HUNDRED YEARS AGO

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 May 1938, Page 9

HUNDRED YEARS AGO

DEATH OF SAMUEL MARSDEN NOTABLE CAREER RECALLED. INVITATION TO A MISSIONARY’S FUNERAL. The hundredth anniversary of the death of Samuel Marsden on May 12, 1838, is an event that is of peculiar interest to New Zealanders. Hitherto unpublished material housed in the Grey Collection, Auckland, and the Turnbull Library, Wellington, throws light on the circumstances of the last respects which were paid to Marsden by a grateful community in Australia. Like his predecessor. Captain Cook, Marsden began life in humble surroundings in Yorkshire. Unlike Cook, he lived to see the seeds of his enterprise bear’ fruit. Cook rediscovered New Zealand, circumnavigated it, and charted its coastline with remarkable accuracy. Marsden, as great a pioneer in another field, made seven voyages to establish his church in the northland of untutored Maoris and rough whaling civilisation. Marsden allied the teaching of the Bible to the practical instruction of husbandry. For he was as distinguished for his practical commonsense as for his religious zeal. “A missionary,” he wrote in his first memorandum on the Nev/ Zealand Mission, “should also be of an industrious turn, a man who could live in any country by dint of his own labour. An industrioys man has great resources in times of difficulties and danger in his own mind.” But Marsden was capable in the practice as well as in the profession, of the moral virtues. Chaplain in name, bishop in effect, he preached his initial sermon in New Zealand on Christmas Day, 1814 on the historic text “Behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy.” To the Bay of Islands he introduced the use of horses, cattle, poultry and wheat, factors which Dr. G. H. Scholefield described in “New Zealand in Evolution” as being “at least as potent as the gospel in uplifting the Maori.” PIONEER AND INSTRUCTOR. Marsden’s powers of endurance and industry were not limited to the dissemination of the Gospel. His six weeks’ journey in canoe and on foot, covering six hundred miles of wild coastline 'and rugged interior, entitle him to a select place among the explorers of the North Island. His establishment of a seminary at Parramatta, Australia, for the instruction of Maoris in various crafts, gives further testimony to his foresight. Yet it was not to be expected that Marsden would be without his difficulties or his detractors. The defections of some of his assistants, the enmity of settlers, were obstacles that had to be overcome. The whalers and adventurers, Marsden's contemporaries were not of a type to encourage offers of hospitality from the missionaries to subsequent travellers. Thus Augustus Earle in his “Nine Months’ Residence in New Zealand” noted that his “landing gave no pleasure to these secluded Englishmen (the missionaries); they gave us no welcome; but, as our boats approached the shore, they walked away to their own dwellings, closed their gates and doors after them and gazed at us through their windows; and during three days that we passed in a hut quite near them, they never exchanged one word with any of the party.” When on December 10, 1837, Marsden wrote his last message about the New Zealand Mission, his energy and health were failing. He died after a short illness. AN EVENTFUL LIFE.

To the diaries of the Rev. Richard Taylor, an emissary of ' the Church Missionary Society, who was stationed at the Bay of Islands in the late ’thirties, we owe this description of Marsden’s various escapes from death: — “ ... he has received several wonderful providences in his life —once, when going to England in a leaky vessel, the passengers deemed it so unsafe, that they, with the crew, determined upon abandoning it for a new built vessel that was near, and they would have done so had it not been for Mr Marsden who prevailed upon them to stay, and fortunate it was for them they took his advice, the leaky vessel reached home safely the new built one sank. Another time he had a very narrow escape he drove over a bridge in flames, the instant he got over it fell in.” These diaries are now housed in the Alexander Turnbull Library. CURIOUS INVITATION.

Marsden’s funeral was the occasion for a curious invitation addressed to Taylor. The original of the document lies in the Grey Collection, Auckland. “Your attendance” (runs the invitation) “is requested at the Funeral of the late Rev. Samuel Marsden which will take place on Tuescday. May 15 at 11 o’clock a.m. precisely. The procession will move from his late residence Parsonage Parramatta.” The invitation is surmounted with a sketch of a tombstone and is signed "James Burgess. Undertaker." Taylor's diary description of the funeral runs:—“l went to breakfast with Sadlier and accompanied him in Mr Cartwright's carriage to Mr Marsden’s funeral. I never saw a funeral so numerously or respectably attended there were nearly 60 carriages and almost every person in authority in the colony, the Col. Sec. and Judges etc., with ministers of every denomination, the procession reached almost a J of a mile. Mr Cowper read the service and gave an address on the occasion, there were 3 clergymen who walked before the hearse; indeed it was truly wonderful to see what respect was paid to the memory of the good old man who thus closed his honorable and useful Ministry, in this colony, of 45 years during which he had to contend with more than ordinary difficulties, being called upon to oppose the Governor, and to maintain his sacred office in opposition to the highest powers of the day, which he did in the good cause and held fast his integrity.”