admits the demoralising influence of the surrounding paganism--an
influence which none wholly escaped, and before which some actually
succumbed. "I feel in myself," quaintly writes another, "a great want of
that spirituality of mind which New Zealand is so very unfavourable for;
because of the continual scenes of evil that there is before our eyes,
and for want of Christian society. So that you must excuse my barrenness
of writing, and give me all the Christian advice you can."

The most interesting personality among these first settlers was Kendall.
Wayward and erring, passionate and ungovernable as he was, a close study
of his letters shows a depth of sin and penitence, together with a
breadth and boldness of philosophical speculation, which fascinates the
reader. Alone among the missionaries he seems to have tried to approach
the Maori from his own side, and to enter the inmost recesses of his
thought: "I am now, after a long, anxious, and painful study, arriving
at the very foundation and groundwork of the Cannibalism and
Superstitions of these Islanders. All their notions are metaphysical,
and I have been so poisoned with the apparent sublimity of their ideas,
that I have been almost completely turned from a Christian to a
heathen." Like the ancient Gnostics, Kendall tried to combine
Christianity with a sublimated version of pagan superstitions; and if
moral restrictions stood in the way, he cast them aside. "I was
reduced," he says, "to a state so dreadful that I had given myself
entirely up, and was utterly regardless of what would become both of
body and soul."

The details of his strange career cannot, of course, be given here. He
has been represented as an utter hypocrite, and evidence is not wanting
to give colour to the charge. But another and more favourable view is
not only possible: it is forced upon anyone who studies his
self-revelation through his letters. He seems to have hoped that his
ordination would have given him moral strength and stability, but he had
to admit that he had never been so strongly tempted to sin, so unable to
resist it, or so ingloriously foiled, as since his return from England.
Marsden's sharp exercise of discipline, though it elicited outbursts of
passion, seems to have had a healing effect. "Blessed be God," he
writes, "who has certainly undertaken for me. His sharp rebuke has laid
me low; yet why should I repine, since He has inclined me to seek His
face again?" Upon his exp