Colonists as a rule shrug their shoulders when questioned as to the depth of Maori religious feeling. It is enough to point out that a Christianity which induced barbarian masters to release their slaves without payment or condition must have had a reality in it at which the kindred of Anglo-Saxon sugar-planters have no right to sneer. Odd were the absurdities of Maori lay preachers, and knavery was sometimes added to absurdity. Yet these dark-skinned teachers carried Christianity into a hundred nooks and corners. Most of them were honest enthusiasts. Two faced certain death in the endeavour to carry the Gospel to the Taupo heathen, and met their fate with cheerful courage. Comic as Maori sectarianism became, it was not more ridiculous than British. It is true that rival tribes gloried in belonging to different denominations, and in slighting converts belonging to other churches. On one occasion, a white wayfarer, when asking shelter for the night at a _pa_, was gravely asked to name his church. He recognised that his night's shelter was at stake, and had no notion what was the reigning sect of the village. Sharpened by hunger, his wit was equal to the emergency, and his answer, "the true church," gained him supper and a bed. Too much stress has been laid on the spectacle of missionaries engaging in public controversies, and of semi-savage converts wrangling over rites and ceremonies and discussing points of theology which might well puzzle a Greek metaphysician. Such incidents were but an efflorescence on the surface of what for a number of years was a true and general earnestness.