REGENERATING THE MAORI.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 79, 23 September 1911, Page 3

REGENERATING THE MAORI.

A STRIKING ADDRESS. WHAT IS BEING DONE AND WHAT IS WANTED. At the Anglican Church conference on Thursday the Rev. Hawkins, superintendent of Maori Missions, delivered a striking address on Maori Mission work. He said there were many problems in the Maori mission work of to-day that did not exist in the past, and they were becoming more critical every day. and they had to think well before tackling them. In the Maori work, he said, they were at the secondary stage in missions. Those who had read missionary literature would know that this was true. ■ In the first generation when they went to heathen lands the missionaries needed all their courage, for they were, going to have their martyrs, and to meet . heathenism and all its cruelty. But afterwards they saw the. faith spread very rapidly, and these -people, when they came out of their heathenism to Christianity, were very bright and keen indeed. After them ea-ine the second . generation, a generation which had not been saved from heathenism to Chris- . tianity, but which had been l>orii into Christianity, and which did not know , personally wjlat they had been saved from. In this connection he commended !, his hearers to read the book, ''Fiji of To-day," by the Rev. J. W. Burton. ' The problems of Fiji were the probhmis, here. They had now to form character in the i second generation, and it was hard work, : with no glamor about it, a work of j steady application, for character was not ( formed in a day. | The first point to remark was that < the Maori was different from the pukeha i in that he had always been communistic, i and they carried that idea into Chris- | tianity, an idea of home and •family ' a.nd - national- prayer and Christianity 1 that we seemed to have lost. The Maori 1 did not see the necessity for private wor- i ship, for locking oneself into a room and ; praying- to the Father in secret. This i wis easily explained—there were no pri- i vat-e rooms to retire into. The need for < personal Christianity and private prayer 1 needed to be driven home to the Maori, i The speaker referred to the diocesan work in the Maori mission field, and to 3 tho organisation. At the head was the Bishop. Under the Bishop were four ' superintendents, two Europeans and two Maoris, all travelling the diocese. In the eighties and nineties there were many of the old Maori missionaries alive. By 1900 they had all died, and the only European working in the diocese in 1000 was the speaker, who had come as a deacon to the late Archdeacon Clarke. One of the superintendents looked after the lay readers and clergy principally, and another was just setting out to organise work amongst t)ie young people, a section of the work which was lamentably weak. The members of the ; illusion had large districts—for instance, ] there was only one man in Taranaki, his district extending from the Mokau to Parihaka, and inland to Purangi, and out to the Wanganui -district. He was I praying for assistance, for the people | were crying out for services which he could not arrange for them. The call was for Maori clergymen, and the Maori men were responding nobly. In a few years, if well supported by the people for the financial side, the missionary work of the diocese would bo well staffed. An important work was the, excellent work being done amongst the Maori women. As no nation rose above its women, so the work' amongst its women was the best means of raising and saving the race. In a Maori settlement, he said, everybody and everything came to religious service, though they tried to keep the ilogs (rut. There was a man now who was appointed to go round, not to teach Sunday Schools, but to teach the teachers to impart the knowledge to the children. There would be no difficulty, as out here in the European settlements, in getting the children to go to Sunday School. Referring to the financial side, lie said he was not going to beg. He found that where people knew the facts —and most people recognised their responsibility in regard to the Maori missions—they were ready to help. But the Maori clergy yvere getting only £75

a year, on which to raise their families. Oiie or two got £IOO a year, and they should not rest content till every Maori clergyman got that sum. The Maoris themselves had collected £OSO last year, and the Maoris in this diocese who cared were not very well off. It had to be remembered, of course, that it was only since 1003 that cither the Maoris or the diocese had been asked to undertake the financial responsibility of this work, for it was done bv the Church Mission-

ary Society from England. There were

50 Maori churches in the diocese, and the Maoris had built every one of these themselves. They were quite willing to give the land, too, ,for sites for churches and vicarages, and they asked no assistance in the upkeep of their churches, and they provided nearly half of the stipends of the clergy. The Rev. M. P. Kapa, wdio had been ordained that morning, gave a brief address in Maori, at the request of Bishop Orossley, and the Ilev. Hawkins acted as interpreter, lie said that he had been working -for three years in the Waikato district—a district which had, like Taranaki, been opposed to the Christian faith

as the result of the war with the whites. When he first commenced his work there he was unable to obtain a hearing at tangis and Maori meetings, but eventually he managed it, profiting by the Maori love for hymn-singing and particularly part-singing; the four parts to the pakcha hymns particularly charmed them. Through hymn-singing and short sermons he at best gained a bearing, be ?..\id. laying stress on the short sermons. The' Maoris bad a saying "By the shortness of the stem of the pipe shall

a man's nose be warmed." so likewise if the sermons were short—ah, then the} would like to hear them. In his first and second years he had felt very much inclined to go home from the work, but in the third year he began to love the people -because be was now beginning to see evidences of the conversion of the. people lo Christianity. In this year, for instance, they had opened at the Waikato Heads tlie first church that had been built in that di-lrict since ISO.'!, the year of the war, and at live sliue time'they had confirmed 50 candidates, the first candidates continued in those parts since the war.