‘Our word to you, O Grey,’ they saluted him, ’is this.  We wish you happiness and health, and to know that our love goes forth with this letter.  We wish to tell you that your name will never be forgotten by the Maori people in these islands Many of us knew you in New Zealand, but all have heard of the great things done by you, for European and for Maori, in that country.  May God’s blessing rest upon you, and give peace and happiness to you, who have done so much for the peace and happiness of others, in your long and honoured life.’

An illness brought that life very near the ebb, and friends wondered, of an evening, if next morning they would hear his simple, tender, ’Good-bye to you.’  Sir George waited ready, abiding in the faith, witnessing of it, ’Man should have religion as his guide in all things.  I feel that God communicates with His creatures when they please.  He lets them know what is right and wrong, even argues with them.

’It was a comfort to me, in trying hours, to feel that I was working according to the way of my Maker, so far as I could comprehend it.  Perhaps I most experienced this nearness of an all-wise Providence while I was amid the heathen acres of the far south.  You seemed to be communing with the Great Spirit more intimately in these lonely haunts than elsewhere.  I have always been supported by the belief in God’s goodness, as manifested to me.  My judgment is that man cannot prosper if he falls from faith, by which I mean trust in a Supreme Being.’

There were no shadows, no terrors for Sir George Grey, in what we chilly term death.  He could look blithely along the road, ready to greet it with outstretched hand when it turned the corner.  Just, he waited to go, as he might have waited for a sure arm on which to lean.  He saw the lamps afar.  ‘When one has reached an old age,’ was his vista, ’the thought of death should not be a sad thought.  It is not sad with me, but on the contrary pleasant, meaning a happy event to be welcomed.  Death!  I do not believe in death, except that the flesh dies; for the spirit goes on and on.  Terror of death is necessary, in order to keep men and animals from killing themselves.  That is all.

’The future is mystery, for none have returned to inform us what is there.  But our knowledge of the, Creator teaches us that His goodness will be greater and greater towards His creatures.  If the babe leaves the womb, to come into such a beautiful world as ours, how beautiful a world may we not pass into?  It was terrible to the babe to be torn from the womb, but it had no idea what loving hands were waiting for it.

’We have God’s assurance that He is always good to His creatures who die, and we may be satisfied.  Really, there is a lovely romance in death, in the spirit being released from the clay, which, through ill-health or old age, has grown to burden it.  That spirit, struggling onward and upward, shakes itself free and soars off, bright, fresh, eternal, to the other world for which it had been preparing.  It purifies itself, by throwing aside a weight, and thus death is not death but life; another birth, life in death.’