MISSION TO MAORIS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 226, 24 September 1927, Page 17

MISSION TO MAORIS.

HOW !T STARTED. AT MA&SDEFB INVITATION. "HARVEST PLENTIFUL, WORKERS FEW." The celebrations this week in Auckland of the 105 th anniversary of foundation of the Maori Methodist Mission renders it fitting that a little of the early history of the movement should be recalled. A century ago there was a great gulf fixed between the Church of England and "Dissenters," which makes it all the more remarkable that it was at the invitation of that great Anglican, the Rev. Samuel Marsden, that a Wesleyan minister, with his wife, crossed over from Sydney to start work amongst the Maoris. Samuel Marsden was too great a man to let petty distinctions of creed interfere in the doing of a work which was needed. With him it was a case of the "harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few." Upon his return to Sydney, from the Bay of Islands", he urged the Rev. Samuel Leigh, the first Methodist missionary to New South Wales, to come to New Zealand and assist in the work of evangelising the Maoris. A few years later, Mr. Leigh and his wife started missionary work at Kaeo, Whangaroa, amongst the very Maoris who had killed and eaten the crew of the Boyd, because the captain had flogged the son of a chief on the trip over from Sydney. To Check Over-Lapping. Later it was agreed when the work of the Anglicans and Methodist Missions to the Maoris assumed more importance, that to prevent over-lapping the Church of England ehould work on the East Coast of the North Island, and the Methodist Church on the West Coast. Thus the two churches worked amicably together, and when Mr. Marsden visited New Zealand it was his practice to call on his Methodist brethren, encouraging them by his counsel and sympathy. Start of Mission to Maoris. It is of interest to recall what it was that drew the attention of Mr Marsden to the Maoris of New Zealand Ruatara, a chief of the Bay of Islands took a trip to England with a whaler as the captain had promised to introduce him to the King of England When London was reached, Ruatara was simply turned adrift without pay and had a very hard time until he got a chance to return to New South Wales by the convict ship Ann in the year 1810. On board was the Rev. Samuel Marsden, who was grearly attracted by Ruatara, and on arrival at Sydney took him to his home, as the chief was sick. Later he sent Ruatara to the Bay of Islands. It was having met Ruatara that caused Mr. Marsden in ISI3 to start the Anglican mission at Bay of Islands. Arrival of Bishop Selwyn. It was not until another great Anglican, Bishop G. A. Selwyn, arrived in New Zealand, that the position changed for the worse. Fresh from Oxford, Bishop Selwyn was a much different man to what he developed into when he had greater experience in colonial life. One thing is certain—it was with the coming of Bishop Selwyn that the first sectarian troubles began in New Zealand. The late Rev. T. G. Hammond, in his book, "The History of a Mission," touches upon the matter from the Methodist point of view. He wrote: The real cause of bitterness came when that great and good man, Dr. Selwyn, arrived in New Zealand. The Bishop was a High Churchman, while his missionary clergy already in the land were perhaps to a man evangelicals. The Bishop commenced badly in the Bay of Islands, where he told the Maoris under the oversight of the Rev. John Hobbs that the orders of the missionaries who had converted them were irregular; that he, as Bishop, was the head, and that these missionaries were but the feet." Accustomed to look up to their Methodist missionaries as leaders, the Maori chiefs took time for reflection, then they replied: "Very well, Bishop. If you are the head, and these missionaries of ours are the feet, do not attempt to cut off your feet; your head would be of little value without your feet." This, of course, was quite on the lines of Maori logic, and must have been a poser even for the great Bishop. In the Taranaki province the trouble first developed seriously. Mr. Hammond writes: "Most painful results followed the Bishop's exclusive teaching. Village was set against village, family against family. They went so far as to erect fences between their respective habitations, lest they ehould look upon one another while engaged in worship." A Bishop's Great Act. A beautiful incident is, however, related by Mr. Hammond to illustrate how much colonial life had done to emancipate Bishop Selwyn. Before finally leaving New Zealand he dispensed Holy Communion at a public function in St. Matthew's Church, Auckland. In the congregation were the Rev. John Hobbs and the Rev. James Wallis, two venerable missionaries of the Methodist Church. "After dispensing the emblem to his own congregation," wrote Mr. Hammond, "the Bishop took the bread and wine to these two servants of God and said, 'May we meet again at the marriage supper of the Lord.'" Mr. Hammond also relates an incident to show how Dr. Selwyn's outlook had broadened during his residence in New Zealand, that "some of the remote country churches the Bishop purposely refused to consecrate, so as not to exclude Wesleyan ministers from using them when they visited these outlying places."