"For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe."

IN contemplating the wondrous extension of the Gospel through the world, we are struck with the many and mighty forces which have been brought to bear on the human heart; not too many, when we consider how varied are the attractions of earth; nor more than sufficient, when we feel how weak is man, and know, by the experience of every age, how opposed is our fallen nature to the influences of heaven. The spirituality of the Christian's worship, as distinguished from the burthensome [5/6] ceremonial of the Jewish law; the reasonableness of Christianity, when contrasted with the degrading abominations and idolatrous rites of heathenism; the pure, and exalted, and endearing views which the Gospel discloses of the Deity; the love of the Son in dying for man; the sanctifying graces of the Spirit; the denunciation of everlasting punishment on the impenitently wicked, and the promise of eternal happiness to the righteous, for Christ's sake, in a better world yet to come, present to the devoted Missionary a combination of motives fully equal, under the Divine help, to support his fainting soul amid those many and peculiar difficulties, privations, and discouragements which on every side, yet not unmixed with many a consolation, beset his tangled path.

The Apostle, in both his Epistles to Timothy, places these motives before his own son in the faith. Whatever was the age of the first Bishop of the Ephesian Church, he was at least young in the discharge of his Episcopal duties; and though appointed to his high and holy office even by prophetic designation, he might, without [6/7] disparagement to his own authority, have received the admonition of the aged, and inspired, and experienced Apostle of the Gentiles. His see was fixed in the metropolitan city of Asia, in the midst of a voluptuous, superstitious, and immoral population, where idolatry was upheld with singular splendour, and its abominable rites practised with a cruelty which would have disgraced the most savage nation. [Appendix (A).] Every thing, humanly speaking, depended, under God's grace, on the character, conduct, and doctrinal integrity of the first Christian Bishop. He was the centre around which the Christians would rally, and on which the unbelieving Jew and the flagitious heathen would direct, not their eye only, but their fiercest hatred.

How seasonable then, under such circumstances, were warnings such as these! "Give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine;" "Be thou an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity;" [7/8] "Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine; Watch thou in all things, endure affliction, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry." And how consolatory and encouraging under his arduous ministry were declarations such as these: "There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all." "It is a faithful saying, For if we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him: if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him." And "God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." And in yet closer connexion with the text: "Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come." The youthful Timothy must have deeply felt and profited by these admonitory declarations; and we know from Ecclesiastical History how fully and fearlessly, even to the sacrifice of his life, he acted upon them. [8/9] The Apostles, as a body, and St. Paul in an eminent degree, had done the same. "For therefore," are St. Paul's words, for the sake of this godliness, "we both labour and suffer reproach," even from those for whom we are laboring, "because," as he justly adds, "we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe."

On an occasion, like the present, of such deep interest to the Christian Church, I know not, Brethren, on what passage of Holy Scripture we can dwell with more comfort and edification than on these words of this tried Apostle. They were addressed to the chief minister of the church at Ephesus; they speak of labors undergone, and sufferings endured for the cause of the Gospel of Christ; they lift our souls to God, and lead us to repose on Him in all things; they lay before us the vastness of His love, and its intensity towards the believer; they intimate the transcendent excellence of the evangelical doctrine in itself and in its consequences both temporal and eternal; and they exhibit in the person of the Apostle a [9/10] conspicuous example of unwearied zeal, and faithful endurance in preaching and maintaining the Word in the face of an opposing world.

Much has been said of the simple virtues of the untutored savage; and so great have been the encomiums lavished on a state of nature, that the untravelled Christian has been tempted to ask what need of the privileges of grace? Alas! how quickly is this delusion dispelled by an actual acquaintance with the physical and moral condition of savage man in his native wilds! It is pitiable to witness the degradation of the woman; the indolence and tyranny of the man; the liability of both, from very destitution, to multiplied diseases; the precariousness of their subsistence; their exposure to the sanguinary inroads of hostile tribes; their ignorance, superstitious fears, immoral usages, and unbridled passions. I speak that which I have seen, or have heard from credible witnesses, whilst moving myself among--not the most abject of the savage race--the unconverted Indians of Southern America; but who can be conversant even among [10/11] these, and at the same time reflect, that there are yet thousands and tens of thousands of our fellow-creatures still more lost to God than even they; yea, wholly without God in the world, and with little to raise man above the beasts around him, and not feel how transcendently blessed would be the day when it should please God, through the agency of His Church, to bring these nations, now walking in darkness, into the light of the truth, to raise them into men by making them Christians, and to turn them from dumb idols to the humanizing, and holy, and ennobling service of the Christian faith.

