Bumby's successor as mission superintendent was the Rev. Walter Lawry, who for several years onward from 1818 had been a missionary in the Friendly Isles, and was thus well qualified by previous experience for the work upon which he entered on March 17, 1844. The prospect before him was in the highest degree hopeful. Heathenism had in many parts disappeared before the gently subduing power of the Christian religion, and he found the ordinances and institutions of the Methodist Church in existence among many a Maori tribe, and in some of the few European settlements which had already sprung into existence. Many and frequent were the occasions when the missionaries' hearts were made glad by applications from the stout-hearted warriors of former years for admission to the privileges of Church membership, and on some of these one hundred at a time would be baptized and admitted as catechumens.

Perhaps no better evidence can be supplied of the power of the Christian religion to subdue the savage character and regulate the lawless conduct of a Maori multitude than an account given by an eye-witness, the Rev. James Buller, of a Maori feast held in 1844 at Remnera, a few miles from the present city of Auckland. The Maoris have always been given to feasting, and this feast was no exception to the generality in that it had a political purpose:

The number of visitors was about four thousand. For their refection there awaited eleven thousand baskets of potatoes, a hundred large pigs, nine thousand sharks, and liberal supplies of flour, rice, sugar, and tobacco. A shed, four hundred yards long, was standing about fifty yards from the breastwork of potatoes, which shed was covered with Witney blankets, and one thousand more were ready as gifts. The feast lasted nearly a week. There was a natural fear in the minds of the European settlers in Auckland that the presence of such a muster of Maoris would be fraught with danger. Had they intended mischief, the few soldiers in the barracks sunk into nothing before such a host. But not a single act of disorder transpired. Only one accident happened, and that was to one of themselves. It has been well

asked, "Would the Caledonians, from the age of Constantine to that of the Plantagenets, have shown similar forbearance?" The governor, Captain Fitzroy, with his suite, paid a formal visit to the assembly. The war dance was performed by sixteen hundred. With such a number it was effectively done; but, as a relic of their old barbarism, it is not to be commended. Good taste, not less than sound morals, must condemn the practice. The several tribes were attended by their respective missionary pastors. Clusters of tents covered the ground, with small flags waving in the breeze. The Sunday was well observed, as it generally was in those days. Gathered into their several groups, the people worshiped God and heard his word.

Thousands of people, lately savage, brought together on an occasion usually stimulating to warlike propensities, must have come under the influence of habits far removed from those which had made men the plunderers and murderers they had been so recently, if they could conduct themselves with such admirable decorum. And indeed this was the case. Formerly liars and thieves, Mr. Lawry, describing a seven weeks' journey among them, says:

I was forcibly struck with their truthfulness and honesty. I did not hear of a single departure from truth or honesty in the case of a single individual of our people. I was cheered with the sight of the natives, without exception. Whether they traveled with us or not, all united with us in morning and evening devotion; the hymn was sung, the chapter was read, and prayer was offered. This is now the case in all those places where the influence of the missionary prevails, and there are few which that influence has not reached.

A few years after Mr. Lawry's arrival in New Zealand two useful educational institutions were established-a native model

school and the Wesleyan College. The first of these was founded at "Three Kings," three conical hills of volcanic character, near Auckland, for the purpose of training youth of both sexes, Maori and half-caste, in the rudiments of an English education, Christian knowledge, and industrial pursuits. Placed under the care of the Rev. Alexander Reid and Mrs. Reid, with an efficient staff of assistants, it continued in active operation till 1860, when it was interrupted by the disastrous Maori war. Wesley College came into existence under the presidency of the Rev. J. H. Fletcher, and was specially devoted to the training of the sons and daughters of missionaries

in New Zealand and the South Seas, though not to the exclusion altogether of the children of laymen. For some years Wesley College, though now non-existent, had a successful career as a high-class educational institution, and was the only one in the land in which any thing but the merest elementary instruction could be obtained.

Mr. Lawry continued to fill his office of general superintendent until the year 1854, when he retired from the active work of the ministry, and, after residing four years in Sydney, died, aged sixty-six, March 20, 1859.

