The Life and Labours of the Rev. Samuel Marsden Part 13

In the same spirit he presented the Wesleyan Methodists with a valuable piece of land on which to erect a chapel, at Windsor. This act of Christian charity was acknowledged by their missionaries in a grateful letter. Mr. Marsden's reply is full of warmth and feeling. "You express your acknowledgment for the ground at Windsor to build your chapel and house upon. I can only say I feel much pleasure in having it in my power to meet your wishes in this respect. To give you the right hand of fellows.h.i.+p is no more than my indispensable duty; and were I to throw the smallest difficulty in your way I should be highly criminal and unworthy the Christian name, more especially considering the present circ.u.mstances of these extensive settlements, 'where the harvest is so great and the labourers are so few.' ... The importation of convicts from Europe is very great every year; hundreds have just landed on our sh.o.r.es from various parts of the British empire, hundreds are now in the harbour ready to be disembarked, and hundreds more on the bosom of the great deep are hourly expected. These exiles come to us laden with the chains of their sins, and reduced to the lowest state of human wretchedness and depravity. We must not expect that magistrates and politicians can find a remedy for the dreadful moral diseases with which the convicts are infected. The plague of sin, when it has been permitted to operate on the human mind with all its violence and poison, can never be cured, and seldom restrained by the wisest human laws and regulations. Heaven itself has provided the only remedy for sin--the blessed balm in Gilead; to apply any other remedy is lost labour. In recommending this at all times and in all places, we shall prevail upon some to try its effect; and whoever do this we know they will be healed in the selfsame hour. I pray that the Divine blessing may attend all your labours for the good of immortal souls in these settlements."

His private charities displayed the same catholic spirit. His disinterestedness was great, and his only desire seemed to be to a.s.sist the deserving or to retrieve the lost. He was not foolishly indifferent to the value of money, as those who had business transactions with him were well aware; but its chief value in his eyes consisted in the opportunities it gave him to promote the happiness of others. Hundreds of instances of his extraordinary liberality might be mentioned, and it is probable that many more are quite unknown. The following anecdotes, furnished by his personal friends, will show that his bounty was dealt out with no sparing hand.

A gentleman, at whose house he was a visitor, happened to express a wish that he had three hundred pounds to pay off a debt. The next morning Mr.

Marsden came down and presented him with the money, taking no acknowledgment. The circ.u.mstance would have remained unknown had not the obliged person, after Mr. Marsden's decease, honourably sent an acknowledgment to his executors. All he a.s.sisted were not equally grateful. Travelling with a friend in his carriage, a vehicle pa.s.sed by.

"Paddy," said he, calling to his servant, "who is that?" On being told, "Oh," said he, "he borrowed from me two hundred pounds, and he never paid me." This was his only remark.

Yet he was not tenacious for repayment, nor indeed exact in requiring it at all where he thought the persons needy and deserving. The same friend was with him when a man called to pay up the interest on a considerable sum which Mr. Marsden had lent to him. He took a cheque for the amount, but when the person retired, tore it up and threw it into the fire, remarking, "He is an honest man. I am satisfied if he returns me the princ.i.p.al; that is all I want."

On another occasion, a friend who had been requested to make an advance of fifty pounds to a needy person, but was unable to do so, mentioned the case to Mr. Marsden, with, "Sir, can you lend me fifty pounds?" "To be sure I can," was the answer, and the money was instantly produced.

When he called, shortly afterwards, to repay the loan, Mr. Marsden had forgotten all about it. "Indeed I never looked to its being repaid."

The Rev----, being pressed for a hundred pounds, walking with Mr.

Marsden, mentioned his difficulties. Mr. Marsden at once gave him a hundred pounds, simply remarking, "I dare say that will do for you."

A lady had come to the colony at the solicitation of her family, with the view of establis.h.i.+ng a school of a superior cla.s.s for the daughters of the colonists. At first she met with little success. Mr. Marsden saw the importance of her scheme, and at once invited her to Paramatta, offering her a suitable house and all the pecuniary aid she might require, and this under the feeling of a recent disappointment in an undertaking of the same nature.