Different--I had almost said, less hopeful--is the state of those, who having been brought to Christ in their infancy, and having been called by His name, have yet grown up without Him in age, and have "given themselves up to work all uncleanness with greediness." What can the Gospel effect for sinners thus wilfully hardened against the Truth? "It is impossible," says an Apostle--it is a strong word, yet, as our Lord once added, "with God all things are [11/12] possible"--"it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and are made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they fall away, to renew them again unto repentance." Yet even for these, if they will but receive it, the Gospel has a balm. "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." The faithful minister of the Cross will still be on the watch even for these; and who shall say, how soon, in some softer hour, which a mother's prayers may have gained, or under some heavy chastisement, which God may in His mercy have sent, the doctrine of a dying Saviour may not, under God's awakening grace, touch the heart of the most abandoned of our brethren? [Quae cum ille dixisset, atque illa" (Monica, Augustini mater) "nollet acquiescere, sed instaret magis deprecando, et ubertim flendo, ut me videret, et mecum dissereret; ille jam substomachans taedio, Vade, inquit, a me, ita vivas; fieri non potest, ut filius istarum lacrymarum pereat."--S. Augustini Episcopi Confessionum lib. iv. cap. 12.] "The [12/13] Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost."

But yet more: look with what serenity the aged Christian walks even upon the brink of the grave! What has been his support throughout his earthly pilgrimage? The same Gospel, which humanizes the savage, and reforms the sinner, has its word, and its sacraments, its examples from without, and the witness of the heart from within, its peace on earth, and its hope, through Christ, of heaven, to comfort, and encourage, and edify yet more and more the tried and faithful servant of the Lord; "that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works."

How adapted indeed to every want, and to the varying condition of man, is the blessed and glorious Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ! How noble its conceptions of God! how true, though humiliating, its picture of man! How sublime, yet practical, its doctrines! how pure, beneficent, comprehensive, and elevating its precepts! how abundant its graces! how noble its rewards! how worthy of a creature [13/14] originally made in the image of God, and privileged through Christ, to look forward to the day of a perfect restoration to it! How did the Apostles "labour" for it! how did they "suffer reproach" wrongfully, yet with patience, contentment, and even cheerfulness! "Yea," exclaimed the learned, and eloquent, and highly-descended Apostle of the Gentiles, "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." "Even unto this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are afflicted, and have no certain dwelling place:" "Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat; we are made as the filth of the earth, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day:" "But none of these things move me," was the noble confession of this great Apostle in his charge to the Ephesian Clergy, "neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the Gospel of the grace of God." The Apostles labored. Their sound went [14/15] forth into all lands, and their words unto the ends of the world." Yet, fervent and unwearied as was their zeal, it was ever, after the prudential pattern set them by their divine Master whilst on earth, tempered by discretion, directed to one common end, and guided by one common rule. They collected the Congregation, and ordained the Pastor over it. They preached the word, and settled Churches every where. "All things were done" by them "decently, and in order." Their's was no desultory warfare against the strongholds of Satan; they made good their way as they advanced. "For this cause left I thee in Crete," writes St. Paul to Titus, "that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee." And in his first Epistle to Timothy he manifests a similar anxiety for the integrity of the doctrine of the Church, no less than for the maintenance of an orderly discipline: "As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus when I went to Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no [15/16] other doctrine, neither give heed to fables, and endless genealogies, which minister questions rather than godly edifying which is in faith, so do." "Order "--I gladly quote the words of the first Anglican Bishop in the East--"order was not," in the Apostles' times, "thought incompatible with enterprise, or with holy influences, but rather perhaps to have been among the tests and evidences of a commission from God." [Bp. Middleton's First Charge to the Clergy of Calcutta, &c. p. 218. Sermons and Charges, &c., with Life, by Archdeacon Bonney.] The glad tidings of the Gospel sounded not less sweetly, because they were then attuned to ecclesiastical harmony; neither were the several congregations of believers less faithfully fed with the bread of life, or themselves less sound in the faith, less given to good works, or less zealous in their heavenly Master's service, because with one accord, and with one mind, and with one judgment, they "continued stedfast in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.

