Historical Sketches of the Foreign Missions of the Seventh-day Adventists

NEW ZEALAND

About the first of November, 1885, I went to New Zealand to visit the principal cities there for the purpose of securing agents for the Bible Echo, intending to return to Australia in time to assist in getting out the January number. We had decided that our paper must be a sixteen-page monthly. At first we thought that a smaller sheet would do; but after issuing an eight-page trial number, we were satisfied that a larger paper was necessary. Our present views are that our paper is none too large, and that it ought to be issued oftener. HSFM 102.1

A study of the map of New Zealand will show that it is made up of two large islands called respectively the North and the South Island, and one that is smaller, called Stewart Island. A large part of these islands is very mountainous. Public roads are comparatively few, travel by land being performed principally on horseback. Reference to the map will show that nearly all the cities are on the sea-coast, or very near it. Consequently the principal means of conveyance is by water. Aukland, on the northeastern coast of North Island, is a city of about forty-five thousand inhabitants. It is the headquarters of navigation for the various islands of the Pacific Ocean. Wellington, situated at the southern point of North Island, is a city of about the same size, and is the capital of New Zealand. Dunedin on the southeast, and Christchurch on the northwest, of South Island, are cities of about twenty-five thousand inhabitants each. Both are great commercial cities for coast vessels to Australia. Invercargil, which is composed largely of the Scotch element, is also a city of importance. These, with many smaller cities containing from five hundred to three thousand inhabitants near the sea-coast, communicate with one another principally by water. The New Zealand Union Steamer Company runs a line of vessels from Aukland around the coast of New Zealand and across to Australia. It requires two weeks to go from Aukland to Melbourne, for these vessels stop at the principal ports during the day, and run from port to port during the night. This gave me an excellent opportunity to visit the cities, and accomplish what I had in view in coming to New Zealand. HSFM 102.2

On reaching Aukland, I found many opportunities to send the truth to the different islands of the Pacific. There are regular lines of steamers from Aukland to the Friendly, the Society, and the Fiji Islands. Nearly every captain and under-officer on these vessels was ready to co-operate with us in placing packages of our publications in the hands of proper persons to distribute on the different islands. All these islands are settled more or less by Europeans; but the prospect that the truth will meet with much success in these islands is not very flattering. The people are not friendly to foreign missionaries. The natives are mostly of a low order. HSFM 102.3

At Aukland we found a denomination called Christians, who correspond very nearly to the first-day Adventists of America. These had a class, or school, in which different points of doctrine were discussed every Thursday night. Each member of the class was permitted to introduce any subject he chose. I was invited to present those doctrines wherein we differed from them. This was done freely, and it resulted in a discussion on the Sabbath question with their pastor, Mr. Aldrich. They held another class of the same nature at Mount Eden, one of the suburbs of Aukland. Here we introduced the personal and visible coming of Christ. This resulted in another friendly discussion. The result of these discussions was that a small company embraced the truth. These now meet regularly on the Sabbath, hold Bible readings, and have social worship in different parts of the city. HSFM 102.4

Among those who embraced the Sabbath here was a young man who was hopelessly given to intoxicating drink. Even his wife despaired of his ever reforming. He felt anxious to sign the covenant, so we presented it to him with the temperance pledge embodied in it. This he finally signed; and in a letter received from there about a month after, it was stated that he had not drank a drop of liquor since. HSFM 103.1

One of the first to embrace the truth in Aukland was Bro. Edward Hare. He and his wife commenced to keep the Sabbath before I had been with them three weeks. Since he fully committed himself to the truth, he has given all his time to selling our publications, and to distributing them on board of vessels, and his wife has opened correspondence with various persons on the different islands. They both devote a large share of their time to personal missionary work and to correspondence. He is the general agent for our publications, and has in his employ a number of other agents. From the commission on the publications he nearly supports himself. HSFM 103.2