Of the large sums he expended on the New Zealand mission from his own private resources it is impossible even to conjecture the amount, to say nothing of a life in a great measure devoted to the service. He one day called upon a young man of enterprise and piety, whom he was anxious to induce to settle in New Zealand, and offered him fifty pounds per annum out of his own purse, as well as to raise a further sum for him from other sources. Nor should it be forgotten, in proof of this disinterestedness, that with all his opportunities and influence in New Zealand, he never possessed a single acre of land there, or sought the slightest advantage either for himself or for any member of his family.

Another feature in his character was his unaffected humility. This was not in him the nervous weakness which disqualifies some men for vigorous action, rendering them either unconscious of their power, or incapable of maintaining and a.s.serting their position, and consequently of discharging its obligations. This, though often called humility, is, in fact, disease, and ought to be resisted rather than indulged. Mr.

Marsden's mind was vigorous and healthy; he took a just measure of his powers and opportunities, as the use he put them to proves abundantly.

There was nothing in him of the shyness which disqualifies for public life; he was bold without effrontery, courageous without rashness, firm without obstinacy; but withal he was a humble man. His private correspondence will have shown the reader how anxious he was to submit his own judgment, even on questions affecting his personal character, to what he considered the better judgment of his friends at home. To vanity or ostentation he seems to have been a perfect stranger. There is not a pa.s.sage in his correspondence, nor can we learn that a word ever fell from his lips, which would lead us to suppose that he ever thought himself in any way an extraordinary man. Flattery disgusted him, and even moderate praise was offensive to his feelings. When the life of his friend, Dr. Mason Good, appeared from the pen of Dr. Olinthus Gregory, it contained an appendix, giving an account of his own labours and triumphs at Paramatta and in New Zealand. This he cut out of the volume with his penknife, without any remark, before he permitted it to lie upon his table or to be read by his family. He was so far from thinking he had accomplished much, either in the colony or amongst the heathen, that he was rather disposed, in his later days, to lament that his life had been almost useless; and indeed he was heard more than once to express a doubt whether he had not mistaken his calling, and been no better than an intruder into the sacred ministry. Perhaps failing health and spirits were in part the cause of these misgivings, but his unfeigned humility had a deeper root. It originated in that evangelical piety upon which all his usefulness was built. He saw the holiness of G.o.d, he saw his Divine perfection reflected in his law, and though he had a clear, abiding sense of his adoption through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, this did not interfere with a clear conception too of his own unworthiness. When told one day, by a justly indignant friend, how basely he was misrepresented, "Sir," he exclaimed, and the solemnity of his manner showed the depth of his meaning, "these men don't know the worst. Why, sir, if I were to walk down the streets of Paramatta with my heart laid bare, the very boys would pelt me."

Such was Samuel Marsden, a man whose memory is to be revered and his example imitated. "Not merely a good man," says the preacher of his funeral sermon, "who filled up the place allotted to him on earth, and then sank into his grave; not merely a faithful minister of Christ, who loved and served his Saviour and turned many to repentance, but more than either of these. Rightly to estimate his character we must view him as a peculiar man, raised up for an especial purpose." And he adds--

"As Luther in Germany, and John Knox in Scotland, and Cranmer in England, were sent by the Head of the church, and fitted with peculiar qualifications to make known his glorious gospel, hidden in Romish darkness, so too, no less truly, was SAMUEL MARSDEN raised up in this southern hemisphere, and admirably fitted for the work, and made the instrument of diffusing the light of that same gospel, and of bringing it to bear on the darkness of New Zealand and the Isles of the Sea, and upon the darkness, too, no less real, of the depravity of society in early Australia."

APPENDIX I.

Progress of the Gospel and of Civilization in New Zealand, since Mr. Marsden's Decease.

The great work of Mr. Marsden's life was undoubtedly the New Zealand mission; but he was also, as we have seen, the early friend, the wise adviser, and not unfrequently the generous host of that devoted band of men who first essayed the introduction of the gospel to the Society Islands. Each of these missions has been attended with astonis.h.i.+ng success; each has produced what may be called magnificent results,--results which already far exceed, in some respects, the most sanguine hopes, extravagant as at the time they seemed to be, of Mr.