[17] And what, in all their counsels, in all their movements, in all their labors, distresses, trials, disappointments, and successes, what was the one never-failing stay, and supporting, and encouraging, and tranquillizing influence, on which the Apostles relied, and under which they acted? "We trust in the living God," is the Apostle's asseveration, "who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe." Deeply engraved on the heart of the Christian missionary should be these words. He must faint under his burthen, if he realize not to his soul the very presence of an Almighty Father, reconciled unto him in Christ Jesus. There are crosses too heavy for us to bear up against, with our weak, and eager, and fretful temperaments, unless we be inwardly sustained, in all humble thankfulness, by this cheering conviction. Even in these Christian lands the minister of Christ must have much to contend with; much, of daily occurrence, to try his temper, to exercise his patience, to test his faithfulness, to call forth his charity. He is however in his native land; he is among the friends [17/18] of his youth; his kindred are all around him, or within his reach for intercourse or advice; opinion is already in favour of what is right; religion is no new truth, however imperfectly received; ecclesiastical discipline is already known, however we may have to lament its unavoidable relaxation, or its frequent breach and neglect; he has many with him, though there may be those who are against him; he moves as one of a body, and that body large, united, and influential: but in a distant and newly-settled colony, where all is strange; where everything relative to the foundation and just government of the Church awaits the forming hand of the Bishop; where law is weak or inapplicable; where opinion must be created, usage established, and religion taught from its very first principles, exemplified, upheld, promoted by every legitimate and righteous means, and set up as a countervailing force against that spirit of secularity which is so often the accompaniment and bane of Colonial undertakings; where instruction must be provided for all ages, Ministers sought out or ordained, [18/19] churches built, schools instituted, parishes defined, God honored, and man encouraged in virtue, reclaimed from vice, or converted to the Truth: how needful to him--unto whom, under God, is committed the great trust of evangelization in remote and heathen lands--how needful this prevailing sense of God's ever-watchful providence! "Commit thy way unto the Lord, and put thy trust in Him, and He shall bring it to pass;" "It is good for us to hold us fast by God, and to put our trust in the Lord God;" "The Lord himself is thy keeper: the Lord is thy defence, upon thy right hand; so that the sun shall not burn thee by day, neither the moon by night; the Lord shall preserve thee from all evil; yea, it is even He that shall keep thy soul: the Lord shall preserve thy going out, and thy coming in, from this time forth for evermore," is language, of which he only can feel the full import, or taste all the richness of its consolation, who has been left alone in some act of holy and perilous duty with God only near him--but that God, "the Saviour of all men, and specially of those [19/20] that believe." "When I am in heaviness, I will think upon God," was the wise, no less than pious, resolve of the Psalmist. Man may give--and piously, and justly, and in conformity with very ancient custom, and most beneficially give--to the higher Ministers of his God titles of dignity, and pre-eminency of rank; but that peace, which passeth all understanding, the world cannot give; neither can it take away; it is laid up for the faithful in the Lord only--even in the God of their salvation! [Appendix (B)]

