THE CHURCH

Southland Times, Issue 19500, 14 March 1925, Page 10

THE CHURCH

GENERAL NEWS AND NOTES. FROM PULPIT AND PEW. The Wesley Training College at Paerata commenced this year with 55 boys, 17 of whom are Maoris. The Rev. J. H. Weeks, who died at his home, Tooting, aged 64 years, was for 30 years a missionary on the Congo for the Baptist Society.

The Rev. L. A. Day from North Invercargill, will be the preacher at Georgetown. The West Plains service will be conducted by the Rev. J. Carlisle.

As Miss Delight Lynn, 8.A., is retiring from the secretaryship of the Methodist Young Women’s Bible Class movement* Miss Lorna of Palmerston North, has been recommended to fill the vacant position.

The vicar and choir of Bellingham, London, visited the hal! of the Fellowship Inn, Bellingham, a licensed house conducted on the lines of a cafe, on Christmas Eve, and sang a number of carols to an appreciative audience.

The Rev. J. Carlisle will be the,preacher at the Esk Street Baptist Church, and will take as his subject in the morning, ‘‘The Prayer that Beat the Devil,” in rhe evening. “The Man who tried to Run away from Himself.”

The Rev. David Calder, on behalf of the Bible Society, presented the president of the New’ Zealand Methodist Conference with a beautiful copy of the new edition of the Maori Bible , which he declared Would for all time be to the Maori what the Authorised Version was to the Church.

The Methodist Fund shows an income of £39,000. which it is hoped will be raised to £42,000 before the fund is closed. The Methodist Conference expressed its high appreciation of the splendid response to the

centenary when it was remembered that the appeal w’as made during most difficult years from a financial standpoint.

In the Canadian Mission in Bihe, West Central Africa, the tests for church membership are higher than in most w’hite churches. No candidate is received into membership until he has brought another to take his place in the class for catechumens. No one can be a member who drinks or smokes or takes snuff; and not long ago one man was suspended for sending his son for brandy when he was sick.

The “Cameron Home” children and staff return from Fortrose on Saturday morning, where they have been staying at the Presbyterian Manse for nearly three months. The children are very well, and have had a delightful holiday. The kindness of the Fortrose people will long be remembered by both children and staff.

Knox congregation are organising an effort towards debt reduction and it is proposed to run a carnival about the end of May. A meeting of the ladies of the congregation was held last Tuesday and the enthusiasm displayed augurs well for the success of the proposed carnival. The principal stallholders were appointed and Mrs Chisholm was elected lady President and Miss McLeod lady organiser. During the afternoon musical items were given by Miss Brokenshire and Mrs A. Milne.

The Wyndham congregation of the district Methodist Circuit received intimation from their pastor, Rev. G. H. Bridgman, last Sunday, that his final pulpit appearance at Wyndham, prior to his transfer to another sphere of labour, would be that night fortnight—Sunday, March 22. He would not be departing from the circuit for one or two weeks after that date; but, in deference to a popular request, he had acquiesced to the suggestion that Mrs Bridgman should be privileged to preach at Wyndham finally on April 5.

On Sunday afternoon the Tuatapere Presbyterian Bible Class held one of its periodical teas, on this occasion being joined by the teachers of the Sunday School. After some bright company singing, a sumptuous tea was partaken of. Miss Rosie Donaldson ( a budding elocutionist) then read a letter of appreciation from Sunday School and Bible Class to Miss Jenkins, who for a number of years has served both these sections of the Church as organist. The letter was followed by the presentation of a Sunshine Purse containing notes. Rev. S. Waddell, Mr A. Dawson, (Sunday School Superintendent), and Miss Kennedy (Leader of the Bible Class), each in turn eulogised the good qualities and unselfish spirit of the guest, after which she was toasted with musical honours. Miss Jenkins briefly and feelingly returned thanks, thus bringing a pleasant function to a close.

Preaching at St. Mary’s, New Plymouth, on the observance of Sunday, the vicar, Rev. F. G. Harvie, said frankly: “We middle-aged people were brought up years ago with a very definite view of Sunday, its duties and its doubts. Although we disliked Sunday intensely as children, yet with an immense number of people the Puritanical discipline of those days laid the foundations of the habit of treating Sunday as ‘a day apart,’ which they have never given up.” The vicar pointed out that the primary duty on Sunday was to worship God in His House; secondly, it was a day for rest and renewing the physical powers. He concluded: “If we want the good old Sunday habit to endure as a permanent feature in British life, let those who profess the faith take the lead in setting a good example, for it they do not nobody else

The following extract from a letter received from Mr D. N. Mac Diarmid (a missionary in the Sudan) speaks for itself:—

“Sad to relate, the mission horse died today. It developed very bad sores, which I lanced and treated/but the poor brute died at half past twelve in its hut. I give the exact time for a purpose. I left the animal in its hut till half past two and then came out with ropes, to get the boys to haul the animal into the bush. But I found that between the time it died and half past tw’o word had gone forth to the people at the mountains, two miles away, and when I got out with my ropes, the Nubas had not only dragged the animal several hundred yards away, but they had it also dismembered, and there was just the remainder of the carcass with a gory crowd of naked Nubas fighting over it. I warn, ed them that they would probably all die if they ate it, but they merely smiled and hacked on. It was a fearsome sight, but it saved funeral expenses.”