Marsden and his early coadjutors some fifty years ago. Yet in other respects their disappointment would have been great had they lived to witness the present state of things, whether in New Zealand or Tahiti.

Instead of native tribes growing up into Christian brotherhood, and a.s.serting a national independence, these beautiful islands have bowed to a foreign yoke. Instead of native churches they have rather a.s.sumed the form of offshoots and dependencies of British churches. A great work has been accomplished, and its fruits will never cease to ripen. But events have occurred which only prophets could have foreseen; changes have taken place which neither political sagacity nor the saintly wisdom of those good men who first projected our foreign missions amidst storms of insult, or, what was worse to bear, the withering influences of a contemptuous neglect, antic.i.p.ated. It is often so in this world's history. Our successes, our trials, the events which happen to us, our national history, and that of the church of Christ, scoop out for themselves fresh channels, and flow still onwards, but in the direction perhaps least of all expected.

Our readers are, we trust, so far interested in the details already given as to desire some further acquaintance with the later history of these great missions since Mr. Marsden's death. This we propose to give, briefly of course, for the subject would fill a volume; and such a volume, whenever it shall be written well and wisely, will be received with delight by every intelligent member of the whole catholic church of Christ.

We shall direct our attention in the first place to NEW ZEALAND.

Attempts to colonize upon a large scale, attended with constant aggressions upon the native tribes, had occurred before Mr. Marsden's death, and awakened his anxiety. A New Zealand Company was formed in 1839, with the avowed object of purchasing land from the Maories, and settling large tracts of the island with English emigrants. It made no provision for the spiritual welfare of the natives, nor indeed for that of the European settlers; and it was evident that, however well-intentioned, the project in the hands of a mercantile company would be effected, as such schemes always have been effected, only at the cost of injustice and oppression to the natives. Meanwhile danger was threatening from another quarter. Louis Philippe now sat upon the throne of France. Though not ambitious of military conquest, he was cunning and unprincipled, and anxious to extend the power of France by force or fraud. Her colonial possessions she had lost during her long war with England, and now scarcely one of them remained. He saw and coveted the islands of the Southern Ocean, and resolved to repair his colonial empire by the addition of these splendid and inviting prizes. It was said, and we believe with truth, that a frigate was already equipped and on the very point of sailing for New Zealand with secret orders to annex that island to the crown of France, when the English government, tardily and with sincere reluctance, resolved to antic.i.p.ate the project and claim New Zealand for the queen of England. This was done, and the island was formally annexed to the English crown, and in January, 1842, became an English colony.

For once the story of colonial annexation is neither darkened with crime nor saddened with war and bloodshed. The measure was essential both to the security of the natives and to the work of the Protestant missions.

Lawlessness and anarchy were universal: the Maori tribes were slaughtering one another; the white man was slaughtering the Maori tribes. For the native laws were obsolete, and the laws of England no man yet had the power to enforce.

There was, too, on the part of England, and it was strongly expressed in the British parliament, a determination to secure, as far as possible, not only the safety but the independence of the natives under their old chiefs, and to leave them in possession of their ancient usages and forms of government. In fact, the authority of queen Victoria was to be that of a mild protectorate rather than an absolute sovereignty. The chiefs were to acknowledge the supremacy of the crown as represented in the governor. To him, and not as heretofore to the field of battle, with its horrors and cannibalism, were their disputes to be referred; and in all doubtful questions English law, its maxims and a.n.a.logies, were to be held supreme. Upon these easy terms the most fastidious will find little to blame in our annexation of New Zealand. The Maories did not exceed, it was computed, one hundred thousand souls. Suppose they had been twice that number, still they could scarcely be said to _occupy_ the whole of an island of the size of Ireland, and quite as fruitful. There was still room for a vast influx of Europeans, leaving to the natives wide tracts of land far beyond their wants, either for tillage or the chase, or for a nomad wandering life, had this been the habit of the Maories. And when the threatened seizure by France is thrown into the scale, few Protestants, of whatever nation they may be, will hesitate to admit that the conduct of England in this instance was both wise and just.

