A LIFE WELL LIVED.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 63, 7 December 1937, Page 4

A LIFE WELL LIVED.

£he death of Bishop Wiliams is mucH more than the passing of an honoured, noble-minded, efficient leader in the Church of England. His death removes one of the few remaining liying contacts with New Zealand as .it was when the White Man was a stranger to many Maori tribes, and when there were still young Maoris who believed that the invader should be confined to the sea ports. His father and grandfather had walked and talked with these Maoris, and as a lad he saw them as they were in their primitive nobility. Thus he must have learned, not only the words of the Maori tongue but the rich poetie thoughts that often lay beneath the words and the shrewd wariness with which the Maori could elothe a phrase. With this early training and the inherited missionary ability and zeal of his immediate forbears Herbert Williams was well equipped for the destiny that he was to fulfil. His instinctive scholarliness found satisfaetion in his studies at .Canterhury College and Cambridge University. His years of teaching at Te Rau Theologieal College, where eager young • Maori minds sought to understand the philosophy and faith of the White Man, must have given him a still deeper insight into Maori psychology, Thus when he was called to take a leader 's part in the service of his Church he brought a wide knowledge of man in all his subtleties and simplicities. How well he served his God and his Church is for those who worked with him in that Church to say. To the wider public, of all sects and creeds, his memory will be honoured for the work he has done in proserving for all time much of the lore and language of New Zealand which theMaoris themselves had lost. Bishop Williams was beloved by all who ■knew him. He talked well and wisely, and from his rich storehouse of knowledge many a listener has gathered some of the fun and philosophy that make life more worth living. Not only from . the mind did the Bishop get his satisfactions. He was a craftsman who knew how to work with wood and metal. He was a printer. too, and he it was who first installed a printing press in-Poverty Bay. So many -things a man can do with his life. Herbert Whliams used the gifts God had given him, and 1 his fellow men are. rifihex J&ereby, ^ -v