w
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 P^moir of l^c ^'ife anb ^gistopate 
 
 GEOEGE AUGUSTUS SELWYN, DJ). 
 
 BISHOP OF NEW ZEALAND, 1841—1869; 
 BISHOP OF LICHFIELD, 1867— 187S. 
 
 VOL, IT.
 
 y^H-^-e^O . 
 
 ^.^.
 
 Umolx ai llje l^ife mxi) €ps(o^uU 
 
 GEOKGE AUGUSTUS SELWYN, D.D. 
 
 BISHOP OF NEW ZEALAND, 1841-1869; 
 BISHOP OF LICHFIELD, 1867-1878. 
 
 REV. H. W. TUCKER, M.A., 
 
 AUTHOR OF "UNDER HIS BANNER," "MEMOIR OF BISHOP FEILD," ETC., ETC. 
 
 WITH TWO PORTRAITS, LITHOGRAPHS, AND MAPS. 
 
 "IMPLESTI MERITIS SOLIS UTEAMQTJE DOMTJM." 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES.— VOLUME II. 
 
 ITonbon : 
 WILLIAM WELLS GARDNEE, 
 
 2, PATEENOSTER BUILDINGS. 
 1879. 
 
 \All Rights Reurved.l
 
 LONDON ; 
 
 It. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, 
 
 BKEAD STREET HILL, E.C.
 
 
 CONTENTS, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 New Zealand and England, 1852 — 1854 . , 1 
 
 CHAPTEH II. 
 
 New Zealand and Melanesia, 1855—1859 ... 35 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ecclesiastical Organization ..... 84 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Maori War ....... 156 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 New Zealand and Lichfield, 1860 — 1867 . . , 211 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Lichfield and New Zealand, 1868—1870 , , .246 
 
 745356
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Lichfield, 1871—1877 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 I'lUNCirLES AND CONVICTIONS . 
 
 I'AOE 
 
 286 
 
 330 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Last Dav.s . • ^^^ 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Summary 377 
 
 Portrait of the Bishop [1877] Frontispiece. 
 
 Conspectus of Creeds To face ]hS52 
 
 LaUV CiIAPKL ("if LiCUFlELD CATHEDRAL . P. 386
 
 CtEOEGE AUGUSTUS SELWYN, D.D. 
 
 CHAPTEK I. 
 
 NEW ZEALAND AND ENGLAND. 
 [1852-1854.] 
 
 The Visitation on which the bishop was engaged in the 
 snmmer of 1851-2, did not come to an end, as was men- 
 tioned in the last chapter, until March 29 of the latter 
 year. It supplied many subjects of anxiety and of regret ; 
 the people had accepted Christianity eagerly and sincerely, 
 but an emotional system of religion without a strict system 
 of teaching and discipline had left them without backbone, 
 moral or intellectual, and a time of reaction had set in. 
 Tlie young men fell away from Christianity, or declined 
 to accept it, and the great mortality of the young children 
 gave but small hope of the future of the Maori race. The 
 confirmees were mostly middle aged : the children were un- 
 educated, and the young men were growing up indifferent 
 to Christianity, and despising the restraints of heathenism 
 which their fathers had acknowledged: the missionaries, 
 burdened with the charge of enormous districts, had been 
 unable to give to the young that moral and social train- 
 ing which was necessary if Christianity was to be a power. 
 Some of them gratefully acknowledged the bishop's efforts, 
 and succeeded in establishing: boardinf'-schools in their
 
 •2 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. i. 
 
 iiiissiuns, and the people everywhere offered tracts of 
 hind for schools, if only the bishop could officer and 
 superintend them ; hut, as he said, he could not officer 
 them, and yet he knew that time was being lost, while he 
 could only, like Marias, sit down and weep at the sight of 
 a ruined Carthage. 
 
 While on this tour Mr. Abraham met the bishop at Mr. 
 Ashwell's station, Taupiri, and found him literally in the 
 midst of his work. 
 
 " He wa.s in church examining, and at six o'clock he 
 conlirmed 200 men and women. This was his forty-fourth 
 confirmation this tour, and completed about the 3,000 
 whom he examined almost one by one, and satisfied him- 
 self of their proficiency. Alas ! alas ! no young men or 
 women. Out of the 3,000 only fifty perhaps were between 
 sixteen and twenty-six. This is the result of no schools. 
 The young people have utterly set aside Christianity and 
 taken up nothing instead, but doat uj)on the vices of the 
 towns, and horses, and whale-fishing. Here, however, the 
 bi.shop's eyes and heart were gladdened by a school. Mr. 
 Ashwell is a deacon of C.M.S. He has fifty girls and 
 twenty boys under his charge, and devotes himself to the 
 work most vigorously." 
 
 At another place on this Visitation the fruits of a good 
 girls' school were apparent, and the case was the more 
 interesting as the mistress was a Maori \voman, the widow 
 of a great chief 
 
 When her husband died she fled for refuge from heathen 
 li;ibits to the Mission Station to which she became so 
 valuable : her father-in-law came to mourn at his son's 
 funeral, and she ol^served him sidling off towards a slave 
 wilii his hand on his tomahawk, and she only just saved 
 the slave from being sacrificed as "InferioQ" to his son's 
 " Manes." " This old man," wrote Mr. Abraham, " came to 
 the l)i.shop's recent confirmation, and seeing the bishop at 
 tlie altar, and Mr. Maunsell at the reading desk, he, 
 hcatlien as be was, walked up to the altar and assumed the 
 vacant .seat, .'^aying, that the bi.shop was the great chief in 
 church ami lie was no.vt. Air. Maunsell in vain tried to
 
 1852-1854.] D.V. AND D.G. 
 
 induce liim to move, when just before the confirmation 
 service the bishop beckoned to the faithful Rota, and in a 
 moment he and another lifted the altar bodily over the 
 rails, and shut the gate, leaving the old chief alone terribly- 
 disconcerted, and a laughing-stock to the whole community. 
 The bishop's character for readiness of resource and 
 promptness of action rose 100 per cent, and no man dares 
 give himself airs near him. There may be some who 
 would think this rather an irreverent way of treating the 
 altar, but it would have been much more irreverent to have 
 this old heathen giving himself airs there, and ejecting the 
 priest from his place. The thing was done very quickly 
 and quietly, and probably saved a general disturbance." 
 
 It must not be thought that the labour of these 
 Visitations was confined to the toil of travel by sea and 
 land, and to occasionally coarse and insufficient fare : there 
 was the ever-present strain to fulfil the programme, to be 
 able to add to the engagements which had been assigned 
 to each date with the condition added D.V,, the letters 
 D.G., which were always inserted when the engagement had 
 been kept. There was also the annoyance of living much 
 in public, often in society that was barely congenial, and 
 the lack of all opportunity, save on board ship, for study 
 and privacy. On this Visitation there is an entry in the 
 journal on Ash Wednesday. " Three hours quiet in the 
 chapel between services," which shows how precious and 
 exceptional the privacy was. 
 
 Easter was kept at Auckland, and on Easter Monday the 
 bishop wrote a letter which is in truth a striking Easter 
 sermon to his son in England. 
 
 Auckland, April 12th, 1852. 
 
 My very dear William, 
 
 I can fancy you now enjoying your Easter holidays with 
 one or other of the kind uncles and aunts, who are to you 
 in the place of your parents ; and I know so well their 
 love for you that I feel sure that they have not omitted to 
 teach you all that your dear mother and I have been 
 teaching Johnnie at this holy season. It is this thought 
 
 VOL. II. B
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. i. 
 
 •which makes us content to be absent from you in the body, 
 though always present in the spirit ; and, with such foster- 
 parents as those to whom we have consigned you, we are 
 sure that no one will accuse us of acting like the ostrich, 
 in leaving its egg in the sand, either to be hatched by the 
 heat of the sun, or to be trampled under the foot of the 
 passing beast. But though I feel the most perfect con- 
 fidence in my dear brother William, who has so kindly 
 undertaken this charge, that he will teach you, as his own 
 son, everything necessary to your soul's health, yet the 
 sight of a father's handwriting, reminding you of my love 
 towards you, will add force to the lessons which you are 
 daily receiving, and to which I can add nothing new, 
 except the peculiar efficacy of counsel given from a dis- 
 tance, and partaking therefore more of the nature of faith 
 than of sight. It is at this season, when the great doctrine 
 of Justification by Faith was first established by the 
 Eesurrection of our Lord, that I love to think of my un- 
 seen child as seeking for salvation by faith in an unseen 
 God and Saviour. If I were with you, every day and 
 every hour would bring with it some new anxiety; any 
 sign of idleness ; any hasty word ; any want of reverence ; 
 any departure from truth ; any disposition to vice ; would 
 cause at least a passing doubt, whether you were growing 
 in grace, and increasing in wisdom, as in stature. But now 
 at the distance of half the globe, all is happiness, because 
 every thought is Faith: Faith in the Father who has 
 adopted you for His own child : Faith in the Saviour 
 who has taken you into His arms and blessed you : Faith 
 in the Holy Spirit by whom you were born again to 
 newness of life : and in a lower range, Faith in your uncle, 
 that he will be to you a spiritual father: and Faith in 
 yoiirsclf that you will not undervalue or neglect these gifts 
 of God and of man ; these lilessings of heaven and of earth. 
 You will soon enter upon a life of peculiar trial — for a 
 public school is a boy's first real acquaintance with the 
 tem])tations of the world. If I were near you to watch 
 tlie first effect of Eton upon your mind, what doubts and 
 fears I should have, whenever I observed any sign of the 
 effect of evil companions, weakening your own principles, 
 and abating your love of God and of Christ. But now I 
 can resign you with confidence into the guidance of your 
 heavenly Father; trusting that He will not suffer you to be
 
 1852-1854.] SICKNESS OF MELANESIANS. 5 
 
 tempted above that which you will be able to bear. While 
 you trust alone to His arm of strength you may sometimes 
 without trespassing upon the Divine attributes, turn your 
 thoughts to your parents and brother in Xew Zealand, and 
 think that we are daily praying for you, that your faith 
 may never fail ; but that we may be all united in seeking 
 salvation by the one appointed means ; and thereby 
 securing for us all a joyful meeting in the life to come 
 through Him who as at this time rose from the dead for 
 our justification. 
 
 Your most loving father, 
 
 G. A. iS^'Ew Zealand. 
 
 Tlie Easter Octave was barely over when, on April 20, 
 the bishop was again afloat in the Border Maid, on another 
 tour. On May 26, when the Border Maid reached Auck- 
 land, the bishop was able to write in his diary, " End of 
 Confirmation tour on which every DV has been marked 
 with a DG to the exact day, Xapi? tw 0ec3." 
 
 There was, however, little rest for the bishop ; the ap- 
 proaching cold of winter warned him that the delicate 
 Melanesians must without delay be carried back to their 
 native latitudes. He would gladly have been spared the 
 voyage to and the sojourn in the relaxing air of the 
 Tropics, but when the Trinity Sunday Ordination was over, 
 no time was to be lost. One of the boys from Lifu, George 
 Nelson Hector Apale, died on June 2, the bishop being 
 " called out of chapel to commend to God the soul of our 
 dear boy, the first-fruits of Acliaia." Another Nengone 
 boy, who had taught him much about his baptism, knelt by 
 his side, while his cousin sat at his head, and exclaimed 
 " Alas, my brother ! " and the dying lad dictated a letter 
 to his heathen father, declaring his faith and happiness. 
 Another lad, Cho by name, was ill, and delay was impolitic. 
 On the day after Trinity Sunday the bishop's log contains 
 the following entry : — 
 
 June 7th. — "Went on board to hasten preparations for 
 sailing, Cho's illness urging me. Lighted fires on board to 
 smoke for rats. Packed up books and cleared cabin," 
 
 B 2
 
 6 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. r. 
 
 And on June 8tli there appears the following : — 
 
 " Went ou board Border Maid to open hatches and re- 
 place books, \iivy few dead rats." 
 
 On the point of sailing, a letter was written by the 
 bishop to the Eev. Edward Coleridge, wliich is here given : — 
 
 Auckland, June 16th, 1852. 
 
 My yeky dear Friend, 
 
 On the eve of sailing on my fifth voyage to the Nortliern 
 Islands, I write just one short line to deprecate your dis- 
 pleasure at the long interval which must occur before you 
 hear from me again. In judging of my punctuality as a 
 correspondent, you must bear in mind, that my year is now 
 parcelled out into large portions, during one of whicli I am 
 removed far from the range of all post-oflices. It is quite 
 possible that a space of six months should now intervene 
 between two of my letters ; a time I can assure you which 
 passes over my head so rapidly, as scarcely to leave any 
 distinct consciousness that any necessary duty has been so 
 long postponed — so full of change of scene and of em- 
 plo}ment is the work to which it has pleased God to call 
 me. But of this you may be sure, that both mind and 
 matter bring you continually to remembrance ; whether I 
 travel by land or sea, or remain quietly at home, some evi- 
 dence of your love is always before my eyes. This thought 
 comes home to me now, when I am just signing the deed of 
 sale of the Undine, and preparing to go on board the 
 Border Maid — in both of which vessels you have so large 
 a share — in the purchase of the one, and the equipment of 
 the other. I part with a pang from the good little schooner, 
 in which, without cost or parade, T could traverse the sea, 
 protected by the God " Who tempers the wind to the 
 shorn lamb," and enables the smallest vessel to ride in safety 
 over the stormy waves. Nothing but the necessity of carry- 
 ing larger numliers of scholars would liave reconciled me 
 to the larger vessel, with its greatly augmented pecuniary 
 responsibility : but as it must be so, I must endeavour 
 that 
 
 "Nave ferar magna an parvfi, fcrar umis et idem." 
 
 One dear boy out of our thirteen has been taken to his 
 rest ; Vjaptized on his death-bed by C. J. Abraham during 
 my absence at the Bay of Islands, and blessed by me at
 
 1852-1854.1 ANAITEUM. 
 
 the moment of his departure. Another is now on board, 
 dangerously ill, but with the hope that a few days' sail to 
 the northwai'd will restore him to health. Our cold winds 
 in autumn always try the constitution of the island boys 
 on their first visit : those who come for the second time 
 appear to be acclimated. Even little Thol, whose life was 
 despaired of in 1850, has spent his second term with us. 
 without the least iujury ; and is grown into an active and 
 robust boy. Mr. Nihill will stay about two mouths on 
 Mare with his pupils, and I hope, after further acquaintance 
 with the people, will be able to present some of them to 
 me for baptism. He now speaks their language fluently. 
 Do not expect rapid progress from us amidst these scat- 
 tered stones of the tower of Babel ; but pray for us, that 
 our work may be blessed with fruit in the appointed time 
 of harvest. From your affectionate and grateful Friend, 
 
 G. A. New Zealand. 
 
 On June 19th the Border Maid sailed, and a favourable 
 wind soon carried the shivering Melanesians into warmer 
 regions. At Anaiteum, as usual the first landing-place, 
 the bishop put on shore the Presbyterian teachers, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Inglis, who, with a horse and very much baggage, had 
 had a free passage in the Church-ship from Auckland ; the 
 native lad whom Mr. Geddie, another Presbyterian preacher, 
 had asked the bishop to take with him to Auckland in the 
 previous year, was also landed here. At Mare or Nengone 
 the Eev. W. Nihill and his native assistant, Henry Tara- 
 toa, were put on shore, together with some scholars. Mr. 
 Nihill spent three months on this island with a view to 
 preparing the way for the permanent settlement of English 
 missionaries, and the bishoj) sailed northward, visiting 
 amongst other of the Banks' islands, Santa Cruz, which had 
 been one of the most dangerous spots in the Pacific. Here 
 a favourite pupil was regretfully left on shore, the only 
 clothed person among hundreds of naked heathens : 
 " Still it was his home," wrote the bishop, " and God grant 
 that in his simple way he may teach among his own people 
 the true word of life." The Solomon Islands were after- 
 wards thoroughly visited, and the bishop was received with
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. i. 
 
 cordiality at Malicolo, where in the previous year he had 
 been in miicli peril. 
 
 The claims of tliese more distant islands and the short 
 time that could be given to each of them satisfied the 
 bishop that he was not equal to the due supervision of 
 them while hampered by the care of New Zealand, and on 
 August 20 there is the following entry in his diary : — 
 
 " The careful superintendence of this multitude of islands 
 will require the services of a missionary bishop, able and 
 willing to devote himself to this work." 
 
 But some years elapsed before Mr. Patteson was con- 
 secrated Bishop of Melanesia. 
 
 On September 2.jtli Xengone was again reached, and j\Ir. 
 Nihill and his scholars came on board. These last were 
 five in number ; among them was George Siapo, who had 
 been a pupil of the bishop's for four years, having first 
 attracted his notice when he went down to the bottom of 
 one of the coral pits in his own island to fetch water for 
 the stranger. He had been among the party on shore at 
 ^Malicolo, in 1850, and had carried his water-barrel high 
 above his head until he reached the boat ; he was now ac- 
 companied by his affianced bride and her companion, and 
 thus the problem, how to provide the Christians of Melanesia 
 with Christian wives, which had often exercised the bishop's 
 mind, seemed to be in a Avay of being solved. The wish 
 of Siapo to have his wife as well educated as himself 
 showed also a great advance in his own Christian character : 
 he had been ill during his stay at Xengone, and had con- 
 templated the probability of never returning to his home, 
 and this anticipation was indeed realised as he died at 
 Auckland in January 1853. 
 
 On October 2nd the Border Maid sailed round the north- 
 ern end of Lifu and took on board John Thol, an old 
 favourite and companion of Siapo ; on October 21st she 
 dropped anchor in Kohimarama, the college harbour. An 
 English visitor who saw the bishop land at Auckland, and 
 conduct his twenty-five youths and two young women, the 
 representatives of almost as many languages, from the ship
 
 1852-1851] DUTY OF UNITY. 
 
 to the college, declared that, saving in the weakness of 
 bodily presence and the imperfection of speech, the bishop 
 seemed to him more fully to realize the true conception of 
 the Great Apostle of the Gentiles than he had Qver thought 
 possible. There was indeed another point of resemblance 
 between the Apostle and the bishop, for since the day 
 when St. Paul plied his needle and twine, few mission- 
 aries have more usefully exercised their skill in this re- 
 spect than did the bishop, when out of a patchwork bed 
 quilt he made with his own hands dresses for Wabisane and 
 Wasatrutu, the Nengone girls, soon to be baptized by the 
 names of Sarah and Caroline. 
 
 On his return the bishop preached a sermon, in which he 
 insisted on the enlarged responsibilities which the increased 
 number of heathen pupils laid on all who were concerned 
 with them. One of those who heard it thus wrote his own 
 
 impressions : — 
 
 Sunday, Oct. Zlst, 1852. 
 
 The bishop preached from Zech. viii. 23, applying 
 the prophecy, which was never literally fulfilled in the 
 Jewish Church, to its spiritual fulfilment in the Christian ; 
 and pointing out its literal fulfilment now before our 
 eyes,- when tliese heathen tribes, which people the sea, are 
 ready to take hold of the skirts of the Christian, and say, 
 " We will go with you, for we know that God is with you." 
 This feeling, more or less clearly shown, is the spring and 
 motive which lures these heathen tribes within our reach. 
 This he illustrated by the figure of the magnet, and in- 
 stanced, with some detail, the several principles of Gospel 
 truth, which had been witnessed to in their late voyage. 
 The lessons which he drew were striking. He spoke of 
 Unity : that we cast not the stumbling-block of our own 
 unhappy divisions before those who have yet to receive the 
 first principles of our common faith ; and he spoke of his 
 own endeavour to act in this spirit in all his dealings with 
 the London Mission, concerning their work in these seas ; 
 his willingness to aid and befriend them in all temporal 
 concerns ; his desire that their work might be in parallel 
 lines, not in opposition to each other, though it could not be 
 in union. Then personally on each one of us, among whom
 
 10 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [niAP. i. 
 
 these youths and cliihh-en were brought for a season, the 
 heavy responsibility was hiid of intlueuciug them for good 
 or evil. They came amongst us civilized men, from their 
 native Isles, with minds and intellects often dim and un- 
 used to exertion, but with every perceptive sense and faculty 
 quickened to a degree of which we have no conception ; — 
 the eye, accustomed to track the step of every living creature, 
 the tlight of every bird in the air, the gliding of the many- 
 coloured fish within their coral caves ; the ear, awake in the 
 dead of night to the shghtest sound, which might warn 
 tliem of the approach of an enemy. Youths trained in 
 this constant exercise of tliese organs of sense, are quick 
 to receive impressions through the senses. It may be but 
 the motion of the hand, the glance of the eye, the expres- 
 sion of a countenance, and you may teach them evil which, 
 though heathens, they know not : — it may be a word, and 
 yet its consequences may remain through eternity. This 
 was worked out ; and then the conclusion, in the exhorta- 
 tion to a consistent Christian life, as an example to others, 
 and as our own only peace." 
 
 The year 1852 "closed in sorrow," as the bishop entered 
 iu his diary on December 31. On the l-lth of the same 
 month John Thol had died, " My first Melanesian scholar, 
 dear to me as one of my own children ; " the Border Maid^ 
 which had proved ill found in gear and sails, had to be 
 sold, and the proceeds the bishop felt bound to repay to 
 the Australian dioceses which had purchased her; the great 
 rise in seamen's wages, consequent on the discovery of gold 
 ill Australia, would not allow him to commission another 
 ship even if lie possessed one. In this month the bishop 
 completed the formal resignation of a portion of his diocese 
 which was constituted, but not until several years had 
 ela])sed, the diocese of Wellington. 
 
 J Jut amid all his anxieties the bishop had always been 
 able amply to justify his plans, which cavillers both in 
 England and at the antipodes had ridiculed. Tlie time 
 WHS now at hand when labour was to have its dignity ac- 
 Icnowledged, and with something like triumph the Bishop 
 thus told the story to Mr. Coleridge : —
 
 1852-1854.] TRIUMPH OF INDUSTRIAL TRAINING. 11 
 
 Schooner "Boeder Maid," at Anchor, 
 
 COKOMANDEL HaRBOUE, 
 
 St. Simon and St. Jude, 1852. 
 
 My deae Feiend, 
 
 Two days ago it was currently reported in Auckland, 
 that " the bishop was going to the diggings ; " for we have 
 now diggings of our own, in this harbour, out of which 
 some small particles of gold have been washed, of the size 
 of pins' heads, whether placed there on purpose by some 
 Dousterswivel or not, remains to be proved. At all events 
 enough has been found to induce the governor to come 
 here in person ; and accordingly I have brought him in the 
 Border Maid, to show my respect for Her Majesty and my 
 personal regard for Colonel Wynyard. So while the official 
 party have gone off to " the diggings," with mattocks, 
 shovels, tin dishes, &c., to try for gold, I sit down quietly 
 in my cabin to write to a friend whose zealous and un- 
 wearied friendship has been to me a more productive 
 mine than any Avhich will be found in New Zealand. 
 How little did people think, when they were laughing 
 at our industrial system at St. John's, that we were 
 training our scholars for the one business which would 
 soon absorb all professions within itself. When the col- 
 lege met Sir Everard Home with a procession of forty 
 spades (an honour as my father said which would have 
 been more suitable to Sir Cloudesley Shovel), no one 
 thought that the day was so near when every parent who 
 then objected to his son being made to work, would be 
 thankful for the strength of arm developed in the course 
 of his college education. We shall soon be quite the 
 fashion, for doctors, lawyers, merchants, and even clergy- 
 men, are all digging for gold, and proving that everything 
 is genteel which is well paid ; and that digging was only 
 contemptible when it was done for eighteenpence a day. 
 Upon the world's own showing we are now right in our 
 plans, digging for a treasure hidden in a better field ; and 
 finding gold where we least expected it, in the hearts of 
 the wildest and most barbarous of men. Now we begin 
 with thankfulness to see and to show what it was for 
 which we dug and delved, when the rivers of milk which 
 now flow from our college pastures are drunk by thirsty 
 islanders from countries where even water is scarce. As 
 for the substitute with which Providence has supplied
 
 12 LTFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 them in the juice of the cocoa-nut, it is no more to he 
 compared with real milk than the bread-fruit with a 
 quartern loaf; a conclusion first drawn by Dr. Johnson, 
 and since conhrmed by all my Polynesian experience. As 
 the master of a large household you will easily understand 
 how anxious our present position would be, with twenty- 
 four new mouths just added to our community, and with a 
 large vessel to maintain, and with prices of all provisions 
 rising, if we had not our own resources, independent of 
 the public markets, and steadily increasing in amount by 
 the certain process of bringing every expenditure as much 
 as possible to bear upon the improvement of the college 
 estate. If our colony, like the others, should prove to be 
 auriferous, we shall be in danger of being too wealthy, for 
 the pressure of small means, and the uncertainty of my 
 income has led to efforts such as poor men only are likely 
 to make ; and these will yield a tenfold return by the 
 rapid increase of the value of property. 1 should look 
 with fear upon this prospect, if I were not also able to 
 look out upon forty degrees of latitude crowded with 
 living souls, among whom the distribution even of the 
 amplest means will scarcely provide, that every one of 
 them may take a little. 80 if it should please God to give 
 us wealth, 1 have little doubt of being able to act upon 
 John Wesley's rule for taking out its sting, by giving it 
 away. 
 
 Your hint has not been lost upon me, in which you 
 advised me to make it appear that I was not neglecting 
 my own diocese. lUy dear friend the bishop of j\Ielbourne, 
 one of the least prejudiced and most candid men of his 
 class, wrote to me still more plainly on the same subject. 
 I am well aware of the quarter from which these remarks 
 proceed ; but neither this nor any similar attempt at 
 hindrance or interference shall make me cease to esteem 
 that body for their work's sake. Without any mention of 
 names I have informed my two metropolitans of Canter- 
 Ijury and Sydney, that these imimtations liave come to 
 my knowledge ; and have sent to them a table (of which 
 you shall have a copy) containing a statement of the 
 manner in which I have spent my time during the last ten 
 years from the day of my landing in New Zealand. The 
 results are curious, and illustrative of the life of a colonial
 
 1852-1854.] DIVISION OF TIME. 13 
 
 bishop, which can scarcely be understood, and certainly 
 not felt, by any of the good questionists in England. One 
 whole year I have spent at sea, between the English settle- 
 ments, distant 1,000 miles at their extreme points, and 
 requiring a voyage of 2,500 or 3,000 miles to visit them 
 all. During the whole of this year of voyages I was lost 
 to all the direct objects of my oflice ; but in that time my 
 charge, journals, study of languages, navigation, and the 
 chief part of my correspondence has been accomplished ; 
 all bearing upon that work for which alone I live, and to 
 which such powers as God has given to me of body and 
 mind have been devoted. It appears that the English and 
 native duties have occupied nearly equal portions of time ; 
 and the JSTorthern missions only half as much as either of 
 them ; but the collegiate duties, as being the husbandry of 
 my best garden plot, have absorbed as much time as the 
 English and native visitations put together. 
 
 On January 1, 1853, the bishop left Auckland at 7.30, 
 " with a heavy heart : " the entry in his diary goes on to 
 record : " Forded a stream breast high with the flood tide ; 
 took the wrong turn about four miles from Horowhenna ; 
 found out our mistake and slept in a sheltered hollow on a 
 clear stream. Wet night." The following day was Sunday, 
 and the small party joined in worship, morning and even- 
 ing, and the Bishop wrote in his journal — " New Year : New- 
 Thoughts : New Heart : New Man." Until April 18 the 
 labours of this visitation made principally on foot and 
 partly in canoes, continued day by day. On the fourth 
 Sunday in Lent he wrote a letter to his elder son at Eton, 
 which may well be called extraordinary : — 
 
 Wairarapa Valley, near Wellington, 
 March 6th, 1853, 
 
 My very dear Child, 
 
 I am spending my Sunday with a hospitable Scotch 
 family, under whose roof I have been detained three days 
 by bad weather. It is not often that I have any spare 
 time on Sunday, but as I have just finished my morning 
 services with two congregations of ten each, one Scotch, 
 and the other Maori, 1 sit down to commune with you, my
 
 14 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [cHAr. i. 
 
 dear child, aud to feel myself united still with you in the 
 bond of the spirit. I am now about 500 miles distant 
 from your dear mother, and thirty times tliat number of 
 miles ii'om you, yet in a moment the mind is with both, 
 re^iuiring no conductors like the electric telegraph, and 
 quicker in its motion even than light. We can form some 
 faint idea of spiritual agencies by comparing them with 
 the discoveries of science, and then observing how far the 
 most wonderful law of matter falls short of the simplest 
 exercise of mind. The thoughts of time and distance are 
 closely connected ; the caravan in the desert measures its 
 journeys by days and hours according to the steady pace 
 of the camel or ass : the earth's surface is measured in 
 longitude either by degi'ees or hours, but the electric 
 telegraph changes the usual course of our thoughts and 
 daily experience by disconnecting distance from time. 
 Still we have the material wires to stand in the way of 
 the pure conception of a spiritual agency, independent 
 alike of distance and of time. The solar system carries 
 us a step nearer, where we become acquainted with a force 
 by which all the planets are bound to the sun, and one to 
 another. The amount of tins force can be calculated with 
 the stiictest accuracy, but the nature of the force itself is 
 beyond our comprehension. We simply give the name of 
 gravitation to a power which we cannot explain, and which 
 is so entirely independent of matter as to act equally 
 through a vacuum. But we are conscious of a power 
 within ourselves far more wonderful and inexplicable than 
 any of the forces by which the universe is governed, 
 because they are all reducible to some fixed and, for the 
 most part, unilbrm law ; but the power of thought within 
 us, with all the rapidity of light and of electricity, and 
 with the same power of passing, like gravitation, from 
 earth to heaven, has an infinite versatility, which defies all 
 calculation. If my thoughts, for instance, were subject to 
 any material law, they would gravitate towards each 
 object in proportion to its importance. The greatest part 
 would be directed towards God : the rest in due proportion 
 to your dear mother, to the duties of my office, to my 
 children, and to my friends. But this is contrary to 
 experience. Tliere is no such law constraining us to think 
 of each olject according to its real importance; but a
 
 1852-1854.] FAITH IN ABSENCE. 15 
 
 wonderful admixture of moral and material agencies ; 
 visions of things invisible mingling with recollections of 
 distant objects once seen but now removed from our sight ; 
 and all these liable to be shut out by thoughts compara- 
 tively worthless, relating to the visible concerns of daily 
 life. When I sit down to write to you, it seems as if all 
 these intervening thoughts and cares were removed ; and 
 the warm current of parental love circulates as freely as 
 if no distance separated us the one from the other. I 
 could pour out all my heart to you in overflowing affection, 
 and yet the heart would still seem full, as if certain that 
 an equal measure of your love had been received into it. 
 This is the effect of that intermediate and lower kind of 
 faith, which results from the recollection of objects once 
 seen, but now invisible ; such as the love of a parent for 
 an absent child, or of a child for an absent parent. The 
 highest exercise of the same power is in the case of the 
 pure objects of faith, in things wholly invisible ; to love 
 an unseen God, and to feel that we are loved by Him, 
 " "Whom having not seen, we love ; in whom, though now 
 we see Him not, yet believing, we rejoice with joy un- 
 speakable and full of glory." — (1 Peter 1-8.) 
 
 I often comfort myself with the hope that our separa- 
 tion may be for the good of both ; that this spiritual power 
 of parental influence, exercised from a distance, may be 
 even more effectual than personal intercourse. Certainly 
 it is more akin to that highest of all human influences, 
 wdiich our Redeemer, as the Son of Man, exercises upon 
 His Church, from which His bodily presence has been 
 removed. What a power there is in the thought of the 
 Cross and of Him who hangs upon it, of His bleeding 
 temples, and of His pierced side ; and above all, of the 
 meek and forgiving countenance of Him, who in death is 
 praying for his murderers ; and yet this image is neither of 
 Faith alone, nor of sight, but of both together ; a belief in 
 a written narrative picturing upon the mind a living re- 
 presentation of something in the highest degree mournful. 
 Of this mixed character, but of course infinitely lower in 
 degree, is the influence which, I hope, the recollection of a 
 parent will exercise upon you. You can at will present to 
 your mind some lively image of my life and actions ; 
 sometimes enjoying .domestic happiness with your dear
 
 16 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap, i, 
 
 mother and brother, and Mr. Abraham and Carob'ne ; 
 happiness which you know would be marred in a moment 
 by a single syllable of evil report of you ; or you may 
 imagine me riding over the waves in a boisterous gale, and 
 listening to the roar of wind and sea, while you are 
 enjoying the rich swell of the organ in Ely cathedral ; or 
 you may suppose me surrounded by a crowd of naked 
 islanders, while you are gazing upon a procession of royal 
 carriages, or the bright cuirasses of the household cavalry. 
 Or in a lower range of subject, while you are eating ices at 
 Layton's, or criticizing breakfasts at the Deanery, you may 
 think of your father as enjoying a bowl of new milk at the 
 cow-shed of some hospitable settler, or sharing a basket of 
 potatoes with some ]\Iaori company. In all cases, as each 
 contrast rises before the mind between lives so dissimilar 
 as yours and mine, you will remember that the same 
 thought, which sweetens every inconvenience of my life 
 (for hardships there are none) consoled me also for my 
 separation from you, that it was right to be done, and that 
 what is right, will come right, and will end in happiness, 
 though it begin in sorrow. Every good report of you con- 
 firms tliis ground of comfort. " I have no greater joy than 
 to hear that my child ^\■alks in truth." 
 I remain. 
 
 Your truly affectionate father, 
 
 G. A. New Zealand, 
 
 But when the toils of travelling were ended they were 
 only exchanged for more engrossing occupations ; a high 
 conception of ministerial duty, and an inadequate clerical 
 staff, rendered leisure or even moderate work impossible, 
 save on board ship. The following extract is taken from 
 the bishop's diary, and must not be considered as in any 
 respect an unparalleled day's work : — 
 
 " May 6, Sunday after Ascension. 
 
 " 8 A.M., hospital ; litany and sermon ; ' I will pray the 
 Father,' &c. 
 
 " 9.80, military service ; litany ; communion ; sermon, 
 Elijah and the three caj^tains of fifty.
 
 1852-1854.] ORDINATION OF NATIVE CLERGYMAN. 17 
 
 " 1 1, St. Paul's ; full service and sermon, Isaiah, 
 ' They shall mount up with wings as eagles ; ' infant 
 baptism. 
 
 " 2 P.M., military hospital ; evening prayer and sermon, 
 ' I will send you another Comforter.' 
 
 " 3, gaol ; evening prayer and exposition of second lesson, 
 Eomans viii. 
 
 " 4, St. Matthew's ; evening prayer ; infant baptism and 
 sermon, ' See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh.' 
 
 " 6, St. Paul's ; evening service and sermon, ' Why stand 
 ye gazing up into heaven ? ' " 
 
 Trinity Sunday (May 22) was "a day to be much 
 remembered with thankfulness." Rota Waitoa was or- 
 dained deacon, the first of the Maori race to receive the 
 gift of orders ; he had been for ten years vmder the eyes of 
 the bishop, and had been his travelling companion in most 
 of his laborious journeys ; the occasion was made one of 
 much solemnity; three archdeacons, three other priests, 
 and three deacons were present. The bishop preached, 
 part of his sermon being in English and part in Maori, the 
 latter drawing bursts of acknowledgment from the natives 
 present. Archdeacon Abraham wrote, four months later, 
 an account of the events of this memorable day and of the 
 causes which had led to them, in the following letter to a 
 friend in England : — 
 
 St. John's College, Auckland, N.Z , 
 Sept. Qth, 1853. 
 
 It is so important an event in the history of this Church 
 that it deserves a more distinct notice than a newspaper 
 gives. Perhaps the bishop has himself written to you on 
 the subject, as it is one that has been very near his heart 
 all along, and the fulfilment of it (or rather the beginning 
 of the end) was a subject of great comfort and hopefulness 
 to him, and that too at a time when he particularly needed 
 comfort, having suffered a most severe blow to many of his 
 fondest hopes in the temporary suspension of all proceed- 
 ings at the college, owing to the misconduct of two whom 
 he had trusted, and who had most flagrantly betrayed their 
 trust.
 
 18 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. r. 
 
 As all the Maoris were soon to leave us, the question 
 forced itself upon the bishop's mind, wliat was to become 
 of his faithful liota ? He had remained like a faithful 
 Abdiel all along for nigh ten years, adopting every Christian 
 and civilised habit, and thoroughly approving and conform- 
 ing to our rules and ways. He was much respected by 
 his countrymen, and had a knowledge of Scripture that far 
 surpassed that of any of his people. We had been raising 
 him step by step, putting him in charge of Maori boys and 
 men, making him catechise in church, and accustoming 
 him to such like teacher's work. The question was, then, 
 whether he should be sent home to his tribe (or his wife's 
 tribe), as a catechist or as a clergyman. His wife is a very 
 good woman, and has been educated in the native girls' 
 school and in the bishop's house since her marriage. But 
 still we were afraid that if he went back as only a 
 catechist, he might sink down again to the low native 
 habits, whereas, if he were a clergyman, his own people 
 would take a pride and delight in making him the equal 
 of the English clergyman, and instead of drawing him 
 down would liold him up. 
 
 Just while this was balancing, the governor and one or 
 two of the Churcli Mission clergy, pressed on the bishop 
 very much the importance of making a beginning just 
 now, and mentioned Eota as the fittest person to begin 
 with. There is a general stir amongst them for education ; 
 the governor is ari'anging a plan for educating the whole 
 people and providing them with a graduated scale of 
 schools and colleges. If they could look on to the ministry 
 as the apex, they would be still more earnest in improving 
 tliomselves, and have a still further motive for steady and 
 Christian conduct ; as this appeal coincided with the 
 bishop's own feelings and wishes, he came to the deter- 
 mination of ordaining llota "NVaitoa (Kota is the Maori 
 pronunciation of Lot). He spent one or two montlis in 
 si)ecial preparation of him for the ministry, and sent him 
 to the missionary of this district (the llev. Gr. A. Kissling) 
 for furtiier instruction, and during the examination week 
 preceding the ordination, Rota was examined by Archdeacon 
 AV, Williams, Archdeacon I>rown, and myself, and we all 
 expressed the greatest satisfaction with the right feeling 
 and sound sense he showed on the subject, as well as his
 
 1852-1854.] EOTA WAITOA. 19 
 
 Scriptural knowledge. The poor fellow was in floods of 
 tears whenever one tested and probed him at all on the 
 most vital points and sounded his motives ; he was so diffi- 
 dent of himself, and yet so well knew where to find strength 
 and support for his work. The point that specially seemed 
 to satisfy the two archdeacons (who were so well acquainted 
 with native character) was his diffidence, whereas tlie 
 general trait in the character of natives is found to be 
 self-conceit. 
 
 Accordingly, on Trinity Sunday, the bishop ordained him 
 deacon, and two English deacons priests at the same time, 
 before a large congregation of English and natives, at St. 
 Paul's Church. The few words of special address to Eota 
 from the bishop were some of the most touching I ever 
 heard. It was quite in the vein of Paul to Timothy, witli 
 the paternal feeling of the same apostle to Philemon. Both 
 were deeply affected. Eota officiated that same afternoon, 
 both at the hospital to his sick countrymen, and at St. 
 Barnabas, where I understood his manner and matter gave 
 general satisfaction. He is gone to his wife's home, Te 
 Kawakawa, on the east cape, and I hear excellent accounts 
 of him from all sides. 
 
 For the twelve years during which his life was prolonged, 
 Rota Waitoa entirely justified the bishop's action ; but the 
 step was taken with small encouragement from the majority 
 of the older missionaries, who, having seen so much of the 
 natives in their barbarism, were slow to believe the change 
 with which their labours had had so much to do. 
 
 The winter was now coming on, and sickness among the 
 Melanesians warned the bishop that no time was to be 
 lost in carrying them to their warmer islands; but the 
 Border Maid had been sold, and at tliis time of special 
 need the bishop found himself without a vessel of 
 any kind. The Undine could have been chartered, but 
 since the time when the Bishop was wont to " treble-bank 
 his little cabin with native scholars, ranged like the three 
 ranks of Grecian rowers, some on the floor, some on the 
 benches, and some in the berths," new navigation laws had 
 been passed, which would forbid the crowding the bishop's 
 
 VOL. II. c
 
 20 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. i. 
 
 party, which now amounted to thirty, in a ship of so small 
 a tonnage. Nothing remained, therefore, but to go to 
 Sydney, with small hope of finding there a better climate, 
 but with a chance of meeting with a ship that would take 
 him northward. On June 10 the bishop and ISIrs. Selwyn, 
 with the Melanesians, male and female, sailed in the Daniel 
 Wchstcr, and arrived after a long and dangerous passage 
 on the 29th. One of the lads, George Nabong, " the first 
 fruits of Malicolo," died on the voyage, the bishop having 
 baptized liim the same day. The voyage, therefore, had 
 been a time of trial, and on landing the bishop heard the 
 news of the death, in England, of his friend Bishop 
 Broughton of Sydney. 
 
 There was great difficulty in finding a suitable vessel in 
 which the voyage to the islands could be made, and for 
 seven weeks the bishop and his party were the guests of the 
 Church-folk at Sydney, who outdid their former liberality. 
 On July 29 the barque Gratitude sailed for Anaiteum, 
 Nengone, Lifu, and Malicolo, and landed the bishop at Auck- 
 land on September 7. The Nengone girls had been lauded 
 on their native island, and had carried the news of the 
 death of George Siapo. Two lads had died between Sydney 
 and the islands : the survivors were now returned to their 
 friends, and the parents of those who had died were com- 
 forted. There had been, not without reason, some appre- 
 hension lest the news of their children's death should lead 
 to some act of violence by way of revenge, but in each 
 case it was found that the parents believed that all care 
 had been bestowed on them, and were reconciled to their 
 loss. 
 
 The necessity of personal conference with the authorities 
 of Church and state now convinced tlie bishop that his 
 presence in England was absolutely demanded. He saw 
 that no constitution would be granted to the Church unless 
 he himself obtained it. Year after year he had convened 
 meetings in all the principal places for the discussion of 
 the question, and had patiently sat out weary conferences
 
 1852-1854.] VISIT TO ENGLAND NECESSARY. 21 
 
 while the colonists were losing themselves in mazes of 
 irrelevant talk, which he declined to interrupt, hoping, as 
 he said, that " they would feel their feet for themselves, 
 and stand all the firmer for it." The division of the diocese 
 had become more necessary since the colony had for civil 
 purposes been divided into six provinces. The pacification 
 of the country and consequent dispersion of the colonists 
 had increased the demands for clergymen and school- 
 masters, and the native people had given several noble 
 estates for the endowment of industrial schools, and always 
 with the condition that the trust should be for the benefit 
 of both races. The experience acquired in Melanesia had 
 proved that he " could not continue for an indefinite period 
 to conduct these extended duties with any advantage to 
 the Church," and " therefore," he added, " it is my intention 
 to offer my services for seven years, if it please God to 
 prolong my life, as a pioneer to prepare the way for the 
 establishment of a missionary bishopric among the islands 
 of the Western Pacific ; and then, after resigning the charge 
 into the hands of the new bishop, to concentrate all effort 
 and to spend the remainder of my days in the place where 
 my heart is fixed." ^ 
 
 In November, 1853, the bishop sailed in company with 
 Sir G. Grey, the Governor, in the colonial brig Victoria to 
 Norfolk Island and Nengone, landing Mr. and Mrs. Nihill 
 and their baby on November 23 at the last-named island. 
 The bishop wrote in his diary, " Mournful parting and 
 blessing. Shall I see him again ? He is very pale and 
 weak, but not dejected." On Decem.ber 11, he returned to 
 Auckland : a very busy fortnight followed, and an ordina- 
 tion was held on December 18, and a confirmation of 
 seventy-five persons in the afternoon of the same day : 
 
 ^ The bisliop was moved to this proposal by the legal difficulties which 
 were at the time supposed to be in the way of consecrating a bishop for 
 regions beyond the British dominions. It is hardly necessary to say that 
 the plan was much modified. 
 
 c 2
 
 22 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. t. 
 
 the college was partially dismantled, and on December 
 31, the bishop and Mrs. Selwyn sailed in the Commodore 
 for England. 
 
 " The end of another YEAr^ or sorrow, to aov yeveaOo}" 
 M-as written in his diary. There was yet another entry, 
 " Many kind and tender farewells. Beautiful day and 
 sparkling breeze. Eeceding town and college : twelve years 
 have made it another home." And what had not those 
 twelve years of ungrudging labour done for New Zealand? 
 There was no part of the colony which had not been 
 visited by the bishop and its necessities grasped and, so 
 far as was possible, provided for. As he wrote on one 
 occasion about this time, " The dim and visionary idea of 
 New Zealand, which I used to brood over in 184:1 before 
 we left England, is changed by God's blessing to an 
 accurate knowledge of every accessible part of the coast, 
 and of almost every inhabited place in the interior." 
 
 But for the unhappy conflicts which had set race against 
 race, the unceasing efforts of the bishop would have 
 achieved greater visible results ; but even these apparent 
 hindrances had called on him for a display of the highest 
 courage, the courage which takes the weaker side when 
 it knows it to be in the right, and which does not shrink 
 from rebuking the powerful for misusing power. Such 
 a testimony to righteousness and justice works often 
 results which cannot be weighed in the scales of human 
 j udgment. 
 
 To the bishop both races w^ere equally his charge : for 
 either he would have made any sacrifice with equal readi- 
 ness ; in his own words his cfi'ort had been " to raise the 
 character of both races by humbling them : " for the 
 education of each, according to their several needs, he had 
 grudged neitlier money nor labour. One representative of 
 tlie Maori race he had been able to enrol in the list of his 
 clergy. Had no legal hindrances withstood him, he would 
 not have been after twelve years the sole bishop in New 
 Zealand. In 1817 he liad written to an eminent statesman
 
 1852-1854.] RESULTS. 23 
 
 in England, " if freedom be given to our Australian Synod 
 [which did not meet until 1850] to consecrate bishops, we 
 would soon found and endow sees in all places where they 
 are wanted, and fill them with competent men. Of course 
 at first the ' vcdigaV would be ' 'parsimonia,' but in the 
 next generation the lands procured by gift or legacy would 
 yield a certain revenue." That he would have justified 
 his words, the fact that so soon as the way was open, 
 colleagues of unusual gifts and graces obeyed his sum- 
 mons, and owned his powers of attraction, is a sufficient 
 proof. 
 
 Amid the islands of the Western Pacific he had made 
 seven voyages, and by his courage and faith in divine 
 protection had disarmed the suspicions of barbarous 
 people which had been only too justly excited by the 
 rapacity of the representatives of Christian nations. He 
 had seen his labours developed from the apparently barren 
 ventures of 1848 when in landing, not without peril, on 
 strange islands, he limited his efforts to the establishing of 
 friendly feelings on the part of the natives, until in 1852 
 more than fifty islands were visited in perfect safety, and 
 twenty-five scholars were freely intrusted to the bishop in 
 order that they might spend a summer under his roof. 
 
 The story of all these achievements had reached ears 
 which are generally dull of hearing the tales of varied 
 failure and success which are the records of all true work 
 done for God : and it was not to be wondered at if on his 
 arrival in England the bishop was cordially welcomed by 
 all classes of persons as one who spoke that which he knew 
 and testified that he had seen, and whose personal career 
 had been in beautiful consistency with his principles. 
 
 The voyage, commenced on December 31, 1853, did not 
 end until May 5, 185-1; the Commodore met with rough 
 weather and put into the Falkland Islands, where the 
 bishop landed, and was welcomed by the governor and the 
 chaplain, the Eev. Charles Bull. 
 
 When the Bishop was nearing the English coast he
 
 21 LIFK OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. i. 
 
 detailed in a letter to his staunchest of friends, the Eev. 
 E. Coleridge, what were the objects of his visit, and how 
 rapidly he hoped to accomplish them. 
 
 Barque "Commodore" at Sea, 
 Maij 2nd, 185i. 
 
 My very dear Friend, 
 
 The good Providence of God has brought us within 
 120 miles of our native country, and we are still sailing 
 on with a fair wind, which gives us hope of being in port 
 before the end of the week. I therefore begin a letter for 
 you, in case any opportunity shoukl occur of sending it 
 ashore by a pilot-boat in the Channel, that you may be 
 among the first to hear of our arrival. We look forward 
 now to seeing you again with hearts as full and feelings 
 as fresh as if we had not been separated a week. A few 
 more wrinkles or grey hairs here and there may betray a 
 difference, but in other respects we sliall meet, I am sure, 
 in exactly the same state as if there had been no break 
 in our intercourse. 
 
 Eichmond will of course be our first point and pivot 
 of future operations. My dear old father's grey head will 
 be the magnetic centre of our .system. We do not pur- 
 pose to make a long stay in England. I must, if possible, 
 leave again in the beginning of November. A colonial work 
 such as mine, with such mixed elements, requires constant 
 watching : it is all ups and downs ; and everything, under 
 God, depends upon catching men and circumstances at 
 the favourable time. Vohimes of Meriting and years of 
 talking may be found at last to have been thrown away, 
 unless the hand is always ready at a moment to drive a 
 nail and fix the transient thought of some well-disposed 
 man, who, for want of that, would at once carry off liis 
 benevolent intention to the gaping mouth of some dissent- 
 ing community. Flattery will do something to fix our 
 colonial quicksilver, as is well-known to all makers of 
 looking-glasses, but those who do not wish to make use 
 of that instrument must be content to hannner on. Do 
 not then urge me to prolong my stay, but use your in- 
 fluence to get my work speedily done, and send me to my 
 own element again.
 
 1852-1854.] WORK IN ENGLAND. 25 
 
 Tlie chief points are : — 
 
 1. The subdivision of the diocese, and a speedy settle- 
 ment of the Sees of Wellington and Lyttelton at least. 
 
 2. The enactment of a free power in the Church of 
 New Zealand to meet in Convocation of Clergy and Laity, 
 and to manage its own affairs, within certain limits. 
 
 3. A definite recognition of plan for the conduct of the 
 Melanesian mission, with the hope of a Missionary Bishop 
 to take the work off my hands at some future time. 
 
 Minor matters : Suggestions relating to Norfolk Island 
 and the Talklands. 
 
 Pray use your influence with our friends, now in power, 
 to give me quick despatch : as Colonial Bishops, being 
 imconnected with the State, are not used to ante- chambers, 
 and only wish to get work done with as little formality as 
 possible. 
 
 One more private request I have to make : and that is 
 that you will allow me to keep as much in the background 
 as possible, working rather underground, in offices, than 
 high above in pulpits or on platforms. We have had a 
 season of unexampled sorrow, I verily believe, a special 
 visitation of Satan, and I should mock the sorrow of our 
 penitents and of those who mourn with them, if I were 
 to seem to return in triumph from a successful work. 
 
 The bishop reached England just as our troops were 
 embarking for the Crimea. The interest of the nation was 
 much absorbed in the impending war ; but wherever the 
 bishop went, and he went up and down the country, his 
 sermons and speeches were eagerly listened to, startling 
 as were some of his sayings. Everywhere he pleaded for 
 unity: from the other side of the globe he had studied 
 the controversies of the INIother Church, and he admitted 
 that personal knowledge and observation proved to him 
 that there was greater unanimity in things fundamental 
 than he had been led to expect, and he urged his hearers 
 day after day to cherish and increase every element of 
 union and peace. 
 
 Eresh from work among colonists and heathens, he was 
 able from his own experience and observation to bring
 
 26 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. i. 
 
 forward ample arguments for the unity of the human race, 
 and to insist on the perfect equality in God's sight of all the 
 tribes of men : having given abundant proofs in his omui 
 career of what a bishop with no secular authority and with 
 small stipend could effect, he could declare at the Mansion 
 House, without being accused of empty and reckless decla- 
 mation, that "if the Church of England had 500,000/. a year 
 to spend on missions she could not do better with half of that 
 sum than spend it on 500 bishops with 500/. a year each." He 
 urged that the first missionary to set foot on a new country 
 ought to be a bishop, on the fundamental principle of every 
 tree created having seed within itself, and equally of every 
 bishop being able to create about him a native ministry 
 adequate to do the whole work of the country. 
 
 What could be said to refute the bishop thus fortified by 
 experience, and who pointed to the fact that the seven 
 churches of Asia, each with its own particular angel or 
 bishop, were contained in a district not larger than York- 
 shire ? When pleading for the modest income of 500/. per 
 annum as enough for the maintenance of a bishop he was 
 again quoting his own practice. It has been already 
 stated that the gross income of the see, 1,200/. per annum, 
 he had thrown into the common fund of the diocese and 
 had drawn only 500/, for himself. He had now resolved 
 to give up the 600/. per annum which the Church 
 ]\Iissionary Society had contributed towards his income, 
 and to apply it to the support of new sees, and to draw 
 only the other moiety which had come from public funds : 
 but this offer had barely been accepted when he was 
 informed that witli the establishment of local government 
 his stipend had been removed from the home estimates and 
 had found no place in the colonial budget. 
 
 The bishop accepted the position with perfect equanimity, 
 he congratulated himself on having refused the see of 
 Sydney wlien it was vacant, as there would have been 
 dilliculty in filling up a see with no income, while for 
 Iiimself he said, " twelve years' residence in New Zealand
 
 1852-1854.] LOSS OF INCOME. 27 
 
 bad made him acquainted with the best places for finding 
 fern-roots and the haunts of birds and fishes," and he 
 added, " I wish to state most clearly and distinctly and in 
 all seriousness that it is my intention to go back to my 
 diocese and to dig or beg, if need be, for my maintenance, 
 for I am ashamed of neither." 
 
 Everywhere he called on his hearers to give themselves 
 or their sons, as the case might be, to the work of the 
 Church. In Eton College chapel especially he dwelt on 
 the possible future of many who listened to him, and on 
 the opj)ortunities of rendering high and noble services to 
 the Church which were within their reach, if, " trained in 
 this school of buoyant freedom and energetic idleness, they 
 were to go forth as the Messengers of Salvation." 
 
 With even more earnestness did he plead that the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury should always have at hand a body 
 of young clergymen, " ready to go anywhere and do any- 
 thing " in the spirit in which, in that very year, thousands 
 of the best born of England's youth were volunteering for 
 duty in the Crimea. Preaching on St. Barnabas Day in 
 Holy Trinity church, Windsor (the church which was built 
 largely through his exertions), he said — 
 
 " There must be fastings and prayers, and imposition of 
 hands of the prophets and teachers, and a commission 
 given by the Church. And there must be a willingness 
 in every one that is called, when he hears the question, 
 ' Whom shall I send, and who will go for us ? ' to answer 
 at once, ' Here am I, send me.' This spirit of obedience 
 to authority has already sent our fleets and armies to 
 every part of the world. Eeligion lags behind, as if un- 
 equal, in the race. The Church condemns itself, while 
 it applauds in some of its servants a course of duty which 
 is no more than their reasonable service, and which ought 
 to be the common duty of all its ministers. For want 
 of this authority to call, and of this willingness to obey, 
 though successors of Paul and Barnabas may be called 
 and consecrated to the work of the Holy Ghost, and 
 endued with power to ordain elders in every place, it rests
 
 28 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [cHAr. i. 
 
 with every Silas and every Mark to determine, each for 
 himself, whether he will depart from them, or go with them 
 to the work. All depends upon choice, instead of obedi- 
 ence. And yet wdio can rightly choose in such a work as 
 this? who can rightly estimate his own fitness for the 
 work of Christ in untried duties, and among an unknown 
 people ? Those elders of the Church who have seen and 
 known every candidate for Holy Orders, may judge of the 
 fitness of every one for each portion of the work. But 
 without willingness in the young to obey, to what purpose 
 will be the discrimination of the elders ? Self-will cannot 
 fail to bring on again sucli sliarp contention as that which 
 parted asunder one from the other those whom God had 
 joined; and filled first with anger, and then, no doubt, 
 with sorrow, even the Son of Consolation. 
 
 " There is no comfort in the thought of the heathen 
 world, but in the hope of the restoration to the Church of 
 the spirit of obedience. What comfort, I would ask, 
 w^ould there have been to any one who had a son or 
 brother in New Zealand, in the time of the war, if he 
 had been told that it had been left to the free choice of 
 every British soldier and sailor whether he would go out 
 to his rescue ? And in what one respect, I would ask, 
 are tlie men of our army and navy more bound to foreign 
 service than the soldiers of the Cross ? " 
 
 But a few weeks after these words were uttered the 
 invitation was given by the bishop to one who accepted it 
 as a call, and from the date of that auspicious event the 
 bishop felt that a great part of the burden of the Melau- 
 esian work was taken from him. It was in August, 1854, 
 that Mr. Patteson dedicated himself, and all that he had, to 
 the work of the Cluircli in the Pacific. In the same week 
 in which this pledge of personal service was given, the 
 bishop put forth his modest appeal for material aid in the 
 following letter to his firm friend the Piev. E, Coleridge : — 
 
 Exeter, August lith, 1854, 
 
 ]\Iy very dear Friend, 
 
 If I am always troubling you, I must plead as my 
 excuse that you have taught me, by the long experience 
 of your unwearied friendship, to apply to you for assistance
 
 1852-1854.] . MELANESIAN PLANS. 29 
 
 in all the wants and difficulties of my diocese. And I 
 appeal to you with the greater confidence, because I know 
 that you are well acquainted with the general character of 
 the new work which God has opened to us in the western 
 islands of the Pacific Ocean. Much has been done for 
 New Zealand, and now I am happy to say that the seed is 
 bearing fruit, and that the English and native congrega- 
 tions are both able and willing to do much for themselves. 
 But Melanesia is a field entirely new ; comprising an un- 
 known number of populous islands, known on the maps 
 by the names of New Caledonia, the Loyalty Islands, 
 Banks's Islands, Santa Cruz, the Solomon Islands, New 
 Hanover, New Britain, New Ireland, &c., and extending 
 as far as the great island of New Guinea. I speak of this 
 as the boundary of our mission field, because I hope that 
 the Bishopric of Borneo will soon stretch out its arms 
 to the eastward, while we are pushing northward and west- 
 ward, till the two branches of our work meet, by God's 
 blessing, at their common centre in the island of New 
 Guinea. 
 
 You are already aware that it has pleased God to enable 
 me to make seven voyages through the southern part of 
 Melanesia, from 10° to 24° of south latitude, and to visit 
 about fifty islands, in about half of which we have held 
 intercourse more or less with the native people, and pre- 
 pared the way for future undertakings. From ten of these 
 islands we have received scholars into our central school, 
 to the number of forty, speaking ten different languages. 
 It will not be, as in New Zealand, where the Testament 
 printed in the native language at the extreme north was 
 carried by native teachers a thousand miles to the furthest 
 villages in the Southern Island, and was there read in places 
 unvisited by an English missionary. We on the contrary 
 must look forward to a long and persevering effort, before 
 we can hope that much ground will be gained under 
 circumstances of such peculiar difficulty. 
 
 The object of my present letter is to engage your co- 
 operation in a plan for giving permanence to the work 
 which has been thus begun. You will agree with me that 
 it would be worse than useless to enter upon such an 
 undertaking in a desultory manner. It has required seven 
 voyages to give me even a small insight into the compli-
 
 30 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. i. 
 
 cated conditions of the problem which has to be worked 
 out. No single life could be depended upon as sufficient 
 to bring this plau to maturity, and unless due care be 
 taken to supply a succession of agents well qualified and 
 trained for duties of an unusual kind, it would be in 
 danger at any moment of falling to the ground. At present 
 the conduct of the work rests mainly upon the Bishop of 
 Newcastle and myself, who were appointed ]\Iissionary 
 Bishops by the Australasian Board at its meeting at 
 Sydney, in 1850. 
 
 If the organization of the New Zealand Church had 
 been a little more advanced towards completion, I should 
 gladly have availed myself of the consent already obtained 
 to the appointment of the Venerable Archdeacon Abraham 
 to succeed me in the see of Auckland, the archdeaconries 
 of Wellington, Waiapu, and Tauranga being, as it is 
 proposed, erected into bishoprics and placed under the 
 episcopal care of the present archdeacons W. "Williams, 
 Brown and Hadfield. Knowing the difficulties which are 
 thought to stand in the way of the creation of missionary 
 bishoprics, I should then have gladly undertaken the 
 charge of jNIelanesia as my own diocese, retaining only such 
 an interest in New Zealand as might connect me still with 
 the councils of its Church, and give nie a central home 
 and resting-place among my own countrymen. But I 
 should not be able, for some considerable time, to clear iip 
 the Y)resent responsibilities attaclied to the see of New 
 Zealand, such as the Trusts of the Church Estates, and 
 the organization of our Church system. But if the 
 difficulties now standing in the way of the appointment of 
 missionary bishops to act in regions beyond the limit of 
 Her Majesty's dominions should not be removed, I should 
 be willing, at some future time, if it please God to pro- 
 long my life and health, to resign New Zealand, and 
 undertake the Bishopric of Melanesia, as it is clearly im- 
 possible tliat the work of the Church of Christ should be 
 permanently hindered by merely technical obstructions. 
 
 My proposal to you therefore is this : to raise a fund 
 of not less than five or more than ten thousand pounds, 
 for the endowment of the Bishopric of Melanesia : the 
 interest to be allowed to me so long as I discharge pro- 
 visionally the duties of the office ; and the principal to be
 
 1852-1854.] MELANESTAN TRUST FUND. 31 
 
 held in trust by the treasurers of the Colonial Bishoprics' 
 Fund, or some other competent body of trustees, till the 
 new bishopric shall have been fully established. 
 
 I speak of the endowment of the bishopric alone ; 
 because T hope that the ministerial work in Melanesia 
 will be conducted almost entirely by native agency. You 
 know my theory of missionary action, that we ought to 
 send out a bishop first, with one or two such friends as 
 Thomas Whytehead and Charles Abraham, to assist him 
 during his life, and succeed him after his death, and that 
 they, with the assistance of a few schoolmasters, should 
 devote their efforts to the work of raising up a ministry 
 from their own native disciples. Many of the difficulties 
 which occur in a mixed system, including English as well 
 as native ministers, would thus, I hope, be avoided, and 
 the native church would be supported from the first by 
 the contributions of the people. 
 
 And now, my dear friend, I have only to desire your 
 prayers, and those of the other kind friends, who will co- 
 operate with you, that this great work may be guided and 
 followed by the special grace of the Holy Spirit ; for it 
 would be vain indeed to undertake a work like this, 
 amidst the shattered fragments of many nations, bearing 
 in the multiplicity of their languages the signs of the 
 curse of Babel, without the most humble yet confident 
 reliance upon the aid of that Spirit, which, on the day of 
 Pentecost, began to be poured out upon all flesh. It is 
 indeed a great and glorious work, appalling in its vastness, 
 and yet sustained by the fulness of the promise, that the 
 prayers of the Son of God will never fail till the Father 
 has given to Him, " the heathen for his inheritance and 
 the utmost parts of the earth for His possession." 
 Believe me to be. 
 Your most faithful and affectionate Friend, 
 G. A. New Zealand, 
 
 The appeal was more than successful : and 10,000Z. were 
 raised for the See of Melanesia in the course of a few 
 weeks. Among other tokens of sympathy, it was deter- 
 mined to furnish the mission with a new vessel to be 
 called the Southern Cross. 
 
 On St. Peter's Day, the annual commemoration of St.
 
 32 LIFE OF BISPIOP SELWYN. [oiiAr. 
 
 Augustine's College at Canterbury claimed the bishop's 
 presence ; and in a speech which was full of the words or 
 the spirit of Holy Scripture, he set forth the duties of 
 those who were called to the missionary life. To a society 
 of young men, generally of humble origin, pledged by their 
 position to simplicity of life, if not to voluntary poverty, 
 he uttered these comforting words : — 
 
 "A prophet's office is not in the courts of kings, or 
 in rich men's houses, where men wear soft clothing 
 and fare sumptuously every day. John came neither 
 eating bread nor drinking wine, yet Herod from the midst 
 of his palace heard the fame of his preaching in the 
 wilderness, and respected his character and listened to liis 
 reproof His great prototype, Elijah the Tishbite, put on 
 no courtly garb to wait upon Ahab, but bound his hairy 
 mantle about his loins with his leathern girdle, and went 
 down to him to Samaria to preach to him of the judgments 
 of God. His successor Elisha, called from the plough to 
 receive the mantle of Elijah, assumed to himself no pride 
 of office, but for ten years administered to his master's 
 wants, till he saw him caught up into heaven, and received 
 a double portion of his spirit. Amos was neither a pro- 
 phet nor a prophet's son, but a herdsman and a gatherer of 
 sycamore fruit : yet the Lord took him as he followed the 
 flock : and the Lord said unto him. Go, prophesy to my 
 people Israel. Zechariah speaks of the true prophet as 
 one who disclaims all glory of his office ; and says, I am 
 no prophet, 1 am an husbandman ; for men taught me to 
 keep cattle from my youth : and yet to him the wounds of 
 Clirist were revealed, with which He was wounded in the 
 house of his friends. God chose David his servant and 
 took liim from the sheepfolds, while he was following the 
 ewes great with young, to feed Jacob His people and Israel 
 His inheritance. The shepherds of Bethlehem were in 
 the field keeping watch over their flocks by night, when 
 they were guided by the light of heaven and called by the 
 voice of angels to be the first preachers of the new-born 
 Saviour. Tlie shepherd's hut, the yoke of oxen, the fisher's 
 coat, the tattered nets, and the leaky boats, the mission of 
 the seventy without scrip or purse, I'eter and John going
 
 1852-1854.] UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 33 
 
 up to tlie temple without silver or gold ; all these are the 
 lessons which Scripture teaches us ; these are the signs 
 and badges of that order out of which Christ Jesus chose 
 and called His apostles, evangelists, and prophets. 
 
 "We have this faith therefore in the prophet's office, 
 that it needs no worldly aid to give it its effect : neither 
 wealth, nor honour, nor talent, nor birth, nor station. It 
 needs only the calling of God, and a willing heart to obey 
 the calling. If you rest upon the real graces of the Chris- 
 tian character, and the real powers of the Christian 
 ministry, without assuming any of those false and adven- 
 titious aids which hinder rather than promote the progress 
 of the gospel, you will not fail of the pro]Dhet's reward," 
 
 The bishop was much engaged during his stay in 
 England in facilitating the formation of a Church Constitu- 
 tion in New Zealand, of which more will be said in its 
 proper place ; it is sufficient here to record that he returned 
 to New Zealand after a stay of less than a year in England, 
 feeling that now the last obstacle was removed, and that 
 self-government was within the reach of the Colonial 
 Churches. 
 
 The University of Cambridge in the season of Advent 
 heard those four famous sermons on the work of Christ 
 in the world, which did for the cause of missions in 
 Cambridge similar service to that which the Bampton 
 Lectures of Archdeacon Grant had done for Oxford some 
 ten years before. In active missionary work he thought 
 the Church would find her true pacificator. In the 
 crowded cities of India or China, in the plains of 
 Africa, or among the unnumbered islands of the Pacific 
 Ocean, he thought there might be found " outlets for the 
 excited and sensitive spirits of the Church at home," in 
 which men who were termed " rebels " in England mi^rht 
 be free "to serve God and to win souls," Among the 
 visible results of these sermons was the self-dedication of 
 Charles Erederic Mackenzie to the work of missions, and 
 there were many on whom the preacher's words made an
 
 34 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. i. 
 
 indiilible impression. One of his hearers desired to place 
 his whole fortune at the bishop's disposal, but he refused 
 to accept an offer made under impulse, however noble, and 
 he bade the young man go and consider the cost of the 
 sacrifice which he proposed to make, and this at a time 
 when the offered sum would have made further pleadings 
 unnecessary. 
 
 And how many men, young and old, have gone again 
 and again to those sermons for guidance and solace in 
 their work, whether at home or abroad, whether among the 
 heathen or the colonists of the British Empire, and have 
 found what they sought, can never be known. Every- 
 where the bishop urged to unity and charity, and on the 
 subject which had distressed so many minds, and driven 
 some noble spirits to despair of the Church of England, 
 hampered by the civil power as she was and is, the bishop 
 from the University pulpit declared that : — 
 
 " Questions like those which now agitate men's minds 
 must be tried by the balance of the sanctuary, or they 
 must be left untried. The coarse and clumsy processes of 
 human law cannot analyse the ethereal elements of the 
 doctrines which link together the life that now is with 
 that which is to come. To bring in aliens from other pro- 
 fessions to judge on legal grounds alone of the meaning of 
 words which can have no meaning at all but by their in- 
 ward power and application to the heart, would he to deny 
 to the Church, which will hereafter judge angels, the power 
 to judge herself."^ 
 
 So amid much speaking and preaching, superintending 
 the building of the Southern Cross, and preparations for 
 parting once more from fatherland and family, the year 
 1854 closed on the bishop and his associates. 
 
 1 "The work of Christ in the Worhl." Four sermons preached before the 
 University of Cambridge, 1854. By George Augustus Selvvyn, D.D., Cam- 
 bridge : Macmillan & Co., 1855.
 
 1855-1859.] THE SOUTHERN CROSS. 35 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 NEW ZEALAND AND MELANESIA. 
 
 [1855—1859.] 
 
 The sojourn in England, althoiigti it lasted much longer 
 than the bishop either desired or intended, was of com- 
 paratively brief duration, and there was crowded into it 
 a variety of business details which might well have been 
 spread over a much longer period. In pulpits and on 
 platforms, in hurried journeys throughout England, in 
 interviews with Government officials, in preparing for re- 
 suming the Melanesian work in conjunction with Mr. 
 Patteson on a more enduring plan and with larger and 
 more definite objects in view, and in superintending the 
 building and launching of the Southern Cross, on which 
 the success of the mission largely depended, the bishop's 
 time was fully occupied. He had landed in England on 
 May 5, 1854, and he purposed to leave again as early in 
 1855 as the Southern Cross could be prepared for the 
 voyage. On January 1 he registered her at the Custom 
 House, " the first on the roll of the new year ; " on the 
 5th the bishop slept on board, and on the Feast of the 
 Epiphany the schooner was towed to Gravesend; on the 
 8th she " spread her sails for the first time," and on the 
 10th she entered Southampton Water " leaky." 
 
 The delays caused by this mishap were especially try- 
 ing, not merely to the intending passengers, but to their 
 
 VOL. IT. D
 
 36 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. ii. 
 
 families and fi'iends, from whom they were about to part ; 
 but the bishop bore it with equanimity, and thus wrote 
 to Mr. Patteson : — 
 
 Lincoln's Inn, Jan. 17th, 1855. 
 
 My dear Coley, 
 
 We are still troubled with a small leakage, the cause of 
 which they have not yet discovered. It is not large in 
 amount, but annoying to the men. Every other prepara- 
 tion is in a fair way of being completed by the end of the 
 week ; but this may cause an indefinite delay. Still, as 
 I know how painful it is to be always taking leave, I 
 think that your plan is a wise one of coming to South- 
 ampton either Saturday or Monday. I always live on 
 board w^hen I am there, to conduct our evening prayers 
 with the crew and to keep order, which in harbour is 
 always a matter of difficulty, though my present crew have 
 given me less trouble than any which I have had before. 
 The cold, I warn you, is pretty severe ; thermometer this 
 morning about 40° ; but I hop and hammer, and think of 
 the Crimea, and so get on very well. In the large cabin 
 they have a brazier, and are warmer ; but there is great 
 confusion with all the stores turned out of their places to 
 make way for the search after the leak. If you come you 
 shall have a share of my cabin, as Sarah will not be on 
 board till the last day or two. It makes me quite happy 
 to think of the quiet and Christian manner in which your 
 father and sisters give you up to the work to which I fully 
 believe God has called you, and of your own calm con- 
 templation of your first parting from them. My own 
 dear father is in the same tranquil state of mind. 
 Love to the Judge, 
 
 Your affectionate friend, 
 
 G. A. New Zealand. 
 
 I3ut the leak refused to be discovered, and the trial 
 increased daily ; and yet the bishop could extract from it 
 for himself and commend to others a lesson of patience.
 
 1855-1859.] DELAYS. 37 
 
 Ely, March 10th, 1S55. 
 
 My deae Coley, 
 
 I have not answered your letter of 28th February, 
 having nothing to communicate, and not wishing to in- 
 flict upon you my own indecision. By Hector's report 
 of last night, the leakage, after the third repair, seemed to 
 be undiminished in quantity. As the point now stands, 
 it is probable that we shall take our passage in a merchant 
 ship, and leave Messrs. Wigram to send out either the 
 Southern Cross or some other vessel, at their own time and 
 cost. It is a sad derangement of all our plans, but it 
 cannot be helped ; and if it does no other good, it is useful 
 as a lesson of patience. What I most regret is the sus- 
 pense in which our good fathers are kept ; but to which 
 I do not feel it right to add the anxiety of thinking of us 
 as sailing in an unseaworthy vessel. 
 
 All hopes of sailing early in 1855 were now at an end, 
 and the imperfect way in which the Southern Cross had 
 been built interposed many tedious delays and prevented 
 any plans being formed : the bishop was always on the 
 move, going frequently to Southampton to find that little 
 or no progress had been made. In this enforced leisure, 
 if leisure it might be called, he wrote the Preface of his 
 Analysis of the Bible, of which mention has already been 
 made. On February 5 the Southern Cross was relaunched ; 
 but the delay that had occurred was so serious, that tlie 
 bishop was compelled to take his passage in a larger ship 
 which would make a more rapid voyage. On March 15 
 there is the significant entry in his diary, " Packed up 
 sorrowfully," and on the 22nd of the same month, " Took 
 final leave of my dearest father. 'Heaven prosper all 
 your undertakings ' repeated constantly." On March 29 
 the Southern Cross left Southampton, and the Duhe of 
 Portland, with the bishop and Mr. Patteson on board, left 
 Gravesend ; the vessels reached New Zealand, the former on 
 July 19, the latter on July 5. The Instructions given to 
 the captain of the SoutJiern Cross are so characteristic of 
 
 d2
 
 38 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. ii. 
 
 the " skipper bishop," as he was often called, that they 
 must find a place in these pages. 
 
 7, Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, 
 March 11th, 1855. 
 
 The Bishop of New Zealand, at the request of 
 Messrs. Wigram, sends the following advice to Captain 
 
 Sustins : — 
 
 CLEARING THE CHANNEL — 
 
 1. Do not attempt to make much southing till 12° or 
 13° W. longitude, so as to be able to weather Cape Finis- 
 terre if the wind should be S.W. 
 
 2. Sight the ISIadeiras for rating the chronometers, but 
 do not get entangled with the islands. 
 
 3. Cross the Line about 23° W. longitude, about the 
 same route as that pricked off on the bishop's general 
 chart. 
 
 4. Eound the Cape of Good Hope about 40° S. latitude, 
 and keep on that parallel. Make a point of sighting St. 
 Paul's Island to get the time for the run through Bass's 
 Straits. 
 
 5. Do not attempt to near the straits at night or in 
 thick weather. Make out, if possible, the light on Cape 
 Otway, and from that shape a course for the Straits. The 
 chief danger is the Crocodile Eock : you have a good chart 
 on board. 
 
 6. After clearing the Straits, steer for the Three Kings, 
 off the N.W. Cape of New Zealand. From abreast the 
 island Cape Maria Van Diemen may be seen. Eound the 
 North Cape pretty close, and steer for Cape Brett ; thence 
 to the Little Barrier Island. Then to Eangitoto, looking 
 out for the flat rock off Kawau, and the rock off Tiritiri 
 Matanglii. Eun in between Eangitoto and the North 
 Head, as by large chart on board. 
 
 You have Charts — 
 
 1. Gulf of Hauraki, 
 
 2. Auckland Harbour. 
 
 Betts is well acquainted with this coast.
 
 1855-1859.] ENGLAND LEFT AGAIN. 39 
 
 P.S. — 1, The bishop's cabin must not be used, except 
 for the barometer and chronometers ; but kept perfectly 
 clean. 
 
 2. Chronometers to be wound up and compared by 
 Betts every morning at 8, and reported to the captain. 
 
 The bishop prays that the blessing of God may be upon 
 the master, mate, and crew of the Southern Cross, and 
 bring them safe to the end of their voyage. To this end 
 he hopes they will meet together as often as possible on 
 week-days and always on Sundays for reading the Bible 
 and prayers. 
 
 G. A. New Zealand. 
 
 Possibly the trial of leaving England was more bitter 
 now than it had been in 18-il. True it is that the bishop 
 was now returning to a work to which he was no stranger, 
 and in which he was deeply interested ; and indeed on his 
 arrival at Auckland he wrote in his diary, " Very thankful 
 to be once more in New Zealand ; " but he was now parting 
 for ever in this world from his father, who died in the 
 following July, in his 81st year, and he was leaving behind 
 him his two sons. 
 
 To them he wrote, when the pang of separation was felt 
 in all its acuteness and freshness, a letter which is inserted 
 only after some misgiving whether it is not too sacred to 
 be revealed to the general reader. 
 
 "Duke of Portland," off North Foreland, 
 11.40 A.M., Alarch SOth. 
 
 My deaeest Boys, 
 
 Mamma and I could not restrain our tears as ^ve watched 
 you waving to us almost till you landed : but we feel that 
 the blessing of your Heavenly Father will watch over you, 
 and to Him and to your kind aunts and uncles we will- 
 ingly resign you, though not without many a sorrowful 
 thought, and secret longing either to take you with us or 
 to stay in England wnth you. But it is better as it is, for 
 we go away with the hope that you will come out to us, if 
 God will, full of all religious and useful knowledge, with 
 miuds much better prepared to do faithful service to God
 
 40 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. ^ [ihai'. u. 
 
 and your fellow-creatures than if you had spent your 
 youth in the narrow range of colonial pursuits. While 
 we and you are sorrowing for our separation, remember, 
 my dear boys, and let the thought sink deep into your 
 minds, that, next to the love of God and of our Blessed 
 Saviour, the strongest motive to diligence and good con- 
 duct must be the desire to give us the comfort and 
 pleasure of hearing that you are increasing in wisdom 
 and in stature, and in favour with God and man. 
 
 God bless you both, for Jesus Christ's sake. 
 
 Your very loving Father, 
 
 G. A. New Zealand. 
 
 P.S. — The dogs are quite well and have had a run this 
 morning, "We anchored at the Nore last night and sailed 
 at four this morning. This will be taken on shore by the 
 pilot who will leave us in the Downs. 
 
 On July 3 the bishop entered in his log, "At 2 a.m. 
 came to Cape Brett, mistook it for Great Barrier ; tacked 
 into the bay, and at daylight, finding our mistake, ran out 
 again," As the vessel approached the entrance of the 
 harbour of Auckland, the people on shore saw by the way 
 in which the ship was handled that there was no novice 
 at the helm, and it was on this occasion that a sailor said, 
 " It was enough to make a man a Christian to see the 
 bishop handle a vessel." An absence of eighteen months 
 provided the bishop with many arrears of work, and he 
 at once addressed himself to his duties with his accustomed 
 vigour. Tliree days only had elapsed before he entered 
 in his diary, "Began work at S. Stephen's School with 
 Eev. Piota Waitoa and Levi Te Ahu." He found time 
 to write the following letter to his elder son : no date 
 is given, but it was evidently written very soon after 
 his landing. 
 
 St. Stephen's School, Taukarua, 1855. 
 
 My dear William, 
 
 You will be glad to hear that we arrived here on Thurs- 
 day, tlie otli of July, after a very pleasant and rapid 
 passage On the 3rd May we crossed the tropic of
 
 1855-1859.] VOYAGE. 41 
 
 Capricorn, only thirty-one days from the Lizard, On the 
 11th May passed close by Tristan d'Acunha, but the wind 
 was too strong for us to attempt to land. On the 15th May 
 we recrossed the meridian of Greenwich in 37° South, and 
 thought often of your probable employments ; as our time 
 was then again the same as yours. On the 21st May we 
 passed the Cape of Good Hope in latitude 41° South, and 
 while you were going up to Surly on the 4th June, w^e 
 were passing Kerguelin or Desolation Island, a place 
 more worthy of the name of Surly than any spot on the 
 banks of the Thames. After this we went to 51° South, 
 and saw two icebergs ; on the 29th June to our great joy 
 we sighted the North Cape of New Zealand, but did not 
 reach .Auckland till the 5th July, thanking God for a most 
 pleasant and prosperous voyage. Dear mamma was not 
 very well on board, but she is better now. Perhaps the 
 parting from you and Johnnie fretted her, and you will, I 
 am sure, remember what I said to you, and what your own 
 feelings will often suggest, that the best and most effectual 
 way of comforting both her and me, will be to let us hear 
 good accounts of you both at home and at school. Put 
 away childish things, my dear boy ; you have now sealed 
 your Baptismal promise in Confirmation, and have received, 
 I trust, a double measure of the Spirit of God ; you have 
 partaken of the strengthening and refreshing food of the 
 Lord's Supper ; here are three talents already granted to 
 you ; and you are solemnly pledged to employ them to the 
 glory of God and the good of your fellow-creatures. Even 
 neglect of these gifts is itself a sin, like that of the man 
 who hid his talent in the ground. To leave undone the 
 things which you ought to have done, is no less a sin than 
 to do the things which you ought not. Our prayers are 
 offered up continually for you from the opposite side of 
 the world, that your Heavenly Father would more than 
 supply to your heart the influences of the parents from 
 whom you are separated. May your prayers go ujd with 
 ours, our morning prayers with your evening, and our 
 evening with your morning prayers ; and meet together 
 through the mediation of our Lord and Saviour before the 
 mercy-seat. 
 
