CHURCH OF ENGLAND MISSION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVIII, Issue 8042, 1 February 1906, Page 2

CHURCH OF ENGLAND MISSION.

AX INTERESTING MEETING. St, Mary's Hall, New Plymouth, was crowded to the door on Wednesday night when special addresses, dealing with the missions of the Church of England, were delivered by His Lordship Bishop Ncligau, and Captain Sinker, K.N.K., aud Ecv. F. Larkins The chair was occupied by the Mayor, Mr It. Cock, who briefly opened the proceedings. The meeting was a most enjoyable and instructive one, the positions of the various missions being dealt with and explained clearly and interestingly. The Ecv. Mr Larkin, who has previously been connected with this portion of the Diocese, and is now about to renew acquaintance with it for a short while, dealt with Home Missions and their imparlance in furthering the Church.

Captain Sinker, who is Captain ol the mission steamer Southern Cross and u typical jolly-faced sailor, in s. mosl interesting address described the work of the Church in the Melanesian Mission, throughout the islands of Polynesia. Speaking as a navigator who had had opportunity of judging the work performed by missionaries on the islands, he gave the lie direct to those scoffers who ridiculed mission work, and its henelicient influence on the islanders. He described the hardships and self-abnegation of the missionaries m graphic phraseology, and gave nu interesting account of the manner in which the training of native teachers, and their subsequent work as teachers amongst their own people, was being supervised by the Mission, concluding with an earnest appeal for practical help, especially such as would ease the lot of the missionaries in their physical well-being. The Bishop, in the course of a powerful and convincing addivw, especially treating on the Home and Maori missions, said that one ol'l lie most hopeful and healthy signs of the interest that had been awakened in these important branches of the Church's policy was the very large attendance he now invariably met at Mission lneelin-s Ho announced that the plan he had sketched out twelvemonths ago for the establishing of Homo and Maori mis. sions m the outlying portions of the Diocese had, to a great extent, materia, liscd. The Taranaki Home Mission, he was pleased to announce, was n >\v an accomplished fact. He especially desired that Taranaki should, by Ink' mg the burden of maintaining the Homo Missionary in the province oIV the hands of the Central Committee, thus allowing him to get move Home Missionaries for service in other pirts of the diocese, where the services of spiritual advisers were badly wanted by the people Within a few months, under the present scheme, the whole of the back country behind Wiiitara, Tnglcwood, and Stratford will have boon cut off from their respective parishes, and handed] over to a Home Missionary. (Applause,) Dealing with the Maori Missions, His Lordship said the church now had nineteen Maori clergymen at work throughout the diocese. While lie could not give them any startling statistics of whole tribes coming into the Church, he could tell them that a most remarkable change had come over the natives—especially in the Waikalo —iu their attitude towards Christianity The opinion of their native pastors, who were best able to judge, was that there would shortly be a golden harvest for the church amongst the Maoris r of Taranaki. A mnv departure 1 about to be entered upon was in sending ladies, specially trained for the work, to labour amongst the Maoris in their pahs, teaching them how to cook, to tend their babies and to nurse, and in that way endeavor to win them for Christ. He concluded with an earnest appeal to all to assist the Mission, winch this year is espcci- , ally in need of funds. The work was . not his hearers' work or his work only. It was God's work, ami could only be done by the power of the Holy Ghost, and that could only descend if they prayed, in the words of Captain Skinner, prayed till if hurt. His Lordship, Bishop Xcligan, visits Okalo to-day, when ho will conlirm live natives.