It is not possible to give utterance to these consolatory truths, without a prayer for him, who is now about to be sent forth to the work of a Bishop in a far distant land, that he may be abundantly comforted by them. It is a glorious spectacle, when one of the wisest and mightiest of the nations of the earth is seen rousing itself at length to the full sense of its religious obligations, and, like a giant refreshed from his sleep, putting forth its strength for the evangelization of [20/21] the world. The Lord will assuredly be with a nation thus Christianly working in obedience to the Divine will, and in reliance on the Divine help! And may we not humbly, but confidently, trust, that He will be in an especial manner with him, who now, at the call of duty, bursting asunder the endearing ties of country, consanguinity, and friendship, full of the Saviour who died for him, intent on winning souls to Christ, ready to sacrifice all for Christ, and devoutly relying on the providence of his God, willingly offers himself to the Lord, going out, "like faithful Abraham" before him, not knowing whither, or on what he goes, save on the Lord's business, and at the call of those who have power from the Lord to send forth laborers into His vineyard? May the grace of the Almighty be upon him! May he be "endued with power from on high;" with wisdom, with purity of heart, with singleness of intention, with firmness of purpose, with the spirit of courage, forbearance, patience, condescension, and never-failing charity! May he have grace to preserve, under every [21/22] untoward event, an evenness and calmness of temper, not soon ruffled, not quick to take offence, and ever slow to give it; not easily cast down under disappointment; not expecting too much, nor seeking to reap, where the Minister of Christ must often be content to sow! May he patiently abide the time; not pressing too fast, nor yet suffering opportunities to escape unseized! May he speak the truth boldly, yet in love; taking his own well-weighed course, and leaving to conflicting sects, if unhappily there be any, to take theirs! May he govern with impartiality, ever giving to merit, and to merit only, the reward which is its due! May his own example be ever the interpreter of the Church's laws! May he require no sacrifice, no act from his Clergy, in which he is not prepared to bear his part; working himself, as it were, in the trenches, that his fellow-laborers may work the more cheerfully under him! May his own ease and convenience, however considered by his Clergy for him, be the last in his own consideration! May he not be rash in [22/23] tempting danger, yet fearless in the hour of inevitable peril! May he be enabled to endure much, supported by the reflection, that his Divine Master, when ministering before him, "had not where to lay His head!" To the child may he be in himself, and through his Clergy, an ever-willing instructor--to the man an adviser in all difficulties--to the aged a comforter under every infirmity! May he be easy of access to all! May the Clergy find in him a friend, yea, a father, no less than their ruler; whose will, for affection's sake, may be unto them in the place of a law; whose commendation may be their highest earthly recompense, and whose censure may be felt as their severest punishment! Rightly has the State resolved to lay the foundation of a new colony in true religion. The introduction of the Gospel in all its ministerial fulness, no less than in the strictest purity of evangelical doctrine, will happily be coeval with its annexation to the British crown. "Much to be observed unto the Lord," will be the day, on which its first Bishop shall, under the Divine blessing, [23/24] plant the standard of the Cross on the shores of New Zealand! May it stand for ever there, "an ensign of the nations;" and may he be the blessed instrument, under God, of bringing many unto it! May he "see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied" through Him, who shall strengthen him! Amid the grateful prayers of a converted, reclaimed, and religious people, may his days pass on, rich in blessings, temporal and spiritual, to the land of his Christian adoption; and, "when the Chief Shepherd shall appear," may he, with all that must at that day give an account of their respective stewardships, "receive a crown of glory, that fadeth not away," through the same Christ Jesus our Lord; to whom, with the Father, and the Holy Ghost, three Persons and one God, be glory for evermore. Amen. [Appendix (C.)]