The Maories in general accepted this new state of things with satisfaction. Those of them who resided on the coast and in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Islands saw that the aggression of the colonists was restrained, and that their own safety was secured. Further in the interior, where the want of an English protectorate was less felt, heart-burnings occurred, fomented, as usual, by designing men, and aggravated by the occasional outrage of individuals. Some of the tribes resisted, and a war broke out, though happily neither b.l.o.o.d.y nor of long duration, in which the Maories maintained the reputation of their native valour, even against English regiments. Nor was it till the year 1849 that the peace of the island and the supremacy of the English crown were perfectly restored and a.s.serted.

For a time the progress of the gospel was triumphant. For example, archdeacon William Williams could report that the number of communicants in the eastern district, beneath his care, had risen from twenty-nine in 1840, to two thousand eight hundred and ninety-three in 1850; and these were "members of the congregation who were supposed to walk in the narrow way. Here then," he exclaims, "is abundant encouragement; the little one is become a thousand. In the course of ten years, there has been time for the novelty of Christianity to wear away; but, while some are gone back again to the beggarly elements of the world, hitherto the Lord has blessed his vineyards with increase." In other districts the progress of the gospel was equally gratifying. At Tauranga, out of a population not exceeding two thousand four hundred, upwards of eight hundred partook of the Lord's supper; and yet there were many native Christians who, from various causes, had been kept away from this ordinance. Other denominations of Protestant Christians had likewise their trophies to exhibit to the "praise of his grace," who had crowned their labours with success. "The facilities," reports one missionary, upon the eastern coast, "the facilities for usefulness are great; the coast might become one of the most interesting missionary gardens in the world. Crowds can be got together at any time for catechizing; the dear children are all anxious for schooling; the native teachers and monitors put themselves quite under your hands; and they are, I think, a very improving and improvable cla.s.s."

Similar reports reached home from almost every station in New Zealand.

At the intervention of a missionary of the church of England, a Wesleyan missionary, and an English lay gentleman, (the surveyor-general,) the Waikato and w.a.n.garoa tribes, bent on mutual slaughter, laid down their arms at the instant the battle should have joined. They had had their war-dance; some random shots had even been fired; their mediators had begun to despair; when at length, towards evening, they agreed to leave the subject in dispute between them (the right to a piece of land), to Sir George Grey, the governor, and Te Werowero, a native chieftain, for arbitration. The question was put to the whole army, "Do you agree to this?" Four hundred armed natives answered with one voice, a.s.senting.

The question was put a second time, and they again gave their consent.

"The surveyor-general giving the signal, we all," says the missionary, "gave three hearty cheers; after which the natives a.s.sembled for evening-prayers, and," he adds, "I trust I felt thankful." The accounts that reached England, filled men's hearts with astonishment; even upon the spot, men long enured to the spiritual warfare with idolatry, were amazed at the greatness of their triumph. They wrote home in strains such as the following.

"Rotorua is endeared to us by every tie that should endear a place to a missionary's heart. We came hither, to a people utterly debased by everything that was savage. Now, there is not a village or place around us, where the morning and evening bell does not call to prayer and praise, and where the sabbath is not observed.

I am sometimes astonished when I look back upon the past, and remember what we have pa.s.sed through. If I think only of those scenes which occurred to us during the southern war, the remembrance seems appalling. Now peace reigns in every border; the native chapel stands conspicuous in almost every Pa; wars seem almost forgotten; and for New Zealand, the promise seems fulfilled, 'I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.'"

New Zealand was at length, outwardly at least, a Christian land. Bishop Selwyn had, in 1842, taken charge of the church of England and the oversight of her missions, and other denominations a.s.sumed a fixed and settled character. The missionary began to merge and disappear in the stated minister. The ancient warrior chieftain too, was fading fast from sight; and we cannot deny that, savage as he was, we part from him with some feelings of respect. Who that has a heart to feel, or any imagination capable of being warmed by strains of exquisite pathos, can read unmoved the last words of the dying Karepa? The scene is in the lonely village of Te Hawera, of which he was the chief. Mr. Colenzo, the missionary, arrived just as his people, with loud cries, sitting around his new-made tomb, bewailed his departure. At night they gathered around their spiritual father in his tent, and one of the natives thus related the last words of Karepa.