 Your loving and hopeful Father, 
 
 G. A. New Zealand.
 
 42 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. ii. 
 
 A letter written about the same time by Archdeacon 
 Abraham to the Rev. Ernest Hawkins gives a good and 
 independent account of the position of matters on the 
 bishop's return : — 
 
 St. John's College, Auckland, N.Z., 
 July 2ith, 1855. 
 
 My dear Hawkins, 
 
 I don't suppose that the bishop in his hurry of business 
 will have time to write to you and announce his arrival 
 here, which I am thankful to say took place, after a very 
 prosperous voyage of ninety-eight days, on the 5th of 
 July. We were all taken by surprise, not having heard a 
 word from England of his intention to come by the DuJce 
 of Portland. The first intimation that he was on board 
 the English vessel was the fact that a strange vessel had 
 threaded all the intricacies of the harbour, and rounded 
 the North Head, before the gun fired for the pilot. There 
 was not a breath of wind either, so that people began to 
 say, " There must be some one on board that knows wdiat 
 he's about, and all the tides and currents of the harbour ; 
 and who so likely as the bishop ? " Sure enough in half 
 an hour more the Custom House officer came to say the 
 bishop was on board, and that the Southern Gross was on 
 her way following him. I confess that we were very 
 thankful to think he had not come out in his own schooner, 
 wdth all the wear and tear and watching cares that that 
 would have entailed ; whereas in the Duke of Portland he 
 had all the time for rest, and quiet thought; and Mrs. 
 Selwyn had a quicker and easier passage. . . . The bishop 
 looked dreadfully worn however on his arrival, and every 
 one was painfully struck with his appearance ; but I soon 
 divined the true cause, wliich was that he had been up for 
 two or tln'ee nights, piloting tlie ship down the coast, 
 through all the islets. He soon recovered his good looks, 
 and certainly does seem all the better for English air, and 
 the bracing of body and mind that the last year and a 
 half have given him. 
 
 We are most thankful to have such a valuable addition 
 to our body as C. Patteson. He will be a great blessing 
 to the Melanesian Mission, and specially to the bishop.
 
 1855-1859.] TARANAKI. 43 
 
 The Southern Cross arrived on the 19th, having had an 
 excellent passage, and is pronounced a good vessel by the 
 
 captain and all hands 
 
 The bishop is very busy at present preparing another 
 native for ordination, Levi by name. He is a man of 
 superior abilities to Rota, but not so well trained or taught. 
 He belongs to a Taranaki (New Plymouth) tribe, and will 
 be sent there after his ordination in September. And a 
 most important work will it be, for at this moment the 
 natives there are fighting, and the English may get in- 
 volved, and 300 soldiers are going down there to-morrow ; 
 but if the C.M.S. had sent a missionary there it might 
 have been stopped. Probably the bishop will go with the 
 soldiers to try and prevent further mischief. Levi, one 
 of their own people, is a chief, and will probably have 
 great influence with them. 
 
 The mention of Taranaki (or New Plymouth) introduces 
 us to a place and to a subject which have very much to 
 do with the subsequent life of the bishop. A dispute had 
 arisen between two natives, Katatore and Arama Karaka, 
 (— Adam Clarke), about land : the two parties had begun 
 firing at each other within five miles of the town of New 
 Plymouth, to the great alarm of the English settlers, who 
 had asked that soldiers might be sent down to preserve 
 the peace. The Governor on his part feared that the pre- 
 sence of troops might be misunderstood by the natives, 
 and, while determining to send a military force, he asked 
 the bishop to go down and try to make peace, and at least 
 to explain that the soldiers' duties would be limited to the 
 protection of the English town, and would have no re- 
 ference to the Maori quarrel. The bishop therefore, 
 accompanied by Archdeacon Abraham and Eota Waitoa, 
 representing the three orders of the ministry, started on foot 
 through a country very difficult to travel over, and after a 
 fortnight of hard work reached the Waitara, the scene and 
 subject of the contest, on August 14. AVilliam King, a 
 name which occupies a prominent place in the story of
 
 44 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. ii. 
 
 subsequent wars, had joined Katatore, because the enemy 
 had come nearer to his land than was safe, but not from 
 any cordial sympathy with Katatore's cause. When the 
 bishop reached King's Pa, he found no war-camp nor any 
 signs of hostility to the English, the whole tribe having 
 gone out to tow off an English schooner which had got 
 aground on the sand bar. 
 
 On August 15 the conference began, and how it was 
 conducted was thus recorded by Archdeacon Abraham : — 
 
 " Next morning, before we were up and out of our hags 
 (not heels), two natives put their heads in at the tent-door, 
 and tenet koe'd the bishop. One was a fine old gentleman, 
 with a kindly face and no guile in it. The other younger, 
 but perhaps sixty years of age, with a broad, open, hand- 
 some face, somewhat bloated, perhaps, yet not at all un- 
 pleasant. They came in, and sat talking for an hour, 
 while we shaved and dressed and ate our breakfast with 
 them. When they went away, I asked who they were, 
 and the bishop said the first was an old cliief of the tribe 
 he had known long ago at Nelson, and the younger of the 
 two was the notorious and much-abused William King, 
 the man who first saved the Government under Sir George 
 Grey in 1844, by driving old Ilangihaeata out of the 
 country ; and then took a decided line against the Gover- 
 nor, who tried to prevent his coming up here to Taranaki, 
 to settle in the inheritance of his forefathers, whence he 
 had been driven by the Waikatos twenty-five years ago ; 
 but was now allowed to return in peace to the unoccupied 
 land, when Sir George Grey threatened to prevent his 
 returning, by planting guns at his canoes. He still per- 
 severed, and some of his people brandished their toma- 
 hawks about the Governor's head; and come they did, in 
 spite of the threats and guns, and most determined are 
 they to retain their lands, and prevent the English getting 
 hold of any ; hinc illcc laerymm. Hence all this disturbance 
 we have come to try and settle. Eawiri and his party 
 wanted to sell the disputed land to the English ; Katatore 
 shot him down in cool blood, unarmed 
 
 " We readied Katatore's Fa, and found one hundred
 
 1855-1859.] NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 45 
 
 men or so within ; all were seated on the ground to hear 
 what the bishop had to say. After a few minutes a man, 
 dressed like a would-he flash criminal at Newgate, came up 
 to us. It was Katatore ; a little, cunning-looking, ill- 
 favoured rascal as I ever saw, dressed in a black paletot, 
 moleskin trousers, boots, and a little hat on the top of an 
 immense bush of hair. He then told us the story of the 
 murder. When he came to it, the bishop said, ' So, then, 
 you killed an unarmed man in cold blood for the matter 
 of land?' 'Yes.' 'Then you repeated the act of Cain 
 towards Abel, and in the sight of God and man you are 
 a murderer.' 
 
 "The man started up in great wrath, but the bishop 
 calmly repeated it. The man started on his feet and left 
 the ring of people, muttering and growliug ; but his own 
 people did not seem disposed to support him on that point, 
 nor to question the bishop's judgment or right to express 
 that judgment. The bold plainness of speech the bishop 
 used towards the murderer, and the abuse that the news- 
 paper writers have lavished on him for holding any inter- 
 course at all with the murderer, &c. &c., seem together 
 exactly to make up the duties required of a Christian 
 minister in the Collect for St. John Baptist's Day : — that 
 he should ' boldly rebuke vice, constantly speak the truth, 
 and patiently suffer for the truth's sake.' It has been the 
 bishop's practice for the last thirteen years, during which 
 he has been so attacked by the same person in all the 
 settlements, to ' answer him never a word. ' " 
 
 Even so during the war it fell to tlie bishop's lot to 
 officiate at St. Paul's church on the Sunday on whicli the 
 story of Naboth's vineyard was read as the first lesson. 
 Several of the members and friends of the Ministry of the 
 day, with whom the bishop happened to be in political 
 antagonism in consequence of that unhappy war, were in 
 the church. The bishop preached a written sermon on 
 " Ahab," which certainly caused the ears of many of those 
 who heard it to tingle, and which was the subject of much 
 indignant comment afterwards. Several of the bishop's 
 friends in consequence obtained the manuscript of the
 
 46 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. ii. 
 
 sermon, and studied it carefully, with the result that they 
 were at a loss to know what portion of the sermon had 
 excited such indignant comments. The fact was that the 
 fire and energy and deep feeling displayed by the preacher 
 had given an apparent personality to the sermon, which 
 perliaps was not without its value. 
 
 The bishop experienced the fortune which generally 
 befalls peacemakers : because he would espouse the side of 
 neither he became obnoxious to both. He held service in 
 the Pa of one tribe, and was accosted by the other on the 
 following day with the jeering counsel, "Go and have 
 service with your bloodshedding children." Meanwhile 
 the soldiers had come down by sea, 200 men of Her 
 Majesty's 58th regiment, some sappers, three guns, 
 and artillery to serve them : the natives were excited, 
 and charged the bishop witli deceiving them in saying that 
 the soldiers would take no part in their quarrel : the bishop 
 assured them of his frankness and openness with them, 
 and just then a messenger arrived with letters from Colonel 
 Wynyard to W. King, assuring him that he only wished 
 to keex3 peace between the natives and the English. On 
 August 31 things settled down after a speech of the 
 bishop's, giving good advice to both sides. Archdeacon 
 Abraham writes : — 
 
 " It was very striking to see the men's delight wlien he 
 wound up his speech with their old song : 
 
 ' Ka tangi te riroriro, 
 Kei te ahi au tamariki ! ' 
 
 the ]\Iaori equivalent for ' Lady bird, lady bird, fly away 
 home," &c. All the good advice and sober counsel given 
 before seemed to tell but little ; but this quotation set the 
 wliole party on the alert, and it was repeated and bandied 
 from one to another, well illustrating the well-known 
 saying, ' Give me tlie writing of your ballads, and I don't 
 care who makes the laws.' " 
 
 During tliis visit the bishop was constantly holding
 
 1855-1859.] PASTORAL LETTER. 47 
 
 services with natives and colonists, and persuading the 
 latter to provide themselves with churches. At length 
 the same journal records : 
 
 " Sept. 3rd to 8tJi. — Waiting idly for the steamer. Our 
 Church work being done, and the native quarrel having 
 apparently subsided for the present, the bishop, who must 
 always be doing something, carried all his party on to the 
 road, which was very dangerous and full of gTeat holes ; 
 and having in vain tried to persuade the people to mend 
 them, we all ' turned to,' and in a day and a half had made 
 it passable : a broad hint to them in every sense * to mend 
 their ways.' The Church was fully represented in this 
 way- warden ship, there being a bishop, a priest, and a 
 deacon, and two lay Maoris and four lay boys. It caused 
 much amusement to the passers-by, but I am afraid little 
 shame." 
 
 On September 11 the bishop reached Auckland: he had 
 been so misrepresented and reviled by local newspapers, 
 which it would have been an indignity to notice, that, for 
 the information of his own people and flock in New 
 Plymouth, he wrote a Pastoral Letter, explaining his course 
 and the view which he had taken of the native quarrel 
 and the land disputes existing between the natives with 
 one another and with the English. 
 
 Prom this pastoral, written in a tone of judicial calm- 
 ness, it is necessary to extract passages of considerable 
 length, as they furnish the key to the bishop's conduct 
 throughout the later wars, in which he was often at 
 variance with the civil authorities, and was bitterly mis- 
 represented by the press. 
 
 Pastoeal Letter of the Bishop of New Zealand to 
 THE Members of the Church of England in the 
 Settlement of New Plymouth. 
 
 My Christian Brethren, 
 
 It has not been my custom to address you on any merely 
 secular or political subject, and my present letter will not, 
 I hope, appear to be any deviation from this general rule.
 
 48 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [cHAr. ii. 
 
 But on the contrary, when I have reason to believe that 
 some members of our Church have been offended by 
 reports which they have heard of my opinions or my 
 conduct, I feel it to be, I may say, a religious duty to place 
 in your hands my own explanation ; because, while on the 
 one hand I cannot consent to be altogether guided by 
 public opinion, neither on the other hand would I wish to 
 appear to disregard or to defy it. 
 
 The subject of my present letter is the question which 
 has so long disturbed the minds of the English and Native 
 inhabitants of this district ; and in which two distinct 
 elements are so mixed up as to seem at present incapable 
 of separation, even in the minds of those who would other- 
 wise be best able to judge of the merits of the case. It 
 will be my object to draw a clear line of distinction 
 between two things so widely different as a murder which 
 all Christian men will concur in condemning, and a land 
 question, upon which much diversity of opinion may be 
 expected to exist. 
 
 I. — On the subject of the murder I have little to say, 
 because it would seem to be quite unnecessary for a 
 Christian bishop to spend many words in telling the 
 members of his flock, that he disapproves of a crime, 
 which he has already declared, in the presence of' the 
 murderer himself, to be a repetition of the sin of Cain.^ 
 But I must be guided entirely l)y my own conscience, as a 
 minister of the Gospel, in the intercourse which I feel it to 
 be my duty to hold with those by whom this or any other 
 crime has been committed. I shall not dare to cast off any 
 one to whom I believe that God still holds out the hope of 
 forgiveness. There is no crime so heinous as to warrant a 
 clergyman in contradicting the principle declared by our 
 Lord and Master, " that He came not to call the righteous, 
 but sinners to repentance." 
 
 On this first point then you will clearly understand my 
 
 ^ The Taranaki Herald, August 22nd, 1855, had printed : — " Bishop 
 Sclwyn is again louding his blighting influence to New Zealand, has again 
 taken the murderer by tiie hand, as lie did the perpetrators of the Wairau 
 massacre — a murderer wlio is without the excuse of those at Wairau : viz. 
 that of being first fired upon. ... It is reserved for the Bishop of New 
 Zealand to use his undoubted influence to shield notorious criminals from 
 justice, when those criminals appeal to his sympathies througli the 
 medium of a dark skin."
 
 1855-1859.] PASTORAL LETTER. 49 
 
 position ; that though I abhor the murder, yet I hold it to 
 be my duty to visit and exhort the murderers ; as a humble 
 follower of Him, whose title ever has been, and ever will 
 be to the world's end, " The Friend of Sinners." 
 
 II. — Separating then the murder from the Land question 
 with which it has become so unhappily confused, I come to 
 the second part of my letter, on which, as I have already 
 said, there is much room for difference of opinion. In a 
 country where every member of the community is free to 
 hold his own views, and to express them in any constitu- 
 tional way, I hope that you will see, that if we should 
 unfortunately differ in opinion, you have no more reason to 
 be offended with me than I with you. 
 
 It has always been my lot to be accused of opposing the 
 interests of my own countrymen in the settlements of the 
 New Zealand Company, by supporting the claims of the 
 native inhabitants. The root of all this appearance of 
 opposition (for I deny that it was real) lay in tlie fact, that 
 the Agents of the New Zealand Company, while they 
 recognised, by partial acts of purchase, the right of the 
 natives to the land, did not sufficiently investigate the 
 titles, and therefore failed to extinguish them. The solu- 
 tion of the question was made more difiicult, by the large 
 supply of double-barrelled guns which were given to the 
 natives in payment for the land. A transaction which was 
 supposed to give to two or three thousand Englishmen an 
 absolute right to dispossess seven thousand armed New 
 Zealanders was concluded within a space of time in which 
 no honest conveyancer w^ould undertake to draw a marriage 
 settlement upon an encumbered estate. This was the 
 wholesale mistake, which led to all the misfortunes and 
 disappointments of the Company's settlers. If the pur- 
 chases had been conducted with more deliberation, over 
 small blocks of land, and with the consent of all the 
 owners, there is reason to believe that the colonists would 
 have remained undisturbed, as the purchases of private 
 settlers have, almost in every instance, been sustained by 
 the testimony of the native vendors. It is against all 
 experience to say that, either the New Zealanders are 
 unwilling to sell land, or that, having sold it, they will not 
 allow the purchaser to enter into possession. , . . When 
 I find myself accused of blighting the prospects of my
 
 50 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. ii. 
 
 countrymen, I tliink it sufficient to point to the province 
 of Auckland, in which I nominally reside, where every 
 merchant and almost every settler would, be ready to 
 admit, that the province owes its present wonderful pro- 
 sperity to the peaceful union of the two races. One 
 hundred and fifty coasting vessels bring native produce 
 into the port of Auckland. Five large rivers, navigated 
 by innumerable canoes, bring down from the heart of the 
 country the flour ground in more than twenty native water- 
 mills. Fifty thousand natives draw their supplies of 
 clothing, tobacco, and hardware from its stores, paying a 
 large share of the indirect taxation of the country, without 
 so much as asking for a share in its representative institu- 
 tions. I am sure that it has been the constant feeling in 
 the province of Auckland, that while the New Zealanders 
 thus confidingly leave to our race the entire control over 
 the revenue accruing from their industry, so much the 
 more must it be our bounden duty to legislate wisely 
 and equitably for them. I am not aware that a single 
 syllable has ever been said in that province about taking 
 possession of land which the native owners were not dis- 
 posed to sell. . . . 
 
 It is strange indeed, that your advisers in the local 
 newspapers, who dwell so much upon the sixth command- 
 ment, should forget altogether that the same law has also 
 said. Thou shalt not Covet. They may disguise it to 
 their own consciences, but it is my duty as a minister of 
 the law and of the Gospel to lift up my voice against the 
 publication of opinions, which would lead on to the sin of 
 murder as the direct consequence of the sin of covetous- 
 ness. I offer to my countrymen my best assistance and 
 influence with the native people in all their just and lawful 
 desires, but I have no fellowship with covetousness, be- 
 cause Ahab found it to be but the first step to blood- 
 guiltiness. Surely there is enough of blood already crying- 
 out of the ground against the Christian nations of Europe, 
 — against Spain, and France, and England — to make us 
 tremble for the issue of our own connexion with the New 
 Zealanders. I can not remain silent, while opinions are 
 being expressed and plans proposed which, if you prove 
 to be the stronger, would destroy the New Zealanders, or 
 if you be found the weaker, would destroy yourselves.
 
 1855-1859.] PASTOEAL LETTER. 51 
 
 My advice to the natives in all parts of New Zealand has 
 always been, to sell all the land which they are not able to 
 occupy or cultivate. I had two reasons for this : first, to 
 avoid continual jealousies between the races ; and secondly, 
 to bring the native population within narrower limits, in 
 order that religion, law, education, and civilization might 
 be brought to bear more effectually upon them. It is 
 strange to me to find myself accused of joining in a " con- 
 spiracy " to hinder the sale of land ; when, not my opinion 
 only, but my practical advice in all parts of New Zealand, 
 has been directly the contrary. All T ask for is an entire 
 abstinence from all threats and a hond fide transaction with 
 all classes of real owners after careful investigation of titles. 
 ... As for the charges against William King of treachery and 
 duplicity, before such offensive charges are published, it 
 would be well to remember the first principle of our English 
 law, — that every man is held to be innocent, till he has been 
 proved to be guilty. In this case, the same persons, upon 
 mere suspicion, usurp the functions of accuser, jury, and 
 judge. I have no hesitation in recording my own deliberate 
 conviction that William King has no ill-will whatever 
 against any of oui- countrymen, not even against those who 
 have publicly expressed their desire to take away his land. 
 Let those who complain of his duplicity cease to force him 
 into a position of hostility by their suspicions and their 
 threats. For it ought to be remembered, though such 
 things are readily forgotten when the danger is passed, that 
 William King and his party are the very men whom Mr. 
 Hursthouse describes in p. 50, as " those who had assisted 
 the Governor in quelling Eauparaha, and now longed to 
 rejoin the head-quarters of their tribe, and return to their 
 old homes on the banks of the Waitara." .... 
 
 There are not many persons who have been al^le, as I 
 have, to visit all the chief sections of the Ngatiawa tribe, 
 scattered as they are over Port Nicholson, Waikanae, 
 Nelson, Queen Charlotte's Sound, and the Chatham Islands. 
 In all these places there is the same desire (which I think 
 no Taranaki settler can wonder at or condemn), to return 
 to their old homes in this lovely and fertile country. 
 When I first visited New Plymouth, in October, 1842, I 
 was accompanied by nearly forty men of the tribe, who 
 came avowedly to ascertain whether the state of the 
 
 VOL. II. E
 
 52 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. ii. 
 
 country would allow of their return. Every man of this 
 party knew the exact spot which had belonged to his fore- 
 fathers. The migration to the remote Chatham Island had 
 neither caused Taranaki to be forgotten, nor the recollec- 
 tion of their local claims to be lost. I ascertained in the 
 Chatham Island to what part of this country they laid 
 claim, and I have just passed through their settlements to 
 the south of the White Cliffs, and found them re-es- 
 tablished in their own homes. The head teacher of the 
 tribe, and one of the first converts to Christianity among 
 them, is about to be admitted to Holy Orders, which led 
 me to ask, whether he had a claim to any land which might 
 be available for his maintenance. I was immediately in- 
 formed of the exact spot, and of the grounds of his title. 
 From these and similar facts I draw the conclusion, that 
 every member of the Xgatiawa tribe knows his own land 
 in the Taranaki district, and desires to return to it. 
 
 In many respects this return of the Ngatiawa may be 
 beneficial to the settlement. First, by the vast impulse 
 which will be given to the industry of the Province by 
 men who in every one of their scattered locations, and 
 especially in the Chatham Islands, under their late chief, 
 William Pitt Pomare, have shown themselves the steady 
 friends of the English people, and have made the most 
 rapid progress in agriculture and trade. But still more 
 beneficial to the Province will be the return of all the 
 absentee proprietors, if it should have the effect, as I hope 
 it may, of facilitating the sale of their surplus lands 
 
 No menaces of military interference are likely to have 
 any eifect upon men who from their childhood have been 
 accustomed to regard it as a point of honour to shed their 
 last drop of blood for the inheritance of their tribe. And 
 yet these very men, and others of their race, have already 
 sold 30,000 acres in this settlement for ten-pence an acre — 
 a million of acres at Ahuriri for a penny three farthings ; 
 — the whole of the first Auckland territory for about four- 
 pence; — and the whole ]\[iddle Island, south of Kaikoura, 
 for a mite per acre. Nothing is more easy than to extin- 
 guish the native title ; nothing will be more difficult than 
 to extinguish a native war 
 
 When I came here, at considerable inconvenience to 
 myself, to advocate these principles, and to recommend all
 
 1855-1859.] PASTORAL LETTER. 53 
 
 those natives, who might be disposed to listen to my advice 
 to promote good- will and concord with the English settlers 
 by tlie willing surrender of their surplus lands, especially 
 of those portions, the title to which is disputed among 
 themselves ; and after having constantly and publicly 
 spoken on the same subject on my route at Whaingaroa, 
 Aotea, Kawhia, and elsewhere (in all of which places the 
 same land question is under debate among the natives), I 
 confess that I was astonished to find myself the object, not 
 only of suspicion, but of open insult and attack, in the very 
 settlement which I came to serve, aud from those whose 
 office ought to restrain them from party prejudice and 
 personal invective, I never answer such attacks in the 
 public newspapers, because I do not recognise any such 
 tribunal ; nor do I enter into any controversy with men 
 bearing the title of Ministers of religion ; because you will 
 agree with me in thinking that nothing would be more dis- 
 creditable to religion than such profane wranglings among 
 men professing to administer the Gospel of Peace 
 
 I find myself charged with having shielded a murderer 
 from justice. 
 
 I have already told you, that I have never spoken of the 
 murder of Eawiri, but to condemn it in the strongest 
 language, even in the presence of the murderer. 
 
 You well know that I was in England when the murder 
 took place, in August, 1854. One person, I know, from 
 his letter to Katatore, did shield the murderer on the day 
 of Eawiri's funeral, not indeed from justice, but from a 
 tumultuary exercise of "Lynch Law," which might have 
 set the wdiole country in a blaze ; and I am happy to be 
 able to express my entire approval of that judicious exer- 
 cise of missionary influence 
 
 To sum up this letter, which has grown to its present 
 length by the repetition of attacks in the local newspaper, I 
 beg you to accept this condensed statement of my opinions. 
 
 1. I am quite ready to advise my native friends to sell 
 their surplus lands, on the most reasonable terms, or even 
 to give them to the Government for nothing : but this 
 advice will be of no avail, until the question is entirely 
 devoid of party feeling, and disconnected altogether from 
 such irritating subjects as the murder of Eawiri. 
 
 2. I desire to see each native land owner secured by a 
 
 E 2
 
 5; LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. n. 
 
 Crown grant for his own individual property ; and regis- 
 tered as a voter, on the same qualification as an Englishman. 
 
 3. When the native land owners are thus registered and 
 represented, with full recognition of equal rights and 
 privileges, 1 will not be backward in explaining to them 
 that they are liable to all taxes, penalties, and other public 
 burdens, in common with all other classes of Her Majesty's 
 subjects. 
 
 4. But on the other hand, I shall resist, by all laAvful 
 means, every attempt to carry out any other interpretation 
 of the Treaty of Waitangi than that in wliich it was ex- 
 plained to the natives by Governor Hobson, and under- 
 stood and accepted by them. 
 
 5. I hold it to be an act unworthy of Englishmen to 
 avail ourselves of any native custom, either of conquest or 
 of slavery, to disfranchise any class of native proprietors ; 
 especially when experience has proved, that, where no party 
 questions are raised, the native title can be extinguished, 
 and all classes of claimants satisfied, for a few liaif-pence 
 per acre. 
 
 6. Believing myself to be better able than most other 
 persons to judge of the unprotected position of the out- 
 lying settlers in the scattered and especially in the pastoral 
 districts of New Zealand, I shall feel it to be my duty to 
 remind the inhabitants of the towns, even at the loss of 
 my own infiuence and popularity with them, that the 
 principles which I advocate, and the line of conduct which 
 I pursue, are not infiuenced by any ill-will towards them, 
 or even by an indifference to their interests ; but by a wide, 
 I may say, a general knowledge of New Zealand, and of all 
 classes of its inhabitants, and by the conviction that the 
 lives and property of our fellow-settlers, scattered as they 
 now are over at least 15,000 square miles of broken country, 
 can only be preserved by the greatest forbearance, and the 
 strictest justice in our dealings with the native people. 
 
 May God so prosper all the Councils of the Colony, and 
 so guide all private opinions, that "peace and happiness, 
 truth and justice, religion and piety, may be established 
 among us, upon the best and surest foundation," that of 
 the union of the two races ; in the terms of the Deed of 
 Grant for the site of the College at Porirua, dictated by 
 the native donors, " that they may grow up together as
 
 1855-1859.] ORDINATION OF A MAORI. 55 
 
 one people, upon the same common principle of faith in 
 Jesus Christ, and obedience to the Queen." 
 I remain, my dear Friends and Brethren, 
 
 In evil report and good report, 
 Yonr faithful and affectionate Friend and Pastor, 
 G. A. New Zealand. 
 
 On 23rd September of this year Levi Te Ahu was or- 
 dained deacon, the second of the Maori race to be advanced 
 to the dignity of the sacred ministry. Four days later 
 the bishop sailed in the new Southern Cross on a long 
 Visitation tour to the Chatham Islands and the Southern 
 Settlements, not returning to Auckland until March 31st 
 of the following year. On December 17th he received, on 
 arriving at Wellington, a letter from Professor Selwyn 
 containing the news of his father's decease on July 25th. 
 In his diary there appears tlie following entry against 
 July 30th :— 
 
 " My dear father buried at the church on Rusthall 
 Common, at 11.15 a.m., 10.55 P.M. N.Z. time. ' ijpe/jia tIv 
 rpCTToOaTov e'^r/'/ca/^e? iv ;!^^ovt KoiXa.' ' Faxit Deus ut sit 
 corpori quies, animte felicitas et in die ultimo Iseta resur- 
 rectio.' William's letter of this date received 17 December, 
 1855." 
 
 A letter from Archdeacon Abraham, written on April 
 1st, 1856, bears testimony to the precision with which the 
 bishop made and fulfilled his engagements in journeys 
 where he was almost wholly dependent on himself for 
 means of locomotion ; it also tells, what the bishop would 
 never have told, the hardships and difficulties which befell 
 
 him. 
 
 St. John's College, Auckland, 
 April Id, 1856. 
 
 I went yesterday to meet the bishop with a horse twenty 
 miles from here, according to appointment. To show his 
 wonderful punctuality to appointments of this kind, he 
 laid out his plans six months ago for a journey of 1,000 
 miles, and fixed to be here on the 31st of March. Accord- 
 ingly last week he sent a letter to say that he would be 
 at a place twenty miles from here on that day at 1 o'clock
 
 56 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [( hap. ii. 
 
 and as my watch pointed to the hour, I looked np and 
 saw him emerge from a bush, looking well, wiry, and bushy. 
 He had walked 550 miles and ridden 450 in the course of 
 the last three months, having examined and confirmed 
 1,500 people. He was alone nearly all the way, and had 
 great difficulty in getting the horses he did, so engaged 
 are the people in their cultivations, &c., that they would 
 not spare time to go with him. It is rather sad to think 
 of the contrast between his first journey fourteen years ago 
 with twenty-nine followers and this solitary one. How- 
 ever, perhaps it shows a more settled state of things in the 
 country ; and he was better pleased with their habits than 
 he expected to be ; nor is the diminution of numbers so 
 great. In one district he found almost exactly the same 
 numbers as were there ten years ago. We had heard that 
 drinking was very much on the increase, but he did not 
 find it so. He gave an amusing account of the way in 
 which he shamed them sometimes into giving him a horse 
 to ride. He would go to a village and ask for a horse and 
 guide. " There were none," was the answer. He would 
 point to a herd of thirty or forty not far off, — no one knew 
 to whom they belonged. He then would put down his pack 
 and begin to throw out the most useless articles, and pack 
 it up again, and begin to strap it on. "What are you 
 about ? " " Lightening my burden for a walk." This 
 touched some ivomans heart, who would either herself 
 fetch, or urge her husband to get a horse. One morning 
 at dawn, as he was just starting on his lonely march, he 
 found a woman standing with a horse ready for him. I 
 don't know that they are more selfish than other people. 
 I sup])0se in England a bishop or clergyman might find it 
 equally difficult to get any one to lend liim a horse and go 
 with him, unless he were well paid. They are becoming 
 more civilized, and occupied in ordinary work. . . . The last 
 month's journey was the worst, perliaps, as he was obliged 
 to leave his blanket behind to lighten his shoulders, and 
 had to sleep under his tent with nothing but a thin maude 
 these cold autumnal nights. 
 
 In this letter Archeacon Abraham touches on a prickly 
 question which perplexes all missionaries to the heathen, 
 viz. the baptism of polygamists. The custom of the
 
 1855-1859.] POLYGAMY. 
 
 diocese of New Zealand evidently did not command the 
 archdeacon's entire assent. Twenty years later Bishop 
 Selwyn was consulted on the subject, a question having 
 been sent home for solution from the West Coast of Africa, 
 and he wrote the following letter : — 
 
 The Palace, Lichfield, Od. 2Qih, 1875. 
 
 My dear Me. , 
 
 The subject of your letter is a vexed question. You 
 will find it argued by Archbishop Whately with his usual 
 confidence and force, on the side of the opinion expressed 
 in your letter. 
 
 In New Zealand our practice was to require a man to 
 confine himself to one wife, with a view to baptism. 
 Marriages in that country among the heathen were no- 
 thing more than concubinage, often without consent of 
 the woman. The men far exceeded the women in number ; 
 so that the practice of polygamy by the privileged class 
 of chiefs led to habitual sin in the lower orders, who could 
 not obtain wives. 
 
 I am not prepared to exalt our view of the question into 
 a Divine Law, on the ground of the words of our Lord or 
 St. Paul, but in New Zealand I have always felt it to be 
 a rule of very high moral expediency. 
 
 Different countiies, I suppose, must be judged by their 
 own special circumstances ; and therefore, dogmatical or 
 logical conclusions by Archbishop Whately or others, on 
 either side, may very often be wide of the mark. The 
 science of daKOfierpia taught us by our blessed Lord 
 would favour some flexibility of practice in the early days 
 of a mission, without compromise of the permanent prin- 
 ciples of Gospel Truth. 
 
 Yours very faithfully, 
 
 G. A. Lichfield. 
 
 While one brother had been ronghing it on a New 
 Zealand Visitation, another had been elected to the Lady 
 Margaret Professorship of Divinity, a position which he 
 filled until his death. The contest lay between Mr. W. 
 Selwyn and Professor Harold Browne, the present Bishop 
 of Winchester, and hence the allusion, in the bishop's
 
 68 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [cbav. ii. 
 
 letter of congratulation, to the battle of Hastings, a 
 humorous prelude to graver thoughts. 
 
 St, John's College, N.Z., A2)ril 2nd, 1856. 
 
 My dear William, 
 
 Many thanks for the account of the battle of Hastings, 
 which interested all our party, including Abraham and 
 Patteson, very much. May the Divine blessing guide 
 your pen and your tongue in the composition and .delivery 
 of your lectures, that the comments of the JMargaret Pro- 
 fessor may be a worthy setting of the pearl of great price. 
 
 The University of Cambridge certainly appeared to be 
 in a hopeful and teeming state. Professor Blunt, vmder 
 God's blessing, has not laboured in vain. There appeared 
 to be a practical earnestness and sound Church principle, 
 such as I do not remember in former days. However the 
 critics of my evening sermon may object to the expression 
 " good old Church of England party," I am deeply con- 
 vinced that it is the only standard which can "be the 
 stability of our times or make our Church a praise upon 
 earth," and I marvel that many who talk so much of the 
 sacred deposit of the Eeformation and of the truths sealed 
 by the blood of the martyrs are so ready to compromise or 
 fritter away the fundamental truths for which the Eeformers 
 were ever ready to die. I have just read a letter from INIr. 
 Wilson, vicar of Islington, to the JRecord, on the state of the 
 Church in Geneva, which ought to be a warning to those 
 who reject what I meant by good old Church of England 
 party — that is, a standard of doctrine and of worship, such 
 as that which is contained in our Book of Common Prayer. 
 
 Pray let me have full particulars of your course of 
 lectures, and encourage William to copy for me anything 
 which you think I should like to see. The idea of a con- 
 ference between three professors, so generally united in 
 feeling, as Jeremie, Browne, and yourself, charmed me. 
 There is hope, indeed, if this be carried but, that the 
 University will be the seed-plot of the Ministry, and that 
 the preparation of candidates for Holy Orders will not be 
 as it was in our days, the mere sitting out a reading of 
 Pearson to whicli nobody attended. 
 
 May God bless and direct you, and may our Lord loosen 
 your tongue and open your hearers' ears.
 
 1855-1859.] riTCAIRNEES. 59 
 
 The time had now come when the Melanesian Mission 
 demanded more perfect organisation and more uninter- 
 rupted care than had previously been possible. All who 
 were concerned in it grudged the labour and time spent in 
 the voyage to and from the islands in autumn and spring, 
 to say nothing of the break in the course of instruction 
 and the chilling of any good impressions when the boys 
 were sent back to live among their heathen friends. The 
 idea of finding a centre in a warmer latitude, and there 
 establishing a school where the scholars could be kept 
 through the whole year in a congenial climate, had long been 
 present to the bishop's mind; in the end of 1853 he had 
 gone with the then Governor, Sir George Grey, in H.M. 
 colonial brig Victoria, and had inspected Norfolk Island, 
 which appeared itself to both governor and bishop to be a 
 most suitable centre. Sir George Grey had written to the 
 Home Government recommending that some of the build- 
 ings now no longer used as a prison, and a portion of the 
 land, should be granted to the bishop, who had come to 
 England thinking that a request so urged and supported, and 
 withal so reasonable in itself, would not be unsuccessful. 
 About this time, however, the descendants of the mutineers 
 of the Bounty had outgrown the island of Pitcairn, and a 
 number of well-meaning people in England had taken up 
 their case with the enthusiasm which is always lavished 
 on the heroes of a romantic story and of blemished escut- 
 cheons, but which prosaic and honest folk have to go 
 without. These people, with more of kindliness than wis- 
 dom, who had applied for the removal of the Pitcairn 
 community to Norfolk Island, were horrified at the idea 
 of the interesting descendants of mutineers living on 
 the same island with Mr, Patteson and his Melanesian 
 scholars : the primitive and patriarchal system under 
 which they had existed at Pitcairn seemed to be incom- 
 patible with such neighbours : but the good philan- 
 thropists did not take into account the fact that Norfolk 
 Island, being " in the midst of the Australian colonies
 
 60 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. ii. 
 
 and in the track of the ships of all the great maritime 
 nations," could not be as Pitcairn had heen in its isolated 
 position, " a happy valley," into which the temptations 
 which intercourse with the world brings in its train could 
 not enter. 
 
 The bishop, with far deeper knowledge of human nature, 
 urged that in the face of such temptations, to which they 
 were unaccustomed, they would need some more active 
 salt to save them from corruption ; that in the IMission 
 Schools, and in doing sailor's and missionary's duties on 
 board the Southern Cross, the young men of the community 
 would lind a sphere of spiritual work and usefulness, in 
 which some might even be trained for the sacred ministry; 
 at the same time the Mission Station would contribute good 
 service to the State, and furnish a body of interjireters, 
 " which would save the captains of our men-of-war from 
 the humiliating necessity of taking evidence in the gravest 
 questions from the natives through the interpretation of 
 white men living in the most dissolute manner, and wholly 
 unworthy of credit." 
 
 On ]\Iay 27, 1856, the Southern Cross dropped her anchor 
 off Norfolk Island. The bishop wrote in his log : " Took 
 a boat and rowed in to the AVharf at the Cascades : saw no 
 one: walked into the store and took possession, giving three 
 cheers for Sir Thomas Acland " (who had opposed the 
 occupation of any part of the island by the bishop). " Met 
 a man who told us that the Pitcairners had not come, and 
 there were only twelve persons on the island. Eeturned 
 on board." 
 
 The next day the Southcr7i Cross sailed for Sydney, in 
 order that the bishop might appeal to Sir W. Denison, the 
 Governor of New South Wales. Always friendly to the work 
 of the Mission, he was, however, on this occasion obdu- 
 rate, and bent on carrying out his instructions, which 
 were to screen the Pitcairn community in their new home 
 from all contact with the outer world. A fortnight was 
 spent in tiiis unprofitable work of trying to influence the
 
 1855-1859.] " TAKING THE NONSENSE OUT." 01 
 
 Governor, but the only visible result of that sojourn of 
 fourteen days in Sydney Harbour is the following letter, 
 which the bishop wrote to his son in England : — 
 
 SvDXEY, "Southern Cross." at anchor, 
 Ju')ie 12th, 1856. 
 
 My very dear Johnnie, 
 
 Here we are, mamma and I, sitting quietly in our 
 cabin, with a most beautiful sunny sky overhead, though 
 it is now the middle of winter, in a pretty cove of this 
 beautiful harbour ; and the first use which I make of the 
 time of quiet is to write a letter to you and Willy, to be 
 ready for a ship which is soon to sail for England. We 
 intend to stay here about a week or ten days, and then to 
 sail for Norfolk Island to visit the Pitcairners, whom we 
 did not find there when we touched on our way from New 
 Zealand ; and then to sail away for the Solomon Islands, 
 to see our old scholar Didimang, and to bring away some 
 new ones ; then to beat up against the trade-wind for a 
 month or six weeks, calling at every island, fifty in num- 
 ber, in the New Hebrides and New Caledonia groups. 
 When we return, if it please God, to Auckland, we will 
 send you a full account of all our proceedings, that you 
 may look out the places on the map, and follow us in your 
 thoughts and your prayers. . . , 
 
 We have had excellent accounts of you both from many 
 friends, which have given us great pleasure. We hope 
 soon to hear of your being in the fourth form, and in Mr. 
 Coleridge's house, where I hope you M'ill not earn many 
 lickings by impudence learned as " Cock " of Mr. Hawtrey's 
 house. Try to be respectful and obedient to the master 
 whose fag you are, and to all the upper boys ; for this 
 is one of the great advantages of a public school, " to 
 take the nonsense out of a fellow," as one of our boys said 
 of our college. We have been made quite happy by the 
 last accounts, and have no doubt that we shall receive 
 similar reports from your uncles and Mr. Coleridge. 
 
 God bless you and guide you through the temptations 
 of youth. 
 
 Your own loving Father, 
 
 G. A. New Zealand.
 
 62 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN [chap. n. 
 
 It was probably to relieve pent-up feelings rather than 
 with any liope of persuading people who had already 
 made up their minds, that the bishop wrote in the follow- 
 ing terms to Sir John Patteson : — 
 
 Tattearua, Atjckland, March 2nd, 1857. 
 
 You know in what direction my wishes tend ; viz. that 
 Coley, when he has come to suitable age, and has deve- 
 loped, as I have no doubt he will, a fitness for this work, 
 should be the first Island Bishop upon the foundation of 
 which you and your brother Judge and Sir W. Farquhar 
 are trustees, that Norfolk Island should be the see of the 
 bishop, because the character of its population, the salu- 
 brity of its climate, and its insular position, make it the 
 fittest place for that purpose, though good folks in Eng- 
 land seem to think the contrary. There the bishop ought 
 to have his school of candidates for Holy Orders, who 
 might always be married men with their wives, to guard 
 against the idea, which seems to stand in our w^ay in 
 England, that the island scholars wiU demoralize the 
 Pitcairners. I am myself a member of the Pitcairn 
 Island Committee, and would never on any account do 
 anything to injure them ; but I cannot believe that their 
 purity or morality will be preserved by their being shut 
 up in a glass case, and debarred from a practical interest 
 in such works as ours, while they are made the pets and 
 playthings of all the officers of every man-of-war. As I 
 have seen a young lady's copy-book filled with a complete 
 list of all the officers of Her Majesty's ship Juno, and 
 rings on her fingers presented by some of the same offi- 
 cers, though I hope and believe that nothing has yet 
 occurred to impair the simplicity of these island damsels, 
 yet I can apprehend other dangers more imminent than the 
 residence among them of your son and his black scholars. 
 What the community will want is a high and practical 
 tone of feeling and sense of duty, — something to energize 
 a nature which partakes largely of tropical inertness — 
 some higher stimulus than the wool and beef and arrow- 
 root, with which their thoughts will speedily be absorbed. 
 Your affectionate and grateful Friend, 
 
 G. A. New Zealand.
 
 1855-1859.] NORFOLK ISLAND. G3 
 
 On July 4 the bishop reached ISTorfolk Island again, to 
 find the Pitcairners in full force, and very cordial in their 
 reception of the Episcopal party. None of the islanders 
 had ever been confirmed, and Mrs. Selwyn was left there 
 to assist in preparing the women and girls for that holy 
 rite, while the bishop sailed on his eighth voyage to the 
 islands, accompanied by Mr. Patteson, to whom every- 
 thing was new. The Southern Islands, which the bishop 
 had visited in his earlier trips, were left, and the whole 
 attention was concentrated on the virgin field offered by 
 the more northern groups. In this voyage the bishop 
 sailed further to the North than in any previous expedition: 
 landings were effected on sixty islands, and thirty-three 
 scholars were brought to New Zealand, the majority of 
 them being natives of the Solomon group. 
 
 After eight weeks' cruising the Southern Cross returned 
 to Norfolk Island on September 3rd, and the story of this 
 third visit shall be told in the bishop's own words in the 
 following letter to his sou : — 
 
 Auckland, Sept. 16th, 1856. 
 
 My very dear boy. 
 
 We have been dehghted to receive from your uncle and 
 aunt very good accounts of you, from which we conclude 
 that you have prayed for Divine grace to enable you to 
 fulfil the promises which you took upon yourself in your 
 Confirmation, not only in the presence of your earthly 
 parent, from whom, except for those few months, you 
 have been so long separated, but much more in the pre- 
 sence of that Heavenly Father who is about your path 
 and aboiit your bed. I have just returned from Norfolk 
 Island, where I held on Sunday the 7th September one of 
 the most remarkable confirmations, I should think, in the 
 history of the Church. Tlie whole adult population of 
 the Pitcairn Islanders, except three who were too feeble to 
 attend, presented themselves to me in nine classes to be 
 examined and confirmed. Your dear mother had care- 
 fully prepared all the women during two months that she
 
 64 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. ii. 
 
 resided on the island. The eldest of the candidates — a 
 woman more than seventy years of age — was a daughter 
 of John Adams, the last survivor of the mutineers of the 
 Bounty. Almost all the candidates were connected in 
 some degree of relationship with men who, if they had 
 been captured, would have been hanged at the yardarm 
 of a man-of-war, and who died violent deaths, the result 
 of intoxication, jealousy, and every other evil passion. And 
 yet the grace of God enabled John Adams to sow a seed 
 in the hearts of the children among whom he was left 
 alone in the year 1800, which bore this rich harvest in 
 1856, when eighty-five of his children, grandchildren, sons- 
 in-law, or daughters-in-law, or foster-children, whom he had 
 adopted, were confirmed by me with the full conviction of 
 my own feelings that in every respect which is outwardly 
 discernible, in moral conduct, in attendance on public 
 worship, in temperance, soberness, chastity, in respect for 
 the Lord's Day, and in knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, 
 the whole adult community was duly qualified for the 
 holy Ordinance. And to make the scene more striking, 
 the service was performed in the Convict Chapel, the very 
 opposite of the place where you were confirmed^ among 
 the signs of royalty, and honour, and chivalry, blended 
 with the most beautiful architecture and the richest carv- 
 ings. The chapel opened into the prison-yard, set round 
 with every kind of cell for every class of criminal ; in 
 every corner heaps of rusty fetters and cast-off garments, 
 marked with the broad arrow and inimbered on the back, 
 as if the wearer were no longer worthy of a name ; and all 
 these signs of misery and sin made more striking by the 
 horrid silence of the solitary cells, or of the wards which 
 the numbers showed to have been once crowded with 
 20, 30, or even 100 prisoners. Close by this visible type 
 of everything that is most hateful in sin and in its con- 
 sequences might be heard the song of praise, in which 
 every voice joined ; and on the 7th September eighty-five 
 persons there knelt before the Lord's Table, to receive 
 strength to fulfil their baptismal promise, by fighting man- 
 fully under Christ's banner against sin, the world, and 
 the devil. 
 
 My dear boy, you have already applied to yourself the 
 ^ S. George's Chapel, Windsor.
 
 1855-1850.] SANTA MARIA. 65 
 
 moral of all this. If such be the love of God and the 
 power of Diviue grace in training up the children of 
 mutineers and drunkards, who but for that Grace might 
 have been worse than the worst of those criminals who 
 made Norfolk Island, as it was called by Judge Burton, a 
 hell upon earth, surely God will expect even more fruit 
 from the children of Cliristian parents, nurtured among 
 many prayers of parents and sponsors, under the shadow 
 of cathedrals, in the constant enjoyment of all the means 
 of grace, with parental love yearning after them at a dis- 
 tance, and the kindest foster-parents watching over them 
 at home, and with the ever-present Spirit of their Heavenly 
 Father dwelling within their hearts. You are of an age to 
 feel such thoughts as these, and to apply them to your own 
 conduct ; so do not think, like the Eton " Fellows," that 
 your pater preaches too long sermons ; but let a few words 
 from m.e from time to time at long intervals set you think- 
 ing, and so become the seed of a thousand good resolutions 
 and holy thoughts. 
 
 The bishop was averse from writing detailed records of 
 his voyages, and little would have been known of them 
 had not his friends demanded from him vivcl voce stories 
 of his doings when he returned to his home. Thus a 
 graphic and independent account of the doings of this 
 eighth voyage to Melanesia was sent to a clergyman in 
 England : — 
 
 Od. ISth, 1856. 
 
 I will give you some anecdotes of the bishop's last trip 
 to the north. Perhaps you have heard them before through 
 Judge Patteson. 
 
 They came to an island called Santa Maria, north of 
 Mallicolo, and after reading Quiros' account of his land- 
 ing there 250 years ago, they went into the same bay as 
 he did. He states that he was kindly treated by the old 
 folks, with whom he interchanged presents ; but lie ob- 
 served the young men moving off to a promontory 
 at some little distance, round which his boat must pass. 
 Accordingly, when he was rounding this point, he was 
 saluted by a volley of arrows. Just so, the bishop was
 
 66 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [( hap. ii. 
 
 Idudly received by the old people in the bay, and he 
 observed the young folk moving off to the promontory ; 
 and accordingly he kept his boat out of reach of arrow- 
 shot, but was duly saluted with a volley in passing. And 
 this has been going on apparently for 250 years without 
 interruption. What a stereotype is this ! 
 
 The bishop passed on two or three miles, landed at 
 another village, and made presents to the people ; so he 
 hopes to have secured for himself a favourable reception 
 next year. 
 
 Have you any notion of the way in which he conducts 
 his missionary work ? Perhaps you fancy that, like S. 
 Augustine landing at IJamsgate, he marches up chanting 
 litanies in procession. If he did, he would probably be 
 killed before he had gone 100 yards; for there is no 
 Queen Bertha there to have prepared the men's minds 
 and hearts for the Gospeh In due time, maybe, he will 
 chant his Litany and Te Deum there. But on first in- 
 vading the land or lagoon he has to make a favourable 
 impression on the people's minds by presents, and by 
 letting them see that he is not come to trade. This he 
 does by leaving his boat ten or twenty yards from the 
 reef, where some 100 people are standing and shouting; 
 he then plunges into the water, arranging no end of pre- 
 sents on his back, which he has been showing to their 
 astounded eyes out of the boat. He probably has learnt 
 from some stray canoe or a neighbouring island the name 
 of tlie chief. He calls out his name ; he steps forward ; 
 the bishop hands him a tomahawk, and holds out his hand 
 for the chief's bow and arrows. By this Glaucus and Dio- 
 medes' process he wins golden opinions at all events. The 
 old chief with innate chivalry sends the tomahawk to the 
 rear, to show that he is sale and may place confidence in 
 him. The bishop pats the children on the head, gives 
 them fish-hooks and red tape ; for there is an enormous 
 demand for red tape in these islands. Probably then the 
 bishop has some " tame elephant " with him — a black boy 
 from some other island, — and he has clothed him, and 
 taught hira to read or the like ; and he brings forward 
 this spi'cinien and sample, and tries to make them under- 
 stand he wants some of their boys to treat in like manner. 
 The bishop gets aa many names written down as he can,
 
 1855-1859.] FRUITS OF SACRIFICE. 67 
 
 and picks up as many words as he can ; establishes a 
 friendly relation, and exchanges calico for yams perhaps, 
 or cocoa-nuts, and after a while swims off to his boat. 
 Next year he will go and call out the names of his old 
 friends ; get two or three on board ; induce them to take 
 a trip with hira while he goes to the neiglibouring islands. 
 So he learns their language enough to tell them wliat he 
 has come for. He returns, and lands his guests, with full 
 instructions to tell the people his objects ; and the third 
 voyage he finds plenty ready to come off to New Zealand, 
 or any other place where he fixes his head -quarters. 
 
 Mr. Patteson too had found the work not merely con- 
 genial, but engrossing and attractive, and had gladdened 
 the bishop's heart by writing to him that it was so ; his 
 letter drew forth the following reply : — 
 
 Wellington, Nov. 2ith, 1856. 
 My DEA.E COLEY, 
 
 I am most thankful to receive your good account of the 
 boys, and to find that you are experiencing what I always 
 felt to be so remarkable a feature in this work, viz. the 
 affection which grows up spontaneously towards these 
 wild children of nature. To find such elements of good 
 where we might have expected every evil passion to be 
 dominant is a very great encouragement. We have been 
 delighted to hear of the good old Judge entering with full 
 flow of feeling into the proceedings of St. Barnabas' Day, 
 as one who has now qualified himself for a full share in 
 that holy fellowship, by having given a better contribu- 
 tion than even Barnabas laid at the feet of the Apostles. 
 Pray tell him from me when you write how thankful I 
 am that he has thus found his consolation, and practically 
 verified our Lord's promise, that those who give up sons 
 for His sake shall receive them back again even in this 
 life. As men said of St. Paul, your bodily presence was 
 little compared with the power of your letters to place 
 you before your father's mind, as engaged in the work to 
 which he has dedicated you, a work tending to complete 
 the number of God's elect, and so to bring about that 
 re-union of parents and children over which death will 
 have no dominion." 
 
 VOL. II. F
 
 68 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [(HAp. ii. 
 
 The bishop-captain kept up the discipline of his ship 
 M'ith man-of-war's precision, and the foregoing letter goes 
 from profound subjects to the domestic economy of the 
 
 Sonfhcni Cros->. 
 
 Our household on board has been going on well till last 
 
 Saturday, when Mr. thought proper, after a whole 
 
 day's leave on shore, to keep himself and the two B 
 
 away till 10.30 p.m., for which he and they have been 
 " loffsed," according to the law. Soal and Fisher have 
 been uniformly steady. 
 
 In October of this busy year the bishop sailed again to 
 the southward on Visitation, hoping to greet the new Bishop 
 of Christchurch on his arrival. It will be remembered 
 that in 1851 the bishop had resigned this portion of his 
 diocese, and had hoped that a bishop would have come out 
 with the first detachment of settlers in the Canterbury 
 colony ; but for five years that hope had been disappointed. 
 On Christmas Eve the bishop wrote in his diary : — 
 
 " Went on board at 8, took off the bishop and his whole 
 famUy in our two boats : carried them to the Southern 
 Cross; whole Harper family seated round our cabin, fourteen 
 or fifteen happy faces. Went on shore, borrowed trucks, 
 pulled baggage up bridle path ; three cheers on the top : 
 packed on horses down the hill : met carts at the bottom." 
 
 On the Christmas Day the new bishop was installed, 
 and on the festival of S. Stephen Bishop Selwyn wrote : — 
 
 " This day fifteen years I left England, and this morning 
 I woke up with a thankful feeling that my load was at 
 length lightened by the transfer to the Bishop of Christ- 
 church of one-third of New Zealand." 
 
 Tlius ended a year of much work, and many blessings. 
 On New Year's Day the Southern Cross sailed again for 
 Auckland, vza the Chatham Islands, Wellington, and 
 Waiapu. 
 
 The year 1857 was fraught with events of great import- 
 ance ; the Melanesian voyage, in whicli the islanders were
 
 1855-1859.] GROWTH OF EPISCOPATE. 69 
 
 carried to th^ir homes on the approach of winter, was made 
 without the bishop taking any part in it. He was fully 
 engaged with plans for a conference which was held in June 
 at Taurarua for the purpose of agreeing on a Constitution for 
 the Church of New Zealand. This conference was attended 
 by representatives from all tlie other Settlements and by 
 the missionaries of the Church Missionary Society. The 
 whole question of Ecclesiastical Legislation will be dealt 
 with in a separate chapter, and the event is only thus 
 briefly chronicled here. The happy accom^alishment of 
 his hopes for the diocese of Christchurch had led him to 
 look forward to a still larger extension of the Episcopate, 
 and on these and other topics he wrote a letter of much 
 interest to the Rev. Ernest Hawkins : — 
 
 Auckland, Feb. 21th, 1857. 
 
 The natural effect of the creation of the Bishopric of 
 Christchurch has been to make our other provinces desirous 
 of the same benefit. I proposed at first thnt Wellington 
 and Nelson should be united in one diocese ; but Nelson 
 strongly objected to this, and I think with good reason, as 
 the lion's share of the benefit would certainly remain with 
 Wellington ; and it is very probable that Nelson would 
 not have seen more of the new bishop than they do of me ; 
 for I seldom fail of going there every year. Church meet- 
 ings have been held in both places, and resolutions have 
 been cordially adopted, and forwarded to the Secretary of 
 State for the Colonies and to the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 with the sanction of the Governor of New Zealand. 
 
 I therefore beg for the support and consent of the 
 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign 
 Parts to the proposed arrangements, which I am sure, 
 under the Divine blessing, will have the effect of building 
 up the Church of England in this country on a sure foun- 
 dation of ecclesiastical polity. I deprecate any question 
 about the necessity of this subdivision : on these simple 
 grounds, that New Zealand is as large as Great Britain, and 
 therefore that five, or even six bishops, will have no sine- 
 cure, as the number of persons to be confirmed is not the 
 labour, but the distance to be gone in search of them. My 
 average is about one candidate for confirmation for every 
 
 F 2
 
 70 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [cHAr. ii. 
 
 mile of travelling. In all other respects of organizing in- 
 stitutions and giving a tone to a new society, it is absolutely 
 necessary that a bishop should be early in the field, and 
 have a field within the compass of his powers. 
 
 Melajstesia and Norfolk Island. — There has been and 
 is great confusion about the Island portion of the diocese of 
 New Zealand, 
 
 In 1841, the diocese of New Zealand was formed by 
 Letters Patent, separating it from Australia; and with 
 geographical limits including Norfolk Island, and expressly 
 giving to my charge all islands adjacent to New Zealand. 
 Norfolk Island is 400 miles only from New Zealand, 800 
 from Sydney, 1,000 from Van Diemen's Land. 
 
 In 1842, when the convict establishments were trans- 
 ferred from Sydney to Tasmania, an Act was passed annex- 
 ing Norfolk Island to Tasmania, and on the supposition 
 that it was still part of the diocese of Australia, trans- 
 ferring the ecclesiastical jurisdiction to the Bishop of 
 Tasmania. To this I made no objection, as it seemed only 
 reasonable that the Bishop of Tasmania should superintend 
 all the convict chaplains, whether in Van Diemen's Land 
 or Norfolk Island. 
 
 But the convict system having ceased in Norfolk Island 
 I can see no reason why the spiritual oversight should not 
 revert to the Bishop of New Zealand (even though the 
 civil government be retransferred to Sydney) till the 
 island becomes the See of the Bishop of Melanesia, for 
 which purpose it is admirably adapted. 
 
 The simple and practical course seems to be : 
 
 1. To repeal the Act 6 & 7 Victoria, c. 35. 
 
 2. To pass a new Act, if necessarj^ placing Norfolk 
 Island under the Governor of New South Wales. 
 
 3. To leave the ecclesiastical oversight to revert to the 
 Bishop of New Zealand, the insular character of whose 
 diocese constrains him to maritime habits, and makes it 
 easy for him to visit Norfolk Island. 15ut Parliament 
 need have nothing to do with this, as all the liadicals have 
 a great objection to legislating for the Colonial Church, and 
 I, though no Padical, in this point agree with them. The 
 Act being repealed which annexed Norfolk Island to the 
 diocese of Tasmania, my Letters Patent will then, I presume, 
 ajjain take effect.
 
 1855-1859.] MELANESIA. 71 
 
 As to the Melanesian Bishopric, plans, I thank God, 
 are fast ripening. 
 
 We have nearly 10,000/. already paid up and invested 
 for the endowment of the bishopric. 
 
 Eev. J. C. Patteson has already visited with me twenty- 
 seven islands, besides twenty-five more where we were 
 not able to hold intercourse with the people. He has ac- 
 quired the languages of New Zealand, the Solomon Islands 
 and one of the Loyalty Islands, to a sufficient extent to 
 teach and preach to the people ; and is now constantly 
 engaged with a school of native youths from St. Christoval, 
 Guadalcanar and Nengone, with whom we hope to return 
 in June to their islands, and in the case of the two first- 
 named islands to widen and improve our acquaintance with 
 the people, besides pushing out into the unknown regions 
 of 'New Ireland, New Britain, and New Hanover. The 
 establishment of the new bishoprics in New Zealand will 
 leave me much more time for missionary work, especially 
 as the portion of the country which will still remain under 
 my charge will be superintended, during my absence, by 
 such trustworthy men as the two Archdeacons Williams, 
 Archdeacon Abraham and Archdeacon Browne. It is surely 
 for the interest of the Church that I should leave to such 
 tried and experienced servants of Christ as much freedom 
 as possible to administer the affairs of their own arch- 
 deaconries. I should not have made these remarks if I 
 had not heard something said about neglect of New Zea- 
 land. On the contrary, when we are in a situation, as we 
 hope to be in a few years, to claim the Bishopric of Norfolk 
 Island with its train of 100 islands, chiefly ministered to 
 by native pastors, but some by the children of Pitcairners, 
 then there will be nothing that will please me more than 
 to shrink away from all the ground over which I have been 
 unduly stretched, and to devote the rest of my days to the 
 cultivation of a garden-plot in New Zealand. 
 
 Church Trust Deed and System. — I have just seen 
 a resolution of the S.P.G. allowing of grants of money for 
 endowment to be made to dioceses where the bishop, 
 clergy, and laity are legally incorporated : and Archdeacon 
 Abraham seems to have received private information that 
 the word legally was put into the resolution on purpose to 
 restrict such grants to dioceses where Church Acts, such as
 
 72 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYX. [> 
 
 those of ]\Ielbourne and Canada, have been passed by the 
 Colonial Legislature ; but that our Trust Deed, resting 
 upon the general powers of an Act of our Assembly, appli- 
 cable to all religious bodies, but not specifying the Church 
 of England, would not come within the intention of 3^our 
 resolution. If this should be the case, I would submit to 
 the Society that there is no real difference between the 
 ])lau proposed in New Zealand and those adopted in Mel- 
 l)Ourne or Canada. No Colonial Legislature can establish a 
 Church. All it can do is to legalize a Sect. So far is the 
 Melbourne Act from being higher or safer ground than 
 ours, that the petition from the members of the Church in 
 Melbourne stated most clearly that they asked for nothing 
 more than might be given to any other religious body ; 
 but that the other bodies, having ready-made systems of 
 their own, did not require the Colonial Legislature to create 
 them for them ; but that the Church of England having 
 no such system of its own, came to the Legislature to make 
 one for her. We say, on the contrary, we have as good a 
 system as any other denomination, and as good a right to 
 carry it out ; and all we ask is, that as we have no Courts 
 of our own, you will give us the use of your Court to en- 
 force, if necessary, the covenants which we make among 
 ourselves. Our Trust Deed will state what our system is, 
 and an Act passed at the last session of our General 
 Assembly incorporates all religious bodies, without speci- 
 fying any by name except the Wesleyans and Romanists, 
 who had got into some difficulty with their property which 
 required special legislation. It will, I think, be satisfactory 
 to you to know that Sir John Patteson and our Chief 
 Justice Martin have gone carefully into the Draft Trust 
 Deed and the Act of the Cleneral Assembly of New Zea- 
 land, and these are Sir John Patteson's words in a letter 
 dated London, 5th Dec. 1856 : — 
 
 " Judge Martin and I have had two evenings' talk touch- 
 ing New Zealand aiiairs. We looked over the drafts of 
 the Trust Deed and the Bill which the Archdeacon sent 
 me, and thouglit they would answer the intended purpose 
 very well." 
 
 We are aiming at the same ends as our brethren in 
 Canada and Melbourne, viz. a strictly legal incorporation 
 of the Church of England in tliis Colony ; l)ut our proposed
 
 1855-1859.] VANUA LAVA. 73 
 
 mode of operation differs in detail from theirs, for reasons 
 which it would take me almost a volume to explain. But 
 my chief desire is to avoid confusion between functions so 
 entirely distinct, so far as concerns the Church, as those of 
 the Imperial Parliament and the Colonial Legislature. 
 
 The Conference over, the bishop carried back to tlieir 
 homes the Bishop of Christchurch and the representatives 
 of the southern portions of New Zealand, and then set out 
 on July 22nd with Mr. Patteson on the most exhaustive 
 inspection of the Melanesian Islands which he ever made. 
 Norfolk Island was first visited, and Mrs. Selwyn was in- 
 stalled in Government House, to the delight of the whole 
 population ; four of the Pitcairners joined the ship, which 
 would now always have a full complement of hands on 
 board when a boat's crew was taking the bishop ashore ; 
 and thus equipped she visited in succession the Loyalty 
 Islands, New Hebrides, Banks' Islands, Santa Cruz group, 
 and the Southern Islands of the Solomon group ; hardly 
 an island was passed over. At the Loyalty Islands the 
 bishop encouraged the native teachers of the London Mis- 
 sionary Society, who had been for a long time without any 
 supervision or support on the part of their superiors : and 
 at the New Hebrides friendly communications were held 
 with the Presbyterian teachers. Passing northward the 
 bishop entered into a field that was occupied by no one but 
 himself, and into waters in which his own charts were the 
 only guides. 
 
 There were strange, wild characters roaming about the 
 seas in those days, outlaws, by choice or necessity, from 
 civilized countries, whose only law was the law of might ; 
 and the bishop had more than one characteristic interview 
 with leaders among these. One of these, as he lay dying 
 in a harbour of the New Hebrides, said — " Take my boy 
 to Bishop Selwyn, and teU him to bring him up not to be 
 so big a scamp as his father." 
 
 On this voyage the spacious harbour at Vanua Lava 
 was discovered, and named Port Patteson after Sir Jolni
 
 74 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. ii. 
 
 Patteson : here a Sunday was spent quietly, the natives of 
 this and the neighbouring island of Mota dropping in in 
 their canoes, and looking on half amused, half awestricken. 
 Little did the worshippers think that, among those nude 
 and grotesque figures, with frizzled hair and boar-tusk on 
 wrist, there was standing one who was destined to be the 
 first Native priest of Melanesia, George Sarawia. 
 
 At Lifu the native teachers welcomed the arrival of 
 the Mission ship, and begged that a missionary might be 
 sent to them : the bishop, unwilling to explain at length 
 the difficulty of granting the request, could only prescribe 
 patience ; but his old scholar John Cho, with liis wife and 
 two men, determined to go to New Zealand for another so- 
 journ, and thus the Southern Cross returned to Norfolk 
 Island and to New Zealand, with every available square 
 foot of room well occupied by a motley group of 
 passengers. 
 
 A few days were spent at Auckland, and the bishop, 
 stranger always to rest and leisure, started on a Visitation to 
 those portions of the Southern Island which were not under 
 the care of Bishop Harper. He returned to Auckland early 
 in 1858, which was in many respects a most eventful year. 
 After a Visitation of the Chatham Islands and of Taranaki, 
 which was not free from mutterings of war, the bishop 
 returned to Auckland on April 8th, and a fortnight later 
 sailed with Mr, Patteson on a very fruitful voyage to the 
 islands, leaving Mrs. Selwyn for the third time on Norfolk 
 Island. Visits were paid to Lifu and Nengone ; and 
 scholars were returned to their friends : at Mai on May 15th 
 the bishop restored a lad named Petere to his friends in 
 the presence of more than 100 of his own people. The 
 boy spoke to his friends of what he had learned in New 
 Zealand about God and our Lord, the Lord's Day, the duty 
 of living in peace, &c., and then Mr. Patteson preached the 
 first sermon ever heard on Mai. The bishop entered in his 
 journal on this eventful day, " Petere and Laure waiting 
 upon us to the very last, and bringing mats and presents for
 
 1855-1859.] MR. PATTESON AT LIFU. 75 
 
 all. Poor boys, with tears in their eyes, and up to their 
 waists in water, they were the last to leave us. I blessed 
 them both and returned on board, full of thankfulness fof 
 this wonderful day." 
 
 On June 14th the bishop left Mr. Patteson at Lifu, where 
 he had determined to keep school with his pupils during 
 the winter instead of sending them back to their own 
 island homes and the barbarism which reigned there. The 
 island was not well suited for a Melanesian winter school : 
 cocoa-nuts were abundant, but bananas, bread-fruit, and 
 sugar-cane, to which the boys had been accustomed, were 
 not to be had. Water too was scarce : but with Norfolk 
 Island closed against him as a permanent settlement, Mr. 
 Patteson had no great range of choice, although he after- 
 wards kept his school at Mota. The climate too was cold, 
 and subject to great variations of temperature. Here, 
 however, Mr. Patteson spent sixteen weeks, until on 
 September 30th, the bishop on board the Soutlicrn Cross 
 called for him and took him on a voyage to the northward, 
 which ended only in November. 
 
 The Southern Cross on this northward trip met with an 
 accident which might have been more serious. It has been 
 pleasantly recorded by one who was present, the Rev. B. T. 
 Dudley, in the columns of the AucJdand Church Gazette: — 
 
 " On the day on which we passed up the lagoon, at New 
 Caledonia, there was a peculiar sheen on the water, which 
 rendered it very difficult to see the bottom (usually in 
 these lagoons the bottom can be seen with wonderful clear- 
 ness, even to a depth of fifteen to twenty fathoms). The 
 bishop, alternately with the captain, had been watching on 
 the fore-yard as we sailed along throughout the whole 
 morning, when suddenly, the peculiar grating sound which 
 once heard cannot be easily forgotten reached our ears; 
 there was an evident cessation of forward motion, followed 
 shortly by a succession of severe bumps, and we soon 
 found that the ship's ' forefoot ' was fast aground. What 
 was to be done ? Captain Williams, who had been follow- 
 ing us in the Mary Ann Watson, as soon as he came up to
 
 76 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [. hai-. n. 
 
 US pulled OQ board and undertook to carry the news of our 
 mishap to Port de France, meanwhile suggesting to us to 
 take to our boats ; the bishop, however, preferred to do his 
 best to help himself before calling in other aid. Accord- 
 ingly, under the directions of the captain, who certainly 
 rose to this occasion, we all, from the bishop downwards, 
 worked with a will, carrying anchors out into deeper water, 
 heaving on the windlass, &c., and finally, about midnight, 
 the tide having risen to the full, we had the satisfaction of 
 feeling the ship slip off the ledge on which she had rested 
 into the deeper water alongside. Shortly after this one of 
 the boats of H.M. Iris, which happened then to be lying 
 in the harbour, came out to us, and we warped off into 
 deeper water. In the morning we entered the harbour, 
 being met by the steamer Styx putting forth to our rescue ; 
 and found the ^French man-of-war Bayonnais and several 
 transports in harbour besides the Iris, the whole making a 
 lively scene. 
 
 " Now came the difficulty ; the vessel showed no signs of 
 serious injury ; but how were we to know that her bottom, 
 after all the bumping that had gone on (and very hard 
 bumping too), was fit for the voyage to New Zealand ? there 
 was no dock, no patent slip ; not even a ' hard ' on which 
 to lay the vessel, and no divers were obtainable. 
 
 " The bishop was equal to the occasion. He caused the 
 ship to be heeled over as far as was safe ; and then, having 
 stripped himself to his tweed trousers and jersey, in the 
 presence of the captain of the Bayonnais and some of his 
 officers, and amid their exclamations of admiration, made a 
 succession of dives, during which he felt over the whole of 
 the keel and forward part of the vessel, much to the detri- 
 ment of his hands, which were cut to pieces with the 
 jagged copper; and ascertained the exact condition of her 
 bottom, and the nature of the injuries sustained. No 
 wonder that the next day, after dining on board the 
 Frenchman, he was sent away with a salute of eleven 
 fruns ! " 
 
 During the interval of the two voyages the bishop wrote 
 a characteristic letter to his sister, who had undertaken the 
 charge of an important Training Institution at Sandwell 
 near Birmingham.
 
 1855-1859.] SANDWELL. 77 
 
 Auckland, Kawau Island, 
 August 2ith, 1858 (St. Bartholovicw's Day). 
 
 My dear Sister, 
 
 I can imagine you to-day expounding the character of 
 St. Bartholomew to your little congregation ; and teaching 
 them to be like Nathanael, Israelites indeed without 
 guile. May all the orphans whom you are bringing up be 
 guileless children of that Heavenly Father, who has given 
 His blessed Son to wash them in His own blood, that they 
 may walk in white raiment, and follow the Lamb whither- 
 soever He goeth. 
 
 My employment at tlie present time is of a different 
 kind, though to the same end ; for I am living here in an 
 old deserted cottage, once the dwelling of a Cornish miner 
 (working in the copper-mine now abandoned), to super- 
 intend the repairs of the Southern C?'oss, which was slightly 
 damaged by six hours' bumping on a reef in New Caledonia. 
 My dwelling is not equal to Sandwell ; but it is wonder- 
 fully comfortable and quiet; and I only regret that I did 
 not bring down dear Sarah with me to share my hermitage. 
 The fruit of this uninterrupted leisure is a letter to you, to 
 assure you of our interest in your great work ; and of our 
 frequent prayers that it may l3e abundantly blessed. The 
 feature in it which pleases me most is its comprehensive- 
 ness in providing for the wants of so many different classes 
 of persons ; and yet all united together by a reciprocity of 
 usefulness, like a " body fitly joined together and com- 
 pacted by that which every joint supplieth." It is an 
 experiment which we have tried on a large scale, and with 
 some measure of success, though the peculiar circumstances 
 of a colony are very unfavourable to the growth of such 
 institutions. Still we point to our scholars in every part 
 of New Zealand and elsewhere, as proofs that industrious 
 habits inculcated at school will not easily be lost. Through 
 the same process of reciprocal industry at St. John's 
 College have come forth the following results : — 
 
 Clergymen. — Mr. Hutton, Mr. Fisher, Mr. S. Williams, 
 Mr. H. P. Butt, Mr. F. Gould, Mr. A. G. Purchas, Mr. E. 
 H. Heywood, Mr. C. P. Davies, Mr. Ptota Waitoa (New 
 Zealander), Mr. T. L. Tudor. 
 
 Laity. — Henry Taratoa, head teacher of Otaki native
 
 78 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [( hai'. ii. 
 
 school ; Philemon Te Karari, head teacher of St. Stephen's 
 native school ; Nelson Hector, chief officer in P. and 0. 
 Company's steamer ; G. and F, Howard, now managers of 
 the College farm; besides many more, who, taken under 
 the charge of the College in the depressed period of the 
 colony, and in a state of poverty, are now all doing well 
 as clerks in banks or merchants' offices, surveyors, managers 
 of saw-mills, &c. 
 
 I can scarcely go to any part of the country where old 
 scholars of the College do not at once come forward to 
 offer me their assistance. All this is by way of encou- 
 ragement to you, and to express my conviction that you 
 have laid the right foundation in taking thought first for 
 tlie poor. This was the ruling principle of all the ancient 
 foundations which have been the stability of the English 
 commonwealth. The gentleman and lady heresy is the 
 young cuckoo against which you must guard, lest it drive 
 your hedge-sparrows out of their own nest. You will 
 have persons of what are called the higher class, who will 
 wish to belong to your club, that they may get more 
 than the value of their subscription. They will he glad 
 enough to be waited upon by your orphan children, but 
 they will teach them nothing in return. Eliminate all 
 such elements as these, and cherish your hedge-sparrows, 
 those who will take everything as it comes, and stay with 
 you in winter as well as summer, without fancies or likes 
 and dislikes. ]\Iay you have the poor always with you, 
 and always have the will and the power to do them good. 
 Your very affectionate Brother, 
 
 G. A. New Zealand. 
 
 Events had happened in England during this year which 
 gave to the bishop much cause for thankfulness. Ilis firm 
 friends. Archdeacon Abraham and the Rev. E. Hobhouse 
 had been consecrated to the Sees of Wellington and Nelson 
 respectively. New Zealand was no longer the wild un- 
 cultivated country over which he had travelled on foot, or 
 around whose coasts he had sailed in his little craft: it 
 was rapidly becoming peopled with English immigrants, 
 the Maoris were proving their fitness for Holy Orders,
 
 1855-1859.] KOHIMARAMA. 79 
 
 and the Church was firmly taking root. In seventeen 
 years the bishop found himself one of four bishops who 
 were shepherding the flock in New Zealand ; in the islands 
 of Melanesia Mr. Patteson was each year revealing the 
 marvellous powers which pointed him out as the born 
 leader of the crusade which Bishop Selwyn had originated. 
 It was therefore with real thankfulness that the bishop 
 was enabled to write in his diary on 31st December: — 
 
 "A year of many blessings. Two prosperous voyages 
 to the Islands; one prosperous voyage to the Southern 
 Settlements ; one third of the Visitation Tour by land 
 accomplished ; the consecration of the Bishops of Wellington 
 and Nelson." 
 
 But the year which followed was hardly less fruitful in 
 results : in 1859 the first General Synod was held, of -which 
 more will be written in another chapter : on the same 
 occasion another See was founded, and Archdeacon Williams 
 was consecrated Bishop of Waiapu. Mr. Patteson had 
 made one voyage before Easter, the autumn having set in 
 unusually early, and had returned all his boys to their 
 homes, and in August he sailed again, accompanied by 
 Bishop Selwyn, to whom this was the last occasion of 
 visiting Melanesia. On their return Mr. Patteson, who 
 had now earned and assumed the honour and the 
 duties of leadership in the work of the mission, was 
 enabled to move his scholars from St. John's College to a 
 new position at Kohimarama, on the Waitamata Har- 
 bour, where the liead-quarters continued until in 1867 
 they were transferred to Norfolk Island. The local 
 work of St. John's Cullege, which, as contrasted with the 
 Melanesian work, had seemed to fade away, and with it 
 many bright hopes, was in part revived at this time. The 
 bishop's sermon at the re-opening, on the text, " Thou fool, 
 that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die," 
 was most characteristic, and full of hope for the future. 
 The Eev. S. Blackburne, who was selected as the head of 
 St. John's, has kindly contributed his own impression of
 
 80 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [.hap. ii. 
 
 the bishop and of his work, both in New Zealand and in 
 Lichfield : — 
 
 " It was an immense privilecie to be brought into intimate 
 intercourse with Bishop and ]\lrs. Selwyn, Bishop Patteson, 
 and Sir W. ISIartin. Bishop Selwyn I always regard as the 
 greatest man this age has produced. A king every inch of 
 him, he would rule by a look, but stoop to perform the 
 most menial office without the slightest loss of dignity. 
 
 " What I most admired in him was his keen sense of duty, 
 and his grand simplicity of character. 
 
 " I was attracted to New Zealand by hero-worship ; I had 
 never seen the bishop, but in my Cambridge days I had 
 heard much of him. 
 
 " When Bishop Abraham, having been commissioned to 
 appoint his successor at St. John's College, kindly offered 
 the post to me, I told him that I looked forward with 
 intense pleasure to working in the diocese of so great a 
 man as Bishop Selwyn. He replied, ' He is a great man, 
 and would appear so to his valet, if he had one.' 
 
 " Soon after we had cast anchor in Auckland harbour the 
 captain told me that the bishop was pulling off to the ship. 
 As he came on board all were struck with his appearance, 
 and showed great respect. His first wish was to make 
 acquaintance with the emigrants, and I introduced many to 
 him. He spoke in such a kind and fatherly way to all. 
 
 " He had arranged a month beforehand to devote the day 
 of our arrival to welcoming us, and settling us at the 
 college. 
 
 " One instance of simplicity he soon gave us. I was busy 
 with boxes, &c., getting them ready for the boat, when the 
 bi-sliop came up and said, ' Are these yours ? ' and he took 
 a large box in each hand, and carried it to the gangway, 
 much to our astonishment and that of the captain, crew, 
 and passengers. But there was no loss of dignity. He 
 looked grand when lie was doing porter's work. There 
 was one youth, whom I specially brought under his notice. 
 He was an apprentice, who had met with a frightful ac- 
 cident, and whom we had brought through (humanly 
 speaking) by careful nursing. As he was recovering, I had 
 many opportunities of talking to him, and I prepared him 
 ior confirmation, in the hope that there might be one in
 
 1855-1859.] FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 81 
 
 Auckland whilst the ship was in harbour. So I asked the 
 bishop if he was going to hold a Confirmation soon. ' Oh,' 
 said he, ' we manage those matters very simply here. 
 Whenever a clergyman tells me that he has any candi- 
 dates ready, I go to his parish and confirm ; and if there is 
 a single one (as in the present case) I confirm at any 
 service.' So the lad was presented at an evening service 
 at St. Paul's, Auckland, and was much impressed with the 
 service. I have kept up a correspondence with him from 
 time to time. He has been Avrecked frequently, and he 
 has commanded several vessels, but he never forgets those 
 days which to him were very happy, and he always refers 
 to them with the simplicity of a child. 
 
 " To return to our welcome at the College. The bishop 
 having duly installed me, suggested that we should repair 
 to the chapel, and return thanks for our safe voyage. So 
 I mustered the many members of my family, including 
 servants, and the bishop conducted a most touching service, 
 selecting the most appropriate psalms and prayers ; and 
 when he gave the blessing he left the prayer-desk and 
 put his hand on every one present, down to the little 
 baby in arms. We lost the little one soon after, but we 
 often think of the blessing that he received from the bishop 
 at our first service in the college chapel. 
 