In former years Bro. Hare had fitted himself for a missionary to the Maories, the native New Zealanders, and he now has a great burden for them. After he saw the light upon the Sabbath, he was anxious that I should visit his father and mother, who resided in Kaeo, one hundred and sixty miles north of Aukland. This I decided to do before returning to Melbourne. We became deeply interested in Father Hare and his family. For twenty years he had been a schoolmaster in the north of Ireland. By his present and his former marriage, and by the former marriage of his present wife, he has a family of twenty-four children. Sixteen of these are married and have children. Many of them are men of means, and hold honorable positions in society. They are persons of more than ordinary ability, and have an extensive influence. Father Hare himself is local preacher for the Methodists. At his invitation I occupied the pulpit the three Sundays while I was there. Three local preachers, of whom two were Father Hare and his son Robert, afterward embraced the truth; and Robert, relinquishing all his former plans, soon started for America, to attend the college in California that he might fit himself for the work of the ministry. It was no small sacrifice for him to relinquish all his cherished plans of life, to fit himself to proclaim an unpopular truth. HSFM 103.3

During this first visit at Kaeo, which continued over three Sabbaths and first-days, we held meetings in a hall almost every evening, and in the day-time we visited from house to house and held Bible readings. As the result of this visit, two families took their stand for the truth; but their numbers were so few that they did not hold public meetings. HSFM 103.4

In January I returned to Melbourne, and on the way visited the various cities on the coast, in many of which we found good openings for the presentation of the truth. In many places there were those who had received our publications from America, and who were anxious to hear on the subjects of the Sabbath and the second coming of Christ. HSFM 104.1

The newspapers here are more liberal than those in Australia, and seem willing to publish reports of our work in America. The people believe in giving each denomination a fair chance, and they encourage those of other views to come into their community. But the religious leaders are as determined to monopolize the ground as they are anywhere else, and the opposition was as great in Aukland as in Australia; but it proceeded only from the churches. The newspapers generally sympathize with the new-comers. HSFM 104.2

The first of March, after a short stay in Australia, I returned to New Zealand on my way to America. I found the friends still holding firmly to the truths which they had received at the time of my first visit, and the interest to hear, instead of diminishing, had deepened and extended. At the same time the opposition had grown more fierce from those who had rejected the truth. Bro. Edward Hare had been successful in selling the “Great Controversy,” Vol. IV., having disposed of over four hundred copies in a little more than three months. He had also placed our publications, including a bound volume of the Signs, on nearly all the steamers sailing from Aukland. While on the steamer going from Kaeo, we could not find the volume of the Signs which had been placed upon the table; but by inquiry we learned that a gentleman who was going to a popular-watering place had become so interested in reading it that he was anxious to take it with him, and had obtained permission of the stewardess to do so. HSFM 104.3

The truth, especially when presented by means of Bible readings, seemed to be accompanied by a power that nothing could withstand. When once the truth began to work, it would seem that scores became interested without any effort on our part. One would tell another, he another, and in this way the truth relative to the Sabbath and the near and visible coming of the Lord would be carried over a large extent of country. We found several persons from India who had seen our publications there, and who testified to the interest taken in them by the people in that country. HSFM 104.4

My second visit to Kaeo was one long to be remembered. Baptism had never been administered in that vicinity, and the people entertained strange ideas concerning the dress to be worn by the candidates. I did not learn of this, however, until after our first baptism; but I saw clearly that there was something that hindered those from going forward in the ordinance who were thoroughly convinced that it was their duty. But at our first baptism the Spirit of God rested down upon the people. They saw that there was nothing improper in the ceremony. From this time it seemed that the Spirit of God triumphed over the powers of darkness in a most remarkable manner. Three were converted the night of the baptism, and three others took their stand for the truth within a few days. The second day after the baptism eight more were baptized, and the day we left we learned of about fifteen more who would have been baptized had I remained longer. Some who had felt that they never could keep the Sabbath on account of their business, then decided to do so. HSFM 104.5

It was on Tuesday at five o’clock P. M., that we met for our last baptism. We then celebrated the ordinances at the house of Father Hare, organized a church as far as we could, arranged for a Sabbath-school, and on Wednesday I left them to hold their first public Sabbath meeting alone. Thus many believers were baptized and organized into a church and Sabbath-school, and celebrated the ordinances, before they observed the Sabbath. But the evidence that God accepted the work was as conclusive as in cases of six months’ standing. Our anxiety for the success of their first Sabbath meeting was not greater than theirs. On Monday, while at Aukland, I received the following telegram: “Services and Sabbath-school well attended. Isaiah 12:1, 2.” We returned the following: “Telegram received. 1 Corinthians 15:57, 58.” Since then we have received encouraging letters from them. They have now organized a course of Bible readings which they hold each night in the week except Sunday. They have also undertaken the task of carrying the truth to every family in that section of the country. HSFM 105.1