"He summoned us all," said he, "to come close around him, and with much love exhorted us; talking energetically, as was his custom, a long while, he said:--'You well know that I have brought you, from time to time, much riches, muskets, powder, hatchets, knives, blankets. I afterwards heard of the new riches, called faith. I sought it. I went to Manawatu; in those days a long and perilous journey, for we were surrounded by enemies; no man travelled alone: I saw the few natives who, it was said, had heard of it; but they could not satisfy me. I sought further, but in vain. I heard afterwards of a white man at Otaki, and that with him was the spring where I could fill my empty and dry calabash. I travelled to his place, to Otaki, but in vain; he was gone--gone away ill. I returned to you, my children, dark minded. Many days pa.s.sed by; the snows fell, they melted, they disappeared; the buds expanded, and the tangled paths of our low forests were again pa.s.sable to the foot of the native man. At last we heard of another white man who was going about over mountains and through forests and swamps, giving drink from his calabash to the secluded native--to the remnants of the tribes of the mighty, of the renowned of former days, now dwelling by twos and threes among the roots of the big trees of the ancient forests, and among the long reeds by the rills in the valleys. Yes, my grandchildren, my and your ancestors, once spread over the country as the Koitareke (_quail_) and Krivi (_apteryx_) once did; but now their descendants are even as the descendants of these birds, scarce, gone, dead, fast hastening to utter extinction. Yes, we heard of that white man; we heard of his going over the high snowy range to Patea, all over the rocks to Turakirae. I sent four of my children to meet him. They saw his face; yes you, you talked with him. You brought me a drop of water from his calabash. You told me he had said he would come to this far-off isle to see me. I rejoiced, I disbelieved his coming; but I said he may. I built the chapel, we waited expecting. You slept at nights; I did not. He came, he emerged from the long forest, he stood upon Te Hawera ground. I saw him. I shook hands with him; we rubbed noses together. Yes, I saw a missionary's face; I sat in his cloth house (_tent_); I tasted his new food; I heard him talk Maori; my heart bounded within me; I listened; I ate his words. You slept at nights; I did not. Yes, I listened, and he told me about G.o.d, and his Son Jesus Christ, and of peace and reconciliation, and of a loving Father's home beyond the stars. And now I, too, drank from his calabash and was refreshed, he gave me a book, as well as words. I laid hold of the new riches for me, and for you, and we have it now. My children, I am old; my teeth are gone, my hair is white; the yellow leaf is falling from the Tawai (_beech tree_); I am departing; the sun is sinking behind the great western hills, it will soon be night. But, hear me; hold fast the new riches--the great riches--the true riches. We have had plenty of sin and pain and death; but now we have the true riches. Hold fast the true riches, which Karepa sought out for you.'

"Here he became faint, and ceased talking. We all wept like little children around the bed of the dying old man--of our father. He suffered much pain, from which he had scarcely any cessation until death relieved him."

But New Zealand was now pa.s.sing through a dangerous crisis. The Maori ceased to exist in his savage state. Cannibalism was a mere tradition.

Of the ancient superst.i.tions scarcely a trace was left. European arts and manners were introduced in almost every part of the island, and New Zealand took her place amongst other civilized communities. Still, under new circ.u.mstances fresh dangers threatened her. The church of Rome saw from afar and coveted so glorious a possession; and in the course of a single year a Romish bishop and sixteen priests landed at Wellington, and a second bishop with his troop of priests and nuns at Auckland. For a while the childish simplicity of the Maori character, fond of show and a stranger to suspicion, gave them great advantage; and the missionaries of evangelical churches viewed their progress with serious apprehension.

