Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/168

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Letters from New Zealand

you have done well in coming, like this, to own your fault, and you wish to know what I think you ought to do, to make some public reparation for it to your people, and for your own conscience sake. I am now going to write out a statement, I shall write it in English, but as Mr. Greenwood, the Maori Commissioner, is in Hokitika, and you know him as one who speaks Maori well, I will get him to translate it into Maori. Next Sunday morning you must go to the Church as usual, in your cassock and surplice, but, instead of beginning the service, stand at the Lectern, together with these two Chiefs who are with you, and read out the statement, which confesses your fault. Then, taking off cassock and surplice, go and sit down on the furthermost seat in Church, and let Horomona and Arapata conduct the service. You must wait a whole month; meanwhile I will write to the Bishop, and, if he sees fit, he will commission me to reinstate you as Lay Reader."

Accordingly, I wrote out the document, and read it to them, as they understood English, and I made it a complete and almost humiliating confession of wrong-doing, and of his sincere desire for the forgiveness of his people.

Next week they came again to report that all had been duly done. This Rangitira, Chief of his tribe, who as a boy must have known his father, before his conversion to Christianity, as a fierce warrior who would have scorned to humble himself before his people, and would have struck down with his tomahawk anyone who dared to suggest such a thing, stood before his tribe and made confession of his fault with the simple sincerity of a true Christian, and what is far more, he did so with the full approval of his