182 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
The circumstances of our mission work here in the south were remark- 
ably favourable. First, when I began my work here, the great movement 
of the conversions in the north had reached this way. Secondly, when 
civilization began, the Otago settlement commenced, so that our Maoris 
found a market to sell their produce and to buy things necessary for & 
civilized life. But no civilization among such low sunken savages could 
have succeeded if conversion to Christianity had not gone before. The 
savage heathen is used to filth and vermin and occasional starvation ; they 
do not inconvenience him. If nice things of civilized people come within 
his reach, and he can get them by begging or stealing, he will take them; 
but to work constantly, which a civilized life requires, that he cannot and 
will not. Looking from his standpoint at the toil of civilized men, he must 
be a fool to undertake these in exchange for his careless ways. But when 
conversion comes in, and his mind is occupied with Christian, humanizing 
ideas, then that is all changed. He becomes willing to work out his 
civilization, his mind‘is in his work, and the advances he makes please 
him 
It is a wonderful power that works so mightily in the human mind and 
changes it for the better. It may be “ hid from the wise and prudent and 
revealed unto babes,” figuratively. Missionaries understand that power; 
for they have it, else they could not and would not undergo such long hard- 
ship as to live among savage heathen for the purpose of helping them up, 
by precept and by example, to a Christian humanity. Savage heathen are 
not pleasant company; they are rude and offensive; they are full of 
vermin, they stink. But the wonderful spiritual power within over- 
comes all that. There was a time, before they became missionaries, 
when they groaned and travailed, may be in a dry orthodoxy, may be in an 
honest scepticism, till they listened to the voice of Jesus: ‘‘ Come unto me 
all ye that labour and are heavy laden.” They came and found rest for 
their souls. There came into them the mind which was also in Christ 
Jesus, namely to seek and to save such as are lost, though it may be under 
hardship and sufferings. 
I have stated the above to show the moving power of mission work, 
because science works to bring to light hidden forces which produce visible 
effects. 
Some people think that no good is done by converting the heathen ; but 
such people do not know the heathen in their places of heathenish living, 
nor the converted in their civilized homes. The Maoris here in the south 
had, in their heathen state, such weak constitutions, brought on by their 
miserable way of living, that anyone who became sick had no hope of 
recovering—(they had no word for hope in their language). The sick were 