 " Bishop Selwyn had a love of work, and great po"s\'er of 
 endurance. I have heard of his taking eight services in 
 one day. When 10,000 soldiers were landed in New 
 Zealand with only one chaplain (and he a Eoman 
 Catholic), the bishop felt that it w^as his duty to provide 
 for them : so he constituted himself chaplain, started a 
 number of services, and held Bible Classes with the men. 
 The soldiers were enthusiastic about him. He knew 
 exactly how to adapt his language to them. It was 
 amusing to hear the officers speak of him. They not only 
 admired him as a bishop, but they discovered in him great 
 power for taking in the details of military life. They 
 thought tliey saw in him the making of a first-rate soldier. 
 They used to say that it was a shame that he was not a 
 general. The naval men were equally enthusiastic about 
 his seaman-like qualities. They all agreed that he would 
 have made a first-rate admiral. He was, as a cricketer 
 expresses it, ' good all round.' He would have taken the
 
 82 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. ii. 
 
 lead in any profession. Of his capacity for work I had a 
 specimen in the camp. 
 
 " At a time when he was pressed with a good deal of 
 parochial work which he had undertaken in Auckland, I 
 offered to help him on Sundays, suggesting that my 
 theological students might, as lay-readers, take my paro- 
 chial services in the college district, and set rae free for 
 duty in an Auckland church. He jumped at the offer, and 
 employed me not in Auckland, but in the camp at Otahuhu, 
 which was six miles from the college ; and I found myself 
 in for five services every Sunday. The work was interesting, 
 but a little trying to the physique of any but a Selwyn. 
 
 " Those who have seen much of the bishop must have 
 been struck with his wonderful acquaintance with Holy 
 Scripture, and the aptness of the portions which he chose 
 for special occasions. When we had a farewell service in 
 his private chapel, it seemed as if the passage that he read 
 had been written for the very occasion, so apt was it ; it 
 almost appeared to be delivered by him impromptu. A 
 stranger whom T met in London remarked to me on this 
 acquaintance with the Bible, which was evident when the 
 bishop read a lesson. He had attended a service at Lichfield 
 cathedral, and heard Bishop Selwyn read a lesson. But he 
 said, ' He did not read it, he spolic it ; he knew it off by 
 heart.' 
 
 "T'lie simplicity of living which Bishop Selwyn had 
 practised in New Zealand he brought with him to England. 
 He disliked a fuss being made wdien he came to partake of 
 hospitality, and had an especial aversion to being taken 
 about in grand carriages. He came to stay with me at 
 
 B , wheji 1 held the rectory there, I think it was for a 
 
 Confirmation, and when he wrote to announce his coming 
 he added, ' Don't send a carriage to meet me at the station ; 
 send your donkey for my bag, and I will walk.' ]\Iy good 
 squiress had put her carriage and horses at my disposal, 
 but the bishop would not make use of them; and when we 
 went from my house to a neighbouring parish for the 
 consecration of a churchyard, a distance of six miles, we 
 walked. 
 
 " On his way to B , on his first visit to the parish, he 
 
 overtook an old woman toiling with difficulty up the steep 
 liill that leads to the village. He offered her his arm, and
 
 1855-1859.] WAITARA. 83 
 
 pulled her up the hardest part, and of course talked cheerily 
 with her. She had no idea who he was, and told him she 
 
 was going to B church, to hear the bishop preach. 
 
 Great was her astonishment when she saw the bishop enter 
 the church in his episcopal robes, and recognised her kind 
 companion. She came from the neighbouring village, and 
 was a Dissenter ; but the effect of the bishop's geniality was 
 her conversion to the Church, and she has been a staunch 
 Church woman since." 
 
 In this same year the first overt act was taken which led 
 to the outbreak of the unfortunate war which raged for 
 years, and led to the apostasy of a large proportion of the 
 Maori race, and which may be said to be smouldering even 
 at this moment, seeing that neither party has been the 
 indisputable victor, neither has peace ever been made. 
 
 But the story of the Waitara war, mixed up as it is with 
 the story of the bishop's life, wdll have a separate 
 chapter. 
 
 VOL. II.
 
 84 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANIZATION. 
 
 This biography has now reached a point at M'hich it will 
 be necessary to ignore strictly chronological order, and to 
 go back to the very early days of Bishop Selwyn's residence 
 in New Zealand. In 1859 the first General Synod of the 
 Anglican Communion in these islands was held, but the 
 assembly was the result and the climax of the thought, 
 and prayer, and patient labour of many years. 
 
 It needed but the throwing out of swarms from the 
 mother-country to prove how lamentably deficient is the 
 Church of England in powers of self-government and of adap- 
 tation to the varying necessities of a rapidly changing order 
 of things. At home, with the support of endowments and 
 the influence of State connection, these deficiencies are not 
 so patent, although anything like unusual tension brings 
 them into prominence : but when the mother-Church, 
 awaking from her slumbers and regarding the daily exodus 
 of her children to all parts of the world, followed them 
 with the fulness of her organization, it was no longer 
 possible to conceal how inadequate was the provision for 
 the due administration of her discipline and the mainten- 
 ance of her position, both in the colonies and among the 
 heathen. 
 
 At first it is true this was not revealed in the full 
 light of its necessity. In India, which was treated as 
 a garrison, in Australia, which was regarded as a large
 
 in.] ANOMALOUS POSITION OF CHURCH. 85 
 
 convict station, in Canada and the West Indies, where the 
 Church was an appendage of the State and maintained by 
 subsidies in the shape either of lands or money voted from 
 the public treasury, the life of the Church and its inherent 
 powers were suppressed in consideration of the material 
 aids which the civil power secured to it. But there came 
 a time when colonies outgrew the stage in which Imperial 
 nursing was possible : for a time they had been ap- 
 pendages to the Colonial Office and had been governed 
 from Downing Street, but when the claim for local self- 
 government in matters civil could no longer be resisted, 
 the value of Letters Patent, on which the coercive juris- 
 diction of the Episcopate had depended, was discredited 
 on the first occasion on which it was tested, and the 
 Church was found to have fallen between the two systems, 
 and to be given up to anarchy almost without power of 
 extricating herself. 
 
 The condition of a Church thus situated was well 
 shown by a comparison with a colony similarly situated as 
 regards its civil government, by one who had much to do 
 with rescuing the New Zealand Church from the "anoma- 
 lous position " which he ^ describes : — 
 
 "Without law or organization there can be but little 
 efficiency. If it were uncertain whether the Governor of 
 a colony were clothed with any legal powers ; if there 
 were no means of ascertaining what his powers really 
 were ; or if, when known, there existed no tribunal for 
 enforcing them ; if it were uncertain, too, whether the 
 laws of England, or which of them, extended to a colony ; 
 if there were no local legislature with authority to make 
 laws for its government ; no courts for the trial and 
 punishment of offenders, the helpless condition of the 
 colonial state may be readily imagined ; yet, until means 
 are taken for establishing among its members some settled 
 form of ecclesiastical government, such is, infact, the 
 condition of the Colonial Church. Though their numbers 
 far exceed those of every other religious communityin the 
 
 ^ Mr. Swainson, late Attorney (Jeneral of New Zealand. 
 
 G 2
 
 85 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 colony, the members of the Church of England in New Zea- 
 land are practically the least powerful and efficient of them 
 all when called upon to act in concert. A majority of the 
 population of the colony are to be found among the mem- 
 bers of the Church ; its clergy are numerically equal to 
 the ministers of all the other religious denominations, and 
 more than ordinary provision has been made for its epi- 
 scopal supervision ; but the Church in New Zealand is 
 still without law, without organization, without discipline, 
 and without unity, and for want of some system of or- 
 ganization, by which its power may be directed to a com- 
 mon object by a common will, its influence is destroyed. 
 Of all religious denominations, too, the members of the 
 Church of England are the most helpless when suddenly 
 thrown upon their own resources in a new country. The 
 lay members of other religious bodies have generally had 
 some share at home in the management of their Church 
 affairs, and the necessity of their own personal exertions 
 has not been forestalled by the providence of their an- 
 cestors. 
 
 " Carrying with them habits of self-reliance, knowing that 
 there is no one to help them but themselves, and having 
 no Act of Submission or other ecclesiastical statute to deter 
 them, they immediately on landing in a new country set 
 earnestly to work to organize a system of Church-govern- 
 ment, suited to their new and altered circumstances ; and 
 from the outset they become a united and effective body. 
 The members of the Church of England, on the other 
 hand, find themselves in an anomalous position : they 
 neither carry with them the ecclesiastical laws of their 
 parent Church, nor any authority to make new and more 
 suitable laws for themselves ; and, until recently, it was 
 Ijelieved that the clergy and laity could not, in the face of 
 the Act of Submission, lawfully even meet together for 
 the purpose of agreeing on regulations touching on ecclesi- 
 astical affairs ; indeed, on questions of the most elemen- 
 tary kind, and of immediate practical importance, they 
 find themselves without either rule or guidance. By what 
 means may the necessary funds be raised for the build- 
 ing of churches and for the maintenance of the clergy ? 
 In whom should Church property be vested, and by 
 whom should it be administered ? Should the clergy be
 
 III.] NEED OF ORGANIZATION. 87 
 
 supported by independent incomes, or depend partly on 
 the voluntary contributions of their congregations ? And 
 should their incomes be regulated by any general scale ? 
 How and by whom should patronage be administered? 
 By what tribunal are ecclesiastical offences to be tried, 
 and how is Church discipline to be maintained ? On 
 these and other like questions the members of the Church 
 of England in a colony, not only find themselves witliout 
 any law, but without any power of legislation. 
 
 " Having been members of an institution in the mother- 
 country having its churches and its ministers maintained 
 and supported by ancient endowments, they come to regard 
 a well-endowed ecclesiastical establishment almost as a 
 birthright, and are somewhat surprised, on transplanting 
 themselves to a new country, that cluu'ches are not built, 
 and that ministers are not supported without cost or trouble 
 to themselves : and some time commonly elapses before 
 they realize their true position and recognize the necessity 
 for their own exertion. And even when the vis incrtice 
 has been overcome, having been unaccustomed at home to 
 take any part in Church organization or in the manage- 
 ment of ecclesiastical affairs, the laity find that they have 
 no experience to aid them when called upon to take part 
 in laying the foundation of the ecclesiastical institutions 
 of their adopted country. 
 
 "And no measures having been taken by the parent 
 Church to provide her colonial branches with any system of 
 local self-government, tlie bishops, clergy, and laity of the 
 Church of England in a British colony, instead of being 
 a body ' fitly joined together by that which every joint 
 supplieth,' were a mere aggregation of disjointed members 
 as powerless for many important purposes as an army 
 without the Mutiny Act or the Articles of War." 
 
 The bishop had carefully considered the condition of his 
 diocese, and he sought counsel from one who, better than 
 almost any other man, was qualified to give it. He wrote 
 to Mr. Justice Patteson : — 
 
 " There are no men to whom many of us look with more 
 confidence than to Judge Coleridge and yourself It has 
 become so habitual with me to take counsel from your
 
 88 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [cuap. 
 
 order, first with Sir J. Eichardson, now with ]\Ir. Martin, 
 who is as a brother, that I would earnestly desire, if it be 
 not premature, to send you a special retainer of love and 
 gratitude, engaging you to undertake the elaboration of 
 the intricate question of the Constitution of the Colonial 
 Church ; and if you would now and then communicate 
 with Mr. Martin, C. J., and me on this subject, you would 
 find two minds most ready to receive your practical 
 counsels. The questions are simply three, but those of 
 great magnitude : — 
 
 1. AVhat Enghsh laws we are bound by ? 
 
 2. What colonial laws we have ? 
 
 o. What further legislation we require ? " 
 
 Bishop JSelwyn was appointed Bishop of New Zealand 
 under Letters Patent from the Crown, and he was invested 
 thereby with autocratic power for the government of the 
 Church. As an Australian bishop, similarly appointed 
 six years later, the first Bishop of Melboui-ne, said, " The 
 government of the Church of England in this colony is 
 a pure autocracy. While the colonial clergy justly com- 
 plain of the insecurity of their tenure, men of liigh standing 
 and ability in England, such as we especially require, are 
 for the most part unwilling to accept employment where 
 they would be subject to the will of a single individual." 
 
 But these prelates soon discovered, to use the words of 
 Mr, Gladstone, that " in their very power lay their weak- 
 ness," for purposes of government. Hence from Australia, 
 New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa, there came 
 petitions and demands for liberty to hold assemblies for 
 ecclesiastical purposes, and to associate the laity with 
 the clergy in the regulation of the affairs of the Church. 
 
 The Bishop of New Zealand had hardly been two years 
 in his diocese, when, in 1844, he held a Synod of the Clergy 
 at the Wairaate, of which adequate mention has already 
 been made. In 1847 another clerical Synod was held, 
 but in the interval since the former Synod the bishop had 
 been in correspondence with the authorities both of Church
 
 III.] MONARCHICAL EPISCOPATE. 89 
 
 and State, and was able now to produce a draft Constitution 
 for the Church on the basis of consensual compact, which 
 was, as Mr. Gladstone pointed out, " the basis on which 
 the Church of Christ rested from the first." To this Synod 
 the bishop uttered those memorable words, some of which 
 have already been quoted in these pages, but which will 
 bear repetition : — 
 
 " I believe the monarchical idea of the Episcopate to be 
 as foreign to the true mind of the Church as it is adverse 
 to the Gospel doctrine of humility. The expressive Ma 
 of our native language, I pray, may always be appended 
 to my name. I would rather resign my office than be 
 reduced to act as a single isolated being. It remains then 
 to define by some general principle the terms of our co- 
 operation. They are simply these ; that neither will I act 
 without you, nor can you act without me." 
 
 From that time the bishop, as well in New Zealand as in 
 England, never slackened his efforts in the cause of Church 
 organization ; he never pressed his own views, which the . 
 people he knew were not yet sufficiently educated in 
 ecclesiastical matters to receive, but everywhere he sowed 
 the seed, and left it to germinate. In the year 1850 he 
 received the following thoughtful Appeal from the laity and 
 clergy, which was signed by the Governor, Sir G. Grey, 
 the Chief Justice, the Attorney-General, and many others: — 
 
 "We, the undersigned members of the branch of the 
 Church of England existing in the New Zealand islands, 
 beg with great respect to offer the following remarks for 
 your Lordship's consideration. 
 
 " Upon reviewing our present position, we find that we 
 form the most advanced and remote outpost of the Church 
 of England. There have also devolved upon us, in com- 
 mon with many of our countrymen, the important duties 
 of aiding in the foundation of a great nation, and in the 
 moulding of its institutions. At the same time there are 
 in our immediate vicinit}'- various heathen nations, and 
 even in the midst of us are many native inhabitants of 
 these islands who have not yet embraced the doctrines of
 
 90 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 Christianity. Moreover we, the European members of 
 the Churcli of England, have been collected from many 
 countries, and are settled in widely detached localities ; 
 and thus, although we are bound together by a common 
 faith, and have common duties to perform, we are united 
 by but few of the usual ties of long and familiar acquaint- 
 ance, whilst there is no system of local organization which 
 might tend to draw us together as members of the same 
 Church. 
 
 " We therefore feel ourselves called, from circumstances 
 and from our position, to vast responsibilities, and to the 
 discharge of important duties, whilst we have many 
 elements of weakness around and amongst us. From 
 these causes it is our earnest conviction that a peculiar 
 necessity exists for the speedy establishment of some 
 system of Church-government amongst us, which by assign- 
 ing to each order in the Church its appropriate duties, 
 might call forth the energies of all, and thus enable the 
 whole body of the Church most efficiently to perform its 
 functions. 
 
 " Even with such a system our eflbrts might at first be 
 feeble, from want of numbers and from our limited means, 
 but yet we humbly trust that we should labour witli such 
 heart and earnestness as becomes those who desire to aid 
 in planting here an efficient Church, which may, with 
 God's blessing, promote His service, spread wide a know- 
 ledge of the Gospel, and secure the welfare of those vast 
 numbers of our brethren who must hereafter occupy 
 these islands. 
 
 " Actuated by these views and wishes, we beg to submit 
 for your Lordsliip's consideration, and we trust for your 
 approval, the outline of a plan of Church-government, 
 resembling in many points that which we are informed 
 has proved so beneficial to our brethren in America, and 
 which we should all be satisfied to see adopted here. liy 
 providing ibr the assembling of a General Convention, tlie 
 proposed plan affords also a security for the ultimate 
 establishment of that system of Church-government which 
 may be found to be most in conformity with the wishes of 
 the whole body of the branch of the Church of England 
 existing in New Zealand. 
 
 " We have felt the less hesitation in submitting these our
 
 III.] SOWING BESIDE ALL WATERS. 91 
 
 views to your Lordship because we are aware that you 
 have long been most anxious to see an efficient system of 
 Churcli-government established amongst us, and that this 
 subject is one which has not only always occupied your 
 own earnest attention, but which you have on various 
 occasions commended to the serious consideration of the 
 members of our Church." 
 
 It is not necessary to cumber these pages with the 
 scheme of a General Convention proposed by those who 
 signed the foregoing address, inasmuch as many alterations 
 were made before the scheme was finally adopted. Armed 
 however with this assurance of the desires of his best laity, 
 the bishop went to the episcopal meeting at Sydney, where 
 the principle of such self-government was affirmed with 
 the increased weight of so important a gathering. 
 
 In the years 1852 and 1853, public meetings were held 
 in all the settlements in New Zealand to consider a docu- 
 ment entitled, " General Principles of a Constitution for 
 the Church in New Zealand," drawn up and circulated by 
 the bishop. The amendments made at these meetings 
 were embodied, with the original draft, in a tabular state- 
 ment, with the signatures appended, in order that the 
 amount of difference of opinion might be distinctly seen. 
 The document, in this altered form, was again printed and 
 circulated, and any member of the Church who had not 
 already signed it was invited to attach his signature to 
 that column of the tabular statement which contained the 
 principles most in accordance with his own opinion. 
 
 How trying were the surroundings and circumstances of 
 some of these meetings, at which the bishop patiently pre- 
 sided, and how content he was to sow beside all waters in 
 the trustful confidence that it would not be in vain, may 
 be gathered from a letter written by one who shared in all 
 his labours to the late Eev. Ernest Hawkins : — 
 
 " There is no one principle that our bishop has kept more 
 steadily in view, or more regularly put before the eyes and
 
 92 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 miuds of the English settlers that are members of the 
 Church of England, than the necessity of their learning to 
 support themselves, and eventually of their relieving the 
 parent Church of the burden — for it is a hurden when that 
 support is exacted beyond the due time, though you have 
 always felt it to be a privilege to feed the infant Church in 
 any colony, and to educate it for a vigorous avrapKeia. 
 
 "The details then that I propose to give you of the 
 different meetings held hereabouts for this purpose would 
 be exceedingly commonplace, and will probably be found 
 very uninteresting, and in noways differing from the 
 15,000 parish- vestries that are being held every week in 
 England. But they may be considered more important in 
 this point of view, that they exhibit an infant Church in 
 its first efforts at walking alone, or rather crawling and 
 tumbling about, the moment it has left hold of its 
 mother's hand. 
 
 " Hitherto the difficulty has been to get people to come 
 together for Church meetings. They seemed to have an 
 intuitive forecast that they were going to be asked to give 
 money, and they used to say, ' We are very well satisfied 
 with things as they are, the services of the clergy and minis- 
 trations of religion being provided by S.P.G., through the 
 bishop in part, and by the bishop and his friends in part.' 
 But an Englishman's love for vestry-meetings is too deeply 
 ingrained into his nature to let him go on for ever ac- 
 quiescing in a state of things which altogether shuts him out 
 from parochial affairs, and the words of a farmer to me as 
 I came out of the first meeting that we held in this district 
 expressed, in perhaps an exaggerated way, the feelings of 
 the class : ' When I heard the church-bell ring this even- 
 ing and summon me to the first vestry-meeting I had 
 attended for twelve years, and for the first time in this 
 country, 1 was quite overcome, and affected to tears.' 
 Poor man ! he had heard the same church-bell ring night 
 after night for evening prayers, and his feelings had been 
 proof, but a vestry-meeting and its attractions were over- 
 powering ! and really the meeting was most harmonious. 
 Many rules and practices of the Church that had beenes- 
 tablished from the first here in accordance with common 
 sense (I mean with the rubrics or most of them), were 
 formally accepted and approved, not as rubrics, but as
 
 III.] RELATIONS WITH OTHER BODIES. 93 
 
 practical and sensible, and what is still better, as Scriptural 
 customs. I do not believe that the meeting quite knew 
 how rubrical its spirit was — for there is no particular 
 attachment to our Prayer-book in this district, which is 
 peopled mostly by Scotch Presbyterians and Wesleyans, 
 but who from having no other place of worship have 
 frequented ours, and are 'kindly welcome.' You must not 
 think us very lax and latitudinarian here because I say so, 
 but the fact is that in a new country, where men go out 
 into tbe bush and settle far away from their own means of 
 grace, our bishop has always said to the Scotch and the 
 Wesleyans, ' As long as you have no minister or services 
 of your own communion, you are free and welcome to 
 come to ours.' In this spirit I have always acted, and 
 have too good an opinion of the real charity and common 
 sense of our Church brethren at home to fear any censure 
 for a course that would not be right, or expedient, at home. 
 In this same spirit the bishop has always acted in his 
 Melanesian labours. He has helped a London IMissionarj', 
 or a Scotch Presbyterian, when labouring alone in fields 
 where the Church was doing nothing. He has held out the 
 right-hand of fellowship to the simple-minded Samoan 
 teachers whom he found scattered over the Isles of the 
 Pacific. He has helped all except the Eoman Catholics, 
 and strange enough, that has been made a subject of 
 charge against him by the London Mission. They say, 
 ' Why don't you leave our stations alone, as you do the 
 Eoman Catholic ? ' The interference with their stations 
 consisted on one occasion in his taking a Scotch Presby- 
 terian minister and forty tons of goods, gratuitously, from 
 Auckland to Anaiteum. Of course I can see how some 
 persons may say, ' Ah, that's the fruit of your countenan- 
 cing Dissent in any form ; it serves you right for meddling 
 with them, and you might have expected ingratitude.' 
 But ' we are not careful to answer them in this matter.' 
 
 "The first meetings which the bishop called were in 
 Auckland, and the two parishes of St. Paul's (the Rev. J. 
 F. Lloyd), and St. Matthew's (the Pie v. F. Thatcher), sent 
 their Church Committees to attend. 
 
 " The bishop expressed to the meeting very much what is 
 so clearly enunciated by S.P.G. as the Society's principle 
 of action in the answer made to the North American
 
 94 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 Missions, and given in the Eeport of 1850. It told upon 
 them most pointedly when he explained the sources 
 whence the Society's income is so much derived, viz. ' the 
 savings of the poor.' And the wealthy merchants and 
 shopkeepers winced under the fact that they were being 
 siipi)lied with the ordinances of religion to some extent 
 by the weekly contributions of ragged schools. 
 
 "The bishop laid before them his Endowment Plan, where- 
 by he proposes to endow every minister to the amount of 
 half his income, by means of funds contributed partly from 
 the parishioners and partly from any resources he may 
 have to meet them with, of course, mainly relying on your 
 kind and willing aid. 
 
 " The great object of this /^a// endowment is to make the 
 clergyman partially independent of his flock, and partially 
 dependent — independent enough ' to speak the truth, and 
 boldly rebuke vice,' without fear of man ; dependent enough 
 to be made punctual and attentive to his duties, and not 
 allowed to hunt three times a week, or spend a ' May ' 
 month for religious or secular dissipations away from his 
 post without leave. 
 
 " The principle was accepted, and has since been acted 
 upon, and the people have in real earnest set about collect- 
 ing funds for the present maintenance and future endow- 
 ment of their minister. One man certainly did get up 
 and say broadly, that he objected to all endowments, and 
 wished his clergyman to be ' entirely dependent on him ; ' 
 but either the shame of having so nakedly avowed such a 
 demoralizing sentiment, or the tacit rebuke administered by 
 his fellow-townsmen, has so far taken effect that he has 
 quite withdrawn all objection and is among the most 
 willing contributors and collectors. The great difficulty 
 that the bishop has to get over is this : he wants to prevent 
 large livings like Stanhope ever infesting our system, and 
 he wants to keep every large town at much the same rate 
 of endowment — every country village or hamlet at its pro- 
 portionate rate. But the people want to get their endow- 
 ment money ' invested in such a way that some day or 
 other it may return cent, per cent, for their present invest- 
 ment. The bishop says, ' No, you shall always have the 
 colonial rate of interest on it, and no more, and the rest 
 shall go to establish the Church in other and poorer
 
 HI.] VESTRY MEETINGS. 95 
 
 districts.' All this yon will see duly set forth in his 
 Pastoral Letter of this current month. 
 
 " The next meeting he called was not so successful. It 
 was at a Pensioner's settlement, called Howick. After 
 having stated his plans, and one or two persons having 
 commented on them, up got what on board-ship would be 
 called ' a sea-lawyer,' and asked if he might address the 
 meeting. He was a pensioner, a sergeant, who was once 
 of our communion, but had lately fallen away, and you 
 will hear why, as the story goes on. His speech is a grand 
 instance of the form the grammarians call ' bathos.' 
 He began, ' My Lord, Gentlemen, nurtured as I have been 
 in the British constitution, proud as I am of my Church 
 and State, I want to know what has become of the 40/. we 
 pensioners subscribed for a schoolroom five years ago ? ' 
 The bishop had not come prepared for this ' mare's nest ' 
 of course, and he said he would send the account, if he or 
 his clergy had anything to do with it. Taking courage 
 from tliis discovery that the bishop had not got this matter 
 at his fingers' ends, up jumped another pensioner, and said 
 that the sum was 120/. The bishop begged them to 
 nominate two of their body to come to the college and 
 inspect the accounts. This they of course were shrewd 
 enough to refuse. And my friend the sergeant having 
 said that ' this v/as the point that made him a Dissenter, 
 and militated against the Church,' got up, and with all his 
 colleagues left the room. Next day I inspected the books, 
 and sent them a report, which showed that the school- 
 house which the bishop had put up and the payments for 
 master and books, &c., amounted to 50/. instead of 40/., 
 and so left the school in debt to the bishop 10/. The 
 accounts had all the names of the subscribers and the sums 
 affixed to their names. Besides this I sent them the whole 
 Howick account for Church matters, and In-ought them in 
 debtors to the bishop's Church account 400/. 
 
 " I mention these facts in detail to give you some notion 
 of Colonial Church life in its less interesting and romantic 
 features. There are, you will observe, some hard, coarse, 
 rough scenes to be gone through — such as would astonish 
 an English bishop if he were to come across them. It is 
 just as well that people at home should know tliat the 
 trials of colonial bishops do not so much consist in the
 
 96 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 pleasant excitement of walking through the glorious forests 
 and swimming the rivers of New Zealand, or the like, nor 
 in the novelty and refreshment of missionary work among 
 a simple or savage people, but in being brought into con- 
 tact day by day w^ith the rudest and coarsest spirits of un- 
 restrained colonialism, which vaunts itself and prides itself 
 most especially in saying and doing the most offensive 
 things in the most offensive way. Our bishop has practi- 
 cally exemplified an old saying we used to have at Eton, 
 and I daresay belongs to all parts of our mother-country, 
 ' You must go on never minding.' 
 
 " Besides these English meetings we had a Maori 'Korer5,' 
 and I am happy to say that the natives of our neighbour- 
 hood are coming round to much more sensible and hopeful 
 plans in accordance with the bishop's and governor's 
 wishes, and have given land for Church purposes. They 
 propose to come and live in a more civilized way, and to 
 adopt the good part of English habits, having hitherto 
 learnt and adopted the bad habits they saw in the town. 
 The old cliief promised the bishop to abandon his heathen 
 course, and to prepare for Christianity. His name is 
 Kawau, and he is a most pleasant old gentleman." 
 
 In 1854 the bishop had come to England authorized by 
 his people " to take such steps as might be necessary for 
 carrying into effect the wishes of his diocese." It had 
 been suggested " that application should be made either 
 for a Eoyal Charter or for an Act of the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment, to enable this branch of the English Church to 
 frame laws for its own government." But, as has been 
 already mentioned, the bishop found it impossible to carry 
 out these instructions in the manner proposed. 
 
 One result was, however, attained by the bishop : he 
 learned the opinion of the highest legal authorities, that 
 no Act of Parliament rendered illegal the holding of 
 Diocesan Synods witliin the limits of a colonial See ; and 
 at the same time the Governor-General of Canada was in- 
 formed by the Secretary of State that Her Majesty's 
 Government were by no means satisfied that any statutable
 
 III.] CONFERENCE. 97 
 
 aid was necessary for enabling the clergy and laity in that 
 colony to meet by representative bodies for the purpose of 
 making rules for Church affairs. 
 
 All prospect alike of imperial legislation and of im- 
 perial prohibition being at an end, the bishop invited " the 
 members of the Church, who were willing to administer its 
 property, to associate themselves together on the basis of 
 mutual compact, and to establish a representative Governing 
 Body to manage the property of the Church, to apportion 
 its proceeds, to regulate the salaries to be paid to its 
 ministers, and to make such regulations for the extension 
 of the Church system and for the organization of its 
 members as might be practicable, on the basis of property 
 and on the principle of voluntary compact." 
 
 The course that had been adopted in Melbourne fur- 
 nished an example to be shunned : in that colony the 
 members of the Church derive their powers of sy nodical 
 action entirely from the State ; and it was felt that what the 
 legislature had given, the legislature might take away, and 
 that the Synod established under the Melbourne Act held 
 its existence at the will of a body with whom it might 
 have no community of interest, sympathy, or feeling: 
 that if any alteration should be required in the Act, it 
 must be sought from the Colonial Legislature, who would 
 criticise its proceedings in no friendly spirit ; that the 
 affairs of the Church, being regulated under civil authority, 
 would at any time be liable to be made, both on the hust- 
 ings and in the legislature, the subject of party and poli- 
 tical debate. It was determined therefore to proceed on 
 the principle of voluntary compact, and to apply to the 
 Colonial Legislature only in the event of legal powers being 
 found necessary to carry the system into effect. 
 
 On May 14, 1857, the first conference of the bishops 
 (two in number, viz., Selwyn and Harper), clergy, and laity, 
 was held at Taurarua. On June 5 they presented a Draft 
 Report, showing the grounds on which the Conference had 
 been led to the conclusion that it was expedient to organize
 
 98 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 the members of the Church of England for the purpose of 
 self-government as a branch of such Church, and the 
 reasons which had iufiueuced the Conference in agreeing to 
 the resolutions which had been passed with a view to that 
 object. 
 
 On June 13th, 1857, the Conference put forth with due 
 solemnity the following 
 
 " CONSTITUTION for associating together, as a Branch 
 of the United Church of England and Ireland, the 
 Members of the said Church in the Colony of New 
 Zealand, agreed to at a Generax, Conference of 
 Bishops, Clergy, and Laity, assembled at Auckland 
 on the thirteenth day of June, in the year of our 
 Lord 1857. 
 
 ''In tf)t i^amt of €i<©iB — ^nun. Whereas it is 
 desirable that the Members of the United Church of 
 England and Ireland, in the Colony of New Zealand, 
 should be associated together as a Branch of the said 
 United Church, and that a Eepresentative Body should 
 be constituted for the government of the same. And 
 whereas, until due provision shall be made in that behalf 
 by competent authority, it is desirable that the Members 
 of the United Church of England and Ireland, should, 
 so far as they lawfully may, associate themselves together 
 )jy voluntary compact, as a Branch ol' tlie said United 
 Church, for the ordering of the affairs, the management 
 of the Property, the promotion of the Discipline of the 
 Members thereof, and for the inculcation and maintenance 
 of sound Doctrine and true Eeligion throughout the Colony, 
 to the glory of ALIMIGHTY GOD, and the edification and 
 increase of the Church of CHRIST : And ivhereas the 
 Bishops, and certain of the Clergy and Laity representing 
 a numerous body of the Members of the said United 
 Church in the Colony of New Zealand, have met in 
 Coni'erence to determine the fundamental ])rinciples on 
 which the Members of such Branch of tlie said Churcli 
 shall be thus associated together, and for the purpose of 
 deciding on the Constitution, and defining the powers and
 
 III.] CONSTITUTION. 99 
 
 jurisdiction of the governing body of such Branch of the 
 said Church, and of prescribing the terms and conditions 
 on which the Property of such Branch of the said Churcli 
 shall be held and administered : 
 
 " Now, therefore, the said Bishops, Clergy, and Laity, 
 IN Conference assembled, do solemnly declare and establish 
 as follows : — 
 
 " L — FUNDAMENTAL PROVISIONS. 
 
 " 1, Tliis Branch of the United Church of England and 
 Ireland in New Zealand doth hold and maintain the 
 Doctrine and Sacraments of CHRIST as the LORD hath 
 commanded in His Holy Word, and as the United Church 
 of England and Ireland hath received and explained the 
 same in the Book of Common Prayer, in the Form and 
 Manner of Making, Ordaining, and Consecrating of Bishops, 
 Priests, and Deacons, and in the Thirty-nine Articles of 
 Religion. And the General Synod hereinafter constituted 
 for the government of this Branch of tlie said Church 
 shall also hold and maintain the said Doctrine and 
 Sacraments of CHRIST, and shall have no power to 
 make any alteration in the authorized version of the 
 Holy Scriptures, or in the above-named Formularies of 
 the Church. 
 
 "2. Provided that nothing herein contained shall prevent 
 the General Synod from accepting any alteration of the 
 above-named Formularies, and version of the Bible, as 
 may from time to time be adopted by the United Church 
 of England and Ireland, with the consent of the Crown 
 and of Convocation. 
 
 "3. Provided also that in case a Licence be granted 
 by the Crown to this Branch of the Church of England 
 to frame new and modify existing rules (not affecting 
 doctrine) with the view of meeting the peculiar circum- 
 stances of this Colony and native people, it shall be 
 lawful for this Branch of the said Church to avail itself 
 of that liberty. 
 
 " 4. And Wliereas opinions have been expressed by 
 eminent legal authorities in England that the property of 
 the Church in New Zealand might be placed in jeopardy, 
 unless provision were made for the contingency of a 
 
 vol. XL H
 
 100 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 separation of New Zealand from the Mother Country, and 
 for that of an alteration in the existing relations between 
 Church and State ; it is hereby further declared that in 
 the event of a separation of the Colony of New Zealand 
 from the Mother Country, or of a separation of the Church 
 from the State in England and Ireland, the General Synod 
 shall have full power to make such alterations in the 
 Articles, Services, and Ceremonies of this Branch of the 
 United Church of England and Ireland in New Zealand 
 as its altered circumstances may require, or to make such 
 alterations as it may think fit in the authorized version of 
 the Bible. 
 
 " And the said Bishops, Clergy, and Laity do further 
 declare and estahlish as follows : — 
 
 " 5. There shall be a Representative governing Body 
 for the management of the affairs of the Church, to be 
 called the General Synod of the Branch of the United 
 Church of England and Ireland in the Colony of New 
 Zealand, which shall consist of three distinct Orders, viz., 
 the Bishops, tlie Clergy, and the Laity, the consent of 
 all of which Orders shall be necessary to all acts binding 
 upon the Synod, and upon all persons recognising its 
 authority, 
 
 " 6. The above provisions shall be deemed Fundamental, 
 and it shall not be within the power of the General Synod, 
 or of any Diocesan Synod, to alter, revoke, add to, or diminish 
 any of the same. 
 
 "II. — PROVISIONS NOT FUNDAMENTAL, 
 
 " 7. There shall be a Meeting of the General Synod at 
 least once in every three years, at such time and place as 
 shall from time to time be prescribed in that behalf by the 
 said General Synod. 
 
 " 8. The first General Synod shall consist of the Bishops 
 for the time being, and of such and so many Members, 
 having such qualifications, and to be elected in such manner, 
 and for such Districts, as may be prescribed in that behalf 
 by the Conference now assembled. 
 
 " 9. The General Synod shall from time to time determine 
 at what periods there shall be a new election of the Members 
 of the General Synod,
 
 111.] CONSTITUTION. 101 
 
 " 10. Every act of the General Synod shall be assented 
 to by a majority of the Members of each of the three 
 Orders, present in person, at a duly constituted meeting. 
 
 " 11. It shall be lawful for the General Synod to fix any 
 standard of qualification, and to appoint any mode of 
 registration, for the purpose of determining what persons 
 are admissible to take part in the proceedings of any 
 General or Diocesan Synod, or of any Archdeaconry or 
 other Local Board, whether as Electors, Kepresentatives, or 
 Deputies, or in any other manner whatsoever. 
 
 " 12. No person shall take any part in the proceedings 
 of any General or Diocesan Synod, or of any Archdeaconry 
 or other Local Board, whether as Elector, Eepresentative, 
 or Delegate, or in any other manner whatsoever, who shall 
 have been declared incompetent by any Tribunal acting 
 under the authority of the General Synod, or who shall 
 have declined, when required by the same authority, to sign 
 a declaration of his adhesion and submission to the Pro- 
 visions of these Presents. 
 
 " 13. The General Synod shall have full power to deter- 
 mine how and by whom all Patronage shall be exercised, 
 and in what manner and upon what conditions every 
 Clergyman, Trustee, Catechist, Churchwarden, School- 
 master, or other Ofiice-bearer or Agent, whether Clerical 
 or Lay, shall enter upon the use and occupation of any 
 portion of the Church property held in Trust under the 
 Provisions of these Presents, and in what manner, and 
 upon what conditions, all such Office-bearers, whether 
 Clerical or Lay, shall receive their respective appointments, 
 and the General Synod shall have full power to fix the 
 amount of all salaries, dues, fees, and other emoluments, 
 payable to any person out of the proceeds of any property 
 held by or in Trust for the General Synod. 
 
 " 14. All Clergymen, Trustees, Catechists, Churchwardens, 
 Schoolmasters, or other Office-bearers or Agents, who shall 
 be so appointed, or who shall receive any income or emolu- 
 ment from or out of the said Trust property, and all Office- 
 bearers who, whether receiving any emolument therefrom 
 or not, shall have consented to hold their appointments 
 under and in conformity with the Provisions of these 
 Presents, shall be liable to be deposed, removed, or sus- 
 pended from their respective appointments, by the General 
 
 H 2
 
 102 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 Synod, if from any cause whatever tlie General Synod 
 shall deem it expedient and proper to exercise such power ; 
 and whenever any Clergyman, Trustee, Catechist, Church- 
 warden, Schoolmaster, or other Otftce-bearer or Agent, 
 whether Clerical or Lay, shall he deposed, removed, or sus- 
 pended from his appointment, he shall ipso facto immediately 
 cease to have or exercise any function or office under the 
 Provisions of these Presents, and shall he absolutely de- 
 prived of all the rights, emoluments, stipend, or salary to 
 which by virtue of his appointment he would have been 
 entitled but for such deposition, removal, or suspension, 
 and shall forthwith deliver up to the General Synod, or to 
 Trustees appointed by them, all such Trust property and 
 all such deeds, books, papers, money, and effects belonging 
 and relating thereto, as may then be in his occupation, 
 possession, or power. 
 
 " 15. The General Synod shall constitute a Tribunal in 
 New Zealand for the purpose of deciding all questions of 
 Doctrine and Discipline ; and also, if it think fit, may 
 constitute a Court of Appeal from the decision of such 
 Tribunal. 
 
 " 16. It shall be lawful for the General Synod to frame 
 such Pegulations as shall be found necessary from time to 
 time for the management of the property held subject to 
 the Provisions of these Presents, and for the government 
 of all persons holding office under or receiving emolument 
 from the General Synod, and generally to make all such 
 Ptegulations as shall be necessary for the order, good 
 government, and efficiency of the said Branch of the 
 United Church of England and Ireland. 
 
 "17. It shall be lawful for the General Synod to delegate 
 to any Synod, Board, or Commission, either specifically as 
 the case may require, or under such general regulations as 
 shall from time to time be laid down by the General 
 Synod, all or any of the powers conferred upon the General 
 Synod by these Presents. 
 
 " 18. It shall be lawful for the General Synod to alter, 
 amend, or repeal all or any of the Provisions of these 
 Presents, save and except the Provisions which have been 
 hereinbefore declared to be Fundamental. 
 
 " 1 9. The General Synod of this Branch of the United 
 Church of England arid Ireland may associate with itself
 
 III.] CONSTITUTION. 103 
 
 any Missionary Dioceses which may be formed among the 
 other Islands of the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 " 20. For the purpose of carrying into effect the objects 
 of these Presents, a governing Body or Diocesan Synod 
 shall be formed in each Diocese, npon the same principle 
 as the General Synod, consisting of the Bishop, Clergy, and 
 Laity within such Diocese ; and such Diocesan Synod shall, 
 as far as possible, be similar in form and in mode of action 
 to the General Synod. 
 
 " 21. Such Diocesan Synod may exercise within the 
 limits of the Diocese all the powers of the General Synod 
 not inconsistent with or repugnant to any Regulation of the 
 General Synod. 
 
 " 22. Any Eegulation assented to by all the Diocesan 
 Synods, with a view to its acquiring the force of a Ptegu- 
 lation of the General Synod, shall be taken and deemed 
 to be, and shall have the force of, a Eegulation of the 
 General Synod. 
 
 " 23. Provided always that no such Regulation shall 
 repeal or alter any of the Provisions of these Presents. 
 
 " 24. The General Synod shall have power to make any 
 Regulation controlling, altering, repealing, or superseding 
 any Regulation which may have been made by any Diocesan 
 Synod. 
 
 " 25. Saving any rights of the Church and of the Crown, 
 the nomination of a Bishop shall proceed from the Diocesan 
 Synod, and, if sanctioned by the General Synod, shall be 
 submitted by the General Synod to the authorities in 
 Church and State in England for their favourable con- 
 sideration. 
 
 " 26. All property, real or personal, to be conveyed to 
 the General Synod, or to Trustees on behalf of the General 
 Synod, shall be held upon Trust, that such General Synod 
 or Trustees shall and do stand seised and possesssed of 
 and interested in the same, or otherwise shall and do 
 convey, settle, assure or assign the same upon aiid for or 
 according to such trusts, intents, and purposes, and under 
 and subject to such powers, provisoes, declarations, and 
 agreements, and in such manner and for such objects and 
 purposes, whether Religious, Missionary, Ecclesiastical, 
 Collegiate, Scholastic, or Charitable, as the General Synod 
 of this Branch of the United Church of England and
 
 104 LIFE OF -BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 Ireland iu New Zealand shall from time to time direct or 
 appoint iu writing under the hand of any person authorized 
 by the General 8yuod in that behalf, subject however to 
 any special covenants and declarations of Trust imposed 
 by any Founder, Donor, Testator, or other Benefactor, 
 which shall have been assented to by the General Synod 
 or by any Board or other person authorized by the General 
 Synod in that behalf. 
 
 "27. The General Synod or any Board or Commission 
 constituted by the General Synod in that behalf, shall, for 
 the purposes of "the Religious, Charitable, and Educa- 
 tional Trusts Act, 1856," be deemed to be a body duly 
 constituted to represent the Branch of the United Church 
 of England and Ireland referred to in these Presents. 
 
 " 28. Every Trustee in whom any property, real or 
 personal, shall be vested either solely or jointly with any 
 other persons or person for or on behalf of the General 
 Synod, shall hold the same with the powers and subject 
 to the limitations, restrictions, declarations, and provisoes 
 contained in the several clauses of the Schedule hereunto 
 annexed, and any Board or Commission appointed by the 
 General Synod for that purpose shall possess and may 
 exercise all or any of the powers vested in the General 
 Synod as shall be by the General Synod in that behalf 
 prescribed. 
 
 " 29. The Doctrines which shall from time to time be 
 taught or inculcated by the Bishops, Clergy, Catechists, 
 Schoolmasters, and others, wholly or partially endowed 
 or maintained by the proceeds of property held subject to 
 the Provisions of these Presents, and the Doctrines which 
 shall, from time to lime, be taught or inculcated in any 
 churches or chapels, whether cathedral, parochial, colle- 
 giate, or missionary, and in any colleges, or schools, which 
 shall be either wholly or partially built out of funds de- 
 rived from the property held subject to the Provisions of 
 these Presents, or upon sites held by Trustees appointed 
 in the manner herein specified, shall not, nor shall any 
 such Doctrines, be repugnant to the Doctrines of the 
 United Church of England and Ireland as the same 
 are explained and contained in the Thirty-nine Articles 
 and in the Book of Common Prayer, and in the Form 
 and Manner of Making, Ordaining, and Consecrating of
 
 III.] CONSTITUTION. 105 
 
 Bishops, Priests, and Deacons ; and it shall be the duty 
 of all Trustees, appointed pursuant to the Provisions of 
 these Presents, to obey all instructions issued to them by 
 or on behalf of the General Synod, for the purpose of 
 guarding, as far as possible, against any Trust property, 
 or proceeds therefrom, being so applied or disposed of as 
 to promote the teaching or inculcation of any Doctrine 
 repugnant to that of the United Church of England and 
 Ireland as so explained. 
 
 " 30. No Clergyman, Trustee, Catechist, Churchwarden, 
 Schoolmaster, or other Office-bearer or Agent, shall be ad- 
 mitted to any office under the Provisions of these Presents, 
 or be entitled to receive any income, emolument, or benefit 
 from or out of any property held under the same, unless 
 and until he shall have signed a Declaration of his adhe- 
 sion and submission to the Provisions of these Presents in 
 the form following : — 
 
 " I, A. B., do declare my submission to the authority of 
 the General Synod of the Branch of the United Church 
 of England and Ireland in New Zealand, established by a 
 Constitution agreed to on the 13th day of June, 1857, and 
 my consent to be bound by all the Provisions of the said 
 Constitution, and by all the Eegulations which may from 
 time to time be issued by the authority of the said General 
 Synod ; and I hereby undertake in consideration of being 
 appointed immediately 
 
 to resign my appointment, together with all the rights 
 and emoluments appertaining thereto, whenever I shall 
 be called on so to do by the General Synod, or by any 
 person or persons lawfully acting under the authority of 
 the General Synod in that behalf, 
 
 " Given under my hand this day of 18 , 
 
 in the presence of 
 
 " 31. Any doubt which shall arise in the interpretation 
 of these Presents, or of the Constitution for the time being 
 of this Branch of the said Church, shall be submitted for 
 final decision to the General Synod, or to some Tribunal 
 to be constituted by the General Synod in that behalf, 
 
 " 32, Nothing herein contained shall be deemed or con- 
 strued to take away, abridge, or prejudicially affect any 
 right of any member of the United Church of England 
 and Ireland, except so far as any such right may be
 
 106 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 affected by the recognition, on the part of such person, 
 of the authority of the General Synod, and by his sub- 
 mission to these Presents." 
 
 "SCHEDULE ABOVE EEFEERED TO. 
 
 " 1. The General Synod may from time to time, by 
 writing under the hand of any person authorized by it 
 in that behalf, appoint a Trustee or Trustees for the whole 
 or any portion of the property held in Trust ; and may 
 from time to time, as often as it shall think proper, by 
 any such writing cancel and revoke every such appoint- 
 ment, and may appoint another Trustee or other Trustees 
 in the place of all or any one or more of the Trustees 
 named in, or hereafter to be appointed by or on behalf of 
 the General Synod. 
 
 " 2. Any Trustees or Trustee may, by the direction of 
 the General Synod, sell, and absolutely dispose of, either 
 together or in parcels, and either by public sale or private 
 contract, all or any part of the said Trust property in re- 
 spect of which no Trust shall have been created incon- 
 sistent with the exercise of this present power; or by 
 the like direction may exchange the said property, or 
 any part thereof, for any other freehold hereditaments 
 situate in the Colony of New Zealand ; and give (out of 
 any money in their hands applicable to such purpose) or 
 receive any money by way of equality of exchange, and 
 may execute all such conveyances as may be requisite for 
 efCectuating such sale or exchange. 
 
 " 3. Provided always that all money arising from such 
 sale, or received by any Trustees or Trustee for equality 
 of exchange as aforesaid, after payment of the costs and 
 expenses payable by such Trustees or Trustee in relation 
 to such sale or exchange, shall be expended in the abso- 
 lute purchase of other freehold lands or hereditaments in 
 New Zealand, or in such other investment as the General 
 Synod shall direct. 
 
 "4. All property which shall be so purchased or re- 
 ceived in exchange as aforesaid, shall be held by the 
 Trustees or Trustee in whom it shall become vested upon 
 such Trusts as the property so to be sold or given in ex- 
 change was held subject to.
 
 HI.] CONSTITUTION. 107 
 
 " 5. Any Trustees or Trustee may from time to time, by 
 any deed, lease any portion of the Trust property vested in 
 them or him, iu respect of which no direction or appoint- 
 ment shall have been made by the General Synod, or no 
 Trust created inconsistent with the exercise of this pre- 
 sent power, to any person or persons, for any term not 
 exceeding twenty-one years in possession and not in re- 
 version, at such rent and subject to such covenants and 
 provisoes as they the said Trustees or Trustee may deem 
 reasonable, and may apply the rents of the property so 
 leased to the purposes to which the annual income or pro- 
 ceeds of the Trust property shall for the time being be 
 properly applicable. 
 
 " 6. The receipt in writing of any Trustees or Trustee 
 or of any Agent duly authorized in that behalf, shall be 
 a good and effectual discharge for all money paid to them 
 or him under or by virtue of these Presents, and shall ex- 
 onerate the person or persons paying such money from all 
 obligation of seeing to the application thereof, and from 
 all liability on account of the loss, misapplication, or non- 
 application thereof, and it shall not be incumbent on any 
 purchaser or other person to or with whom such sale, ex- 
 change, or lease as aforesaid shall be made, to inquire as 
 to the necessity for or propriety of such sale, exchange, or 
 lease, or whether any direction for such sale, exchange, or 
 lease shall have been given by the General Synod. 
 
 " 7. Every Trustee shall be chargeable for such money 
 only as he shall actually have received, although he shall 
 have joined in any receipt for money received by any co- 
 Trustee, and shall not be answerable for the act of any 
 co-Trustee, or for any loss which may arise by reason of 
 any Trust money being deposited in the hands of any 
 banker or agent, or from the insufficiency or deficiency 
 of any security upon which the Trust money, or any 
 part thereof, may be invested, nor for any loss in the exe- 
 cution of the Trust, unless the same shall happen through 
 his own wilful neglect or default. 
 
 " The above Constitution for associating together as a 
 Branch of the United Church of England and Ireland 
 the Members of the said Church in the Colony of New 
 Zealand was agreed to at a General Conference of Bishops, 
 Clergy, and Laity, assembled in St. Stephen's Chapel,
 
 108 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap, 
 
 Auckland, on the thirteenth day of June, in the year of 
 our Lord, One thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven. 
 
 " In witness whereof we the said Bishops, Clergy, and 
 Laity, have hereunto subscribed our hands. 
 
 " G. A. New Zealand, E. W. Stafford, 
 
 H. J. C. Christchurch, Frederick Whitaker, 
 Henry Williams, Henry John Tancred, 
 
 William Williams, William Swainson, 
 
 R B. Paul, T. M. Haultain, 
 
 A. N. Brown, E. K. Prendergast, 
 
 OcTAVius Hadfield, Thomas Hirst." 
 
 C. J. Abraham, 
 G. A. Kissling, 
 James Wilson. 
 
 From this document, which was under obligations to 
 the American Church, all branches of the Anglican Com- 
 munion, notably the Church in Ireland, have learned 
 much. For the purpose of enabling the bishop legally to 
 transfer to the Synodical trustees property which had been 
 vested hitherto in himself as a corporation sole, it was 
 necessary to obtain an Act of the Legislature. This became 
 law in July 1858, and the Synod was so far recognised by 
 the Colonial Legislature. 
 
 It was determined that the General Synod of New 
 Zealand should meet triennially, and its first session was 
 held at Wellington on March 9, 1859. 
 
 The Bishop's Address on this so important an occasion 
 was a masterly production, and has a lasting interest. It 
 records his own struggles, his loyalty to the Mother Church, 
 which in no degree blinded him to its shortcomings, the 
 results, not of inherent defects, but of accidental circum- 
 stances, and his aspirations and plans for the Church of 
 New Zealand. 
 
 " The present meeting, my dear brethren, is the fulfil- 
 ment of hopes which have been cherished by many of us 
 during a period of fifteen years. In the year 1844 tlie 
 first Synod of the Diocese of New Zealand was held at the 
 Waimate, but, in the uncertainty which prevailed on the
 
 III.] BISHOPS ADDRESS. 109 
 
 subject of Church-government in the Colonies, many high 
 authorities in England censured our proceedings as illegal. 
 Being well aware that this opinion was unfounded, I was 
 not deterred from convening a second Synod at St. John's 
 College, Auckland, in the year 1847, at which I read a 
 correspondence between the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 and Mr. Gladstone, then Secretary of State for the 
 Colonies, containing a proposal for a Church Constitution, 
 in which the three Orders of Bishops, Clergy, and Laity 
 should be associated on the basis of voluntary compact. 
 
 " The Diocesan Synods of 1844 and 1847 were exclu- 
 sively clerical, but, from the time of the meeting of the 
 Synod of 1847, efforts began to be made, and have never 
 since been intermitted, with a view to the admission of 
 Lay Eepresentatives. The Conference of the six Bishops of 
 the Province of Australasia, held at Sydney in the year 
 1850, unanimously recommended a Constitution, in which 
 the Laity should be associated with the Bishops and Clergy. 
 
 " In order to remove from our proceedings even the 
 suspicion of illegality, attempts were made to procure from 
 the English Legislature a recognition of the right of the 
 Colonial Bishops to convene Synods for the management 
 of their own diocesan affairs. Three bills for this purpose 
 were brought forward in successive Sessions of the British 
 Parliament, but, one after the other, they all fell to the 
 ground. In the meantime, a change of opinion took 
 place among the legal authorities in England, and the 
 question settled down upon its present basis, that, as the 
 Colonial Churches must have laws for their own govern- 
 ment, and as neither the Church nor the State at home 
 can make laws for them, they must be left free to legislate 
 for themselves. 
 
 "Another question then arose whether the Colonial 
 Legislature ought not to be applied to, to give a Constitu- 
 tion to our branch of the Church of England ; and this 
 opinion was strengthened by the fact that the Synods in 
 Canada and Melbourne seemed to have adopted this course. 
 Comparisons began to be drawn between a voluntary 
 Association such as we have formed, and a Church 
 established by law. The full discussion of this subject 
 would occupy too much of your time, but a few remarks 
 will be enough to show that we have not acted unadvisedly
 
 no LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN". [cHAr. 
 
 in avoiding, as much as possible, all application to the 
 Colonial Legislature. If we had accepted an Act, invest- 
 ing us with power over all persons, so far as they are 
 Ministers or IMembers of the Church of England, we must at 
 once have come into collision with the Church Missionary 
 Society, which still retains in its own hands full powers 
 of government over one- half of the clergy of the Northern 
 Island : we must have said at once to all those Lay Mem- 
 bers who have not yet joined us, ' You can be no longer 
 Members of our Church, unless you accept our Constitu- 
 tion and obey our laws.' To recognize the power of the 
 Colonial Legislature to enact a new definition of Church 
 Membership would have been to assume the part to be 
 equal to the whole, for how can one Colony of the British 
 Empire settle the question, ' What is a Member of the 
 Church of England ? ' The Constitution given to us in 
 one Session of the General Assembly might be altered or 
 repealed by another : questions of the deepest interest to 
 ourselves, and which ought to be discussed only in the 
 solemn Synods of the Church, such as the test of Com- 
 munion, and the veto of one (^rder on the other two, might 
 become the subjects of political agitation. In short we 
 should incur all the liabilities of a Church established by 
 law, while at the same time, in the eye of the Colonial 
 Legislature, we should be only as one of many denomina- 
 tions, all equal to one another. 
 
 " These and many more reasons of a like kind induced 
 the Conference which assembled at Auckland in 1857 to 
 concur in founding our Church Constitution on the basis 
 of mutual and voluntary compact. And it is with the 
 deepest thankfulness that I acknowledge the wonderful 
 Providence of God, which has already given to our first 
 meeting so many of the essential characteristics of a 
 Synod of the Church. Who would ever have thought 
 that four Bishops would have met together here, and that 
 one of our most solemn acts would be the Consecration of 
 a fifth : or that the present body of Clergy would repre- 
 sent sixty of their Order ? It is but five-and-forty years 
 since the first Missionary landed in New Zealand, and but 
 twenty since the Colony was formed. All this wonderful 
 change has been accomplished within the lifetime of many 
 who are here present. Surely ' this is the finger of God,'
 
 III.] BISHOP'S ADDRESS. Ill 
 
 and this is the ground of our assurance that He is with us 
 in our present work ; and that He will effectually accom- 
 plish what He has so wonderfully begun. 
 
 " There is but one doubt of any importance, which I 
 have heard expressed on the subject of Church Constitu- 
 tions, and that is, that we may be tempted to rely on mere 
 external and material organization, instead of resting on 
 the one foundation-stone of Jesus Christ, and seeking for 
 the quickening influences of His Holy Spirit. But is not 
 this a danger inseparable from our mixed nature in its 
 fallen state ? As the flesh lusteth agamst the spirit, and 
 these are contrary the one to the other, so must everything 
 that is outward and visible endanger the purity and vitality 
 of that which is spiritual. However precious may be the 
 ointment, a dead fly might cause it to stink. The brazen 
 serpent might be made into an idol. The sacrifice of the 
 Paschal Lamb might become an empty form. The temple 
 of the Lord might be made a den of thieves. The word of 
 God may be the letter that killeth, instead of the Spirit 
 that giveth life : the savour of death unto death, instead of 
 the savour of life unto life. We may have the form of 
 godliness while we deny the power thereof. The tables 
 of stone may draw away our thoughts from the Holy Law 
 of God written on the tables of the heart. Prayer, Baptism, 
 Confirmation, Communion, every ordinance that has a 
 form of words or an outward sign, is liable to the same 
 danger ; and even where no form of words is used, the 
 lips may still draw near to God, while the heart is far from 
 Him. If every Sacramental sign w^ere removed, formality 
 would still grow up from the dead heart within. 
 
 "The danger, then, which is feared, of trusting to 
 external organization, rather than to the inward life of 
 the Spirit, is not peculiar to our present work, but is the 
 besetting danger attendant upon every religious ordinance, 
 and common to the Church at large, and to all its Mem- 
 bers. It would be vain, then, to seek for spiritual life by 
 rejecting outward organization. By God's appointment, 
 the spirit and the flesh are linked togethei-, and man cannot 
 put asunder what God hath joined. The Saviour of the 
 world was not deterred from anointing the blind man's 
 eyes with clay by any fear lest the virtue should be 
 ascribed rather to the clay than to Himself. The miracle
 
 112 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 of the loaves was not less likely to be impressive because 
 the multitude was arranged in order by fifties and hun- 
 dreds, or because the fragments that remained were care- 
 fully gathered up. The foolish Martha who had everything 
 to think of and everything to do at the actual moment of 
 her Lord's coming, was not more likely to be spiritually- 
 minded than the provident INIary, who had trimmed her 
 lamp and set her house in order, and done her share of the 
 work beforehand, and was ready at a moment when He 
 came, to sit at His feet. The Gospel, even when preached 
 by the Apostles, was likely to be hindered, if occasion 
 were given to the Grecians to murmur that their widows 
 were neglected in the daily ministration. That some might 
 be able to give themselves continually to prayer and to the 
 Ministry of the Word, it was necessary that others should 
 be appointed to serve tables. The whole consideration of 
 the subject of spiritual gifts in the 14th chapter of the 1st 
 Epistle to the Corinthians is closed with the warning that 
 God is not the author of confusion, but of peace : and 
 that all things ought to be done decently and in order. A 
 man's ability to rule his own house was to be taken as one 
 sign of his fitness to take care of the Cliurch of God. 
 
 " No, my brethren, not one of us will ever think that 
 out of the mere dry bones which we frame together we can 
 constitute a living creature : but we all beheve that our 
 Heavenly Father, of His own free love, and for the merits 
 of His dear Son, and in answer to our prayers offered up 
 in His name, will pour down his Holy Spirit upon our 
 hearts, to unite this our body with Christ our head ; and 
 all its members in the bond of peace ; that the whole 
 body being fitly framed together and compacted by that 
 which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual 
 working in the measure of every part, may make increase 
 unto the edifying of itself in love. We trust to that 
 quickening Spirit to make us lively stones, built up as a 
 spiritual house upon the foundation of tlie Apostles and 
 I'rophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone. 
 
 " In order that our Church may grow into an Holy 
 Temple in the Lord, it must be fitly framed, and we must 
 be builded together. When the wall of Jerusalem was 
 built, every one had his sword girded by his side, and so he 
 builded : every one with one of his hands wrought in the
 
 III.] BISHOP'S ADDRESS. 113 
 
 work, and with the other held a weapon. But the temple 
 was built of stone made ready before it was brought 
 thither, so that tliere was neither hammer nor axe nor any 
 tool of iron heard in the house while it was in building. 
 So far from needing weapons, they did not need even a tool. 
 May our work be of the same kind. We can have no 
 enemies from without ; we ought to have no enmities from 
 within. We shall not have to cut and shape our stones to 
 fit them into spaces narrowed up by private interests or 
 vested rights of property : we may take them at once as 
 they have been made ready for us in God's Holy Word : 
 and build without regard to any other model than the 
 example of our Blessed Lord and His Apostles. 
 
 "Do we then boast ourselves against our Mother 
 Church in thus abandoning some parts of her present 
 system ? On the contrary, we desire, as faithful children, 
 to show, so far as God may give us grace, how glorious she 
 might have been in the purity of her doctrines, and in the 
 holiness of her liturgy, if she had been released from 
 those chains, from which the peculiar circumstances of the 
 Colonial Church have set us free. The abuses of private 
 patronage, the sale of spiritual offices, inequality of in- 
 comes, the failure of all corrective discipline over the 
 beneficed clergy, the heart-rending injustice of dilapida- 
 tions, all springing from the same root of private property, 
 these are no part of the Church of England, and they 
 must have no place here. We should be guilty indeed, if, 
 with our eyes open, and a free choice before us, we should 
 engraft upon our new Branch of the Church of England 
 the same abuses, against which the Preachers of St. Paul's 
 Cross and Whitehall remonstrated in vain. 
 
 "You will forgive me if I detain you a little longer 
 upon this point, because I should feel most acutely any 
 imputation of disloyalty to our Mother Church. I wish 
 you to feel with me, that our Constitution simply proposes 
 to remove those abuses which have been encrusted upon 
 har system, and which for many years back, even the 
 State in England has been endeavouring to reform. It 
 would be tedious to recite all the Acts of Parliament 
 which have been passed to undo the faulty work of 
 former ages, and to bring the Church into that system 
 with which we purpose to begin. The equalization of the
 
 114 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 incomes of Bishoprics, the suspension of Canonries for the 
 better maintenance of tlie Parochial ISIiuistry, the facili- 
 ties afforded for the division of Parishes, these and other 
 Acts of the same kind, all recognise the existence of evils, 
 which the State in England labours after its own fashion 
 to remedy, but which it is our duty to prevent. We are 
 bound to strive, and to pray, that our Church may be holy 
 and without blemish. We must give good heed that the 
 wheat which we sow in our new soil be free from tares. 
 
 " I shall now lay before you as briefly as possible the 
 various subjects which seem to require your attention ; 
 and if in some instances I shall accompany the statement 
 with practical advice, you will not, I am sure, suspect me 
 of any wish to dictate to the Synod any peculiar system ; 
 for I trust that we have met here in a spirit of counsel, and 
 that we shall be ready to give up or modify our private 
 opinions when we find that they are opposed to those of a 
 majority of our brethren. 
 
 " It may at once be assumed, that frequent meetings of 
 the General Synod ought not to be necessary : and with 
 this view ample powers of delegation have been reserved 
 to it by tlie Deed of Constitution. These powers will 
 have to be used to bring into operation two classes of 
 Trusts : the one representing the General Synod itself, 
 and competent to discharge certain of its functions : the 
 other invested with powers of local administration under 
 the authority of the General Synod. 
 
 "I. — First Class, of Standing Trusts representing the 
 General Synod : — 
 
 " 1. The first of these will be a board for the determina- 
 tion of questions of Eeference brought up by appeal from 
 any Diocesan Synod, or other subordinate administration. 
 
 " 2. The second will be a Board of Appointment, to 
 exercise the powers of the General Synod, in appointing 
 new Trustees, and in confirming all elections to spiritual 
 offices. 
 
 " II. —The Second Class, of Trusts invested with powers 
 of local administration under the authority of the General 
 Synod : — 
 
 " 1. The First and most important of this class of Trusts 
 will be the Diocesan Synods : the Constitution of which 
 will require careful consideration.
 
 in.] BISHOP'S ADDRESS. 115 
 
 " 2. The Second will be the Archdeaconry or Eural 
 Deanery Boards, which though now rendered of less im- 
 portance by the subdivision of the country into several 
 Dioceses, may still be found of use. 
 
 " 3. The Third, the Parochial Trusts, including Church- 
 wardens, Parochial Committees, &lc. 
 
 " 4. The Fourth, all Special Trusts, such as those now in 
 operation for the support of Colleges, Native Schools, and 
 for the management of Property held in Trust for special 
 purposes. 
 
 " In constituting these various Trusts, it will be neces- 
 sary that you should select the Trustees and issue instruc- 
 tions for tlieir guidance. 
 
 " In the selection of Trustees of the second class you 
 will, I have no doubt, accept, in most cases, the recom- 
 mendation of the local representatives. The right prin- 
 ciple for our guidance seems to be contained in the words 
 of the Twelve in Acts vi. 3, * Brethren, look ye out among 
 you . . . men of honest report . . . whom u-e may appoint 
 over this business.' The General Synod will act wisely 
 in appointing men who possess the confidence of their 
 own neighbours. 
 
 " The same principle will apply to aU spiritual offices. 
 The Board of Appointment must not interfere needlessly 
 with the Bishop and his Synod. But there are cases in 
 which its powers will be brought into operation : as, for 
 example, when the Diocesan Synod cannot agree with any 
 congregation on the election of a minister, in which a 
 reference ought to be made to the Board representing the 
 General Synod, whose appointment should be final. But 
 the highest duty of the Board of Appointment will be to 
 take effectual care that no simoniacal contracts, or corrupt 
 practices, be allowed to interfere with the simple rule of 
 putting the right man in the right place. Their office will 
 be like that of the prophets and teachers at Antioch, to 
 separate the Ministers of Christ for the work to which 
 they believe the Holy Ghost has called them. It cannot 
 be consistent with the right discharge of this plain duty 
 that money, upon any pretext or in any manner, should 
 have any weight or influence in the appointment to a 
 spiritual office. 
 
 " I think that we shall all agree in leaving the Diocesan 
 VOL. II. I
 
 116 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 Synods as mucli freedom of action as possible, subject, 
 however, to a few general rules to secure uniformity of 
 action among the various Dioceses in matters of primary 
 importance. 
 
 " The first of these is in the appointment of Clergymen. 
 This power might, I think, be well vested in a Diocesan 
 Board, composed of the Bishop as Chairman, ex o'fficio, 
 and two Clergymen and two Laymen elected by the 
 Diocesan Synod. It might be a standing instruction to the 
 Board, upon the vacancy of any cure, to call for a Deputa- 
 tion of tlie Parishioners, and to concur with them in 
 making a new appointment, or, if the two parties should 
 be unable to agree, then to refer the question to the Board 
 of Appointment acting in behalf of the General Synod. 
 If the new appointment should involve the removal of a 
 clergyman from a Parish to which he is already engaged, 
 then a Deputation also from that Parish should be invited 
 to attend. It ought, I _ tliink, to be a valid ground of 
 objection on the part of any Parish to the removal of their 
 Clergyman, that he is maintained by them at the full scale 
 of income to which he is entitled. Parishes ought not to 
 be allowed to compete with one another for popular 
 Clergymen by holding out inducements of greater emolu- 
 ment. All such practices are contrary to the nature of a 
 spiritual office, and degrading to the clerical character. 
 
 " The second duty of the Diocesan Synod, which I will 
 mention, is to provide for the maintenance of the Clergy, 
 and, on this point, a general uniformity of system is also 
 desirable. A few fundamental principles have always 
 been kept in view in the Diocese of New Zealand, and I 
 would recommend them to your consideration, as already 
 tested by many years' experience : 
 
 " 1. That the maintenance of the Clergy should be 
 supplied partly from Endowment Funds, and partly by 
 voluntary contributions. 
 
 " 2. That the Incomes of the Clergy should be regulated 
 by an equitable scale. 
 
 " 3. That a Clergyman maintained at the full scale of 
 income be expected to give his undivided services to the 
 work to wliich he is appointed. 
 
 "4. That no Clergyman be considered as permanently 
 located in any Parish, in which tlie Parishioners do not
 
 111.] BISHOP'S ADDRESS. 117 
 
 supply that portion of his income which depends upon 
 voluntary contributions. 
 
 " I believe that I may appeal to several of my brethren 
 here present to confirm my statement, that this system, 
 after many difficulties, is now being carried out in several 
 Parishes with great regularity. 
 
 " The third duty of the Diocesan Synod will be to 
 establish a Tribunal for the trial of all charges against 
 Clergymen or other office-bearers of the Church. In 
 the case of a Clergyman I would recommend that the 
 Tribunal be composed of the Bishop, three Clergymen, and 
 one Lay Assessor. In the case of a Lay Office-Bearer, the 
 number of Clergy and Laity miglit be reversed. The forms 
 of procedure for all such Diocesan Tribunals ought, I think, 
 to be prescribed by the General Synod. The appeal from 
 the Diocesan Tribunal to the Board representing the 
 General Synod has already been spoken of. 
 
 " The fourth duty of the Diocesan Synod wdll be to define 
 Parishes. But the General Synod ought to lay down the 
 principle upon which Parishes are to be first defined, and 
 afterwards, if necessary, divided from time to time. The 
 Parish should resemble the sheepfold, in having boundaries 
 well marked and known for the time being, but easy to 
 be removed. We must strictly guard against the intro- 
 duction of a system in which, from a jealous respect for 
 the rights of property, fifty or even a hundred thousand 
 souls have been left under the nominal charge of one 
 clergyman. It will be easy now for the General Synod 
 to lay down a rule, that whenever the members of the 
 Church in any parish shall be found to exceed a certain 
 number, it shall be the duty of the Diocesan Synod to 
 alter the boundaries ; and to divide the endowment fund 
 of the old parish in due proportions between the two or 
 more parishes which shall be formed out of it. This sub- 
 division of parishes in the Archdeaconry of Waitemata 
 has been so far carried out, that no clergyman has more 
 than one thousand members of the Church under his 
 charge. Many of these parishes have endowment funds, 
 all administered by a common Trust, in which every 
 parish has its own representative Trustee, and therefore 
 readily admitting of a new apportionment, if any parish 
 should require to be divided. 
 
 I 2
 
 118 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 " I come now to the subject of the Tenure of the landed 
 Property of the Church. It is well known to all here 
 present that I have been hitherto the sole Trustee of all 
 the Church lands in the English settlements in New 
 Zealand, with the exception of Canterbury and Otago. I 
 undertook this heavy responsibility, and have borne the 
 increasing burden for sixteen years, with the single object 
 of excluding all vested rights and private interests, which 
 would have stood in the way of the free action of the 
 General Synod of the Church. I now lay upou the table the 
 terrier of more than 14,000 acres of land, secured to the 
 Church by about 100 Crown grants, and devoted for ever 
 to the support of religion and Christian education ; and 
 under the powers vested in me, by an Act of the last 
 General Assembly, I say to this Synod, — Take these pro- 
 perties, and use them as you please, within the limits of the 
 Trusts, and may God guide you to a right use of His bounty. 
 
 " The reconstitution of the Trusts which I now surren- 
 der will require considerable care, and on this point I feel 
 it to be my duty to offer some practical suggestions. 
 
 " The Transfer of the Trusts. — The first business of the 
 Synod will be to elect persons to act as Trustees. The 
 Secretary of the Synod must then ascertain whether those 
 persons will be willing to accept the Trusts. I shall then 
 have to execute conveyances to each set of Trustees of 
 such portions of the Church property as will be held in 
 Trust by them. The Trustees, on accepting the Trust, must 
 sign a deed of submission to the authority of the General 
 Synod. All the Trusts will be thus brought within the 
 provisions of the lieligious and Charitable Trusts Act of 
 1856 ; and new Trustees can be appointed from time to 
 time by the Board of Appointment holding authority 
 under the General Synod. 
 
 " The property of the Church may be classed under the 
 following heads : — 
 
 " 1. Sites of Churclies and Burial Grounds. — For the 
 tenure of property of this class, I should advise that all 
 the churches and burial grounds, within convenient limits, 
 such as an Archdeaconry or Kural Deanery, should be 
 held by one set of Trustees, responsible to the General 
 and Diocesan Synods, but not under the authority of the 
 Barochiul Committees.
 
 in.] BISHOP'S ADDRESS. 119 
 
 " The advantages of this plan are manifold. The pro- 
 perties so held in one Trust might mutually insure one 
 another, by a small annual payment made by the Church- 
 wardens of each parish ; the proceeds of all the burial 
 grounds arising from fees and sales of vaults would main- 
 tain a Curator to improve all the grounds. A building 
 fund might be accumulated by a small payment from each 
 parish; by which, at the end of a certain number of 
 years, each parish might be assisted to rebuild its church. 
 The care of the fabric of the churches being a part of the 
 Archdeacon's duty, I think that he ought in all cases to be 
 ex officio one of the Trustees to hold sites of churches and 
 burial grounds. 
 
 "2. Parsonage Houses and Glebes. — Some confusion is 
 apt to arise on the subject of Glebes. Glebe land may 
 either mean land given for the actual use and occupation 
 of the clergyman ; or, land to be let as an endowment for 
 his maintenance. In respect of land actually used and 
 occupied by the clergyman, with consent of the Diocesan 
 Synod, including the site of the parsonage house, it may 
 be thought well that the clergyman should be his own 
 Trustee, upon signing the usual deed of submission to the 
 authority of the General Synod. He will thereby approxi- 
 mate as closely as can be desired to the status of a 
 beneficed clergyman in England, but with this difference, 
 that he will not be able to avail himself of a freehold 
 tenure to defy the authority of the Church. As a Trustee 
 he will be subject to all the conditions of the Trust, one 
 of which ought to be that he shall be bound to keep the 
 parsonage in repair. Care ought to be taken that de- 
 lapidations shall be repaired during the lifetime of the 
 Incumbent, and not left to be paid for after his death. 
 
 " 3. Glebes for endowment, on the contrary, ought, I 
 think, to be held by the Trustees of the Endowment Fund. 
 There can be no advantage in the Clergyman and his 
 Parishioners being connected by the relations of landlord 
 and tenant. He will generally get less than his due, and 
 even that at the price of much ill-will. Besides, if the 
 principle of a Diocesan Scale of Income be adopted by 
 the Synod, Clergymen will not in all cases be entitled to 
 receive the whole rent of the glebe. It will be seen at 
 once, how this will facilitate the division of Parishes, and
 
 120 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 exchanges between Clergymen from one Parish to another. 
 The cases in which such exchanges are desirable are when 
 Clergymen are no longer equal to the charge of populous 
 and laborious parishes. In such cases no difficulty on the 
 score of income ought to stand in the way of an exchange 
 to a more suitable sphere of duty, 
 
 " 4. Cathedral Property. — The valuable Estate known as 
 the Cathedral Ground at Auckland will be surrendered 
 to the General Synod, in Trust that the proceeds shall be 
 applied to the permanent endowment of Bishoprics within 
 the Islands of New Zealand ; to the building of Cathedral 
 Churches, in which the members of the Church residing 
 in the distant parts of the country shall have places 
 allotted to them, when they come to the Cathedral City ; 
 to assist in building and repairing Bishops' houses ; in 
 maintaining candidates for Holy Orders ; in defraying the 
 expenses of meetings of Synods, Eegistration, Visitations 
 of Bishops and Archdeacons, and in general to such uses 
 as belong rather to the Diocesan than to the Parochial 
 system. I would advise tlie Synod to constitute a separate 
 Trust for this Property : and to take care, that if possible, 
 the interests of all the New Zealand Dioceses shall be 
 represented in it. 
 
 " 5. Collegiate Property. — I have carefully abstained 
 from all attempts to incorporate Colleges under charters 
 or statutes granted by the Colonial Legislature. It seems 
 to be impossible in a new country to frame statutes to 
 provide for every change of circumstances which may 
 occur. For example, since the departure of the present 
 Bisliop of Wellington, St. John's College has remained 
 without a Principal. I have used the discretion vested 
 in me by the donors of the College Estates to apply part 
 of the proceeds to the maintenance of Scholars in other 
 Church Scliools ; and part to the improvement of the 
 Estates. The buildings in like manner have not been 
 useless, but have been occupied every summer by the 
 scholars of the Melanesian Mission: and the College 
 Chapel has been the place where the natives of many 
 islands have offered up their first prayers in the House of 
 God. I would recommend that the same latitude of dis- 
 cretion be granted to the new Trustees of the College 
 properties, to use them to the best advantage, according to
 
 III.] BISHOP'S ADDRESS. 121 
 
 circumstances, to promote sound learning and religious 
 education, reporting to the General Synod, at its periodical 
 meetings, tlie details of their system and of their accounts. 
 Two such Trusts would be required. One for Trinity 
 College, Porirua, and another for St. John's College, with 
 its affiliated Grammar School at Auckland. 
 
 " 6. Native Education. — It appears from the original 
 letter of Sir George Grey, that he intended the present 
 Boards of Education to come under the authority of the 
 General Synod. The Native Education Act, passed in the 
 last session of the General Assembly, makes no change in 
 the government of the Native Schools, as at present 
 carried on under the three religious bodies. At present, 
 the system of Native Education in connexion with the 
 Church of England is cumbered with this difficulty, that 
 the Eunds granted out of the revenue of the country 
 have been administered by the two Boards of Education, 
 but the Lands are vested Iq the Bishop alone ; and yet the 
 objects of both Trusts are the same ; for the lands were 
 given expressly to make the schools _^self- supporting, and 
 so to supersede the grants of money. If the Synod were 
 to re-appoint the present Boards of Education, and also 
 vest in them the School Estates, which I now surrender, 
 both branches of the work would be brought under the 
 same government. The Auckland Board of Education 
 would administer Estates at St. Stephen's, Kohanga, Tuku- 
 poto, and Otav/hao ; and the Southern Board at Te Aute, 
 Whanganui, Papawai, and Kai-kokiri-kiri. The Native 
 School Estate at Otaki is devoted to the same purposes, 
 but is held in trust by the Church Missionary Society. No 
 Crown Grant has yet been issued for the School Estate at 
 Wairengahika, near Turanga 
 
 " 7. There are also some pieces of Land held in Trust 
 by me for the Melanesian Mission, which I purpose to 
 retain till the Island Bishop shall have been constituted 
 and the Bishop shall have associated himself with the 
 General Synod. You are probably aware that a sum of 
 money sufficient in itself for the endowment of this 
 Bishopric has already been invested in the English Funds. 
 
 "The last subject, which it is my duty to submit to 
 your careful consideration, is the constitution of the 
 General Synod itself ; and I have placed it last, because
 
 122 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 if you should be inclined to take tlie various subjects of 
 discussion in the order in which I have arranged them in 
 this opening address, this, which is in some respects 
 the most important subject of all, will not be brought 
 under consideration till all the Bishops and many other 
 members now absent shall have assembled. 
 
 " Many of you are well aware tliat it was not without 
 anxious deliberation that the Conference resolved unani- 
 mously to authorize this Synod to be convened, and drew 
 up a deed of Constitution for that purpose. That Con- 
 stitution will be found to contain nothing more than has 
 been agreed to again and again at public meetings, held 
 periodically, of the members of the Church in all the 
 English settlements during the last ten years. With the 
 exception of the two fundamental points of adhesion to 
 the Doctrines of the Church of England, and the Constitu- 
 tion of the General Synod with the Three orders of Bishops, 
 Clergy, and Laity, every question of Church government 
 is open to the consideration of the present meeting. 
 
 " The first question atfecting the Constitution of the 
 Synod, which will naturally engage your attention, will be 
 the (Qualification of Electors. I would deprecate the use 
 of the word Church Membership, because, as a voluntary 
 Society, we cannot confer rights of Church Membership 
 upon those who join us, nor deny them to those who stand 
 aloof. The test which we ought to require is the declara- 
 tion of a willingness to obey the Laws of the Synod, which 
 the Elector through his Eepresentative will concur in 
 making. And here the value of the three orders is appar- 
 ent, for every member of the Church may rest assured 
 that no law can be made to which a majority of his own 
 order has not consented. 
 
