Round the World on a Church Mission. By the Rev.
G. E. Mason. (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.)—Mr. Mason is to be congratulated on having written a volume that has not a dull page in it. Strong in his churchmanship, he is liberal to those who differ from him, and is blessed with a sense of humour, and a keen sense of enjoyment. The author has an eye for natural beauty. It was a little risky, perhaps, to attempt a fresh descrip- tion of Niagara, but he gets through the ordeal well ; and in New Zealand, the scene of his labours as a " missioner," his pictures of scenery, and of the life of the natives, are always interesting and fresh. Shrewd sense, and the capacity for understanding and sym- pathising with men of all classes, and especially with the Maories, are striking features of Mr. Mason's narrative. He admits that the natives are often wild, and prefer living on potatoes, dressing in a blanket, and lying in a hot spring to manual labour, but observes that the Maories are not the only people who lounge through life like lotus-eaters. " Their idea of life is followed in Paris, in London, in Brussels, in New York. You have only to substitute for the potatoes, truffles and turtle, for the blanket a suit of clothes made in Savile Row, and for the hot spring an armchair in a club in Pall Mall, and you find the same character repeated under the irreproachable fashion of the inheritors of a Christian civilisation of a thousand years." After writing of an English church, which was the most unsightly building in the district, Mr. Mason very sensibly expresses his regret that the natives, who have a talent for rich carving and ornament, should not be encouraged to build churches after their own manner. He is scarcely so sensible when he expresses his wonder that a com- mercial people, even from a financial point of view, erect four places of worship where one would suffice. The one building, in Mr. Mason's judgment, should belong to the English Church; but what would he say if, in the little township, there were more Dissenters than Churchmen ?
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