DESCRIPTION OF RUAPUKEPAST AND PRESENT.

Southland Times, Issue 1056, 13 November 1868, Page 2

DESCRIPTION OF RUAPUKEPAST AND PRESENT.

The following account of the successful labors of tlie Bar ■ - Mr '-\^olifan£. German Missionary on the Island .. of Buapuke, will be read with interest. The subjoined letter originally appeared in a G-erman newspaper, but we are indebted to Mr Giesow for the translation : — In May 1844, 1 landed on the island of Buapuke, then inhabited by 200 Maories. The grossest forms of heathenism had already been given up, and some of the external forms of Christianity had already been accepted through the instrumentality of Christian natives, from the N;Ortb., but the spirit was wanting.,,. The Maories were living, in different kaiks (villages), and I had to gd frbtti » place to place for the purpose of divine ! service, and to give them Christian instruction. Their habitations were very badly qualified for those meetings becausethey were too low and for the most time filled with smoke. The entrance was in the best houses only three feet high and just as broad, in most of the houses but scarcely two feet high and wide, so that it was necessary to creep into them on hands and knees. An opening just as large as the door was left opposite it on the roof to let a little light in and a little smoke and stench, out. . , ;: ;., tt was natural in those cifetimstitnceS that I greatly desired to have a building" in which we could meet for divine service and instruction with decency and without hurt to our health. But I could not persuade the Maories to help me, because partly they had no desire whatever for a church and partly sectarian differences stood in the way. As little as they understood of Christianity as strongly were they divided into Episcopalians and "Wesleyans, without knowing anything whatever of the difference of those doctrines. I had here to learn how much sectarian differences are out of place in the mission field (however much each one may love his own church in which he was born and brought up), and I could well understand how Paul, led by the Spirit of God, speaks with zeal against it in the Corintheans; I had not the slightest desire to form a tnird party and therefore never entered into BAf sectarian disputations, neither for the odd nor against the other church, biit prayed and worked continually that the grace* of G-od might be formed in them. As I acted always without partiality I found that both sides listened to me, although neither parties would listen to a teacher of the other parties. Under those circumstances a mutual church was a necessity, but I could get no help from the Maoris, and from, the other Christian world I was far separated. Years passed by before I could receive an answer to my letter to the North German Mission Society. 'My means were very small ; for tools I was in possession of a spade, a small axe, a small hand-saw, a small auger, a few nails and a pocket-knife. My hermitage (for in the first five years I Hved hereas a true hermit, and the place is still called "the hermitage") stood on the foot of a little hill near the shores of a small beautiful lake, and sometimes I ascended the hill and knelt down there on a level place in the scrub and prayed that here a house of God might be raised* In the spring of 1845— in the month of November, when in Europe autumn is passed — after my potatoes and other garden vegetables were in the ground, I went with my hand-saw and axe into the bush, and cut down such wood as I myself could carry to the place where. I intended to build the church. The swagging of it was truly hard work, for the bush was a good distance from it; and no track led to it, and as there were then no cattle here, the scrub, grass, &c, were so thick, that I could only break through it with great exertions. . But I was then in strong man's age, and carried alone all the wood to the place for the building. After this, I went into the swamp and cut, with my pocket knife, rushes for the roof and the walls, and carried it also up the hill, and then I began to build. I dug the ends of the side posts into the ground, instead of laying the floor first, and when the iron nails were done, I had to make wooden, ones, for which the boring of the holes was the most troublesome work. God gave me strength and health to finish the building. It was in the beginning, a very rude building, but in the following years many things were improved, and also a little spire was built, for which Bremen presented us with a bell. In the first month of the year 1846 was the church so far finished that I could hold divine service in it — and in the first month of the year 1868 it was broken down — For 22 years has the Word of God been proclaimed in that simple Church, and proved its divine power on the Maories. Although their sentiments are by far not so deep as those of the disciples of Jesus in the old Christian home, for there the Christians are loom from christiau parents, and were already with the mother's milk fed with Christian feelings, when the Maories were -wild heathens given over to heathen hardness. The most of the Maories were baptized in that Church. The former, sectarian differences have disappeared Each one feels himself as a member of the Church of Christ and although our church is subject to much weakness,, we must have forebearance and remember from what cruel cannibal heathenism they were saved, and that if we were, not subject to weakness we could not feel the need oi" a Saviour. I found the Maories living in wretched dirty huts, sparingly clothed with old rags full of vermin, and now they live in clean and neat houses, and dress just like the European cleanly and decently. The new church is now built on the same place where the old one stood, and is already roofed in, but as the inside is not yet finished we

hold the divine service in the schoolmaster's house, until we can use the church which soon must be* It is built of wood and roofed with shingles. The little spire for the bell is cove red with j zinc. The interior is plain boarded, and the whole has a very good appearance. The Government pays the cost of the j church as well as the salary of the , schoolmaster from the interest of £2000, which was reserved for the purpose of educating the Maories, when they sold a few years ago Stewart's Island to the Government, who have the control of the school, but the Magistrate at the Bluff and I have the supervision. Christianity is acknowledged in the school and school-books, but all sectarian teaching left out as there is here no national church. All churches are on ecjual footing.

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