o look with less regret upon the check
which the Christian message received after its first rapid advance. The
rise of Mohammedanism in the sixth century drove the faith of Christ
from Asia and from Africa, but it kept it "white." It threw a barrier
across the old road which led from Jerusalem to the Antipodes, but the
barrier enabled preparation to be made on either side for a grander and
more fruitful intercourse. On the south of the Islamic empire the
migrations of the peoples brought to our islands the Maori race, who
made them their permanent home. On the north, the Christian faith took
firm hold of the maritime nations of Europe, from whom the missionaries
of the future were to spring.

The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1452 may be taken as the
turning point. It closed more firmly than ever the land-route to the
south, but the libraries of this great city, in which was preserved
nearly all that remained of ancient learning, were scattered by the
captors, and their contents carried far and wide. New Testament
manuscripts awakened fresh study in the western world, and led to a
cleansing and quickening of religion; narratives of old Greek explorers
made men impatient of the barrier which blocked them from the lands
which the ancients had known, and thus drove them to seek new routes by
sea.

Marvellous was the energy which now awoke. By 1492 Columbus had crossed
the Atlantic, and Vasco da Gama, having rounded the African continent,
had reached India by an ocean road which had nothing to fear from the
Mussulman power.

Two routes, in fact, had now been opened, for not only did the
Portuguese follow up da Gama's discoveries in the Indian Ocean, but the
Spaniards from the American side soon entered the Pacific. But neither
of these nations quite reached our distant islands. Their ships were
swept from the sea in the seventeenth century by the Dutch, whose
eastern capital was Batavia. From this port there started in 1642 a
small expedition of two ships under the command of Abel Tasman. Heading
his journal with the words, "May the Almighty God give His blessing to
this voyage," the courageous Hollander went forth, and, sailing round
the Australian continent, struck boldly across the sea which now bears
his name. On December 16th the mountainous coast of our South Island
rose before him, and what we may now call New Zealand was seen by
European eyes. The ferocity of the inhabitants prevented the explorer
fr