A History of the English Church in New Zealand

by Henry Thomas Purchas

THE CATHEDRAL, NELSON.

"The hymn—an invocation to Christ for the Holy Spirit's aid to regenerate the natural heart, and impress it with love to God—I had often heard and sung; but never before had it come home to me with such reality, or sounded with such sweetness and power, as in this solemn appeal to the Most High.... We then prayed for this dark world, its sorrowing and erring children, that the God of mercy would be graciously pleased to bring them to a knowledge of himself; and after thanks for the mercies of the day, we commended ourselves to God. Our simple service over, we said no more. For a time all remained quiet; none seemed willing to interrupt the silence in this strange place and on this still stranger occasion; nothing was heard but the storm, which appeared to be tearing the remainder of the roof from the shed, and the rain rattling against the raupo. The taua seemed as if struck by the fabled wand of some mighty magician! Their former reserve and low whispering ceased; and after a while they began to talk quietly to each other, and shortly afterwards they spoke to ourselves and to our natives. The gloom had passed away, their countenances became altered; and they now began to prepare some refreshments. Each of the taua had carried at his back a small flax basket of potatoes, containing some three or four handfuls. Of this slender stock they passed along (for there was no moving for want of room) a liberal share for ourselves and our natives. After this the pig was cut up and roasted; but, faint and hungry as I was, it was nearly impossible to eat it. And now all restraint was thrown off, and the Maoris conversed freely and pleasantly. So the night wore on, better than it had begun. At last, cold and weary, overpowered by the smoke, I fell asleep on a bundle of bullrushes; and when I awoke, I found that I had been sleeping unconsciously on one of the men's heads."

Incidents such as this did not, of course, happen every day; but this one is typical in that it shows the religious character of the Maori. Here is a war-party who start out with the object of shooting down a number of unsuspecting people. They come back talking in quite friendly fashion with the men who had baulked them of their prey. What had worked the change? Simply the singing of a hymn. Where could we find stronger evidence of a disposition naturally religious, or a more striking instance of the divine guardianship?

In trying to trace the causes of the wonderful spread of Christianity among this ferocious people, it is natural to think first of the combination of benefits which the missionaries were able to bring. They stood for all the knowledge and civilisation of the outside world, as well as for the message of a world to come. They had no telephones, no motor cars, nor even matches; but they brought tools of iron and of steel, they had strange animals and plants, they used glass and china and wool and cotton, and above all they learned from books. Such marks of power could not fail to tell upon a shrewd people like the Maoris. The most intelligent of the chiefs, without at all understanding the truths of Christianity, were at once attracted by these signs of mechanical and intellectual superiority. We have seen how much the mission was indebted to the three great generals of New Zealand—Hongi in the north, Waharoa in the centre, and Rauparaha in the south—for the main steps of its advance. It might seem at first as though the explanation of Maori Christianity were a fairly simple matter.

Yet such a conclusion would be very far removed from the truth. Undoubtedly the prestige of the white man's civilisation gave a valuable leverage at first, as in the notable case of Ruatara. Undoubtedly also, many of the common people were simply swept along by the current when once it grew strong enough to make itself felt. But the earliest real converts were old men, delicate girls, consumptive lads, and wretched slaves, whose hearts were caught not by axes and blankets, but by the message of a Father's love and of a home beyond the stars. The Maori was a religious being, and when his old faith failed him in the hour of need, he turned to the new gospel of certitude and hope. Nobler spirits among the race were drawn also by the social side of the new teaching; they saw in it a prospect of ridding the land of desolating wars; but in each case it was the true power of Christianity that operated, not the adventitious blessings which it brought in its train.

Very interesting, as evidences of the heartfelt piety of the early converts, are the letters which many of them wrote to Yate on the eve of his journey to England. There is surely nothing of a merely conventional goodness about such language as this: "I have this day, and many days, kneeled down, and my mouth has whispered and has said loud prayers; but I wish to know, and am saying within me, if I have prayed with my heart. Say you, if I have prayed to God with my heart, should I say No, and not do His bidding, as the Bible says we must and tells us how? And should I flutter about here like a bird without wings, or like a beast without legs, or like a fish whose tail and fins a native man has cut off, if I had love in my heart towards God? Oh! I wish that I was not all lip and mouth in my prayers to God. I am thinking that I may be likened to stagnant water, that is not good, that nobody drinks, and that does not run down in brooks, upon the banks of which kumara and trees grow. My heart is all rock, all rock, and no good thing will grow upon it. The lizard and the snail run over the rocks, and all evil runs over my heart."