I know of no place in the world where there is greater need of ministerial help, or where it would be more appreciated, than in the Colony of New Zealand. We sold over twenty pounds’ worth of publications there, and received many subscriptions for the Bible Echo. The brethren use six hundred copies of the Echo per month in their missionary work, and are ready to support the work in that Colony, even if two ministers could be sent them. They also feel such anxiety for their children that they would gladly build a school-house and pay the expenses of a teacher from America, could they thus obtain one that would teach present truth in connection with the sciences. HSFM 105.2

One sister who does the work for a family of nine or ten persons, including six children, the youngest but six years of age, has become so interested for her children that she takes one hour each day to teach them present truth. Margaret, the eldest, was baptized before I left. The interest for their children, friends, and neighbors, is beyond anything I have ever seen in America. HSFM 105.3

Twenty of Father Hare’s family, including himself and wife and four daughters-in-law, have embraced the Sabbath. One lady who took her stand for the truth in Kaeo did so reluctantly and with deep feeling, fearing great opposition from her mother whom she dearly loved. During the greater part of her life she had been a worthy member of the Methodist church. She requested me to visit her mother when I returned to Aukland. I had been there only a few hours, however, before a lady called to see me. To my surprise she was the mother of this lady in Kaeo who had embraced the Sabbath. She said that the Signs of the Times had fallen into her hands, and she had become interested in the doctrines it taught. One of our prophetic charts hung in the room where we were, and I briefly explained to her the symbols on it. She then said that when she was a girl she lived in the north of Ireland, and that in 1843 she there heard preaching on those very subjects from a chart similar to the one I had. She became so interested in the Advent doctrine at that time that her father forbade her attending the meetings, so she had heard nothing more on these subjects from that time to the present. This interview revived in her mind what she had heard forty-three years ago, and she was quite sure that we were right in our position. She said that she would observe the Sabbath hereafter, and that she was interested to read further on the subjects of present truth. It seemed that the very sound of the truth concerning the seventh-day Sabbath and the second coming of Christ carried with it conviction to some earnest, faithful seeker for truth. HSFM 105.4

One of our brethren at Kaeo had used tobacco for forty years, until it had become to him a necessity in order to think clearly. But when he received the light of present truth, he renounced it, and has not touched it since. In a letter written April 7, 1886, he says: “I have so many things to write you that I hardly know where to begin, and wherever I do begin I fear I shall make but poor progress, lacking, as I do, my former inspiration [meaning his tobacco]. Well, I feel quite satisfied to dispense with it, believing that all the good I have done under such inspiration is so very small as to be nowhere discernible. In what various ways men do evil that good may come! Blessed be the Lord for more light; and may he graciously grant more grace to enable me to live up to it! HSFM 106.1

“Three Sabbaths have come and gone since you left, and I am sure that you will be glad to hear that Joseph and Wesley [the latter of whom was extremely bitter against the Sabbath up to the morning before I left, when I had my last interview with him] with their families were in attendance at our first Sabbath meeting after your departure. It was more than I had expected. Oh, how our heavenly Father does far more and ‘exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think’! Prejudice seems to have a strong hold upon the people generally, and with those whose profession is the highest it is the strongest. Some hardly know what to make of our views; others have taken to prayer. One lady in particular says that she has obtained light through that medium, and has been instructed to cast the Old Testament overboard. I told the person who informed me of this that she would better stop praying, lest she should be instructed to cast the New Testament also overboard. I fear that God will send some strong delusion to those who are knowingly opposing the light. HSFM 106.2

“Our Bible readings are as follows: At Joseph’s house on Monday night; at Brigg’s house on Tuesday night; at Wesley’s on Wednesday night; at my house on Friday night; and at Bro. Lett’s every fourth Sabbath night. Besides our regular Sabbath-school and services in the hall, we have either a Bible reading or a service at my place every Sabbath afternoon. I had a visit recently from a presiding elder, and found that my resignation was very acceptable, at least on his part. HSFM 106.3

“What can be done for Bro. B.? He is most anxious to attend your college, and to devote himself to the work of the Lord; but he is poor. Now our little church here will pay his passage, and if, with what little he may have of his own, your institution could possibly receive him notwithstanding the financial deficiency, I have no doubt it would be to the glory of God. There is an important field of labor about here. See to it, dear brother, that it is not neglected. We are trying in the meantime to do what we can.” HSFM 106.4