 " This limitation of the Electoral Francliise will require 
 an Electoral Koll, with certain persons didy a2J})ointed to 
 add to it from time to time the names of new Electors. 
 It will be tlie duty of the Secretary of the General Synod 
 to Ibrward to these persons timely notice of all Elections, 
 and to issue Voting Tapers, if that should be the mode of 
 Election which you adopt. In short, the liepresentative 
 system of the General Synod will require to be worked 
 with the greatest care, through a known and registered 
 body of Electors, increasing daily, as we may hope, in
 
 III.] BISHOPS ADDRESS. 123 
 
 numbers, in proportion as information is diffused, and 
 interest awakened, by the actual working of the General 
 Synod. For, while I admit that the number of Electors 
 who have voted for Eepresentatives to the present Synod 
 is but small, yet I cannot agree with those who argue that 
 therefore the time for Synodical action is not yet come. 
 On the contrary, after grinding in the mill of public meet- 
 ings for ten tedious years of hope deferred, I have come to 
 the conclusion that nothing but the actual meeting of the 
 Synod itself would ever have awakened a general interest 
 among the great body of our professing members. The 
 plain truth is this, that we have been so long accustomed 
 to have everything done for us, that we are very slow at 
 coming to the conclusion that, in our Colonial Church, we 
 have everything to do for ourselves. 
 
 " After fixing the qualification of Electors you will have 
 to consider the Qualification for Lay Eepresentatives, and, 
 in fixing this, I do most earnestly hope tliat we shall not 
 recede from the standard adopted by the Conference, of 
 members in full communion with the Church of England. 
 You will accept my assurance that this recommendation is 
 made in no exclusive spmt, but with the earnest prayer 
 that the Spirit of God may so bless our united work, that 
 through the means of grace conveyed to our brethren in 
 these earthen vessels, and distributed throughout the 
 length and breadth of the land, many devout communi- 
 cants may be yearly added to the Church, and so be pre- 
 pared to join us in seeking for the spirit of counsel in 
 communion with God and with Christ. 
 
 " I would draw your attention further to the Qualifica- 
 tion of Clergymen. You will have to consider whether 
 any Clergymen should be members of the Synod ex officio, 
 as, for example. Archdeacons acting ex officio as Trustees of 
 Endowment Funds. You will have to distinguish between 
 Clergymen regularly licensed, and holding Church offices; 
 and other Clergymen licensed generally to perform Divine 
 Service, but holding offices not immediately connected 
 with the Church : and other Clergymen again, who are 
 neither licensed, nor hold any office, but live as ordinary 
 settlers. It will be a question also for you to decide, 
 whether Deacons shall be admitted to the same privileges 
 as Presbyters. In whatever manner these questions may
 
 124 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 be settled, we shall require an official List of Clergy duly- 
 qualified to take part in the proceedings of any General or 
 Diocesan Synod. My own idea of a distinction would be 
 that every licensed Clergyman, whether Presbyter or 
 Deacon, might claim to be entered upon the List by right, 
 and that every unlicensed Clergyman of irreproachable 
 life and character may be entered if proposed and accepted 
 at a meeting of any Diocesan Synod. 
 
 " The Minor points, of the time and place of meeting of 
 the General Synod, the manner in which it is to be con- 
 vened ; the payment of the expenses of the Synod itself, 
 and of the attendance of its members ; the best mode of 
 authenticating its proceedings will not escape your notice, 
 but they require no further remark. 
 
 " But there is one subject more under this head of the 
 Constitution of the General Sjniod, which I must not 
 omit : and that is the consideration of the best mode of 
 drawing our Native brethren into closer bonds of Christian 
 fellowship with ourselves. I have already mentioned that 
 an Endowment both in money and land has been pro- 
 vided for the Melanesian Bishopric : and let us never rest 
 satisfied till the Bishop of the Isles has taken his seat 
 among us. Already it has pleased God that our field of 
 view should be extended over seventy or eighty islands ; 
 and our work will not be done till twice that number of 
 heathen Islands shall have received the message of salva- 
 tion. To make this work our own, to identify it with the 
 duty of our branch of the Church, to form systematic plans 
 and to carry out regular efforts for its support, will be a 
 part of our proceedings upon which I do not anticipate 
 one dissentient voice. 
 
 "But to come nearer home, upon the same line of 
 thought I must draw your attention to the state of the 
 Native Church of New Zealand. And first to one subject 
 claiming our unmingled thankfulness, that I hope soon to 
 receive a Commission to consecrate to the office of a Bishop 
 one whose age and experience has often made me feel 
 ashamed that I should have been preferred before him, 
 and to whom I have long wished to be allowed to make 
 this reparation, by dividing with him the duties and 
 responsibilities of my office. 
 
 "The great object for which the Missionary Diocese of
 
 III.] BISHOP'S ADDRESS. 125 
 
 Tiiranga (=\Vaiapu) has been constituted is to widen the 
 basis of Native Ordination. At present it is impossible 
 not to feel some doubts of the future stability of the 
 Native Church. My recent journey through the Mission 
 Stations has left me in a balanced state between hope and 
 fear. The thought of the populous districts of Whakatane, 
 Opotiki, Waiapu, and Taranaki, all left without a resident 
 Missionary, would be one of unmingled sorrow, if we did 
 not see the fruits of the Divine Blessing upon the Mission 
 now appearing, in the faithful men of the Native race 
 who have already been ordained, or are now passing 
 through their probation for the Ministry. We must feel 
 that, when half the human race in Africa, India, and 
 China is still unconverted, we cannot ex^Dect more men 
 from England to take care of our 50,000 souls. But why 
 should we desire foreign corn, when our own native fields 
 are white already to the harvest ? Our lot has fallen in a 
 fair ground, yea we have a goodly heritage. We are the 
 tillers of a field which the Lord has blessed. 
 
 " This is the bright gleam of hope which cheers the 
 sadness of our Missionary journeyings. It cannot be that 
 all this work of grace should have been wrought in vain. 
 If we pass through deserted hamlets, where the aged men 
 and women who welcomed us in former years have passed 
 away, leaving no child, the thought arises, that though they 
 have passed from earth, yet not one of them is lost. If 
 we see the signs of a decaying faith, and of a love that 
 waxes cold, in the ruined chapel and its grass-grown path, 
 we have but to look to the tombs around it, for there lie 
 those who have gone to their rest in Jesus, dying in the 
 fervour of their first love, and infants cut off like flowers 
 in the morning, with the fresh dew of baptismal grace upon 
 their hearts ; there the first evangelists to their heathen 
 countrymen wait for their Lord's return to call them to 
 enter into His joy. If we see the native youth departing 
 from the example of their fathers, given to self-indulgence, 
 drunkenness and sloth ; we see, on the other hand, that 
 through this furnace of temptation, as in our own schools 
 and colleges in England, God's chosen servants are being 
 trained and proved for the ministry of His Word. The very 
 same cause which fills our hearts with fears for the many 
 strengthens our confidence in the stability of the few.
 
 126 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 " But I cannot disguise my conviction that the time has 
 come when a imited action between the two branches of 
 our Church is absolutely necessary. Our countrymen are 
 spreading themselves over the greater part of the New 
 Zealand Islands. Japhet is being enlarged to dwell in the 
 tents of Shem. The constant traffic with the English 
 towns brings the Native population more and more into 
 contact with our own race. It will be found impossible 
 to carry on a double government for the Colonial and 
 Missionary Church. But the blending of the one into the 
 other must be a gradual work, and ought to be begun im- 
 mediately. The Euthanasia of the Mission cannot be a 
 sudden death. 
 
 " It is now more than six years (Feb. 23, 1853) since 
 a large public meeting at this place concurred unanimously 
 in the following Eesolution : — 
 
 " ' That this Meeting, gratefully acknowledging the vast 
 benefits which, under Divine Providence, have been con- 
 ferred upon the New Zealand Islands by the Church 
 Missionary Society, authorize Archdeacon Hadfield to 
 communicate with the Society in order to ascertain 
 whether they would be willing to resign into the hands 
 of the Clergy and Laity of the district of Wellington 
 their present charge of the Native Settlements in that 
 district; and upon what conditions they would assist in 
 forming a fund for the permanent Endowment of Native 
 Parishes and Schools.' 
 
 " I would earnestly recommend to this Synod the adop- 
 tion of a resolution of a similar kind, including the whole 
 field of the Society's Mission in New Zealand. 
 
 " My apology for the length of this address must be 
 that I have endeavoured to condense, within the smallest 
 compass, the deeply important subjects which it is my 
 duty, as your President, to bring before you ; and I will 
 now conclude by the expression of my earnest prayer that 
 we may be so blessed with the spirit of counsel as to have 
 a right judgment in all things." 
 
 The discussions of this Synod were conducted with a 
 spirit of forbearance and charity, which confuted the fore- 
 bodings of those who had declared that the clergy and 
 laity would meet only for the fomenting and increasing of
 
 III.] CONSECRATION OF BISHOP WILLIAMS. 127 
 
 dissensions, and the Synod terminated by an act, which the 
 bishop gratefully thus described in a letter to his son : — 
 
 " The Synod was closed most appropriately by the con- 
 secration of Bishop Williams ; the four Bishops, of New 
 Zealand, Christchurch, Wellington, and Nelson concurring 
 in the act of consecration. It was a most delightful day, 
 and one that I little expected to see when I first came to 
 New Zealand. All seemed to be so thoroughly happy and 
 satisfied with the appointment of the new bishops, as 
 much as if each settlement had chosen its own bishop 
 from personal knowledge ; and the act of the younger 
 bishops in consecrating one so long and so much respected 
 in New Zealand as Bishop Williams was felt to be most 
 appropriate : lest we should seem to have come in to reap 
 the harvest which another had sown. 
 
 " After the Synod we returned to Auckland, from which 
 centre I am now following up the remainder of my cycle 
 paper, with only one Sunday more before I come to the 
 end. For all these mercies, may God make me truly thank- 
 ful, and may the same merciful Providence watch over my 
 dear children." 
 
 About the same time (April 1 3) the bishop wrote to a 
 friend in England : — 
 
 " We had a delightful day on Sunday, April 3, when 
 the four Bishops, of New Zealand, Christchurch, Welling- 
 ton, and Nelson, consecrated the Bishoj) of Waiapu. We 
 are most grateful to the Giver of all Good. 1 shall go 
 back to Auckland light in heart, being now enabled to 
 leave these rising provinces to the care of their own 
 bishops. The time is approaching when I shall feel justi- 
 fied in applying for permission to consecrate Mr. Patteson 
 as Bishop for the Islands ; giving up, if required, the Bay of 
 Islands for his See. In the meantime I hope to be enabled 
 by God's blessing to prosecute the mission work with 
 more vigour in consequence of the cutting off of the 
 southern portions of New Zealand." 
 
 This event was one that evidently drew forth pio- 
 foundest gratitude from the bishop : his letters at this
 
 1-28 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [nHAP. 
 
 time seem to have abounded M'itli thankfulness. Thus 
 to another friend he wrote : — 
 
 " I wish that you could have been present to see our little 
 church at the Antipodes, represented by its four Eton 
 Bishops (for we must naturalize Harper)/ lighting a fifth 
 candlestick to be a light to lighten our native Christians. 
 The new bishop was already at his work in New Zealand 
 while I was still a boy at Eton ; and though a veteran, who 
 might have claimed some relaxation of his work, has just 
 pulled down a comfortable house at his mission station to 
 remove to a wild tract of uncultivated land, and there 
 begin again the first work of settling, amidst all the per- 
 turbations of a native school, for the purpose of training 
 up the New Zealand youth to take their place in the new 
 order of things, 
 
 " At present I can hardly bring fully home to my mind 
 the feeling of relief from the state of constant straining 
 after unattainable results in which I have hitherto lived. 
 The change is so sudden, that my present state of mind is 
 one almost of collapse, and I am not so fully happy and 
 thankful as I ought to be ; but this will come when I 
 have had time to adjust myself to my narrow orbit, especi- 
 ally if it should please God to enable me to win the per- 
 sonal regard of my smaller flock, to know them as their 
 shepherd, and to be known by them, instead of merely 
 passing by and casting upon them the shadow of an 
 apostolic office, but without its healing virtue." 
 
 The Constitution adopted at this first meeting of the 
 General Synod was brought into operation in the several 
 dioceses in the course of the same year ; that is to say, a 
 Synod in each diocese was convened by its bishop, con- 
 sisting of the bishop, all the licensed clergy and lay repre- 
 sentatives from each organized cure; and the powers 
 entrusted to it, under the Constitution by the General 
 Synod, were exercised in drawing up statutes for the 
 election of synodsmen and of nominators, the formation of 
 parishes, and for regulating generally the external affairs 
 of the diocese. 
 
 ' P.isliop Harper had heen a Private Tutor at Eton, but never an Eton boy.
 
 III.] NEW ZEALAND SYNODS. 129 
 
 These Diocesan Synods have since met every year, and 
 have secured in each diocese the hearty co-operation of 
 their respective clergy and laity ; it is not easy to 
 overrate the advantages which the Church has gained 
 thereby, alike as regards its government and its esta- 
 blishment in the affections of the people ; and it may be 
 af&rmed with truth, that without some such synodical 
 action, giving to the clergy and laity a voice in the regula- 
 tion of matters ecclesiastical, no Colonial Church can 
 take a permanent hold upon the community among whom 
 it is placed. The General Synod, which is the presiding 
 authority of the provincial Church, is held once in three 
 years, and since its first meeting at Wellington in 1859 
 has been assembled six times, viz., at Nelson 1862, 
 Christchurch 1865, Auckland 1868, Dunedin 1871, Wel- 
 lington 1874, and Nelson 1877. Its office is to aid in 
 maintaining, in union with the Church of England, the 
 doctrine, sacraments, and discipline of Christ, as that 
 Church has received the same ; to provide for unity of 
 action on all essential matters, and the enforcement of 
 discipline throughout the province ; and to combine and 
 develop the energies and sympathies of the Church in 
 the extension of her work and ordinances. No material 
 alteration has been made in the Constitution since its first 
 adoption, excepting in reference to the tenure of Church 
 property. A large proportion of this, chiefly, however, in 
 the North Island, had been obtained by gifts or purchased 
 by Bishop Selwyn, and was vested in him ; and this he 
 proposed to surrender to Trustees appointed by the General 
 Synod, to be administered by them (if not under special 
 Trusts), at the direction of the General Synod ; and he seems 
 to have expected that other Trustees of Church property 
 and bodies like Diocesan Synods, who might associate 
 themselves with the General Synod, would likewise place 
 their property under the control of the General Synod, and 
 so that body, by the hold which it would have over Church 
 property, would ensure obedience to its decisions and
 
 130 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 greater uniformity of action. This was objected to by the 
 Churchmen of the Diocese of Christchurch, where the 
 lands which had been set apart by the Canterbury Associa - 
 tion for Church purposes had been vested in a body of 
 trustees appointed under an Act of the Legislature. They 
 asked to be recognised as entitled to unite themselves with 
 the other Dioceses under the Constitution and to take 
 their part in the administration of the affairs of the 
 Church, without transferring those lands, from the trustees 
 in whom they were vested, to trustees appointed by the 
 General Synod. The question was fully considered at the 
 meeting of the General Synod held at Christchurch in 
 1865, when it was agreed that each Diocesan Synod might 
 hold property for Ecclesiastical purposes and appoint 
 trustees of such property without prejudice to their allegi- 
 ance to the Church Constitution or to the authority of the 
 General Synod. And to facilitate this, an Act, with the 
 sanction of the Synod, was obtained from the Colonial 
 Legislature, by which it was pro^dded that each Diocesan 
 Synod should possess, in respect of property held for 
 Diocesan purposes and vested in trustees appointed by the 
 Diocesan Synod, the same powers as were possessed by the 
 General Synod in respect of property held in trust for that 
 body. An useful Act had previously been passed by 
 the New Zealand Legislature, enabling the General 
 Synod, or indeed any body recognised as represen- 
 tative of a religious denomination, to appoint trustees, and 
 to fill up vacancies when such might occur, at a duly 
 constituted meeting. 
 
 Other Acts also empowered the Bishop of New Zealand 
 to transfer property held by him to trustees appointed 
 by the General Synod, and have enabled also any 
 bishop in New Zealand who had become possessed of 
 property in his corporate capacity, to transfer the same to 
 trustees appointed by the Diocesan Synods. This has been 
 the only serious deviation from the intentions of the founder 
 of the Church Constitution of New Zealand — for such
 
 III.] BISHOP PATTESON. 131 
 
 must Bishop Selwyn be esteemed, though, as he himself 
 repeatedly stated, he only followed therein the precedents 
 of the early Church, and was assisted in the draft of the 
 Constitution by Sir J. Patteson and Sir J. T. Coleridge, and 
 his friends and advisers Sir W. Martin and Mr. Swainson. 
 And the steps taken to obtain this concession, involving, 
 as it did, an important departure from the plan contem- 
 plated by Bishop Selwyn, only served in the end to show 
 what reliance was placed by a large body of objectors 
 in his wisdom, his disinterestedness, and his devotion to 
 the interests of the Church, and their earnest desire not 
 to lose the invaluable benefits which lie had secured to the 
 Church by his sagacity and untiring exertions. 
 
 In 1862, on the occasion of the General Synod being 
 held at Nelson, the President could announce to the mem- 
 bers assembled that the number of clergy in the Province 
 had risen to nearly one hundred, among whom were one 
 priest and nine deacons of the native race : that since 
 1859 Diocesan Synods had assembled twice in the diocese 
 of New Zealand, twice in the diocese of Christchurch, 
 thrice in the diocese of Wellington, and four times in 
 the diocese of Nelson ; while in the essentially Maori 
 diocese of Waiapu a Synod had been held, attended by 
 two English clergymen, three native clergymen, and nine- 
 teen lay synodsmen of native race, and in which all the 
 proceedings were conducted in the Maori language. 
 A Eural Deanery Board had likewise been organized in 
 Otago, in the hope of thus preparing the way for the Synod 
 of a new diocese. 
 
 In the previous year Bishop Patteson had been conse- 
 crated, and now took his seat in the Synod, which affirmed 
 " that it will be of the greatest advantage to the Church in 
 New Zealand to have a definite field of missionary labour 
 open to it." " But," said the bishop — 
 
 "These manifold blessings have been tempered with 
 much wholesome sorrow. At the very time when we were 
 VOL. II. K
 
 132 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 thanking God for the increase of the native pastorate, a 
 war broke out between the two races, which at one time 
 seemed to threaten to rend asunder the bonds by which 
 they had been united for twenty years under the influence 
 of the same faith and in obedience to one sovereign. 
 
 " After visiting most of the tribes who were engaged in 
 the war, I have reason to think that it has pleased God, in 
 His mercy, to avert this fearful calamity. We may still 
 cherish the hope that the two branches which have been 
 grafted upon the same root of Christ will live and bear 
 fruit together. May God grant that Japhet may not envy 
 Shem, and that Shem may not vex Japhet. 
 
 " In thus thanking God for these evidences of His mercy, 
 we must not be understood to thank Him only for the 
 material system of Church-government which He has 
 enabled us to frame. We have learned to-day, in the 
 celebration of the highest ordinance of our holy religion, 
 to thank God that we are * very members incorporate in 
 the mystical body of His Son, which is the blessed com- 
 pany of all faithful people.' We thank Him for the spirit 
 of love, of concord, of communion, Avhich He has breathed 
 into the many members of our united body. We thank 
 Him for all the separate gifts of holiness and grace which 
 He has given to us as ' members in particular ;' and also 
 for uniting us together in one lioly fellowship. We thank 
 Him for the grace by which we have been made ' lively 
 stones ' (1 Peter ii. 5) ; and also for that grace by which 
 He has built us up to be 'a spiritual house.' It is of His 
 mercy that we are not mere grains of sand, but are com- 
 pacted into the substance of the Eock of Ages. 
 
 " The end and aim of this spiritual organization is work, 
 greater, better, more effectual work. We are ' made mem- 
 bers of this holy fellowship, that we may do all such good 
 works as God has prepared for us to walk in.' All great 
 works must be done by the agreement of many workmen, 
 under one master-builder. ' Can two walk together except 
 they be agreed ? ' All argument on this subject is unneces- 
 sary in an age like the present. Every object in the world 
 around us suggests the thought that single-handed work 
 has passed away, as belonging to an age of barbarism. The 
 spade has given way to the plough; the scythe, the sickle, 
 and the flail are being superseded by machines for mowing.
 
 III.] ADDRESS TO SYNOD. 133 
 
 reaping, and thrashing. The single arm is reinforced by 
 combinations of wheels and levers to raise a weight far 
 beyond its own unassisted strength ; and as man associates 
 with himself the beasts of burden, and the mechanical 
 powers to multiply his strength, so for the same purpose 
 he unites himself with his fellow- men. The tirst thought 
 of the projector of any great work is to form a company. 
 The effect of this power of association, so strongly marked 
 in our own race, has been to multiply sixfold, within our 
 own lifetime, the rapidity of travelling by land ; to reduce 
 to less than one-half the time of the post between England 
 and this country ; to carry messages with the rapidity of 
 lightning over thousands of miles : all these are the visible 
 proofs of the power of united action under the guidance of 
 practical wisdom. 
 
 "We also have our great work which God has given to 
 us to do : ' to prepare the way of the Lord, to make straight 
 in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley must 
 be exalted, and every mountain and hill must be laid low : 
 and the crooked must be made straight, and the rough 
 places plain.' (Isaiah xl. 4.) 
 
 " This work cannot be done without union of many 
 hearts and hands, under the guidance of the wisdom which 
 is from on high. Men of the greatest gifts and the most 
 exalted piety have tried to reform mankind by their own 
 spiritual energy and individual zeal; but their work too often 
 died with themselves, because it was built upon no system 
 to endure to future generations. Not so the great Master- 
 builder, — He who ' hath measured the waters in the hollow 
 of His hand, and meted out heaven with the span ; who 
 taketh up the isles as a very little thing ; and before whom 
 all nations are as nothing,' — even He condescends to asso- 
 ciate fallen men as fellow-workers with His blessed Son, 
 It might have been enough that the Word of Life should 
 be preached once for all by the lips of Him, who spake as 
 never man spake ; but it was the will of God that His ser- 
 vants should ' go into all the world and preach the Gospel 
 to every creature.' Nothing could be added to the perfect 
 tion of Him who came to be the Saviour of the world ; all 
 were to live and move and have their being in Him ; light 
 and life were to be in Him alone ; Christ was to be all 
 and in all; and yet there was to be no member of His 
 
 K 2
 
 134 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 Church so poor and humble as not to have his allotted 
 work in his Master's household. Hand and foot, and eye 
 and ear, all were to have their appointed functions, as 
 ' members in particular,' and yet united as the body of 
 Christ. There was to be no schism in the body, because 
 it is the same God which worketh all in all. No abund- 
 ance of spiritual gifts could dispense with the necessity of 
 the ' more excellent way ' of cliarity. ' Miracles, gifts of 
 healing, diversities of tongues' (1 Cor. 12), were not more 
 powerful evidences of the truth of the Gospel, than the fact 
 that ' the multitude of them that believed were of one heart 
 and of one soul ' (Acts iv. 32). This more excellent way 
 cannot be less necessary to us now that the miraculous 
 gifts of the Holy Ghost have been withdrawn. We need 
 all the strength that unity can give ; all the graces that are 
 promised to united prayer ; all the power which the ' mem- 
 ber in particular ' derives from its incorporation with the 
 body, and from its dependence upon the Head. 
 
 " This is the principle of our synodical action. It is not, 
 as some suppose, a vain attempt to supply by material or- 
 ganization the defects of inward life ; but it is the result of 
 a conviction, founded upon the records of the Apostolic 
 Church, that the inward life must not be separated in 
 practice from the external unity of the body of Christ. 
 The law of unity is the essence of its strength, its purity, 
 and its holiness. The only faith that will remove moun- 
 tains and make straight in the desert a highway for our 
 God, is that faith which worketh by love." 
 
 In 1865 the General Synod was held at Christchurch, 
 and some changes were made in the Constitution at the 
 instance of the Diocesan Synod of Christchurch as men- 
 tioned above. A more important step was taken, which was 
 nothing less than an acceptance on the part of the Bishops 
 of New Zealand of that amount of severance from the 
 State whicli seemed to be deduced from discordant utter- 
 ances of the Civil Courts in England, and a petition that 
 the severance might be made complete and unmistakeable 
 by the removal of the last semblance of connexion repre- 
 sented by the retention of discredited Letters Patent. The 
 petition of the Bishops was in the following terms : —
 
 III.] PETITION TO THE CROWN. 135 
 
 TO THE QUEENS MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY. 
 
 The Humble Petition of tlie undersigned Bishops of the 
 Anglican Church in New Zealand sheweth : — 
 
 1. That your Majesty's Petitioners were duly consecrated 
 according to the Form and Manner of Making, Ordaining, 
 and Consecrating of Bishops according to the Order of the 
 United Church of England and Ireland, and humbly ex- 
 press their conviction that all the powers necessary for the 
 due administration of the Office of a Bishop in this Colony 
 were conveyed to them by the Ordinance of Consecration. 
 
 2. That your Majesty's Petitioners accepted Letters 
 Patent from the Crown the validity of which has now 
 been denied by the Judicial Committee of the Privy 
 Council in the following words : — 
 
 '^ Although in a Crown Colony properly so called * * * 
 a Bishopric may he constituted and Ecclesiastical Jurisdic- 
 tion conferred by the sole authority of the Crown, yet the 
 Letters Patent of the Crown will not have any such effect or 
 operation in a Colony or Settlement which is possessed of an 
 independent Legislature." 
 
 That the Letters Patent granted to your Majesty's Peti- 
 tioners were issued after the Colony of New Zealand had 
 become possessed of an independent Legislature. 
 
 3. That your Majesty's Petitioners therefore humbly 
 crave permission to surrender their Letters Patent and to 
 be allowed to rely in future upon the powers inherent in 
 their office for perpetuating the succession of their Order 
 within the Colony of New Zealand and securing the due 
 exercise of their Episcopal functions, in conformity with 
 the Church Constitution hereinafter described. 
 
 4. That your Majesty's Petitioners, in conjunction with 
 Representatives of the Clergy and Laity from all the Dio- 
 ceses in New Zealand, and with Bishop Patteson, have 
 agreed upon a Constitution for associating together the 
 Members of the United Church of England and Ireland in 
 New Zealand by Voluntary Compact for the ordering the 
 affairs, the management of the property, the promotion of 
 the discipline of the Members thereof, and for the in- 
 culcation and maintenance of sound Doctrine and true 
 IJeligion throughout the Colony.
 
 136 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [.'Hap. 
 
 5. That this Constitution has been recognised by an 
 Act of the Colonial Legislature empowering the Bishop of 
 New Zealand to convey to Trustees appointed by the 
 General Synod, as established under the provisions of the 
 said Constitution, numerous properties formerly held by 
 him ; and that at the present time the residences of four 
 Bishops and of many of the Clergy, Sites for Churches and 
 Schools, Burial Grounds, Lands for the Endowment of 
 Bishoprics, Parishes, Schools, Colleges, and of the Melane- 
 sian IMission, are vested in Trustees appointed under the 
 authority of the said General Synod ; and further, that 
 regulations have been framed for the administration of the 
 properties so held in Trust for the General Synod, and a 
 Tribunal has been established for the decision of any doubts 
 ■which may arise in the course of such administration, in 
 agreement, as it is believed, with the decision of the Judi- 
 cial Committee of the Privy Council in the Case of Rev. 
 W. Long V. the Bishop of Capetown. 
 
 6. That the General Synod at a meeting held at Christ- 
 church in May 1865 framed rules for enforcing Discipline 
 within their Body, and also established a Tribunal to deter- 
 mine whether the rules so framed and assented to " have 
 been violated or not, and wliat shall be the consequences 
 of such violation," and that all the Bishops in New Zea- 
 land together with Bishop Patteson assented to the Rules 
 so framed, and to the establishment of the Tribunal afore- 
 said, and are bound in common with all the Clergy and Lay 
 officers of the Church in this Colony by all the Rules 
 adopted by the General Synod. And further, that this 
 Compact so entered into by all the Bishops in New Zealand 
 before the receipt of the Judgment of the Judicial Com- 
 mittee of the Privy Council on Petition of the Bishop of 
 Natal was afterwards found to be in agreement with the 
 following words of that Judgment : — 
 
 " The United Church of England and Ireland is not a 
 part of the Constitution in any Colonial Settlement, nor can 
 its authorities or those ivho hear office in it claim to he recog- 
 nised hy the Law of the Colony otherwise than as the members 
 of a voluntary association." 
 
 7. That this Constitution of the Church in New Zealand 
 was framed after careful consideration of a Despatch of the 
 Right Honorable H. Labouchere to Governor-General Sir
 
 III.] PETITION TO THE CROWN. 137 
 
 Edmund Head, Bart., and in accordance with the following 
 suggestion in that Despatch : — 
 
 " I am aware of the advantages which might belong to a 
 scheme under which the binding force of such regulations 
 should he simply voluntary." 
 
 8. That your jNTajesty's Petitioners have accepted and 
 acquiesce in the decision of the Judicial Committee of the 
 Privy Council that the Church of England in this Colony 
 " is in the same situation with any other Religious hody, in 
 no hetter hut in no ivorse position, and the members may adopt 
 rules for enforcing Discipli7ie within their hody ivhich will he 
 binding on those ivho expressly or by implication have assented 
 to them" And they therefore humbly submit that the 
 Judgment of Lord Lyndhurst in the Case of Dr. "Warren 
 points out the course of procedure in all questions which 
 may arise between any of the members of the Anglican 
 Church in New Zealand, whether Bishops, Clergy, or Laity, 
 who have bound themselves by Voluntary Compact under 
 the authority of the General Synod, viz. : — 
 
 (1). That the question be tried and decided according 
 to the Pules of the Synod as agreed to by the 
 Bishops, Clergy, and Laity. 
 (2), That on Petition of either Party the Supreme 
 Court of the Colony has authority to inquire into 
 " the regularity of the proceedings and the autho- 
 rity of the Tribunal, and on those grounds merely " 
 to aftirm or annul the decision, 
 (3). That from any such decision of the Supreme 
 Court of the Colony an appeal would lie to the 
 Privy Council upon the same grounds. 
 
 And therefore that the Anglican Church in New Zealand is 
 
 effectually guarded against the danger apprehended by the 
 
 Lords of the Judicial Committee, viz. : — 
 
 " That cases might occur in ivhich there would be a denial 
 
 of justice and no remedy for great public inconvenience and 
 
 mischief " 
 
 without having recourse to a direct appeal to the Crown in 
 
 the case of any controversy such as that which is presented 
 
 by the Petition of the Bishop of Natal. 
 
 9. That the above recited principle of the civil equality 
 of all Keligious Bodies has been affirmed by a Eesolution 
 passed by the House of Eepresentatives in New Zealand.
 
 138 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 10, That your Majesty's Petitioners humbly express 
 their conviction that the right of appointment of Bishops 
 in New Zealand is not part of the prerogative of the Crown, 
 inasmuch as all the Bishoprics were founded by private 
 efforts and endowed from private resources ; and further, 
 that the assertion of any such claim may operate as a 
 most serious discouragement to the Clergy already in New 
 Zealand, and tend to prevent other clergymen from coming 
 out from England, by cutting them off from all hope of 
 election to the highest office of the Church in this Colony. 
 
 11. That your Majesty's Petitioners therefore humbly 
 pray that all doubts may be removed as to their statushoth 
 ecclesiastical and temporal, 
 
 1. By the acceptance of the surrender of their Letters 
 Patent now declared to be null and void : 
 
 2. By declaring the Royal Mandate under which your 
 Majesty's Petitioners were consecrated to be merely 
 an authority given by the Crown for the Act of 
 Consecration, and to have no further effect or legal 
 consequence : 
 
 3. By recognizing the inherent right of the Bishops in 
 New Zealand to fill up vacancies in their own order 
 by the Consecration of persons elected in conformity 
 with the regulations of the General Synod, without 
 Letters Patent, and without Poyal Mandate, in the 
 same manner as they have already consecrated a 
 Missionary Bishop for the Islands in the Western 
 Pacific, after communication with your Majesty's 
 Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies and 
 with the Attorney-General of New Zealand. 
 
 And your Majesty's humble and loyal Petitioners as in 
 duty bound will ever pray, &c. 
 
 G. A. New Zealand, 
 H. J. C. Christciiukch, 
 C. J. Wellington, 
 Edmund Nelson, 
 William Waiapu. 
 
 When the sixth General Synod was held at Auckland in 
 18G8, Bishop Selwyn was in the anomalous position of the 
 occupant of two Sees divided by half the world from each
 
 Ill] WOLVERHAMPTON CONGRESS, 139 
 
 other. It had been found impossible for him to re- 
 sign New Zealand on his being enthroned at Lichfield, 
 and he had made it a condition of accepting the latter that 
 he should return for a time to New Zealand and arrange 
 the multifarious concerns of his diocese and province before 
 the final separation was made. 
 
 To the last day of his life the bishop was always the 
 eloquent advocate and convincing defender of synodal 
 action. When he took his seat in the Lambeth Confer- 
 ence of 18G7, which he declared to be in his judgment the 
 most important event that had befallen the Church of 
 England since the Eeformation, he was at once listened to 
 as the one prelate who had had more practical experience 
 of Synods, diocesan and provincial, than any other member 
 of that august assembly. During his stay in England, 
 little dreaming that any prospect was before him other 
 than that which most he desired, of dying first Bishop of 
 New Zealand, his intense love for the Mother Church 
 led him everywhere to recommend the establishment of 
 Diocesan Synods, " whose decisions will be humbly and 
 dutifully submitted to some higher Synod of the whole 
 Anglican Church " as the remedy for our " unhappy divi- 
 sions," and as the surest means of winning souls and main- 
 taining them in the faith, when won. At the Church 
 Congress held at Wolverhampton, in 1867, in the very 
 diocese over which he was so soon to rule, or, as he would 
 have preferred to say, which he was so soon to serve, he 
 insisted on the necessity of Synods being fully established, 
 and he thus gave his own experience : — 
 
 " For eight years I have been in the habit annually of 
 meeting in my own Diocesan Synod both clergy and laity, 
 and every three years I meet also our General Synod, com- 
 posed of all the Bishops of New Zealand, with the addi- 
 tion of Bishop Patteson, and with the elected clergy and 
 laity of all the dioceses ; and in no one of these Synods 
 has there ever been anything which a Christian man could 
 wish had never taken place. The bishops, clergy, and
 
 140 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [(HAP. 
 
 laity have met in one chamber, have discussed all subjects 
 that were necessary to the well-being of the Church, and 
 have especially discussed the subject of Church Missions 
 in connexion with the extension of the Gospel of Christ 
 through all the neighbouring islands ; and in the whole of 
 this work there has been the greatest harmony among the 
 different orders of which those Synods are composed, 
 leaving upon my mind the most earnest hope that the day 
 will shortly come when every diocese shall have its own 
 Synod, where the clergy and laity will be presided over by 
 their own bishop." 
 
 In perfect consistency with these convictions and experi- 
 ences, the bishop immediately on his translation to Lich- 
 field sought to confer on his new diocese the blessings 
 which with so much patience and labour he had acquired 
 for the diocese which he was leaving. This part of the 
 subject will, however, be dealt with at a future period, and 
 will fall in with the record of his life at Lichfield. 
 
 In February, 1868, he took his seat for the first time in 
 the Convocation at Canterbury, and the present Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury has publicly stated, with cordial 
 appreciation of his many gifts, that " the bishops received 
 very great benefit from the electric force which attended 
 his presence, and which was certainly something new 
 amongst them at the time when he became a bishop at 
 home." 
 
 No one can read the chronicles of Convocation of the 
 year 1868 without recognising how true and how well 
 chosen are the words of the Primate, which have been just 
 quoted. Bishop Selwyn found the Upper House dis- 
 cussing with much erudition and patience, but with infi- 
 nitely small result, the following resolution, proposed by 
 the Bishop of London : — 
 
 " That this House, viewing with anxious concern the 
 increasing diversity of practice in regard to ritual obser- 
 vances as causing additional disquietude and contention ;
 
 III.] CONVOCATION. 141 
 
 and perceiving with deep regret that the resohitions 
 adopted by tlie Convocations of Canterbury and York 
 have failed to secure unity, deems it expedient for the 
 peace of the Church that the limits of ritual observance 
 should not be left to the uncontrolled discretion of indivi- 
 dual clergymen, and therefore ought to be defined by 
 rightful authority." 
 
 The debate was long and learned, but it is not disre- 
 spectful to say that it could possibly lead to nothing but 
 an expression of opinion on the part of the assembled 
 prelates. This was at once detected by the Bishop of 
 Lichfield, who said : — 
 
 " I think it desirable when a new member comes into a 
 body, that he should in some general way state the princi- 
 ples on which he intends to act; and my principle, as far 
 as I can see at present, is not to attempt to exercise any 
 power that we do not really possess. I have been occupied 
 for some twenty-five years in constructing a system of 
 Church-goverument, if possible, out of the very discordant 
 elements supplied to my hands when I first went to New 
 Zealand. My first object w^as to construct a governing 
 body which should have the confidence of the commu- 
 nity, and I so far succeeded that an appeal has been made 
 on a recent occasion touching this question of ritual to the 
 governing body. When imputations were made in New 
 Zealand against Bishop Jenner, who was consecrated to 
 the See of Dunedin, that he favoured ritualistic practices, 
 the answer made was that he had signed a declaration of 
 submission to the laws of the governing body, and that he 
 was prepared to submit to them. 
 
 " Here I apprehend there is no governing body at all : 
 but the Church is in a state of anarchy and lawlessness. 
 Here is a rubric which bears the name of law,^ That law 
 is so ambiguous that it ceases to be law, and in respect of 
 that rubric the Church is in a state of lawlessness, and in 
 respect to that lawlessness in a state of anarchy. To the 
 rubric itself I attach very little consequence, because 
 having accepted cordially the whole of the Prayer-book 
 
 ^ The ornaments Eubric.
 
 142 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 I believe that this rubric may be altered by Parliament 
 to-morrow without afi'ecting my conscience or the con- 
 science of any clergyman. The words are ' by the autho- 
 rity of Parliament,' and not a word is said about the 
 Church. If Parliament chooses to alter that particular 
 rubric to-morrow, I am bound to abide by the decision of 
 l*arliament by the terms of the rubric itseK. P)ut on the 
 general principle I deny that Parliament can alter the 
 I^'ayer-book as it pleases, and that we should be bound to 
 submit to the alterations, and therefore I limit my remarks 
 to this particular rubric. I find that the rubric is not 
 understood. Nobody can tell us what it means, and yet 
 we are told there is going to be a legal decision upon it. 
 The Bishop of London regretted that in giving its decision 
 the Court was so slow in its operation. As the matter is so 
 very uncertain, how can you expect the Court to go on 
 quickly ? The question evidently cannot rest upon the 
 rubric alone. Are we then in the meantime, while a 
 Poyal Commission is examining into the meaning of the 
 rubric, and into the way in which individual clergymen 
 understand it, and while the question is still pending in 
 the Ecclesiastical Courts, to sit in condemnation upon a 
 certain number of clergymen, whose names are not men- 
 tioned, and whose doctrines are not known, and to cast out 
 from this Convocation a general condemnation for certain 
 offences upon persons unknown, founded on the transgres- 
 sion of a law which we all admit to be unintelligible ? 
 This is a very great difficulty to me, coming as a young 
 and new member of this Convocation. In explaining my 
 reasons for disagreeing to this resolution, I say that in 
 support of it certain charges are made against certain 
 persons unknown, and I cannot support it because it does 
 aim at certain persons unknown. 
 
 " . . . .1 have had a conversation with one clergyman in 
 London on the subject of ritualism, and he told me frankly, 
 that if there was really an effective governing body, he for 
 one would at once give in his adhesion to it. If they are 
 told that Convocation, knowing nothing whatever upon 
 the subject, has passed resolutions which, say what 
 you will, will be construed into a direct condemnation, 
 they will feel that the body to which they look for guid- 
 ance has practically abdicated its own authority, and that
 
 III.] CONVOCATION. 14.3 
 
 they are left in the same state of auarchy as before. I 
 think we ought to pause before sending out such a resolu- 
 tion as that. I look upon it that the differences have arisen 
 from the suspension of the legislative power of the Church, 
 and if I had any hope whatever, which I have not, and 
 therefore do not intend to try the experiment, of being 
 able to induce this Convocation to accept certain resolutions 
 which would touch the root of the matter, and deal with 
 the constitutional defect, I might be tempted to submit a 
 proposition to the House. Can we deny that the lecjislative 
 powers of the Church are in a state of suspense ? Tlie 
 natural result of this suspension is that in doubtful matters 
 individual clergymen have acted on their own judgment. 
 An appeal to the Courts of Law can be of little avail, if the 
 law itself be doubtful. How is a decision to be arrived 
 at ? Is there any law at all ? If there be, mnst it not be 
 a law of so doubtful a character that any decision upon it 
 must be unsatisfactory? If the law be unsatisfactory, 
 then it follows that legislation must be necessary. I think 
 all this does point to legislation, and I think it better to 
 say so at once. Why, indeed, should we have any hesi- 
 tation in expressing our opinion ? And if we do desire 
 legislation, then I think a very grave and solemn question 
 arises, viz., whether it should come upon one point alone, 
 or whether it should not rather enter into a Jimltitude of 
 other questions. The legislative power in this country 
 has remained dormant almost since the date of the Eefoi- 
 mation, and there has been no power of making new laws 
 as new cases occurred. The Episcopal Church in the 
 United States of America, having legislative power, has 
 removed this doubtful rubric from its Prayer-book. If 
 the same power had existed here, and if the doubtful 
 rubric had been removed from our Prayer-book, these 
 questions would never have arisen. I feel that the appoint- 
 ment of a Royal Commission is not the best way of acting ; 
 that the appointment of a Eoyal Commission is, in effect, 
 superseding to a certain extent the legitimate functions of 
 the Church. It is because I believe that the ancient land- 
 marks ought not to be removed, except with the same 
 solemnity and by the same process as that with which 
 they were originally laid down, — and it is because this 
 matter is in danger of leading to a removal of the ancient
 
 144 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 landmarks by an incompetent authority, that I think it 
 M^onkl be much better that we should not pass any reso- 
 lution upon the subject at all, but that we should trust 
 rather to the prevailing common sense and good feeling of 
 the clergy themselves, when these things have run riot for 
 a little while, not to allow them to run to such an excess 
 as to inflict any permanent injury upon the Clnn'ch." 
 
 At a later period of the same debate, the Bishop of 
 Lichfield again spoke in explanation, and among other 
 things said : — 
 
 "The difficulty lies not in the refractory spirit of the 
 clergy, but in the ambiguity of the law. Legislation may 
 be needed to make the law more clear. It is in the power 
 of the Legislature to do that, but how the matter is to be 
 decided on an appeal to a Court of Law I cannot see, other- 
 wise than it might be decided by drawing lots. When we 
 see that four most eminent lawyers on one side declai'e 
 that vestments are illegal, and that four eminent lawyers 
 on the other side declare that they are not, and when we 
 see that the counsel for the prosecution does not think it 
 expedient to introduce the question of vestments into his 
 plea, one cannot fail to feel that a decision of a Court of 
 Law would not settle the point. What we want is that 
 the legislative body of the Church, with the concurrence 
 of the State, should clear up the laws, substituting for 
 those which are obscure, clear and unmistakeable laws. 
 Perhaps the expunging of this rubric would settle a great 
 part of the question. I must say, however, that I dift'er 
 from those who think that the question of vestments is 
 the main cause of the secessions to the Church of Home. 
 / believe the real caitse why, in the face of all our advance- 
 ment in knowledge, the Church of Rome makes progress among 
 ourselves, lohile all its errors are unretracted, is found in the 
 divisions which exist among us ; and the only %my in which 
 we can counteract this is Iry heing united." 
 
 In the same session of Convocation a Eeport of a Com- 
 ndttee on Diocesan Synods appointed in the previous year 
 was presented, and the balance of opinion was largely
 
 III.] ARCHBISHOP LONGLEY. 145 
 
 adverse to their being organized. Tlie Primate in his im- 
 partial summing up said, he should look with interest at 
 the proceedings of the Bishop of Lichfield. "He seems 
 resolved upon making the experiment, and no doubt he 
 will be able to carry it out as successfully as any of us 
 could hope to do ; but I do not think the time has come 
 when, in my diocese at least, I can propose anything of 
 the sort." 
 
 Even to the judgment of Archbishop Lougley, the 
 experience during a quarter of a century of the advantages 
 of synodal action went for nothing, and the effort to set in 
 motion such an organization in an English diocese seemed 
 to be quixotic ; and yet hardly more than ten years have 
 elapsed, and the few dioceses, which are still without an 
 organization, which would almost have satisfied Bishop 
 Selwyn if it did not quite attain to his ideal, are excep- 
 tional cases, and appear to be rapidly moving towards 
 conformity with the majority. 
 
 The Upper House did not come to its decision without 
 being fully in possession of the experience of the great 
 pioneer in this movement. The Bishop of Lichfield had 
 urged the assembled prelates to adopt the system which he 
 had commended to them after long trial : for the name, 
 whether Synod or Conference, he cared little. 
 
 " Of the assembling together of bishop, clergy, and 
 laity," he said, " I have no more doubt of the necessity 
 than I doubt whether bread and meat are good for food. 
 I am convinced, from an experience on the subject of more 
 than twenty years, that such meetings are absolutely 
 necessary, and that there should be some voluntary and 
 some supplementary action of the bishop, clergy, aud laity 
 on which they should be brought together. These meet- 
 ings for convenience, though not of necessity, are called 
 Diocesan Synods, for I do not think that name is tied to 
 any particular meaning." 
 
 After speaking of what he had already done daring tlie 
 two months which had seen him Bishop of Lichfield, and
 
 146 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 of the resolutions which had been passed in all the Eural 
 Deaneries of that diocese, he was beset by questions from 
 his brother bishops, the majority of whom were doubtful 
 of the policy, and even of the possibility of his plans : at 
 length, with infinite good humour and patience, he sat 
 down and invited his bretliren to catechise him freely, and 
 this was done and submitted to in a manner which was 
 gratefully acknowledged by all the bishops who had listened 
 to the informal and unusual proceeding. 
 
 It is impossible to curtail materially the series of ques- 
 tions and answers which were put and given, and it would 
 be to deal inadequately with a great question to pass it 
 over. The following extracts from the proceedings of the 
 Tipper House of the Convocation of Canterbury on 
 February 20, 1868, are therefore given : — 
 
 The Bishop of Oxford (Wilberforce). — Then in what 
 way do you mean to give a binding effect to your decisions, 
 and how far will they reach ? 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — I am endeavouring to put in 
 a short form the substance of lengthened discussions at 
 each of our Pairidecanal Synods, and the average amount 
 of discussion would be about twenty-nine hours in all. 
 These were meetings where I was face to face with my 
 clergy, and in some instances with a number of the laity. 
 What we meant by a binding force was this : when a ques- 
 tion should be put to the vote, every person in the minority 
 should be bound by the decision of the majority ; for 
 practical questions relating to the well-being of the diocese 
 and any administration of tiie funds nmst necessarily be 
 settled by the decisions of the majority. I suppose it is 
 the same way with the Ecclesiastical Commission. I 
 suppose one Commissioner, although personally he does 
 not aiZTee with what is adopted by the rest, is bound by 
 the decision of the majority. This question was a good 
 deal discussed, and it was well understood that no person 
 could permit a question to be put to the vote and then go 
 away from the Synod and act without reference to it, but 
 purely according to his own views.
 
 111.] DEBATE IN CONVOCATION. 147 
 
 The Bishop of Oxfoed — Would it apply to such a case 
 as this, for instance, taking a very simple case : whether 
 the Clergy should attend at a consecration in surplices or 
 in black gowns ? That is of no importance in itself, but 
 it is a simple question that may illustrate what I mean. 
 Could you make such a rule as this, for instance — that for 
 that diocese it is desirable that the Clergy who attend the 
 Bishop at a consecration shall appear before him in their 
 habit as Clergymen, or, on the other hand, in their academic 
 dress ? That is now a practical question, and if these 
 things are to do good at all, it must be by enabling us 
 to bring a number of scattered parties throughout the 
 diocese into united action. These external things are 
 nothing in themselves, but they are valuable as indica- 
 tions. I want to ask whether questions of this kind could 
 be discussed in the Synod, and whether the minority would 
 take the decision of the majority ? 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — In going through a number 
 of subjects, it becomes necessary, as far as possible, to 
 prevent the discussion of details ; and it was understood 
 that when the Synod came to nieet, it would be in the 
 power of the majority to preclude all discussion on any 
 subject they liked. If all parties agreed to the introduc- 
 tion of a subject, and it was afterwards put to the vote, 
 the minority, I think, would be willing to be bound by the 
 decision of the majority. Now, in my own installation to 
 my bishopric in Lichfield, a very disagreeable thing took 
 place. There was some doubt as to whether the Clergy 
 who were present could wear surplices or not. Many of 
 them came in surplices, and they were told to take tliem 
 off. Some of them did take them off, and some did not. 
 Even the students of the Theological College attend the 
 services there on certain occasions in surplices, and yet 
 it was supposed to be inadmissible for the Clergy to 
 wear them on that occasion. Now, that was very un- 
 pleasant ; and if the question had been settled before by a 
 simple rule, it would have been much better. Such ques- 
 tions as this might be settled by the Synod. 
 
 The Bishop of Salisbury (Hamiltonj— But that is a 
 cathedral question, and not a clerical question. 
 
 The Bishop of Ely (Bkowke) — Yes ; it was a question 
 for the Dean and Chapter of the cathedral to deal with. 
 
 VOL. II. L
 
 148 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [cUAr. 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — Certainly; but I pointed 
 out this as being the kind of question which it would 
 be well to have decided by a j)roper authority. All we 
 want is an authority to say, in such cases, shall the dress 
 be black or white. 
 
 The Bishop of Oxfokd — But the power of excluding 
 anything would rest with the Bishop ? 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — It would rest with the 
 majority of the Clergy, with the majority of the Laity, 
 and with the Bishop. 
 
 The Bishop of Oxford — Then, supposing the majority 
 of the Clergy voted that it was right to wear surplices, 
 and the minority voted that it was not. Could the minority 
 escape afterwards from the decision of the Synod? 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — I think in that case we 
 should do very much what we did here yesterday — 
 try by an adjustment to arrive at unanimity. 1 do not 
 suppose we should ever risk the disruption of such a 
 body for such a question. 
 
 The Bishop of Bangor (Campbell) — Suppose the 
 minority of those actually present did consider them- 
 selves bound by the decision of the majority, still the 
 Clergy who were not present except by representa- 
 tion might not consider themselves so bound. Is not 
 that so ? 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — Why, I should suppose 
 these difficulties would be reasons for not introducing 
 such questions at all. 
 
 The Bishop of Oxford — But, after you have excluded 
 questions of doctrine and reduced the operation of the 
 Synod to practical subjects, if you exclude them too, how 
 do you propose to find occupation for these busy spirits 
 you have made ? 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — "Without entering into any 
 of those questions in New Zealand, we have had constant 
 occupation. We have never lacked employment, and have 
 never ibund ourselves in any disagreeable position. If 
 there has ever been any disagreeable subject introduced, it 
 has either been stopped or dropped. 
 
 The Bishop of Oxford — But are the cases pandlel ? 
 You know both New Zealand and your own diocese of 
 Lichfield ?
 
 III.] DEBATE IN CONVOCATION. 140 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — I think mine is an argument 
 d fortiori, because when I went out to New Zealand I 
 found the Clergy were under the English Church Mission, 
 and that society has never in any way said to its Clergy- 
 men, " You owe an allegiance to the Diocesan Synod and 
 in proportion we relax our rules for you." At first at the 
 meetings of the Synod the English Church missionary 
 Clergymen were always in a majority, and could have 
 stopped any proceeding if they had chosen to do so. 
 
 The Bishop of Oxfokd — But does it not throw a 
 little light on their friendliness that they were in an 
 assertive majority ? 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — I say the great supporters of 
 Synodical action were those Clergymen owing an allegiance 
 elsewhere to a society in Jlngland, and so much the more 
 remarkable is it that the minority thoroughly consented to 
 what was done. 
 
 The Bishop of Bangoe — Have the decisions of the 
 Synod in New Zealand always been acquiesced in ? 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — We began by saying dis- 
 tinctly, that no person who, from any reason whatever, 
 withheld his assent from Synodical action should be 
 affected by any of our acts, and the effect has been that 
 only one Clergyman out of 105 has withheld his voluntary 
 adhesion from us. There were certain laymen who 
 strongly objected to the formation of the Synod originally, 
 and among them was the present Chief Justice, but now 
 he is one of our strongest supporters and members. I 
 may say that I find nothing whatever in the report before 
 us to object to, unless the objection be raised on the 
 theory that this is not a Diocesan Synod proper, and 
 nobody pretends that it is. We do not know what a 
 Diocesan Synod proper is. 
 
 The Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol (Ellicott) — 
 Yes, we do. We have had to look into that. 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — But from what period of the 
 Church's history do you take the Diocesan Synod ? 
 
 The Bishop of Ely — From the sixth century to the 
 Preformation. 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — But that is the very point. 
 The report of thirty-two Commissioners after the Eeforma- 
 tion, called the Rcformntio Ler/um, contemplated the 
 
 L 2
 
 150 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [i hav. 
 
 existence of a Diocesan Synod other than that which 
 existed in the time you speak of. 
 
 The Bishop of Ely — But that was not enforced. Since 
 the Eeformation the Diocesan Synod lias been merged in 
 the Bishop's Visitations. 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — I find the general sense is 
 to let the Bishop's A^isitation merge in the Diocesan Synod. 
 But I do not know how far I am legally competent to 
 relieve them from that. 
 
 Tlie Bishop of Oxford — Can you state in any one or 
 two details what you imagine the work will be for the 
 Synod in the diocese of Lichfield ? What would the 
 Synod have to do ? You spoke of administering the funds 
 of the diocese, but in my diocese there would be no funds 
 to administer. What sort of subject could there be any 
 wholesome decision given upon by such a body ? 
 
 The Bishop of Salisbury — And what would form the 
 difference between these Diocesan Synods and the Kuri- 
 decanal Synods existing already ? 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — In answer to the Bishop 
 of Salisbury I nmst say that the difference would be this 
 — that the Diocesan Synod would bring the Clergy into 
 contact with the Bishop, which the Ruridecanal Synod 
 does not. I should not like to be bound to attend and 
 hear all the proceedings in all the eight-and-forty Ruri- 
 decanal Synods in my diocese ; but, on the other hand, I 
 do wish to have the cream of all those meetings collected 
 together into one. In answer to the Bishop of Oxford I 
 may give this as an instance of the sort of question which 
 would be dealt with. I have received a numerously signed 
 memorial representing the feeling of a large body of the 
 Laity and of many of the Clergy in the neighbourhood of 
 AVolverhampton in my diocese, and asking me to assist 
 them in organizing a lay association. Now, I feel myself 
 quite incompetent as a Bishop to control the influences 
 which may be put into o]jeration by such a system, for it 
 is impossible that the ljishop> can exercise any such 
 authority over such an association as he is enabled to 
 exercise over his own Clergy. You might have, as the 
 result of such an association, a number of guinea sub- 
 scribers laying down their own laws, and controlling their 
 own lay agents in a manner not only without the consent
 
 in.] DEBATE IN CONVOCATION. 151 
 
 but even in opposition to the wishes of the Bishop. If I 
 had a Diocesan Synod, the first thing I would do would 
 be to ask, "Are you willing to let this lay association 
 be subject to the laws of the Diocesan Synod?" and if 
 they agreed, then I should be safe in acting with them. 
 But if they would not agree, and I were to have no more 
 authority over them than the laws imposed by these guinea 
 subscribers, I would not have any connection with them. 
 I know the evil of it; I know how completely these 
 societies are, to a certain extent, undermining and super- 
 seding the real work of the Church. But I would not 
 consent to the establishment of a Diocesan Synod udIcss 
 they gave me a veto in the proceedings. There has been 
 considerable discussion on that point in my diocese, but I 
 was determined nothing should induce me to meet the 
 Synod unless they acknowledged that principle. Having 
 that power, I can stop anything objectionable at any 
 moment; and the Laity also have the same power, for 
 if they think I am doing anything improper, they can 
 stop it. In the same way the Clergy would have the 
 same power, and thus I think we should be perfectly safe. 
 I apprehend that such a Synod would not fail through 
 lack of work — it would find plenty to do in absorbing into 
 itself those irregular agencies which would otherwise be 
 curvetting about outside the Church. That is only one 
 case out of fifty that I might mention. 
 
 The Bishop of Oxford — I do not see how to apply that 
 exactly. 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — Then I will mention another 
 case. Applications are sometimes made to the Bishop by 
 some of his Clergymen to consent to a sale of a portion of 
 the glebe. A Clergyman may write to me and say that a 
 coal-mine has been discovered, or there is good reason to 
 believe one may be discovered, near to or underneath his 
 glebe, and it w^ould greatly benefit his living if I gave my 
 consent that it may be sold. Now, I cannot sanction that 
 on my own responsibility alone ; I cannot sell the property 
 of the Church for some present good unless it is distinctly 
 considered by a competent body that it is for the real 
 good of the Church. These questions are coming before 
 me every day, and other questions relating to the manage- 
 ment of training schools, &c.
 
 152 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 The lii.siiop OF Oxford — lu my own diocese we have a 
 very simple anangement. There is one common Board 
 elected every year by ourselves, and our Archdeacon and 
 liural Deans are ex officio members. Then there are sixteen 
 Laymen and eight Clergymen from each archdeaconry, with 
 the Bishop at their head. 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — That is a Diocesan Council. 
 
 The Bishop of Oxford — But it is not a Synod. 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — But I look upon a Synod 
 chielly as a means of arriving at a good executive for all 
 these purposes of the Church, and which shall not simply 
 derive its authority from the nomination of the Bishop. 
 Such a Council as that which the Bishop of Oxford has 
 already mentioned would answer the object. I should 
 desire that the Iluridecanal Synod should have its own 
 standing committee, with an appeal to the triennial meet- 
 ing of tlie Diocesan Synod, which Diocesan Synod should 
 also have its own standing committee, to advise the Bishop 
 in matters relating to the diocese. The only difference 
 between what already exists in the diocese of Oxford and 
 M'hat I propose is, that perhaps my proposal would have a 
 larger basis of confidence, and in its operation such a body 
 would be able to do everything necessary in practice from 
 time to time for the well-being of the diocese. 
 
 The Bishop of Oxford — Do you think tlie establish- 
 ment of these Synods would lead to any other advantages? 
 
 The Bishop of Lichfield — Certainly. I think it will 
 lead to more unity, just as the very fact of Ihe existence 
 of the Ituridecanal Synods has leil to more unity in the 
 Church, much more than was originally anticipated 
 
 The Bishop of Oxford— I wish to return my personal 
 tlianks to the Bishop of Lichfield for his great kindness in 
 l)earing the questioning to which we have subjected him. 
 As to the important subject itself, I do not think that the 
 ])lan he has shaped out will meet the desire of those who 
 wish for the restoration of Diocesan Synods. But such 
 discussions as these afford us opportunities of learning 
 wisdom one from another, and diffusing our ideas amongst 
 our brethren at large, for it is most important that we 
 should sift these matters to the bottom. Li my diocese 
 it has been considered desirable to found a Diocesan 
 Society, and many are of ()})inion tliat all differences
 
 III.] DEBATE IN CONVOCATION. 153 
 
 would disappear under the influence of such a Synod. 
 My honoured friend Archdeacon Wordswortli, one of our 
 Eural Deans, considers this one thing terribly lacking in 
 the organization of the diocese. My question to him is the 
 same as that which I put to my right rev, brother — Given 
 the Diocesan Synod, what is it to do ? I cannot see the 
 use of calling large bodies into existence unless there is a 
 definite work for them to discharge when called together. 
 The result of my listening to the discussion to-day has not 
 been to clear up the difficulty, and I remain in the same 
 doubt as I was before. I have always felt, if I got my 
 Diocesan Synod, what should I do with it ? That is the 
 difficulty with me. I admit the great advantage of bring- 
 ing together the Clergy and the Laity, and the Clergy and 
 Laity and the Bishop, and my life has been spent in 
 inventing opportunities for that purpose, and I am happy 
 to say with no inconsiderable success. We meet Arch- 
 deacons and Eural Deans annually. Our three days of 
 prayer and discussion and consultation are invaluable ; 
 and we follow that up by Kuridecanal Synods in every 
 part of the diocese, where the Eural Dean states all that 
 has been agreed to at the central meeting, and the informa- 
 tion is thus spread throughout every part of the diocese. 
 
 The Bishop of London — Do you call them Synods or 
 Chapters ? 
 
 The Bishop of Oxford — Euridecanal Chapters. We 
 have a gathering also of the school inspectors in the diocese 
 for three days. By these various means a great body of 
 the Clergy and Laity meet together every year. I find 
 that in the Euridecanal Chapters the first condition of 
 success has been that there should never be a decision 
 by vote. So that the minority may come with perfect 
 confidence that they will have the opportunity of stating 
 their own views and not becoming entangled by engage- 
 ments, but they go back as free as they came, altogether 
 unbound. That is the pinch of the whole question, and 
 that is the reason I was so anxious to ascertain the 
 opinions of my right rev. brother as to whether we 
 could introduce that one principle. 
 
 The Bishop of Lichheld — I believe that many charit- 
 able Trusts would not require the intervention of Parlia- 
 ment if they were suliject to diocesan government. We
 
 154 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 leave them in the hands of five or six persons who 
 have power to devolve Trusts to their heirs and assigns. 
 The governing body in such cases possessing public 
 confidence acquires by the consent of all parties the 
 management of a Trust. We are not troubled by fram- 
 ing statutes as traps for perjury, which is the case with 
 respect to many statutes, but all our business in colleges 
 or trusts is managed on the simple plan that every 
 body of trustees is bound to make a report to a Synod 
 at the triennial meeting, and that Synod issues new 
 instructions to meet whatever difficulties may have arisen 
 witliin the three preceding years. That system has given 
 so much confidence to the public that I am not aware 
 of any other being adopted. In a new country the 
 persons making endowments and offering gifts come in 
 in considerable numbers, and I have been obliged to 
 keep on hand a printed form of conveyance, reserving 
 to the General Synod the right of laying down rules and 
 regulations. The body of Trustees come and ask for in- 
 struction every three years, and we try to hcej) out of laiv 
 fees, which have eaten out the very vitals of many Trusts 
 in England. There are certain subjects on which it is 
 desirable to deliberate without coming to a vote ; and it is 
 the business of the Synod to place in a schedule those 
 subjects on which we should not deliberate, those on 
 which we should deliberate, and those on which delibera- 
 tion should be followed up by a vote. As soon as a 
 governing body is established in a diocese, that body will 
 accumulate about itself an almost incredible number of 
 Trusts, because it is the most influential and confidential 
 body that the Deaneries know. 
 
 With his talent and passion for organization, and with his 
 high estimation of its value, it was natural that the bishop 
 should have considered the invitation to the Lambeth 
 Conlerence in 18G7 a call which he could not disregard, 
 although he had up to that time turned a deaf car to the 
 earnest invitations of his relatives to visit England again : 
 equally natural was it that he should have been so pro- 
 minent an actor in that assemblage, that he should have 
 been cho?cn permanent secretary, and that to his earnest
 
 III.] GROWTH OF SYNODS. 155 
 
 representations was owing that second and still greater 
 gathering of bishops in July, 1878, which he did not live 
 to see. 
 
 Nevertheless, the scene at Lambeth in July, 1878, which 
 he was not spared to witness, and in which, had he lived, 
 he would have been the most prominent personage, was a 
 triumphant climax to the efforts of Bishop Selwyn in the 
 cause of unity which dated from his first Synod at the 
 AVaimate in 1844.
 
 156 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [ uap. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE MAORI WAR. 
 
 Another chapter has to be written regardless of the chro- 
 nological order of this biography, in which will be recorded 
 not the successes but the hindrances of the Gospel. The 
 story of the evangelization of New Zealand differs from 
 the corresponding records of almost every other part of the 
 world ; generally we have to chronicle the innate antipathy 
 of the heathen mind to the reception of the Truth, the force 
 of their ancestral traditions, the pride of their hereditary 
 superstition. In New Zealand the Maori after the first few 
 years assimilated Christian teaching with a readiness, too 
 much akin to precocity, but when in its principal features 
 the progress of the Gospel seemed to be unimpeded, the 
 inevitable difficulty connected with the acquisition of land 
 almost from the first intruded the accustomed obstacles. 
 The colonizing instinct of the Anglo- Sa^oiji race, on which 
 we are wont to boast ourselves, is too often but an euphe- 
 mistic synonym for the "greed of land" which in so 
 very many instances has led to the ' ultimate destruc- 
 tion of the rightful owners, until we have accepted as 
 a philosophical axiom the vague assertion, so grateful to 
 our pride and amljition, that " the inferior race is doomed 
 to disappear in the presence of the superior." 
 
 How sad had been the story, how discreditable the 
 policy of our earlier colonization in the plantations of 
 America, in New South Wales, and in Tasmania, was
 
 IV.] MAORI HISTOEY. 157 
 
 \ 
 
 only too notorious, when the Government, in a fit of ap- 
 parent compunction, determined that New Zealand should 
 be a bright exception to the blunder of our former experi- 
 ments in colonization. It was for this end indeed that 
 New Zealand was added to our already ample Colonial 
 Empire. British subjects had commenced to buy land on 
 very doubtful title in these islands, and the Ministry knew 
 too well that a crowd of speculating Britons eager to 
 acquire land in a country where there was no settled form 
 of government would lead at once to a war of races, if the 
 Crown did not assume the sovereignty of the country to 
 which its subjects, and those not the most orderly, had 
 been attracted. The Ministry of the day pledged itself that 
 nothing should be wanting which could save the natives of 
 New Zealand from that process of extermination under 
 which uncivilized tribes had hitherto disappeared when 
 brought face to face with civilization. It was determined 
 to try for the first time the great experiment, whether the 
 representatives of the superior race, when they found 
 themselves in that border-laud where they confront the 
 vices both of barbarism and civilization and the virtues of 
 neither, should be true to their higher destinies; and whether 
 a fragment of the family of the first Adam, long sunk in 
 degradation, could be engrafted into the family of the 
 second Adam and maintained in social and political vigour. 
 The Maori race had great and exceptional advantages ; 
 they had been under the influence of Christian missionaries, 
 whose integrity and benevolence are unquestioned, for 
 more than thirty years before their country attracted 
 immigrants. A fatal error, an error, it is true, only of 
 judgment, but not the less fatal for our present considera- 
 tion, had been committed. Daring all these years the 
 Missionaries, in accordance with the principles that then 
 prevailed, had aimed at making their converts Christians 
 but not citizens ; their moral nature had been changed, but 
 ou their social habits little or no impression had been 
 attempted. If the missionaries had combined with tlie
 
 158 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 spiritual training, which was the one thing needful but not 
 the only thing desirable, lessons in industry, in agriculture, 
 and in handicraft, the country would not have presented 
 to speculating land agents and land companies the inviting 
 prospect of an untitled and ownerless desert; as it was, 
 no sooner did English adventurers set their feet on the soil 
 of New Zealand than every square yard of land became at 
 once the fruitful seed-plot of litigation and feud. 
 
 The treaty of Waitangi, which was signed on February 7, 
 1840, was the embodiment of the wishes of the British 
 Government, and it was made, as it only could have been 
 made, by the co-operation of the English missionaries; these 
 gentlemen had not been desirous of seeing what had been 
 their mission fields converted into a British colony, and 
 they lent their services and won over the minds of the 
 Maori chiefs and obtained their signatures to the treaty, 
 only on the distinct understanding that by the assumption 
 of the sovereignty the Queen of England did not absorb 
 or destroy the power of the Maori chiefs and tribes. 
 Indeed the chiefs were told that by accepting the treaty 
 their individual importance would be increased, as their 
 title of chieftainship would be acknowledged, and the 
 people, restrained from intertribal wars, as well as from 
 oppression of foreigners, would grow in wealth ; and being 
 bound to submit their own disputes to arbitration, they 
 would be no more insulted by white men. This treaty 
 carefully reserved to the natives all their rights of property, 
 of whatever kind. The tribal right as well as that of in- 
 dividuals was rigidly maintained, and up to the year 1840 
 it was an unheard -of thing that an individual member of 
 a tribe should claim a right to alienate a portion of the 
 land of his tribe. This fact is of great importance, as the 
 disregard of it led at no distant date to a protracted war, 
 the causes of which are not yet removed, and may at any 
 period bring themselves again into prominence. 
 
 To this treaty tlie whole missionary body considered 
 themselves pledged in lidnour; any infringement of its
 
 IV.] TREATY OF WAITANGI. 15'J 
 
 terms on the part of the Government would have at once 
 compromised their influence and their character for in- 
 tegrity in the eyes of the natives. It was not long before 
 the sense of the treaty was severely tested ; but it was 
 subjected to a more severe strain when, in 1852, gold was 
 said to have been discovered at Coromandel, not on Crown 
 land, as had been the case in Australia, but on land in the 
 possession of the natives, most sensitive in regard to their 
 territorial rights. Nothing but self-restraint on the part of 
 all concerned could prevent this discovery from proving an 
 unmitigated curse. The Lieutenant-Governor went to the 
 spot and summoned a meeting of the chiefs : the bishop and 
 the Chief Justice, as has been already mentioned, joined 
 him, and in the presence of these witnesses he offered the 
 chiefs protection and assistance in keeping order among the 
 motley and lawless population who might be expected to 
 hover round the scene of so much hidden wealth. It was 
 doubtless owing to the influence of the bishop and to the 
 teaching of the missionaries that the old chief and spokes- 
 man, Te Taniwha, said, " It is well ; these are the tokens of 
 peace, the presence of the Governor, the Bishop, the Judge. 
 The messengers of God, of Truth, stand here ; even the 
 bone of that which is good. The arrangements are left to 
 you, Governor, Bishop, and Judge." 
 
 Thus the difSculty was solved by integrity and self- 
 restraint ; the result reaffirmed the fact that by the Treaty 
 of Waitangi the Queen obtained the rights of sovereignty, 
 while the JMaoris retained the full rights of chieftainship ; 
 that the Queen received the whole governorship, and the 
 Maoris the full rights of British subjects. The peace was 
 tolerably well kept between the two races during the first 
 period of Sir G. Grey's governorship. He is a man with 
 a peculiar sympathy with native character, and much in- 
 terested in their history and language ; this he has proved 
 in two quarters of the globe ; he also co-operated with the 
 bishop and missionaries in all matters that related to the 
 welfare of the Maoris, but in 1853 his term of office ended.
 
 160 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [. hap. 
 
 and with liis departure New Zealand liecanie jjossessed of 
 an indeperident and representative government. Sir George 
 Grey bad been not merely tbe Governor, be bad been tbe 
 protector and friend of tbe natives ; now tbey found tbem- 
 selves under a government in wbieb tbey were not repre- 
 sented, and bound by laws in tbe enacting of wbicb tbey 
 liad no voice. As tbe present Lord Carlingford said in the 
 House of Commons on April 11, 1861, "A constitution 
 lias been conferred on tbe colony of New Zealand in 
 forgetfulness of tbe large native tribes within tbe domi- 
 nions to wbicb it was intended to a[iply." Neither wei'c 
 tbe average pushing colonists the sort of men likely to 
 work sucb a constitution with moderation ; tliey were 
 constantly holding meetings for tbe discussion of tbe 
 problem, " How to govern tbe country." 
 
 Tbe very treaty of 1840, on wbicb so mucb stress bad 
 been laid by tbe colonists, bad never been fulfilled by the 
 Government in regard to tbe matters guaranteed by it to 
 tbe natives: the responsibilities of sovereignty bad never been 
 observed. Tbe Maoris were eager to learn of tbe white men, 
 whom for their skill and prowess tbey beld in high esteem ; 
 but no adequate steps bad been taken to educate tbem in tbe 
 affairs of ordinary social life, or to fit tbem for the exercise of 
 political rights, and tbe bishop bad found little sympathy, 
 even among tbe missionaries, still less among tbe colonists, 
 witb bis efforts to train tbem in industrial pursuits. 
 
 A colonial ministry in a democratic legislature is not 
 likely justly to govern a native race. Colonists wbo speak 
 of England as home, and wbo regard tlie colony only as a 
 country wbicb gives them a temporary resting-place in 
 which to accumulate a fortune, will manage their govern- 
 ment as an unscrupulous tenant manages a rack-rent 
 farm. Tbe present, not tbe future, is their care ; it is of 
 more importance to exterminate the lawful owners of tbe 
 soil tlian to attempt tbe problem of their civilization and 
 amalgamation with tbe intruders ; and there is, sad that it 
 sbnuld lie so, ever present in Ihr minil of the Ibitisb
 
 IV.] KING OF NEW ZEALAND. 161 
 
 colonist, and too often expressed in his speech, the contempt 
 and abhorrence of men whose colour is different from our 
 own. The Maoris, an aristocratic race, were most sensitive, 
 and sorely was their patience tried. Sir George Grey and 
 the bishop always showed them kindness and respect, which 
 were returned in full measure ; but the rudeness of ignorant 
 and coarse settlers had much to do with setting race 
 against race. The bishop used to say that he was quite 
 ashamed to travel with his native deacons, who in Auck- 
 land were accustomed to sit at his own table and behave 
 as gentlemen, because he could not take them with him 
 into public rooms, where a drunken carter, with a white 
 skin, would have been considered perfectly good society. 
 
 In the bewilderment, then, that was caused by the 
 establishment of constitutional government, by which 
 they were removed from the immediate government of the 
 Queen's representative, whose authority they perfectly un- 
 derstood and respected, and placed under a minister of 
 native affairs, and a parliament in whose constitution they 
 had no share, the Maoris were driven to assert themselves, 
 lest their position should be entirely overlooked. The 
 governing power was felt for their purposes to be deficient : 
 in many parts of the country there had never been a 
 resident magistrate : there was no authority to put down 
 with a high hand the dreaded purchase of rum, or to keep 
 peace. A conference was held in June, 1857, at which 
 Bishop Selwyn and the chief of the Wesleyan mission- 
 aries were present, when, in spite of protests, Potatau, the 
 chief of the Ngatiawa tribe, was elected King of New 
 Zealand. It was distinctly proclaimed that this was not 
 to interfere with the sovereignty of the Queen of England. 
 " Let the Queen and the Pakehas occupy the coast and be 
 a fence round us," were the words of one of the chiefs who 
 hoisted the Union Jack and the King's flag side by side on 
 the same staff. The Governor was alarmed, and visited the 
 districts that were supposed to be rebellious; but after 
 parleys with the chiefs, who received him with honour, he
 
 162 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [ohai- 
 
 returned to Auckland, believing that the so-called " King 
 movement" boded no danger nor insecurity. 
 
 It was not, however, the " King movement " that caused 
 the disastrous war which entailed on the colony losses and 
 miseries which cannot be estimated, and checked, and 
 almost destroyed, the Christianity of the Maori race, 
 although the war gave force and consistence to the " King 
 movement." The Maori king was rather an offshoot of the 
 establishment of a colonial legislature which ignored the 
 indigenous race : the root of the war is to be found in the 
 well-founded mistrust in the native mind of the motives of 
 the English colonists in the matter of their lands. These 
 had always been in their heatlien days the most fruitful 
 source of wars between tribe and tribe : there was not a 
 spot of land throughout the whole of the island of which 
 the limits were not perfectly well defined, the ownership 
 known, and the titles authentic. To the Englishman these 
 lands seemed mere wastes of forest, swamp, or bush, that 
 only after much labour would produce a crop : to the 
 natives they were estates, held by a curious tenure, and 
 which could only be alienated by the consent of all who 
 were connected with them. 
 
 The Maoris had never been unwilling to sell their 
 lands : they had an instinct of political economy which 
 taught them, that the presence among them of skilful 
 farmers would do more for them than the ownership of 
 barren swamps ; but they insisted on the extinction in all 
 cases of the native title, no easy matter amid the intri- 
 cacies of tribal uses and joint ownership. The inmiediate 
 scene of the war was at Taranaki or New Plymouth, 
 whither, as has been stated in a previous chapter, the 
 bishop had gone in 1855 at the request of the Governor to 
 keep peace. Taranaki had long been coveted ground. In 
 1839 the agent of the New Zealand Company had, as he 
 thought, bought it of the tribe who claimed to be its 
 owners : in 1840 and 1842 the rights had to be purchased 
 of other tribes, and the colonists began to settle on the
 
 IV.] WAITAPvA TITLE. 163 
 
 soil for which they had paid: but the presence of the 
 English encouraged many of the original owners, who had 
 long before been driven away by force, or had been carried 
 into slavery, to return to their holdings, of the sale of which 
 they had no knowledge, and about which they had never 
 been consulted. 
 
 A Commissioner, who was sent down to investigate their 
 claims, affirmed the validity of the sale, which was received 
 with so much indignation that military assistance was sent 
 for. The Governor went down in person, and refused to 
 confirm the Commissioner's award : the land on which the 
 English were settled was bought over again, and the rest 
 was given up to the native claimants. Then came the 
 intertribal disputes of 1855, of which mention has already 
 been made. In 1859, the settlers still desiring the posses- 
 sion of a block of land at the mouth of the Waitara 
 Pdver and the only approach to a harbour near their town, 
 it was bought by the Government from a man called Te 
 Teira, whose riglit to sell it was disallowed by his tribe. 
 The offer to sell was made to the Governor in person. 
 Wiremu Kingi who was present immediately said, " Listen, 
 Governor ; notwithstanding Teira's offer, I will not permit 
 the sale of Waitara to the Pakeha: Waitara is in my 
 hands ; I will not give it up. Never ! never ! never ! 1 
 have spoken." 
 
 The subordinate official who investigated the title de- 
 clared that Teira had a perfect right to sell, and the land 
 was at once taken possession of by the English. [It may 
 here be stated parenthetically, that the title was subse- 
 quently found to be defective, and that in 1863 Sir G.. 
 Grey resigned the Waitara to its lawful owners.] Surveyors 
 were sent upon it and were not violently resisted, but the 
 old jSIaori women pulled up their poles and pegs as fast as 
 they stuck them into the ground. 
 
 In February, 1860, the Governor proclaimed martiallaw, 
 and in the following month a military force, which had 
 been sent from Australia, occupied the Waikato district. 
 
 VOL. II. M
 
 104 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [ceai-. 
 
 The step was not taken Avithout protests on the part of 
 those who calmly considered the matter and were not 
 biassed by the fact of possessing land, or of desiring to 
 acquire more : it was pointed out that the seller was 
 almost alone ; that he had taken British gold and expected 
 to be supported by British bayonets, and that the great 
 majority of his tribe, who were " unseduced by money, and 
 unintimidated by power, were only defending the rights 
 confirmed to them by the Queen." 
 
 Nevertheless the conviction remained in the minds of all 
 impartial persons, that the would-be seller had not the 
 whole right of sale, and that a thorough and impartial 
 investigation would prove the fact. In the New Zealand 
 Assembly the oldest and most respectable of the settlers^ 
 supported by the Bishop and Chief Justice, openly espoused 
 the cause of Wiremu Kingi in forbidding the sale of his 
 people's land. Some declared that the seizure of the 
 coveted block of land was the result of a conspiracy 
 among the settlers, and others, and these the more thought- 
 ful, felt that a dispute about a question of title should have 
 been referred to some court of justice, and that it was 
 monstrous that the offices of judge and claimant should be 
 vested in one and the same person. "We think the 
 Governor wrong," the bishop wrote to Sir John Patteson in 
 July 1860, " in making war upon a land question without 
 submitting it first to some judicial inquiry : but he has 
 suffered dearly for it, as the quarrel has cost the lives of 
 many soldiers, and now absorbs the whole force, military 
 and naval, of the Australasian colonies." 
 
 The bishop, accompanied by the Maori deacon Joshua, 
 went up the Waikato in INIay, 1860, in the hope of ar- 
 ranging matters peaceably : he was invited to a large 
 native gathering, where the King's flagstaff was erected, 
 and he felt that he had no course open to him but to leave. 
 
 In November of the same year the discovery near 
 Waikato of the dead body of a IMaori, supposed to have 
 been murdered by an Englishman, caused great excitement ;
 
 IV.] CONSCIENTIOUS DOUBT. 165 
 
 and the bishop laboured with his might to prevent the 
 outbreak of hostilities which seemed imminent. What he 
 did, and with what feelings, is best shown in two letters 
 written on the same day. 
 
 (i.) To Sir John Patteson. 
 
 Ncrv. Zrd, 1860. 
 