The anxious and self-accusing spirit which appears in this passage deepens as the soul passes under the awe of the sacramental presence. "My Teacher," writes another, "I have been many moons thinking about the holy feast which Jesus Christ gave to His disciples, and told everybody to eat it in remembrance of Him. It is not a natives' feast; for in New Zealand everybody eats as much as he is able, and as fast as he is able; but this is a feast of belief. If my body were hungry, I should not be satisfied with a piece like a crumb, nor with a drop that will go in a cockle shell; but my soul is satisfied, my heart is satisfied, though it be a crumb and a drop. The thoughts within me yesterday were perhaps right, and perhaps wrong. I said to myself, I am going to eat and to drink at a table placed before us by the Great Chief of the world. I must be very good, and must make myself good within; or, when He sees me, He will show that He is angry. And then I thought, I will not think anything that is not right, nor do anything that is not straight to-day; and then, God will see that my heart is becoming good. But, Mr. Yate, perhaps you will, and perhaps you will not, believe it: I thought no good thoughts, and I did no good works all day; and yet I was still, and not angry with myself, no, not at all. Now, my Teacher, you say what I am to do, before the next day of the Lord's Supper. I think I must pray to God for a new heart, and for His Holy Spirit."

This honest confession agrees with the observations of many outside observers of the change wrought in the Maoris by their new religion. Not all received the "new heart." Indeed, to judge from the accounts of men like Wakefield and Fox, the old heart was hardly touched by the new doctrines. The Christian Maoris were blamed for covetousness and insolence, for dishonesty and lying. "Give me the good old Maori who has never been under missionary influence," was the feeling of many of the colonists. It was the same complaint as is heard in every mission field. But calmer and more unprejudiced observers give a different verdict. The Bishop of Australia reported: "In speaking of the character of the converted natives, I express most unequivocally my persuasion that it has been improved, in comparison with the original disposition, by their acquaintance with the truths of the Gospel. Their haughty self-will, their rapacity, furiousness, and sanguinary inclination have been softened—I may even say, eradicated; and their superstitious opinions have given place, in many instances, to a correct apprehension of the spiritual tendencies of the Gospel. Their chief remaining vices appeared to me to be indolence, duplicity, and covetousness."

In mentioning these three prevailing vices, the bishop lays his finger upon faults which the lover of the Maori has still to deplore. His tendency to indolence shows that Marsden's insistence on industrial training was sound in theory, though not easy to carry out in practice. Highly endowed as the Maori was in many respects, he found it hard to copy the white man in his regular and even life of toil. The Maori was in fact the Greek of the south. Intellectually he was brilliant, and his memory was nothing short of marvellous. Somewhat later than our period, an English surveyor on the west coast of the South Island was disturbed in his camp by a party of Maoris who had come from Ahaura in the valley of the upper Grey. They had never seen a white man before, but they had picked up some knowledge from other Maoris who had come overland from Port Cooper. During the night, "they commenced the recital of the morning service; before morning they had repeated the Litany four times, the whole version of the Psalms, three or four creeds, and a marriage service, and then the whole morning service again."[4] Men who could do this might surely be expected to be equal to anything. Altogether, the unfolding of the Maori nature at this time was such as to arouse the highest hopes for his future greatness. To the friends of the mission in England it seemed as though the angels' songs over a repentant nation could be almost heard. Their orators, like Hugh Stowell, indulged in rhapsodies over the isle "now lovely in grace as she is beauteous in nature"; and even a philosophic thinker like Julius Hare could give it as his deliberate opinion that, for many centuries to come, historians would look back to the establishment of a Christian empire in New Zealand as the greatest achievement of the first part of the nineteenth century.