Mission work among aborigines every-where has always suffered, more or less, from the detraction of the unsympathetic settler and the selfish trader; and it is not to be wondered at that the Maori mission should have awakened some hostility in the same classes of critics. Much labor has been bestowed upon the Maori race, and though it can no more be said of this than of any other benevolent enterprise that the results have been co-equal with the hopes and expectations indulged, yet the work, as a whole, has been a very great success. It cannot be claimed that success was immediate. Long and wearily did the first missionaries labor before they were able to claim their first convert, and it was only on the 14th of September, 1825, ten years after their landing, that they were able to administer Christian baptism to Rangi, the first to bear the Christian name among the Maori race. In the face of brutalizing cannibalism and infanticide, debasing polygamy and unclean indulgences, and a belief in a powerful priesthood and their black arts, it was an up-hill battle that had to be fought before a people who had been subjected to such mighty brutalizing forces could be brought under the purifying and elevating influences of Christ's gospel. But the liberation was accomplished, and, until the disastrous wars broke out, for which European cupidity and wickedness are so largely responsible, the Maoris who accepted Christianity and her institutions displayed an admirable spirit of devotion and fidelity to the truth they had received as from God. Habits of decency, regularity, and piety were fostered by New Testament teaching, and the law of God, so long as they yielded to its requirements, had to them a sanctity, especially as it enjoins religious worship and observance of the Sabbath, which secured sincere and devout

obedience. A military officer, Colonel Mundy, gives a description of a scene witnessed by him in 1847, which shows how these statements may be claimed to be realistic. He says:

I was returning with the governor from a walk to Mount Eden, when, upon turning the angle of the volcanoes, we came upon some hamlets belonging to people employed by government in quarrying the stone at the foot of the hill. I do not remember ever to have seen a more interesting or impressive scene than met our view as we looked down into the little valley below us. Eighty or a hundred Maoris, of various ages and both sexes, were standing, sitting, or reclining among the low fern in front of the village, in such groups and attitudes as accident had thrown them into. In the midst, on a slightly elevated mound, stood a native teacher, deeply tattooed in face, but dressed in decent black European clothes, who, with his Bible in his hand, was expounding to them the Gospel in their own tongue. Taking off our hats, we approached so as to become part of the congregation. No head turned toward us, no curious eyes were attracted by the arrival of the strangers, (as is so often the case in more civilized congregations,) though the governor was one of them. Their calm and grave looks were fixed with attention on the preacher, who, on his part, enforced his doctrine with a powerful and persuasive voice and manner, and with gestures replete with energy and animation. The sermon was, apparently, extempore, but there was no poverty of words or dearth of matter. It was delivered with the utmost fluency, and occasional rapid reference to and quotation from Scripture. The wild locale of this outdoor worship, (in the lap, as it were, of a mountain torn to pieces by its own convulsions, in the midst of heaped-up lava and scoria, with fern and flax waving in the wind,) invested the scene with a peculiar solemnity, and carried one back some centuries in the history of the world.

Similar testimonies from impartial sources might be adduced to almost any extent; while records of public profession of faith in Christ, verified by holy living and crowned by triumphant dying, fill the note-books of many a devoted missionary. Despite the unwillingness of some even who have been the most profited by Maori civilization to admit their obligation to Christianity, in the present instance it is undeniable that it made a way for British law and British commerce. Sir George Grey, twice Governor of New Zealand, and who has spent so large a portion of his life in it, once said on a public occasion: I feel confident that, regarded as a mere money investment, the very best investment England can make is to send out in advance and far in advance of either colonists or merchants

-missionaries, who are to prepare the way for those who are to follow them." And, said the first governor, Captain Hobson, addressing the Legislature, in 1841: "Whatever difference of opinion may be entertained as to the value and extent of the missionary body, there can be no doubt that they have rendered important service to the country, or that, but for them, a British colony would not at this moment be established in New Zealand." If to reduce a rude language to writing, to provide an elementary literature, and to instruct in the simpler arts and handicrafts of civilization, be to prepare the way for a profitable intercourse on the part of a commercial nation with a strong, brave, and intelligent native race, then the Wesleyan missionaries of New Zealand, along with their brethren of other Churches, are entitled to the ungrudging thanks of many who have built up substantial fortunes out of their trading in the fair and fertile home of the Maori.

By the blessing of God the missionaries had been able to cope successfully with native superstition and ferocity. There remained another obstacle to their work, which came from their own race. A country so admirably adapted for colonization as New Zealand was sure to attract Europeans and Americans to its shores in large numbers; and it is simple truth to say that, while many of the earliest settlers were orderly, virtuous, and Christian, all of them were by no means so. A government officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Russell, native commissioner, speaks, in 1862, to this point as follows:

The conduct of some of the Europeans who have located themselves in the Mohaka and Wairoa districts would almost lead me to suppose that they were the barbarians, and the Maoris the more civilized people. Scenes of drunkenness and outrage are described, in which men have taken part whose education and position should have led to a very different line of conduct, and which bring the moderation and forbearance of the natives into very strong contrast.

New forms of evil were thus presented to the Maori, and that, too, by the countrymen of the very men who had persuaded him to abandon slavery and cannibalism. Drinking, gambling, profanity, and Sabbath-breaking were now before his eyes; and what wonder if, as he beheld them, he first lost confidence in the religion of his benefactors, and ere long abandoned it to return to the more complicated and unmeaning religious