HUI, the Maori boy, lived in New Zealand. He had lived with his tribe nearly all his life, but some of the members of the tribe had wandered away from their village, and had camped near a white settlement in Wellington.
An evangelist was preaching in a tent nearby, and Hui, seeing the people go in, thought he might try to get in as well, and see what the “white man” was doing! So he went in, took a seat at the back of the tent, and gazed about, wondering greatly at what was going on. Not understanding English, he was, of course puzzled. He caught the words:
“O happy day, happy day,
When Jesus washed my sins away.”
Because the chorus of that hymn was repeated several times, he actually learned the words there and then. He went back to his tribe, and kept saying the words over and over again, feeling quite important in having learned some of the “white man’s” language. Day after day he said the lines, not understanding any of the words.
Some months later he went to work on a settler’s farm, and picked up the English language very quickly. From his fellow-workmen, he heard about God.
Once again the tent was pitched, and Hui went to hear the message. The preacher was feeling rather downhearted for he thought that all in that tent were Christians; but Hui was touched and drank in the words of the gospel of God’s great love to poor sinners quite eagerly.
“Oh, did God so love a poor ‘Maori boy,’" he thought, “that His Son came here and shed His blood; and will it really wash my sins away?”
The hymn, “O Happy Day,” was given out, and the tears streamed down Hui’s face as he joined in singing these precious words, the first English words that he had learned. The preacher noticing this spoke to young Hui as he was leaving the tent, and had the great joy of hearing that Hui had met the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour God that night, and that Jesus had indeed washed his sins away.
ML-12/18/1966