 My dear Sir John, 
 
 In the midst of some feelings of doubt which must 
 arise, when a minister of the Gospel enters into any- 
 political contest, it is a great comfort to me to receive 
 such a letter as yours, not so much because it is pleasant 
 to find one's own opinion confirmed, as because I can now 
 feel satisfied that I have not taken up my present position 
 without just and necessary cause. Up to the time when the 
 soldiers were sent to Taranaki I was in the most friendly 
 communication with the Governor and his ministers. 
 Sir William INIartin was his constant adviser on all matters 
 relating to the social improvement of the natives, and had 
 just compiled a small code of rules for the use of native 
 magistrates at his request. We had not even the oppor- 
 tunity of offering advice, for we heard nothing of the 
 matter till the order was given for the troops to embark. 
 The false step once taken, the Government seemed deter- 
 mined to persist in carrying it through with a high hand, 
 and for a time the voice of the colony seemed to be in 
 their favour. But the change soon began to be apparent. 
 We knew that Waikato needed but a little more provoca- 
 tion to break out into war, because the affair at Taranaki 
 was announced by Government, and looked upon by the 
 natives, as the beginning of a new policy for the whole of 
 New Zealand. It became necessary for us to enter into 
 the strife, and I hope it was done temperately and respect- 
 fully. The evil has now approached Auckland. I am 
 now writing from the house of IMajor Speedy, forty miles 
 from Auckland, whose family have just returned from a 
 short exodus to the nearest water carriage, to be ready to 
 fly from a party of Waikatos, said to be 400, but actually 
 250. The exciting cause, superadded to the Taranaki war, 
 was that the body of a native of the place was found in the 
 
 M 2
 
 lOfi LIFE OF mSllOP SKLWYX. [oUAr. 
 
 foivst, rtppaivutly killod by Ji gun-shot wound. An Eno;lish- 
 niiin who had boon shootin>:; wiUl oattlo was suspootod of 
 tho niurdor. but no pivol' was found against hin\. Wo 
 havo just roooivod nows that tho war party has gouo 
 quiotly back aftov hoaring tho statomont ot" the nativo 
 ohiofs who oonduotod tho inquiry as assossoi"S to tho 
 Knglish coivnor. Tho sottUn-s havo ivturnod to thoir 
 h>oinos. and aro busy unpacking thoir goods, and oxhuniing 
 their buried property. One week's tasto of the realities 
 oi' war has been sutlicietu for them. Xow is tho time for 
 the t'i'nernnient to make peace, when tho white people 
 liave had just sutheient taste of war to euro our insular 
 disposition to enjoy the oxcitenient of war at the expense 
 of othoi-s. 
 
 (ii.) To William Selwvn. Ksq. 
 
 Thk JLu kt, Ai>r. Sni, 1S60. 
 My PK.VK WlLLLVM. 
 
 Von will nol know tho place from which 1 am writing, but 
 1 hope you will see it and n\any of my customary haunts 
 when you visit us, as wo hope, next year. This is a small 
 Knglisii settlement on one of tho many crooks of the ^lanu- 
 kaii estuary, and about six miles fixun tho Waikato. About 
 a fortnight ago a nativo was found dead in the forest near 
 this place, and his friends supposed him to havo been 
 n\uuloivd by a white man. An inquiry was held, but no 
 pixxif could bo found, and numy believed that the death 
 had been accidental. But the e-xciteiuent caused by the 
 long continuance of the Tamnaki war had so iutlamod the 
 minds of the island tribes, that a lai-ge party of armed men 
 came down the Waikato in thoir canoes last Tuesday and 
 tlnxnUenod to seize the suspected i>ei"son and deal with 
 him accoi\ling to thoir own law. At eight on Tuesday 
 evening the news arrived in Auckland, and I mounted my 
 trusty old chestnut, '" IJona." or the "Man in the ^loon," 
 to go to meet the war party. At tluve in the morning I 
 ixnicliod the furthest English village. Drury. about twonty- 
 f<»ur miles fixun Aucklauil. and twelve fixnn the Waikato 
 IJiver, on which tho supposed enemy was encamped. The 
 village ami tlie lai-go iim (Young's) was as still and peaceful 
 as if lU'thiii' li.id li.ii'i'eiu'd. T rode into the vard. opened
 
 IV.] INFLUENCE OF THE BISHOP. 167 
 
 the stable, lighted the stable lantern, fed my horse, and 
 walked up and down the stable for an hour before any 
 one appeared ; and when, at 4 A.M., the master of the house 
 appeared to call his men to cany messages to warn the 
 settlers of their danger, I could not help congratulating 
 him on the confidence which he felt in his Maori enemies, 
 to sleep so soundly within twelve miles of 40 armed 
 men ■s\'ith nothing but a forest road between him and them. 
 He then gave me breakfast, and I rode on about sLx miles 
 further to the edge of the wood, calling upon the settlers 
 on the way, and advising them to assemble in one house 
 and wait for further information Then I left the 
 horse, and walked through the wood, ^vith mud up to my 
 knees (for we have had a season like your last summer), 
 till I came to Tuakau on the Waikato, where the "taua'' 
 fighting party, was expected to land. About twelve Arch- 
 deacon Maunsell joined me, and at two the war party 
 came, but we could see at once by the open and bright 
 expression of their countenances that they did not mean 
 any mischief The afternoon was spent as usual in much 
 talk upon the subject, and ended with evening serWce in a 
 large house filled with about 200 men, with their muskets 
 piled around the central pillars. They were old friends 
 whom I had seen at the great meeting at the junction of 
 the "NVaikato and Waipu, where I had held many such 
 services with them. Their \illages lie between the rivers 
 Waikato and Waiho (Thames), and their chief is William 
 Thompson, the son of old AVaharoa, a warrior of great 
 name in former days. Their arms were well cleaned and 
 kept, but not of the newest kind, being chiefly old muskets 
 with flint-locks. "\Ve were glad to find that they were 
 inchned to go back C|uietly. The tribes resident on the 
 river refused to allow them to pass through their ground ; 
 and thus, according to their own expression, shut the door 
 against them. Archdeacon Maunsell and I of course 
 gave them our advice to go back, and so furnished them 
 with another excuse. 
 
 Thursday, Kovcmhcr 1. — Another sersdce with my Avar- 
 like friends, and a short address on the subject of the 
 communion of saints, after which an old man, seeing 
 me looking at them steadfastly, asked what I was thinking 
 about : to which I answered that I was thinkinii whether
 
 168 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 they were sealed in their hearts or on their foreheads only. 
 He took the hint at once, and replied, " What can we do, 
 if the Governor makes war npon us ? " I then asked the 
 chief why two of his canoes had broken off from the main 
 body, and had gone on ahead instead of stopping at Tuakau. 
 He said that he did not know, but that they themselves 
 felt uneasy about it. I offered to go in search of them ; 
 and he gave me a letter to order them to return, of which 
 the following is a translation : — 
 
 " George and Whakapaukai, give heed, if you are 
 overtaken by the bishop at Patumahoe come back both of 
 you, come back peaceably all of you. Your work is done. 
 The footsteps sound at Patumahoe (the place where the 
 man died). The claim of the dead is satisfied, come back 
 peaceably. We shall break up from hence (to return 
 home). 
 
 noug 1. y ^i^, r ^^^cestors of his tribe.) 
 
 He read this letter aloud to the tribe, and I hurried off 
 to catch the truants, for Archdeacon Maunsell and I were 
 not without fear that they were gone to attack the English- 
 njan whom they suspected of the murder. I had just 
 come to the edge of the forest, and was looking forward 
 witli no great appetite to another dive through the deep 
 mud, when one of my faithful native deacons, Pirimona Te 
 Karari, appeared with a horse (old Jack) who carried 
 me to the place where I had left Eona. On my way I 
 cheered the settlers with the prospect of a speedy return to 
 their own homes ; but advised them to keep together on 
 the outside of the forest for another night or two. 
 
 I'irimona and I then rode together to Patumahoe, to 
 inquire after George and Whakapaukai, two gentlemen of 
 no good repute among their own people. On the way we 
 met Mr. Purchas, who had heard of the favourable dis- 
 position of the " taua," and had come out to stop the 
 ^lauku settlers from flying in a boat over Manukau. As 
 we reached the settlements, the little parties of men, 
 women, and children began to appear on the various paths 
 leading to their homes. Under the verandah of one of the 
 empty houses stood the brother of the man supposed to be 
 murdered. He was in lighting costume, with his double- 
 barrelled gun in his hands ; and said that he was there to
 
 IV.] PANIC. 169 
 
 guard the house at the owner's request, which I found to 
 be true. Thus the very man who had gone up the Waikato 
 to summon the tribes to avenge his brother's death, was the 
 first to be employed by the settlers to guard the property 
 which he had forced them to leave. At first I did not quite 
 believe his story, but thought it possible that he might be 
 waiting for George and Whakapaukai, so I took a guide 
 from the native village, left the horse at a settler's house, 
 and walked off with Pirimona to Purapura, a small village 
 about six miles off on the banks of the Waikato, expecting 
 to find the crews of the missing canoes there, or to meet 
 them on the way. It was well that we left the horses, for 
 the night overtook us before we had cleared the wood ; 
 and we should have had much trouble in getting them 
 through in the dark. About 8 P.M. we reached the village, 
 but found only an old man and a few women, who wel- 
 comed us to a blazing fire, and made us a supper of 
 " dough boys." The women told us all they knew about 
 the causes of suspicion against the white man ; but knew 
 nothing of the movements of the party of whom we were 
 in search. So after prayers and a long talk we all lay 
 down on the floor of the house and slept till daybreak. 
 
 Friday, Novcnibcr 2. — Pirimona and I started at day- 
 light to walk back to the English village, where we were 
 hospitably entertained at breakfast in the first house we 
 came to ; and had the pleasure of finding that the inmates 
 had slept quietly with more confidence in our vigilance 
 than we deserved, for Dogberry and Verges could not have 
 slept better than we did. 
 
 In the afternoon we rode five miles, to the place where 
 the suspected person was living, to inquire whether any 
 strange natives had been seen about ; but none had been 
 seen, and we began to hope that the stragglers had returned 
 quietly to the main body. 
 
 Saturday, November 3. — This morning a message arrived 
 from Mr. Maunsell reporting that the " taua " had re- 
 turned, and all the settlers here are unpacking their goods 
 and setting their houses in order with thankfulness of 
 heart. Some are digging up their buried property ; and the 
 native trustees are bringing back to the owners the move- 
 ables which they had hidden in the woods. Friendly 
 relations are immediately resumed between the two classes
 
 170 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 of inhabitants, and a stranger coming here to-day would 
 not discover that there had been any ah^rm. Pirimona 
 has gone to the native village to renew his advice to the 
 natives to give np carrying their arms ; and to-morrow he 
 will, I hope, conduct Divine Service with them, while 
 I assemble the English settlers to offer up their thanks- 
 giving for the restoration of tranquillity ; and so ends the 
 little history of the Patumahoe Taua. 
 
 We are looking forward anxiously to your visit, if it 
 please God, next year, and to the many conversations 
 which we hope to have on the suliject of your future 
 calling. On that point I hope everything, but presume 
 nothing, because I remember that at your age, though I 
 had some desire for the ministerial office, I liad not any 
 fixed or devoted purpose of heart to undertake its duties, 
 nor any steadfast resolution so to frame my life as to make 
 every day a preparation for it. It pleased God that much 
 of the restless energy which then found its vent in mere 
 amusement, the running to and fro, as it seemed, without 
 ])oint or aim, was a training of which I have since felt 
 the value, to enable me to do the work of an evangelist 
 in seeking out the sheep of Christ that are scattered over 
 a thousand hills. I wait, therefore, in patience, till it 
 pleases God to make known to your heart the work which 
 He has given you to do. But remember that every man 
 has his work. There is no place in heaven for unprofitable 
 servants. 
 
 Your most affectionate Father, 
 
 G. A. New Zealand. 
 
 Not until after his decease was tlie full story of his 
 courage and unselfishness made known: then an old 
 settler at INIauku ^^Tote in an Auckland newspaper: — 
 
 " The stories of his self-sacrifice are in every household, 
 and indeed during that grievous nntive war he seemed 
 ulji(piitous. No wife suddeidy by its dire effects widowed 
 but he was there. No mother bowed down in sorrow for 
 the loss of her son, but his tlirilling voice was pouring 
 into her ear the words of consolation and blessed hope. 
 No isolated liousehold requiring a warning of the near 
 approach and evil intentions of the stealthy foe but the
 
 IV.] RECOLLECTIONS. 171 
 
 bishop was the first to sound the tocsin, and personally 
 assist the family to a secure place of refuge. Sure I am 
 that the first European settlers of Mauku, humanly speak- 
 ing, owed their lives to Bishop Selwyn's untiring watch- 
 fulness and forethought. Well I remember the early 
 spring of 1860, upon the occasion of a native being killed 
 in the bush, when our lives were considered in such jeo- 
 pardy, that the Governor ordered a vessel to be sent to 
 the Mauku river to rescue us from imminent peril. His 
 Excellency's message for us to go on board reached us 
 during breakfast one morning, and was quickly followed 
 by the stealthy step of a friendly Maori, who came to urge 
 us to go away at once, for she had " made a thief of the 
 korero of the Maori," and they had planned to kill us that 
 night. We quickly turned the calves to the cows, opened 
 the doors of the pigstyes, but silver was as dross to dear 
 life, and we left the spoons on the breakfast-table, and 
 hastened to the refuge so kindly sent for our relief. On 
 the Raven in the Mauku Creek were collected the whole 
 of the white population — amounting to some sixty souls — 
 and there we spent two days awaiting orders from head- 
 quarters, when Mr. Purchas came to inform us that the 
 bishop and Mr. Maunsell had gone and met Wiremu Kingi 
 (William King) and the war-party at Tuakau, and in- 
 fluenced them to abandon their hostile intentions towards 
 us, and return to AVaikato ; consequently we might dis- 
 embark and safely return to our homes. You may be sure 
 we speedily took advantage of this joyful intelligence, and 
 I happened to be the first to reach Upper Mauku. The 
 desolation those two days of abrupt absence had caused 
 beggars description. Calves bleating for food, cows stand- 
 ing by their unknown progeny nearly bursting with milk, 
 pigs rooting up carrots, turnips, onions, strawberry-beds, 
 &c. But all this was as nothing when I descried a well- 
 known figure descending a hill near, and approaching the 
 house. I ran to the gate, which I had scarcely reached 
 when I saw the bishop, who had dismounted from his 
 horse, and was taking from the saddle a small haversack. 
 I accosted him : ' My lord, I suppose you know we have all 
 just left the vessel and returned to our homes. Have we 
 done right ? ' He replied, ' Yes ; I know all about it. Will 
 you let me leave my horse here until tomorrow, as I am
 
 172 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 going to Purapura ? ' I said, ' Certainly ; but you cannot 
 proceed to-night; it is eight or nine miles, an obscure 
 bush-track, and now past 4 o'clock. Come in, take some 
 refreshment, and go in the morning.' His reply was, ' No, 
 thank you, I have bread in my kit, and must push on at 
 once, but shall probably be back early in the morning.' 
 And return he did at 6 A.M., drenched to the skin, having 
 had to ford a creek. He took my hand, and said in his 
 own kind and musical voice, ' I know you will forgive my 
 not answering your question yesterday, but now I will 
 make a clean breast and tell you all. You know Mr. 
 Maunsell and I intercepted the jVIaoris at Tuakau, and 
 after we had arranged with William King for their return 
 we found a party of the most reckless of them had, while 
 we were talking, taken a canoe and started off, intent on 
 mischief. So I volunteered to go to Purapura, and get the 
 chiefs there to prevent a war-party passing over their 
 land, without wliich permission tliey could not proceed to 
 Mauku. This the chiefs William Wesley and Adam Clark 
 have promised to do, but I will remain here until all 
 danger from these wild spirits is past.' And so he did ; 
 guarding us with jealous care, never seeming to sleep 
 soundly ; for upon any unusual noise in the night he was 
 up and out in a moment. On the Sunday, Nov. 4, 1860, 
 he conducted in our little schoolroom Divine Service, and 
 preached a sermon never to be forgotten — inspiring trust 
 and confidence in God. The Bishop of New Zealand and 
 Lichfield visited Mauku for the last time on the 1st Octo- 
 ber, 18G8, having on that day held a confirmation service 
 at the church, and on the ]\Iauku and Drury Eoad, \mder 
 a glorious full moon, in a voice trembling with emotion, 
 we received the bishop's parting blessing, and bade adieu 
 on^^earth to this great and good man." 
 
 Tn the early part of 1861 whilst hostilities still con- 
 tinued at Taranaki, the bishop, as before, did all that 
 lay in his power to promote peace. After a personal 
 interview with the Governor, he submitted a formal 
 memorandum on the Taranaki question, in which he 
 claimed that the rights of the New Zealanders as 
 British subjects should be regarded as identical with those
 
 IV.] EQUALITY OF RIGHTS. 173 
 
 of the English ; that the rights of Maoris to the soil of New 
 Zealand, where the title had not been extinguished, should 
 be fully recognised ; that all native customs in connexion 
 with proprietary right should be respected ; that all land dis- 
 putes should be submitted to a competent and impartial tri- 
 bunal ; and that the existing quarrel should be allowed to 
 sink tacitly into an armistice until feelings on both sides 
 should be sufficiently calm to allow of negotiations for peace. 
 In May, 1861, the Governor addressed a formal procla- 
 mation to the chiefs of Waikato, demanding that the King 
 movement should be given up, and he at once prepared to 
 invade the district in force, and with this view the troops 
 were removed to Auckland. This was happily averted by 
 his removal from the government. As in 1848 the bishop 
 had been called by Mr. Hume in the House of Commons 
 " a turbulent priest," so now in New Zealand he seemed 
 likely to receive a repetition of the honour. His consci- 
 entious advocacy of the rights of his fellow-citizens was 
 denounced as a political interference, and he was told that 
 no right to interfere between Her Majesty's Government 
 and her native subjects could be allowed to any minister 
 of religion. To this the bishop replied May 20th, 1861 : — 
 
 " There is no ambiguity whatever in the ground which 
 we take. When all other classes of Her Majesty's English 
 subjects in New Zealand are expressing their opinions 
 upon the native question, and supporting a policy which 
 we believe to be unjust, we should be guilty of betraying 
 the native race, who resigned their independence upon 
 our advice, if we did not claim for them all the rights and 
 privileges of British subjects, as guaranteed to them by 
 the Treaty of Waitangi. As the earliest settlers in this 
 country — as agents employed by Government in native 
 affairs — as intimately acquainted with the language, cus- 
 toms, and feelings of the native race — and, above all, as 
 ministers of religion having the highest possible interest 
 at stake — we assert the privilege, which the law allows to 
 every man, of laying our petitions before the Crown and 
 the Legislature."
 
 174 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 A lull followed at this juncture, and in July of the 
 same year the bishop and his most influential clergymen 
 represented to the Government that the war had been 
 wholly uncalled-for, that Taranaki had up to the time 
 of the outbreak been one of the most peaceful parts 
 of the colony, and that a suitable Tribunal, before which 
 disputes about land could be adjudicated, would remove 
 all dissatisfaction from the native mind ; they also offered 
 their personal services in inquiring into the causes of dis- 
 satisfaction, and in influencing the Maoris to acce[)t terms 
 of peace. 
 
 In September, 1861, Sir George Grey returned to New 
 Zealand to resume, under very altered conditions, the 
 governorship wliich he had laid down some eight years 
 before. The ]\Iaoris knew him to be a man of resolution 
 and power, but while they saw the troops still remaining 
 at Auckland, to the great satisfaction of the trading classes 
 of that city, they felt that peace was as remote as ever. 
 Nevertheless, the Maoris welcomed their old protector, 
 and sent him addresses and words of greeting. The Wai- 
 kato people kept silence, and waited for the Governor to 
 make the first sign ; ultimately he met the chiefs face to 
 face, and in a manifesto of wonderful ability proclaimed 
 a jDolicy of justice to both races ; as for the Maori King, 
 he thought him a mistake, and a foolish mistake ; but he 
 should not fight him — he should " dig quietly round him 
 until he fell," while there would soon be twenty kings, 
 and wealthy ones too, for every chief who behaved loyally 
 to the Governor would be a king. 
 
 During tins lull the Governor employed the military in 
 cutting a grand road through the forest of Hunua, thereby 
 making the Waikato country easy of approach and of 
 attack. At the end of it he built a large fort, capable of 
 holding 1,000 men, which was called Queen's Redoubt, 
 and overhanging the Waikato river he built another fort. 
 While the Governor was thus steadily and firmly preparing 
 for war, the bishop, as became his oflice, was labouring for
 
 IV.] MOBBING AT TARANAKI. 175 
 
 peace under very great difficulties. His unpopularity was 
 at its height. There was on the part of the majority of 
 the colonists a bitter resentment against his advocacy 
 of native rights, and resistance to the subordination of 
 those rights to the supposed interests of the colonists. 
 He had no sympathy either with the contempt or with 
 the fear of the Maoris which prevailed — now one, now 
 the other — with those who knew little of them, and 
 who were unacquainted with their language and feelings. 
 In October he attended a great assembly of natives at 
 the Waikato, and in the following month he went to 
 Taranaki, and was, as he recorded in his journal, " re- 
 ceived with groans." 
 
 Little more than the above laconic entry was recorded 
 by the bishop himself; but on his return to Auckland he 
 was compelled to tell the story to his friends, who had 
 received exaggerated and untrustworthy accounts of it, 
 and one who heard it from his own lips thus related it 
 to friends in England : — 
 
 " I wish you could have seen his bright, noble look as he 
 told this story. As soon as he landed the mob assembled 
 on the beach, and while he waited for his carpet-bag, 
 began, ' Three groans for Bishop Selwyn ; One groan more,' 
 and so on. He had to post letters at the post-office, and 
 while there these heroes followed him, and the mob grew 
 and groaned anew. He thought it better to put down 
 this nonsense ; so he turned and said (they were all 
 turning their l3acks) ' N"ow, it is more English-like to look 
 me in the face, and tell me your grievances.' I give the 
 substance, not the exact words. Several began to speak 
 at once, but the rest stopped them with ' Fair play ; if the 
 bishop will hear us one at a time.' Another began some 
 coarse, violent expressions ; but he was snubbed down — 
 ' That's not the way to speak to the bishop ! ' One query 
 was, ' Why didn't you teach the Maori English, then there 
 would be no trouble ? ' Answer, ' I have been doing this 
 ever since I came ; two of my scholars are here, and speak 
 English freely ; one you know, Henri, is with Mr. Powis.'
 
 17G LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 A voice called out, ' Yes, and he's the greatest rogue alive.' 
 ' Very well,' said the Bishop ; ' then you see knowing 
 English is not everything.' Then one called out, ' You're 
 f^rasping all the land.' Bishop : ' I will make you a pre- 
 sent of all the land I own.' ' I don't mean your own ; 
 you don't seek land ; you like power. I mean puhlic 
 Church land. You're reviving all the old abuses in Eng- 
 land.' Bishop : ' I thought the endowments in England 
 offered means of education to even the lowest, who may 
 become Lord Chancellors, bishops, and the like.' The 
 mob applauded this. At last a stump orator got up, and 
 spoke so long that everybody went away, and the Bishop 
 was left master of the field. Some gentlemen then came up 
 and said, ' Don't, my lord, think this a sample of Taranaki 
 feeling towards you.' However, three j)rovincial council- 
 lors were very noisy among the mob. After this, one in 
 every four began to touch his hat to this noble man. AVe 
 hear from an officer who was there that the Bishop has 
 won the hearts of all the military, specially the young 
 men. He dined at mess, and they all gathered round 
 him afterM-ards, listening to his views. He went all 
 through the Ngatiruanui country, and was met with 
 great cordiality. He was detained for a day among the 
 Taranaki natives at first starting. They said he came to 
 spy, and that no minister should go through their country. 
 The bishop sat on his bundle, and said, ' Oh ! but I can't 
 listen to the voice of one man. That would be like 
 Governor Browne. If all Ngatiruanui wish me not to 
 come, I'll return.' ' You had better take up your bundle 
 and return,' said the old chief. But he sat sturdily. He 
 made them all laugh, for he said, ' I'm very like wheat. 
 There's the Takehas : they were the upper stone grinding 
 me at Taranaki, and now you grind me here.' They were 
 very hospitable and friendly, only he must not go on. 
 In the evening came a deputation from Euanui, praying 
 him to come. So he slipped off in the early dusk the 
 next morning, and went all through the district, marvel- 
 ling at the good sense and right feeling of these maligned 
 peo])le. Not a word of vindictiveness had they to utter 
 against us or the troops. 
 
 " He met a magistrate (a Maori) on his way to these 
 people, with a large canvas bag ; in that was the book of
 
 IV.] RENATA'S SPEECH. 177 
 
 English laws the late Governor had compiled in Maori, 
 and the Chief Justice's smaller, but more practical book, 
 and all the written results of their Courts (Eunangas) at 
 Tauranga. He was sent to attend the coming Eunanga, 
 and to discourse on the blessings of law. When our 
 Primate got back to the village where his progress had 
 been opposed the old chief apologised and said, ' Now let 
 us how d'ye do ; and henceforth all ministers may come 
 and go as aforetime. You are the great billow that has 
 crushed the canoe ; you are the great fish that has broken 
 through the net ; ' and so they parted most amicably." 
 
 The journey, made entirely alone and unarmed through 
 the disaffected country, was accompanied by very much 
 personal risk, but no fear tempted the bishop to refrain 
 from administering rebuke to his Maori children. 
 
 About this time Eenata, a friendly and very intelligent 
 chief, wrote a lengthy letter to the British Commissioner, 
 and followed it up by a famous speech, which was rapidly 
 reported throughout the whole district, and was every- 
 where quoted by his fellow-countrymen. He cleverly 
 availed himself of the Governor's interdiction on the pos- 
 session by the natives of guns and j)owder ; and with 
 much dramatic power he said, " My custom with regard 
 to my enemy is, if he have not a weapon, I give him 
 one, that we may fight upon equal terms. Now, Gover- 
 nor, are you not ashamed of my defenceless hands ? " The 
 imputation of cowardice on the part of the English told, 
 and was very popular. 
 
 Within a few days of Eenata's oration an English 
 carter and his boy had been murdered by Maoris near 
 Omata, and while these two events w^ere fresh in their 
 minds the bishop travelled through their country. He 
 was in a native house at night sitting round the fire with 
 a large party who were asking him questions about the 
 meaning and value of portents and of marvels which were 
 supposed to have happened. They told the bishop many 
 of their national myths, and he said, " You have told me
 
 178 LIFE OF BISHOP SKLWYN. [chap, 
 
 many strange things, now I will tell you a ghost story ! 
 Tliey were at once attentive, and he thus began : " There 
 was once a man who dreamed a dream that he was sit- 
 ting with a large party round a fire, when out of the fire 
 there rose up the figure of a man who said, ' Oh, Governor, 
 if I had an enemy and he had no weapon, I would give 
 him one before we fought. Oh, Governor, were you not 
 ashamed of my defenceless hands ? ' and he stretched 
 them out. The people all applauded the sentiment which 
 was so just and true ; but the dream went further. * After 
 a time there rose up another figure slowly out of the fire, 
 and looked on them : it was a white face, very pale, and 
 blood was streaming down it : the figure was dressed like 
 an English boy, and held a bullock whip. Slowly he too 
 stretched out his arm and said to the Maoris, ' Were you 
 not ashamed of my defenceless hands ' ? " 
 
 The people asked the bishop to interpret the story, but 
 they knew its meaning only too well, and by that mys- 
 terious intercommunication more rapid than an organized 
 postal service, which half-civilized tribes have among 
 themselves, it spread far and wide, and was talked of in 
 every native pah and round every camp fire. 
 
 It was during this perilous walk that a fanatical prophet 
 persuaded the people in a certain village not to receive 
 the bishop into their houses, but to offer him a pigstye for his 
 night's shelter. The bishop accepted the churlish accom- 
 modation, set to work and cleaned out the pig-stye, turning 
 out the pig3, and then cut some clean fern and littered it 
 down for his bed. His conduct astonished the Maoris 
 and made them say, " You cannot whaJca-tutua that man," 
 i.e. dej'rade him from tlic character of a gentleman.^ 
 
 * This incident prompted the Bishop's brotlier, Professor Selwyn, to 
 write tlie following lines : — 
 
 A J<j]iiiiuii I'islio]) in New Zeiilaud wood, 
 Finding no host to give him bed or food, 
 Was kindly lodged by two of poieine breed, 
 Who left their straw to rest his wcarv head.
 
 IV.] PEACE DESIRED. 179 
 
 The Governor, although he was preparing for war, was 
 hardly less anxious than the bishop that peace should be 
 restored. At the close of 1861 he published a proclama- 
 tion in Maori, which was widely circulated among the 
 natives, and of which the conclusion and summary were 
 in the following terms : — 
 
 " This, then, is what the Governor intends to do, to 
 assist the Maori in the good work of establishing law and 
 order. These are the first things : — The Kunangas, the 
 Assessors, the Policemen, the Schools, the Doctors, the 
 Civil Commissioners to assist the Maoris to govern them- 
 selves, to make good laws, and to protect the weak against 
 the strong. There will be many more things to be planned 
 and to be decided ; but about such things the Painangas 
 and the Commissioners will consult. This work will be a 
 work of time, like the growing of a large tree — at first 
 there is the seed, then there is one trunk, then there are 
 branches innumerable, and very many leaves : by and by, 
 perhaps, there will be fruit also. But the growth of the 
 tree is slow — the branches, the leaves, and fruit did not 
 appear all at once, when the seed was put in the ground : 
 and so will it be with the good laws of the Eunanga. 
 This is the seed which the Governor desires to sow : — the 
 Kunangas, the Assessors, the Commissioners, and the rest. 
 By and by, perhaps, this seed will grow into a very great 
 tree, which will bear good fruit on all its branches. The 
 Maoris, then, must assist in the planting of this tree, in 
 the training of its branches, in cultivating the ground 
 
 But hark ! returning at the dead of night, 
 
 A friendly grunt is heard upon the right. 
 
 And on the left a snout salutes his cheek, 
 
 Which moved the chaplain iu great wrath to speak : 
 
 Ho ! friends and Maoris : this is infra dig. 
 
 Our Bishop's cheek insulted by a pig. 
 
 He must be killed and cooked. The Bishop smiled, 
 
 And said, My friends, in judgment be more mild. 
 
 These pigs have been my friends : have lodged me well, 
 
 And of their kindness I shall often tell. 
 
 And for the kiss you do not understand 'em ; 
 
 It is the pig's admission ad eundem.^ 
 
 ' Alluding to the ancient custom of kissing the cheek of eminent men vho received 
 degrees honoris causA, or wlio were admitted ml eumlein 
 
 VOL. 11. N
 
 180 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 about its roots ; and, as the tree grows, the children of the 
 J^Iaori, also, will grow to be a rich, wise, and prosperous 
 people, like the English and those other nations which 
 long ago began the work of making good laws and obey- 
 ing^them. Tliis will be the work of peace, on which the 
 blessing of Providence will rest, — whicli will make the 
 storms'to pass away from the sky, — and all things become 
 light between the "^INIaori and the Pakeha; and the heart 
 of the Queen will then be glad when she hears that the 
 two races are living quietly together, as brothers, in the 
 good and prosperous land of New Zealand." 
 
 After the so-called peace of 1361 had been concluded, 
 the road to Whanganui continued to be stopped, and a 
 board of tolls was put up demanding 5/. from all settlers who 
 should pass by that way, but 50^. from any minister of 
 religion, whether native or English. The cause of this 
 antipathy to the missionaries was the fact that they had 
 always advised the people to accept what was so evidently 
 the Will of God, and was clearly for their benefit, union with 
 the English under the common government of the Queen : 
 many therefore now believed, that all along their teachers 
 had been doing the behests of the English and preparing 
 the way for the subjugation of the natives. 
 
 The greater part of 1862 was spent in that uncertain 
 condition of nominal peace which threatened at any 
 moment to be interrupted by the war for which each 
 party was in its separate fashion preparing. Sir George 
 Grey was busy in making his roads, which would facilitate 
 the manceuvres of the British army, whenever their 
 services should be called into requisition : the INlaoris not 
 only continued to nurse their grievances, but they had 
 seized on a block of land at Tataraimaka as a material 
 guarantee for the restoration of the Waitara. 
 
 In October, 1862, a great national meeting was held at 
 the Ngatihaua village of Peria, to which invitations had 
 been issued several months previously. Several of the 
 Waikato chiefs had even invited the Governor to attend,
 
 IV.] MEDIATION. • 181 
 
 and those who had not joined in the invitation, had re- 
 frained only because it was considered that the speakers 
 would probably indulge in strong language, and woiild 
 possibly say things which would affront the Governor and 
 compromise their character as courteous hosts. The 
 difference between the Governor and the Maoris, between 
 what the one proposed and the other would accept, was 
 in itself small, but it represented nothing less than tlie 
 old question of nationality. If both parties withdrew 
 from the Waitara, it would look like a conference of 
 nations, and the English might take Tataraimaka and 
 welcome : but to let the Governor remain in possession 
 would seem to be the act of a conquered people. 
 
 The bishop, having no fear of hard words, attended the 
 Conference which was held at Matamata, the residence 
 of the King-maker, Wiremu Tamahana, and he tried to 
 repress this passion for nationality which overjjowered all 
 other considerations. The first encounter occurred on a 
 Sunday. Wiremu Tamahana had preached to the assem- 
 bled multitude on the words, " Behold, how good and 
 joyful a thing it is, brethren, to dwell together in unity," 
 and had illustrated the doctrine by relating the benefits 
 produced by the union of the Maori tribes, once con- 
 stantly at war, but now consolidated into one brotherhood 
 under a Maori King. The bishop heard that the sermon 
 had produced a great effect upon the audience, and asked 
 leave to conduct service in the afternoon, when he 
 preached a very different sermon on the same text. On 
 the following day the bishop was allowed to address a 
 Native assembly, and he thus availed himself of the 
 opportunity : — 
 
 "Here am I, a mediator for New Zealand. My work 
 is mediation. I am not merely a Pakeha, or a Maori ; I 
 am a half-caste. I have eaten your food, I have slept in 
 your houses ; I have talked with you, journeyed with you, 
 prayed with you, partaken of the Holy Communion with 
 
 N 2
 
 182 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 you. Therefore I say I am a half-caste. I cannot rid 
 myself of my half-caste ; it is in my body, in my flesh, in 
 my bones, in my sinews. Yes, we are all of us half- 
 caste. Your dress is half-caste — a Maori mat and 
 English clothes ; your strength is half-caste — your courage 
 Maori, your weapons English guns. Your soldiers are 
 half-caste — the man a Maori, the uniform and word of 
 command English. Your ' mana ' (authority) is half- 
 caste — a Maori office with an English name. Your faith 
 is half-caste — the first preachers, your fathers in God, 
 English, your own hearts the mother, to whom was horn 
 faith. Therefore I say, we are all half-castes; therefore 
 let us dwell together with one faith, one love, and one law. 
 Yes, let them be one. I have not forgotten the motto of 
 old Potatau [the Maori King], Faith, Love, and Law. He 
 did not say to us Let there be many forms of faith, many 
 forms of love, many forms of law, but Let there be one 
 form of each. Mj feet stand upon that word of his. Do 
 not suppose that I have come here uninvited. W. Thomp- 
 son has invited me. The Council of Waikato has agreed 
 that to-day I should be allowed to speak my mind to you. 
 Well, then, carefully weigh these special thoughts : — 
 
 " 1st. Let the law be one. 
 
 " 2d. Let tlie Waitara question be decided by law. 
 
 " 3d. Let Tataraimaka (near Taranaki) be occupied quietly 
 by the English owners. 
 
 " First. ' Let the law be one.' You have heard what W. 
 Thompson said about the Duke of Newcastle's despatch. 
 I will explain that despatch to you. If you wish Matu- 
 taera and his Council to make laws for you, make known 
 your regulations to the Governor; he will see them con- 
 firmed in your province for all alike; just as there is a 
 Provincial Council at Wellington, anotiier at Auckland, 
 another at Napier, and each with their own superintendent. 
 They make their own laws for their harbours, their roads, 
 their sales, their lands, &c. ; then it remains for the 
 Governor to confirm their laws. It is not a partial law, or 
 a class law, but there is one law for all. Therefore I say 
 to you, agree to this fijst thouglit of mine, ' Let the law 
 be one.' 
 
 " Now for the second point, ' Let the Waitara case be 
 decided by law.' 1'his is not my idea only — it is yours.
 
 IV.] BISHOP'S ADDRESS. 183 
 
 \V. Thompson ; it is yours, Ngatikahungunu — it was what 
 we all said. At the end of the war at Taranaki, j^ou, W. 
 Thompson, said, ' As for Waitara, let the law look to it.' 
 What law ? The Maori's law, or the English law ? No. 
 The law of us all together. Ngatikahungunu (Eenata's 
 tribe), this was your word, ' If there is a question about 
 a bushel of wheat, it is tried by law ; about a horse, it is 
 tried ; about a pig, it is tried ; but about land, a great 
 matter, it is not tried by law.' This was what we all said 
 formerly, at least all of us English who took your part on 
 that occasion. ' The fault Governor Browne committed was, 
 that he did not try the Waitara question by law.' This 
 was my sickness, that it was not tried. This is my 
 medicine, that it should be tried by law. Who shall try 
 it ? Both of us together — your men that are skilled in 
 Maori usage, our men that are skilled in English law. It 
 was one man of yours who began the wrong, namely, Te 
 Teira. It was one man of ours who continued the wrong, 
 Governor Browne. Now all of us together, the whole 
 body, will set right tlie wrong of one member. Agree to 
 this second point of mine, ' Let the Waitara question be 
 decided by law.' 
 
 " Now for the third, * Let Tataraimaka be occupied 
 by its English owners.' This is no new word of mine. 
 Last year William King said to Tamati Ngapora and me, 
 ' Soon it will be all clear.' I went to Taranaki on the 
 faith of this. I was not believed. You have heard of my 
 trouble there. It is over now ; Hori Ngatai and I have 
 made friends. But the chief cause of my sorrow is for 
 the widows and orphans who are living at the town, at 
 New Plymouth, deprived of their lands. They have done 
 no wrong. Let some of us go and restore them to their 
 homes. You and I, W. Thompson, should do this, and 
 ' Let Tataraimaka be quietly occupied by the English 
 owners.' 
 
 " Here the Bishop turned to Matutaera, and raised his 
 hat, and said, ' Matutaera, head chief of Waikato, here am 
 I, entreating you, by the name of our father Potatau, who 
 died with feelings of love to men, agree to the principles 
 by which we shall all live happily.' 
 
 " The Bishop turns to W. Thompson. ' My son, W.
 
 184 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap 
 
 Thompson, here am I, begging you in the name of the 
 dead at Taranaki, agree to these principles.' 
 
 " The Bishop turns to the whole assembly. ' all ye 
 tribes of New Zealand, sitting in council here, I beseech 
 you, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we 
 all believe and hope, agree to the proposal by which we 
 shall all live in peace and happiness.' " 
 
 The bishop's arguments, so fearlessly and impartially 
 urged, convinced several of the chiefs, but did not alter the 
 general resolution of the meeting. Wiremu Tamahana 
 called on his brother-chiefs to allow the Waitara title to 
 be investigated, and demanded that Tataraimaka should be 
 given up to the English : but he could not move the tribes, 
 and he would not desert them, lest by so doing he should 
 break up the Maori independence. Early in 1863 the 
 Governor without any warning came down among the 
 chiefs of the Waikato and was well received. They 
 assured him the Maori King had not been set up in con- 
 sequence of the Waitara business : that they had had 
 the project in mind long ago, even in the days of Sir 
 George's former residence in the colony. The Governor 
 on his side told them that he meant at once to seize 
 Tataraimaka, and of tliis the Maoris admitted the justice. 
 They implored him not to bring a steamer up the Waikato : 
 small boats and canoes they did not mind, but a steamer 
 could bring troops and great guns into their country ; but 
 the Governor was firm in the matter, and told them that 
 after he had towed their canoes again'st the stream he 
 believed they would go to war with him if he took the 
 steamer away. 
 
 In March 1863 a Court-house built at the Waikato, but 
 which was believed by the natives to be a masked stockade, 
 was thrown into the river ; this probaljly hastened matters, 
 and in the month of April Sir G. Grey took the field. 
 Accompanied by the General in command, the Colonial 
 Premier, the ]\Iinister for Native Affaiis, and a large
 
 IV.] PASSION AND PANIC. 185 
 
 military force, lie went down to Taranaki by sea. Battalion 
 after battalion was moved from Auckland, and at Taranald 
 and for a large district round, stockades and redoubts were 
 built on the land of natives whom we had never con- 
 quered. 
 
 When matters had gone thus far it was discovered that 
 the native title to the Waitara was after all sound, and no- 
 thing remained in honour but that the English should give 
 it up. Unfortunately the proper order was reversed, and 
 Tataraimaka was retaken by force before the Waitara was 
 restored. This led at once to hostilities, and after numerous 
 warnings had been given by the Maoris, and the delay of 
 a whole month after Tataraimaka had been retaken, two 
 officers and seven soldiers were shot down as they were 
 marching along the seashore, and the Taranaki war broke 
 out again in full force. " Now I must give up the Waitara," 
 said the Governor, when he heard of the murder. '' It would 
 have been better," said the Duke of Newcastle, the Colonial 
 Secretary, " if the reoccupation of the Tataraimaka block, 
 and the abandonment of the Waitara, had been effected at 
 one and the same time." " We can see clearly the error of 
 our tribes in slaying the Pakehas," said the eloquent chief 
 Kenata, " but at the same time we cannot lose sight of the 
 error of the Governor in not making known his decision 
 about the Waitara at the proper time." 
 
 One month after the murder had been committed, the 
 British troops took a Maori position by storm, and H.M.S. 
 Eclipse fired Armstrong shells at long range among the 
 Maoris on the beach. The British lion being thus somewhat 
 appeased, the bulk of the troops were withdrawn to Auck- 
 land, and H.M. 57th regiment was stationed at Taranaki. 
 The colonists having tasted revenge, desired to have more : 
 hatred and panic divided the white inhabitants : it was 
 believed that schemes were afloat for the destruction of 
 the whole European population, and the abhorrence of the 
 Maoris was so intense that they were not safe in the town.
 
 186 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 An iron-plated steamer arrived from Sydney, and the 
 General commenced his advance. 
 
 " And here we are," wrote the Bishop of Wellington, " in 
 the second act of the Waitara war. Messrs. D. and D. B., 
 strong supporters of the war, investigated the Waitara 
 case, and have advised the Governor to relinquish the land, 
 finding that Te Teira had no right to it, and that he had 
 deceived the Governor, and tliat Parris, the Commissioner, 
 had suppressed or concealed from the Government many 
 things. All of us, therefore, who took the strong and 
 decided line we did, were fully justified in doing so. But 
 the act of injustice so thoroughly disgusted the Maoris, 
 and gave them such a thorough distrust of us, that we 
 cannot put things into the status quo ante. And the late war 
 demoralized them, and encouraged them to engage in 
 another. And then that horrid outrage in ]\Iay was com- 
 mitted on the escoi't, and then the Government very 
 foolishly published a proclamation confiscating the land on 
 which the murder was committed, which land belongs to a 
 loyal native teacher living at AVaikanae near here, so that 
 the whole attention of the Maoris has been diverted from 
 the disgraceful murder to the unjust confiscation of a loyal 
 Maori's land. And then the Governor invaded Waikato, 
 whereupon many natives who disapproved of the murder 
 have joined in resisting the aggressive movement." 
 
 Ten thousand troops were now on the move, furnished 
 with all appliances for taking the field, but not a single 
 chaplain was with them. The bishop, regardless of con- 
 sequences, did what he believed to be his immediate duty, 
 symi)athizing not at all with the object of the expedition, 
 and knowing that his presence with the soldiers would be 
 misconstrued by his Maori flock into an espousing of the 
 cause of their enemies ; but he could not allow 10,000 
 men to go to battle with no one to care for their spiritual 
 interests ; he therefore joined the army as chaplain, and at 
 tlie same time protected the Native Teachers and their 
 flocks, lie lived in camp, pitching his own tent with a
 
 IV.] BEGINNING OF WAE. 187 
 
 skill which provoked the envy of the soldiers, and which 
 secured for him dry quarters while his comrades were 
 soaked. Probably no part of his career was more noble and 
 fearless than this : as it turned out, his action compromised 
 him with both parties, but the fact that it did so is pro- 
 bably a testimony to the righteousness of his proceedings. 
 
 An officer who was present describes how, when the 
 steamer was taking the first detachment of soldiers up the 
 Waikato, he saw through his telescope the figure of a man 
 on foot rapidly making his way to the mission station : 
 after a while he came to a small tributary stream, and he 
 was observed to be feeling for the bottom with a long 
 stick, and when it proved too deep to be forded he was 
 seen to strip, to tie his clothes in a bundle on his head, 
 and to swim across. This was the Bishop of New Zealand 
 hastening to prepare the native clergyman for the incursion 
 of English soldiers, and to try to protect him, and his 
 school, and his flock of sheep, which represented all his 
 worldly goods. It was a characteristic deed, and years 
 afterwards, when people saw him sitting in the chair of 
 S. Chad, beneath the figure of S. Christopher, with staff 
 in hand wading through the water, and bearing the child 
 Christ on his shoulders, they were fain to see a fitness in 
 the coincidence, and to believe that the saint of the early 
 legend was at best but a prototype of the great missionary 
 bishop of the nineteenth century. 
 
 On July 13 the General crossed the river in force, and 
 the bishop wrote, " The Eubicon is past, and war is declared 
 against New Zealand." "With a heavy heart," he took 
 up his quarters in the porch of the church at IJrury, " a 
 most comfortable chamber, eight feet by eight, with a 
 window!" His duties were not limited to those of a 
 military chaplain, for he had to go long distances and warn 
 the settlers, as massacres were now frequent, the Maoris 
 lying in ambuscade, and shooting all who came within 
 shot. Each action gave him much to do in the hospitals, 
 and he records the high opinion which he had formed of
 
 188 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 tlie soldiers, the patient cheerfiiluess of the wounded, the 
 good feeling that existed between officers and men. The 
 dates of the bishop's letters at this period are strangely in 
 contrast with those of former years. " Queen's Redoubt," 
 " Sailor's Camp," " Head-quarters," &c., are very different 
 from the peaceful cabin of the Undine and the study at 
 St. John's College, but the work in the field was as fruitful 
 and as noble as any. At one time the bishop is visiting a 
 Maori deacon whom nothing would induce to desert his 
 station : at another, as at Eangiriri, where a great battle 
 was fought, he came upon the churchyard " where a large 
 party were at work on thirty newly-made graves ; each 
 soldier lay in his separate grave, regiment by regiment, 
 company by company, comrades in life and in death not 
 divided." At another time he is burying a dead Maori, 
 \vhose body was found in the trenches : the English soldiers 
 laid him in the grave, and the bishop gave an address, in 
 which he reminded them that the Maori clergy had. in 
 several instances given Christian burial to our soldiers. 
 "If there must be war," he said, "our great effort ought to 
 be at least to de-brutalize it ; and the army, from the 
 General downwards, have shown every willingness that it 
 should be so." 
 
 In the midst of these trying labours the bishop found 
 time to write frequent letters, in which there is an uniform 
 consistency of opinion as to the justice of the war. 
 
 The two following letters to his sons in England are 
 taken from among many written at this period : — 
 
 August Zlst, 1863. 
 
 My dear William, 
 
 Another month closes upon us still in a state of war, and 
 likely I fear to remain, but still there does not seem to be 
 so much heart in the war as might have been expected. I 
 cannot think that the native people in general believe in 
 the justice of their cause. At Waitara they were con- 
 vinced that they were in the right; now they cannot justify 
 the unprovoked attack at Taranaki, which yet their chief
 
 ]v.] EVIL COUNSELS. 189 
 
 men refuse to disavow. If it were not for the deep-seated 
 feeling of distrust, whicli of course grew immensely during 
 the Waitara war, they would soon agree to terms. I am 
 very glad that you went away just in time, not because of 
 any danger which you may have escaped, for I wish neither 
 my children nor myself to neglect any public duty from fear 
 of danger ; but because I am just as glad that you should not 
 be in arms against my Maori children, however rebellious 
 they may be. Neither is the state of our young men 
 bettered by the war, for they are all enrolled in the militia, 
 and in danger of acquiring evil habits and a low tone of 
 thought and speech.. My duties are now chiefly with the 
 soldiers, who are scattered over nearly twenty stations. 
 
 Rangiahua, or Taipouei, 
 (Head-quarters Camp), 
 
 Dec. ith, 1863. 
 
 My very dear William and Johx, 
 
 I must send you a joint letter, as it will relate to public 
 affairs. You will have heard that I am acting as military 
 chaplain Math the army in Waikato, taking alternate 
 fortnights of duty with Archdeacon Maunsell. When the 
 war began in earnest it was necessary to have some one on 
 the spot, as there were continual cases of wounded men to be 
 vioited, and dead to be buried. By a despatch from the 
 War Office the General was authorized to appoint as 
 chaplains any missionaries who had been driven from their 
 stations. So I named Mr. Ash well for Head-quarters camp, 
 and Mr. Morgan for Drury. Archdeacon Maunsell was 
 then at his own station, but he has since left it, and has 
 joined the military work 
 
 It is a strange thing to be moving up the Waikato with 
 an army, after twenty years of annual visits of a peaceful 
 kind. To see the hills crowned with English forts, and 
 steamers smoking on the river, is a strange and to me a 
 painful subject of reflection. Whether we could have done 
 anything more to avert the war I doubt, for our influence as 
 clergymen has waned ever since the Maori King was set up, 
 and we refused to alter our prayers for the Queen. Evil 
 counsels have prevailed, and the people are now reaping 
 the fruit of the seed of discord which they have sown. 
 In all the most serious engagements they have been de- 
 feated with loss. They have been these : —
 
 190 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [niAP. 
 
 Katikara, south of Taranaki, where they lost thirty or 
 forty ; we very few. 
 
 Kohcroa, on the Waikato, where the INIaori loss was 
 about the same. 
 
 Mercmere, a strong position turned and evacuated without 
 loss of either side. 
 
 Rangiriri, a very strong position, most ingeniously de- 
 fended with earthwoiks, against which four several assaults 
 were made in vain, with a loss of forty killed and eighty 
 wounded on our side. The garrison being entirely sur- 
 rounded, surrendered at discretion the next day, in number 
 about 180, including some of the leading men of Waikato. 
 
 They are now on board the Curagoa man-of-war The 
 
 General complimented the prisoners upon their gallant 
 defence 
 
 So ended the battle for that day, and the General and 
 stafi" lay down in the trench nearest to the keep, while the 
 sappers were digging down the earthwork with a view to 
 the renewal of the assault in the morning through the 
 breach. The General's orderly climbed up on the parapet to 
 fire down into the keep, and was ordered down several 
 times by the aide-de-camp. In spite of this he went up 
 again, and had just turned his head round to say, " They are 
 all gone, there is no one there," when a ball passed through 
 his head and he fell down dead almost at the General's feet. 
 All night the INIaoris kept up a fire, and then at break of 
 day hoisted a white flag. The soldiers instantly rushed up 
 and fraternized with the Maoris, giving them biscuit. Not 
 so the civilians at Otahuka, some of whom are said to 
 have thrown stones at them as they passed along. 
 
 The fact of his thus being encamped with the troops led, 
 as has been already stated, not unnaturally, to his being 
 much distrusted by the natives. The real history of this 
 misconception was thus explained by an English officer in 
 high command. One day after a hard fight between the 
 English and natives in and around a swamp, our men had 
 driven off the main body of the natives, and he (the 
 Colonel) was returning to his quarters in the evening, 
 inwardly thanking God that he had escaped without a 
 scratch, when he met the bishop going towards the swamp.
 
 IV.] SEEKING THE WOUNDED. 191 
 
 " What are you after, my lord ? " " Going to look for the 
 wounded." " Oh, but there are a good many natives in the 
 swamp to look after them." " I don't know that," said the 
 bishop, and tramped on towards the swamp. The officer 
 could not let him go alone ; so he turned back, and ac- 
 companied him to the scene of the late action. The bishop 
 led the way among the toi-toi (pampas grass), and called 
 out in Maori, "Any wounded man here ?" " Bang, bang," 
 was the sharp reply from several guns. " All right," said 
 the bishop, " and now let us go into the other part where 
 the firing was hottest." Off they went, and again the 
 bishop cried out, " Any wounded man here ? " A weak 
 thin voice replied, " Tenei ahau," (Yes, here am I). They 
 made their way tow^ards him ; picked him up, and carried 
 him off the field on a check shepherd's plaid that one of 
 them had. They had several miles to go before they could 
 reach the Eedoubt and get his wound attended to. As 
 they were going, they fell in with two soldiers making for 
 the camp, and got them to take turns occasionally in 
 carrying the man, while the colonel and the bishop carried 
 the men's rifles. Some natives saw the bishop carrying a 
 rifle, and spread a report that he had fought against them. 
 This poisoned their minds against him for two years or 
 more. At last, on the occasion of a great meeting of natives, 
 some speaker denounced the bishop as one of their foes, 
 when up got the wounded Maori and told his people the 
 true story ; and then all their bitterness and hostility turned 
 to admiration and gratitude. 
 
 It needed but time to reveal the whole integrity of the 
 bishop's motives, but all that he did for both races during 
 that disastrous period will probably never be known in this 
 world. One who shared his labours has kindly contributed 
 to this memoir the following testimony to their variety, 
 and the unselfish care which prompted them : —
 
 192 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [niAi-. 
 
 Royal Dockyard, Siief.rness, 
 July Uth, 1878. 
 
 As there was no army chaplain in the field in the 
 beginning of the war, 1 with the consent of my com- 
 manding officer put myself under the bishop's direction to 
 supply services to the troops. He was taking me one day 
 from tlie Queen's Eedoubt to the Head-quarters, along a 
 road through dense bush said to be infested with Maoris, 
 and by which no officer was allowed to travel without an 
 escort; but he would not hamper himself witli one. We 
 came to a part of the road on the side of a steep hill, full 
 of deep ruts. He told me to pull up and hold his horse. 
 He dismounted and set to work to fill up the ruts, saying 
 as he laboured that the waggons for provisioning the troops 
 might get capsized. I was reminded of the good Samaritan, 
 as this, like the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, had tlie 
 title of " the bloody way." Further on we came to a place 
 where a company of the 18tli Royal Irish were stationed. 
 They were not remarkable for sobriety, and as we were 
 passing the stockade, the bishop saw a man lying drunk 
 without anything on his head. He dismounted and 
 dragged him a considerable distance, until he placed him 
 under the slielter of a tree, remarking to me, " those men 
 
 do not know the danger of sun-stroke." 
 
 S. W. Payne (Chaplain r.n.). 
 
 In addition to the divided feelings with which the bishop 
 was a daily witness of the terrible war, there was present 
 the sad disa[)pointraent at the conduct of the natives, for 
 whom it would seem that he had laboured in vain : but 
 nothing appears to have exhausted his patience, nothing was 
 in his eyes labour thrown away, if only it were done for 
 God, As in the early days of his episcopate he had 
 thankfully ministered to a race of whom he said, " it was 
 evident that they were dying out," so now amid the 
 apostasies and relapses of those on whom he had bestowed 
 the labour of the best years of his life, he had no greater 
 desire than to shepherd the faithful few, and to be ready to 
 receive the penitent if tlieir hearts were touched, and they
 
 IV.] DECLENSION. 193 
 
 returned. In the midst of these sorrows he wrote to the 
 Bishop of Adelaide : — 
 
 "I have now one simple missionary idea before me — of 
 watching over the remnant that is left. Our native work 
 is a remnant in two senses : the remnant of a decaying 
 people, and the remnant of a decaying faith. The works 
 of which you hear are not the works of heathens : they 
 are the works of baptized men, whose love has grown cold 
 from causes common to all Churches of neophytes from 
 Laodicsea downwards." 
 
 And while he was thus grieving over one portion of his 
 people, the other was regarding him witli suspicion and 
 animosity, as having unduly espoused the cause of their 
 natural enemies the owners of the soil. Well did Bishop 
 Patteson write about this time : " How often do I think 
 with reference to him of a 'prophet is not without honour,' 
 &c. Little the Auckland settlers know the man 'that 
 standeth among them : ' but let them say what they may, 
 even they respect and admire him so greatly that his 
 name must ever be a power in the land." 
 
 In the early days of 1864 the British troops dispersed 
 the natives, who fled to their mountain fastnesses ; the 
 Waikato was held by our soldiers, and some forces were 
 landed at Tauranga to carry out the new policy of confis- 
 cation of native lands and property, in which by a blunder 
 loyal and friendly owners suffered with those who had been 
 carrying on the war against us. In the interval of active 
 operations in the field the bishop wrote to his elder son, then 
 contemplating admission to Holy Orders, a letter, which 
 has its own value as giving his idea of what should be a 
 curate's manner of life in a large town parish. Ultimately 
 Mr. Selwyn was ordained to the curacy of Chaddesley 
 Corbett near to Kidderminster, but with a small population, 
 and altogether in strong contrast with that large and popu- 
 lous town. But the bishop found in a less arduous sphere 
 no excuse for an easy estimate of ministerial obligations,
 
 194 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chai'. 
 
 and the two letters are given as valuable i:)ictures of 
 ministerial duty whether in a large or a small parish : — 
 
 (I.) 
 
 Te Rom Waipa (Head-quarters Camp), 
 Feb. 4th, 1864. 
 
 MV. DEAR AViLLIAM, 
 
 1 am again in the country through which I travelled witli 
 you, but under very different circumstances. For want of 
 other military chaplains I have attached myself to the army, 
 believing that where the wounded and the dying are, there 
 is the place for tlie minister of the Gospeh Since Ean- 
 giriri there has been little or no loss of life till Tuesday 
 last, when Lieutenant Mitchel of the EsJc was shot on the 
 steamer Avon while coming up the Waipa. We fear that 
 his wound is mortal. To-day the plot is thickening. We 
 are within one and a half miles of a strong native position, 
 Patarangi, and about two miles from another, Pikopiko ; and 
 as I write a dropping fire is going on continually with 
 small arms, and an occasional shot from the Armstrong 
 guns, which are being brought into position about 1,000 
 yards from the pa. The General has 3,000 men ; the 
 Natives are not supposed to have more than 1,200, but 
 they have so strengthened their positions by earthworks 
 that he is obliged to proceed cautiously and systematically. 
 The popular idea of "rushing" seems to have been 
 a bandoned since Rangiriri. 
 
 The scenes around me make me very thankful that you 
 escaped just in time, to avoid being enrolled in the Auck- 
 land militia. The worst part of the war is the frightful 
 demoralization that is going on among our young men. 
 Instead of this state of things, you will I hope before you 
 receive this have been called to be a servant of the Prince 
 of Peace; and may the same Holy Spirit, who I trust 
 has called you to tlie work, confirm and guide you in it. 
 Nothing can be more pleasing to me than your connexion 
 with ;Mr. Claughton and Kidderminster. It brings back 
 to mind the pleasure which I felt when George Herbert^ 
 entered the ministry under the same pastoral guidance 
 
 ^ Now Dean of HercfoKl.
 
 IV.] CLERICAL OBLIGATIONS. 195 
 
 I feel sure that you will now learn what real work means, 
 and will remember what I said to you about the employ- 
 ment of time. In a parish like Kidderminster there will 
 be no idea of duty from 10 to 1, and pleasure afterwards ; 
 but every hour will have its allotted task, and it will be 
 your meat and drink to do your Master's will, and to finish 
 His work. If I live till the 21st February, I shall not fail 
 to be with you in spirit, praying that you may be a good 
 and faithful minister of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 (11.) 
 
 Auckland, N.Z., May 1th, 1864. 
 ]\Iy VERY DEAR AViLLIAM, 
 
 Before you receive this I hope that you will have been 
 ordained, and will have settled down to your work with 
 r. IVIarriott. I should have preferred Kidderminster, 
 because I fear that in a small parish you will be exposed 
 to the temptation of doing half a day's work and consider- 
 ing it a whole one. Accept my assurance that even a 
 small parish is enough to occupy a clergyman's whole time, 
 and to employ all his thoughts : and yet not enough to 
 overtax his energies and make relaxation necessary. In a 
 parish of moderate size the work may be thoroughly done, 
 every parishioner regularly visited, whether in sickness or 
 in health : every birth of a child followed up by a visit 
 to the parents to arrange the time of baptism and the 
 choice of sponsors : every projected marriage a reason for 
 a special interest in the young people: confirmation classes 
 not called together hurry-skurry when the bishop's notice 
 comes, but carried on as a matter of course, a new class 
 begun as soon as the last has been confirmed : the schools 
 rot merely visited but actually taught : truant children 
 hunted up : absentees from church, young or old, mildly 
 admonished : and above all such careful study of the Word 
 of God for its own sake as may make the composition 
 and delivery of sermons a work of small difficulty ; for 
 out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh : 
 frequent catechising (not questions at random, but upon 
 a train of thought prepared before, and to one definite 
 VOL. II.
 
 196 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 point), will give you freedom in composition and oral 
 delivery, besides enabling you to suit your instruction to 
 the capacity of your hearers or scholars, by knowledge of 
 their actual want. Then there will be a system of paro- 
 chial charities, for all which I refer you to your aunt 
 Letitia ; penny banks, coal clubs, clothing clubs, shoe 
 clubs, &c., all of which are chiefly valuable for the access 
 which they give a clergyman to the hearths at least, if not 
 to the hearts, of liis parishioners. It required men full of 
 the Holy Ghost and of power even to serve tables. These 
 manifold works will leave little spare time, morning, noon, 
 or night ; and, however true it may be that half a loaf is 
 better than no bread, I hope that you will give your parish- 
 ioners the whole loaf. May the Holy Spirit guide and 
 strengthen you in this blessed work. 
 
 The reckless and indiscriminate confiscation of land of 
 the so-called rebels gave fresh vitality to the Maoris' 
 falling cause. In April, 1864, the war broke out again at 
 Tauranga, and the British were repulsed with much 
 slaughter at the Gate Pa on April 29th. In the same 
 month the Paimarire or Hau-hau fanaticism sprung up as 
 it were in a single night, and then the Maoris failed in 
 successive battles, and being thus divided among them- 
 selves, were conquered by the disciplined forces of the 
 British army witji comparative ease. In July, 1864, the 
 Tauranga chiefs gave in their allegiance, and were punished 
 for the defence which they had made in behalf of their 
 ancestral territory by the confiscation of one-fourth of it. 
 
 There was not — and there has never been — any formal 
 termination of the war : the bishop's counsel, spurned 
 when offered, has been adopted without acknowledgment, 
 and the quaiTcl has been allowed to sink into an informal 
 armistice. The Government claiming to assert that all 
 Maoris were subjects of the Queen, could not in con- 
 sistency make any treaty or terms with persons whom it 
 pronounced to be insurgents and rebels : its policy was, 
 suppression of tlic rebellion, punishment of the leaders, and
 
 IV.] DELUSIONS OF MAORIS. 197 
 
 then a general amnesty. But this was found to be difficult 
 of execution ; there were isolated instances of submission, 
 but the majority of the Waikatos withdrew to the tract 
 outside of the confiscated block, and there they have 
 remained unmolested to the present day, their territory 
 being known as the King's Country and themselves refusing 
 to acknowledge any allegiance to the English Crown. The 
 strict isolation which they maintained at first has been of 
 late considerably relaxed, and they come to the market at 
 Alexandra just within the boundary to buy and sell : their 
 country may become an Alsatia, and on this account it is 
 very desirable that they should cease to live thus cat off 
 from the rest of the colony. 
 
 After a while both parties were weary of the strife, and 
 with the withdrawal of the Queen's troops quietness was 
 restored to the land to this extent, that the fightings were 
 almost limited to the Paimarire against the friendly natives : 
 the former were the victims of one of the most horrible 
 delusions that ever made captive the hearts of men. A 
 Taranaki chief, named Horopapera Te Ua, had shown such 
 symptoms of insanity that his people had bound him, first 
 with cords and afterwards with chain and padlock ; from 
 both of these he escaped, and declared that the angel 
 Gabriel had released him. From a lunatic he came to be 
 esteemed a prophet ; he foretold a great 'victory, which was 
 supposed to have been realized when a small reconnoitring 
 party of soldiers were cut off. He professed to have 
 received revelations from the Angel Gabriel. A worship 
 was compiled for his followers, which was a mixture of 
 Eomanism, Wesleyanism, and Church doctrines, associated 
 with the fanaticism and licence of Mohammedanism. To 
 propagate this creed by the sword became a virtue, and no 
 restraints were put on the worst passions of our nature 
 Under the influence of visions some of them reverted 
 to cannibalism. Something of every creed they adopted : 
 they affected the name of "Universal;" called their 
 doctrine " Paimarire " (all-holy), and themselves " Hau- 
 
 2
 
 198 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYJT. [chai-. 
 
 haus," (or barkers) from their habit of repeating the sound 
 " hau " accompanied by a deep breathing from the chest. 
 
 The emissaries of this fanaticism were sent in two bands 
 through the country with their routes duly prescribed to 
 them by the authority of their founder. Their instructions 
 were that they should travel peaceably, carrying with them 
 human heads, which they were to deliver to a chief in 
 Poverty Bay. Their object was not fighting, but to gain 
 the adhesion of the tribes through whose territory they 
 passed; at Whanganui one contingent was defeated in 
 February, 1865, by the friendly natives under John 
 Williams, a catechist of the Church Missionary Society, 
 who died of his wounds, and was buried with military 
 honours, the British ensign being his pall. After this 
 defeat the fanatics set out with the determination to 
 murder every missionary whom they met, and there was 
 no time in which to warn those who were exposed to this 
 new peril. 
 
 On March 2nd the second contingent of these fanatics 
 readied Opotiki, in Poverty Bay. They found the tribe 
 already in great excitement, and they uttered a bitter 
 lamentation, unlike anything ever heard before ; it was a 
 mourning for the lands which they had lost, and it had an 
 overpowering effect on the bystanders ; it touched their 
 amor patrice and infected those who had hitherto stood 
 aloof. The few English who were present described the 
 condition of the whole tribe as one of raving madness. 
 
 Just at this moment a small schooner entered the harbour 
 having on board two clergymen, Messrs. Volkner and Grace, 
 who were at once seized upon : the former was the bearer 
 of medicines and nourishing food for the sick stricken 
 with the fever which had been e])i(3emic in Poverty Bay ; 
 the next morning, with the blasphemous cry that it was 
 the will of God, he was murdered under circumstances 
 exceptionally revolting, and ]\Ir. Grace was taken prisoner. 
 
 Immediately on hearing this appalling news the bishop 
 went down to Poverty Bay in the hope of rescuing Mr.
 
 IV.] RESCUE. 199 
 
 Grace, but it was a delicate and peiilous work. On Marcli 
 16th, however, it was accomplished, and he -v^Tote the 
 following grateful letter to Mrs. Selwyn : — 
 
 H.M.S. "Eclipse," Opotiki, 
 Thursday Evening, March \Wi, 1865. 
 
 .... We have Mr. Grace safe on board, God be thanked ; 
 we sailed on Friday, 10th. 
 
 On Saturday at noon we reached Tauranga, saw the arch- 
 deacon and Colonel Greer, but got no new information. 
 Sailed on to Kawakawa, Hicks' Bay ; arrived just after 
 morning service at 11. Eutene, Hori Tapore, and others 
 came off, and reported that the party who had threatened 
 Bishop Williams had gone by the inland route. Eota not 
 there, but at Tauranga ; sailed on and anchored in Poverty 
 Bay at daylight on Monday morning. Found the Englisli 
 settlers in great excitement, as the Paimarire party had 
 just arrived. Hired horses on the spot. Captain Fremantle, 
 Mr. Rice (native officer), and I, reached the bishop about 
 nine, greeted by a friendly party in arms of 300 or 400 
 men, headed by Anara Matele. Went to the bishop's 
 house, and found all well, and thankfully acknowledging 
 the stedfastness of their people, who had gathered from all 
 parts for their protection. Went out to a meeting, at 
 which the bishop's army appeared in fighting costume, 
 with more of Maori usage than I liked to see, as I would 
 rather have seen the native clergymen with a hundred 
 quiet men in brown coats than 400 native warriors in 
 brown skins. However, the relief from anxiety was so 
 instantaneous and complete, that I was not disposed to 
 question the means. Piota, Ptaniera Kawhia, Hare Taukae, 
 and Tamihaua Huata were all there. The substance of the 
 speeches was that they would not allow any of their Pake- 
 has to be touched, but that they would not interfere to 
 apprehend the murderers. I then asked them to write a 
 letter and send a deputation to require the Opotiki people 
 to give up Mr. Grace. This was immediately mixed up 
 with a condition that Hori Tupaea should be given up. I 
 said that I had nothing to do with his capture or his release, 
 but that I could assure them that he had returned to 
 Tauranga. Some professed to doubt this. I begged them
 
 200 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 not to mix up the two questions, but failed in persuading 
 them. In the evening we returned to the ship, an old 
 chief having first warned me against sleeping on board, 
 because he said the Paimarires would drag the ship ashore 
 by their enchantments. On the Tuesday morning Leonard 
 AVilliams came down with the letter and deputation of 
 two ; one of them our old friend Ruitona Piwanga. The 
 letter contained the same condition about Hori Tapaea; 
 that we should go to Tauranga, and bring Hori, and return 
 with him to Opotiki, and then Mr. Grace would be given 
 up. Tliis was not what we wished, as we felt that we 
 might go to Tauranga and find that Colonel Greer had no 
 instructions, and that he might refuse to act without the 
 Governor, and that the Governor might not have returned, 
 and that all this time poor IMrs. Grace would be in the 
 same state of anxiety. On the side of the Government it 
 would be of course unpleasant to have to consent to an 
 exchange of prisoners. However, we had no choice, so we 
 came away with our letter, and the same night anchored 
 again in KawakaAva (Hicks' Bay). Here we expected to 
 find a letter from j\Ir, Angus White, now at AVaiapu, to 
 wliom j\Ir. Pdce had written, but the messenger had not re- 
 turned. Here was a new- perplexity, so we waited another 
 night in vain, in hopes of his return, as we felt a little 
 anxious about Mr. White. At 4 a.m. we steamed out and 
 passed the Ladybird anchored inWhare-kahika Bay (Hicks' 
 West Bay) without seeing her ; she however saw us and 
 steamed out after us, and w^e met and saw S. and H. 
 AVilliams, with whom we took counsel, and agreed that 
 they sliould go and see INIr. Wliite at Waiapu, and then on 
 to Tauranga, while we went to Opotiki. They could give 
 us no information about Mr. Grace. Steamed on to Omaio, 
 twenty miles from Opotiki, and went on shore among a 
 friendly party, who told us that ]\Ir. Grace was certainly at 
 Opotiki ; that Jao, master of the schooner Ediiosc, had 
 been allowed to sail to I'auranga to fetch Hori Tapaea, and 
 bring him back, upon whicli j\Ir. Grace would be released. 
 I sent a note from this place by special messenger, to Mr. 
 Grace, but it never reached liim. Anchored for the night 
 six miles from Opotiki, the weather, on this as all other 
 niglits in this cruise, being beautifully calm. At daylight 
 this day (Thursday IGth), we anchored off Opotiki. The
 
 IV.] ROMAN CATHOLIC MAORIS. 201 
 
 masts of a schooner appeared in the river, wliieli those on 
 board pronounced to be the Edi'pse. At 8 A.M. we landed 
 our deputation with their letter, fully expecting to have to 
 wait the whole day for an answer ; about nine, a boat, to our 
 surprise, came out of the river with the two Levys and two 
 other white men. Why Mr. Grace did not come with them 
 did not clearly appear, as they said he was living with 
 them in the same house, and no guard was kept over him. 
 Either they were afraid to bring him, or he had given his 
 word not to escape. Captain Fremantle was anxious to 
 go in his boat ; but this I feared might endanger Mr. Grace's 
 life, as horsemen were scampering, to and fro along the 
 beach, and it seemed impossible that Mr. Grace could now 
 escape unobserved. Presently two Maoris appeared on the 
 beach who were said to be friendly. Levy went in his 
 boat, as he thought, to fetch them, but returned to our great 
 delight with Mr. Grace. You may suppose how thankful 
 I felt, and what a warm welcome he received from every 
 one. His story I have not time to write, but you already 
 know most of the material points. The boats of the ship 
 went in immediately to tow out the schooner, and in an 
 hour she was clear out, with all the white men on board 
 except one, who was not to be found. God be thanked. 
 
 After Mr. Grace's rescue the Hau-haus went down to 
 Otaki and threatened the Church natives. Eoman Catholic 
 Maoris were considered to be friends of the King- party, as 
 they paid allegiance to their bishops and to the Pope and 
 not to the Queen. These men told Archdeacon Hadfield 
 that if he would make his escape they would protect him ; 
 but he replied that he should under no circumstances leave 
 his post, that he was prepared to lay his bones at Otaki, 
 whether after a violent or a natural death, but nothing 
 would induce him to move; and his resolute courage 
 brought the whole tribe to his feet. 
 
 The bishop had gone down to Christchurch to attend 
 the General Synod, where, as has been mentioned in the 
 preceding chapter, matters of unusual importance were 
 discussed. "Wherever a friend was in danger, there it had 
 always been his impulse to place himself ; but things were
 
 202 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [cuap. 
 
 now altered, and he might be doing harm rather than good. 
 But it must have cost him much unhappiness to have 
 written this letter : — 
 
 Wellington, June 1th, 1865. 
 
 My dear Akchdeacon, 
 
 In former times, if I had heard that you were in any 
 troul)le, I should have set out at once to join you ; and I am 
 ready to do so now if you think that I can be of any assist- 
 ance. But I do not like to come without first communi- 
 cating with you, as I am now so suspected and slandered 
 by all the King natives. I am ready, however, at a 
 moment's notice, at your bidding, and will put off my 
 return to Auckland if I hear that you would like me 
 to come. 
 
 We have offered up our prayers for you this morning, 
 and constantly think and speak of you. We have no 
 great anxiety on your account, but our interest in you 
 and yours is not measured by the reports of the day. 
 
 May God strengthen and preserve you. 
 
 Your affectionate Friend and Brother, 
 
 G. A. New Zealand. 
 
 One contribution the bishop made to the alleviation of 
 the evils of which the colony was the victim — a contri- 
 bution becoming his office. He ordered a prayer to be 
 offered up in all the churches of New Zealand during the 
 continuance of the plague, and it will be seen that the 
 Form of Prayer which he drew up differs from others which 
 some may remember as having been used in similar times 
 of trouble, and which appeared to dictate to the All- Wise 
 how and for how long He should allow the scourge of war 
 to visit His people : — 
 
 "O Lord, whose never-failing Providence ordereth all 
 things both in heaven and earth, we humbly beseech Thee 
 to receive our prayer for the Governor of this land and for 
 all who are in authority, that they may be so guided by 
 Thee in all things, that the dominion of our Queen may 
 be estaVjlished in this land in justice and mercy, according 
 to Thy ll.,]y Will.
 
 IV.] BISHOP SELWYN'S GALLANTRY. 203 
 
 " We commend to Thee, merciful Father, all our brethren 
 who are gone forth from amongst us to bear arms and to be 
 exposed to the peril of death ; all who are thereby hindered 
 from worshipping Thee in Thy house, that Thou wilt keep 
 them from forgetfulness of Thee and of Thy holy law : all 
 who are sick ; all who are wounded ; all who are drawing 
 nigh unto death ; all who are bereaved. And we pray that 
 Thy Spirit may so rule in all of us as to keep us from every 
 uniaecoming and unchristian temper ; from all cruel, and 
 unmerciful, and vindictive thoughts. 
 
 " And we beseech Thee, good Lord, to restrain the evil 
 passions of men, and to deliver this land from the misery 
 of strife and bloodshed, and to pour out upon all the people 
 of the land the spirit of concord, and obedience, and peace. 
 And this we pray through Him who is the Prince of Peace 
 and Saviour of all men, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen." 
 
 It is hardly necessary to state that the conduct of the 
 bishop during the war entirely won the hearts of both 
 officers and men with whom he was encamped. He used to 
 ride most Sunday mornings from the furthest Eedoubt, after 
 holding a short service, and then onward from camp to 
 camp, a distance often amounting to forty miles, holding 
 seven or eight services in the day. There was rather a high 
 ridge, along which the bishop had to ride between the two 
 Eedoubts. For the space of two miles it was exposed to 
 the fire from the Maoris in the bush below. The bishop 
 rode at full canter. The officers used to watch him with 
 their field-glasses. They would see a puff of smoke, and 
 hear a " ping," look at the bishop galloping along, and 
 say, " It's all right ; they missed him ! " This occurred 
 frequently. The bishop used to say he could count on his 
 fingers the risks of his life which he had ever run, but 
 then he did not reckon these, because he knew the Maoris 
 were poor shots, or their powder was so bad. 
 
 At the end of the war his services were publicly 
 recognised by the medal, given to all the military who had 
 taken part in the war, being granted to him ; the officers 
 and men to whom he had ministered, either on active
 
 204 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 service, or when sick and ■wounded ; and the friends of 
 those -whom he had nursed and tended to tlie last, sub- 
 scribed and gave liim money for the ornamentation of his 
 private chapeh It was with that donation that he pro- 
 cured the painted windows in the private chapel of the 
 palace in Lichfield. All the subjects of those windows 
 represent what may be called the Christian and specially 
 chivalrous side of the soldier's life. All the lights on the 
 south side are filled with subjects taken from the Old 
 Testament ; all on the north i'rom the New Testament. 
 The west window has the arms of the fSee of New Zealand 
 and those of the 8ee of Lichfield, and a copy of the medal 
 which Dean Champneys caused to be struck and given to 
 his school children when he was rector of "Whitechapel, and 
 when they used to make their penny collections for the 
 bishop's Maori schools. The medal showed the globe on 
 Mercator's Projection, with a scroll reaching from England 
 to New Zealand, bearing the legend, " One in Christ." At 
 the east end of the chapel was a representation of the 
 Centurion at the foot of the Cross. But the most remark- 
 able and historical window is one on the south side, 
 representing David pouring out the water which the 
 three soldiers had fetched from the well of Bethlehem 
 at the risk of their lives (1 Chron. xi. 17 — 19). This 
 was intended to record a like chivalrous act of a 
 INIaori chief in the course of the war near Tauranga 
 on the east coast. 
 
 The IMaori general in question was named Henare Taratoa. 
 He had been educated by the bishop at St. John's College, 
 from about 1845 to ]853. He was a very clever, thought- 
 ful youth, but excitable, and not altogether to be depended 
 upon, so that the bishop would not lead him on to the 
 njjnistry for fear he might fall away from the faith. Once 
 when the bishoj) was telling a party of natives ^sop's 
 fable of the cat that was changed into a princess, and how 
 the princess leapt out of bed when she saw a mouse, he 
 suddenly turned to Henare, and said, " What's the mouse ? "
 
 IV.] TEACHING BY FABLES. 205 
 
 " Te vitenga Maori" (old native ciistoins) was the reply. 
 " AYhat's the princess ? " said the bishop. " The Maori 
 lieart/' said the conscience-touched youth. Henare sided 
 with his countrymen in the war, but held to the Gospel, as 
 was -shown by the action which the painted window 
 records. He was commanding the native forces at the 
 fl"ht after the disaster that befell the Ens-lish at the Gate 
 l*a. The English charged their rifle-pits and drove them 
 out ; the Maoris slowly retreated, facing the enemy, and 
 were all bayoneted, showing a courage that won the 
 admiration of the English. When Henare's body was 
 searched, they found on him the " orders of the day " for 
 lighting. They began with a form of prayer, and ended 
 with the words (in Maori), Eom. xii. 20, " If thine enemy 
 hunger, feed him ; if he thirst, give him drink." These 
 were not idle words, for on the occasion of the panic that 
 occurred amongst our troops at the Gate Pa a few days 
 before, several English officers, naval and military, had got 
 inside the Maori redoubt, and were left there, severely 
 wounded. One dying of his wounds was tended all night 
 by Henare Taratoa. The dying man asked for water. 
 There was none inside the Maori redoubt, nor nearer than 
 three miles on their side of the Gate Pa; but there was 
 water inside the English lines at the foot of the Gate Pa ; 
 and Henare Taratoa crept down amongst the fern within 
 reach of the sentries, and filled a calabash with water, 
 which he successfully carried back to refresh the parched 
 lips of his enemy. The English officers told this story, 
 which in itself is a sufficient answer to the taunt so often 
 throwm at our missionaries, " What's the value of your 
 supposed conversions to Christianity ? Where are the 
 fruits of the Gospel you have preached ? " 
 
 Yes ; it was not all darkness and failure : the bright 
 side of the cloud was sometimes turned towards the great 
 bishop, and in the uniform fidelity of the Maori clergy 
 there was present comfort and hope for the future : never- 
 theless there must have been much of sadness present
 
 206 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap 
 
 ^vhell he wrote the following touching letter to his iin- 
 swerving friend, the Eev. EdMard Coleridge : — 
 
 New Plymouth, N.Z., Dec. 26th, 1865. 
 
