Preface.

It has been suggested to me that I should write a connected narrative of my recent visit to the Unitarians of Australia and New Zealand. I really do not think I have anything to tell which would be worth making a book of; and yet it seems desirable that there should be some record of this the first occasion that a Unitarian minister has made an official tour of the Australasian States and, as far as time allowed, has come into communication with all who were in religious sympathy with him. I have therefore preferred to reprint these letters, some of them addressed to my own congregation, and others, through The Inquirer, to the Unitarians of Great Britain. They are of no merit as literary compositions, and might as such well be left to the obscurity of back numbers; but they are the fresh impressions made on my mind as I travelled, and worth more than would be any account I could now write. They will perhaps be read with interest in years to come by the few who would learn something of the state of religious thought on the other side of the world in the beginning of the page viii twentieth century. At any rate this little hook will be a memorial of an interesting mission, and as such will, I trust, be accepted by those concerned in it, whether at home or abroad. A few paragraphs have been added to my Samoan Diary, which indeed, properly belong to it; for I had them in my mind when writing, but not the books which would have supplied the desired facts. Otherwise, but for verbal corrections, the letters are reprinted as originally written.