A History of the English Church in New Zealand

by Henry Thomas Purchas

The first act of the new official was to gather the northern chiefs on the lawn in front of the British Residency, on the other side of the river from Paihia, and to lay before them the famous document known as the Treaty of Waitangi. It is sometimes asserted that Henry Williams was really the author of this treaty. That would seem to be an error, but he may have been consulted in the drafting of the document; and there can be no question but that it was his influence which induced the chiefs to sign it. It was he who interpreted to the Maoris the provisions of the treaty, and the speech in which Hobson commended it to their acceptance; and it was he and the other missionaries who secured the signatures of the chiefs in other parts of the island. Whatever may be thought of the policy of this momentous document—securing as it did to the native race the full possession of their lands and properties under the British flag—it is a standing witness to the influence of the missionaries, and to the trust which the Maoris had come to place in their integrity and benevolence of purpose.

The one place where the treaty was opposed was the new English settlement of Wellington, where the settlers stigmatised it as "a device to amuse the savages," and proceeded to set up a rival government of their own. Henry Williams went once more therefore to Port Nicholson, and succeeded in getting the treaty signed by the chiefs of that place. Thus supported, Hobson now felt himself strong enough to proclaim the Queen's sovereignty over the country, and himself became its first Governor. He had no military force to depend upon, and he ruled the country through the missionaries. His tenure of office was embittered by the constant opposition of the Company at Wellington, as well as by the difficulties natural to such a position; and he was harassed into his grave within two years of his arrival. But this period may be looked upon as the climax of missionary influence in New Zealand. After 1842, mission work went on extending, but the old workers no longer occupied the forefront of the stage.

Before they retire into the background to make room for other figures, it will be well therefore to cast a glance over their work and its methods, their characters and their example. The position which they held was in many ways unique, and though their age lies not so far behind us in point of time, it really belongs to an order of things quite different from our own.

The first point of contrast with our present somewhat overgoverned society is the absence of authority. The missionaries and settlers were sent out to a wild country to do the best they could. The bishops of the Church in England did not claim, nor believe that they possessed, any jurisdiction over them. The direction of the mission lay with the Committee of the C.M.S., but unless it sent out a sentence of dismissal, what could such a distant body do? If it sent out instructions to New Zealand, no answer could be expected for a whole year, during which time circumstances might have altogether changed. Short of actual dismissal, its power of discipline was but slight. Much of its power must of necessity be delegated to Marsden in Australia, but Marsden's authority was limited in the same way, though not quite to the same extent. He could not visit the mission often, nor could he secure that his instructions should be obeyed. As a matter of fact they were often not obeyed. "I know nothing I can say will have any influence upon their minds," he once wrote in despair; "they have followed their own way too long, and despise all the orders that have been given them by their superiors." This censure applied to certain individuals among the first settlers, and when one reads the letters and journals of these same men, one cannot help feeling some sympathy with them in their position. Possibly Marsden, with his exceptional powers, expected rather much of average human nature. But the point is that the position of an early missionary was an independent one. There was no civil government at all, and the instructions from ecclesiastical superiors were necessarily infrequent, often lacking in knowledge, never quite up to date, and backed by no compelling force except the threat of "disconnection" from the Society.

Under such circumstances everything depended on the personalities of the men themselves. Those who came before 1823 were on the whole disappointing. Marsden frequently compared them to the twelve spies who all failed, excepting Caleb and Joshua. Unfortunately he never lets us know who his "Caleb" and his "Joshua" were. But one of them can hardly have been other than the young schoolmaster, Francis Hall, whose letters reveal a singularly earnest and beautiful spirit. Even he, however, admits the demoralising influence of the surrounding paganism—an influence which none wholly escaped, and before which some actually succumbed. "I feel in myself," quaintly writes another, "a great want of that spirituality of mind which New Zealand is so very unfavourable for; because of the continual scenes of evil that there is before our eyes, and for want of Christian society. So that you must excuse my barrenness of writing, and give me all the Christian advice you can."