 My very dear Friend, 
 
 ]\Iy date recalls to memory Plymouth, Dec. 26th, 1841, 
 and brings you vividly before me, laying the last stone on 
 the beach, praying with us in the cabin of the Tomatin, 
 and waving your last farewell to us from the boat. Twenty- 
 four years "have passed away, but the remembrance of that 
 day remains as fresh as ever. So also does the " undying 
 love" which then united us together, and which neither time 
 nor distance can impair. But, oh ! how other things have 
 changed ! how much of the buoyancy of hope has been 
 sobered down by experience ! when, instead of a nation 
 of believers welcoming me as their father, I find here and 
 there a few scattered sheep, the remnant of a flock which 
 has forsaken the shepherd. Think of my hanging on to 
 a grapnel off Mr. Volkner's Mission Station, not daring to 
 land, in the very same manner as Coley ^ and I are accus- 
 tomed to do at some heathen island visited for the first 
 time. At this place I do not know how far it is right to 
 go among my people, though in former times peace or war 
 made no difference in their willingness to receive me. At 
 present we are the special objects of their suspicion and 
 ill-will. The part which I took in the Waikato campaign 
 lias destroyed my influence with many. You will ask, 
 then, " Did I not foresee this 1 " and if so, " Why did I 
 go ? " I answer first that, though 10,000 men were sent 
 from England, no military chaplain arrived at head-quarters 
 till the advance had reached its farthest point in Waikato. 
 I could not neglect the wounded and dying soldiers. Then 
 there were many wounded INIaoris brought in from time to 
 time, to whom it was my duty to minister. Add to this, 
 that two of our mission stations (those of Mr. Ashwell 
 and Mr. Morgan) had been occupied by a native clergy- 
 man and catechist, whom no threats could induce to leave 
 their posts after the P^nglish missionaries were advised to 
 retire. It was my duty to see they were not injured Avhen 
 our troo])S advanced, and this made it necessary for me to 
 be ill the front, and thereby to expose myself to the impu- 
 1 Rev. J. V. Piittpson.
 
 iv.] RETEOSPECT. 207 
 
 tation of having led the troops. This has thrown me back 
 in native estimation, more, I fear, than my remaining years 
 of life will enable me to recover. But what are my sor- 
 rows compared to those of the Bishop of Waiapu, who 
 had completed his quarter of a century at Poverty Bay, 
 and after constant eftbrt and anxiety has just begun to 
 rest upon a settled system, with a thriving college, seven 
 native clergymen, a Diocesan Synod meeting annually, 
 in which the proceedings were conducted entirely in the 
 native language ; his son Leonard, as his archdeacon, most 
 active and efficient ; and then all was broken up as in a 
 moment — not a portion of his work, as my Maori duties 
 are, but the whole ; and now he has gone back to the Bay 
 of Islands, whence he started, full of hope, a year or two 
 before I left England. 
 
 In the midst of these sorrows we have solid comfort in 
 the sight of the stability of our native clergymen, who 
 have never swerved from their duty, and never forgotten 
 or broken the oath of allegiance to the Queen which they 
 took at their ordination. This affords a strong ground for 
 believing that if the Maoris in general had ever consented 
 to become British subjects, they would have kept their 
 promise; but to be forced into the position of British 
 subjects without their consent, and subject to the new 
 infliction of a Government in which they had no share, 
 administered by men wdth interests and feelings opposite 
 to their own, — this was too much to expect them to sub- 
 mit to. The real cause of war in New Zealand has been 
 the new constitution, and the cause of the greater bitter- 
 ness of the strife has been the new element of confiscation 
 introduced by the colonists against the will and express 
 orders of the Home Government. The argument in fa- 
 vour of it is this : a Maori cares more for his land than 
 for anything else ; therefore the punishment which he will 
 feel most is the confiscation of land. There might be 
 some force in this, if the Maori had committed some real 
 crime, of which he was conscious ; but when he believes 
 that the Englishman has only been waiting his time to do 
 what he has now done, and that the land was doomed just 
 as much if the owners were innocent as if they were guilty, 
 then confiscation becomes in their eyes simple spoliation, 
 and has none of the effect of punishment. Certainly
 
 208 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 nothing could look more like a determination to provoke 
 a quarrel tliau the "Waitara business ; where the natives 
 had been allowed to kill one another for two years in 
 civil war, on land questions, raised by our eagerness to 
 buy upon disputed titles ; and then the sword which had 
 been never drawn to vindicate tlie law was drawn to 
 break it, and war made in the name of the Queen upon 
 her own subjects on a question of civil contract on the 
 very spot where murders remained unpunished, and the 
 chief murderer became the ally of the Queen's represen- 
 tative. 
 
 The llau-hau superstition is simply an expression of an 
 utter loss of faith in everything that is English, clergy and 
 all alike. The only wonder is that the whole people did 
 not become Romanists, as the missionaries of that persua- 
 sion are chiefly from France. The murder of Mr. Volkner 
 was an exceptional case ; the act of one miscreant (Kere- 
 opa), not one of his own people, working upon Mr. V.'s 
 own flock, with that mysterious power which has been 
 so often seen in times of public excitement. The wretch 
 went over afterwards to Poverty Bay, and gained the same 
 kind of influence over the disciples of Bishop Williams. 
 That it was not a mere spirit of murder is proved by the 
 fact that Mr. Grace, another missionary, was spared, and 
 that a medical man, J\ir. Agassiz, remained at Opotiki for 
 months after the murder. There is no olfence, of the sin 
 of which a ]\Iaori has a clearer perception than of murder 
 properly so called, and very few murders have been com- 
 mitted by the race during the twenty-six years of the 
 colony — none in the previous twenty-five years of the 
 mission. In time of war and public excitement deeds 
 aie done of which the exact character can scarcely be 
 defined, for the conscience even of an Englishman on such 
 occasions is no safe or consistent guide. 
 
 AVe have every reason to think that the worst is now 
 past, and as the withdrawal of the troops will abate the 
 appetite of the colonists, we shall probaldy settle down 
 again upon the unsatisfactory basis of the questionable pos- 
 session of one or two million acres of veiy indifferent land, 
 acquired at the cost of 5/. per acre and many priceless lives ; 
 and of the entire repudiation of the Queen's authority over 
 the whole interior of the Northern Island. This is the
 
 IV.] RETROSPECT. 209 
 
 result of seeking first " the other things," instead of the 
 " one." It is not many years since the Queen's name was 
 honoured throughout New ZeaLand, and no more accept- 
 able hope could be held out to the Maoris " than that the 
 two races might grow up to be one people, with one faith, 
 and under one sovereign." All this time they sold their 
 land faster than we could pay for it, at from ^d. to lOd. 
 per acre, wishing nothing more than to have houses built, 
 roads laid out, and Englishmen settled among them. " 
 earth, earth, earth ! " Such has been our cry. The Queen, 
 Law, Eeligion, have been thrust aside in the one thought 
 of the acquisition of land. Native agents were called, 
 and were, " Native Laud-Purchase Commissioners." Thus 
 neglected by us, the natives chose for their own chief 
 magistrate the old friend of Governor Hobson, and the 
 constant supporter of order and peace. He soon died, and 
 we took the earliest opportunity of quarrelling with his 
 son, because he did not, or could not, coerce the island 
 Chief Eewi, who has been the chief, if not the sole cause, 
 of the renewal of the war. All the young King's land 
 has been confiscated, but little or none of Eewi's. And 
 the pleasant dream so full of bright hope has melted away, 
 and the prospect of a few more years, if it be God's will, 
 of plodding labour is all that remains to me, to build up 
 again the tabernacle which is fallen down. 
 
 I do not see my way to another visit to England. It is 
 more congenial to my present feelings to sit among my 
 own ruins, not moping, but tracing out the outlines of a 
 new foundation, than to go through another course of 
 public life in England. So much has been said or written 
 of late about my order that I have begun to think that it 
 will be well for us to be more sparing of our visits. We 
 leave to the English clergy their own entire freedom to go 
 every year to the Baths of Lucca or to Switzerland for 
 their long vacation, and to spend their time there in 
 entire idleness. If our enjoying eight or ten months of 
 mixed pleasure and work once in thirteen years is a 
 stumbling-block to them, I will not give them cause of 
 offence. If there has been anything wrong in this re- 
 spect on the part of my brethren, as a senior member of 
 the body I ought to set a better example. As I referred
 
 210 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYX. [chap. iv. 
 
 to this subject in a former letter, you will see that it has 
 entered deeply into my mind. 
 
 The proceedings in the matter of the Nelson Bishopric 
 have been strictly regular. The Diocesan Synod delegated 
 their share in the nomination to the Bishop of London. 
 The General Synod in like manner delegated their right of 
 confirmation to the Archbishop of Canterbury. This binds 
 the diocese and the province. "\Ve leave the negotiations 
 with the Crown in the hands of the Archbishop, but if he 
 should fail to obtain authority to consecrate the bishop- 
 designate, we should proceed to consecrate him in New 
 Zealand, because after the late decisions of the Privy 
 Council we see no hindrance to this way and no other 
 way open to us. The petition of the Anglican Bishops in 
 New Zealand will, I hope, lead to such an answer as will 
 set the question at rest. We are not aware of the exist- 
 ence of any greater difficulty in our own case than in that 
 of the Scottish Episcopal Church, or of the Episcopal 
 Church in the United States. The State has cast off our 
 tow-line, and we have made sail for ourselves. Don't say 
 that we are rebels : it is the State that has repudiated the 
 Church. 1 held on to the last strand till the Lord Atropos 
 cut it. 
 
 Your very affectionate and grateful Friend, 
 
 G. A. New Zealand.
 
 1860-1867.] PROGEESS. 211 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 NEW ZEALAND AND LICHFIELD. 
 
 [1860—1867.] 
 
 After tlie digression of the two preceding chapters, it is 
 necessary to resume the chronological order of the story 
 which was broken at the end of 1859. It was the prelude 
 to a stormy period, of which much has been said in the 
 last chapter. Of the troubles connected with political dis- 
 turbances no further mention will be made ; additional 
 trouble was present in the shipwreck of the Southern Cross, 
 happily without loss of life, on the shores of New Zealand, 
 on her return voyage after having left Mr. Patteson and 
 his boys on the island of Mota, which subsequently became 
 one of the first of the islands in the mid- Pacific to receive 
 the Gospel. In all the disturbances, whether present or 
 imminent, which visited the colony, the bishop could dis- 
 cover hopeful tokens of real and substantial progress. The 
 roll of Maori clergy was gradually being enlarged, and 
 everywhere in the Northern Island the village schools, off- 
 shoots of the larger missionary schools which were the 
 direct fruit of the college at Auckland, were offering them- 
 selves for his inspection and commendation. These were 
 especially gratifying to the bishop, inasmuch as he had 
 persevered, in spite of sympathy withheld and opposition 
 offered, in his determination to establish these boarding 
 schools, to which he had been assured that no Maori 
 would ever come. In one case the seed sown had withered 
 VOL. XL p
 
 212 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [ohap. v. 
 
 and perislicd, and yet now far and wide tlie blade Lad 
 sprung up and the grain was being harvested. 
 
 The year 1860 was also a time of preparation for the 
 great event of 18G1, the consecration of the IMissionary 
 Bishop for the western islands of the South Pacific 
 Ocean. The relations of the Church towards the civil 
 power were in an indefinite and hazy condition at tliis 
 period ; the State had cut the Church adrift, and yet was 
 unwilling to relax any semblance of the hold which it im- 
 potently claimed to have on its freedom of action. It was 
 a great year for true Church autonomy when in New Zea- 
 land a bishop was consecrated for Melanesia, in Capetown 
 a bishop was consecrated for Central Africa, and from the 
 ]Mother Church a bishop was consecrated, under the ab- 
 normal and eccentric " Jemsalem Bishopric Act," for the 
 Sandwich Islands. This measure of freedom was not, how- 
 ever, attained without much effort, and Bishop Selwyn, the 
 last man in the world to undervalue constituted authorities, 
 had step by step to contend with difficulties w^hich rested 
 on no legal basis, but which yet rendered his progress slow 
 and difficult. 
 
 How careful he was not to seem to infringe either the 
 letter or the spirit of any law, and what pains he took to 
 secure the sanction of all who were even remotely con- 
 cerned in the matter, — these things are shown in a letter 
 written to the late Professor Selwyn a few days after Mr. 
 
 Patteson's consecration : — 
 
 Auckland, March ith, 1861. 
 
 My DEAR William, 
 
 .... On St. Matthias' Day, Sunday, February 24th, 
 three Eton bisliops had the great pleasure of consecrating 
 a fourth Eton man to the office of Missionary Bishop among 
 the western islands of the South Pacific. We have not 
 yet heard of the consecration of Bishop Mackenzie ; but 
 we hope that it may have been on tlie same day. The 
 steps which we took were these — 
 
 I wrote to the Duke of Newcastle to offer to agree to 
 any of the following plans : — 
 
 \(i) To give up a small piece of the noitli end of New
 
 1860-1867.] BISHOP PATTESON. 213 
 
 Zealand, say from the Bay of Islands northwards, as a See 
 for the Island Bishop. 
 
 (b) To procure the repeal of that portion of the Act of 
 Parliament which annexes Norfolk Island to the See of 
 Tasmania, and to make Norfolk Island the See of the 
 bishop, as Labuan is for Borneo, Hongkong for China, and 
 St. Helena ^ for South America. 
 
 (c) To procure a kind of patent for the bishop, analogous 
 to the authority of a British consul, i.e. a power over British 
 subjects, being members of the Church of England, though 
 residing in places out of Her Majesty's dominions. 
 
 (d) To allow the New Zealand bishops to exercise the 
 inherent powers of their office, as the bishops of a distinct 
 province of the Church. 
 
 This last the Duke of Newcastle accepted, with many 
 cordial expressions of approbation ; and only raised the 
 doubt whetlier the consecration could take place within 
 British territory. 
 
 On this point I took the opinion of four Crown lawyers : 
 Chief Justices. 
 
 Present Arney, 
 
 Late Martin ; 
 
 A ttorney- Generals. 
 Present ...... Whitaker, 
 
 Late Swainsou ; 
 
 who all gave their opinion that they knew of no statute 
 English or Colonial, which would make it illegal to hold 
 the consecration in New Zealand. Having further aj)pealed 
 to the laity by a ^S'-i quis published in all the churches in 
 and near Auckland, and having obtained the consent of 
 all the New Zealand suffragans, I no longer felt any scruple, 
 but went on with the work, as I have described in the 
 consecration sermon, " with a conscience void of offence." 
 There will be some, I suppose, who will cavil, but their 
 voices will scarcely be heard in the midst of the general 
 approbation. The new bishop is generally beloved, and a 
 beginning could not have been made in a new and unpre- 
 cedented work with a person more likely to win for his 
 work that kind of public favour which rests on personal 
 considerations. 
 
 1 This liad been one of the reasons for establishing the See of St, 
 Helena, but the idea was never carried into practice. 
 
 p 2
 
 214 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chat. v. 
 
 On February IG, 18G1, the Metropolitan and two suf- 
 fraojans, the Bishops of "Wellington and Nelson, publicly and 
 solemnly notified their intention to consecrate IMr. Patte- 
 son, and on the Feast of St. Matthias they fulfilled their 
 pledge. The circumstances of that eventful day have found 
 their appropriate record in the biography of him who, con- 
 secrated at this time to the work to which he had years 
 before been dedicated by the act of his father and by his 
 own will, terminated his noble career at Nukapu in the 
 Santa Cruz group on the vigil of St. Matthew, 1871. Of 
 Bishop Patteson and his work none but the most incidental 
 mention has been made, and that of set purpose, in these 
 pages. But it seems to be necessary to the completeness of 
 this biography that the sermon preached on this occasion, 
 one of the most striking perhaps ever preached by 13ishop 
 Selwyn, should here find an abiding record, and on this 
 account it is here given : — 
 
 Acts I. 24. 
 
 And they prayed and. said. Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all 
 men, show ivhether of tJiese two TJwu hast chosen. 
 
 If a reason be asked for the peculiar character of this 
 congregation, it is given in the first words of the text, 
 
 THEY PRAYED. 
 
 On other occasions the House of God is as free as the air 
 of Heaven. The sojourner, the wayfaring man, the friend- 
 less, the rich, the poor, the old, the young, the full Com- 
 municant, and the proselyte of the gate, all may enter 
 freely through its open doors, for the Church is the House 
 of Prayer for all people, where every one may come, to 
 cast down his own burden, and to pour out his soul before 
 the Lord. 
 
 But this is a season of special prayer, and of that most 
 solemn act of prayer which is offered up in the Holy 
 Communion. And therefore the invitation has gone forth 
 far and wide to all who have partaken of the blessed 
 Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, to meet the
 
 1860-1867.] SERMON. 215 
 
 Bishops and Pastors of our Church at the Lord's Table, 
 and to pray with us and /or us. 
 
 We ask for these special prayers in a season of special 
 need, for the solemnity in which we are engaged is one of 
 fearful responsibility. We have not come here in a spirit 
 of boasting, but of fear and trembling. We have not met 
 together to exalt ourselves above our brethren in Christ, 
 because we are Bishops or Presbyters or Communicants of 
 the Church : for the day reminds all Pastors of the Church, 
 of him of whom Christ said : " Have not I chosen you 
 twelve and one of you is a Devil ? " and the place reminds 
 us, that it was from that Holy Table that the first Com- 
 municants rose up, one to betray his Lord, one to deny 
 Him, all to forsake Him. 
 
 Was not that a season of fear and trembling, wlien tlie 
 eleven Apostles met in that upper room, in which they all 
 abode after the Ascension, and continued with one accord 
 in prayer and supplication ? Prayer was their comfort 
 even then, though the Holy Ghost was not yet given. 
 We can well understand why they prayed. The Bride- 
 groom had departed from them. They were a band of 
 mourners. There was Mary the mother of Jesus weeping 
 for her Son. And there was Mary Magdalene weeping 
 for her Saviour: and Peter mourning for his denial of 
 his Lord : and Thomas mourning for his faithlessness : 
 all mourning for the brother who had fallen from his 
 Bishopric and gone to his own place. 
 
 A book was unrolled before them, in which were written 
 lamentations and mournings and woe. The dark word of 
 prophecy had been then fulfilled. The Shepherd had 
 been smitten, and the sheep of the flock had been scat- ■ 
 tered abroad. One habitation was desolate, and no man 
 to dwell therein. Each in his own degree had been 
 offended because of Christ ; even that Apostle who said 
 " Though all men shall be offended because of Thee, yet 
 will I never be offended." Judas, Peter, all the Apostles, 
 had stumbled at that stumbling stone : and all this had 
 been foretold by prophecy as foreordained by God : and 
 yet they could not excuse themselves by alleging God's 
 foreknowledge. Their Lord had said, " It must needs be 
 that offences come, but woe be to that man by whom the 
 offence cometh."
 
 216 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. v. 
 
 And now to this sorrow for the past was to be added 
 fear for the future: for this word also of prophecy was to 
 be fulfilled : " His Bishopric let another take." Another 
 Soldier of the Cross was to step at once into the place in 
 which he had seen his comrade fall. There was no special 
 guidance of the Holy Ghost, as when Paul and Barnabas 
 were separated for the work wliereunto God had called 
 them. All the past was full of bitter proofs of their 
 own unfitness for their Master's service. They had not 
 known theii^ own hearts. They had fancied themselves 
 ready to go up to Jerusalem, to die with Him : they pro- 
 mised to go with Him to prison and to death ; yet they 
 had denied and forsaken Him. They had not known 
 their own deceitful hearts : how should they know the 
 hearts of other men ? One source of comfort and of light 
 had been opened to them by their Divine INIaster, and to 
 that they resorted. They prayed, and said, 
 
 " Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, 
 show whether of these two Thou hast chosen." 
 
 They did not pray alone. The same Blessed Saviour 
 who had borne their griefs and carried their sorrows, who 
 had prayed for them in His Agony, while they were sleep- 
 ing, would not forsake them in their act of prayer. He 
 knew that Satan had desired to have them that he might 
 sift them as wheat : and He prayed for them, that their 
 strength might not fail. 
 
 In the power of that intercession Peter stood up in the 
 midst of the disciples ; Peter foremost in the blessing, 
 " Blessed art thou Simon Barjona," and foremost also in 
 the offence, " Get thee behind me, Satan, thou art an 
 offence unto me." Had he forgotten his own bitter tears 
 for liis threefold denial ; or his grief at his Lord's three- 
 fold exhortation to him to feed His sheep ? Was his 
 bearing that of the primate of the Apostolic brotlierhood, 
 proud of his own office, and confident in his own 
 strength ? If he had been righteous in his own eyes, 
 he would have brought a railing accusation against his 
 brother. J^>ut his words are not of condemnation, but of 
 sorrow. He speaks of Judas not as a traitor, but as the 
 guide of them that took Jesus. He does not deny that 
 Judas was an Apostle, but puts it forward as a sorrowful 
 fact, that he was numbered with them, and had obtained
 
 1860-1867.] SERMON. 217 
 
 part of their ministry. In fear and sorrow he recognised 
 the fulfihnent of prophecy in his brother's fall ; in fear 
 and hope he called upon his brethren to fulfil the same 
 Word of God by appointing another to take part of that 
 ministry and Apostleship from which Judas by trans- 
 gression fell. 
 
 I have endeavoured to explain the feelings with which 
 the Apostles must have offered up those fervent prayers 
 at the election of Matthias, as some guide to our own 
 thoughts and feelings on the present occasion. 
 
 We too must come to this work in a spirit of prayer, 
 because it is to us a work even of greater fear. 
 
 I speak first of .the Consecrating Bishops. 
 
 We are called upon to execute this office of the 
 Apostles, in an age when the Bridegroom has been taken 
 away, and when all outward gifts and guidances of the 
 Spirit of God have been withdrawn. We are not like 
 those Holy Men, who were with the Lord Jesus " all the 
 time that He went in and out among them, beginning 
 from the baptism of John, unto the same day that he was 
 taken up." We cannot choose from men who have enjoyed 
 the like privileges as eye-witnesses and ministers of the 
 word. We are inferior to them both in respect to the 
 power to choose, and of the field of choice. Compared 
 with them, we are but " blind leaders of the blind." 
 
 And yet the office of the Apostles is laid upon us. 
 They have long gone to their rest : but the commandment 
 still remains in force, " Go ye into all the world and preach 
 the Gospel to every creature." God neither gave immor- 
 tality to the Apostles, nor a sudden spirit of conversion to 
 the world. It is seen then to be the will of God, that the 
 fulfilment of prophecy, and of our Blessed Lord's Com- 
 mandment, should be a gradual work, to be carried on by 
 successive generations of the Christian Ministry. 
 
 Through a hundred steps of spiritual lineage that 
 Apostolic Ministry has been brought down to us. At this 
 distance from the source of blessing, we fear lest we be 
 found wanting. We are called upon to exercise the office 
 of Apostles, but witliout the special gifts and graces of the 
 Apostolic age. What are we that we should have power 
 to carry on the Lord's work in obedience to His command- 
 ment ?
 
 218 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYX. [chap. v. 
 
 When we look to tlie side of prophecy, the thought is 
 no less fearful. The \vhole volume of Holy Scripture 
 seems to be imrolled before us with its warning of woe. 
 "Woe be to me, if I preach not the CJospel." Is the 
 promise yet fulfilled, that in Abraham and his Seed shall 
 all the nations of the earth be blessed ? Has Christ 
 already received all the heathen for his inheritance and 
 all the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession ? 
 Is there no wilderness which has still to blossom as the 
 rose ? No Islands that still wait for the Lord ? No king- 
 doms that must become His ? Are all idols utterly 
 abolished ? Are there no Gentiles yet to come to His 
 light ; no doves to come back to the windows of His ark ; 
 no sons to come from far ; no daughters to be brought to 
 be nursed at His side ? Has His Church been estab- 
 lished in the top of the mountains as a city set upon 
 a hill? 
 
 The vastness of the scope of the prophetic visions at 
 once humbles and enlarges the mind. " Thy heart shall 
 fear and be enlarged " is God's promise through Isaiah. 
 However little our work may be, it is part of that purpose 
 of God which can never fail. We pray for our little one 
 in fear and humility, and while we pray it becomes a 
 thousand. It is but a drop in the Ocean, but that Ocean 
 is the fulness of God. 
 
 But when we thus recognise the work as of God alone, 
 ordained by His determinate counsel and foreknowledge, 
 a new cause of fear arises, and brings with it a new motive 
 to prayer. In this work of God, belonging to all eternity, 
 and to the Holy Catholic Church, are we influenced by 
 any private feelings, or any personal regard ? The charge 
 Avhich St. Paul gives to Timothy in words of awful 
 solemnity "to lay hands suddenly on no man" may well 
 cause much searching of heart. " I charge thee before 
 God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that 
 tliou observe these things, without preferring one before 
 another, doing nothing by partiality." Does our own 
 partial love deceive us in this choice ? We were aU trained 
 in the same place of education ; united in the same circle 
 of friends ; in boyhood, in youth, in manhood, we have 
 shared the same sorrows, and joys, and hopes, and fears. 
 T vr.^^i'ved this my son in the Ministry of Christ Jesus
 
 1860-1867.] SERMON. 219 
 
 from the hands of a father of whose old age he was 
 the comfort : he sent him forth without a murmur, nay 
 rather with joy and thankfulness, to these distant parts of 
 the earth. He never asked even to see him again ; but 
 gave him up without reserve to the Lord's work. Pray, 
 dear brethren, for your Bishops, that our partial love may 
 not deceive us in this choice, for we cannot so strive 
 against natural affection as to be quite impartial. 
 
 And yet, as standing in the " presence of God, and of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the elect angels," we 
 solemnly declare that we are not laying hands suddenly 
 on this dear friend and brother : so far as we can search 
 our own hearts, and judge of our own motives, we are 
 doing nothing by partiality. In frequent conference and 
 in solemn Communion we have spread the matter before 
 the Lord ; and Ave have received at least this satisfaction, 
 that no one single whisper of the voice of conscience 
 within has warned us to forbear. We have risen from our 
 prayers more and more resolved to go forward in the name 
 of God, and in the full belief that this is indeed His work, 
 and that this is His chosen servant. 
 
 Here again was the need of prayer, that we were left to 
 our own unassisted judgment. It is true that I had re- 
 ceived Commission, now nearly twenty years ago, from the 
 Primate of the English Church, to regard New Zealand as 
 a fountain to diffuse the streams of salvation over the 
 Coasts and Islands of the Pacific Ocean : and that supplies 
 have been furnished by the Church at home with no 
 sparing hand to enable me to begin the work. But in this 
 special act of the Consecration of a Missionary Bishop 
 the authorities in Church and State at home have 
 advisedly left us to exercise our own inherent powers : 
 with the kindest expressions of sympathy with our under- 
 taking, but with no division of responsibility. And yet 
 we do not stand alone in the work, for at this very time 
 the Sister Church in the Cape Colony, with the active 
 support of a former Governor of New Zealand, is sending 
 out a Missionary Bishop to Central Africa. AVe too have 
 received the same encouragement from the Officers of the 
 Crown in New Zealand, their attestation of the fitness of 
 the person whom we have chosen, their assurance of the 
 lawfulness of our act. We have called upon the Laity in
 
 220 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYx^. [chap. v. 
 
 all our Churches to come forward, if they know of any 
 just cause or impediment. The general consent of Church 
 and State, of the Clergy and Laity, both here and at home, 
 seems to justify our act. I have not heard of one dis- 
 sentient voice. We humbly trust, that we may go on 
 with this our work, with a conscience void of offence, 
 toward God, and toward men. 
 
 Having asked your prayers for us the Consecrating 
 Bishops, I now ask them for him who is to be consecrated ; 
 and these are the reasons : — 
 
 Because, like all others of his brethren, he will have 
 care of many Churches : the stewardship of the Mysteries 
 of Christ : the guardianship of the purity of His Word : 
 the administration of godly discipline : the oversight of the 
 flock, which the Son of God has purchased with His own 
 blood. 
 
 But, especially, because he will go forth to sow beside 
 many waters, to cultivate an unknown field, to range from 
 island to island, himself unknown, and coming in the 
 Name of an unknown God. He will have to land alone 
 and unarmed among heathen tribes, where every man's 
 hand is against his neighbour; and bid them lay down 
 their spears and arrows, and meet him as the messenger of 
 peace. He will have to persuade them by the language of 
 signs to give up their children to his care : and while he 
 teaches them the simplest elements which are taught in 
 our infant schools, to learn from them a new language for 
 every new island. Surely then, dear brethren, w^e must 
 pray earnestly that this our brother may have a large 
 measure of the Apostolic gifts ; a power to acquire divers 
 languages ; and also boldness with fervent zeal constantly 
 to preach the Gospel to all the nations now to be com- 
 mitted to his charge. Already sixty islands have come 
 under his care, and at least one hundred others, stretching 
 westward as far as New Guinea, are among the number 
 of the islands which are waiting for the Lord. I can but 
 indicate the outlines of this groat work : your own minds 
 iill up the details, by that lively faith which springs fi'om 
 a hearty acceptance of all the prophecies and of all the 
 promises of the Bible. It may be, that your prayers will 
 be more earnest for objects which you see as through a 
 glass darkly; like those solemn prayers which faithful
 
 1860-1867.] SERMON. 221 
 
 men offer up in the darkness of the night, to the God who 
 seeth in secret. 
 
 One duty yet remains : to commend our dear brother to 
 the work to which we believe God has called him. 
 
 It was the privilege of the Apostles to elect Matthias 
 out of the number of those " who had companied with 
 them all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out 
 among them, beginning from the baptism of John unto 
 the same day that He was taken up." Our privilege 
 though different in degree may be the same in kind ; for 
 faith supplies what is denied to sight. 
 
 So may every step of thy life, dear brother, be in com- 
 pany with the Lord Jesus. 
 
 May the baptism of John be in thee, to fill thee with 
 that godly sorrow which worketh repentance not to be 
 repented of: a foretaste of that comfort which will be 
 given to them that mourn, by the baptism of the Holy 
 Ghost and of fire. 
 
 May Christ be with thee, as a Light to lighten the Gen- 
 tiles ; may He work out in thee His spiritual miracles ; 
 may He through thee give sight to the blind, to see the 
 glories of the God invisible : and open the ears of the deaf 
 to hear and receive the preaching of His Word : and loose 
 the tongues of the dumb to sing His praise ; and raise to 
 new life the dead in trespasses and sins. 
 
 May Christ be with you wdien you go forth in His Name 
 and for His sake " to those poor and needy people ; to 
 those strangers destitute of help ; " to those mingled races 
 who still show forth the curse of Babel, and wait for the 
 coming of another Pentecost ; poor alike in all worldly 
 and spiritual goods, naked to be clothed, prisoners to be 
 loosed, lepers to be cleansed. To you is committed Christ's 
 own Ministry, to seek for His sheep that are dispersed 
 abroad ; to hold up the weak, to heal the sick, to bind up 
 the broken, to bring again the outcasts, to seek the lost. 
 Your ofiice is, in the widest sense, to preach the Gospel to 
 the poor. 
 
 May Christ be ever with you ; may you feel His pre- 
 sence in the lonely wilderness, on the mountain top, on the 
 troubled sea. May He go before you, with His fan in His 
 hand, to purge His floor. He will not stay His hand till 
 the idols are utterly abolislied.
 
 222 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. v. 
 
 May Christ be ever with thee, to give thee utterance to 
 open thy mouth boldl}^ to make known the mystery of 
 the Gospel. Dwelling in the midst of a people of unclean 
 lips, yoii will feel Him present with you to touch thy lips 
 with a live coal from His own altar, that many strangers 
 of every race may hear in their own tongues the wonderful 
 works of God. 
 
 May Christ he ever with you : may you sorrow with 
 Him in His agony and be crucified with him in His death, 
 be buried with Him in His grave, rise with Him to newness 
 of life, and ascend with Him in heart to the same place 
 whither He has gone before, and feel that He ever liveth 
 to make intercession for thee, " that thy strength fail not." 
 — Amen. 
 
 Of the rest of the bishop's residence in New Zealand little 
 remains to be recorded ; it has already been dealt with in 
 the two preceding chapters. His time was spent either 
 in the field ministering to each of the hostile camps in- 
 discriminately, whose soldiers were equally his children, 
 or in building up the Church and providing for its admin- 
 istration and government through the action of Provincial 
 and Diocesan Synods. The system of these institutions 
 provided for the apparent anomaly of Bishop Patteson 
 residing for a great part of each year at Ivohimarama, 
 close to Auckland, and in the diocese of another bishop, 
 without any collision or friction. Bishop Selwyn used to 
 say that there need be no difficulties about territorial 
 limits of dioceses if only there were Synods to regulate 
 the action of the bishops, and that the advice of Lord 
 Nelson to liis captains to remember that they could 
 never do wrong if they brought their ships alongside 
 of the enemy's, might well be followed, mutatis mutandis, 
 by the chiefs of the missionary forces arrayed against 
 heathendom. 
 
 The course of legislation in England in connection with 
 the South African Church concerned deeply every branch 
 of our Communion, and was watched with much interest 
 by the bishops in New Zealand. On his return from the
 
 1860-1867.] PETITION TO CROWN. 228 
 
 General Synod at Christcluirch, in 1865, the Metropolitan 
 wrote to a correspondent in England that the threats of 
 one of the dioceses " to secede from our Federal Union," 
 were amicably pacified "just before the Colenso Judg- 
 ment came to teach us that we have nothing to hope as a 
 Church unless we are united among ourselves. We are 
 quite content to be without patents," the letter went on 
 to say, " but not content to have a spurious coin forced 
 upon us as retaining fee for indefinite suit and service. 
 To give nothing and to claim everything cannot be the 
 basis of a contract between the Crown and a Colonial 
 Bishop. They gave me a salary and then took it away ; 
 and Letters Patent which are declared to be null and void ; 
 and yet the Privy Council tells me that I am a creature 
 of the Crown, ' a wretched creature who must bend his 
 body if Csesar carelessly do nod on him.' If it were 
 really Ctesar I should try to be content, but I have no 
 disposition to accept Lord Westbury as the keeper of my 
 conscience, nor would Her Majesty if she had any choice 
 in the matter." 
 
 A few weeks later, in August, 1865, he wrote to the 
 same correspondent in England : — " I send a copy of a 
 petition-^ which the Bishops of New Zealand have forwarded 
 through the Governor to the Queen. It is our answer to 
 Lord "Westbury, who, I think, will not soon see the end 
 of the questions which he has provoked by the last 
 decision of the Judicial Committee. Happily our Church 
 system had been so guided, under God's blessing, by the 
 counsels of Sir W. Martin and Mr. Swainson that we 
 have nothing to alter. The Privy Council decisions affirm 
 the legality of every step that we have taken, and require 
 nothing to be altered, though much of course remains to 
 be perfected and defined." 
 
 In this year (1865) the bishop had good hopes of being 
 able in process of time to provide for the establishment of 
 a bishopric of Dunedin, thereby relieving the Bishop of 
 ^ Inserted in Chapter III., p. 135.
 
 224 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [cuAr. v, 
 
 Cliristchurcli of that southern portion of the colony which 
 Bishop Selwyn had iusisted on including in the diocese of 
 Christchurch as a condition of that See being founded. He 
 wrote in this sense to Archbishop Longley, and added, tliat 
 when things were in train he would ask his Grace to look 
 out for the right man. By an unfortunate misapprehen- 
 sion the good Archbishop anticipated the promised an- 
 nouncement, and wrote back that he had selected the 
 Eev. H. L. Jenner, whose consecration would shortly take 
 place. 
 
 The bishop felt himself thus placed in a position of very 
 great difficulty, and came to the conclusion that the only 
 thing for him to do was to go to the Southern Island and 
 " make a raid on Dunedin itself," and raise what funds 
 he could tow^ards the endowment of the See. The pros- 
 pect was not encouraging, for trade was depressed and 
 money scarce. On his arrival at Dunedin he found no- 
 thing had been done; and at Christchurch he had been 
 met by a series of resolutions throwing cold water on 
 the scheme, " not from any wish to oppose it, but from 
 fear of having to pay." Seeing, therefore, no hope of a 
 speedy accomplishment of the purpose which had brought 
 him away from his own diocese, where his presence could 
 ill be spared, he yet resolved, with very divided feelings, 
 to spend a mouth in visiting the " Piunliolders," that 
 it might not be said that the endowment had failed for 
 want of effort on his part. 
 
 The ride tlirough the province of Otago gave to the 
 bishop an opportunity of ministering to the diggers who 
 in large numbers had been attracted to the gold-fields. 
 AVhilc thus engaged he wrote (March 11, 18G6): — 
 
 "... The change of climate and country is complete ; open 
 hills without a tree and covered with yellow grass ; sheep 
 runs without a visible sheep ; accommodation-houses every 
 three or four miles ; tilted waggons going up and down 
 between iJunedin and the Diggings; horsemen rushing along 
 as if they had not a moment to lose ; horses feeding out of
 
 1860-1867.] GOLD DIGGERS. 225 
 
 mangers made of sacking stretched between the shafts of 
 the waggons, and eating as if they too had not a moment to 
 lose. The traffic seems to go on Sundays and week-days 
 alike, and a Scotchman, whom I invited in vain to church, 
 admitted that all the lessons of the old country were for- 
 gotten on this road. . . . Upon the whole, as the thing 
 was to be done, I am not sorry to have had to go over this 
 province. Part of my object is to visit as many diggers as 
 I can, and to hold services wherever I iind them disposed 
 to attend. There was a large party of them on board the 
 Phoebe, returning from Hokitika, who assured me that it 
 was a mistake to suppose that there were not many among 
 them who cared for better things than digging gold. They 
 have the character of being a manly and independent 
 body of men, for the most part orderly and honest. . . . 
 It is a comfort to think that this is the last work of bishop- 
 making in which it will be necessary for me to engage ; 
 and when this is done I may break^ my wand." 
 
 The story of the See of Dunedin is a thorny subject, 
 with which these pages need deal no further than concerns 
 the action of the Metropolitan of New Zealand, If there 
 were any precipitancy in the matter it did not rest with 
 him ; the General Synod of 1865 had clearly contemplated 
 the erection of a See of Dunedin with little delay, and had 
 fixed on Dunedin as the meeting-place of the General 
 Synod of 1868, " if there should by that time be a bishop 
 there." 
 
 In the General Synod of New Zealand, held in 1868, 
 under the presidency of Bishop Selwyn, that Prelate thus 
 liberated his own soul, when it was proposed " that the 
 appointment of Bishop Jenner to the Bishopric of Dunedin 
 be not confirmed." He said: — 
 
 " The facts alleged in the report of the Committee are 
 founded very much on evidence that would not be ad- 
 mitted in a court of law. Three years ago Bishop Jenner 
 signed a declaration, assenting to the provisions of our 
 Church Constitution. He consented to be bound by the 
 regulations passed from time to time, or to be issued by
 
 226 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. v. 
 
 the General Synod. He has also undertaken to resign his 
 appointment, together with all rights and emoluments 
 appertaining thereto, when the General Synod may call 
 upon him to do so, or any one duly appointed to do so. 
 That declaration was received in New Zealand, and en- 
 tered upon the minutes of the Standing Commission of 
 the General Synod, in June, 1866. There was an interval 
 from that date until the consecration of Dr. Jenner in 
 August, 1866, which gave time to interpose objections if 
 any one had chosen; and, if any valid objections had 
 been made, the Standing Commission would have con- 
 sidered it to be its duty to recommend the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury to stay his hand. The first proceedings began 
 in April, 1867, nine months after the consecration. I look 
 upon this action of the Committee as amounting to an 
 attempt to depose Bishop Jenner. Dr. Jenner was conse- 
 crated with as much formality as I was myself consecrated. 
 The Standing Commission is the proper tribunal to which 
 this matter should be properly referred, as it has been 
 specially appointed to deal with such questions, and con- 
 sists for the most part of legal gentlemen ; and if any of 
 the friends of Dr. Jenner thought it necessary, they will 
 have a perfect right to appeal to its decision. The 
 sufficiency or otherwise of the endowment fund seems to 
 be the question on which the present Committee has come 
 to a decision ; and if, therefore, at any time the endow- 
 ment becomes adequate, it may be competent to enter as 
 a plaintiff on behalf of Dr. Jenner." 
 
 After a long debate the General Synod requested Bishop 
 Jenner to withdraw his claim to the See of Dunedin. 
 
 Twice, on an appeal from the injured person, the English 
 bishops (in 1872 and 1875) have decided that Bishop 
 Jenner was the first Bishop of Dunedin, and that his claim 
 to be so recognised cannot in justice be withheld. Bishop 
 Selwyn was so personally concerned with the transaction 
 that his judgment may be supposed to be biassed by those 
 who did not know him ; his opinion and his action are 
 clearly laid down in an official letter which he wrote but 
 a few days before Bishop Jenner resigned the See of 
 Dunedin : —
 
 1860-1867.] MAORI ORDINATIONS. 227 
 
 " I have always looked upon Bishop Jenner as the 
 bishop in whose name and for whose benefit the fund was 
 collected by me. I propose therefore to the donors that 
 I should be allowed to pay to Bishop Jenner, on his re- 
 signing his claim to the Bishopric of Dunedin, the interest 
 which has accrued from the opening of the fund to the 
 time of the meeting of the General Synod of 1871. IMy 
 own contribution of 100^., with interest, will be paid to 
 Bishop Jenner, for whose use it was given." 
 
 On his return from the south the bishop prepared for 
 Ordination two more of his Maori children ; the uniform 
 fidelity of the native clergy, who in no one instance ever 
 yielded to the temptations which carried away so many of 
 their brethren, was one of the greatest comforts of the 
 bishop's life : the critical attitude of the people now when 
 the war was abating, and a semblance of peace was 
 restored, fully engaged his attention, and he had no mind 
 to leave his diocese and seek rest and change in England : 
 rather he wished to sit amid the ruins of the spiritual 
 temple which he had been allowed to build, and, as he 
 said, to trace out new foundations on which to build once 
 more. But now there came to him a summons which he 
 could not resist : to the entreaties of relations that he 
 would revisit them he had turned a deaf ear, but the 
 summons to attend the Lambeth Conference in September, 
 1867, had for him the nature of a command which he 
 prepared to obey. The estimation in which that august 
 gathering was held by the Colonial and American Churches 
 was in striking contrast with the contempt and indifference 
 which it received at home. There were many instances 
 in which the bishops were sent by their dioceses without 
 charge to themselves, and after solemn services and 
 prayers for Cod's blessing on their counsels. At Auck- 
 land seventy communicants were crowded into the little 
 chapel at Bishopscourt, flowing over, for lack of space, 
 into the study, which adjoined it : there was a fear 
 
 VOL. II. Q
 
 228 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 only too well grounded lest their well-loved bishop 
 should not be allowed to return to New Zealand. One 
 whose privilege it was to be present on the occasion has 
 written : 
 
 " The bishop read Philippians i., and it seemed to me 
 and to others also almost as if the chapter might have 
 been written expressly for the occasion. I doubt if there 
 was a single dry eye in the chapel ; and the bishop's voice 
 at times was scarcely audible, for the sobs which were 
 heard on every hand." 
 
 In July, 1867, the bishop's face was again turned 
 England- wards, and the voyage was spent in preparation 
 for the great gathering which had led him across the 
 globe. Writing at sea to his old friend Sir W. Martin, he 
 thus explained his daily occupation : — 
 
 S.S. " Rauhine," at Sea, 300 miles from Panama, 
 
 August 5th, 1867. 
 
 ... It would have been so pleasant to have you by my 
 side at Lambeth. For lack of my walking encyclopedia 
 I have read diligently at Bingham, taking copious notes, 
 and have now finished three volumes, besides Rose's 
 sermons, and many pamphlets — such as Gladstone on the 
 supremacy and the Bishop of Loudon's charge. The more 
 I read, the more wonderful it seenis that any one should 
 accuse us of going astray from the true principles of 
 Church-government. The system of the African Church 
 is almost exactly the same as that of New Zealand ; and 
 our political circumstances are not unlike theirs, as colonial 
 bodies far removed from the centres of civil government. 
 If I should unfortunately have to break a lance with the 
 liishop of London, I feel myself growing firmer in my 
 saddle every day. 
 
 The bishop on his arrival immediately devoted himself 
 to preparation for the great event which had power to
 
 1860-1867.] ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND. 229 
 
 attract him across the globe. He wrote to his old corre- 
 spondent the Eev. C B. Dalton as follows : — 
 
 Sept. 2nd, 1867. 
 
 My dear Feiend, 
 
 Thanks for your affectionate greeting. You may like to 
 know our movements. On Monday 16th we intend to go to 
 Kichmond to be ready for any preliminary meetings which 
 may be held, to prepare the way for the Conference on 
 the 2-4th. I'rom our distant point of view we look upon 
 this Conference as the most important opening for good 
 which has ever been offered to our Anglican Church : but 
 I have not yet seen any signs to lead me to believe that it 
 is so considered here. I have invitations to meetings of 
 all kinds, S.P.G. Anniversaries, &c., up to the very day of 
 the meeting, and the clergymen who write to me do not 
 seem to be aware that I came to England for one object, 
 and that I am prepared to devote all my time and attention 
 to that : and that therefore I must be free in mind and 
 time to prepare for it beforehand, and, after the meeting is 
 over, to work up its results. It is quite impossible for 
 fifty or sixty bishops from all parts of the world to meet 
 together with any hope of advantage without a well- 
 arranged plan of operation. Synodical action is so familiar 
 to me that I can neither share the fears of the Bishop 
 of St. David's, nor care for the sneers of the Dean of 
 Westminster. 
 
 How he bore himself in that august gathering of his 
 brethren has been recorded with hearty and genuine ap- 
 preciation by one who shared in the deliberations of the 
 Conference. 
 
 From the address of the Bishop of Quebec to his Synod 
 in the spring of 1878, extracts have already enriched these 
 pages : yet another has to be made, and is here given, a 
 valuable but by no means exaggerated picture of him who 
 in three separate quarters of the globe had come under the 
 observation of the writer : — 
 
 " In my mind at least, the first thought that arises is of 
 him who in the last Conference at Lambeth was well-nigh 
 
 Q 2
 
 230 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. v. 
 
 the most conspicuous figure, certainly the most attractive 
 spirit ; and whose place will know him no more. The 
 ways of God are not as our ways — and we know that 
 He doeth all things well. But to our apprehension it 
 would, without that remembrance, seem a thing to be 
 deplored that he who was the great promoter of the 
 present Conference, and whose commanding mind might 
 have been expected to mould its character, should have 
 been taken away just when the work was about to begin. 
 No sons of the prophets came to tell us that the Lord 
 would take away our master from our head. Let us hope, 
 let us pray, that there may be one to take up the mantle 
 fallen from him — one around whom the Church may 
 gather, saying 'the spirit of Elijah doth rest upon Elisha.' 
 
 " I knew the late Bishop of Lichfield under many varied 
 circumstances of his varied life. I saw him, eleven years 
 ago, come from his distant diocese to take, with universal 
 acquiescence in the natural selection — or shall I not rather 
 say the spiritual designation — his true place at the head 
 of the colonial bishops then in England consulting in 
 preparation for the first Lambeth Conference — to take his 
 true place, and to preside in their deliberations, day after 
 day, with a wisdom, grace, and tact peculiarly his own. 
 And I saw him afterwards, when the Conference opened, 
 foremost among the Church's foremost men, a living 
 manifestation of one strengthened by God's grace to 
 endure hardness, fitted and prepared for the work of his 
 ministry by the spirit of power, and of love, and of a 
 sound mind. 
 
 "The gracious charm of his personality, and the en- 
 nobling influence of the man, I was permitted also, here 
 in Canada, to enjoy in my own house. I saw him too, as 
 many of you saw him, and heard his wise and winning 
 words in our Provincial Synod, And again I saw and 
 heard him at New York, when, in the grandest missionary 
 meeting I ever witnessed, he held his magnificent audience 
 under the spell of his burning thoughts. Not that he 
 was eloquent with any of the tricks of rhetoric ; he 
 w-as too sincere, too single-minded for that. Not that he 
 was a great orator: rather he was a great man; great 
 in feeling, great in intellect, great in will — great tlirough- 
 out. And the outflow of such a mind, wliilst never
 
 18G0-1867.] LAMBETH CONFERENCE OF 1867. 231 
 
 lacking clearness or interest, does not always produce 
 the brilliant effects of the practised orator : — not always, 
 but when at its best it goes far beyond them. There 
 comes at such times over the man, and passes to his hearers, 
 a wave of feeling, like the breeze upon an ^olian harp, 
 so exquisite in its delicacy, so deep in its pathos, so 
 genuine and spontaneous, as to fascinate with a fascina- 
 tion to which, in my experience at least, the calculated 
 bursts of artificial eloquence never attain or approach. 
 
 " Such was the man when he came among us mature in 
 years, though ' his eye was not dim, nor his natural force 
 abated.' But I knew him, too, in his manhood's prime, a 
 combination of grace and strength in body and in mind, 
 such as appeared to my young eyes the perfection of 
 humanity. And now that they are older, those eyes have 
 since fallen on no form that gave them the like assurance 
 of a man." 
 
 In the week preceding the Lambeth Conference of 1867 
 there were constant services held in the Church of St. 
 Lawrence Jewry, the forerunners of those many " Short 
 services for men of business," with which we are now 
 familiar, and which have revealed a hitherto unsuspected use 
 to which the churches in the heart of the City may be 
 applied. On one of these occasions the Bishop of New 
 Zealand preached to a congregation of unusual dimensions a 
 sermon of equally unusual freshness and importance. There 
 was a freshness in his words, wholly distinct from the origin- 
 ality of the preacher, which gave to them a force that was 
 all their own : he found the mother-Church distracted by 
 divisions about ritual and doctrine, and much exercised at 
 the attempt to coerce the independent Churches of South 
 Africa into servile obedience to the contradictory utter- 
 ances of an alien tribunal. Such a combination of 
 circumstances gave to him just the occasion which he 
 valued of insisting on unity and on conference as the 
 antidote to controversy and the only secvirity for peace. 
 Preaching from Acts xix, 32 — " Some cried one thing, and 
 some another .• for the assembly was confused ; and the more
 
 232 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. v. 
 
 part knew not ivhercfore they were come together I' — he 
 sketched in terms that were ruthlessly but not extrava- 
 gantly sarcastic, the value of popular judgment in all ages 
 and showed that the bane of Ephesus and Jerusalem was 
 the bane of England in 1867. He showed how in each 
 University honoured names had been held up to scorn ; how 
 in Exeter and in St. George's-in-the-East riot had pre- 
 vailed by reason of religious acrimony ; and how in South 
 Africa a house was divided against itself, because one 
 man would not listen to the godly admonition of his 
 brethren, and his followers supported him not because 
 they agreed with his opinions, but because they regarded 
 him to be the champion of the idol of free thought, 
 before which they prostrated themselves. 
 
 In the week that immediately followed on the gathering 
 at Lambeth, the Church Congress was held at Wolver- 
 hampton, and was made famous by the presence of the 
 Metropolitans of South Africa and New Zealand. Their 
 experiences had been widely diverse, but their counsel to 
 the mother-Church was one and the same. Each called 
 on the Church in all her branches to be true to her 
 inherent Divinity : to trust not at all to external support, 
 which at any time might be capriciously withdrawn, but 
 to organize her own powers of government on the basis 
 of mutual compact. The testimony of these two great 
 bishops, in many respects differently constituted, was 
 identical in regard to the value and the necessity of 
 synodal action working upwards from Local to Provincial 
 Synods : Each bishop claimed for the Colonial Churches 
 perfect liberty and autonomy, as the only security against 
 anarchy. The Bishop of Capetown said : — 
 
 " If you do not want to encourage dissension and create 
 and perpetuate divisions, you must leave the distant 
 Churclies of tlie empire to connect themselves with each 
 other and with the mother-Church, as they will do, by 
 spiritual ties — by rules, laws, constitutions, canons, call
 
 1860-1867.] BISHOP OF CAPETOWN. 233 
 
 them what you will — enacted in Synods, with this only 
 essential principle of universal obligation for the guidance 
 of all, that the authority of the inferior Synod is, and 
 must ever remain, subordinate to that of the higher. That 
 the Diocesan is, as the canons enjoin, liable to be over- 
 ruled by the Provincial ; the Provincial by the National, 
 or — as hereafter our Synods may include more nations than 
 one — the General ; the General by the CEcumenical. 
 Only let this principle be generally recognised, let the 
 imion of the Churches of our communion throughout the 
 world be based upon it, and we shall have adopted a 
 system which has already stood the test of ages, Mdiich 
 was the recognised system of the Church from primitive 
 times to the great division between the East and West in 
 the eleventh century, which is a better bond of union 
 than a thousand Acts of Parliament, which would, had it 
 been adhered to, have preserved Christendom to this day 
 in unity. The chief hindrance to the Church's sound and 
 complete organization in the colonies, to its future unity, 
 and to the due subordination of its several branches to the 
 central authority of which I have spoken, appears to me 
 to arise out of that clinging to statute law which the 
 daughter-Churches have inherited from the mother-Church. 
 All other religious communities in the colonies manage 
 their affairs perfectly well without troubling the Legis- 
 latures of their respective countries, and there seems to be 
 no reason why the Churches of our communion should not 
 do the same 
 
 " Parliamentary legislation, except so far as it may be 
 needed here in England to set us free from the evils which 
 past legislation has entailed upon us, is wholly unnecessary. 
 Sweep away altogether the torn and tattered shreds of 
 parchment which you say ought never to have been issued 
 — which speak to us of an alliance with the State which, 
 for good or for evil, has for ever passed away ; which 
 render us no help, but which cling around us and hinder 
 and embarrass the freedom of our action ; empower us to 
 secure our property for the purposes for which it was 
 given ; and the whole of our Churches will ally themselves 
 with you according to that due order and subordination 
 which the canons enjoin, and will continue one with you
 
 234 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. v. 
 
 so long as you and they continue in firm adherence to the 
 Faith once delivered to the saints." 
 
 The Bishop of New Zealand " drove home " the state- 
 ments of his brother Metropolitan, and argued, from the 
 proceedings of the present Conference, that the time must 
 come -when the mother-Church should have her duly 
 constituted Synods, and her laity taking their full share 
 in their management. Having told in much detail the- 
 work of Bishop Patteson, as though he had himself 
 never been concerned in it, he pleaded in powerful words 
 for unity. 
 
 Contemplating no other future for himself than an 
 early return to his beloved diocese, he felt that he could 
 without offence, and even with the authority of long ex- 
 perience, dwell on the value of unity as a factor in the 
 success of missions abroad. He said, " I have one word 
 to address to the mother-Church. It is this : The best 
 assistance you can give to us in our missionary work is 
 to be united among yourselves." And then he quoted a 
 fact within his own experience which had furnished well 
 a text when pleading for unity in his own Synod at the 
 Antipodes : — 
 
 " I went," he said, " to one of the most remarkable of 
 the New Zealand chieftains, noted for his hospitality to 
 strangers, and when T asked him why he refused to be a 
 Christian, he stretched out three fingers, and, pointing to 
 the centre joint, said, ' I have come to a spot from which I 
 see three roads branching. This is the Church of England, 
 this the Church of Eome, and this the AVesleyans. I am 
 sitting down here doubting which to take.' And he sat 
 there doubting at those cross-roads until he died in a 
 wonderful manner. His village was built on a cliff in 
 which there were hot springs, and in which vast quantities 
 of liquid mud were accumulated. One night there was a 
 landslip, the village was overwhelmed, and that chieftain 
 died in unbelief simply because of the divisions of 
 Christian men. I therefore ask vou of the dear Church
 
 1860-1867.] BISHOP LONSDALE. 235 
 
 in England to give us this best of all assistance, and be 
 united among yourselves. I may say, lastly, that I came 
 to England mainly in the hope that this great Conference 
 of Bishops, followed by this great Congress of Bishops, 
 Clergy, and Laity, msij demonstrate practically and visibly 
 the unity of our Anglican Church. I can assure all of 
 you that our hearts are burning with an intense devotion 
 and eager love to our mother-country and mother-Church. 
 (Turning to Lord Harrowby, the Bishop continued) : A 
 iriend says, ' You have cut the painter.' No, we have not 
 cut the painter ; it has parted of itself, and we are 
 occupied now in forging a better cable — like that invisible 
 and immaterial bond by which the planets are anchored to 
 the sun ; we are declaring one and all that we have not any 
 wish to change or alter the Articles and formularies of 
 our mother-Church. I have learned in that great Pacific 
 Ocean, on which my islands lie like little gems, to pray 
 for the grace of God to enable us to distil from the great 
 ocean of the Catholic Church this essential salt of unity, 
 and with that salt to season all our sacrifices, whether 
 prayer, praise, or almsgiving, and whether at home or 
 abroad, may that sacrifice be acceptable to God through 
 the One Perfect All-sufficient Sacrifice offered once for 
 all." 
 
 The "Wolverhampton Congress was the last appearance 
 in public of good Bishop Lonsdale ; and when his See 
 became vacant, men of all classes and opinions pointed to 
 the Bishop of New Zealand as his worthiest successor. 
 How he ultimately was moved to give up the work to 
 wliich for twenty-six years he had devoted all his thoughts, 
 must be told in his own words. 
 
 He foresaw that in accordance with his own principles 
 of obedience he would have to yield, but when he had 
 conquered his own feelings, and was prepared to make the 
 sacrifice, he thought of his friends in New Zealand. To 
 Sir W. Martin, before any decision had been arrived at, he 
 wrote, in order to catch the mail which left England on 
 December 2nd the following letter : —
 
 236 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. y. 
 
 37, Eaton Square, Nov 2Uh, 1867. 
 
 My very dear Friend, 
 
 I am in a great strait. On the 12tli instant, I received 
 a letter from the Earl of Derby, offering me the Bishopric 
 of Lichfield. Without taking advice, hut after prayer for 
 guidance, I declined the offer by return of post, and 
 supposed that the matter would end there (See letters 1 
 and 2). 
 
 This morning, to my great sorrow, I received a letter 
 from the Archbishop of Canterbury (Letter No. 3) which 
 greatly disturbed my mind. I have always held the 
 opinion that there must be in the Church an authority 
 to send. By the authority of the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury I was sent to New Zealand ; and I promised obedience 
 to him in all things lawful and honest. My own desire -to 
 return to New Zealand is so strong, that I cannot altogether 
 trust my own judgment on a question of conscience. If 
 I Avere to go upon my own will, I could decide in a moment. 
 On Sunday, I am to go to Windsor, and the Dean of 
 Windsor (Wellesley) leads me to think that the Queen 
 may speak to me on this subject. If this should be so, 
 the principle of obedience will again come into operation. 
 ^Much pressure is put upon me from other quarters, but I 
 do not attach much importance to that. You will see 
 how my mind is distracted, by my letter to the Archbishop 
 (Letter No. 4). The time at which the Panama IVIail 
 leaves will, I fear, oblige me to leave you in suspense ; as 
 my letter must be posted before the point can be settled. 
 Aue ! aue ! aue ! 
 
 How I wish that I could take counsel with you. I have 
 no one heie, except Sarah, who can even feel the force of 
 the argument from the New Zealand side. All they allege 
 are arguments drawn from the English side. The point of 
 obedience is the only one upon which I see any light. I 
 have told the Archbishop, as you will see (in 4), that in 
 any case I must go back to New Zealand. Friends here 
 tell me that there will be no difficulty about making up 
 the Endowment Fund for tlie Bishopric of New Zealand. 
 You may be sure that I shall not rest until everything is 
 made as sure as I can for my dear old land, if I am obliged 
 to leave it. 
 
 Pray show this to Archdeacon Lloyd and any others
 
 1860-1867.] OFFER OF LICHFIELD. 237 
 
 whom you wish. We hear with joy that Mary is better. 
 Love to her. 
 
 I remain, in sorrow, your affectionate friend, 
 
 G. A. New Zealand. 
 
 1. 
 
 St. James's Square, Nov. 9th, 1867. 
 
 My Lord Bishop, 
 
 Though I have not the honour of your personal ac- 
 quaintance, yet no one can be ignorant of the invaluable 
 services which you have for many years rendered to the 
 Church and to religion in your distant diocese, and it has 
 occurred to me as possible that you might not be unwil- 
 ling to exchange your present sphere of duty for one less 
 laborious, but not less important ; and I should therefore 
 be glad to be informed, whether in the event of my being 
 in a position to offer you the succession of the late Bishop 
 of Lichfield, you would be disposed to entertain the 
 proposal. 
 
 Before making any actual offer, I should desire to have 
 the honour of a personal and confidential communication 
 with you on one or two points which I consider of import- 
 ance. I am unable at present to name a day for seeing 
 you, as I am confined to my bed by an attack of gout ; but 
 should you look favourably upon my suggestion, I should 
 be glad to see you without any unnecessary delay. 
 
 I have the honour, &c. &c., 
 Derby. 
 
 2. 
 
 Bath, Xov. 12ih, 1867. 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 As your lordship's very kind letter was marked " con- 
 fidential " I have taken counsel with no one but with God, 
 in prayer ; and I have been led to the conclusion that it is 
 my duty to return to New Zealand. 
 
 1. Because the native race to whose service I was first 
 called requires all the efforts of the few friends that 
 remain to them. 
 
 2. Because the organization of the Church in New 
 Zealand is still incomplete.
 
 238 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. v. 
 
 3. Because I have still, so far as I can judge, health 
 and strength for the peculiar duties which habit has made 
 familiar to me. 
 
 4. Because my bishopric is not endowed with more than 
 80/. per annum ; and I have no reason to expect that the 
 Church Missionaiy Society will continue their annual 
 grant of 400/. to my successor. 
 
 5. Because I have personal friends, such as Bishop 
 Abraham, Bishop Patteson, Sir W. INIartin, and others, to 
 whom I am so deeply indebted for freewill assistance, that 
 1 feel bound to work with them as long as I can. 
 
 6. Because a report was spread in New Zealand that I 
 did not intend to return, to which I answered that nothing 
 but illness or death would prevent me. 
 
 I state these reasons because I do not wish to seem un- 
 mindful of your lordship's kindness. There is no one 
 whom I should be so glad to succeed as Bishop Lonsdale, 
 who by his genial kindness has laid a foundation among 
 the clergy and laity in his diocese upon which it would be 
 easy to build. I could work with all my heart in the 
 " black country," if it were not that my heart is in New 
 Zealand and Melanesia. 
 
 I have the honour, &c., 
 
 G. A. New Zealand. 
 
 3. 
 
 Addinqton Pakk, Nov. 2Sth, 1867. 
 
 Dear Bishop of New Zealand, 
 
 1 have received two communications from the diocese 
 of Lichfield this morning, from persons of high considera- 
 tion, representing the feeling both of clergy and laity, and 
 I gather from them both that there is a most earnest and 
 ardent desire throughout the length and breadth of the 
 diocese that you would reconsider your last decision, and 
 consent to be their bishop. I know that at this moment 
 no appointment has been made, and I have every reason 
 to believe, that if you could be persuaded to allow Lord 
 Derby to offer you the See, with the understanding that 
 you would accept it, it would be yours. 
 
 Now I earnestly hope that you may be led to consider 
 this as a high call of duty, and that previous objections 
 may be overcome. Of this I am deeply convinced, that
 
 1860-1867.] AP.CHBISHOP LONGLEY. 239 
 
 you will be rendering the most valuable and highly import- 
 ant service to the Church of England in consenting to 
 your translation. No advantage that can accrue to the 
 Church in New Zealand by your remaining there will be 
 comparable to the benefit you will thus confer on the Church 
 at home. I do trust that your love for our common mother 
 will move you to yield to these anxious wishes which now 
 centre in yourself; and, if I might add an expression of 
 personal feeling, I cannot assure you too decidedly of the 
 deep gratification it would afford me to see you in the 
 See of Lichfield, of the comfort and support which I should 
 find in these anxious times in having you as one of my suffra- 
 gans. I will add no more, than that it will be my fervent 
 prayer this night, that it may please God to guide you to 
 the wished-for decision, which I believe would so eminently 
 conduce to the welfare of the Church of England. 
 
 C. T. Cantuak. 
 
 4. 
 
 My dear Lord Archbishop, 
 
 I have been deeply touched by your most kind letter, 
 and have prayed earnestly that I may be enabled " to per- 
 ceive and know what things I ought to do." Twenty-six 
 3'ears ago your Grace's predecessor sent me to New Zea- 
 land. I had no other reason for going than because I was 
 sent. Upon this question of obedience I am still of the 
 same mind. I am a man under authority. As a matter of 
 promotion conferred by the civil power, I had no hesita- 
 tion in refusing the Bishopric of Lichfield. My love for 
 New Zealand made me hope that the offer would not be 
 renewed. But I do not wish to give undue weight even 
 to that feeling, because the strength of my attachment 
 may mislead me. I am commanded to preach at Windsor 
 on Sunday (Dec. 1), and the Dean's letter leads me to 
 think that the Queen may speak to me on the subject. 
 As a soldier of the Church I shall probably feel bound to 
 do whatever my commander-in-chief bids me. 
 
 One thing is absolutely necessary. I must at all events 
 go back to New Zealand, if only for a few weeks. Every- 
 thing there was left at short notice, when I came away to 
 attend the Conference. To save expense, I have avoided 
 all officials, and therefore all the accounts and trusts with
 
 240 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. v. 
 
 which I am connected would have to be rearranged and 
 transferred. If it should be determined that I am to leave 
 my own dear Xew Zealand, I could, I dare say, get the 
 Bishop of Wellington to come over to confirm and ordain 
 in the Lichfield diocese during my absence. &c., &c. 
 
 G. A. New Zealand, 
 
 The story was again told to Sir W. Martin a month 
 
 later. 
 
 Palace, Lichfield, Dec. 20tJi, 1867. 
 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 I wonder whether my last letter was in time for the 
 Panama Mail. If not, this will be the first announcement 
 to you of the completion of the Lichfield matter. On the 
 1st December I was sent for to preach in the private 
 chapel, Windsor, and to dine at the Castle at six. The 
 Queen sent for me into " The Closet," and expressed her 
 wish that I should take the Bishopric of Lichfield, say- 
 ing many kind things in a very gracious manner, I had 
 previously determined that if the Queen confirmed the 
 authority of the Archbishop, of whose letter I sent you 
 a cofty, it would be my duty to give way: and so I 
 did, with as good a grace as I could : though I felt very 
 sorrowful: and still feel so, when I think of you and 
 our native clergymen, and our friends in Auckland, and 
 Charles, and Coley. The Queen said that she knew that I 
 was very sorry to leave New Zealand, and that she would 
 w^rite to Lord Derby to say that I accepted the bishopric 
 on the condition that I should be free to return to New 
 Zealand to take leave of my friends, after I had taken 
 possession of Lichfield, The same evening I dined with 
 Her Majesty and Princess Louise, a small party of eight, 
 and very pleasant. After dinner in private the Queen 
 talked very nicely and naturally of Prince Albert, and I 
 felt myself speaking pastorally to her; as to a friend 
 needing comfort. She had before given me her book with 
 her autograph, but not without talcing counsel with the 
 Dean of Windsor, whether it would be right to give it to 
 me, considering that Prince Albert said in a certain letter 
 to Baron Stockmar, that my father was deficient in 
 method. 
 
 And so by this marvellous course of events, after the 
 bishopric had been refused three times — 1st, by me ; 2nd,
 
 1860-1867.] RECEPTION AT LICHFIELD. 241 
 
 by Dr. Cookson ; 3rd, by Mr. Lightfoot — I am now writing 
 to you in the old palace, built by Bisliop Wood in 1687, 
 and now inhabited for the first time by a Bishop of Lich- 
 field, in a year designated by the same figures transposed. 
 It seems as if the house had been under a ban ; for Bishop 
 Wood never resided in the diocese, and was therefore 
 suspended by Archbishop Sancroft, who further fined him 
 the cost of this house for damage done to estates of the 
 See through his neglect. To our colonial eyes it is palatial ; 
 and public opinion unanimously supports us in declining 
 to live at Eccleshall Castle, twenty-five miles from Lich- 
 field. The country-house heresy is losing ground. 
 
 On Friday last, Sarah and I came here, and were received 
 most kindly by Canon Lonsdale, son of the bishop. The 
 Dean is very friendly, and Archdeacon Moore, the canon in 
 residence. So the prospects of a united Cathedral body 
 are good, and justify the hopes which I formed thirty 
 years ago as a juvenile -ttTiter on Cathedral Eeform. There 
 is also a theological college with thirty students. The 
 diocese includes all Staffordshire, all Derbyshire, and half 
 Shropshire, three archdeaconries, forty-eight rural deaneries, 
 661 parishes, and 1,200,000 souls. There is a work to 
 begin upon at my time of life, but I did not seek it : and 
 I trust only in Him whose strength is made perfect in 
 weakness. 
 
 I have already begun to act as Trpofevo? of the colonial 
 and missionary churches by receiving here the Bishop 
 of the Orange Eiver Free State, and in this respect at 
 least I hope that I may be of use, as the friend and 
 advocate of the work which I have been forced against 
 my will to desert. 
 
 I shall go to work immediately to raise an endowment 
 fund for the bishopric. If Archdeacon Lloyd, or Arch- 
 deacon Govett, or Archdeacon Leonard Williams should be 
 elected, I will guarantee 600/. a year as long as I live : and 
 a lady has promised to leave 5,000/. by will. Most of the 
 furniture in the "palace "will be left as an heirloom to 
 the See, with the library : excepting some few private 
 books which have become mingled with the others. 
 Hayter may have the carts and horses as a reward for 
 faithful service, unless you have any use in hand for 
 them on the Cathedral Estate. He may also have the use
 
 242 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. v. 
 
 of the cows subject to the duty of supplying you with 
 as much milk as you want. 
 
 We hope to leave England as originally proposed in 
 June or July ; and therefore there will be time for the 
 report of the Diocesan Synod nomination to reach me, 
 Aue ! aue ! aue ! 
 
 Your very affectionate 
 
 And sorrowful Friend, 
 
 G. A. New Zealand. 
 
 At the risk of apparent repetition the following letter to 
 the Rev. W. Selwyn is also given. 
 
 My very dear William, 
 
 To my great sorrow, but to your joy, Lichfield has come 
 round to me again. How could I suppose that the Queen 
 and the Archbishop would take the trouble to lay their 
 commands upon me ? It was easy to refuse it as a matter 
 of patronage and promotion ; but a call from the rulers of 
 the Church is not lightly to be disregarded. And so I 
 have succumbed ; and in the Queen's private room this 
 evening it was settled so to be. And now, my dear son, 
 pray for me more earnestly even than before. It is a great 
 change of plan ; but I trust that it is the will of God. 
 Your very affectionate Father, 
 
 G. A. New Zealand. 
 
 ^ The appointment was in all respects a "popular" one. Churchmen 
 of all but the most narrow type welcomed the Bishop of New Zealand 
 to England, and others who cared little for the accession of spiritual force 
 thus secured to the mother-Church, joined in the general admiration 
 which his romantic career in New Zeahvnd had excited. To this feeling 
 we are probably indebted for the following lines : — 
 
 THE RIGHT BISHOP IN THE RIGHT PLACE; OK, HKLWYN 
 AMONG THE BLACKS. 
 
 A salvo for Rolwyn, the pious and plucky. 
 
 The manly and muscular, tender and true, 
 Let " Lichfield and Coventry" own itself lucky, 
 
 If loss of her shejiherd New Zealand must rue, 
 On the bench of Colonial Bishops, or boat, he 
 
 The labouring oar has still pulled like a man. 
 In his "stroke " for all mitres on s(:os now afloat, he 
 
 Is a model to m iti-h, or surpass, if they can.
 
 1860-1867.] POPULARITY OF APPOINTMENT. 243 
 
 It was not his habit to make much of acts of self- 
 abnegation, and henceforward the bishop was wont to 
 speak almost apologetically of his translation to Lichfield 
 as though he were only as other men to whom an English 
 Bishopric would have been a welcome change after a life 
 of hardship and not unfrequent peril in New Zealand and 
 Melanesia. 
 
 He has toiled, he has tussled, with nature and savage, 
 
 When which was the wilder 'twas hard to decide, 
 Spite of Maori's musket, and hurricane's ravage, 
 
 The tight Southern Cross has still braved time and tide. 
 Where lawn-sleeves and silk apron had turned with a shiver. 
 
 From the current that roared 'twixt his business and him, 
 If no boat could be come at, he breasted the river, 
 
 And woe to his chaplain who craned at a swim ! 
 
 What to him were the cannibal tastes that still lingered 
 
 In the outlying nooks of his Maori fold. 
 Where his flock oft have mused, as their Bibles they fingered, 
 
 " How good would our warm-hearted Bishop be cold ! " 
 What to him were short commons, wet jacket, hard-lying, 
 
 The savages' blood- feud, the elements' strife. 
 Whose guard was the Cross, at his peak proudly flying. 
 
 Whose fare was the bread and the water of life ? 
 
 Long, long, the warm Maori hearts that so loved him 
 
 May watch and may wait for his coming again. 
 He has sowed the good seed there, his Master has moved him 
 
 To his work among savages this side the main. 
 In " the Black Country," darker than ever New Zealand, 
 
 'Mid worse ills than heathenism's worst can combine. 
 He must strive with the savages reared in our free land, 
 
 To toil, drink, and die, round the forge and the mine ! 
 
 Say if We'nsbury roughs, Tipton cads, Bilston bullies, 
 
 Waikato can match, Taranaki excel ? 
 Find in New Zealand's clearings, or wild ferny gullies, 
 
 Tales like those Dudley pit-heaps and nail-works could tell. 
 A labour more brutal, a leisure more bestial. 
 
 Minds raised by le-ss knowledge of God or of man, 
 More in manners that's savage and less that's celestial, 
 
 Can New Zealand show than the Black Country can ? 
 
 A fair field, my Loi\l Bishop — fair field and no favour — 
 
 For your battle with savagery, suft'ring and sin. 
 To Mammon, their God, see where rises the savour 
 
 Of the holocausts offered his blessing to win. 
 Your well-practised courage, your hold o'er the heathen, 
 
 From, not to. New Zealand for work ought to roam ; 
 If it be dark, what miist the Black Country be then, 
 
 What's the savage o'er sea to the savage at home ? 
 
 Punch, December lUh, 1S67 
 VOL. II. E
 
 244 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. v. 
 
 Thus he said humorously at a missionary meeting held 
 at Oxford — 
 
 " It may be objected that I am no fit advocate of 
 missionary work, seeing that 1 have forsaken it. All I 
 can say is, I have had nothing to do with the change, 
 except to obey. Twenty-seven years ago I was told to go 
 to New Zealand, and I went; I am now told to go to 
 Lichfield, and I go.' 
 
 But none save his immediate friends knew how great 
 was the pang which this obedience cost him. On the 
 evening of the day of his enthronement at Lichfield, 
 surrounded in his library by brothers and sisters, sons and 
 grandchildren, and nephews and nieces, he said, with that 
 ready gift of quoting aptly which never forsook him — 
 
 " Socii ! neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum, 
 passi graviora ! dabit Deus liis quorjue finem. 
 
 Per varies casus per tot discrimina rernm 
 Tendimus in Lichfield, sedes ubi fata quietas 
 Ostendunt." 
 
 He threw into the words a spirit and a meaning which 
 the heathen author knew nothing of; but sedcs quietas 
 he never found while life lasted and called him to work. 
 It may truly be said, that the trial of leaving family and 
 country in 1841 was less severe than the pain which it 
 cost liim to leave his adopted country for which he had 
 done so much ; but tliroughout the whole of his career no 
 thought of self ever foimd a resting-place in his mind, and 
 henceforward after a brief visit paid to New Zealand, his 
 whole heart was given to Lichfield and the mother-Church, 
 and for the sake of that mother-Church he laboured un- 
 ceasingly to link all her daughter-Churches to the Parent 
 by the immaterial but enduring bonds of Spiritual union. 
 One only consideration had made him pause before yield- 
 ing that implicit obedience to civil and spiritual authorities 
 that he conceived to be their due : it was, as has already
 
 1860-1867.] LICHFIELD. 245 
 
 been mentioned in his letters to Sir W. Martin, that in 
 leaving New Zealand he was leaving a See almost without 
 endowment. A near relative, who was anxious that he 
 should remain in England, offered to provide by will for 
 ever for the maintenance of the future Bishops of Auck- 
 land, and he gratefully accepted it, in these words : — 
 
 " Your kind offer has been a great relief to my mind, 
 because I have no difficulty in making up the income of 
 the bishop as long as I live ; but the difficulty was to make 
 provision for the future." 
 
 And so the great Primate of New Zealand became a 
 Suffragan of Canterbury ; and if any persons yet remain 
 who repeat the words of regret in which many once in- 
 dulged on insufficient information, that he should have been 
 moved from the Church which he had founded to a position 
 which others could equally well have filled : if any are 
 still found to utter the platitude that a man who is facile 
 princeps in one position does not rise above mediocrity 
 when moved to another : if it be still held by some per- 
 sons that a man who could rough-hew the institutions of 
 a nascent Church and a future Empire, and stamp on both 
 the impress of an original mind, was not likely to do more 
 than keep at its existing level of usefulness a position 
 venerable with the traditions of centuries, then it can only 
 be asserted on the testimony of those who had the best 
 opportunities of judging, that in each year of his Lichfield 
 Episcopate the sense of ministerial obligations and the 
 strength of religious life among the laity have risen with 
 a regularity which can only be compared to the rising of 
 a tide which has known no ebb. 
 
 To Lichfield and works connected with it the rest of 
 these pages will be devoted. 
 
 R 2
 
 246 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vi. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LICHFIELD AND NEW ZEALAND. 
 
 [1868—1870.] 
 
 On January 9, 1868, the bishop was enthroned at Lichfield. 
 Not a day had been lost in providing promptly for the 
 efficient administration of his new diocese. For more than 
 a year he was the occupant of two Sees, 15,000 miles 
 apart, and he humorously claimed for the anomalous 
 arrangement the precedent of Lichfield having been at one 
 time yoked with Coventry, and contended that the mar- 
 riage with New Zealand was a gratifying and suggestive 
 proof of the extension of the Anglican Church. 
 
 No man knew better than he did both the privilege 
 and the difficulty of succeeding to Bishop Lonsdale. Never 
 was bishop more fatherly in all his actions than was that 
 scholarly and humble-minded Prelate, whose last public 
 utterance, at the Church Congress held at Wolverhampton 
 a few days before his decease, was — in strict consistency 
 with his life and practice — an earnest exhortation to 
 brotherly love. " The school of Faith," he said, " is 
 a high school, but the school of Love is higher. Many 
 here have no need to be learners in this world, but we have 
 all of us need to be continually learning in the other." 
 It was well that his successor was also a man of tenderest 
 mould and unfailing sympathy. 
 
 One alteration Bishop Selwyn determined from the first 
 to make, though it cost him the pain of breaking the tra-
 
 1868-1870.] LICHFIELD PALACE. 247 
 
 ditions of more than a thousand years. This has been 
 mentioned in his letter to Sir W. Martin announcing his 
 intention to abandon Eccleshall Castle, and to reside in 
 the Palace. 
 
 To this house he added two wings, one of which con- 
 tained a lofty hall, which was the trysting-place of all 
 diocesan workers of whatever grade or kind, and was con- 
 stantly in request for public meetings and for the exer- 
 cise of hospitality on a scale truly Episcopal. The western 
 wing contained a large business room or of&ce, where his 
 Secretary sat day by day, and some cubicles, almost like 
 cabins, in which candidates for orders and clergymen who 
 came on business were temporarily lodged. At the N.W. 
 angle he added the Chapel, full of fragrant memories of New 
 Zealand, the Pastoral Staff given to him in 1841 being in 
 its place in his stall, and the windows on either side 
 recalling past scenes or memories of his Antipodean Epis- 
 copate. The Chapel was in easy communication with the 
 Library, a spacious room in which to work, and in which 
 signs of work were abundantly visible : and not only of 
 work, but of method, without which the work would never 
 have been accomplished. 
 
 Who that has ever seen it could forget those rows of 
 lockers all round the room, eloquent of the sea-going 
 habits of the designer, and their orderly contents, hundreds 
 and probably thousands of large envelopes, each neatly 
 labelled with the names of the Parish, the School, the 
 Hospital, or the public question with which its contents 
 dealt, and of these too a brief precis was written on the 
 outside. When people wondered how the bishop remem- 
 bered everything about the parish or the question with 
 which they were themselves concerned, they did not know 
 how carefully and methodically everything relating to it 
 was preserved, and how rapidly he could make himself 
 master of the whole business. 
 
