CHRISTIANITY AND COLONISATION AMONG THE MAORIS Concluded.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 209, 30 August 1873, Page 1

CHRISTIANITY AND COLONISATION AMONG THE MAORIS Concluded.

Mr Leigh returned to Sydney, ond soon after embarked for England, resolved to urgeoh the Wesleyan Missionary Committee the commencement of a Mission in New Zealand, and Mr Marsden also wrote to the Treasurer of that Society, Joseph Butterworth, Esq., on the subject. Mr Leigh succeeded, and in 1821 he left England again to commence a Mission in New Zealand; he was soon joined by Messrs Turner, Hobbs, and Stack. The Church Mission was also reinforced; the latter had the centre of its operations at the Bay of Islands, while the Wesleyan Mission was opened at Whangaroa, the scene of the Boyd massacre. To ascertain what Christianity accomplished among the New Zealanders we must look at their religious condition when tHe Gospel reached them. They had no knowledge of the true God. They were not idolaters in the popular sense. They had no idols but they had gods many. Their mythology resembled that of classic Greece and Rome. They had gods of the Ist classy One the creator of the Islands, another of man, another the god of war, and a multitude of inferior deities —gods of the sea. and winds, tutelary divinities of towns, tribes, families, kumeras, and woods; demons haunting woods, caveß, and desert places, whose delight was to torment and annoy the race of men. Oueuuku was a god residing under the rainbow; the thunder was his voice. They sought his favor when on expeditions of war. If the rainbow stood in the front or on the left it was ominous of evil, and they returned home; if it was seen on the right it was a promise of victory.