The most interesting personality among these first settlers was Kendall. Wayward and erring, passionate and ungovernable as he was, a close study of his letters shows a depth of sin and penitence, together with a breadth and boldness of philosophical speculation, which fascinates the reader. Alone among the missionaries he seems to have tried to approach the Maori from his own side, and to enter the inmost recesses of his thought: "I am now, after a long, anxious, and painful study, arriving at the very foundation and groundwork of the Cannibalism and Superstitions of these Islanders. All their notions are metaphysical, and I have been so poisoned with the apparent sublimity of their ideas, that I have been almost completely turned from a Christian to a heathen." Like the ancient Gnostics, Kendall tried to combine Christianity with a sublimated version of pagan superstitions; and if moral restrictions stood in the way, he cast them aside. "I was reduced," he says, "to a state so dreadful that I had given myself entirely up, and was utterly regardless of what would become both of body and soul."

The details of his strange career cannot, of course, be given here. He has been represented as an utter hypocrite, and evidence is not wanting to give colour to the charge. But another and more favourable view is not only possible: it is forced upon anyone who studies his self-revelation through his letters. He seems to have hoped that his ordination would have given him moral strength and stability, but he had to admit that he had never been so strongly tempted to sin, so unable to resist it, or so ingloriously foiled, as since his return from England. Marsden's sharp exercise of discipline, though it elicited outbursts of passion, seems to have had a healing effect. "Blessed be God," he writes, "who has certainly undertaken for me. His sharp rebuke has laid me low; yet why should I repine, since He has inclined me to seek His face again?" Upon his expulsion from the mission, he retired to a house he had built at "Pater Noster Valley," and after a few months left the country. His great services in reducing the Maori language to written form have hardly been sufficiently recognised. Marsden, like the other settlers, could never adapt himself to the Italian vowel sounds, and at his request Kendall wrote out a new vocabulary on a different system; but he soon found it unsatisfactory, and returned to the principles which he had worked out with Professor Lee. For the rest of his life—in South America and in Australia—he still tried to perfect his Maori Grammar. But the tragedy of his life outweighs the value of his philological efforts. If ever a New Zealand Goethe should arise, he may find the materials for his Faust in the history of Thomas Kendall.

From the date of the new beginning of the mission in 1823, its agents were, for the most part, men of a superior type. Yate, indeed, one of the ablest amongst them, was accused on a charge of which he never could, or perhaps would, clear himself. He was accordingly "disconnected" by the Society, but a certain doubt hangs over the issue; and his after life was spent in useful and honourable service as chaplain to the seamen at Dover. The rest of the new workers did excellent service for the mission, and most of them lived to an old age in the country. Remarkable for their linguistic capacity stand out William Williams, who translated the New Testament; and Robert Maunsell, who followed with the Old. This remarkable man took all possible pains to gather the correct idioms for his task—sometimes by engaging the Maoris in argument, sometimes by watching them at their sports. The passion for accuracy was strong in him to extreme old age, and even on his death-bed he interrupted the ministrations of his parish priest with the startling question, "Don't you know that that is a mistranslation?"

Apart from translation work, the missionaries had little inclination or ability for literary pursuits. Some of them (e.g., W. Williams, Yate, and Colenso) took an interest in the plants and animals of their adopted country, but for the most part the missionary was a man of one book, and that book was the Bible. Life was too serious a thing to allow of attention to the literary graces. The place where his lot was cast was in a special sense the realm of Satan. The evidences of demonic activity lay all around. On the one hand were the sickening scenes of slaughter and cannibalism; on the other were the evil lives of sailors and traders of his own race. Now and then the great Enemy would draw nearer still, and one of his own comrades would fall a prey. His own religion was of a somewhat austere type. His calendar was unmarked by fast or festival; he had few opportunities of participating in a joyous Eucharist; there was no colour in his raupo chapel, nor variety in his manner of worship.

The home life of the missionary doubtless often presented a picture of domestic happiness. But there were no luxuries. If he wished to vary the daily routine of pork and potatoes, he must try to obtain some fish or native game. Failing these, he had only his own garden and poultry-yard to look to. Soldiers' rations of coarse groceries were served out from the Society's stores, but everything else must be bought out of his slender income—£50 if a married man (unordained), or £30 if a bachelor. Often in the earlier days, while the Maoris were still unfriendly, even pork and potatoes were not to be had. More than once Henry Williams and his family were brought to the verge of starvation.