NEW ZEALAND AND CHRISTIANITY.
IT was in 1808 that the first evangelical effort was made to reach the Maoris of New Zealand. In that year Samuel Marsden, chaplain to the convict settlement at Paramatta, in New South Wales, visited England, and persuaded the C. M. S. Committee to send out two or three lay missionaries under his charge. He had himself never visited the islands, but had seen some Maoris on the mainland of Australia. He sailed back to his convicts in 1809, with the lay agents. But, arrived in Sydney, he could get them no further for more than four years. No ship could be induced to go to New Zealand, for terror of the Maori cannibals, who had killed and eaten the crew of the shipwrecked Boyd. At last, in 1814, Mr. Marsden bought a small ship, managed to collect a crew, and sailed for the dreaded shores. At the close of the year he settled his band of lay missionaries near the north end of North Island. About 1837 the influence of Christianity had so far civilized the natives that the country was safe for settlers, and English colonists came pouring in. Seven times did the zealous chaplain of Paramatta take the voyage to New Zealand to see the mission, not in a handsome, well-appointed steamer of the present day, but a small sailing vessel. In 1836 he made his last voyage, and found that large numbers of the Maoris had been baptized. The first bishop of the islands was consecrated in 1841, in the person of the great Bishop Selwyn. He was the first and only one of the title, for the country was afterward divided into six dioceses, three in the North Island, Auckland, Waiapu, and Wellington, and three in the Middle Island, Nelson, Christchurch, and Dunedin. Unfortunately, the advance of civilization always means the decline of native, savage, or semi-savage races. New Zealand has now a population of 600,000, while the Maori race has dwindled to about 38,000. Of these about 28,000 are Christian, and the rest semi-heathen. These semi-heathen are descendants partly of those who never embraced Christianity, and partly of those who apostatized at the time of the bitter wars between the English settlers and the natives about land. Most of them are adherents of disaffected chiefs, like Te Whiti and Te Kooti, but some of them have lately joined the Mormons. They mostly live on their own lands in the heart of the North Island.—Gospel in All Lands.