LATE VENERABLE ARCHDEACON MAUNSELL—IN MEMORIAM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9492, 23 April 1894, Page 3

LATE VENERABLE ARCHDEACON MAUNSELL—IN MEMORIAM.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—Vivid recollections, charming and sunlit memories scattered over a period of three decades, enables me to write with confidence and certainty relative to the habits, character, actions, and attributes of the deceased clergyman, whose name is like ointment poured forth, and whose praise is in all the Churches. During all those years I not only lived in the same parish, but resided in close proximity to the venerable Doctor. In many perambulations, in atmospheres of joy and sorrow, I have conversed with him on nearly every conceivable theme, and was struck with the philosophic calmness and serenity of his mind, a sterling catholicity of spirit, the keenness of perceptions, clearness of judgment, and consequent soundness and stability of his conclusions. I have frequently driven him to the Gaol, Asylum, abodes of suffering, beds of the dying, and outlying districts, in which he was wont to administer in holy things. Anent these journeys I submit an apposite question propounded in reference to " Lux Muudi." Did not our hearts burn while he talked by the way and opened the Scriptures? His counsel and sympathy to those whose departure was at hand demonstrates his ability " to weep with those who weep." I will now prove that he could also " rejoice with those who rejoice." One Sunday morning he accompanied me to the house of a gentleman, from whom I was anxious to obtain a subscription for the blind. He declared that I should not get a cent, so left the intramural appeal in my hands. Trying earnestly, I failed absolutely. In the bitterness of disappointment, joining the Archdeacon, I assured him that his prophecy had crystallised into history. On reaching the Manukau Road two gentlemen, in an opeu cab, were coming from town. I interviewed, solicited, and obtained from them £5. Showing the spoil to the doctor, he simultaneously exhibited the high-stepping joy of the schoolboy, the calmer pleasure imbedded in the song of the reaper, and the more thrilling and rapturous elysium of greeting friends after years of peril and absence. Crowning his exuberant rejoicing with the question, " How do you do it?" I replied by my patent, "Herein failure blunts not the edge, but sharpens the knife." _ His discourses were plain, pointed, didactic, practical. If lacking in brilliance and unadorned by the flowers of rhetoric, they had no commerce with the commonplace or colloquial, were vitalised by a silvery vein of originality, and pre-eminently logical. For the sounding brass of speculative theology, and the tinkling cymbals of pseudo-advanced thinkers he had nothing but anathemas, and his manner and gesticulations when dealing with these wells without rooter, and clouds without rain were such as to induce the superficial to imagine that his fiery denunciation and brusque manner were bordering on the ferocious. These paroxysms, which occasionally courted the smiles of his auditors, were but of brief duration. He hated euphemisms, and called a spade a spade. In St. Mary's I have listened on many occasions to the utterances of the late Bishops Selwyn and Patteson and to a galaxy of others but if I had to sit constantly under the ministry of one of these prelates my choice would centre in the subject of this sketch. In good sooth, he never daubed with untempered mortar, but as a wise master-builder rightly divided and applied the truth. It seems but yesterday I had the privilege of entertaining at dinner, inter alia the late Sir W. Fox, Mr. J. Newman, and the Venerable Archdeacon. This trio have crossed the frontier, and we are thereby reminded of the immortal words of Garibaldi, enunciated in the last scene, " Men die, but principles livethese are eternal!" The Venerable Archdeacon was an ardent believer in the Communion of Saints. _ Amid the imperfections of earth it was difficult to realise and experience this article of his creed. Death has removed the barrier, and, like a faithful janitor, has opened the door of admission to myriads of kindred spirits. Thus he has gone to Mount Sion, the city of the Living God, to an innumerable company of saints and angels, to the General Assembly and Church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of spanking which speaketh better things than the blood of Abel. Here we leave him listening to his soliloquy—

" I go to life and not to death, From darkness to life's native sky; I go from sickness and from pain, To health and immortality." —I am, etc., John Abbott. Hurstmere, April 23, 1894.