THE MARSDEN CENTENARY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16742, 24 December 1914, Page 6

THE MARSDEN CENTENARY.

To-morrow, at tho foot of the Marsden memorial cross on tho shores of tho Bay of Islands, a service will 'bo held to celebrate the hundredth anniversary i of the first Christian sermon preached on New Zealand soil. It will not bo so picturesquely dramatic a gathering as the one which was addressed by Samuel Marsden on that spot on Christmas Day, 1814, when the tattooed wild men of Cannibal Land assembled in silent wond’er on the fenced “ marae ” below the palisaded castlehill of Rangihoua to hear the strange white priest unfold tho “glad tidings of great joy,” but it will with fitness memorise for the people of this Dominion an event that had by far a greater and more perdurable influence upon the character and destiny of Ao-tea-roa than any other happening in our young island story. Marsden’s landing and his first sermon on the Tokerau beach a century ago were really tho beginnings of permanent civilised settlement in New Zealand. When the little mission brig Active let go her anchor in the Bay of Islands and' her Pilgrim Fathers of the church j went ashore with their Maori protege, tho wise young Ruatnra, the end of the long black pagan night was at hand, and tho first glimmerings of a now life, spiritual and temporal, came over the Maori horizon. The tremendous significance for us of that Christmas Day a hundred years ago can only be fully realised when we remfunner that until Marsden and his courageous coadjutors got a footing in the north the name of New Zealand was synonymous with atrocities, treachery and cannibalism in the minds of voyagers and traders, that practically every ship that ventured' to these shores in those adventurous days did so at constant risk of being cut off, and that tho Natives were regarded as the most tormuLue set of savages in the Southern Seas. Now and again young Maoris boarded trading ships. for the sake of the exciting life, but they invariably returned to the wild and war-hiaking existence in the pas of their tribespeople. Here and there in New Zealand bays Venturesome white men, often runaway convicts, had adopted' the life of tho Maori, but even these ran constant risk of the man-eaters’ ovens, in which, indeed, they not infrequently ended. “ Abodes of cruelty, darkness and superstition,” Marsden called the homes of the Maori as lie first saw them. In 1814 this country was still in the condition in which Cook had found it forty-fivo years before. It would have remained in that condition, an untrimmed’ land of barbarism, for an indefinite period had not the greathearted chaplain" of the New South Wales convict colony, not content with the one task at his hand, looked about for grander work, and found it in the long, narrow islands that lay in tho gloom of mystery and danger a thousand miles across the ocean to the east-' ward. The official British settlements in New Zealand would certainly not have been founded as early as they were had it not been for the chance that set the first wandering blue-tat-tooed sailor from the Ngapuhi county in Marsden’s way in Sydney streets, and so led him to interest himself in the strange people who ate men and shipped on whalers for the sake of a new experience. It is very questionable whether tho British flag would have been hoisted at the Bay of Islands in 1840 but for. tho missionary spirit which inspired Marsden and the indomitable spirit which kept him to his self-imposed' labours through many years of doubt and trouble. Samuel Marsden had some of the qualities which New Zealand settlers of the early days found in the first Selwyn. He was essentially a -pioneer, and physical difficulties he made little of. He had the courage that is a requisite in a nation-maker, and was something of an autocrat, as indeed was very necessary in his work, whether in the rough colony of Now South Wales or among that race of chiefs the Maoris. His biographers have told of the enormous obstacles he fought and overcame in his religious work in Australia, where evory hand, from that of the Governor down, seemed raised against him in his efforts to combat the vices of that then disreputable corner of the earth. Ho had enemies in high quarters, but he met them fearlessly, and it could have been said of him as Carlyle wrote of his long-gone hero the Abbot Samson, “ Let all sluggards and cowards, remiss, falsespoken, unjust and otherwise diabolic persons, have a care; this is a dangerous man for them.” As a missionary to savage but proud and “touchy” races such as tho Maori, peoples constitutionally short in the temper but punctiliously courteous in their way, Marsden could scarcely have been bettered. He had a keen appreciation of the Maori’s good qualities, and made allowances for hjs love of war and his ruthlessness under stress of battle passion. The Maoris impressed him as “ a noble race,” of uncommon intelligence, just as they did Selwyn, and, like Selwyn and Grey, he possessed the gift, not given to all missionaries or all administrators, of understanding the Na-

tive point of view, and tact to concede something to Native prejudices. As a colonist, he was a man of mark in New South Wales, where he started tho wool-raising industry, and in New Zealand his labours were by no means confined to tho spiritual bettering of the Maori. “I consider every axe, every hoe, every spado in New Zealand,” ho wrote, “ns an instrument to prepare the way of tho Lord. They are silent but sure missionaries in the hands of the Natives of that country.” So ho introduced farm stock and grain cultivation, he brought over millers and carpenters, and taught the eager tribes such of tho useful arts of tho pakeha as suited the genius of the race. Ho was a great traveller also, in a day when New Zealand was wilder far than it was in Solwyn’s day, and, like Selwyn, ho trudged many hundreds of miles on foot over the scarcely discernible trails of tho war-parties, living on kumara and fern-root when nothing better was to be had. He was one of the very first white men to gaze upon the Waitemata Harbour, where Auckland now stands, and there wore very few Maori villages between the Hauraki and tho North Cape that “Te Matenga” did not visit in his wanderings.

In appraising the genius of Marsden as an apostle and a director of missions, it must be said that he had a very acute perception of the qualities which were required in a missionary, and his definition of a successful worker is worth recalling. “Men also of education and knowledge are wanted,” he wrote; “ignorant men, though possessed of piety, will be found illqualified for a mission in New Zealand. The Natives are a wise'and understanding people, and will pry into tho very secrets of every man who resides amongst them. They will soon find out a man’s real character, whether he is ignorant or wise, prudent or foolish, and will estimate the benefits which they are likely to derive from his knowledge, his good temper, his charity, and will esteem or despise him accordingly.” A “ wise and understanding ” diagnosis this; none knew better than Marsden the utter failures that some very good men might.bo in the missionary field. He himself possessed most of the qualifications that made the missionary loved as well 1 as respected by the new-caught peoples of the dark places; and' it was fortunate for those who came after him that it fell to the lot and privilege of Samuel Marsden to preach tho first message of the Rongo Pai to the mat-garbed New Zealander of a hundred years ago.