But as the novelty wore off the Maori Christian discovered that Popery was but a hollow pretence, without heart, or life, or abiding consolation, and whole tribes which had been led astray returned with their chiefs to purer churches in search of better pasturage. Lately the translation of the whole of the Bible has been completed, and in this we have the best antidote, under G.o.d, to the progress of this baneful superst.i.tion. New Zealand, too, besides its several Protestant bishops of the church of England, its zealous missionaries, and stated ministers of every evangelical denomination, has now at length a native ministry of her own Maories, few as yet in number, but holy men, men of competent learning and gifts of utterance, who have evidently been called of G.o.d.

One of these, the Rev. Riwai Te Ahu, who was ordained by Bishop Selwyn, is not only highly esteemed by all the natives of whatever tribe they may be, but by the English too; and he is entirely supported by internal resources, by regular contributions from the natives, and a private grant from the governor himself. We can understand something of the joy with which an honoured missionary, one of the oldest labourers in the field, sat and listened in the house of prayer while he officiated, a.s.sisted by the Rev. Rota Waitoa, the only two Maori ministers of the church of England in New Zealand, and his own early converts, "the one reading prayers, and the other preaching an admirable sermon to his own native tribe." Other churches have similar triumphs. The Wesleyans have three native a.s.sistant ministers, and probably these are not all, for it may be presumed that a great work is going forward in so large an island, of which our missionary societies have no official reports, and by agents who are no longer responsible to them. Thus it is often found that in the interior some village or hamlet has become Christian where no European missionary was ever seen. Native converts have done their own work.

Still the church in New Zealand is in an infant state, surrounded by many dangers. The influx of Europeans, the sudden increase of wealth and luxury, the introduction of a new and foreign literature from England, bearing as it were upon its wings all that is bad as well as all that is lovely and of good report in theology, politics, and morals, may well cause, as indeed it does create, the deepest concern to those who have at heart the purity of the Maori faith, and the continued progress of the gospel. It is not for those who know that the gospel is the power of G.o.d unto salvation, to doubt for a moment of its ultimate success; but the firmest faith may, at the same time, be apprehensive and anxious, if not alarmed, for the fiery trial that awaits her,--not of persecution, but of wealth and luxury, and the sad example of every European vice.

Let the reader help them with his prayers.

We cannot close our sketch of the progress of Christianity in New Zealand, without some allusion to the Canterbury a.s.sociation, one of the most remarkable attempts of modern times to colonize on Christian principles, or rather perhaps we should say, to carry abroad the old inst.i.tutions of England, and plant them as it were full blown in a new country. The design was not altogether original, for the New England puritans of the seventeenth century, had led the way, in their attempts to colonize at Boston and in New England, in the days of Charles I. They would have carried out the principles, and wors.h.i.+p of the Brownites to the exclusion of other sects, though happily for the freedom of religion, their design was soon found to be impracticable, and was only partially accomplished. The Canterbury a.s.sociation was formed on high church of England principles, "avowedly for the purpose of founding a settlement, to be composed in the first instance of members of that church, or at least of those who did not object to its principles." Its early friends now admit that their project was, in some of its parts, utopian and impracticable. The idea, if ever seriously entertained, of excluding by a test of church members.h.i.+p those whose profession differed from their own was abandoned by most of the colonists as soon as they had set foot on the sh.o.r.es of New Zealand. In 1848, Otakou or Otago, in the southern part of the Middle Island, was colonized by an a.s.sociation of members of the Free Church of Scotland; and in 1850, the first colonists were sent out to the church of England settlement, founded in the vicinity of Banks's Peninsula, by the Canterbury a.s.sociation. The site made choice of possessed a harbour of its own, an immense extent of land, which it was supposed might easily be brought under cultivation, and removed from danger of disturbance from the natives, of whom there were but few, an extent of grazing country unequalled in New Zealand, and a territory "every way available for being formed into a province, with a separate legislature." The plan was to sell the land at an additional price, and appropriate one third of the cost to ecclesiastical purposes. The sums thus realized by sales of land, were to be placed at the disposal of an ecclesiastical committee, who were empowered to make such arrangements as they might think fit to organize an endowed church in the colony. A bishopric was to be at once endowed, a college, if not a cathedral, was to be connected with it, a grammar-school of the highest cla.s.s, was to be opened as well as commercial schools; and all the luxuries of English country life, including good roads, snug villas, well cultivated farms; and good society, were to be found by the future settler, after a very few years of probationary toil.

