But in spite of hardships—whether stripped of their possessions, whether driven from their homes, whether death met them at every turn, the missionaries, no matter what their creed, persevered. They looked not back to the evil days which lay behind; but faint, yet pursuing, pushed onward, until the North Island was sprinkled with the white houses of their missions, over which floated the flag of the Prince of Peace, emblazoned with His message, "Rongo Pai!"
Then came the crossing of Cook Strait, and the spiritual conquest of the Middle Island. New missionaries constantly arrived, fresh recruits ever enrolled under the banner of the Cross; until, a bare two-and-twenty years from that Christmas Day when Samuel Marsden preached his first sermon in a land where Christianity was not even a name, four thousand Maori converts knelt in the House of God.
This was not accomplished without strenuous effort. The difficulties and dangers which confronted the earliest mihonari would have driven back all but the most earnest and faithful men. The record of their sufferings and struggles would of itself fill a volume. Indeed, only the least suggestion has been made here of what they bore for Christ's sake. But their works do follow them, gone to their rest as all of them are; and what prouder epitaph can be theirs than this: They came; they saw; and they conquered at last!
FOOTNOTES:
[55] Good Tidings!
[56] By his own tribe pronounced "Shongi."
THE WARS OF HONGI IKA