 The way in which the bishop threw himself into his 
 work justified the remark of the Archbishop of Canterbury
 
 248 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vi. 
 
 after his decease, that "an electric force attended his 
 presence wherever he went." It was impossible to 
 continue the work on the scale and in the spirit with 
 which it was commenced, and this was all too soon made 
 manifest : but everywhere it made a great impression ; and 
 a Staffordshire paper at this time contained an account 
 of Five Days Work in the Potteries, more remarkable for its 
 appreciation of the bishop than for its own literary merits. 
 As a contribution of contemporary testimony, however, it 
 finds a place here : — 
 
 " On Saturday, Bishop Selwyn began his five days' work 
 amongst us by preaching a stirring sermon in Stoke church 
 on the resurrection of the body, and then consecrating the 
 new piece of land appended to the churchyard ; this was 
 over at a quarter-past one. At half-past two he conse- 
 crated similarly at Fenton. At half-past four he preached 
 and consecrated at Stoke Workhouse, where a touching 
 procession of the inmates followed him round their new 
 ' last resting-place.' Three sermons and three consecrations 
 is pretty good work for one day. On Sunday, work began 
 with a sermon in Skelton church, where many of the local 
 magnates were assembled, and jointly contributed, we are 
 informed, barely 221. to the Infirmary. In the afternoon, 
 a characteristic sermon on ' Peter stood by the fire and 
 warmed himself" followed at Edensor, for the warming 
 apparatus, a novelty unknown in the churches of New 
 Zealand. In the evening, the bald, staring architecture of 
 the large church at Stoke was made expressive, if not 
 actually beautiful, by a dense mass of between 1,500 and 
 2,000 worshippers, whom the bishop addressed on behalf 
 of the Infirmary building, and where 50^. was received for 
 that object. Three sermons form the work of the second 
 day. On JMonday a hearty address of half an hour, with- 
 out book or note, delivered from the altar-steps at Stoke on 
 the work of the ministry, together with the administration 
 of Holy Communion, was a two hours' introduction to the 
 laborious work of attention and patience required for 
 presiding at a meeting of clergymen and laymen to discuss 
 tlie question of the division of populous dioceses, and the 
 creation of Diocesan Synods. Monday's labours were
 
 1868-1870.] WORK IN THE POTTERIES. 249 
 
 crowned by a telling sermon at Sneyd Church, on ' My 
 soul is even as a weaned child,' where Christ, weaned 
 from the glories of His Father's heavenly house, and 
 weaned from the comforts and the desires of earth, forms 
 the model for men to imitate in their weanedness from sin 
 and self, which model finds its nearest earthly exemplifica- 
 tion in those little children which such schools as those at 
 Sneyd are intended to rear for God, A collection of 28^. 
 followed this appeal. Thus ended the third day. On 
 Tuesday the bells of Newcastle told by their firing that 
 something unusual was occurring, and a stately procession 
 of mayor and corporation, maces and gowns, which 
 welcomed at the Town Hall and conducted the bishop in 
 municipal state to the Old Church, betokened to the ancient 
 and loyal burghers what tliat unusual interest was. Here 
 the bishop again preached, and proved incisively to the 
 conscience that the law of love, which Christianity proclaims, 
 transcends in its binding force any precepts written down 
 only in words in the Holy Book, and, as at Sneyd the 
 night before, insisted on his people's preparing for the 
 reception of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper on Easter 
 Day. Then he administered the sacrament to some 200 
 communicants. A lunch (speedily concluded) followed at 
 the Castle ; and by three o'clock he was, with exemplary 
 patience, studious attention and pleasant repartee, busied 
 in hearing and removing any objections that were raised to 
 giving the living Church a living and speaking voice as to 
 her wants and intentions through the mouthpiece of her 
 Diocesan Synods. This over by 5.30, there followed at 
 seven, in the Town Hall, a missionary meeting, attended 
 by all classes, in which his simple, manly tale, of how he 
 owned the natives of Australasia for brother men of one 
 blood with us, and how, for the love of Christ, he worked 
 among them for six-and-twenty years, won from the 
 humbler class of burghers, standing in crowds at the lower 
 end of their hall, such expressions of assent as ' That's a 
 a good 'un ! ' Thus ended the fourth day. On Wednesday 
 the colliery village of Talke, of sad name, witnessed a 
 thrilling scene. A little iron church erected by the bene- 
 volence of resident ladies, was that day opened for worship. 
 Holding only a little over a hundred, broad cloth and silk 
 dresses soon appropriated the chief seats, if not the whole
 
 250 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vi. 
 
 edifice ; and M'liile the hymn before tlie sermon was in 
 singing, tlie bishop was seen to leave the tiny chancel, and 
 force his way througli the crowded gangway towards the 
 door. People's hearts began to beat ; the last four days' 
 work is telling on him ; he is going out from the crowded 
 building for a little air. Nothing of the sort. Tlie good 
 missionary took his stand at the western porch, and turned 
 to the 200 colliers standing in the yard, whom the build- 
 ing's scanty proportions would not contain, and addressed 
 them in the simplest and most touching tones and words, 
 reminding them that like their own soil, their life in this 
 world is undermined by sin and death, and that there is 
 none other name under heaven given among men by whom 
 we must be saved, but only the name of Jesus Christ. 
 The bishop's head was uncovered ; the rough men and lads 
 kept their hats on ; but their faces were all turned towards 
 him and their eyes fixed upon him ; and (as he expressed 
 the fervent hope and prayer) perhaps the ear might carry • 
 to the heart of many of them the Word of Life ! On the 
 afternoon of the fifth day the bishop left for Ham, where 
 on Thursday he preached twice, administered Holy 
 Communion, and met the clergy and laity of Alstonfield 
 deanery in consultation on the subject of Synods. Let 
 us hope that the bright visit with which he has greeted 
 this neighbourhood for these five days may leave behind it 
 a trail of light in the hearts of many men, now that he 
 has disappeared for a while from our immediate horizon." 
 
 His first care was to establish in his new diocese that 
 consultative machinery which he had learned to value so 
 higldy in his old. For this the way had been partially 
 prepared : in 18G6 Bishop Lonsdale's attention had been 
 called to the matter of Diocesan Synods, which was at that 
 time being discussed in tlie newspapers : fifteen years 
 before Bishop Phillpotts, in spite of obloquy, had held a 
 Synod at Exeter to re-affirm the Prayer-Book doctrine 
 of regeneration, and the diocese of Ely had quite re- 
 cently been feeling its M'ay towards synodical meetings. 
 He was not favourably disposed to making the attempt, 
 but M'ith the fairness which characterised him lie in-
 
 1868-1870.] LICHFIELD ORGANIZATION. 251 
 
 vited the rural deans of Stafford sliire assembled at 
 Eccleshall to discuss it. The opinion was almost unani- 
 mous in favour of some form of synodal action ; the rural 
 deans of the archdeaconries of Salop and Derby met suc- 
 cessively at Eccleshall, and were asked to bring the whole 
 subject before the clergy of their several deaneries. The 
 result was that Bishop Lonsdale determined to hold a 
 Synod of his diocese, to which he invited the clergy, the 
 churchwardens, and two laymen from each parish, one 
 nominated by the incumbent, the other by the people. 
 
 This Synod was never held, but the fact of its having 
 been determined on encouraged his successor at once to 
 carry out the plans that had been adopted but not executed. 
 In six months time he would leave for his farewell visit to 
 New Zealand, and before doing so he determined that, if 
 labour on his part could effect it, the machinery of such 
 organization should be in full working order. He attended 
 meetings in forty-four Kural Deaneries and in each Arch- 
 deaconry, in which he had to repeat the patient waiting 
 which had been a condition of his ultimate success in New 
 Zealand : the same suspicions and party watchwords 
 assailed him now : dark designs of making the Episcopate 
 autocratic w^ere imputed to him, and his protestations that 
 he was actually laying aside much power and was holding 
 his hands to be fettered, had with many persons no weight. 
 It has taken some years, and will probably require a good 
 many more, to educate stolid and suspicious Englishmen in 
 the truth that synodal action has for its object the subor- 
 dination of the caprice of individual wills, whether of the 
 episcopate, the priesthood, or the laity, to the matured and 
 deliberate judgment of the majority of each order, and that 
 autocracy is thus made unattainable to all alike. " What 
 are the uses of Synods ? " was a question frequently asked, as 
 though with the conviction that it was unanswerable : but 
 the bishop meekly replied, " Everything that for want of 
 Synods has been left undone. Half of our population to 
 be won back to the Church of their fathers : fifty coloniid
 
 252 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vi. 
 
 dioceses looking to us for help ; two-thirds of the whole 
 human race still waiting for Christ : to carry out to the full 
 the work of Christian education : to subdivide our enor- 
 mous parishes : to build churches, and schools, and par- 
 sonages : to call forth the energies of our faithful laity : to 
 choose out the fittest men — even from the humblest ranks 
 — to serve God in the sacred ministry of His Church. It 
 is true that much has been done, and I thank God for it. 
 But I say, let us think nothing done till nought remains. 
 It is the fault of all voluntary societies to sound the 
 trumpet to tell the world how much they have done. It is 
 the characteristic of the work of the Church to be ever 
 conscious of its own defects. It is like Cowper's distinc- 
 tion between knowledge and wisdom. Societies are proud 
 that they have done so much ; the Church is humble that 
 it has done no more. The limitation of each society to its 
 own specific work is very different from the comprehensive 
 charity of the Church, which watches over the whole com- 
 munity. The partial view with which each subscriber 
 devotes himself to some object in which he is peculiarly 
 interested falls far short of that far-seeing wisdom with 
 which the Church, as in days of old, ought to make distri- 
 bution to every man according as he has need. Societies 
 come too late into the field to remedy evils that have 
 become full-grown. The wisdom of the Church is seen in 
 prevention rather than in cure, and in providing remedies 
 before the disease has come to its height. 
 
 " We form our present system, then, in no antagonism to 
 existing societies, but under the conviction that the action 
 of the whole mind of the Church is needed to conduct, 
 under Divine guidance, the whole work which God has 
 given us to do. We desire to have representatives coming 
 to us from the most populous and the most remote parts of 
 the diocese — rich men to set us an example of giving, and 
 poor men to tell us of the wants and feelings of the poor ; 
 and working men to tell us how the work of Christ may 
 best be carried on in mines and factories ; and patrons uf
 
 1868-1870.] SYNOD OR CONFERENCE. 253 
 
 living.?, clerical and lay, to join in seeking out the most 
 deserving curates, and in putting the right man in the 
 right place. We want members of both houses of Parlia- 
 ment to keep us to rules of order, and to assist us in carry- 
 ing up our petitions ; and members of Convocation to learn 
 the mind of the clergy and laity, that they may propose 
 such reasonable alterations of the laws affecting the Church 
 — (such as dilapidations, church building, and the like) — 
 as Parliament will not hesitate to accept and enact. And 
 we desire also the presence of our Cathedral clergy to 
 unite with us in bringing out the dormant powers of that 
 central heart to which I have felt myself drawn as if by 
 some instinctive conviction that the life's blood can be made 
 to flow from thence into the extremities of the diocese. 
 That daily intercession has not been offered up in vain. 
 The part will become more powerful than the whole. Our 
 Cathedral, stripped of half its revenues, will derive new 
 power and spirit from the pruning-knife of the Ecclesias- 
 tical Commission. And above all, we desire that subordi- 
 nation of the individual will to the spirit of counsel which 
 cannot be produced by gathering together men of like 
 minds, for then self-will is strengthened and made more 
 self-confident by the blind assent which is given to narrow 
 prejudices and plausible fallacies. We must have men of 
 all professions and of all classes, and of all shades of 
 opinion, that every want may be fully known, and every 
 opinion fairly weighed, and that the decision may be " that 
 which pleases the whole multitude.' " 
 
 Here truly was an ample programme, based on a system 
 the most comprehensive and unconventional that could be 
 devised. The opposition continued, accompanied sometimes 
 by warmth of language which it is not necessary to record 
 in these pages : when the principle triumphed, the objec- 
 tion was then taken to the title of the proposed meetings : 
 the people who detected popery and ecclesiastical tyranny 
 in the word of Greek origin, saw nothing to complain or 
 be afraid of in the Latin derivative : Synod was dangerous
 
 254 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vi. 
 
 and Conference harmless. The bishop was amused at this 
 distinction, and at the close of the Stafford Archidiaconal 
 Conference said, " We are now approaching the great ques- 
 tion of the day, whether our meetings are to be Synods or 
 not. ]\ly own opinion I can state very briefly : it is that I 
 shall be perfectly willing to assist at such meetings, let 
 them be called what they may. On personal grounds I 
 feel M'ith the poet Moore : 
 
 " The choice what heart can doubt 
 Of tents with love or thrones without." 
 
 I would rather be in a conference M'ith Lord Harrowby ^ 
 than in a Synod without him." On June 17 the Diocesan 
 Conference was held in the city of Lichfield, and was 
 attended by the representatives, clerical and lay, of every 
 rural deanery in the diocese. After Holy Communion had 
 been celebrated in the Cathedral, the meeting for business 
 was held in the Guildhall ; the clergy in academicals sat on 
 the left-hand of the bishop, the laity on his right, and 
 between the two the members of the standing committee, 
 lay and clerical. It was a difiicult but at the same time 
 a triumphant hour for the bishop. A bare six months ago 
 and he had thought of nothing less than the Chair of S. 
 Chad, and now he was presiding over a Synod, the first of 
 the kind to be held in England, although other dioceses had 
 been feeling their way towards such a consummation for 
 some years. It was worthy of himself, while thanking 
 God for the result of six months' deliberations, in which 
 " differences of opinion had only sei-ved to prove that it is 
 possible to differ widely in opinion and yet continue 
 friends," to speak of the "good and hopeful work on 
 which the colophon was that day put," as but the 
 continuation of the work commenced by his predecessor. 
 He could point to the results of the meetings which had 
 been held as largely in favour of synodal action, and 
 in every instance the discussions had been conducted 
 with perfect good feeling and courtesy on both sides. 
 
 ^ Who had bliougly ojipobcd the use of the word Synod.
 
 1868-1870.] DIOCESAN CONFERENCE. 255 
 
 Each of the three counties, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, 
 and Shropshire, which were connected with the diocese, 
 had presented counter-memorials, and some anonymous 
 papers of an unfriendly character had been freely circu- 
 lated ; but the latter had demanded no explanation nor 
 answer, and the former had signatures neither numerous 
 nor influential enough to arrest action. From Staffordshire 
 the most influential memorial had been presented, but this 
 was only signed by 220 persons, of whom one-third were 
 resident in one, and that not a very important, town. The 
 feeling therefore in favour of the Conference was as una- 
 nimous as can be expected in these days, when to oppose 
 any change is the policy most grateful to the indifferent 
 and the irreligious, and especially when such opposition 
 is made on the plea of conscience and Protestantism. 
 These figures and facts were mentioned by the bishop in 
 his opening address ; and he added, " I wish it to be under- 
 stood that if I had met with even a large minority, I 
 would not have pressed this measure in the face of their 
 decided opposition. I had no desire to disturb the peace 
 of the diocese, and I am thankful to be able to say that it 
 has not been disturbed." The labour of attending so 
 many Conferences, in addition to the usual work of the 
 diocese, had been very great, but the bisliop declared that 
 it had been to him a work of much enjoyment, as it made 
 him acquainted both with clergy and laity in a more 
 effectual and speedy manner than any other mode of 
 visitation which he could have adopted : and he added 
 with characteristic frankness and metaphor, " From this 
 general expression of pleasure and satisfaction I do not by 
 any means except those who have opposed me ; for hearty, 
 honest, and outspoken opposition brings with it a pleasure 
 peculiar to itself. It is wearisome to sail always with a 
 fair wind. A brisk breeze, even if it be contrary, is often 
 the seaman's delight." 
 
 It was on the occasion of the successful inauguration of 
 the Diocesan Conference that the bishop painted in fullest
 
 256 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vi. 
 
 detail the sketch of Diocesan Organization which had 
 been his ideal. In addition to all that has been already 
 quoted he pointed to other great works looming in the 
 distance. " We shall want," he said, " a Diocesan Fund, 
 not restricted to special objects, but available, under the 
 direction of the Diocesan Council, for church works and 
 needs of every kind, the fund not to be frittered away 
 in small grants here and there, but devoted annually 
 to great diocesan works tending to give strength and 
 stability to our system." Foremost among these objects 
 he considered the support at the Theological College of 
 the picked members of the corps of lay-agents : but 
 there were costlier and more abiding projects behind : 
 the unattached advowsons, the happy hunting-ground of 
 the clerical agent and the dealer in simony, he wished 
 to purchase for the diocese, in order to bestow them on 
 " its own servants, drawn from its own people, educated 
 in its own college, proved in its own ministry, and 
 found faithful." For these same priests, when their 
 strength failed and they could no more be again what 
 once they had been, he wished to be able to provide 
 "retiring pensions and quiet homes under the shadow 
 of the cathedral," and when their laborious days were 
 ended, what he had contemplated for himself, while in 
 the heyday of his strength, " a cloister grave." 
 
 This was an ideal scheme, but nothing great is ever 
 accomplished by the man who has not a high ideal : and 
 George Herbert's words were never forgotten by the 
 bishop, "that it is good to shoot at the moon even 
 though you only hit a tree." 
 
 Thus the great master-builder secured for his own 
 diocese at least a perfect example of that synodal action 
 which he regarded as essential to the vigorous life of the 
 Church as she is, the best protector against disestablish- 
 ment, and the only true means of making her indifferent 
 to the shock if it should come. The man wlio is content 
 with the present condition of our Church in regard to
 
 1868-1870.] DISESTABLISHMENT. 257 
 
 legislation and internal government must be strangely- 
 constituted, for he must acquiesce in a system in which 
 (1) bishops are irresponsible autocrats, in regard to the 
 unbeneficed clergy, and powerless with regard to the 
 beneficed clergy, save through the agency of an uncon- 
 stitutional and abnormal exercise of the civil power ; (2) 
 the priesthood is unrepresented in the sacred Synods save 
 through the qualifications of legal freeholds, which, un- 
 known to any other Church in Christendom, enable their 
 holders to perform their minimum of routine duty without 
 chance of reproof or interference ; (3) a laity, without any 
 shadow of representation as churchmen ; for the layman 
 who is content with the House of Commons as the legisla- 
 ture of the Church must be densely ignorant and unob- 
 servant. It is the lack of proper ecclesiastical organization 
 in which each order bears its part that estranges bishops 
 from clergy, and clergy from laity, which tempts the laity 
 to apathy and indifference, or to joining hands with the 
 civil power in its encroachments on the province of the 
 Holy Spirit, and leads all alike to trust undidy in endow- 
 ments and privileges which a single session of parliament 
 may sweep away. It was no triumph of what is called 
 " tact " that gave Bishop Selwyn the power which he 
 wielded over men, whether in Melanesia or Mclanthracia, 
 as he called the black country ; he always credited people 
 with possessing a high moral and spiritual tone, and thus 
 he elicited the very spirit whose existence he assumed. So 
 genuine was his belief in the virtue of our Lord's incarna- 
 tion that he may be said to have possessed in the truest 
 sense "the enthusiasm of humanity." 
 
 It had been among the many objections urged against 
 the bishop's proposal that he was indiiferent to the union 
 of Church and State, that he even wished to abolish it, 
 and that Diocesan Synods were either in contempt of such 
 union or preparations for the state of things that would 
 soon be brought about by their impending separation. He 
 was not blind to the evils of both conditions, and probably
 
 258 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vi. 
 
 had thought out the subject in all its bearings far more 
 thoroughly than any of his critics : he had wiitten thirty 
 years before in his work on Cathedral Institutions : " The 
 great question now is whether the principle of our Estab- 
 lished Church or of the voluntary system shall prevail : 
 and this is a question which must be decided by energy 
 and not by learning ; because ordinary men will only 
 inquire which of the two systems is the more efficient. 
 The strength of an Established Church lies in organization : 
 the power of the Voluntary System on the facility with 
 which it adapts itself to every moral change in the feelings 
 and circumstances of men. The one has more consistency, 
 the other more flexibility, and in both systems its defects 
 are the exact converse of the chief advantages." Estab- 
 lished the Church of New Zealand had never been, but 
 the bishop had been endowed and disendowed, and was 
 indifferent to either state of things. He had often con- 
 gratulated himself on " the free air " of a Colonial Church 
 unconnected with the State, and able to adapt itself to the 
 emergency of the hour, and had remonstrated against the 
 action of the civil power which for years had hindered 
 the establishment of Synods and the subdivision of his 
 diocese, on the assumption of a power which it was un- 
 able to justify : in ISTew Zealand he had endeavoured 
 successfully, on the one hand to provide moderate but 
 yearly increasing endowments, and on the other hand to 
 secure the operation of the best principles of the voluntary 
 system : and now that his lot was cast in England he 
 cared not a straw for the material dignity and wealth of an 
 ancient See, and regretted with some bitterness that he 
 could not do with the income of the See of Lichfield as he 
 had done with the smaller income of New Zealand — divide 
 it and his See with his four or five brethren : but he was 
 no advocate for so great a change as was involved in the 
 separation of Church and State. His policy may be 
 described in his words as uttered in Convocation, " I have 
 learned in whatsoever state I am tlierewitli to be content."
 
 18G8-1870.] RETUEN TO NEW ZEALAND. 259 
 
 He would have accepted the spirit of S. Paul's words, 
 " Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was 
 called. Art thou called, being in a free Church, care not 
 for it ; but if thou art called in a Church which is allied 
 with the civil power, use it rather." He v/ould certainly 
 not have attempted or desired to reconstruct in a new 
 country the intricate relations, the result of so many 
 centuries of union, which complicate both the civil and 
 ecclesiastical elements of English society now, neither 
 would he rudely cut the knot, and so turn loose on the 
 world and on the Church a multitude of problems well 
 nigh insoluble. These views he had an opportunity of ex- 
 plaining in public at a time when the disestablishment 
 of the Irish Church was imminent, and was discussed 
 both in the House of Lords and in Convocation, and in 
 July, 1868, he started on the painful errand of severing 
 the link that held him still to the diocese which he had 
 served so well and so long. 
 
 He gave notice of his expected arrival in a letter dated 
 from Lichfield on June 1, 1868, to his old friend Sir W. 
 Martin, the ex-Chief Justice of New Zealand : — 
 
 My very dear, dear Friend, 
 
 One month after you receive this, if it please God, we 
 may again meet in the old haunts. " qui coni2Jlcxus et 
 gaudia quanta." JSTothing in England has yet come up to 
 Taurarua and its associations. And yet the pressure of 
 new work with new interest has begun to take its effect in 
 making one feel at home. A careful visit through forty-six 
 rural deaneries, with synodical meetings, has opened up 
 to me a vast field of thought and, I hope, of action. The 
 Synodical Organization may now be said to be complete 
 on a basis very similar to New Zealand, substituting arch- 
 deaconries for dioceses Archidiaconal Synods have 
 
 been held at Shrewsbury and Stafford : all very pleasant 
 and friendly : some party spirit in Derbyshire — strange 
 statements in the Record of which you will hear, some 
 positively, others by inference, untrue. They did not 
 prevent the result as follows. Deaneries favourable, 43 ; 
 deanery opposed, 1 ; deaneries equally divided, 4 ; total 
 
 VOL. II. s
 
 260 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vi. 
 
 48. Bishop Trower will be my locum tcnens, with Mr. 
 Thatcher for his secretary. 
 
 The visit to New Zealand was necessarily brief, and the 
 voyage was fraught with perils more imminent than any that 
 had befallen the bishop in all his previous wanderings. At. 
 Aspinwall, the plank on which he had walked when re- 
 embarking snapped in two ; he reached Wellington 
 in safety, but the steamer in which he proceeded to 
 Auckland was wrecked. In October the General Synod of 
 the Province was held at Auckland, and sat from the 5th 
 to the 17th instant. Six bishops were present and a full 
 attendance of representatives, both clerical and lay. 
 Bishop Patteson came from the distant Norfolk Island to 
 look for the last time on the friend and leader at whose 
 invitation he had left everytliing behind him. Tlie Metro- 
 politan in a long address dwelt on the importance of the 
 Lambeth Conference, and showed how futile it was to 
 look to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as 
 a possible bond of union to connect the Colonial Church 
 with the Mother Church : that it would require an Act of 
 Parliament to give to all clergymen, as such, the status of 
 beneficed incumbents before that Judicial Committee could 
 serve as a bond of union : that in England 5,000 curates, 
 and abroad all the missionary clergy, together with chap- 
 lains in the army and navy, in gaols and workhouses, were 
 all governed by special bye-laws or voluntary agreements, 
 " with no other right of appeal to the Privy Council than 
 that which may issue from any action for breach of agree- 
 ment tried in any one of the lower courts of law." , . " I 
 respect the feeling," he went on to say, " which makes 
 many good men venerate, almost to idolatry, our English 
 system . . . but I earnestly entreat you, as one who has 
 seen the work of the Church on both sides of the world, 
 hold fast to your voluntary compact : make it as perfect 
 as you can : seek for communion with all the branches of 
 our Anglican Church now scattered over the world: aim at 
 one common standard of faith and ritual in all essential
 
 1868-1870.] FAREWELL TO NEW ZEALAXD. 261 
 
 points : treasure up the memory of all the blessings and 
 privileges which we have inherited from our Holy Mother, 
 that it may be seen that by none is she more honoured 
 and beloved than by the most distant of her children." 
 
 One promise he gave, which was abundantly ful- 
 filled, " that to maintain that intimate union between the 
 mother-Church and her colonial branches should be one of 
 the chief objects of his life." On approaching struggles 
 in England and threats of disendowment he " looked 
 without fear, because we have learned by long experience 
 that the Church of England lives and prospers, not by 
 endowment or by connection with the State, but by the 
 scriptural purity of her doctrine, and the Sacramental 
 fulness of her Liturgy." After the election of the Bishop 
 of Christ Church as " Primate " an address, signed by all 
 the members of the Synod, and which is believed to have 
 been written out of a full heart by Bishop Patteson, was 
 presented to Bishop Selwyn and, both for its own sake as 
 well as being a retrospect of a noble Episcopate for more 
 than a quarter of a century, is here given : — 
 
 " We, the Bishops, clergy, and laity of the branch of the 
 United Church of England and Ireland in General Synod 
 assembled, most respectfully and affectionately address 
 your Lordship upon your resignation of the office of Pre- 
 sident of this Synod. 
 
 " When your Lordship came into this country, more than 
 twenty-six years ago, you began your work as the first and 
 only Bishop of New Zealand by giving a more united and 
 permanent character to the successful efforts of the early 
 missionaries. You end it now as the primate of an 
 ecclesiastical province by providing for the permanent 
 maintenance of your Melauesian Mission, the offshoot of 
 the New Zealand Church. 
 
 " This General Synod is itself a result and witness of 
 your unwearied efforts for the organization of the native 
 and colonial Church of New Zealand, and of your mis- 
 sionary labour among the islands of the West Pacific 
 Ocean. The native of New Zealand, the English colonist, 
 and the Melanesian islander are all represented here. 
 
 s 2
 
 262 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vi. 
 
 " "With respect to the native Church, a Maori diocese 
 has been constituted, and ]\Iaori Synods have been hehl ; 
 seventeen native clergymen have ministered, or do minister 
 faithfully and loyally in different parts of the country ; 
 churches and schools have been built, endowments have 
 been provided, clergymen and catechists have been main- 
 tained ; and collections have been made for the heathen 
 islanders of Melanesia by our ]\Iaori brethren. 
 
 " The Colonial Church in this country has been organized 
 by you upon a system of Synodical action and voluntary 
 compact, which secures to every Churchman who accepted 
 it the enjoyment of true Christian liberty and the exercise 
 of all Christian privileges. 
 
 '•' Lastly, it is to you, in the good providence of God, 
 that the Melanesian Mission owes its existence, and such 
 measure of success as it has pleased God hitherto to grant 
 to it. Your faith and courage first carried the Gospel 
 into those wild islands, " and your wise forethought devised 
 a method of carrying on the work, which experience has 
 already shown to be well adapted to the peculiar circum- 
 stances of that Mission. 
 
 " And now we think, my Lord, how twenty-seven years 
 have passed to-day since you received the episcopal office 
 — years marked by extraordinary events in the history of our 
 country and Church — an episcopate marked in an extra- 
 ordinary degree by your work of faith, and labour of love, 
 and patience of hope. 
 
 " We humbly beheve that, by your wide and varied 
 experience of many forms of human life, by bringing you 
 into contact with men in every stage of barbarism and 
 civilization, or on lonely journeys in the solitude of New 
 Zealand forests, and on the waves of the West Pacific, 
 God's Holy Spirit has been training you for an even greater 
 work than any that you have hitherto accomplished — for 
 which all that has been done may be but the preparation 
 — the crowning work, it may be, of your life to which He 
 has now called you. It seems as if you had been sent 
 first to warn the most distant members here, and were 
 called now to quicken the very heart of our dear mother 
 Church at home, so that the lifeblood may circulate with 
 fresh vigour throughout the body. 
 
 " We know full well that you never cease to pray and
 
 1868-1870.] THE BISHOPS REPLY. 263 
 
 labour for us, and you need no assurance from us that we 
 will ever remember and pray for you. How can we ever 
 forget you ? Every spot in New Zealand is identified with 
 you. Each hill and valley, each river and bay and head- 
 land, is full of memories of you ; the busy town, the lonely 
 settler's hut, the countless islands of tlie sea, all speak to 
 us of you. Whether your days be few or many, we, as 
 long as we live, will ever hold you deep in our inmost 
 hearts. All will pray for you and yours ; the clergy, to 
 whom you have indeed been a father in God, the old tried 
 friends with whom you have taken counsel, the younger 
 men of both races whom you have trained, the poor whom 
 you have relieved, the mourners whom you have com- 
 forted, the sick to whom you have ministered, the prisoners 
 whom you have visited, all think of you now, and will 
 think of you always with true and deep affection, will 
 offer for you always their fervent prayers. 
 
 " We humbly pray God, who has given you the wisdom to 
 conceive and the power to execute your great designs, that 
 your high and noble example may be ever affectionately 
 remembered and dutifully followed by us all, that the mind 
 and spirit of its first Bishop may be stamped for all genera- 
 tions upon the Church of New Zealand, and that the multi- 
 tude of the isles may learn, in years to come, the name of 
 their first great missionary, and rise up and call him blessed." 
 
 The bishop's reply completes the history of the Austral- 
 asian Churches from their foundation. 
 
 "I may say, in those words of Wordsworth, Praises, 
 my friend, ' have often left me mourning.' It is the most 
 difficult and most painful of all things to one placed in 
 my position to reply to such kind expressions as are 
 contained in the address : but in this case the pain is no 
 doubt much mingled with pleasure. Suffice it to say that 
 I have sought for support and comfort from many whose 
 services are not so conspicuous as, though they deserve 
 equal praise with my own if not more. I can say, as 
 has been said on a very different occasion, ' Give God the 
 praise ; we know that this man was a sinner.' All the 
 prosperity of the Church in New Zealand is the work of 
 God. The finger of God has been manifested in all that 
 has taken place in New Zealand from the time Mr. Samuel
 
 204 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vr. 
 
 Marsden landed here in 1814 until now. It is the 
 comforting proiDhecy fulfilled that the little one shall 
 become a thousand. It is a comfort that what one man 
 has begun should become in little more than half a 
 century what the Church of New Zealand now is. 
 When I look around, and look at our New Zealand 
 Church, and think of the time when I came to Sydney 
 and found Bishop Broughton there, with a small number 
 of clergymen around him, and reflect that now that little 
 band has extended into all the provinces of New South 
 AVales, with its immense variety of dioceses, Tasmania, 
 Western Australia, South Australia, and these provinces 
 of New Zealand, with all its satellites in Melanesia — I 
 feel that the power and influence of God's Holy Spirit 
 is being manifested upon earth, and that it has pleased 
 Almighty God to enable us to see His power with our 
 own eyes, so that we need not walk by faith alone, but 
 by sight. Surely it is a great encouragement to all of 
 us to recognise in everything the power of God working 
 through human instruments, and bringing about in His 
 own good time such vast results. If some of the pillars 
 that have been erected seem to have fallen into decay ; 
 if some part of the native missionary work — that work in 
 which so many of you were interested before I came 
 here — if at this present moment that seems to have fallen 
 into decay, may we not hope that, by God's providence, 
 and in the inscrutable development of His will, this deep 
 dejection will last only for a time, that the tabernacle 
 which has fallen down may be built up again, and that 
 the native people may return again to Christianity ? 
 Our native clergymen need not return, because they have 
 not swerved : it may be said of each of them, like Alil- 
 ton's seraph Abdiel, 'Among the faithless, faithful only he.' 
 Though they be few in number, they have been ever faith- 
 ful to that faith which they have esjioused, and still the 
 native Church is full of vitality and hope. In all these 
 things we can trace the special blessing of Almighty God, 
 and the signs of steadfastness in the native pastors lead 
 us to hope that the time is not far distant when the 
 native Church will be restored again to even a better 
 state than ever. That Church I leave to you, as I have 
 said before as a special legacy. I hope you will not
 
 1868-1870.] ADDRESS OF MAOEIS. 265 
 
 let the increase of European population so absorb your 
 attention as to cause you to neglect that remnant, which, 
 however poor it may be, is still a remnant in the great 
 congregation of Christ. It is impossible for me to 
 follow this too kind address through all its details, for 
 that would involve the history of half a life. I will 
 conclude now by most earnestly, most affectionately thank- 
 ing you for this beautiful address, praying for you, as 
 I am sure you will all pray for me, that all of you, 
 in whatever station of life it has pleased God to call you, 
 may fulfil your duty and perform your work with the 
 full guidance and blessing of the Holy Spirit, in bright 
 and unclouded faith in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, 
 letting no vanity, no ambition, no eccentricity, no private 
 feelings of interest lead you into anything that will 
 not tend to the good of the Church and the glory of 
 God." 
 
 Most touching of all was the address of the Maori 
 people, for whom he had done so much, whose cause he 
 had espoused at the cost of his influence and popularity 
 with his fellow countrymen, and of whose recovery he 
 never despaired, even though a large number of them had 
 apostatized. 
 
 The natives of the Waimate and the Bay of Islands, 
 among whom had been for some years the place which 
 he had called his home, were unable to come to Auckland, 
 and had hoped that their old friend would have come to 
 them, and seen once more the spot where he had first 
 pitched his tent ; but time forbade, and they sent by their 
 own clergyman, the Eev. Matiu Taupaki, an address in 
 Maori, of which the following is a literal translation : — 
 
 " Sire, the Bishop ! salutations to you and to mother 
 (Mrs. Selwyn) ! We, the people of the places to which 
 you first came, still retain our affection for you both. Our 
 not seeing you occasions us grief, because there will 
 be no seeing you again. We rejoiced at hearing that you 
 were coming to see us ; great was the joy of the heart ; 
 and now, hearing that it cannot be, we are again in grief.
 
 iJG6 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vi. 
 
 " Sire, great is our affection for you both, who are now 
 "being lost among us. But how can it be helped, in con- 
 sequence of the word of our great one, the Queen ? 
 
 " Sire, our thought with regard to you is that you are 
 like the poor man's lamb taken away by the rich man. 
 This is our parting wisli for you both : Go, Sire, and may 
 God preserve you both ! JMay He also provide a man to 
 take your place of equal powers with yourself ! Go, Sire, 
 we shall no more see each other in the body, but we shall 
 see one another in our thoughts. However, we are led and 
 protected and sanctified by the same Spirit. Such is the 
 nature of this short life to sunder our bodies ; but in a 
 little while, when we shall meet in the assembly of the 
 saints, we shall see each other face to face, one fold under 
 one shepherd. This is our lament for you in few words : 
 ' Love to our friend, who has disappeared abruptly from 
 
 the ranks ! 
 Is he a small man that he was so beloved ? 
 He has not his equal among the many. 
 The food he dispensed is longed for by me.' 
 
 The general Maori address was in hardly less touching 
 or characteristic terms : — 
 
 " To Bishop Selwyn, greeting, — Ours is a word of fare- 
 well to you from us, your Maori people, who reside in this 
 island. You leave here these two peoples, the Maoris and 
 the Europeans. Though you leave us here, God will 
 protect both peoples, and Queen Victoria and the Governor 
 will also protect them, so that the grace of Providence may 
 rest on them both. father, greetings ! Go to your own 
 country; go, the grace of God accompany you. Go, or 
 the face of the deep waters. Pather, take hence with you 
 the commandments of God, leaving the peoples here 
 bewildered. Who can tell that after your departure things 
 will be as well with us as during your stay in this island ? 
 Our love for you and our remembrance of you will never 
 cease. Por you will be separated from us in your bodily 
 presence, and your countenance will be hidden from our 
 eyes. Enough ! Tliis concludes our words of farewell to 
 you. Eroni your children l"
 
 1868-1870.] RETURN TO ENGLAND. 267 
 
 And now the wrench had to be made : on October 20th, 
 the day of parting came : a general holiday was kept at 
 Auckland ; S. Paul's Church was crowded on the occasion 
 of the farewell service, and the streets and wharfs were 
 thronged with thousands who were looking their last on 
 the great Bishop of New Zealand. Hardly less enthu- 
 siastic was the reception at Sydney, where twenty-eight 
 years before he had been welcomed by Bishop Broughton, 
 and here, as always, he pleaded for peace and unity, and 
 insisted on it that as the troubles of the Church increased, 
 so did the necessity of seeking for counsel in synodical 
 meetings to unite her members more cordially one with 
 another. 
 
 There were some who thought the bishop superior to, or 
 proof against, the softer emotions of humanity. It is well 
 that such opinions should be confronted by the following 
 letter ^vritten to his lay alter ego, Sir William Martin, after 
 they had parted, as it seemed, for ever : — . 
 
 "Sydney. Nov. 2nd, 1868. 
 
 " My very dear Friend, 
 
 " After our sorrowful parting on the 20th (sorrowful, yet 
 full of comfort) we were carried along rapidly so as to 
 take our last look at New Zealand^ twenty-four hours after 
 the time of our leaving you. At 6.45 p.m. on the 21st 
 Cape Maria Van Diemen melted away into the twilight 
 mist. Another look at the ' Three Kings ' was the close 
 of aU ; and then the thought came upon me with great 
 bitterness that I should never see the dear old land again. 
 But the mind has nov/ settled down upon its new bearings, 
 and the magnet of English interests and work begins to 
 drav^ me on." 
 
 In the last days of 1868 the bishop again reached Eng- 
 land, accompanied by the Bishop of Wellington ; his New 
 Zealand See was not filled up, and he was commissioned 
 by the Synod to elect his own successor. The Piev. W. G. 
 Cowie, Eector of S. Mary's, Stafford, was subsequently conse- 
 crated Bishop of Auckland, the endowment having been
 
 208 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [( hap. vi. 
 
 raised by the energy of his predecessor, who for some time 
 continued to be, as he said, " ' I'Eveque des deux mondes,' 
 auother proof of that lust of power of which I have been 
 accused." 
 
 On the Feast of the Circumcision the bishop addressed 
 a pastoral letter to the Clergy of the Diocese of Lichfield, 
 in which his plan of work was sketched out. He found 
 that nothing had stood still during his absence, and that 
 no arrears awaited him: that ordinations, consecrations, 
 and confirmations, had all been provided for by Bishop 
 Trower. The bishop was now single-handed, with no hope 
 of obtaining episcopal help save by the division of the 
 diocese, on which his heart was set, and in view of which 
 all the details of the Archidiaconal Conferences had been 
 arranged, yet he determined to hold Annual Confirmations 
 for every part of the diocese, assigning to Staffordshire the 
 months of February, March, April, and May ; to Derby- 
 shire, June, July, and August ; and to Shropshire, Septem- 
 ber and October. He was released from his attendance in 
 the House of Lords as Junior Prelate, and the Diocesan 
 Organization now completed left him free to devote him- 
 self to the spiritual duties of his office. In his first 
 pastoral letter he thus made known his intentions, and 
 the light in which he esteemed the grace of confirmation, 
 and the kind and method of preparation which he desired 
 his clergy to observe. 
 
 " I venture to hope, in submission to Him, without 
 Whom we can do nothing, that I shall be able to admin- 
 ister the rite of Confirmation annvally in all the larger 
 parishes ; and in each of the smaller parishes once in two 
 or three years, by a cycle so arranged that the Confirmation 
 may be held in each parish in turn. There will thus be 
 an Annual Confirmation for every large parish, and for 
 every group of two or three smaller parishes. The Rural 
 Deanery Chapters will kindly assist me in arranging this 
 cycle in such a manner as may best suit the convenience 
 of the clergy and of the candidates. Three, or at the 
 most, four small Parishes may be included in each group.
 
 18G8-1870.] CONFIRMATION. 269 
 
 I hope it may thus be found possible to induce the Parents 
 and Sponsors of the Children to attend as witnesses of their 
 Confirmation, and to meet the Bishop afterwards at the 
 Holy Communion. 
 
 " Upon this plan no formal notice will be necessary to 
 call upon you to begin to collect your candidates. Every 
 Confirmation will be the means of inviting the young per- 
 sons next in succession to present themselves as candidates 
 for the Confirmation for the ensuing year. The impulse will 
 not be lost, nor will the dead weight have to be heaved 
 afresh by a new effort. The only notice required will be 
 of the precise day of the Confirmation. The bishop's in- 
 tention to hold a Confirmation, and the clergyman's con- 
 tinual work in preparing his candidates, will be assumed 
 as a matter of course." 
 
 It was to continuous preparation for Confirmation, ex- 
 hortation to which should be no more needed by the 
 clergy than exhortation to visit the sick or to administer 
 the Sacrament, and to the influence of the newly- con- 
 firmed on the younger children next in succession, that 
 he looked as the most effectual means of retaining young 
 persons, after Confirmation, in the exercise of religious 
 duties. Every clergyman, he thought, should have his an- 
 nual class of catechumens, as every vine had its annual 
 vintage, and every cornfield its annual harvest ; the work 
 of Bible-teaching should never cease, but advance in 
 love and earnestness, and in more personal application 
 to the heart as the day draws nearer " when the Great 
 Teacher of all things and Guide of all truth shall be 
 invoked to pour down on the child His manifold gifts of 
 grace." 
 
 A remarkable letter has been preserved, which shows 
 still more plainly the bishop's view of the pastoral respon- 
 sibility, and of the limits of the episcopal duty. A young 
 woman who had been confirmed by him had fallen into 
 open sin, and her case was known to the whole parish ; 
 the incumbent made it known to the bishop before his 
 next visit, and suggested that he should refer to it as a
 
 270 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vi. 
 
 vvariiing to those about to be coufirmed. The bishop 
 wrote: — 
 
 "Your letter saddened my heart this morning, and 
 brought home more than ever the need of the Comforter, 
 to strengthen our frail children, and to encourage us to 
 persevere under such discouragements. There is, I think, 
 a necessity for caution in a bishop seeming to know too 
 nmch of the arcana of a parish. It might lower the parish 
 priest in the estimation of his people, and impair their 
 confidence in him. The bishop could never do the pas- 
 toral work in a diocese like tliis for want of time and 
 strength to deal with cases individually ; he might supplant 
 the parish priest without replacing him. Then as to my- 
 self : if I did not go on with my work in faith and hope I 
 should soon fail ; if I were to think that a large number 
 of promises made in confirmation would be broken, how 
 difticult it would be to keep up one's own tone of love 
 and zeal ! 1 would rather not know too much of details, 
 but yet I shall be very glad to confer with you on the 
 subject and see whether anything can be done." 
 
 His manner of administering confirmation was very 
 striking and unusual ; it is needless to say that the cate- 
 chumens received the laying on of liands not by com- 
 panies, but individually; when the numbers allowed he 
 called each person by his or her Christian name, which 
 had been his custom in New Zealand ; the particular cir- 
 cumstances of each individual were made known to him, 
 and those who had received lay baptism and had not been 
 received into the Church were dealt with separately, and 
 the reason fur so doing explained. During the ten years 
 of his Lichfield Episcopate he confirmed thus singly and 
 carefully, by the aid of his coadjutors, just 100,000 souls ; 
 and his last public ministration, performed in much physical 
 pain andweakness,was the confirmation of "those dear boys" 
 at Shrewsbury. He determined also himself to institute, 
 whenever ])racticable, every new incumbent coram ccclcsia, 
 and compiled a special office to be used on such occasions- 
 
 The constant intercourse whicli tlie Bishop thus had
 
 1868-1870.] CONSECEATION OF S. JOHN'S CHAPEL. 271 
 
 with the clergy and laity of his diocese not only made 
 him acquainted with every part of it, but also let in a 
 flood of light on the remotest corners, and in a certain 
 sense made each man his brother's keeper. This was felt 
 at once by those to whom an Episcopate thus careful and 
 vigorous was distasteful, and was expressed in an exag- 
 gerated way by an old clergyman, who said : " When I was 
 a young man it was thought sufficient for every one to do 
 his own duty ; but now every one is expected to do the 
 duty of everybody else." 
 
 In May 1869 the bishop preached on the occasion of 
 the consecration of the new chapel of S. John's College, 
 Cambridge, a society that beyond almost any other has 
 sent forth men qualified to serve God both in Church and 
 State ; its roll of members is unusually rich in the names 
 of famous missionaries ; on these the preacher dwelt with 
 pride and thankfulness, and then he added : 
 
 " And can we forget to-day that brother who went forth 
 from this college to preach the gospel to the simple tribes 
 of Southern Africa and ends, alas ! in denying the faith he 
 went to preach ? We know that he has sinned a great 
 sin ; we trust that he has not sinned the sin unto death. 
 let us remember him to-day as we kneel at the holy altar ! " 
 
 But work thus exacting threatened soon to do what 
 New Zealand and Melanesia had been unable to do. 
 When it is remembered what bodily, mental, and 
 spiritual trials the bishop had gone through in New 
 Zealand for twenty-seven years, and then how he had 
 worked in the diocese of Lichfield during the first half of 
 1868, and then how he had crossed the world, had been 
 shipwrecked, had wound up the affairs of his New 
 Zealand See, and returned to England on December 31, 
 1868 ; and further how he had worked during the first six 
 months of 1869, how the illness and death of his brother, 
 the Lord Justice, had told upon him, it will be no matter 
 of surprise that on August 8, while preaching to a crowded 
 congregation at Hayfield he felt his heart almost give up 
 work ; at midnight he thought himself to be dying. As he
 
 272 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [( hap. vr. 
 
 said, " the boiler was not large enough for the engine." 
 The next three months were full of great anxiety. The 
 Bishop of Wellington had taken his confirmation work 
 in June in order to allow him to be in London at 
 his brother's bedside, and in August, the same assist- 
 ance was given in Shropshire, and in the following 
 month the Ordination was held by Bishop Abraham un- 
 der a commission in Lichfield Cathedral. In addition to 
 diocesan work and domestic sorrow the Bishop had taken 
 an active share in the consultations and debates about the 
 proposed disestablishment of the Irish Church. To Sir 
 William Martin he had thus described liis proposals : 
 
 " I advise, Cassandra-like : — 
 
 " 1. A declaration of adhesion to the Formularies of the 
 English Church. 
 
 " 2. A surrender into a common fund of the value of all 
 life interests, which at 3^ per cent, will yield half the 
 present revenue. 
 
 " 3. A proportionate reduction npon all benefices above 
 £150 per annum, including bishoprics. 
 
 " 4. A redistribution of parishes as lives drop, reducing 
 the present number of clergymen from 2,000 to 1,500 or 
 even 1,000, which last would give an average of 700 popu- 
 lation to each clergyman; 1,000 x 700 = 700,000 Church 
 members in Ireland. 
 
 5. An appeal to the laity to make good the deficiency 
 until the reduction of numbers shall have restored the 
 balance, 2,000 clergymen at half salaries = 1,000 ditto at 
 full salary. There is no doubt the Irish Churcli may be 
 made far more efficient than before ; but two rocks are 
 ahead, self-interest and party spirit. Some are for claim- 
 ing their incomes in full; some are for running a tilt 
 against ' the objectionable passages in the prayer-book.' 
 The Bishop of Wellington and I held np New Zealand, but 
 people in England do not like ' a little child to lead them.' 
 Thus pleasing nobody, I shall probably have no part in 
 rebuilding the Irish Church, though I feel as if I had 
 served an apprenticeship to qualify me to act as a master- 
 builder. But the habits of thought are so different, the 
 predominance of ' meum and tuvm,' is so strong that my 
 ' noxfrvms ' will not be accepted."
 
 1868-1870.] REVISED CATHEDRAL STATUTES. 273 
 
 The Bishop returned to Lichfield in October 1869, and 
 he thankfully recorded the services of a trusty grey horse 
 and an equally trusty coachman who had taken him in 
 safety over North Derbyshire and up every hill out of 
 Whitby in his "baker's cart," as he called the sort of 
 exaggerated " cobourg " which took him with the same horse 
 and coachman about the diocese, and was perpetually going 
 to or from the station at Lichfield to welcome the coming 
 or speed the parting guest. But though restored to health, 
 the Bishop was not what he had been before his illness ; 
 he was weak in body and depressed in spirits by the fear 
 that he would have to abandon all his plans for annual 
 confirmations, for public institution of incumbents, and for 
 the working of ruridecanal and archidiaconal conferences, 
 and he resolved to resign his See rather than sacrifice the 
 efificient administration of it. At that time the Bishop of 
 Wellington again visited him ; he had shaped his life since 
 1841 with a view to help the work of his friend, and he 
 now offered to share the labours of Lichfield, as eighteen 
 years before he had shared in the work of the undivided 
 See of jSTew Zealand. The offer was eagerly embraced, and 
 so it came about that the Diocese of Lichfield, which needs 
 subdivision more urgently than ever did New Zealand, has 
 for long benefited by the services of Bishop Abraham. 
 
 Before the close of this year (1869) the bishop had 
 cited the General Chapter of the Cathedral Church to meet 
 in the chapter-house : the canons, both residentiary and 
 non-residentiary, attended " to consider the reports of the 
 Cathedral Commissioners, 1854-5, and to point out any 
 matters suggested thereby which might be beneficially 
 applied to increase the general efficiency throughout the 
 diocese of the cathedral body." 
 
 Here w^as an attempt to embody in his own cathedral 
 and in its system all the functions which thirty years before 
 the bishop had claimed for cathedral establishments ; he 
 was especially fortunate in his cathedral, as he possessed an 
 authority almost unique among the cathedrals of England,
 
 274 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vi. 
 
 " with the assent and consent of the dean and chapter to 
 repeal, abridge, alter, ratify, and confirm existing statutes 
 and constitutions, and also, when it shall be necessary, to 
 ordain and establish other wholesome and necessary 
 statutes, constitutions, and decrees, for the good of the 
 said Church." 
 
 At this chapter the members admitted the responsi- 
 bility of exerting themselves to the utmost, both in their 
 individual and corporate capacity, to bring the message of 
 the gospel and the teaching of the Church to the masses of 
 men within the diocese, and pledged themselves to devote 
 their energies to the work in any way which might seem 
 practicable and conducive to good. How truly the cathe- 
 dral became the centre of spiritual life to the whole diocese 
 will appear in the following pages : it should be stated here 
 that the statutes were subjected to very careful revision and 
 translation for some years, and on December 20, 1875, 
 were ratified and confirmed by the bishop with the assent 
 of the Chapter, and now present a body of intelligible and 
 practicable regulations. 
 
 This was a great triumph and source of thankfulness, 
 and on December 31 the bishop wrote to a correspondent 
 at the antipodes : 
 
 " Our chapter meeting at the close was most happy and 
 harmonious : I had asked all the Prebendaries to stay over 
 the night, and this secured us a second day on which before 
 twelve o'clock we closed our proceedings with earnestness 
 and solemnity, and with much thankfulness of heart. A few 
 words (all that were necessary) were spoken, to withdraw 
 all ill-considered expressions. On December 21, when the 
 whole document had been printed, we met pro fovnid to 
 sign and seal, and so came to pass the cutlLanasid of the 
 old comjiosition, and of all of the unintelligible stuff which 
 has been sworn to for ' four or five centuries.' " 
 
 Lichfield had under the rule of Bishop Lonsdale been 
 among the first dioceses to establish Theological Colleges •
 
 18G8-1870.] THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE. 275 
 
 the lead had indeed been taken by dioceses, as Chichester, 
 and Bath and Wells, Avhose necessities were the least urgent, 
 and the theological seminaries, which in these cities owed 
 so much to the care and learning of Canon Swainson and 
 Canon Finder respectively, must have the credit of con- 
 sidering the welfare of the whole Church rather than of 
 the comparatively small , dioceses in which they were 
 founded. Cuddesdon had made a step in advance in 1854 
 when it opened its doors to students and provided for them 
 all the advantages of common life to which its graduate 
 members had been accustomed at the universities, and 
 which to non-graduates formed no insignificant portion of 
 the education offered to them. Lichfield had founded its 
 theological college in 1856, and opened it in 1857, rather 
 on the model of Wells and Chichester than Cuddesdon, in 
 that its local habitation was limited to a hired house for the 
 Principal's use, while the students found lodgings for 
 themselves ; it difiered however from its predecessors in 
 that, while it primarily offered to graduates the means of 
 pursuing theological study and an opportunity of devo- 
 tional and spiritual preparation for the priesthood, it 
 avowedly regarded the spiritual necessities of the diocese 
 as of first importance, and aimed at the training not only 
 of graduates but also of non-graduates, a class of persons 
 whom fthe needs of the diocese could not but welcome, 
 and " about whom the question was not whether they 
 should be admitted to Holy Orders, but whether they should 
 pass through a regular course of training and preparation 
 previously to their offering themselves to tlie bishojj for 
 examination." Of this class thirty-five students had passed 
 through the college during the first ten years of its exist- 
 ence, of whom thirty-one had been ordained to cuiacies in 
 the diocese of Lichfield, 
 
 This was a scheme entirely congenial with Bishop 
 Selwyn's mind, and he threw himself into the work of the 
 college and extended to it unfailing sympathy. In 1870 
 he set iurtii in a pastoral letter to the clergy and laity the 
 
 VOL. ir. T
 
 276 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap, vi 
 
 necessities of the diocese, the most urgent of which, after 
 the experience of more than two years and of nine ordina- 
 tions,he declared to be an extension and improvement of the 
 means of clerical education. The rapid increase of the mining 
 and manufacturingpopulation — the division of parishes— the 
 multiplication of benefices — the grants for the maintenance 
 of additional curates supplied by the Ecclesiastical Com- 
 missioners and by the societies established for that purpose 
 — had led to a demand for ministrations which the uni- 
 versities alone were quite unable to meet. The Bishop was 
 entirely consistent with himself : thirty years before he had 
 expressed his earnest hope that the Church would take root 
 downwards, and " that many a rustic mother w^ould feel an 
 honest pride in the profession of her son and bless the Church 
 wdiich had adopted him into her service." In New Zealand 
 he had groaned under the burden of inefficient and half- 
 trained assistants, whose education had been only that of 
 fifth-rate grammar-schools, and he was not likely to adopt 
 the popular fallacy wdiich, under the phrase " having the 
 root of the matter in him," substitutes a flaccid pietism for 
 the due cultivation of the highest gifts of God to man. 
 Speaking at Wolverhampton he said, " ^ly brethren of the 
 clergy know well the difficulty of obtaining curates. The 
 customary mode of advertising in the church newspapers 
 may be said to have failed entirely in our populous parishes. 
 Sometimes the advertisements remain for a long time un- 
 answered, and very frequently they are answered by men 
 who seek the curacy only as a title for Holy Orders with 
 no intention of remaining in the parish longer than the 
 stipulated time. Thus the work of our more important 
 parishes is marred by a constant change and rapid succes- 
 sion of inexperienced curates. Thus an artificial demand 
 is created fin- the ordination of many more clergymen than 
 the diocese really requires. Upon this 1 am sometimes 
 asked to lower the standard of clerical education and to 
 abridge the period of probation. It may easily be seen 
 that this would not supply the want. It would only
 
 1868-1870.] SUPPLY OF CLERGY. 277 
 
 produce an equally rapid succession of inexperienced men. 
 Eaw recruits and untrained levies are the first to shrink 
 from the hardships of real warfare. So will the untrained 
 curate shrink from the daily and hourly work of our town 
 parishes. I need not say how the population of our towns 
 is advancing, if not in real education, at least in acuteness 
 and knowledge of the world. Can I consent to place over 
 them an untrained curate with scanty knowledge and no 
 experience ? We must go to the root of these things. We 
 must train om" own men, clergy and laity ahke must help. 
 We must put aside all party feeling. Souls are lost, not 
 saved, by parties in the Church. We have our own theo- 
 logical college now numbering fifty students. We are en- 
 larging the college house to receive as many of them as we 
 can under domestic rule. We send them out under licence 
 to help the parochial clergy in district- visiting and school- 
 room services. We teach them the Bible and the Prayer- 
 book, and how to read, use, and understand them. We 
 desire to make them Anglican Churchmen, neither more nor 
 less, for we are assured that in no branch of the Church is 
 there more of truth and less of error than in our own. 
 We say this not in boasting, but in thankfulness." 
 
 His object was to utilize the services of men of humble 
 origin and to equip them by the best training available. 
 The one defect in the existing college was the absence of a 
 house in which the unmarried students could lodge and 
 have the full benefit of the collegiate system ; this was 
 remedied in 1870 by rental, and in 1873 by the purchase 
 (the money being raised in part by the diocese) of an ex- 
 cellent and substantial house which provided accommo- 
 dation for the principal and his family, for the vice-prin- 
 cipal, a ad for twenty-five students, as well as a lecture- 
 room and library ; the next requirement was a fund to 
 supply free exhibitions to men who promised to be useful 
 clergymen, but who were unable to contribute to the cost 
 of their training. There was something almost appalling 
 in its sadness in the bishop's pastoral of 1870, when he 
 
 T 2
 
 178 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [; hap. 
 
 said " I still receive urgent applications to accept as can- 
 didates for Holy Orders men who have neither obtained a 
 university degree nor a testimonium from a theological 
 college. The plea is always the same : That they have not 
 the means of maintaining themselves at college. It is im- 
 possible for me to receive such candidates without lower- 
 ing the whole standard of the examinations. And yet, in 
 rejecting them, I may exclude many from the ministry 
 who are more worthy than some of those whom I admit. 
 It seems therefore to be most desirable that the collegiate 
 house, for the present at least, should be used for the re- 
 ception of foundation students to be selected after careful 
 examination and upon special testimonials from clergymen 
 under whom they have worked ; and, in order that poverty 
 may be no bar to their admission, that their whole expenses 
 should be provided for." 
 
 Out of this grew the famous " Probationer System," 
 which is believed to have had no counterpart in any English 
 diocese, but which has worked sufficiently well to justify 
 its introduction everywhere. At the Stafford Archidiaconal 
 Conference, held in November, 1870, the bishop was re- 
 quested to form a Board of Examiners for the purpose of 
 testing from time to time the qualifications and attain- 
 ments of young men recommended by the parochial clergy 
 as probable candidates for Holy Orders. These examina- 
 tions were held twice a year immediately after the Lent 
 and September ordinations, and it was intimated that the 
 course of probation and examination would probably ex- 
 tend over two years, and that a man thus tested would 
 probably obtain the college testimoiual in less than the 
 ordinary period of two years. 
 
 It may be supposed that the special snare of young men 
 whose social position is benefited by their becoming 
 clergymen, although their pecuniary position is equally 
 sure to be injured by the fact, is a spirit of self-assertion ; 
 tlie doubtfulness of one's position is ever apt to reveal itself 
 in over- assertion of imaginary }iiivile_i^c.s : it is therefore
 
 1838-1870.] PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. 279 
 
 necessary that men so circumstanced should in one sense 
 be " kept down " while in all other respects they should be 
 assisted to rise. As in New Zealand, so at Lichfield, the 
 bishop found in self-help and mutual service the means of 
 humbling and elevating such men: and it is no mean 
 triumph of the power and success of the college system 
 that a clergyman who experienced all the trials of a pro- 
 bationer, lay-helper, and college exhibitioner has, out of 
 very love and gratitude to the bishop, contributed, at the 
 request of one who was almost unknown to him, the 
 following account of his own career. 
 
 " I. very gladly send you some account of my remem- 
 brances of my late dear bishop. I came into the diocese 
 in 1872 as lay-deacon of a scattered country parish, and 
 I was one of the earliest ' probationers.' 
 
 "The probationer system is peculiar to the Diocese of 
 Lichfield, and was started by Bishop Selwyn. Under it 
 men may go up to Lichfield for examination twice in two 
 years, during which they may either give |themselves up 
 entirely to lay-deacon's work, or may continue in their 
 trade or profession, at the same time doing what work they 
 can under the guidance of some parish priest. Another 
 year before ordination has to be spent at Lichfield Theolo- 
 gical College. 
 
 " I can never be sufficiently thankful for my two lay- 
 deacon years. I gained information in them respecting 
 pastoral work which has since been simply invaluable. 
 We always saw the bishop when we went up to the Palace 
 for examination, and were invited to luncheon, when he 
 generally delighted to tell you stories about his New 
 Zealand life. He was always kind, but thorouglily business- 
 like on these occasions — perhaps just a trifle sharp. He 
 had a special objection to being asked by any candidate to 
 grant him a private interview, and the reason he once told 
 us was that soon after he came to Lichfield lie had seen 
 several young men privately who had so misconstrued his 
 words that in self-defence he was obliged to be more careful. 
 
 " During the early part of my time in the college house 
 I had the misfortune to fall foul of the Principal, and the 
 matter was reported to the bishop. In the next term I
 
 280 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [ciiai'. vi. 
 
 had occasion to ask for the use of the large room at the 
 pah\ce which the "bishop had previously given mc. I 
 received a note from him in which he said that ' there 
 conhl only be one objection to my having the room, and 
 that was that he feared that I, like so many other young 
 men, was apt to think more highly of myself than I ought 
 to think.' JMy request was then granted, and in the 
 kindest way the bishop pointed out to me the beauty of 
 the grace of humility, and begged me to cultivate it. 
 Some time after I gave a lecture in the large room for a 
 charitable work in the diocese. On the following day I 
 dined at the palace, and after dinner the bishop came 
 across the drawing-room to see how I had succeeded. He 
 then told me he had quite intended to be present himself, 
 but was obliged to keep an engagement which could not 
 be put off. He then went on to say that he always told 
 people who were hindered by the rain from going to church 
 when there was a collection, to send their offering, and 
 that he must practise as he preached, upon which he gave 
 me tliirty shillings for himself and Mrs. Selwyn. He was 
 always in his place at early college matins, which were said 
 in the palace chapel. The chapel was at that time im- 
 perfectly warmed, and I have often shivered under two 
 great coats and a gown. The bishop seldom if ever put 
 on an overcoat, and we used to wonder at his powers of 
 endurance. He was very quick to mark men's absence, 
 and used to speak to them about it very sev^erely. 'Mr. 
 G.' he said to one man, " I have not seen you at chapel 
 lately.' ' No, my lord, I have had a bad cold.' ' I think, 
 Mr. G. your cold must have been bad since the beginning 
 of this term.' 
 
 " He often visited the college house and brought over 
 many of his visitors. My room was in tlie new buildings, 
 and had been formerly a harness-room. The bishop one 
 day brought in one of his rural deans and mentioned the 
 fact, adding, ' But I think we have the collar on the right 
 liorse now.' 
 
 " I have been told that once before my time, the bishop 
 came over to the college in the morning and joined the 
 men in mowing the lawn. I'resently the luncheon bell 
 lang and he said he would go to tlie palace and get some 
 lunch and come back and help to finish the work, but long
 
 18G8-1870.] METHOD OF TEACHING. 281 
 
 before the men were ready the bishop was hard at work 
 again with his coat off. 
 
 "Before the advent ordination, when I was ordained, the 
 bishop required all the college men who were caudidates 
 to go to him for instruction ; we were joined by several 
 others. He generally kept us in the library for about 
 three hours, giving us four days a week, and this he con- 
 tinued during the six weeks before the examination. He 
 did not however ' cram ' us for this ; we often wished he 
 would. He took such subjects as Sin, Justification, Con- 
 fession and Absolution, Conversion, &c. His method was 
 this. We generally found written upon a black-board a 
 number of texts and references to the Prayer-book and 
 Articles. We were supplied witli paper, and told first to 
 copy exactly what was written on the board, and then to 
 digest it, looking out all the texts in the Greek Testament. 
 While we were so occupied, the bishop opened his letters. 
 He then took us in hand, going carefully and methodically 
 through the subject, making us in turn read the verses and 
 answer his questions, illustrating his remarks now and 
 then by a reference to some book on his shelves, sticking 
 like a leech to some unfortunate man who was idle or 
 stupid, stopping perhaps to mend the fire, and then resum- 
 ing the lesson, using the fire-shovel as a pointer, and 
 teaching with the greatest energy and clearness. I look 
 back upon these instructions with very great pleasure, the 
 time was spent most usefully, and at the same time 
 pleasantly, for the bishop himself was often the first to 
 lead off the laughter when one of our number had per- 
 petrated some ' bull.' He was most particular in requiring 
 our attendance. One man had been stopping at a country 
 house in the neighbourhood, and had managed to come 
 into the library when the lesson was half over. The 
 bishop inquired the reason of his late appearance, and was 
 told tliat the roads w^re in such a slippery condition that 
 the horses could not be taken out earlier. ' If it had been 
 a football match,' replied the bishop sternly, ' I expect 
 you would have managed it.' At the same time he would, 
 if possible, allow nothing to interrupt him when giving his 
 instructions. Many a time did his "secretary bring in 
 the cards of clergymen who wished to see him, and the 
 almost invariable reply was, " Ask Mr. sc-and-so to stay
 
 282 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vi. 
 
 to lunch, 1 shall be glad to see him afterwards ; " and on 
 one occasion Sir Percival Heywood had called to see the 
 bishop. He left the room for a minute, and then returned 
 with Sir Percival, and introduced him to " his young men," 
 and then left him and resumed his work. What struck 
 one most at this time was the great method of his lessons, 
 and his wonderful knowledge of the Bible and Church 
 formularies, and he frequently told us that his object in 
 spending so much time with us was that when we got 
 into our parishes we might " know our way about our 
 Bibles and Prayer Books." Certainly if we did not it was 
 through no fault of his. I hope we all appreciated his kind- 
 ness in adding this to his already too abundant labours. In 
 addition to the positive information which we gained, 
 there was tliis great advantage, that we could no longer 
 regard him as a stranger. We felt as we went forth to our 
 work that we knew our bishop, and that he knew us. 
 
 " The Ember Week was a memorable time. All the candi- 
 dates fed at the palace. The day began with matins in 
 the cathedral, and ended with evensong in the palace 
 chapel. Addresses were given each evening by chosen 
 preachers — the bishop himself always giving the closing 
 address on the Saturday evening. I was so fortunate 
 as to hear him on several of these occasions, and can 
 testify to the remarkable earnestness and power of his 
 eloquence at such times. No other address ever equalled 
 his. We knew our fate on Friday morning, and the Friday 
 and Saturday were spent in quasi-retreat. On the morning 
 of Saturday, the bishoj) gave us a lecture on the oaths, 
 using the blackboard, as was his custom, and in the after- 
 noon we took the oaths in the library. Of the Ordination 
 itself I need not speak, except to mention how solemnly 
 t'le bishop performed his portion of the service. At the 
 close we walked in procession to the palace, opening out 
 ^\'hen we reached the door for the bishop to pass between us. 
 He then stood at the door, and as each one entered he re- 
 ceived us with a warm shake of the hand and " God bless 
 
 you, Mr, ." The evening was spent pleasantly in the 
 
 drawing-room. The bishop was truly our Father in God — 
 not, indeed, fond or demonstrative, but true, strong, and lov- 
 ing. I may mention several instances of his kindness to my- 
 self I was curate of a district in a larue awkward colliciv
 
 1868-1870.] FATHERLY COUNSELS, 283 
 
 parish, in which a permanent church was urgently needed. 
 My vicar had given me carte Uanche to do what I could in 
 tlie matter, and the first thing was to consult the bishop. 
 This T did when I went to Lichfield for my priest's orders. 
 He appointed an interview for the afternoon after the ordi- 
 nation, and then, tired as he must have been — for the num- 
 ber of ordinands had been large — he went most carefully 
 into the subject, questioning me closely as to the condition 
 of the parish, and finally promising to do all he could to 
 smooth the difficulties, and giving me, as I knelt before 
 him, his blessing for this special work. I can only say 
 that so earnest was his manner, one could almost feel the 
 blessing come, and I cannot tell you how valuable I felt it 
 to be in the great difficulties which the project had after- 
 wards to encounter. He called me back as I was leaving 
 the room, and bid me remember that " Eome was not built 
 in a day," and that whatever was worth doing was certain 
 to be laborious, but that I must be of good cheer. The 
 church is now nearly finished. Twice I had occasion to 
 consvdt the bishop about leaving the curacy to which I 
 was ordained. The first time he sent me the following- 
 letter, which I reckon amongst my great treasures : — 
 
 "'The Palace, Lichfield, JuneTth, 1876. 
 
 '"My dear Mr. 
 
 "'I have read and considered the correspondence herewith 
 returned, and have been led, I trust, by the guidance for 
 which we pray especially at this holy season, to the follow- 
 ing judgment : 1. That yuu are placed in a position of great 
 usefulness at , in tlie midst of great spiritual destitu- 
 tion. 2. That the work, by God's blessing, has begun to 
 prosper in your hands. 3. That all such plans as are now 
 in progress are entered upon with the morally implied con- 
 dition, that you will not leave them to fall away and 
 come to nothing, for a mere preference for some other field 
 of duty of a similar kind. A call to a fixed position as a 
 beneficed clergyman is, I think, very diti'erent from a change 
 of one curacy for another. My fatherly advice to you is, 
 not to add one more to the number of curates who 
 ' never continue in one stay.' 
 
 " A year and a half later on I was in great doubt as to 
 V, hat course I should pursue. My best friends one and all
 
 284 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [. iiai>. vi. 
 
 advising me to seek another sphere of work. I woukl 
 however, ' do nothing without the bishop,' who promised 
 to see me when he visited the parish shortly for a Confir- 
 mation. \Vhen the Confirmation was over — the second he 
 had held that day — he sent for me and asked me to walk 
 with him, shaking liands with some of tlie choirnien and 
 kissing tlie sexton's little children as he left the church- 
 yard. He kept me with 1dm for about an hour, and 
 listened far more patiently than I had even wished to all 
 my grievances, reproving me where I seemed to be in the 
 wrong, and comforting me where he thought I needed 
 comfort. I happened to make use of the expression ' my 
 vievi's.' He turned sharply round upon me and begged me 
 not to make iise of it any more — he had been so thoroughly 
 sickened of it in his earlier life, when he was thrown much 
 into contact with good people who called themselves Evan- 
 gelicals. But when I explained to him what I did believe, 
 he was pleased to say it was perfectly scrii)tural and sanc- 
 tioned by the Churcli. He entered most kindly into all I 
 had to say, reminding me of St. Augustine's words, that 
 ' the greatest trial is the absence of a trial,' and telling me 
 that tbe best way to get rid of suspicion is to live it down. 
 I said that I was quite aw^are that if I left the parish just 
 then there would be a lapse in the work. ' Yes,' he re- 
 plied, ' and these lapses are fatal things.' He finally bid 
 me do my best to stay on, adding, that if at the end of six 
 months' time I still found myself uncomfortable, I might 
 write and tell him. And when I said that I did not like 
 to trouble him so often, he replied that he did not mind the 
 trouble ; and then with his blessing he bid me good-bye. 
 It is now more than a year and a half since then, and I 
 am just leaving my curacy for a benefice — most thankful 
 for the bishop's advice and that I have been able to follow 
 it. 1 nmst bring this too long letter to a close, and will 
 only add that when he was removed from us I felt, in com- 
 mon with many of my brethren, that a dear father was gone, 
 and that a void had been made in life which we could 
 never expect to be filled again. But we felt also that in 
 his example he had left us a splendid legacy." 
 
 TliC bibhop had also contemplated the endowment, un- 
 der the provisions of 3 & 4 Victoria c. 113, of the two
 
 1868-1870.] RESTORED CANONIIIES. 285 
 
 suspended Canonries in the Chapter of the Cathedral, in 
 order that one might be held by the Principal of the 
 College and the other by a Bishop-Coadjutor. The Eev. 
 Canon Latham recognised the importance of the bishop's 
 suggestion in a very practical manner, for under an Act 
 recently passed by Parliament he resigned the Stall which 
 he had held in the Cathedral, and the bishop immediately 
 conferred it on the Principal of the College, the Kev, G. 
 H. Curteis. The necessary consent to the revival of the 
 suspended Canonries was never obtained, and there are at 
 the present time only four Canons Eesidentiary connected 
 with the Cathedral.
 
 236 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 LICHFIELD. 
 [1871—1877.] 
 
 In 1871 the bishop determined to accept the invitation of 
 the American Church to be present at the Triennial Con- 
 vention held at Baltimore ; it was no holiday trip, how- 
 ever pleasant the incidents of the double voyage or of the 
 sojourn among our fellow-Churchmen in the New World ; 
 but it was part of the work to which he had pledged him- 
 self when he accepted the See of Lichfield, that lie would 
 do all that was possible to him to promote intercom- 
 mu7Uon and living sympathy between all the branches of 
 the Anglican Church. He was obviously of all men the 
 one best able to grapple with the task ; none had such 
 varied experiences among the colonists and the heathen, 
 none had so successfully planted a young Church and 
 supplied it with the powers of self-government as he, and 
 of the prelates of the mother-Church no more true repre- 
 sentative could have been sent forth. He had also long 
 ago entertained feelings of warm admiration for the 
 American Church. At the time of liis appointment in 
 1841 the late Bishop Doane of New Jersey, who was then 
 staying in England, and was commanding the attention of 
 all Churchmen by his preaching and his counsels, had 
 written words of greeting to him. Letters passed occa- 
 sionally during the early years of Bishop Selwyn's resi- 
 dence in New Zealand, and on May 23rd, 1845, he liad 
 written tlie following acknowledgment of some gifts sent
 
 1871-1877.] INTERCOMMUNION. 287 
 
 to him from the American Church by the hands of the 
 revered Bishop of New Jersey : — 
 
 May 2Zrd, 1845, 
 
 My dear Friend and Brother, 
 
 .... I rejoice, yea with trembling, if this infant 
 Church can already be the means of awakening some 
 Christian hearts, even in your distant diocese, to a feeling 
 of the unrevoked commandment, laying upon all Christian 
 men the continual obligation to "preach the Gospel to 
 every creature." This is one of the greatest comforts we 
 derive from the thought of the circle of light with which 
 our confederate Churches have now girdled the globe. 
 We may hope that no point of Christian duty can hereafter 
 be lost or hidden ; that when it is forgotten for a time in 
 one portion of the Church Catholic, there will still be a 
 living flame on some other altar from which the extin- 
 guished torch may be re-kindled, that dioceses, as well as 
 individuals, may thus provoke one another to good works, 
 and check and rebuke the grow^th of heresy and error. 
 The free communion of Christian boldness of all the 
 branches of the Church may have all and more than all 
 the effect of the General Councils of old in purifying and 
 invigorating her discipline, and so, by the blessing of the 
 Holy Spirit, bringing on the day when she will be presented 
 to God a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or 
 any such thing. 
 
 You cannot confer on us a greater benefit than by com- 
 municating freely all your own experiences, derived from 
 the comparatively free estate of your Episcopacy, its 
 powers and functions : its effects on the people : its posi- 
 tion with regard to all subordinate institutions of the 
 Church : in all which parts it is easy to see that the 
 English Episcopate has suffered much by its alliance witli 
 the State. Here we are at present in a situation very 
 much resembling your own : with few or no outward 
 hindrances to prevent the full canonical character of the 
 oftice being developed with all its living energy and opera- 
 tions upon the hearts of men. 
 
 It was altogether an occasion of unusual interest, and 
 full of unprecedented opportunities of usefulness ; the
 
 288 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [ciur. vii. 
 
 American prelates, who had attended the Lambeth Con- 
 ference of four years previously had returned witli 
 Avarmer feelings toM'ards the mother-Church than they 
 had ever entertained before ; they had sat on the equal 
 seats of the common Episcopate^ and had been made to 
 feel that their presence in England in response to the 
 Primate's invitation had been cordially appreciated ; and 
 now the first English bishop to visit America was the 
 one around whose name a halo of romance had for 
 years been cast, whose fresh counsels and fearless policy 
 had won the hearts of his brethren as they heard him 
 speak at Lambeth. It was also the year of Jubilee of 
 the Missionary Society of the American Church, out of 
 which had grown the Board of ]\Iissions, and it was 
 thankworthy that such an epoch should be marked by 
 the presence of one of the greatest of living missionaries. 
 Thus it came to pass that the bishop found no rest, but 
 worked as hard in America as he would have done in his 
 own diocese. 
 
 On 8th October he preached the sermon on the occasion 
 of the consecration of Bishop Howe, the Assistant- Bishop 
 of South Carolina. The text was Ephesians i. 22 — 23, 
 The Church, which is His hody, the fulness of Him that 
 filleth all in all. It would seem that in America as in 
 England there are those whose religion takes the form of 
 objecting to the faith and practice of their brethren, and 
 to those the bishop directed the following passage : — 
 
 "Nothing is more right or laudable than jealousy for 
 the purity of religion or for the glory of God. But it 
 must be a discriminating jealousy, lest wliile it burns up 
 the tares it burns up with tliem the wheat also. The 
 faithful watch-dog does not bark at the children of the 
 liouse, or at the master's familiar friend. The faithful 
 sentinel knows liow to distinguish between friend and foe. 
 "When Christ overturned the seats of those who sold doves. 
 He did not condemn His mother for offering up in tlie 
 same temple a pair of young pigeons.
 
 1871-1877.] WEAK BRETHEEN. 289 
 
 "If any one is ready to take offence at the cross in the 
 ground-plan or on the spires of onr churches, he mnst find 
 fault with the firmament itself, for there also is the sign of 
 the Cross ; and many there are and ever will be in that 
 Southern hemisphere where I have long lived, who with- 
 out a single thought of worshipping that starry cross, or 
 putting it in the place of Christ, will rejoice to see it 
 shining there, in the midst of the darkness of the starless 
 Southern pole, as an emblem of the true light tliat shone 
 in the midst of darkness from the Cross on Calvary, a 
 light to lighten every man that cometh into the world. 
 
 " No ; we will no more be ashamed of the Church of 
 Christ than w^e will be ashamed of Christ Himself. If 
 there be times when the Church has been darkened by 
 superstition, if those times be not even now past, is it not 
 the same with Christ Himself ? Can we be silent of the 
 name of Christ because some men deny His Godhead ? 
 So neither will we shrink from setting the Church upon a 
 hill, because scribes and Pharisees trusted in themselves 
 that they were righteous. So neither will we suppress 
 the Word of God, because some men wrest it to their own 
 destruction. So neither will w^e give up our Form of 
 C(mimon Prayer, because some may use it only as a form. 
 So neither will we doubt the necessity of Sacraments, 
 because some are so ignorant as to trust to the outward 
 act. We look not to that which is below, but to that 
 which is above : not to the corruption of that whicli is 
 good, but the fulness of the Divine love from which the 
 good proceeds. If we are told to bring our children to 
 Baptism, or to come ourselves to the Lord's Supper, we 
 must not plead that we have seen baptized children grow 
 up into ungodly men, or that we have known communi- 
 cants who have lived unholy lives. 
 
 " The Word of God, the Sacraments ordained by Christ 
 Himself, every ordinance of prayer and praise, the ministry 
 of the Church — all may suffer corruption, all may be per- 
 verted to evil ; the spirit of religion may be lost sight of 
 in the form ; the outward sign may usurp the place of the 
 thing signified ; visible things may withdraw the mind 
 from the thought of the God eternal, immortal, and in- 
 visible ; the Lord's Day may be made a day of rioting ; 
 all holy things may seem to fall into decay, as man
 
 290 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [. lur. vir. 
 
 himself, the image of God, fell : but to neglect God's gifts 
 because of man's abuse of them ; to set aside God's com- 
 mandments because of man's disobedience ; to doubt 
 God's promises because of man's rejection of them, — this 
 is not the way to attain to pure and spiritual religion 
 of the heart. We must wait for God in the way of His 
 commandments." 
 
 During the session of the Convention the Jubilee 
 Meeting of the Board of Missions was held. Bishop 
 Stevens of Pennsylvania, now w^ell known to so many 
 English Churchmen by reason of the prominent part 
 which he took in the Lambeth Conference of 1878, pre- 
 sided, and could without boasting thank God for what the 
 Clmrch of America had been allowed to accomplish, Tiie 
 great continent in the ever-opening Western regions had 
 offered a field as full of opportunities of doing and suffer- 
 ing for Christ, as any, however remote, part of the globe, 
 and nobly has the American Church, with her full freedom 
 to increase her Episcopate, discharged her duty. To China 
 and Japan she has sent her fully organized Missions, witli 
 the Bishop at the head, and to Africa she has made the 
 noblest atonement for the wrongs of her sons by sending 
 to its deadliest coasts the Messenger of the Gospel. 
 
