10. St. Matthew's Church, Auckland " " 128 11. St. Matthew's Church, Dunedin " " 144 12. Canterbury Churches " " 160 13. Map of the Bay of Islands " " 168 14. St. John's Cathedral, Napier " " 176 15. All Saints' Church, Palmerston North " " 192 16. St. John's, Invercargill " " 200 17. St. Luke's, Oamaru " " 208 18. Wanganui School Chapel " " 224 19. Baptistery of St. Matthew's, Auckland " " 232 20. New Zealand Bishops " " 240 INTRODUCTION. Beginning from Jerusalem. --_Acts._ A commercial message of trifling import may now be flashed in a few minutes from Jerusalem to the Antipodes: the message of Christ's love took nearly eighteen centuries to make the journey. For a time, indeed, the advance was direct and swift, for before the third century after Christ a Church had established itself in South India. But there the missionary impulse failed. Had the first rate of progress been maintained, the message would have reached our shores a whole millennium before it actually arrived. But what would have been then its form and content? Had it made its way from island to island, passing through the minds of Malay, Papuan, or Melanesian on its passage, how much of its original purity would have been preserved? And who would have been here to receive it? Possibly, only the moa and the apteryx. Who knows? These considerations enable us to look with less regret upon the check which the Christian message received after its first rapid advance. The rise of Mohammedanism in the sixth century drove the faith of Christ from Asia and from Africa, but it kept it "white." It threw a barrier across the old road which led from Jerusalem to the Antipodes, but the barrier enabled preparation to be made on either side for a grander and more fruitful intercourse. On the south of the Islamic empire the migrations of the peoples brought to our islands the Maori race, who made them their permanent home. On the north, the Christian faith took firm hold of the maritime nations of Europe, from whom the missionaries of the future were to spring.