"Here he became faint, and ceased talking. We all wept like little children around the bed of the dying old man--of our father. He suffered much pain, from which he had scarcely any cessation until death relieved him."
But New Zealand was now passing through a dangerous crisis. The Maori ceased to exist in his savage state. Cannibalism was a mere tradition. Of the ancient superstitions scarcely a trace was left. European arts and manners were introduced in almost every part of the island, and New Zealand took her place amongst other civilized communities. Still, under new circumstances fresh dangers threatened her. The church of Rome saw from afar and coveted so glorious a possession; and in the course of a single year a Romish bishop and sixteen priests landed at Wellington, and a second bishop with his troop of priests and nuns at Auckland. For a while the childish simplicity of the Maori character, fond of show and a stranger to suspicion, gave them great advantage; and the missionaries of evangelical churches viewed their progress with serious apprehension. But as the novelty wore off the Maori Christian discovered that Popery was but a hollow pretence, without heart, or life, or abiding consolation, and whole tribes which had been led astray returned with their chiefs to purer churches in search of better pasturage. Lately the translation of the whole of the Bible has been completed, and in this we have the best antidote, under God, to the progress of this baneful superstition. New Zealand, too, besides its several Protestant bishops of the church of England, its zealous missionaries, and stated ministers of every evangelical denomination, has now at length a native ministry of her own Maories, few as yet in number, but holy men, men of competent learning and gifts of utterance, who have evidently been called of God. One of these, the Rev. Riwai Te Ahu, who was ordained by Bishop Selwyn, is not only highly esteemed by all the natives of whatever tribe they may be, but by the English too; and he is entirely supported by internal resources, by regular contributions from the natives, and a private grant from the governor himself. We can understand something of the joy with which an honoured missionary, one of the oldest labourers in the field, sat and listened in the house of prayer while he officiated, assisted by the Rev. Rota Waitoa, the only two Maori ministers of the church of England in New Zealand, and his own early converts, "the one reading prayers, and the other preaching an admirable sermon to his own native tribe." Other churches have similar triumphs. The Wesleyans have three native assistant ministers, and probably these are not all, for it may be presumed that a great work is going forward in so large an island, of which our missionary societies have no official reports, and by agents who are no longer responsible to them. Thus it is often found that in the interior some village or hamlet has become Christian where no European missionary was ever seen. Native converts have done their own work.