For nearly a century and a half the startled Maoris treasured the memory of the white-winged ships of the Hollander, before they saw any others like them. At length, in 1769, there appeared the expedition of Captain Cook. England had now wrested from the Dutch the sovereignty of the seas, and Cook was looking for the "New Zealand" which appeared on the Dutch maps, but which no living European had ever seen. More tactful and more fortunate than his forerunner, Cook was able to open a communication with the islanders and to conciliate their good-will. Not yet, however, was England prepared to follow up the lead thus given. Not until her defeat by the American colonists, which closed the "New World" against her convicts, did Britain's statesmen bethink them of the still newer world which had been made known by the explorer. In 1787 an expedition went forth from England--not indeed to New Zealand, but--to South-east Australia, where a penal colony was established at Port Jackson. A strange and repulsive spectacle the enterprise presented, yet these convict ships were the instruments for carrying on the message which had been sent out from Jerusalem by apostolic bearers. "Did God send an army of pious Christians to prepare His way in the wilderness?" asked Samuel Marsden, the second chaplain of this colony. "Did He establish a colony in New South Wales for the advancement of His glory and the salvation of the heathen nations in those distant parts of the globe by men of character and principle? On the contrary, He takes men from the dregs of society, the sweepings of gaols, hulks, and prisons. Men who had forfeited their lives to the laws of their country, He gives them their lives for a prey, and sends them forth to make a way for His chosen, for them that should bring glad tidings of good things. How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!" Advance and retreat; check and recovery; failure of methods which seemed direct and divine; compensating success through agencies that looked hostile; the winds of the Spirit blowing where they list--none able to tell beforehand whence they are coming or whither they will go: such are the outstanding features of the long journey of the Christian faith across the globe; such will be found to mark its history when established in this land. First Period. CHAPTER I. THE PREPARATION. (1805-1813). Every noble work is at first "impossible." In very truth: for every noble work the possibilities will lie diffused through immensity, inarticulate, undiscoverable except to faith. --_Carlyle._