132 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 a 

 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 "s\dlling 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 



