ELOQUENT MAORI BISHOP

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 673, 27 May 1929, Page 14

ELOQUENT MAORI BISHOP

TRIBUTE TO LOVED FRIEND A typical instance of the glowing eloquence for which Bishop Bennett hrst Maori bishop of Aotea-roa. is \Mdely known was heard at Blenheim when the bishop referred to x! at ?h Ven * Archdeacon T. S. Grace, of Marlborough, a noted Maori scholar and a man beloved by both races -In many respects the archdeacon has been to me a father in God," said Bishop Bennett. “Tonight I stand here in his old church, and, in a figurative sense, I place upon the memory of Mr. Gace and all those who were workers with him in those early days a Maori wreatli of kawakawa leaves. It is a circular wreath, emblematic first of all of the fact that there is no end to the lives it recalls, for death is not the end. That kawakawa wreath is made of green leaves—dry leaves would never do—emblematical, again, of the fact that their memory must be, and will be, for ever green. And so tonight may I, in a symbolical or figurative sense, place before you, upon their lives and upon their memories, this wreath significant of life unending and influence going on and on.”