"THE Ephesians were a people of great looseness and impiety; their manners were wanton and effeminate, profane and prodigal . . . . they were miserably overrun with idolatry . . . . among their many idolatrous festivals they had one called katagwgion, which was celebrated after this manner: habiting themselves in an antic dress, and covering their faces with ugly vizors, that they might not be known, with clubs in their hands, they carried idols, in a wild and frantic manner, up and down the more eminent places of the city, singing certain songs and verses to them; and without any compassion or respect, either to age or sex, setting upon all persons they met, they beat out their brains, glorying in it as a brave achievement, and a great honour to their gods. This cursed and execrable custom gave just offence to all pious and good men, especially St. Timothy, whose spirit was grieved to see God so openly dishonoured, human nature sunk into such a deep degeneracy, and so arbitrarily transported to the most savage barbarities, by the great murderer of souls. The good man oft endeavoured to reclaim them by lenitive and mild entreating . . . . when that would not do, out he comes to them into the midst of the street, upon one of these fatal solemnities, and reproves them with some necessary sharpness and [25/26] severity. But cruelty and licentiousness are too headstrong to brook opposition: impatient of being controlled in their wild extravagancies, they fall upon him with their clubs, beat and drag him up and down, and then leave him for dead, whom some Christians finding yet to breathe, took up and lodged him without the gate of the city, where, the third day after, he expired."--Cave's Lives of the Fathers, p. 35.

"As for the title, first; Alas! how poor a quarrel it is! Certainly, if there were that true piety, and those gracious dispositions in the hearts of men professing the Gospel towards God's ambassadors, and agents, which there ought to be, they could not grudge them any style of eminence: their very feet would be beautiful, their hands sacred, their heads glorious; now every thing is too much.

"But not to scan the original of KurioV and Dominus, which every one knows how common it was of old to fathers, masters, husbands, governors, prophets; that no man may wonder, Sara called Abraham Lord; Rebecca calls Abraham's servant so, 'Drink, my Lord;' nay, what if it be made to appear, that even those titles which are now stumbled at, were the usual style of the ancient Bishops? So Eusebius to the Bishop of Trevers, To my Lord Paulinus; and Paulinus in his epistle to him, To my Lord Eusebius. So the Bishops of Egypt to the Bishops assembled in the Councell of Tyre, To our most honourable Lords. The Synod held at Jerusalem to the [26/27] people of Egypt, Libia, &c., calls Athanasius their Pastor and Lord. And Julius, Bishop of Rome, the great abettor of Athanasius, is by the holy Bishop styled kurioV makariwtatoV, Most blessed Lord; and Nazianzen, My Lord the Bishop. And George, the Bishop of Laodicea, writing to certain Bishops, calls them Most honourable Lords; and in the same epistles, putting both together, Most reverend and most honourable Brethren. And Bishop Downham (to whom I refer my reader for this point ["A Defence of the Sermon preached at the consecration of the Ld. Bishop of Bath and Welles, against a Confutation thereof by a nameless author."--Book iii. c. vi. p. 145.]) hath instanced abundantly; yet I may not omit those more aged titles (which he hath omitted), even of blessed Ignatius himself, who calls the Bishop of the Magnesians, axiopropestaton, and Polycarpus, the Bishop of Smyrna, a axioqeon, God-worthy Bishop, which I suppose comprehends the highest degree of Grace; much like to those which the late worthy Patriarch of Constantinople gave in his epistle to our late Archbishop of Canterbury. And how much more is this than we find in their own letters To our most reverend brother, Mr. Cartwright; and how much below that other, Non minus Farello quam Paulo, meaning the blessed Apostle of the Gentiles. And again, that in the 'Practise of Prelates,' Calvin, Beza, Viretus, Knox, Cartwright, are the only worthies of the world that have maintained discipline. For us; If then it hath pleased gracious Princes, for expression of the honour which they gave to God, in the honour given by them to our holy function, to grace us with eminent titles and rights, can any Christian man be so foolishly spightfull [27/28] as to think, because we are Lords-Bishops, that we challenge to be Lords of our Clergie? As he said well, because they themselves are usually styled Masters, are they therefore the Masters of their Church? I would these . . . .. should know, that with high titles we can bear as humble minds (to say no more) as those that pick these quarrels; and are so little transported with these puffs of style, that we account it (according to our Saviour's prescription) our greatest glory to be servants to the souls of the meanest drudges in the family of our God."--Episcopacy by Divine Right. Bishop Hall's Works, tom. iii. sect. 17. part ii. p. 170. fol.

The present population of the Colony is represented as divided into the Aboriginal inhabitants, irregular settlers previously to the formal emigration from England in 1839, and emigrants from this country since that period.

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