DEATH OF RIGHT REV DR STUART

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7391, 20 March 1911, Page 6

DEATH OF RIGHT REV DR STUART

EK-BISHOP OF WAIAPU HIS WORK IN INDIA, NEW ZEALAND AND PERSIA A Press Association cable message received from London last night recorded the death of the Eight Rev. Edward Craig Stuart, ex-Bishop of Waiapu, in his eighty-fourth year. Ho was a son of Alexander Stuart, of Edinburgh, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. The deceased was ordained in 1850, and irom 1851 to 1872 was stationed in India. He became Bisbop of Waiapu in 1877, an office he held until 1893, when he went to Persia as missionary. A VENERABLE MISSIONARY. It was towards dusk one evening the writer stood with the late Dean Hovell in Napier Cathedral, viewing the portraits of New Zealand bishops which adorn tho vestry walls of that ivy-grown edifice. Selwyu, Cowie, Hadfield, Williams and Stuart were in that treasured: collection—most from the brush of Lindauer—taking one’s mind back to the lives of the early missionaries and to the part they played in the work of civilisation during stirring times.' The dean pointed, to Stuart's portrait and spoke in kindly terms of this devoted servant of the church, who, at an age (sixtyseven) when most men feel their course is run, left the smooth paths of labour here for more arduous service in a little .known field. INSPIRATION. In leaving New Zealand for Persia Dr Stuart was inspired by tho efforts of Henry Martyn, Thomas Fren.h and Report Bruce. Both Martyn and Bruco had done good work in Persia, just as French and Stuart had done in India. Martyn, senior wrangler at Cambridge iu his year, and a distinguished classical scholar, sacrificed great opportunities in England for missionary endeavoiur iu.a foreign land. At tlurty-one he laid down his life at Tokat, Armenia. The sister university of Oxford produced the brilliant French, to whom Martyn's example had been a solace, as it bad stimulated Stiiart. The latter went forth from Eng. land in 1850 with French, a willing subordinate to the undertaking which called his senior to Northern India to establish the missionary college of St. John’s at Agra. There-was something akin in tho lives of French, and Stuart. French, who for ten years had ministered in the highest position in India as first Bishop of Lahore, resigned his See to return as missionary among the Mohammedan people. He died alone in a seaport town on the coast of Arabia. Stuart, Vice-Chancel-lor's Prizeman (Divinity) of Trinity College, Dublin, after twenty-one years' ministration in India and sixteen in New Zealand, relinquished the Bishopric of Waiapu in 1893 once more to assume the humble role of missioner. A RIPE FIELD. Persia was regarded by Stuart as an almost untrodden land for the missioner. Although Martyn died as far back as 1812—two years before Marsuen preached his first sermon, one Christmas Bay on the shores of New Zealand—and mission work had been continued in the intervening yearn in Persia, Stuart felt that in i many parts the fields were ripe for bar- 1 vest, and only wanted reapers. It was in 1866, in the frontier State of Peshawar, that Stuart was one day sitting side by side with a young missioner who had been preaching to the crowd in their own native langhago. Together they made their way down the noble Indus, passing ths spot where Alexander the Great crossed’, with his army —Attook, until they came to the ‘ residence of Robert Bruce, missionary. Stuart coord well recall one evening looking out towards the west, where tho jewel-burdened sun was sinking behind the magnificent mountains, how Bruce spoke longfully of the ■regions, beyond, and of his great desire to carry the Gospel into Central Asia. Bruce went to Persia, labouring there throughout the great famine. In his work of relief he opened the way for the missionary, being readily granted permission to travel through the country. When Bruce, left Persia his place was taken by a young New Zealander, Rov. St. Clair Teesdalo, one of tbe first graduates of the New Zealand University, who gave up his parish at Nelson to go out as missioner.

Reports which had reached Stuart from time to time In - Napier led him to believe that there was much yet to he done in the Persian mission field. The country was at a certain point from which it must either advance or recede. Those who were then engaged in Persia had declared that they must be strengthened in their efforts, without -which they could not hope to succeed further. The Church Missionary Society recognised that it had not the staff there to extend the work. Stuart, aged preacher that -ho was, accepted the call, WORK IN HAWKE’S BAY,

He had left his impress on the diocese of Waiapu. His sphere of labour extended from Woodville in the south to the Bay of Plenty in tho north. The Maori people, among whom much of his time was spent, learned to love and honour him. Curiosity led the writer one Sunday afternoon into the pretty little Maori chapel that stands just across the Esk river in the Petane village. The chapel bell had just called the Maoris to worship. It was an interesting study to watch them, and to note with what close attention they followed the bishop’s discourse, given to them in their own tongue. ' Turning over the leaves of an old notebook there is Stuart’s farewell sermon, before his departure tor Persia, delivered in. Napier Cathedral. He concluded;

It is hard to say farewell, but from my heart I say it to you to-night in its highest and fullest sense, farewell, farewell. It recalls to my mind the first text from which I preached to you after my consecration on .the resignation of the late Bishop Williams. The text on that occasion ■ was, ‘'Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever/’ and that is the last thought I desire to leave on the minds of those to whom I now bid farewell. IN PERSIA. ■Writing from Ispahan later on, Stuart ©poke hopefully of what was being done; One indication of progress is afforded by our very presence here now in the Mohammedan city of Ispahan, I and my daughter. When, some thirty years ago. Dr Bruce began the mission in Central , Persia, it was only possible for him to locate it at Jaffa, an Armenian settlement since the time of the great Shah Abbas (contemporary of our Elizabeth),-, two miles on the other side of the river which bounds Ispahan. Now we are dwelling in safety in Ispahan itself, my daughter (

tho only European lady till the other day, when the Russian Consul was joined by his wife. In May, 1900, Stuart wrote: The forty baptisms that have taken place during tho six years X have been here are but tho first fruits of a harvest yet to bo reaped when religious liberty is conceded. Most of these have suffered in many ways, and all, X may say, have risked all and life itself. For, after all, we are only here on sufferance, and any day the flames ot fanaticism and religious persecution may burst forth. Modern civilisation was, . in the Bishop’s opinion, leaving its impress, slowly but surely upon Persia. To a Napier friend he again writes:

In a general way I may say that this old world land of Persia, in mute of tho proverbial immobility of all things Eastera, is being gradually drawn into tho current o£ modern history, and the old order changeth here as in. other lands, though at an almost imperceptible rate ol progress. And our missionary force, inadequate as' it is, yet with a unity of purpose, is helping on this movement. ■ MISSIONARIES AS EMPIREBUILDERS.

The work done by men like Stuart must have been in the mind of Dr Neligan, late Bishop of Auckland. when, in his farewell sermon in Westminster Abbey, on Sunday, January 18th, 1903, prior to leaving for New Zealand, he eaid : "Wo are not fitted —and our history'and traditions and race prove it—for our Imperial position if we ore going to elimin ate ont of our history, and out of our traditions, and out- of the records of our race, what this Church of ours, and what the missionaries, wherever they have gone from England, have accomplished. I submit it without fear of contradiction, that in every part of tho globe where Englishmen have gone and Where Englishmen daim Empire, the proudest Imperial records are ■written in the pages that tell the ebory of missionary enterprise,”