THE YOUNG MAORI PARTY.

Gisborne Times, Volume VII, Issue 367, 18 March 1902, Page 2

THE YOUNG MAORI PARTY.

(To the Editor of the Times). Sir,—A large and deeply interested cc i gregation listened with a new pleasure V the services held in Trinity Church lath Sunday, when the Rev. Mr Bennett preached in the morning from Deuteronomy xxii. c. and Bth verse. His masi sive and well-trained voice with a fuff sonorifie cadence filled the building, anc, was as music to the ears and a solace to the hearts of all present, that in) him the Maori presented even to the! fastidious Pakeha a messenger of whom’ Oxford, Cambridge, or Te Aute, would be’ naturally proud. His eloquence comes up to the Miltonic text, which is “ True eloquence I find to be none but the serious and hearty love of truth ; and that whose mind so- ?* i ever is fully possessed with a fervent desire to know good things, and with the ’ dearest charity to infuse the knowledge of ; them into others, when such a man would iL speak, his words (by what I can exjk ss), ’ . like so many nimble and airy servitors trip about him at command, and in wellordered files, as he would wish, fall aptly into their own places,” . The pictures of the social and spiritual states of the Maori, drawn by the preacher were affecting and truthful, revealing a condition of things not at all commend- ‘ able in such a State as ours, celebrated for liberal institutions and leading the very van of progress. ° To think of ten thousand of our fellowsubjects in this the Premier British Colony as absolute heathen ; is to be—charitable —a thing to make us ashamed. Mr Bennett addressed the children of the Sunday-schools in the afternoon, and was listened to with marked high manners and carefully-trained attention. I am, etc., Gbo, H. Winaoß,