Dr. E. V. Hunter, a missionary of the Church Missionary Society at in the Eastern Province of Uganda, writes that during the first six months of 1924 the Teso Scriptures were out of print and the people could not be supplied. In order to expedite things, 500 copies of part of the New Testament in Teso were sent out by post. When they arrived there was a long line waiting for them, and the first 500 people had one copy each. A groan went up from the others when they heard there were no more. When a further supply arrived in July, more than £lOO was taken in two days, and a stock which should have lasted for six months seems likely to be exhausted in six weeks. Dr. Hunter says: “The next time you pass a cinema and see the long line of people, just think that this is how the folks in Teso stand outside the bookshop waiting for their turn.

At the conclusion of the service in Orepuki Presbyterian Church on Sunday evening, Mr A. H. Nordmeyer, 8.A., divinity student, was waited on by the managers of the church, the choir, and members of the bible-class and presented with a purse of money as a parting gift in token of his faithful conduct of the affairs of the congregation during his stay in Orepuki. f Mr H. Garden, church treasurer, made the Dreseutatioft.

THE MAORI BIBLE.

A NEW EDITION. THE STORY OF ITS TRANSLATION. The issue of a third edition of the Paipera Tapu, the Old and New Testament in the Maori tongue, is a notable event in the history of the Church in New Zealand. The Maori Bible had been out of print for some time, and the Church authorities after making the necessary financial arrangements, brought out the new edition, copies of which have just reached New Zealand. Archdeacon Herbert W. Williams went to England to supervise the production of the Paipera, and the beautifullyprinted copies received are most creditable, alike to the British and Foreign Bible Society, the eminent Maori scholar, who superintended the work, and the printers who produced it. It is a compact volume of just under 1200 pages. The type used is handsome and clear, and the general tech, nical finish of the book is*excellent. A feature which will be approved of highly by Maori students is the marking of the long vowel sounds. The long and short sounds of the vowels are one of the hurdles which the pakeha learner of Maori has to surmount, and the Maoris themselves will welcome this new feature of the printed Paipera. The story of the Maori Bible goes back just over a century—to be exact, 104 years —when the first translation was made of a small portion of the Scriptures. The translation was rather crude, and later translators of the early days did not at first reach phonetic perfection in their rendering of the Maori tongue. A Common fault of the first Church missionaries was the frequent omission of the “h” from words which we now write with “wh.” The Rev. Richard Taylor is an example. Although he wrote a great deal about the Maoris, translated many of his legends and chants, he singularly failed to catch the “wh” sound, and so we find in his valuable writings words like “Wakamaori,” “Wakamuri,” and so on, in which the “h” should follow the “w.”

However, this is a small technical digression. The men who translated the new Bible were missionaries distinguished for their scholarly analysis of the structure of the language and their exactness in reducing it to written form.

The famous Williams brothers —the still more famous first Bishop Selwyn—had their share in the work. The Williams, indeed, have for three generations been the greatest authorities in Maori lexicography. But the most distinguished scholar of all was the Ven. Archdeacon Richard MaunseH, of Auckland—“Te Manihera,” of the Maoris. He brought his great knowledge of the classics to bear on his translations. He was a master of the Greek and Hebrew. As a Maori linguist he had no superior jn the missionary ranks, unless, indeed, it was the old hero of the Wesleyan Mission, the Rev. John Hobbs. Wisely, when the Maori Bible was under revision in the sixties, the best men in the Wesleyan Mission, as well as in the Church of England, were called in to assist and advise, and so with such excellent authorities as Bishop W. L. Williams (the author*of the Maori Dictionary) were associatead John Hobbs and his brother missionaries the Rev. Alexander Reid (who was in charge of the’Wesleyan mission station at Te Kopua, on the Waipa, when Waikato War broke out and ruined me church work) and the Rev. T. Buddle. Mr Hobbs could be bracketed with the Williams, Davis, and Puckley families as a thorough master of the Ngapuhi and Rarawa (North Auckland) tongue—the most perfect form of Maori—and Mr Buddle, like Mr Reid, was intimately acquaited with the idiomatic niceties of the Waikato tongue. Such authorities as these, with several others from the north, made an advisory committee of unimpeachable standing, and it is Maunsell and his coadjutors that the Maori and his pakeha fellow-New Zealander who studies Maori have to thank for the beautiful language —the classic Maori into which this present edition of the Scriptures has been translated.

The Maori and the European student of Maori will treasure this edition. It has long been wanted. In the former days in the Maori kainga there was scarcely any literature other than the Bible, or portions of it, and the Paipera therefore was studied from end to end and discussed continually until there were many of the blanketed old greybeards who could quote Scripture with any minister, white or brown, and sonietimes even beat the

“mihinare” at his own job, if knowledge of chapter and verse could do it.