Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/233

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Letters from New Zealand
201

struggle with death, unable to help; and at last the return of the rescuers, battered, bruised, and spent, with the men they had saved. Then, as if to remind us that "the waves of the sea are mighty and rage horribly; but yet the Lord Who dwelleth on high is mightier," by the time of Evening Service there was a great calm, and under the clear moonlight "the gentleness of Heaven" was over all. You may imagine the congregation, and the solemnity of our Service that night.

A few days later, the bodies having been recovered, amid a vast concourse which well nigh filled the cemetery, I committed them to their last earthly home. A committee has been formed to collect funds for the relatives of those who were lost, where needed, and for the erection of a Memorial granite obelisk, to be placed near St. Mary's Church, where several streets meet. There is no lack of liberal and ready benevolence in such a community as this for such a purpose.

I am gradually getting the Sunday School into shape; this has taken time, as I found merely a handful of children, with a few teachers, and a state of indiscipline that needed strong measures. There is no chance of a Church Day School here; the secular state system holds the ground, with an excellent building, a good staff of teachers, in every way an admirable school save for the great defect of complete absence of Biblical or religious teaching. So we must make much of Sunday School work, supplemented by week-day classes. This, I hope to make a success, as I find many who are anxious to aid in Church work. There is a well-managed Hospital here, in which Sunday Services are held by Mr. Turnbull, one of the pioneers of the place. Actual poverty hardly exists,