Polynesians And

Christianity

Fascinating Story of What Hap pened in N.Z. 100 Years Ago

WHEN my friend Eric Ramsden sug gested that I read and review his new book I privately moaned. Ramsden is a lively writer, with a good sense of the dramatic; but Marsden and the Missions —well, I ask you!

The man who thought of that title had no idea of selling books. I was yawning before ever I opened the attractive covers.

I often had heard of Bishop Marsden —a very worthy but an exceedingly dull per son. I thought—and I had not the least desire to read about the gentleman.

But Marsden and the Missions ac tually is one of the most ‘.‘readable” books that ever has come off an Australian press.

Missionaries went to “convert the heathen” of New Zealand. The Maoris, however, had a culture and a social order worthy of the proud Polynesian race, and they were not in the least conscious of being heathens and barbarians. They met the Europeans with courtesy and hospi tality, but they were not prepared, at a word, to abandon their familiar ancient gods and accept a strange new code — which often was thrust at them with startling unctuousness.

The book tells, with fine flashes of drama and of humour, of how Christianity eventually was accepted by the Maoris, and of how the Maoris gave proof of their high racial standard, insomuch that they survived the shock of impact with Euro pean culture. One of the most interesting things in the history of colonisation may be seen in New Zealand to-day, where

Maoris and Europeans are living happily together as neighbours and where the Maoris, although they have had less than a century in which to absorb European standards of life, thought, education, and morality, are steadily increasing in num bers.

Mr. Ramsden’s book, in its searching analysis of conditions around 1840, ex plains much of the mystery of the Maori metamorphosis and, in that respect alone, it is exceedingly valuable. No student of the Polynesian people, and no historian of the Pacific, can afford to be without it.

It is one of the best documented books I have ever seen. Ramsden gives his authority for every statement: he must have searched thousands of ancient docu ments and tomes.

Marsden, no doubt, was a dear old soul, and one is filled with admiration of his determination, piety, and proselytising zeal. And the other missionaries were praiseworthy pioneers of their church.

But, to me. these are the least important aspects of the book. They provide merely an interesting background for Mr. Rams deh’s quick-moving, fascinating story of the struggle between two social systems, and of how the Maoris adapted themselves to the genius and the kindness, the ras cality and the fanaticism of the white man.

Personally, I never tire of reading about those early nineteenth century mis sionaries, who marched into the tropics, grimly and uncompromisingly determined to thrust their stovepipe hats, frock coats, non-conformist codes and Victorian Sab bath consciences down the throats of the “unhappy heathen,’’ and thus save them from eternal damnation. I never know whether to laugh at the extraordinary pic ture they present, or admire their stern sense of duty and readiness for self-sacri fice.

That is the dilemma with which one is

confronted in Mr. Ramsden’s book. One reads, for instance, of the indignation and sorrow of one typical evangelist when he found that a chief had a dozen wives. The facts that the wives were quite happy and that polygamy had been practised for scores of generations did not seem to the white man to have any bearing upon this “terrible sin.”

And, Presbyterian though I am, I con fess that I chuckled in malicious glee when I found in this book, as in other books, accounts of the frenzy into which these early missionaries fell when they found their fields being invaded by the teachers of the Roman Catholic Church, They seemed to lose all control over them selves —at any rate, they certainly let themselves go in the vituperative writings which they left. “On the Roman issue,” says Ramsden, “both Anglicans and Wes leyans were absolutely united. They both hated and feared the Frenchmen in their ‘frightful hats and long black robes’.” To day, to us, it all seems so petty and so funny: which does serve to show how far the world has travelled in one hundred years.

The book is commended to historians and students of South Seas sociology—it is an authoritative work which must find a permanent place on their bookshelves; and it is commended, also, to the ever growing army of readers who are tired of shoddy novels, and who seek something vivid, in a historical or geographical set ting, about that most fascinating of all subjects, the development of the human race.—R.W.R.

Marsden And The Missions, By Eric

Ramsden. Published by Angus and Robertson Ltd., Sydney. Price 12/6.