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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 77

[introduction]

page 2

their freshness and beauty of the life and example of a very polished Christian gentleman, whose gentleness and forbearance have given to this Colony an example of imperishable beauty. The history of Auckland, as well as that of the Colony, is richer and stronger because it has the grave of William Garden Cowie round which to grow. In the years to come, as men stand by the graves of that Bishop and his wife—who were "lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death were not divided*—they will remember that those parents, among many other things, set the standard of true Imperial service in holding before their sons the ministry of the Church as the sphere wherein men could do high work for God and this Empire.

And now you have to grow accustomed to other leadership, to methods not familiar, and to a mind trained on other lines.

For us, the change has its own difficulties also. The conditions of a new country are very different to those prevailing at Home; the habits of thought in a population numerically very small are extraordinarily unlike those prevailing among the millions of London; the public mind here is forced, by its environment, to run in channels dissimilar to those one has been familiar with. Of course the Britisher is, at bottom, the same wherever he may be; but, though he aims at the same end, more or less, in every clime, yet his methods necessarily vary with his environment.

The thing one finds one has to do now is: habituate one's mind to think in other terms. You would not have sent for one trained at Home if you did not desire that the effects of that Home training should be translated into Colonial terms. In order to translate you must know both languages. I know the Home language, and I have studied that of New Zealand fairly hard since I have been in the colony. I have travelled some 4,000 miles in New Zealand since my Consecration; I have read everything about the Colony and Diocese that I I could, within necessary time limitations, reasonably hope to master; I have talked with, and tried to learn from, several hundreds of persons of all sections of the community. Whilst, in no sense, pretending to infalli- page 3 bility of judgment, I may fairly claim to have acquired solid grounds upon which to rest the conclusions which I shall proceed to lay before you. In almost my first public utterance in this city, I only asked for time before men pronounced judgment on me, my methods and plans of organisation and work. I now only repeat that claim. Personally, I am content to wait for the verdict of history, and I am equally content, in the meanwhile, to submit to criticism, and, if "a more excellent way" can be pointed out, to accept it as an improvement upon my own methods. But, until I am convinced that the message I teach is unseriptural and unhistoric, and that my system of organisation is faulty, people must be good enough to forgive me if I rely on God's dealing with me personally, the experience of my training, and the powers of my own observation, more than on the schemes of those who have no special knowledge or who are amateurs in the subject that has to be dealt with.

* 2 Sam. i. 23.