IN AND FRIEND OF THE
MAORI.

It has been mentioned that the island of Australia was considered as an
archdeaconry of the see of Calcutta. This enormous island, first
discovered in 1607 by Luis de Torres, and inhabited only by the very
lowest race of savages, appeared to the Government of George III. a
convenient spot for forming a penal settlement; and in 1787 the first
convict ships carried out an instalment from the English jails to New
South Wales, where the city of Sydney was founded by Governor Phillip.

As usual in those days, the provision made for the moral or religious
training of this felon population was lamentably and even absurdly
deficient; for it seemed to be considered, that so long as the criminals
were safe out of England, it did not greatly matter to her what became of
them. But the power of grace is sure to work sooner or later wherever
the Christian name has been carried, and a holy man rose up, not only to
fight hard with the mass of corruption in Australia, but to carry on the
light to the more distant shores of the Southern Ocean.

This good man, Samuel Marsden, was the son of a small farmer at Farsley,
near Calverley, in Yorkshire, and was educated at the free Grammar School
at Hull by Dr. Joseph Milner, whose Church History used to be a standard
book in the early part of this century. He began his career as a
tradesman at Leeds, but his school influences had given him higher
aspirations; and a body termed the Elland Society, whose object was to
educate young men of small means and suitable character for the ministry,
and whose chief supporters were Wilberforce, Simeon, and Thornton,
selected him as one of their scholars, and placed him at St. John's
College, Cambridge. He had not even taken his degree when, to his
surprise, he was offered a chaplaincy in New South Wales! The post was
no doubt a difficult one to fill,--for who would willingly undertake to
be one of two clergymen sent to labour among an untamed multitude of
criminals?--and Mr. Wilberforce was, no doubt, glad to suggest a young
man so blameless and full of zeal, and of whom, from personal observation
at Cambridge, Mr. Simeon had so high an opinion.

Samuel Marsden wished to decline it at first; but finding that no one
else would come forward to undertake the charge, he accepted it; and in
the spring of 1793 he was ordained, and married, being then nearly twenty-
nine years of age. His wife, Elizabeth Tristan, was thorou