The scheme was warmly taken up at home, and within a single twelvemonth from the 16th December, 1850, when the first detachment arrived, nearly three thousand emigrants had seated themselves in the Canterbury Plains.

The towns of Lyttelton and Christchurch were founded, and operations on a large scale were fairly begun. Of course bitter disappointment followed, as it too often does with the early colonists, whose expectations are unduly raised by the romantic stories told them in England. But we must quote a pa.s.sage from "Archdeacon Paul's Letters from Canterbury," just published. It may be of use to other emigrants, into whatever region of the world they go. "Restless spirits, who had never yet been contented anywhere, expected to find tranquillity in this new Arcadia, where their chief occupation would be to recline under the shadow of some overhanging rock, soothing their fleecy charge with the shepherd's pipe, remote from fogs and taxation and all the thousand nameless evils which had made their lives a burthen to them at home.

"Alas! the reality was soon found to be of a sterner type--

'These are not scenes for pastoral dance at even, For moonlight rovings in the fragrant glades: Soft slumbers in the open eye of heaven, And all the listless joys of summer shades.'

Long wearisome rides and walks in search of truant sheep and cattle; bivouacs night after night, on the damp cold ground; mutton, damper, (a kind of coa.r.s.e biscuit,) and tea (and that colonial tea) at breakfast, dinner, and supper, day after day, and week after week, and month after month; wanderings in trackless deserts, with a choice of pa.s.sing the night on some bleak mountain side or wading through an unexplored swamp; and, after all this labour, finding perhaps that his flock are infected, and that no small amount of money as well as toil must be expended before he can hope for any profit at all;--these are the real experiences of a settler's early days in a young pastoral colony."

Yet, upon the whole, the founders of the settlement consider that it has answered all reasonable expectations. None of the early settlers have been driven home by the failure of their prospects, and few have been so even from qualified disappointment. The plains of Canterbury have a thoroughly English look, dotted in every direction with comfortable farm-houses, well-cultivated inclosures, and rickyards filled with the produce of the harvest: and the great seaport of the colony, Lyttelton, is well filled with s.h.i.+pping. Christchurch boasts at length its college, incorporated and endowed. It became an episcopal see, too, in 1856, under the first bishop of Christchurch; it has its grammar school and Sunday schools. Here, too, as well as at Lyttelton, the Wesleyans have taken root, and, besides chapels, have their day and Sunday schools.

From the first, the Scotch Church was represented by some enterprising settlers. The decorum of religion is everywhere perceptible; "I believe," writes a n.o.bleman, whose name stands at the head of the a.s.sociation, "that no English colony, certainly none of modern days, and I hardly except those of the seventeenth century has been better supplied with the substantial means of religious wors.h.i.+p and education.

No one doubts the great material prosperity and promise of the colony; and no one denies that it is the best and most English-like society in all our colonies.... Sometimes a very vain notion has been entertained that we meant or hoped to exclude dissenters from our settlement. Of course, nothing could be more preposterous. What we meant was to impress the colony in its origin with a strong church of England character. This was done by the simple but effectual expedient of appropriating one third of the original land fund to church purposes, but this was of course a voluntary system."

Thus New Zealand stands at present. The lonely island of the Southern Ocean approached only fifty years ago with awe by the few adventurous whalers which dared its unknown coasts and harbours, now teems with English colonists. The dreaded New Zealander has forsaken his savage haunts and ferocious practices, and may be seen "clothed and in his right mind," and sitting to learn at the feet of some teacher of "the truth as it is in Jesus." The face of the country has undergone a corresponding change. And in many places, the scene is such as to force the tears from the eye of the self-exiled settler; the village spire and the church-going bell reminding him of home. What the future may be, we shall not even hazard a conjecture. Let it be enough to say that a mighty change has already been accomplished, and that its foundations were laid, and the work itself effected more than by any other man, by Samuel Marsden.

APPENDIX II.