The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1895.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 268, 11 November 1895, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1895.

for the oause that laoks asuistanoo, For tha wrong that needs resistanso, For tie fatura in tlie diatenco. Asd tha good that wo can do.

The presence in our midst, for a few days, of the London Missionary Society's fine steamer the John Williams has bean mads the occasion in several of the churches a»d in other mooting places to direcb the attention of the public fco missionary entorpriee ; and there is little doubt that the addresses will stimulate infceroob in the important work which the Society and other organisations of a similar natureare carrying ou. One fr-els thafc tho missionaries should almost have loss difficulty in Mew Zealand

than anywhere elso in enlisting tho sym pathy of all classes of the community.

An a peoplo we are, ib is to be hoped, aa strongly actuated by philanthropic and Christian motives as our friends at Homo, and we would nob be loss generous than they in giving, according to our means, towards tho noble work of enlightening the dark placea of the earth. But missionary enterprise should even appeal more strongly to us than to them. Wo are the debtors, in a much more direct sense than they, of fcho miasionnrieß. Those mon vrere tho nursea of our still infant colony. It was through their bravo and disinterested efforts thafc she emerged from the shadow of eavagodom into tho light) of civilisation. It is nob uncommon nowadays to hoar ignorant individuals endeavouring to boifbtle tho work those pioneers did, and to attribute to them moan and selfish motives. To us it hita always seemed a sufficients answer to auch criticisms fco recall the fucfc that at the time tho missionaries came to Now Zealand it was nob exactly tho plaeo a man actuated by the lowest worldly aims would have chosen bo emigrate to. We should rather fancy that to moat people ib would have seemed, liko Ireland, an excellent country to emigrate from. Tho mon who took up mission labour in NewZealand in those early days had Ecarcaly more reason to suppose the colony would develop aa it has done than a niiesiouaiy in one of the wildcat of tho Pacific Islands has that ib will become a greab centre of civilicabion. Let us then render honour to whom honour is duo, und certainly our firat missionaries have a ritrhc to ib, not only from mon who are tho avowed friends of the truths they eoivod abroad, but) from those, too, who look merely to the spread of trade and tho civiliaine influences of tho Westorn world. Tho true founders of the? colony, tho .real fathers of Now Zealand, were tho men who brought! tho (S'oepol of Peace to thei>e onco dreaded shores; and one can hardly imagine v colony founded under happier auspice-?. Suroly New Zealandera should have a special sympathy with men who aro doing for tho islands of tho Pacific what) their predecessors did for Now Zealand. Apart from what may be called this Bontimontai sympathy, aud aparb, too, from tho sympathy which as Christiana v,e muat feel in the spread of Hia kingdom on oarth, there is a. great question of worldly policy involved. The missionaries are accomplishing in those islands a work that it is very certain could never have been accomplished by any other agency. They aro preparing the way for the further development of the people among whom they labour, and our only regret is thab the good they are doing should so often bo iuterfored with and neutralised by the advent of civilisation in its lowesb and leaeb desirable forms. If the missionary were only lofb alone to work out his own scheme we s-hould have little reason to deplore the degeneracy of the inhabitants in some of the islands in the Pacific. Thoy might indeed bo veritable "isles of Eden," where the simple peoplo grow wise and industrious undor the rule of tho mission, if tho hatoful trader vribh hia shiploads of vico3 never polluted tho Bhoro. Ib ia a aad comment on our boasted civilisation thab the native name for a white man in somo of the islands ia i" a sailing profligate." Bub, as ib in certain thab the European must sooner or later come to those shores, our hopo is that when be comes the nativea, taught and watched over by the missionaries, will ba in a position to understand and welcome the advantages the strangera bring with them, and to withstand 'he temptations they may also convey. Thanks to the quietly labouring missionary, the two races will be much more likely bo understand one anothor than they have done in the past, when they bocamo acquainted in bloodshed, and formed Buch conceptions of each other's characters a8 made ib impossible for them to exist on a friendly footing.

The missionary steam yacht now lying in our port roproeonts' a century of enterprising work, the results of which are to be seen in many Polynesian Groups. The Society to which this vosael belongs has extensive missions in China, India, Africa and Madagascar, bub the John Williams represents mora especially the field in which the Society commenced its work one hundred years ago. The reports which Capfe. Cook had taken to England of his visits to Tahiti and other South Sea lelaodo secured for the inhabitants of those isles the Jirst attention of tho newly formed Society, and its tirst missionaries, thirty in number, wore conveyed in tho Duff to Tahiti, the Tongun Island and tho Marquesas Group. Two years later three of the missionaries were murdered ab Tonga, and the Marquesas mission was abandoned, bub ab Tahiti tho missionaries continued to labour and for years made no favourable impression upon the people. Ab length Pomaro, tho King, accepted Christianity, and so the change began which has extended to many groups during recent yeara.

For thirty years the London Missionary Society was the only Society labouring in the Pacific J>lob. They wore followed euccessively by the Wosleyans, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians, and now, under theae different societies, nearly the whole of Poly^ nesia is brought within the pale of Christian influence and teaching. The groups under the caro of the London Missionary iiociety aro—in addition to many isolated islanda—tho Cook, Samoan, Tokelau, Ellico, and Gilbert) Groups, and Mission stations have during tho last 20 yersrs boon .astablishad along 400 miles of the coast of iSfew Guinea.

At fcho annual meeting of the Auckland Auxiliary of the London Missionary Society, iso be held this evening, addresses ivill be givew upon the special work of the John Williams, which leavea to-morrow far tho Cook Group oa its glorious miseion of enlightenment. We wieh it a hearty Godspeod.