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CHAPTER XXVII. 



CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH. 



ANOTHER lot of Tutira aliens has carried a message which assuredly no 

 other group of plants has anywhere been privileged to bear. They have 

 reached the station as heralds preparing the way, forerunners making 

 the path straight for the coming of a King. I can never view a row of 

 thyme or clump of mint on the long-deserted site of a far inland pa 

 gifts brought from afar of frankincense and myrrh without seeming 

 to hear their native carrier tell his tale of the mission garden whence 

 the plant had sprung, of the white men from across the sea, of their 

 strange new gospel of peace and goodwill. Assuredly not one of these 

 mission garden aliens, these children of the church, has been handled, 

 tasted, or smelled without discussion of the donor, the austere example 

 of his life, his beliefs. 



No white man in early days visited the district of which Tutira forms 

 a part. The population was too insignificant, the locality too wild ; 

 rumour and report of Christianity was beyond doubt first carried up- 

 country by the medium of plants. Prior to translation of the Bible into 

 the Maori tongue, fertilising messages from holy writ, texts from scrip- 

 ture, had been scattered over heathendom in the form of drupe, rootlet, 

 and seed. As in Antioch, the followers of the new faith were earliest 

 known by the name of its founder, so during discussion of missionary 

 plants were Christian precepts first ventilated on the wilds of Tutira. 



As we shall see, some of the plants in this group have reached the run 

 almost directly from mission stations, others by more circuitous pere- 

 grinations from the same source. 



It is impossible in this volume and in this chapter to deal, however 

 briefly, with the story of the introduction of Christianity into New 

 Zealand. Marsden had already visited the country, but it was not until 