 It was not without significance that the presiding Bishop 
 of a Church which had done such great things should thus, 
 with an entire absence of exaggeration or hyperbole, intro- 
 duce and speak of his guest, the Bishop of Lichfield : — 
 
 " We have to-night with us, beloved, one who, thirty 
 years ago this very month, was consecrated as a Missionary 
 Bishop to go forth, far, far south, beyond wliere you can 
 see these stars, beyond tlie equator, and beneath that 
 glorious Southern Cross that glitters in the southern sky. 
 He was sent there. The cross was in the sky ; but, oli ! 
 the hearts of the men that lived beneath that cross were 
 benighted. They knew not of Him who hung upon the 
 Cross. They knew not of the love that gave itself upon 
 that Cross for their souls. And lu! went forth in his youth
 
 1871-1877.J BISHOP SELV*^YN'S ADDRESS. 291 
 
 as the standard-bearer to hold up the Cross over the land 
 beneath, as God had held it over the southern pole. He 
 went there, and he laboured there, and his labours, by the 
 favour of God, have been so blessed that one diocese of his 
 has grown into seven dioceses, with their bishops and their 
 clergy ; and that land wliich he found in a state of semi- 
 barbarism, just, as it were, coming out of the benighted 
 state of intense heathenism, he has left nominally a Chris- 
 tian land. And may we not say that he has won for him- 
 self a crown ? And as over that Southern Cross, as it 
 hangs in the southern sky, there is also the Southern 
 Crown, so to him who has borne the Cross aloft in those 
 far-off regions, may we not say there remaineth the crown 
 of righteousness which the Lord, the Eighteous Judge, 
 shall give him at that day for his missionary work ? " 
 
 The address which Bishop Selwyn delivered on this occa- 
 sion was one of the most masterly even of his many great 
 efforts. It unfortunately was not published in England, 
 and consequently was little known in this country ; it was 
 no record of his own doings and experiences, but an ex- 
 haustive treatise on the principles of missionary work ; and 
 incidentally it dealt with both the objections of opponents 
 and the apologies of timid friends. It is not possible to 
 omit so important an expression of views so deliberately 
 formed and modified by the experience of a life-time, and 
 which must have an abiding interest so long as Missionary 
 work continues to be carried on in the world. After some 
 pi'climinary remarks, the Bishop of Lichfield said — 
 
 " As you heard a most comprehensive sermon last night 
 on the subject of Missions, I shall not enter much into 
 the purely spiritual part of the question ; but I must lay 
 down just these few plain principles, and if there be any 
 one here who differs from me in any one of them, I should 
 like to have a few minutes' private conversation with him ; 
 but I rather believe there is no one who will not accept 
 these five or six leading principles : 
 
 " First, that the commandment of our Lord is to His 
 
 VOL. II. u
 
 292 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chai'. vii. 
 
 Church to go into all the world, and to preach the Gospel 
 to every creature. 
 
 " Secondly, that that commandment is binding upon us 
 all, not to be left to voluntary efforts, not to be optional 
 with ourselves whether we discharge it or not, but that 
 this must be laid upon every member of every living 
 branch of the Church of Christ as his bounden duty to 
 discharge in his own part and in his own person, both by 
 his alms and by his prayers, if not by his personal effort, 
 that share of this great work which God has given him 
 to do. 
 
 "And then, I think, none of us will dispute this great 
 fact also, that the God of Missions is no respecter of persons, 
 but that in every nation ' he that feareth God and believeth 
 in Him is accepted by Him.' Then, I think, we shall 
 further agree, also, in this great principle, that ' God has 
 made of one blood all nations that dwell upon the face of 
 the whole earth.' And then, further, I hope we shall agree 
 also in this, that all the nations of the whole earth, though 
 they may differ in essential respects on all other points, 
 though there be differences of intellectual power, dif- 
 ferences of culture, differences of civilization, yet all have 
 at least that measure of capacity to receive the grace of 
 God which is necessary for their receiving the benefits and 
 the blessings of the Christian covenant. 
 
 " And then, dear brethren, I must also claim your belief 
 in this great principle, that Jesus Christ shed His blood 
 and died for all alike ; and then, further, for this, that, 
 through our Blessed Saviour, and in fulfilment of His 
 promise, and in answer to His prayers, the Holy Ghost 
 is poured out upon all flesh ; and then the last principle 
 with which I desire your agreement is this : that at the 
 last day, that God, who is no respecter of persons, l)ut who 
 cares for all alike, will ' gather together His elect from the 
 four winds of Heaven, a great multitude which no man 
 can number, of all peoples, and all nations, and all kin- 
 dreds, and all tongues, to stand before His Throne, and 
 before the Lamb.' 
 
 "There is our foundation. No other can be laid. No 
 one single stone, I believe, of that foundation can be re- 
 moved. Now, then, let me trace these principles into 
 their actual operation. With all this clear statement of
 
 1871-1877.] BISHOP SELWYN'S ADDRESS. 293 
 
 the Gospel, of which I have given this imperfect outline, 
 is it not strange that we should hear on many sides dis- 
 trust, coldness, suspicion — everything, in fact, the most 
 opposite to that full current of willing faith and that 
 readiness of hearty love with which we should expect that 
 all Christian persons would receive this great spiritual 
 obligation of taking their part in the work of Christian 
 Missions ? Ever since I have been in any degree con- 
 nected with Missions, I have endeavoured, as far as I 
 could, to analyse all these questions, to find out what it 
 can be which, in the face of all Scripture, in the face of 
 all our repeated statements of belief, in the face of what 
 every one will admit to be his duty if he is questioned 
 upon it, shall nevertheless produce this result, that there is 
 a coldness, and that there is a deadness, and that there is a 
 backwardness, in the cause of Christian Missions. If you 
 will have patience with me, I will endeavour to trace out 
 some of these hindrances, one by one. And the first comes 
 under the head of time. 
 
 " We are growing more and more impatient every day. 
 When it pleases God to multiply our facilities of locomo- 
 tion, when men run around to and fro upon the earth, send 
 their messages across the earth with the rapidity of light- 
 ning, call unto their aid fire and water — the most opposite 
 elements, and even (as was said of your great statesmen 
 in old times), bring down the lightning from Heaven to do 
 their errands, we come into such an impatient state that 
 we cannot even allow God to carry out His own work in 
 His own time, we must have it at once ; we number as it 
 were a few years within which we will try our finite ex- 
 periments, we fix a sort of limit to our hopes, that if in 
 ten years or if in twelve years we can see some visible 
 result, then we are to have faith in the work of Missions, 
 then we are to take courage and go on ! Dear brethren, 
 have we yet to learn that all results must be left in the 
 hands of God ? If the world by God's providence, by 
 His determinate counsel and foreknowledge, waited four 
 thousand years for its Saviour ; if the first great Mission- 
 ary, the patriarch Abraham, was content to receive the 
 promises, and to embrace them, and to see them afar of!', 
 and yet was content with that one single spot of earth, 
 that grave of Machpelah, as his only inheritance in the 
 
 u 2
 
 294 LIFIC OP^ BISHOP SELWYN. [niA?. vn. 
 
 Promised Land, and his own one son Isaac as the only 
 representative of tliat great multitude, countless as the 
 stars of Heaven and as the sands upon the sea-shore, 
 which were to be made his children by adoption and grace ; 
 oh, then, dear brethren, let us dismiss this. We have 
 nothing whatever to do with time ; we are the servants of 
 that Crod with whom ' one day is as a thousand years and 
 a thousand years as one day.' Let us be content to work 
 on, to do all that we can in our little lives of threescore 
 years and ten, and be content to lie down and say that, so 
 far as visible results and tangible success are concerned, 
 we have nothing whatever to boast of, but that we have 
 sown in God's name the seed which, after its appointed 
 period of latency, in God's own appointed time, shall 
 spring up and bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold, and some 
 sixtyfold, and some an hundredfold. 
 
 " The next great hindrance to this practical faith in the 
 work of Missions which I will bring before you is the 
 imputation, which you hear on all sides, of faihire. Let 
 us go to Holy Scripture for that. Was St. Paul satisfied 
 with the results of his works in any of the Churches 
 which he planted ? Did he not live to see much decay ? 
 Was it not necessary for him to administer severe rebuke ? 
 Still more, did not that Apostle, who by our Lord's will 
 exceeded by twenty years the prophetic limit of the utmost 
 span of human life, who lived to the age of one hundred 
 years, live only to see that some of the Churches planted 
 by himself had fallen into decay, that their candlesticks 
 were about to be removed, and yet that the light which 
 was quenched in one part of the Church of Christ would 
 assuredly be rekindled in another ? 
 
 " No, brethren, there is no such thing as failure in the 
 works of (Jod. God permits our works to seem to fail, to 
 try our patience, to prove our faith, to encourage us to 
 ])rayer, to make us more earnest in His work, lest if He 
 were to grant us too large a measure of success, we should, 
 as in the days of our temporal prosperity, forget the God 
 who gives us our wealth, and attribute it to the efforts of 
 our own hands — accept the gift, but forget the Giver. 
 No ; then let no fiiilures, real or apparent — real, I think, 
 there cannot be ; apparent, there ever will be — let no 
 failures ever enter into our minds; let us simply do God's
 
 1871-1877.] BISHOP SELWYN'S ADDRESS. 295 
 
 work in God's name, with prayer for God's blessing, and 
 be assured of this, that in good time we shall reap if we 
 faint not. 
 
 " But now, then, to speak of failures on a lower ground. 
 Have we a right to speak of failures after such miserable, 
 such impotent, such parsimonious attempts as we make to 
 evangelize the world ? If I send a man to lift with his 
 single hand a weight of three or four tons, lying on the 
 ground, and he comes back to me and says that he cannot 
 lift it, shall I say that that man has failed? No, dear 
 brethren ; neither would I say that Missions have failed, 
 when we send out one poor helpless man to preach the 
 Gospel to a million of idolaters — when we place in the 
 midst of the great Empire of China, which, as you have 
 heard, contains three hundred millions of heathens and 
 idolaters, one or two Missionaries, unassisted save by the 
 grace of God ; forgotten even, perhaps, by many of those 
 who sent them out ; deriving a precarious subsistence from 
 alms, not always given with perfect readiness, and with- 
 drawn often on the slightest pretext. No, dear brethren ; 
 if we wish to evangelize the world, if we wish really to test 
 this question of success and failure, let us send out to the 
 heathen such embassies as we send out in our civil capa- 
 cities to all foreign States ; let us take care that the majesty 
 of the Church of Christ is represented by the dignity of 
 the ambassadors of Christ ; let all men see that we are in 
 earnest ; that we are not expecting them to believe that 
 one poor, simple, unassisted man represents the great 
 dignity and majesty of a whole branch of the Church of 
 Christ to the three hundred millions of idolaters in China. 
 Let the means be, in some degree at least, commensurate 
 to the work, before ^^ e turn round upon Missions and say 
 that they have failed. 
 
 •' Now another subject, and one of equal importance, and 
 that is the alleged difference of capacity. I have already 
 touched upon that ; but you know, dear friends, what a 
 false philosophy there is abroad, which is absolutely con- 
 tradicting what we find so often in the Word of God, 
 whether in those exact words or in similar words, that 
 * God is no respecter of persons.' I grant that there may 
 be some excuse, when even an inspired Apostle, after the 
 d:iy of Pentecost, after the Holy Ghost had been poured
 
 296 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [ruAV. vii. 
 
 upon him from on higli, required a vision thrice repeated; 
 to convince him that God is no respecter of persons. It 
 may well be matter of excuse — and God will excuse tliose 
 who pray to be forgiven — if some of us have not yet fully 
 comprehended this great Divine truth, that all mankind 
 are endued by the Spirit of God, in God's own time, with 
 a sufficient measure of capacity to receive everything that 
 is necessary for the salvation of their souls ; that there is 
 no one single human being on the face of God's earth who 
 is shut out from the promises of the Gospel by any 
 difference of intellectual or of moral capacity. And yet 
 how frequently is it alleged : ' It is no use to do anything 
 for these people ; look at them ; are they not the very 
 lowest type of humanity ? ' Dear brethren, I have seen 
 myself what men call the lowest types of humanity. I 
 have seen the Australasian Blacks ; 1 have seen those poor 
 benighted men in Erromango who have twice killed the 
 Missionaries of the Gospel who landed on their shores, 
 first John Williams, and then Mr. Gordon ; and I am sure 
 that those men, I know that those men have the same 
 capacity, in all necessary respects, for the reception of 
 Divine truth that any one of us is gifted with by God 
 among those who are present here to-night. I have been 
 piesent with some of them on occasions of which I need 
 not speak at length, when one of this despised race was 
 sentenced to death, and I attended him at his execution. 
 1 nmst say that, with the imperfect knowledge of our 
 language, with all the difficulty of connnunication with 
 that man that I had, he left upon my mind, at the 
 moment that his irons were being struck off, the impres- 
 sion that he died with just so much of simple faith 
 as was accepted by Jesus Christ from the penitent on 
 the cross. 
 
 " I then pass from that subject, that difference of capacity, 
 begging you all to shut out from your minds that 
 poisonous philosophy which draws distinctions between 
 man and man, which God has never drawn, and which 
 will be reversed in Heaven when the whole multitude of 
 God's elect shall come to stand before His throne. 
 
 " Now, then, for another point, and that is one perhaps 
 of which you have heard something here — the different 
 habits of some of the races to whom God commands us
 
 1871-1877.] BISHOP SELWYN'S ADDRESS. 297 
 
 to minister. The favourite phrase is, the wandering 
 habits, the unsettled habits, the chaugeable habits, of this 
 or that race of people. In Australia there were the 
 Australian Blacks wandering from place to place, and they 
 were supposed to be therefore shut out from all hope of 
 conversion. Here you have your Eed Indians, the wild 
 men of the woods, men of whom poets speak, as ' wild in 
 woods the noble savage ran.' All that was poetry ; but 
 you hear them spoken of as men who, because they are 
 hunting tribes, because for their bare subsistence they 
 move from place to place, are therefore incorrigible ; that 
 it is unnecessary to make the attempt ; it is sure to fail. 
 I see here one of your own six Missionary Bishops, — he is 
 behind me here — the Bishop of Minnesota. I have con- 
 versed to-day with one of his clergy. He tells me that 
 there are forty-five hundred of those Indians in Dakota 
 who are now giving up under the influence of Christianity 
 those very wandering habits which were supposed to be 
 fatal to the hope that they would ever receive it. He 
 tells me that they are now settling upon farms ; that they 
 build houses resembling our own ; that they have given 
 up their life in wigwams, their communist life ; that they 
 are settling down in the domestic walks of a life like our 
 own ; that they fill their churches on the Lord's Day ; that 
 they bring their children to be baptized ; that their youths 
 come to our schools ; that they are in fact acquiring day 
 by day, and with far greater rapidity than even their best 
 friends would have expected, the usages both of Christianity 
 and of civilized life. 
 
 "Now, dear friends, why is that ? Because Missionaries 
 have been found who, instead of expecting wild men to 
 conform to our habits, have made our habits conformable 
 to theirs, who have followed them up from place to place 
 and won their confidence, who have lived the same rough 
 life that they have lived, and gained their hearts by 
 showing a real sympathy for them in their benighted 
 state. But we propose an impossible problem which 
 perhaps I may illustrate from ancient history. The fable, 
 you know, is that the beginning of civilization came from 
 that great musician whose name was Orpheus ; that he 
 went out with his harp into the woods, and played such 
 captivating strains that the wild men of the woods
 
 298 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [cnAP. vii. 
 
 followed him, and built cities in order that they might 
 ever remain within the sound of that music which so 
 touched their hearts. But we say No ; we tell these wild 
 men of the woods : ' Come into our cities, give up your 
 wandering lives, and then we will })]ay music to you;' 
 so that the music is to be the end and not the means ; that 
 the Gospel is to be preached to them when they have first 
 accepted that total change of manners which nothing but 
 the Gospel can produce. 
 
 "Let us then dismiss that subject. Let us believe — and 
 I hope we shall all agree — that there is no one single 
 nation on the face of God's earth, the habits of whose 
 people are of such a kind that they cannot come within 
 that universal promise that all mankind shall, in God's 
 time, be subdued to the obedience of faith. 
 
 " Now, then, another and a very solemn point, and it is 
 what you have all heard — I believe that what I say to- 
 night is simply what all of you have heard by way of 
 objection, though perhaps the answer has not occurred to 
 }0U all ; — I have heard it again and again : * They are 
 dying out ; ' just as if the poet Tennyson were to say : 
 
 " A year is dying in the night ; 
 King out, wild bells, and let him die." 
 
 " Is that Christianity ? is that the Gospel — absolutely 
 to take comfort to ourselves, to shut up our hearts, to close 
 our pockets, because we say : ' Here is a race which is 
 dying out, and therefore we have no duty to discharge ' ? 
 Dear brethren, I could bring that home to you by a very 
 simple illustration. If any one of you, parents, had a 
 child that was dying, and you were to go to your clergy- 
 man to beg him to go down to offer a prayer for that 
 child, would you take it as a sutficient answer if that 
 clergyman were to say: 'The child is certain to die; 
 what is the use of coming down to pray for it ' ? Would 
 you not, in the fulness of your hearts, in the agony of 
 your parental love, use words like those of the nobleman 
 to our blessed Lord : " Sir, come down ere my child die ' ? 
 .So, dear brethren, if those races of the earth be, in God's 
 providence, ap])ointed to pass away, — not, remember, be- 
 cause of any Divine purpose, but in consequence of the 
 sins, the vices, which lollow in the train of civilization (for
 
 1871-1877.] BISHOP SELWYN'S ADDRESS. 299 
 
 these are the causes of death, which is claimed as a 
 mysterious dispensation of God, that the coloured races 
 should melt away before the advance of civilization) ; and 
 if there be other races of the earth which are by God's 
 providence appointed to pass away, as the natives of 
 Newfoundland have passed away, as the last native of 
 Van Diemeu's Land has passed away ; so much the more 
 think of those that remain. Give your alms and lift up 
 your prayers for the remnant that is left. And as for 
 those that have passed from this earth, not one of them is 
 dead ; they are all alive ; they will all stand with us before 
 the judgment- seat of Christ, Whether their blood will be 
 upon our heads, is one of those secret things which belong 
 unto the Lord our God. 
 
 " Once more ; I have but a few more thoughts to bring 
 before you, and those, perhaps, of a more practical kind. 
 Another great argument is the want of means. We have 
 before us the scope of our work. We have heard of how 
 much has been done. Let us think now what remains 
 undone. There are, perhaps, of all denoniinations of 
 Christians, about three hundred millions on the earth. 
 The common estimate of those that remain in heathendom 
 is twice that number. Think nothing done, then, while 
 aught remains. Think nothing done till the whole is 
 completed ; till the whole earth shall be filled with the 
 knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And 
 then we hear : ' Where are the means ? ' Dear friends, 
 we never knew any branch of our good English family 
 that ever lacked means to do any work whatsoever, how- 
 ever great, which it determined to do. I know that for 
 the purpose of war in that little petty war in New Zealand, 
 provoked against the native races, we spent over 7,000,000/. 
 sterling. I know that for the redemption from captivity 
 (most justly, it is true, and most worthily of the object) 
 of forty souls that were taken captive in Abyssinia, the 
 British Government thought it not too much to spend 
 more than 5,000,000/. sterling. I know how these vast 
 works of commercial enterprise, all these great railways, 
 all these great engineering feats, of which we boast, are 
 always supported with abundance of means commensurate 
 with the end to be obtained. I have no fear, then, what- 
 ever, that if your hearts be willing you can find the
 
 300 LIFE OF BLSHOP SELWYN. [chap. vii. 
 
 means. The means are abundant ; the only question is, 
 Are you prepared to give them ? There is no compulsion 
 save that constraining love of Christ of which we have 
 heard. There is no man's taxation, but there is that 
 written law of God that we should give to Him as freely 
 as we have received ; there is that inexhaustible bank upon 
 whicli we all may draw, the very essence of our Christ- 
 ianity, the very fulfilment of our Founder's command, that 
 we should deny ourselves in order that we may take up 
 our cross to follow Him ; and will not any one of you here 
 present say that he or she could not, out of their daily 
 personal expenditures, save at least one-quarter, for the 
 service of God, of that which they now spend upon them- 
 selves ? And put all that together, and then tell me — 
 even if China were to open all its doors to receive our 
 IMissionaries, even if Dr. Livingstone would come back 
 from the heart of Africa and tell us that there also a great 
 and effectual door was opened for the Redeemer's march 
 over the earth, if the whole world were to say to us. as 
 if with one voice : ' Come over and help us ' — whether, 
 if you only deny yourselves, the means will ever be 
 wanting. 
 
 " Next, as to the men. There is another cry — and this 
 is the last with which I shall trouble you — ' Where are 
 the men ? ' Dear friends, when our blessed Lord said that 
 ' greater works than these shall ye do, because ye believe 
 in Me,' He left a little band. That band of one hundred 
 and twenty that gathered in that upper chamber, that 
 little band of five hundred that saw Him in Galilee before 
 His Ascension, that was the sum total of the men to 
 whom Christ gave this vast commandment, this steward- 
 ship of the souls of all mankind. How was it fulfilled ? 
 The Spirit who came down from Heaven so endued them 
 with power from on high, that while, in the infant state of 
 the Cliurcli, men required signs to induce them to believe, 
 'God's Spirit working with the Apostles confirmed the 
 word with signs following.' When these extraordinary 
 gifts of the Spirit were removed, then came the Divine 
 promise in the ordinary course of the fulfilment of the 
 words of Christ, that He would be with His Church always, 
 even unto the end of the world ; that as to Jonadab, the 
 son of L(.'chal), because of his obedience to his fiithcr's
 
 1871-1877.] BISHOP SELWYiYS ADDRESS. 301 
 
 will, the promise was given that he should never lack a 
 man to stand before God for ever — so to those who 
 accepted to the full the burden of the Cross, and went 
 forth to bear that Cross in the poM^er of the Holy Spirit 
 to all the nations of the then known world, the promise 
 was given that they should never lack men who, in their 
 place when they should be taken to their rest, should 
 stand before God and do the work of Christ for ever. 
 That, too, is a plenary promise. That is a promise which 
 knows no exception. It was in that spirit and in that 
 faith and in that power that St. Paul commissioned 
 Timothy to deliver the Gospel which he had received from 
 him, to faithful men who should be able to teach others 
 also — five generations of the Christian Church comprised in 
 two short verses of the Epistle to Timothy. It was in that 
 strength and in that spirit that St. Paul directed Titus to 
 go to Crete and to ordain him elders in every city. And 
 who were those Cretans ? Alway liars, evil beasts, slow 
 bellies ; and yet those liars were to be the preachers of 
 Gospel truth ; those evil beasts were to lie down with the 
 Lamb of God; out of those slow bellies were to flow forth 
 rivers of living water. 
 
 " Never tell me, then, that there is a race upon the 
 earth, out of which, by God's providence and by the gift 
 of His Holy Spirit, there cannot be raised faithful Minis- 
 ters, able to serve God in the holy oflices of His Church, 
 You have them here. All that has been said about the 
 Eed Indian and his wandering habits has never daunted the 
 faith or daunted the courage of your Missionary Bishops 
 who have gone forth among those races, there to gather 
 men to serve God in the holy Ministry of His Church. It 
 has been the same in Africa. It has risen there even to a 
 higher grade. A poor boy, taken out of a slave-ship hold, 
 trained in the schools of the Church Missionary Society at 
 Sierra Leone and sent to England, there to be trained for 
 the Ministry of the Church, has since returned to England 
 to receive consecration as a Bishop of the Church, and 
 gone back again to the heart of Africa, there to preach to 
 his countrymen the unsearchable riches of Christ. 
 
 " The same is seen everywhere, India has its band of 
 native Pastors. Ceylon has its like company of Preachers. 
 New Zealand, out of a race never exceedin<:i in number
 
 302 LIFE OF BISHOP SKLWYN. [( hap. vn. 
 
 (men, women, and children) one hundred thousand souls, 
 has yielded to Bishop Williams and myself seventeen or- 
 dained Missionaries, not one of whom — in the midst of 
 troubles of war, in the midst of the relapse of many to 
 heathenism — has ever swerved, either from his allegiance 
 to the British crown, or from his faith in the Lord Jesus. 
 
 " I say, then, dear brethren, that there is no lack of 
 men. God is able out of these stones to raise up children 
 unto Abraham. Only let us go forth to our work with a 
 living faith — a wide, a world-wide faith — a fliith resting 
 upon a hope which enters into that which is behind the 
 veil. Let us go forth in the name of the Lord of Hosts 
 to bear the banner of the Cross — that banner which, you 
 have heard, has been already planted in the most distant 
 part of God's earth, in the Island of Xew Zealand. You 
 in the intermediate space, you with your nine millions of 
 square miles, you with your vast population increasing 
 every decade by so many millions of souls — to you belongs 
 the stewardship of undertaking the charge of the larger 
 nations of the earth. You may have the blessed privilege 
 of being the means under God's hand of carrying to the 
 three hundred millions of idolaters in China, and the one 
 hundred and seventy millions of idolaters in India, and to 
 the untold multitudes, like the sands upon the sea-shore 
 in number, who throng the vast plains of Central Africa, 
 the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
 Christ." 
 
 The American Church determined that an event so 
 uniciue should not pass away without its special comme- 
 moration : it was out of the question to make to the 
 bishop any personal offering, and with exquisite taste, our 
 Ijrethren, whom our greatest statesman has since descriljcd 
 in words too felicitous ever to be forgotten, as " our kin 
 beyond seas," determined to make an offering to the 
 Mother Church which, kept among the treasures and 
 muniments and traditions of Lambeth, should be for all 
 time a memorial of the love which they bore to their 
 ]\Iother Cliurch. It took the form of a magnificent Alms
 
 1871-1877.] AMERICA'S OFFERING. 303 
 
 Dish.^ With the same good taste which had prompted the 
 ffift, the offering was made in St. Paul's Cathedral, on the 
 
 1 The following description of the alms bason is given by an American 
 paper : — 
 
 " In the centre is the hemisphere, showing the Atlantic Ocean, witli 
 the Old "World on the east of it and the New World on the west. A scroll 
 on the ocean bears the inscription, which expresses the spirit of the gift : 
 ' Orhis vcteri novus, occidens oi-ienti, Filia Mati'i.' At the South Pole is 
 the date, 1871, of the Bishop's visit. In the upper part of the hemisphere 
 is a circular chased medallion, which covers nearly the whole of Great 
 Britain, and bears a ship typical of the Church, having the Cross at its 
 prow, the Labarnm on its sail, the Pastoral Staff of the Apostolic Episco- 
 pate at its mainmast, upheld by two ropes on either side for the other two 
 orders of Priests and Deacons ; and 'S.S.' on the rudder, for the 'Sacred 
 Scriptures.' This ship is leaving England, and is headed towards the New 
 World, indicating that our Church received its existence from the Catholic 
 Church through the Church of England. 
 
 "Outside of this hemisphere is a band about an inch wide, with the 
 names of the six undisputed General Councils of the ancient Church, 
 separated from one another by six hemispheres of la2ns lazuli. As the 
 word ' Catholic ' signifies ' all the world over,' so this band runs all around 
 the globe. 
 
 "From this band, on the outside, spring twelve oak leaves, and between 
 them are twelve twigs, each bearing three acorns -with burnished kernels. 
 This use of the English oak sets forth the English Church growing out- 
 wards, and carrying her Catholicity with her wherever she goes, in every 
 direction. The tivelve is the number of Apostolic fulness and perfection, 
 and the three is reference to the doctrine of the Trinity. From behind tlie 
 oak leaves and acorns spring alternate maple leaves and palmetto leaves, 
 the former symbolizing the North, and the latter the South, — thus repre- 
 senting the historical truth that both parts of our American Church are 
 the outgrowth of the Church of England. 
 
 "The rim bears the inscription, 'It is more blessed to give than to 
 receive.' It begins and ends at a jewelled cross, composed of five amethysts, 
 four topazes, eight pearls, and eight small garnets, all clustered within a 
 circle, the cross itself thus forming a crown of glory. The words are 
 divided by large stones, more than an inch in diameter. As they refer not 
 to the faith, but to gifts, which are of infinite variety, no two are alike. 
 They are all (with one exception) American stones, the one exception being 
 a species of praise from New Zealand, which was found in a lapidary's 
 shop in Philadelphia. As Bishop Selwyn has done more than any other 
 one man to organize the system of the Colonial Episcopate, the piece of 
 that New Zealand stone was secured, to be placed T^^'s^ in the series. 
 
 "Outside the inscription is a very bold cable moulding, the finish of 
 which shows that it is a threefold cord, not easily broken. This means 
 the three Orders of the Apostolic ministry ; one strand being burnished 
 bright to represent the Episcopate, the next under it having twelve cross 
 threads representing the Priesthood, and the next below that having seven 
 longitudinal threads, signifying the Diaconate, the original number of the 
 deacons being seven. Outside this cable moulding, again, is a margin of 
 leaves all growing outward, showing a vigorous outward growth of the 
 Cliurch all the world over. 
 
 "On the under side of the rim is a plain Latin inscription, more speci-
 
 304 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vii. 
 
 occasion of the Anniversary Service, on July 3, 1872, of 
 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, to which 
 Society the American Church always declares that, under 
 God, it owes its existence. Bishop Mcllwaine of Ohio 
 and the Bishop of Lichfield, hand-in-hand, each holding it 
 by one hand, and on bended knee, presented the offering 
 to the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 The good taste which had marked the whole proceedings 
 on the part of our American brethren was now to be 
 equalled by ourselves, and it was under such influence 
 tliat Bishop Selwyn on the following day, the famous 4th 
 of July, the anniversary of the day on which the great 
 American nation achieved that political freedom which im- 
 mediately secured for it the ecclesiastical independence for 
 which it had long struggled in vain, telegraphed to Bishop 
 Potter, of New York — " July 4 : Alms-bason presented 
 in St. Paul's Cathedral. Independence is not dis-union." 
 Truly did Bishop Potter observe, when publisliing the 
 message for the information of the Church — " It was a 
 kindly and gi^aceful impulse on their part to give such 
 dignity to the reception of our offering of love, and to 
 send us such a message on such a day. I am sure it 
 will l)e warmly appreciated by all the members of our 
 communion on this side of the water." 
 
 Another English prelate, only less esteemed (if it be so 
 by our American brethren, because he has never visited 
 their shores, the learned Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Christopher 
 Wordsworth), set forth in graceful verse the thanks of the 
 
 fically detailiiif; the circumstances of the occasion which called forth this 
 gift from the American to the English Chnrch. It nins thus: — 
 
 "'A Ecclesia; Anglicanaj matri, per manus Apostolicas reverendissimi 
 Gnorgii Augusti Selwyn, Dei gi'atia Episcopi Lichfieldensis, pacis et bene- 
 volentiaj internuncii, ejusdenique auctoris, hoc pietatis testimonium filii 
 Americani dederunt.^J^' 
 
 " On the case there is a circular silver plate ; in the centre is a shield, 
 bearing the Union Jack and the American arms quartered upon a Cross 
 (shaded gules), and witii a dove for a crest, whose rays of liglit and heat 
 fill tlie circle. This means that the true unity of England and America is 
 a spiritual unity in maintaining the doctrines of the t'ross of C'lirist."
 
 1871-1877.] BISHOP WORDSWORTH. 305 
 
 Mother Church for the pious offering. It will be seen that 
 the description given in the note has been adopted in these 
 scholarly lines : — 
 
 " Quod carffi mittis, carissima Filia, Matri 
 
 Accipimus sanctse pignus amicitiae. 
 Dat dextram veteri novus Orbis ; Nata Parenti ; 
 
 Miscet et Occidimm Sol Oriente jubar. 
 Pontus Atlantiaco quam^is interfluat ?estu, 
 
 Littora velivolis consociaiitur aquis ; 
 Ecce ! Eatis Christi medium translabitur aequor, 
 
 Alba feruiit Labarum carbasa ; prora Crucem. 
 
 Funis Apostolico fultum gestamine malum 
 
 Ordinibus binis junctus iitrinque tenet ; 
 Navem per scopulos Oracula Sancta gubernaut ; 
 
 Sic tutam sulcat per maris arva viani ; 
 Angliacos linquit poi'tus ferturque Carina 
 
 Americae placido suscipienda sinu. 
 
 Aspice ! qua medium lancis complectitur orbem 
 
 Mystica Cfelatis clara corona notis ! 
 Nomina senarum Synodorum pristina cerno, 
 
 Quae fixam placitis explicuere fidera. 
 Germinat lisec circum quercu diadema Britanna ; 
 
 Donaque fert Triuo frons duodena Deo ; 
 Multicolore nitent diversae lumine gemmae, 
 
 Uudique sic radians lucet Am ore Fides. 
 Crux zonam gemraata aperitque et claudit ; Amoris 
 
 Kam Crux principium est, Crux quoque iinis erit. 
 
 Frateruis veluti triplex amplexibus orbis, 
 
 Cuncta Ministerium cingit Apostolicum : 
 Deuique ut externo diffusa in margiue frondes, 
 
 Sic Christi vitis tendit in omue solum. 
 
 Ergo Te Genitrix, carissima Nata, salutat, 
 
 Et pia de grato pcctore vota refert : 
 Pacis in seterno constringat foedere corda 
 
 Cordibus Angliacis Americana Dens ! 
 Una fides, unus Christus, nos Spiritus unus, 
 
 Unus et Ipse Suo jungat amore Patek ! 
 Sic, ubi transierint mortalia sfecula. Caeli 
 
 Nos una accipiat non peritura Domus ! " 
 
 In the Advent of this year [1871] there came on the 
 whole Church of England the shock of the news of the 
 murder of Bishop Patteson. Persons who had scoffed at 
 Missions before now began to think that there must be 
 something in them to attract men of high gifts and bright 
 prospects to arduous toil and danger, and death. The 
 enmity of the Press against all self-sacrifice, and especially
 
 306 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [< hap. vii. 
 
 against this particular form of it, had of Late reached its 
 heiglit. Missions seemed to he the butt toward which 
 every anonymous scribe, dipping liis pen in venom, might 
 direct his depreciating sneer, and the people loved to have 
 it so. Even in the House of Lords missionaries liad been 
 described by a duke as of necessity either impostors or 
 fanatics. From the date of the martyrdom of John 
 Coleridge Patteson a distinctly marked change is visible 
 in the public estimate of the work to which he had given 
 his life. Public opinion has changed, although no formal 
 confession of past error has been made ; and the nameless 
 folk, who claim to educate it, here, as always, have followed 
 it. They do not season their wares now with the ever 
 facile scoff at Missions because there is no general demand 
 for literature of that kind. Such a life and such a death 
 taught to many men a lesson which they would have 
 learned in no other way : it threw us back on first prin- 
 ciples, and the next Advent found the Church setting apart 
 the first of those now annual days of Intercession for 
 Missions which have secured for them something like an 
 adequate position in the scale of Christian duties. 
 
 To tlie Bishop of Lichfield the news was as though it 
 had told him of the death of his own son ; he seemed to all 
 to have suddenly become ten years older ; it was not for the 
 personal loss of one so dear ; for tliis he could thank God, 
 as he did, with voice trembling with emotion, when in the 
 prayer for tlie Church militant he added after tlie words 
 "for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and 
 fear," " especially for John Coleridge Patteson " : but there 
 was the loss, apparently irreparable to the ]\Iission, for 
 who could fill the vacant place, who supply the Mezzo- 
 fanti-like gifts of him who had been removed ? 
 
 Lichfield was rapidly becoming the centre of missionary 
 activity, and the point to which labourers in foreign fields 
 looked with the knowledge that there was one there who 
 could give them advice such as no other living man could 
 give, for no other man had liad the like experience. When
 
 1871-1877.] SECOND LAMBETH CONFERENCE. 307 
 
 the diocese of Barbados found itself, not only without a 
 bishop, but with no means of securing a successor to Bishop 
 Parry, the Island of Trinidad, not disheartened by the 
 disestablishment w4iich had come upon it, but spurred by 
 that circumstance to look no more to the fickle support of 
 the State but to help itself, turned to the diocese and 
 Bishop of Lichfield for help, and the Vicar of Tamworth 
 was selected, and by the consent of the Archbishop was 
 consecrated in the cathedral of his own diocese. It was 
 a great and probably unprecedented event : London and 
 Canterbury were now no longer the only places where mis- 
 sionary bishops received their mission, and in the Diocesan 
 Calendars each year the connection of Lichfield with 
 those bishops who had been at any time beneficed within 
 its limits was recorded, viz., the Bishops of Sierra Leone, 
 Auckland, Trinidad, Dunedin, and Ai'gyll. 
 
 It was partly the attraction of the man himself, partly 
 the fact of his having visited the American Churches in 
 1871, that led the Canadian Bishops to entrust to the Bishop 
 of Lichfield their memorial to the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury praying his grace, (1) " to undertake an office, by 
 whatever name it may be called, equivalent to that of 
 Patriarch in the ancient Church ; (2) to convene a General 
 Conference of the Bishops of the Anglican Communion to 
 carry on the work begun by the Lambeth Conference in 
 1867." The memorial was presented to the Upper House 
 of the Southern Convocation, 1873, and afforded the Bishop 
 of Lichfield an occasion for delivering a remarkable speech, 
 fresh and unconventional, but aiming at nothing save the 
 adaptation of ancient piinciples to new circumstances. 
 After some introductory remarks he said : — 
 
 " Your grace is well aware that the whole foundation 
 upon which our Colonial Church for a time seemed to rest 
 has been taken away from her — I mean the Letters Patent 
 issued by the Crown, which gave a sort of jurisdiction to 
 the colonial bishops. The number of colonial bishops in 
 the meantime has greatly increased from a very small 
 
 VOL. II. X
 
 308 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vii. 
 
 number ; I tliink there were only nine when I was first 
 consecrated a colonial bishop, and there are now some 
 fifty-two or fifty-three. These bishops are, Avith very few 
 exceptions indeed, absolutely without any means of ascer- 
 taining by what laws or principles they are governed, 
 unless by their own voluntary compact, as in Adelaide, 
 Capetown, lately in Sydney, and in New Zealand, where 
 they have formed a compact by which they have laid 
 down rales and regulations for their own government. 
 That course has received of late the full acquiescence and 
 approval of her Majesty's Government. The Privy Council 
 has decided that the well-known case of " AVarren v. the 
 Wesleyan Society" rules all the decisions of the Privy 
 Council in cases affecting the colonial bishops. And 
 their decision is expressed in the simple words that the 
 Church in the colonies is in the same position, neither 
 better nor worse, than any other religious denomination ; 
 that it has the power of framing regulations for its own 
 conduct, and of determining what shall be the penalty for 
 a breach of those regulations. That principle was laid 
 down by Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst in the case of- War- 
 ren V. the Wesleyan Society," and has now been declared 
 by a judicial decision of the Privy Council to be applicable 
 to all the colonial churches. Then comes tlie great diffi- 
 culty, which, of course, presses on the minds of all those 
 who love the Church of England, and desire to see her 
 unity maintained — namely, how shall all these various 
 bodies, constantly occupied year after year in making laws 
 for their own government, be in any degree restrained 
 from dropping away from the centre. What, in point of 
 fact, is to be the centripetal force by which the centrifugal 
 force is to be restrained ? I have seen the Church in 
 Canada, in the United States, in New Zealand, and in 
 Australia, and among all these branches of tlie Church, 
 comprising the dioceses of seventy or eighty bishops, there 
 is at the present moment, eminently in the Episcopal 
 Church of the United States, an earnest desire to be 
 united in brotherhood with the Church of England. There 
 is in all cases an earnest desire to recognise the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury as the head of this great confedera- 
 tion of the Anglican connnunion. Your grace is well 
 aware that so long as Letters Patent remained in force
 
 1S71-1877.] SPEECH IN CONVOCATION. 309 
 
 there was in most of those Letters Patent, and probably 
 in all, a provision that the bishop, when consecrated, 
 should take an oath of allegiance to the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, and should be subject to the general super- 
 vision of the Archbishop. That very small hold which 
 the See of Canterbury had over the various Colonial 
 Churches has now been almost entirely removed by the 
 abolition of Letters Patent. Not a word is said about it 
 in the mandates, and by far the greater proportion of the 
 bishops now consecrated are consecrated in the colonies 
 themselves. Canada seldom sends to us to consecrate a 
 bishop, and there is a general desire among the clergy of the 
 colonies that the consecration should be carried out among 
 themselves. In New Zealand three or four consecrations 
 have already taken place, and it rests entirely upon the 
 feeling of the people there whether any oath of allegiance 
 or canonical obedience to the Archbishop of Canterbury shall 
 be taken or not. Even if there be an oath, there is no defi- 
 nition of what the canonical obedience is to be. Canonical 
 obedience in the case of the clergy has been construed to 
 mean obedience to such edicts as the bishops can enforce 
 by law. If the principle of canonical obedience as regards 
 the obligation of the clergy to the bishops be such, then I 
 think it also follows that the obedience of the bishops to 
 the Metropolitan or the Archbishop is liable to the same 
 interpretation — that is, that it is an obedience to such 
 edicts as the Archbishop can enforce by law. I come, 
 then, to the fact that, to my knowledge, there is no exist- 
 ing law by which a bishop in any colony in the British 
 Empire can in any way be compelled to obey the admoni- 
 tions and commands of the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 Feeling that it is desirable that all these questions should 
 be settled ; that with our Colonial Episcopate extending its 
 operations and adding to them every year ; that the in- 
 crease of the Colonial Episcopate has been almost two 
 every year since my consecration, — it does - seem vital to 
 the interest of the Colonial Church, and, above all, to the 
 continued unity between ourselves and the branches of 
 the Church of England, that we should come to some under- 
 standing upon the subject. I may add as a circumstance 
 very strongly in favour of what I am bringing before you, 
 that the Irish Church is at the present moment wihtout 
 
 V 9
 
 310 LIFE OF BISHOP SELV/YN. [chap. vii. 
 
 any recognised connection with tlie Archbishop of Canter- 
 Liiry, and is in danger of suffering from that centrifugal 
 force to which 1 have adverted just now. It does, then, 
 seem to me, with all these desirable objects before us, that we 
 are bound to endeavour, for the good of all the Churches 
 of the Anglican communion, to lay down a broad and deep 
 foundation on which all these Churches shall be built up.. 
 How, then, is it to be done without some comprehensive 
 consideration of the whole question ? AVhat is the best mode 
 in which all the Churches of the Anglican comnmniou 
 shall be confederated together ? is the serious question we 
 have to consider. The first thing, I think, is that we 
 should have a head, and that the Colonial Churches must 
 be united to that head, not by law, but by voluntary com- 
 pact. Of course, it is quite impossible that there should 
 be any law that would touch the Churches of the United 
 States. It is nearly equally impossible that we should 
 have a law that will touch the Churches in the Colonies 
 which have a free constitution of their own. It reduces 
 itself, then, to this : there is at the present time an earnest 
 desire on the part of all branches of the Anglican com- 
 munion to recognise His Grace the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury by voluntary compact. He is the head of this con- 
 federation, and of this great body of 150 bishops : he may 
 construct a system by the advice of the members of these 
 various Churches which will regulate all these points, 
 which are at the present moment without any regulation at 
 all. That relates cliiefly to the question whether it might 
 not be desirable, after the subject has been thoroughly 
 considered by a joint committee of both houses, to draw 
 up some document which may be circulated among all 
 branches of the Anglican comnmnion, so as to take tlie 
 sense of all the different Churclies upon this point — ■ 
 whether it is not advisable in some way or other, and 
 under whatever name may be thought best, to accept the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury as tlie head of this great Chris- 
 tian association ? The question then arises, what shall 
 be the authority or the nature of the constituent assembly 
 by wliicli this shall be recognised ? The Canadian me- 
 morial, 1 think, supplies an answer to that question : the 
 Canadian bishops, under the late Bishop of Montreal, and 
 at the instance of the Bishop of Ontario, were the first to
 
 1871-1877.] SPEECH IN COXVOCATIOX. 311 
 
 move Archbishop Longley to convene the Lambeth Con- 
 ference. Lookmg to the beneficial effects which followed 
 that meeting of the bishops of Anglican Christendom, it 
 is a matter for consideration whether it may not be desir- 
 able to invite his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury to 
 convene another meeting of that body, at which all these 
 great questions might be discussed, and I hope much more 
 fully than at the Lambeth Conference. My second pro- 
 posal therefore is, that, in accordance with the petition 
 of the bishops of the Anglican province of Canada, his 
 Grace the Archbishop be requested to convene a General 
 Council of the Bishops of the Anglican communion to 
 carry on the work begun by the Lambeth Conference in 
 18G7. What follows in these resolutions is of the nature 
 of detail. It seems to be expedient that the proposed 
 General Council should beheld in the year 1875. That is, 
 because it so happens that the various meetings of the 
 Anglican communion in the provinces of Canada and the 
 United States happen to fall in 1874. If our propositions 
 be accepted and sent out to them, this will give them full 
 opportunity of considering the question in all its bearings. 
 The materials of full inquiry are supplied by the Eeports 
 of the Committees laid on the table at the adjourned 
 meeting of the Lambeth Conference. The adjourned 
 meeting was limited to one day, and it is quite evident 
 that there was no time to consider those reports in the 
 proper manner. The result was, that the reports were 
 simply received and read, and there they remained — the 
 most valuable documents that could be possibly put forth 
 in the interests of Colonial Christendom — without any 
 practical lesidt. My fourth proposition therefore is — 
 ' That the reports presented at the adjourned session of 
 the Lambeth Conference be taken into consideration by the 
 proposed General Conference of the Anglican Communion.' 
 " Before I leave the subject I hope to be able to impress 
 on my brethren the vast importance of this subject. There 
 is perhaps no person who ought to speak so feelingly on the 
 subject as myself. We are sitting here comparatively at 
 ease. We have laws which, however imperfect, serve us 
 for a guide ; but the Colonial Churches look to us to supply 
 them, not with a complete system, for in some respects 
 their system is as complete as our own, but with a system
 
 312 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. mi. 
 
 that would prevent theiii from diverging widely from the 
 Mother Church. This is what the Colonial Church and 
 the American Church desire. The same feeling of affection 
 exists now in the American Church as in bygone years. 
 When forty-seven bishops met in Baltimore the year before 
 last there was but one feeling of thankfulness for the bene- 
 fits they received from the formularies of the Church. 
 JNIany regretted tliat in those early times they had 
 departed more than they would now wish from these 
 formularies. Many of them would gladly come back to 
 the adoption of the English Prayer-book. The senior 
 presiding bishop in the United States — Bishop Smith, the 
 Bishop of Kentucky — stated to me as distinctly as pos- 
 sible, that it was his earnest desire his Grace the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury should, whether under the name of 
 Patriarch or otherwise, convene a Decennial Council of 
 all the Bishops of the American Church, and that the 
 deliberations of that Council should be limited chiefly to 
 questions of doctrine. From this you will see that this 
 aged man believed that, if we could meet together, a great 
 link of union would be formed between the United States 
 and the Church of England, by which we could solemnly 
 declare the Prayer-book to be the projjerty of all the 
 Church, and that we would not allow one particle to be 
 altered without the consent of the whole Andican com- 
 munion. All the branches of our Church earnestly desire 
 that some means should be devised by which they may 
 all be more closely united in an organized system of 
 fraternal love with the Church of England. It is for us 
 to give them that opportunity. How are they to obtain 
 that bond of union for themselves ? No one single branch 
 of the Church could come to us and say — ' Accept us in 
 some closer union with yourselves.' It must be done in 
 some way similar to that which was begun by Archbishop 
 Longley, by calling together all the Jiishops of the Anglican 
 Church, and if that be done, then I think we shall see that 
 the Church will expand itself in all parts of the world. I 
 hope that this matter will receive the attention which I 
 am quite certain that it deserves. I will only add one 
 further testimony — the testimony of Bishop Barker, the 
 IMetropolitan of Sydney, who long clung to the idea, and 
 M'as supported by the judgment of the Master of the
 
 1871-1877.] SPEECH IN CONVOCATION. 313 
 
 Rolls, that the Church of the Colonies still had some legal 
 connection with the Church of the mother country. When 
 he came to England last year that opinion was entirely 
 dispelled. To show his earnest desire for union with the 
 Church af England, he went to all the members of the 
 Judicial Committee of Privy Council to invite them sepa- 
 rately to form a voluntary spiritual tribunal of appeal on 
 questions of doctrine, for the express purpose of restrain- 
 ing the Church in his own province from those divisions 
 on the English standard of doctrine, which he believed 
 would tend to separation. From all parts of the Anglican 
 Church we have the same testimony, and I may give a 
 strong illustration from one of those small dioceses which 
 have not yet been formed into provinces. The legislature 
 of the island of Barbados have voted an income of 1,000^. 
 a-year to the Bishop of Barbados, but in the Act by which 
 this income is allotted to the bishop there is this pro- 
 vision, that if by an address of the two Houses of the 
 Legislature of Barbados the bishop sliall be found guilty 
 of any breach of discipline or error of doctrine, it shall be 
 competent for the Archbishop of Canterbury for the time 
 being to try the bishop, and, on sufficient cause being 
 shown, to depose him from his office. The Barbadian 
 Legislature pledges itself in that event to deprive him of 
 his position and his income. It may be right, if the 
 Bishop of Barbados should offend, that he should be tried 
 by the Archbishop of Canterbury ; but it is also right that 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury for the time being should 
 have a form of procedure applicable to such cases. There 
 ought to be laid down, by a conference of all the bishops 
 of the Anglican communion, a form of procedure for the 
 trial of a bishop. I give this instance of the Barbadian 
 Legislature as coming from one of the smallest unattached 
 dioceses which has not yet been formed into a province. 
 
 " I have now gone through all these various dioceses, and 
 I hope have shown that in all thei'e is an earnest desire that 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury should be the recognised 
 head of this confederation, and that he should have, for the 
 purpose of providing a system to meet all the wants of 
 those provinces, a Council with defined legislative functions. 
 I beg, in conclusion, to move these resolutios,"
 
 314 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. mi. 
 
 Of Missionary work, whether at home or abroad, the 
 bishop determined to bring the claims before his people 
 both forcibly and systematically. The Cathedral was to 
 be made the centre of this, as of all other diocesan works. 
 Of the triennial cycle of diocesan gatherings held each 
 summer in the cathedral one was the Choral, the second 
 the Home, and the third the Foreign Missionary Festival. 
 
 In the working of Missions to the careless and the 
 heathen at home, he recognised the necessity of a special 
 agency, although, as a principle, he was strongly of opinion 
 that a parish priest should never transfer to others his 
 pastoral charge. But he admitted the wisdom of organizing 
 a system " under which all those persons to whom God 
 has given the power of moving the hearts of other men — 
 a power given only to a few — should so entirely possess 
 the confidence of the diocese and the clergy, that they 
 should be able acceptably, at stated times, to preach a 
 course of sermons, to be followed up by practical oral 
 instruction, which should have the effect of teaching the 
 whole mass of darkness and ignorance which lies around." 
 In fact, he desired to substitute for the present custom, by 
 which a parochial clergyman calls to his aid some brother 
 who has become known as a striking " Mission preacher," 
 a system " under which they might have diocesan preachers 
 acting under the bishop, whose office it should be to go 
 to the dark places of the diocese where ignorance was 
 most deep, there to exercise those vivifying influences in 
 stirring up feelings for good which they had known to be 
 so beneficial in many places. If this were done, he believed 
 that they could find men a\1io were not party men, but 
 who simply desired to win souls for Christ, and whose 
 exhortations might be followed by teaching of a more 
 special character, for they all agreed that the preaching of 
 the Gospel in public, by whatever name, must be followed 
 up by some kind of oral communication with the people 
 whose hearts had been touched." 
 
 There had been established within the diocese of Lich-
 
 1871-1877.] BROTHEKHOODS. 315 
 
 field a commimity of clergymen whose aim it was to devote 
 themselves to evangelistic work among the ignorant masses 
 of the Black Country. Such an organization was not quite 
 the kind of machinery which the bishop had designed, 
 but, as he frequently said, he had learned " to be content 
 with the second best scheme when he could not obtain the 
 first." He had been asked to recognise in some way this 
 community and its work, and in the most practical way he 
 proposed to its founder an alliance, more or less intimate, 
 with the Diocesan Missionary body. The correspondence 
 lasted over several years, and is here given in a summary 
 form : — 
 
 The Palace, Lichfield, Dec. 15th, 1869. 
 
 My dear Mr. 
 
 A meeting of the " long Chapter " Bishop, Dean, Canons, 
 and Prebendaries, is convened for the 30th inst., to con- 
 sider whether the Cathedral may not be made as of old, 
 the centre of evangelical influence and light to the dark 
 places in the diocese. One of the questions to be brought 
 before us, is whether provision can be made whereby a 
 body of fit men can be maintained independently of paro- 
 chial cures, as conductors of special missions, having their 
 centre and if possible their home at the Cathedral city ? 
 
 Strange to say, on one and the same day, I had a visit 
 from Mr. Body, a letter from Mr. Luke Rivington, and a 
 printed letter of Mr. Eyle to the Record, advocating the 
 establishment " of an order of evangelists," to be under the 
 directions of the bishop and his council. My mind was 
 naturally recalled to my conversation with you. 1 wi^ite 
 now to express my hope that you and your friends may 
 have some definite proposal to lay before our meeting on 
 the 30th. 
 
 Yours very faithfully, 
 
 G. A. Lichfield. 
 
 To the same correspondent he wrote at a later date, in 
 the following terms : 
 
 You know already how gladly I shall welcome the assist- 
 ance of such a l)iotherhood as yours ; and endeavour to
 
 316 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [ouap. vii. 
 
 incorporate it with the diocesan system, upon the recogni- 
 tion of obedience to the diocesan authority, I wish your 
 body to be so entirely clear of all doubt and suspicion, as 
 to be accepted by every parochial clergyman. This may be 
 best brought about, by the submission to such a rule as 
 will convince all, that you desire nothing more than to 
 carry out the principles of the Church of England, and to 
 carry her teaching to the hearts of the multitudes of people 
 who throng this diocese. 
 
 On another occasion he wrote to acknowledge a scheme 
 for the brotherhood, which offered to the bishop the posi- 
 tion of visitor : — 
 
 I have read with great care and interest your plan for an 
 order or brotherhood of preachers. My earnest desire and 
 endeavour will be to assist and guide you as much as 
 possible, as a " helper of your joy," rather than as " having 
 dominion over your faith." Some time must elapse before 
 you could have any such legal status as would call for the 
 action of a legal " visitor." I would rather act at first as 
 a friendly referee in a pastoral rather than an official 
 character. 
 
 If you were to be the head, I should have very little fear 
 of disagreement. But my nature is always to hojie rather 
 than to fear, and thereupon I look forward to working with 
 you in the unity of the Spirit, 
 
 After conference and correspondence extending over 
 nearly a year, a declaration was submitted to the bishop, 
 which was approved, but it was further suggested that it 
 would be well to define more precisely the principle of 
 obedience, that "(1) Obedience should be to a common 
 rule approved by the bishop of the diocese. (2) Tliat doubts 
 arising from the application of that rule should be referred 
 to the bishop, (3) That the external works of the brother- 
 hood should be carried on with his sanction and approval." 
 This was assented to, and on S. Barnabas Day, 187-1, the 
 bishop wrote to the Superior :
 
 1871-1877.] CLEEGY HOME AND BAEGE MISSION. 317 
 
 Your letter this mdniing was a sight for S. Barnabas, a 
 real comfort, to learn that you have returned safe and well, 
 for which I heartily thank God. 
 
 I have just been thinking to whom I should address a 
 letter to invite one of your community to give us a short 
 address at the Garden Meeting at the Home Mission Festival 
 on Tuesday, the 20th, on the subject of Parochial Missions. 
 If you are strong enough to give us ten minutes, of course 
 I would rather have you than any other member of the 
 body. We shall be glad to see some others of the brother- 
 hood to testify by their presence to the unity of the diocesan 
 system. 
 
 At a later date when the bishop had expressed a wish for 
 a change in the title-page of a little book which the 
 Superior had compiled, and his wish had been at once 
 assented to, the bishop wrote : 
 
 Your letter has filled me with joy and thankfulness ; our 
 Church will prove itself to be truly catholic when the 
 primitive spirit of obedience is thus added to all other 
 Christian graces. 
 
 A few months before his death the bishop formally ac- 
 cepted the office of visitor, and transacted business for the 
 Society in that capacity. He was accustomed to receive 
 the profession of the brethren, and, according to his own 
 wish, his sanction was necessary for the retirement of any 
 member; he was anxious that a dispensing power should 
 be secured outside the Society, and that it should be in the 
 bishop. Both in public and in private kindly sympathy 
 M'as frequently expressed and always was given, whether 
 by letters or in conversation, when the visitor's advice 
 was sought. 
 
 Among his schemes for the home mission work of his 
 diocese w^re the clergy house in Lichfield Close, and the 
 Barge Mission. Surely it was no mean part of the home 
 mission work which provided for the deficiencies of aged 
 and disabled incumbents by sending to them help from an
 
 318 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vir. 
 
 associated body of diocesan curates, domiciled under one 
 roof in the close. This ' Eamah ' was but an adoption of 
 the plan commenced at the Waimate, whereby the diocesan 
 deacons were available for services in the adjacent villages, 
 but plans cannot be carried into execution in England witli 
 the rapidity that is possible in a young Church. The 
 house was not obtained until 1877, and much care and 
 forethought were bestowed on its adaptation and furnish- 
 ing ; but at the date of the bishop's deatli no suitable agents 
 had been found, and the fund of GO 00/. which had been 
 the offering of a friend to the bishop has passed to his suc- 
 cessor, under trust to apply the interest according to his 
 discretion for the relief of incumbents under temporary 
 disability. The house which the bishop had designed for 
 this purpose will now be the home of his widow. 
 
 The Barge Mission was another scheme which the 
 bishop's death left incomplete : the canal population being 
 always nomadic and amphibious, if not aquatic, had fallen 
 through the meshes of the parochial system and were 
 living in squalor and heathenism. For these it was 
 evident that special machinery must be provided. In 1877 
 the bishop appointed a Barge Mission chaplain who 
 endeavoured to collect the bargemen for worship at their 
 landing-places : every spare Sunday the bishop gave up 
 to this work, so congenial with his spirit : but he saw 
 that to really influence the canal population a canal float- 
 ing church must be provided, and he built a diocesan 
 barge which should move about freely, and in which he 
 determined himself to navigate the grimy waters of the 
 Midland canals with the same cheerful devotion which 
 had carried him over the laughing waves of the South 
 Pacific. He intended that the barge should accommodate 
 a congregation of forty or fifty, " and if" he said to the 
 members of the Diocesan Conference " we should be so 
 happy as to gather togetlier a larger number, we have the 
 liigliest authority for assembling the people on the bank 
 and teaching them from the shi]i." lUit wlie)i the barge
 
 1871-1877.] SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA. 319 
 
 was built it was found that conditions which had never 
 affected the Undine, now oj)posed a troublesome barrier : 
 there was not sufficient sea-room: in other words, the 
 bridges were not of an uniform gauge, and through some 
 of them the barge could not pass, and alterations had 
 to be made which involved much cost, skill, and superin- 
 tendence, and when the great calamity came in April 
 1878, tlie barge was not in working order. 
 
 It was not likely that Foreign Missions would hold a 
 second place in the sympathy and love of so great a 
 missionary. He found that about two-thirds of the 
 parishes in his diocese did nothing for missionary work 
 abroad, and he declared that " if a clergyman would only 
 preach a sermon which produced twopence or threepence, 
 this would show that he had the matter at heart ; but if 
 the whole subject was to be left entirely out of sight in 
 our churches — never preached about from the pulpit nor 
 urged upon the people — they could hardly call themselves 
 a living branch of the Church of God." 
 
 There was no lack of example wherewith to support the 
 bishop's exhortations, for in the end of 1873 his younger 
 son, who had been, in the interests of parochial peace, 
 placed at S. George's, Wolverhampton, offered himself for 
 work in Melanesia, and in the early spring of the following 
 year left England with his father's blessing for the work 
 of which he is now the head. 
 
 In 1874 the bishop again visited America, and ac- 
 companied by several of his clergy, attended the General 
 Convention of the Church of the -United States which 
 was held in New York. On this occasion he saw more of 
 the Canadian Church than he had been able to do in 1871. 
 He seemed to recognise the greater necessity of cement- 
 ing our union with distant churches in proportion as we 
 were rent asunder by party cries at home, and at the 
 Lichfield Conference he uttered these weighty words : — 
 
 " The Church of England has its own special mission. 
 The duty of the Anglican Church is to approach as nearly
 
 320 LIFE OF BISHOP SKLWYN. [chap. vii. 
 
 as possible to the standard of the Primitive Church, hold- 
 ing fast all Catholic doctrine and all essential points of 
 Christian worship, but claiming and exercising the power 
 to ordain rites and ceremonies as a particular and national 
 Church. Let us have a standard of our own — an Anglican 
 standard — admitting as much flexibility and variety as the 
 Church itself may direct for the good of the souls of 
 her people, — Cathedrals, parishes rich and poor, in town 
 and country, missions at home and abroad, special services 
 for every especial need, each (like the various sections of a 
 mighty army) having its distinctive uniform and its own 
 drill, l)ut all alike ' under authority.' I go this autunni to 
 the Synod of Canada and to the Convention of Bishops 
 in the United States. What message shall I take to 
 them ? Shall I tell them that as a united diocese we greet 
 them in the name of the Lord, who would have all men to 
 be one ? Shall I tell them we are all — men in authority 
 and men under authority, — Bishop, Clergy, Laity, subject 
 one to another in the unity of the Spirit and the bond 
 of peace, and that we pray for them (as we pray for our- 
 selves) that that outpouring of the Holy Ghost which, 
 lilvC the oil upon the waves, calmed down the troubled 
 sea of human joassions in the Apostolic Church, may unite 
 us all in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and 
 charity ? " 
 
 Landing at S. John's, Newfoundland, the party w^ere 
 disappointed to find that Bishop Feild had started for the 
 Labrador ; thence they went to Halifax and Montreal ; at the 
 latter city they attended the Provincial Synod of Canada. 
 The bishop spoke of himself as the representative of 
 Church Missions, anxious to see the Synod in session, and 
 to extend to them the right hand of fellowship, and so 
 far as lay in his power to preserve the unity of the 
 English Churcli. Westward still the bishop and his party 
 went, staying at Toronto, London, Ottawa, where the 
 Governor-General being away from the city requested the 
 Bishop of Ontario to occupy Government House and act 
 the part of host to the Bishop of Lichfield, on to ^Minnesota, 
 where that apostolic man Bishop Whipple entertained
 
 1871-1877.] BISHOP OF FREDERICTON. 321 
 
 a kindred soul and introduced his English brother to all 
 his missionary institutions ; on again to Nebraska, where a 
 journey of 1,500 miles toward the setting sun was com- 
 pleted. Hurrying eastward again they reached Fredericton 
 in order to accept Bishop Medley's invitation before the 
 assembling of the General Convention on October 7. 
 Here they saw the most complete Cathedral Church which 
 they had met with in America : one of the bishop's 
 companions wrote, " I never saw the English Church both 
 in its externals and in its ritual more pleasantly trans- 
 planted to a foreign liome," and the Bishop of Fredericton 
 has kindly given his reminiscences of the pleasant meeting 
 in the following words : — 
 
 "Our dear Bishop Selwyn, in October, 1874, travelled 
 seven days and nights without intermission, to fulfil a 
 promise that he would pay us a visit in Fredericton. 
 
 " Notwithstanding the fatigue of so long a journey, 
 he preached twice in the cathedral, to the great delight of 
 all who heard him, and gave us a most interesting account 
 of the life and labours of Bishop Patteson. He also 
 addressed the scholars of our Sunday School in the after- 
 noon, and so impressed them, that of their own accord 
 some of them said, ' We must contribute to educate a 
 Melanesian boy in Norfolk Island.' This they have done 
 for three years. Our first poor little fellow died, and we 
 now subscribe to a second. The bishop left us on another 
 long journey to New York the following day ; and as long 
 as life is spared, we shall never forget his visit," 
 
 The sermon on the opening day of the General Conven- 
 tion, was ]3reached by the Bishop of Lichfield, the text being 
 Isaiah Ixvi, 8, 10, 12. The Bishops of Ejngston, 
 Montreal, and Quebec were also present. At the close 
 of the Convention, the great missionary meeting of the 
 American Church was held, and the Bishop of Lichfield's 
 address was, as in 1871, the chief point of interest. He 
 had now seen something of the work of the American
 
 322 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [ouap. vii. 
 
 Church among the heathen, and he urged the " good com- 
 fortable rectors," the most eloquent men in the city of New 
 York, to put themselves in the forefront of the battle in 
 the far West ; and then, lest this should seem to be mere 
 badinage, he added : — 
 
 " Of course, dear friends, I would not dare to say these 
 things if I was not ready to put myself at the head, or 
 at all events, to go in company with you ; but old as I 
 am, and partially unfit for the work, there is nothing I 
 should like better, if I were not charged with a diocese 
 of a million or more of souls, than to go out with a good, 
 earnest deputation of good Rectors of New York and all 
 the cities in Northern America, and have a thorough good 
 raid, without arms, without ammunition, without rations, 
 and without anything else but the simple preaching of the 
 Gospel, taking care, of course, to learn the language 
 beforehand, because it is that which keeps us back from 
 many of these Indians. Just as I could hardly find a 
 single man who had crossed the Atlantic from England, 
 though so many cross it from this side, so I hardly ever 
 meet a man that does not talk about the difficulty of 
 learning languages. The difficulty is in setting about it. 
 Do you suppose Bishop Patteson acquired a knowledge of 
 twenty languages, so as to be able to converse in ail of 
 them, without some effort ? You may talk about natural 
 gifts and the facilities for acquiring languages ; but the 
 real natural gift is to have in your heart a determination 
 that you will do what is necessary to be done, that you 
 will learn what is necessary to be learned, that you will 
 give up everything that is necessary to be given up, and 
 that you will go forth. Talk not of a missionary's self- 
 denial. It is the very thing that men are doing for 
 evil purposes. All those men who are supposed to be 
 necessary to coerce the Indians, all those generals and 
 soldiers who are now following up the Indians with fire 
 and sword, are submitting to privations and incurring risks 
 greater a great deal than any which missionaries are 
 likely to have to undertake." 
 
 The bishop took the opportunity of meeting objectors, 
 if objectors there wore, to the scheme of organic union
 
 1871-1877.] STEWAEDSHIP OF SOULS. 323 
 
 between the mother and daughter Churches, and showed 
 that it was an union only for aggressive purposes and for 
 economy of power in such aggression. This principle 
 was recognised in the Lambeth Conference of 1878, which 
 declared against duplicate organization of the Churches in 
 the same place or Mission. The Bishop said : — 
 
 "You have heard, perhaps, that in the General Convention 
 there has been a talk about what was meant by proposing 
 that the Church in the United States should be organically 
 united with the Church in England. What I meant by it 
 is this ; that we should have a larger front to go forth into 
 the realms of Satan — a larger power to make aggression 
 upon heathenism ; that we should do it as an united 
 Church ; that there should be no distinction between a 
 clergyman in the United States and a clergyman in 
 England. I do not want to interfere, and the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury does not want to interfere, with your canons 
 or your rules of order. You may alter them again and 
 again as much as you like. But what I say is, let us be 
 united in heart upon this one point — that here is a great 
 nation, thirty millions in England, fifty millions in the 
 United States, all of them speaking, the same language, all 
 of them reading the same Bible, all the subjects of the 
 same promises, all looking forward to the same account 
 which we must give before the Judgment-seat of Christ. 
 This great stewardship, then, of the whole world is at this 
 present moment, 1 believe, committed to our Anglo-Saxon 
 race. If it be not committed to us, I ask to whom is it 
 conmiitted ? Has the stewardship of souls, as a duty 
 binding upon mankind, ceased to exist? Spain had it 
 once. Spain neglected it. Spain has lost it. France had 
 it once. Portugal had it once. There is no nation now 
 that can be put in comparison for one single moment as a 
 real effective missionary power upon the earth to our own 
 English-speaking race. 
 
 " You have heard about the increase of population here. 
 Now, it is perfectly appalling to think of what the popu- 
 lation of this country may become. If you set to work 
 and calculate the seven millions of square miles that there 
 are in the territory of the United States, you will find that 
 hy the time the territory of the United States shall have 
 
 VOL. II. Y
 
 324 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. mi. 
 
 been as thickly peopled as the territory of England, it will 
 contain more than the whole present number of the human 
 race; that is, that if it please God to move the heart of 
 this great nation to a sense of its true, its highest respon- 
 sibility, there may be within a given time the whole 
 number of the human race actually professing Christianity 
 Avithin the limits of the United States, and able upon equal 
 terms, man for man, to do battle with the other remaining 
 unconverted portion of the human race scattered over 
 India and China and Africa, and all these other smaller 
 countries which yet remain in heathen darkness. Now is 
 not that an adequate object for a nation like this ? Is not 
 that a reason why England should be united with her 
 daughter-country in America ? Is not that a reason why 
 the Church in America should be united as with one heart 
 and \vith one soul, with the Church in England ? Is not 
 that a reason why bishops should go forth sometimes 
 like Bishop ]\Iackenzie from England to die in Africa; 
 sometimes like Bishop Auer from America to die in Africa; 
 sometimes like Bishop Patteson to die in Melanesia, and 
 by their deaths to serve Christ as effectually as by their 
 lives, by setting forth an example of Christian self-denial, 
 of duties performed at the hazard of life ? All these 
 qualities of a Christian missionary stir up the hearts of all 
 real believers in Christ as effectually as the deeds of heroism 
 that are done in war by our soldiers and sailors stir up the 
 hearts of our young men to go and do likewise." 
 
 The presiding bishop said : " The only unpleasant part 
 of this meeting is that this is the last time on his present 
 visit that we shall see the face of our beloved brother of 
 Lichfield. To-morrow he leaves for his home. ]\r,iy God 
 bless him and take him in safety to his home with a sweet 
 recollection that he has not laboured in vain ! " The 
 benediction was given by Bishop Selwyn, and the crowded 
 room was slowly emptied, all seeming to be unwilling to 
 depart. 
 
 The warm hearts of American Churchmen were not 
 content to allow the visit of the bishop to go without a 
 substantial record, and as the visit of 1871 was com-
 
 1871-1877.] CONSECRATION OF REV. J. R. SELWYN. 325 
 
 memorated by the alms-dish, so now they provided a 
 capital sum of £200 for the foundation of a "Potter- 
 Selwyn Prize," in Lichfield Theological College. 
 
 The cordiality of this meeting had been increased by 
 the appropriate action of the Bishop of Chichester sending 
 a telegram from the P)righton Church Congress, whose 
 sitting synchronised with that of the Convention, inviting 
 the American bishops to attend the Congress of 1875, 
 which would be held at Stoke-upon-Trent, and which 
 under the presidency of Bishop Selwyn was held for " four 
 days without a word of bitterness or strife." In 1878 the 
 bishop and the dean and chapter had invited all the bishops 
 who came to England to rest awhile at Lichfield and wor- 
 ship with them under the roof of S. Chad, but those who 
 visited that ancient city went as pilgrims to the grave of 
 the honoured dead rather than as guests of his survivors. 
 
 In 1877 a service, such as no cathedral ever before 
 witnessed, was held in Lichiield. The General Synod of 
 New Zealand had elected the Eev, John Eichardson 
 Selwyn to succeed to Bishop Patteson's vacant chair. 
 The consecration took place at Nelson, 8,000 miles in a 
 direct line beneath ourfeet, on February 18 ; and at 11 o'clock 
 P.M., the hour which accorded with that fixed for the con- 
 secration at the Antipodes, a simultaneous service was 
 held at Lichfield. The thoughts suggested both contrast 
 and unity. While to the brilliantly-lighted cathedral the 
 congregation had come through the bitter cold of a winter's 
 night, into the simple church at Nelson, in which the service 
 was held, the floods of noonday sunshine were pouring, and 
 all around the ripened corn was waving in the fresh sea 
 breeze ; but the prayers that came from hearts separated 
 by half the globe met before the Throne, and the glorious 
 chant that went up from Lichfield Cathedral and the 
 prayers offered in many English homes that night were 
 joined with the intercessions of the far-away congregations 
 of New Zealand. 
 
 The bishop himself conducted the service at Lichfield 
 
 Y 2
 
 326 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. vii. 
 
 and gave from the lectern an address which will never be 
 forgotten by those who heard it. 
 
 "Such an occasion," he said, "is better suited for deep 
 feeling than for much speaking. 'We know that tlie great 
 Intercessor is always praying for the Churcli, ' Give Me 
 the heatlien for Mine inheritance, and the utmost parts of 
 the earth for My possession ; ' and that His prayer is ever 
 receiving its fulfilment. So far, indeed, has our own 
 Church been blessed, that it may be said with perfect 
 truth to be now offering up all round the globe a ceaseless 
 and continuous sacrifice of praise in the words of the 
 English Prayer-book — day telling day and night passing on 
 the happy service, as the world rolls round. Thus are our 
 thoughts widened and emancipated from insular prejudice 
 and insular pride. And now, while humbly thanking God 
 for His servant lately departed this life, Bishop Patteson, 
 let us also pray devoutly tliat the work of that good man 
 may never perish, and that he may never lack a worthy 
 successor. Your coming here to-night shows me that you 
 aie all prepared to offer up your prayers for my own dear 
 son, known personally to many of you, and a clergyman 
 ordained in your own diocese. May he be given boldness 
 and prudence. May he be saved from the perils of pre- 
 sumption ; lest, as a novice, he be too much puffed up. 
 Changed from his earlier destination by the advice of 
 Bishop Patteson, may he be blessed in carrying on the 
 same work, to which he seems to be called. And as we 
 have already sent forth from this diocese Bishop Rawle to 
 the West Indies, so let us now send forth our own dear 
 son, to take the Gospel, not to a numerous, but to a widely 
 scattered race, in whom the curse of Babel seems to have 
 reached its utmost climax. These are the isles tliat wait 
 for Christ; and assuredly they will not wait in vain." 
 
 The Nicene Creed was then sung ; and after a short 
 space for silent prayer, a litany, and another hymn, the 
 congregation were dismissed by the bishop with his 
 benediction. 
 
 In May of tlic same year the bishop received a signal 
 mark of royal favour; the Order of S. Michael and S. George
 
 1871-1877.] ORDER OF SS. MICHAEL AND GEORGE. 327 
 
 was reorganized, and the ofifice of prelate and chancellor, 
 which had last been held by the Archbishop of Corfu, was 
 conferred on him. As the order is limited to persons who 
 have served in the colonies, it was obviously impossible to 
 have conferred the office on any other person ; but it is to be 
 hoped that the action of the Crown in the case of Bishop 
 Selwyn will not form a precedent by which the decoration 
 of the order shall be added to the rewards of bishops who 
 have resigned their sees ; as there are no duties attached, 
 the honour might well be bestowed on successive prelates 
 in recognition of long service, not abandoned, in the colony 
 to which the Church had sent them. The terms in which 
 on this occasion the offer was made and was accepted were 
 alike honourable to both parties. 
 
 Colonial Office, May nth, 1877. 
 
 My dear Loed, 
 
 The order of S. Michael and S. George — appropriated 
 as you are aware to Colonial services and claims — is about 
 to receive an enlargement and in some respects a reorgan- 
 ization. The offices of Chancellor and Prelate to the Order 
 are to be revived, and I am now commanded by the Queen 
 to say that Her Majesty has been pleased to confer the 
 office of Prelate ^^pon you. I hope that the appointment, 
 which will involve none but purely honorary duties, will 
 be as agreeable to you as it is pleasant to me to be the 
 medium of communication. It is the recognition of long 
 and great services rendered to the Church in the Colonies, 
 and will I feel sure be very welcome to those who have 
 known and respected you as much as 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Carnarvon. . 
 
 Palace, Lichfield, May 20th, 1877. 
 
 My dear Lord, 
 
 May I request your Lordship to present to Her Majesty 
 my most humble and dutiful thanks for the honour con- 
 ferred upon me in the appointment to the office of Prelate 
 to the order of S. Michael and S. George. My own 
 period of Colonial service has come to an end , but I am 
 thankful to have a son, who, by God's help, may carry on
 
 328 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYX. [chap. mi. 
 
 the same work of uniting the Colonies of Australia and 
 New Zealand with the native races of the Western 
 Pacific, in faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and in alle- 
 giance to the British Crown. Allow nie also to thank 
 you most heartily for the personal kindness of your com- 
 munication. 
 
 I remain, with many thanks. 
 
 Yours very faithfully, 
 
 G. A. Lichfield. 
 
 The fourth Diocesan Conference which was held at 
 Lichfield in September 1877, possessed an interest at the 
 time and for its own sake, which subsequent events have 
 intensified. With a feeling almost prophetic the bishop 
 dwelt on the many changes, caused chiefly by death, wliich 
 had happened in the diocese ; and these changes not only 
 warned each member to " work the works of Him that 
 sent " him and to " set his house in order," but also pointed 
 to the need of fixed principles on which work sliould be 
 securely built up. " As short-lived men who know that 
 we must soon die, we learn the value of institutions which 
 may last for ever." He insisted with more than his ordi- 
 nary vigour on the subdivision of dioceses as the first 
 means of remedying evils and promoting efficiency in the 
 Church : he declared it to be ' most unreasonable ' that Lich- 
 field should contain a population of 1,356,000, and the 
 neighbouring diocese of Hereford should have only 
 237,000 : Church activity, subdivision of parishes, multi- 
 plication of churches, the ecclesiastical commissioners and 
 Church societies giving grants for the maintenance of 
 additional curates, only gave prominence to the question, 
 ' Where are the men V "I say at once," the Bishop added, 
 " we shall never have a supply of men adequate to the 
 present demands of the Church, unless we so divide our 
 dioceses as to enable our bishops to take a large and 
 personal share in the education of their clergy. It may 
 safely be predicted that all these differences, real or sup- 
 posed, between the bishops and their clergy, will cease to
 
 1871-1877.] SUPPLY OF CLEEGY. 329 
 
 exist wlien the young men are trained up under the eyes 
 of their spiritual fathers, as Saul at the feet of Gamaliel. 
 As in |)arishes, so in dioceses, the work is apt to become 
 formal and unreal when the numbers of the flock are in 
 excess of the pastoral power. And surely this is the case 
 when thirty-five deacons and as many priests have to be 
 ordained annually, not to supply the needs but merely to 
 stop the gaps in the present diocese of Lichfield. So also 
 of confirmations. If all were ours 25,000 might be con- 
 firmed annually. As it is, at least 15,000 ought to be 
 confirmed. Nine thousand arc confirmed. If it were not 
 for the help of my dear friends the coadjutor bishops, even 
 the lowest number would be too great for a work like 
 confirmation, which requires to be done with the fervour 
 and freshness of pastoral love." 
 
 For the supply of a clergy, in numbers adequate to the 
 demand, he saw a source " plain as the progress of the 
 rivulet, which issuing from the little spring in the moun- 
 tain side, is guided into the reservoir from whence the 
 w^ater is distributed from house to house ;" he looked to the 
 Sunday schools, the pupil teachers, the bible classes and 
 the confirmation classes. If the clergy would only 
 " encourage the more promising of the young men who 
 attended their ministrations, w^ould welcome them in their 
 homes, watch over their habits, form their characters, and 
 assist them in their studies," the probationer system and 
 the theological college would take up their work and do all 
 that was necessary to send them forth well furnished and 
 equipped for the work of the ministry.
 
 330 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PRINCIPLES AND CONVICTIONS. 
 
 The time lias come when it will be necessary to abandon 
 the chronological order in which the leading events of 
 the bishop's life have hitherto been marshalled, and to look 
 at the principles which underlay the whole of that many- 
 sided activity in the service of God. The reader will ask, 
 What were his convictions as a Churchman and as a Citi- 
 zen, what were his opinions and his politics ? What was 
 the secret of the homage that men voluntarily paid to the 
 opinions of Bishop Selwyn, or of the honour in which he 
 was held wherever the Anglican Communion has extended 
 itself ? He uttered no shibboleths, he led no party, pro- 
 bably he satisfied no party ; his grasp of the Divine in- 
 herent life of the Catholic Church and, as growing out of 
 this, the true doctrines of the Priesthood, of the power 
 of the Keys and of Apostolical Succession, of the grace 
 of Sacraments, led some persons to stamp him, in common 
 with all who thus held the truth according to the pro- 
 portion of the faith, as a High Churchman ; but no man 
 ever more truly earned the title of Evangelical or more 
 thoroughly clung to the great and simple doctrines of 
 the Gospel, to the proclamation of which among the 
 heathen he gave the best years of his life: he had 
 gathered all the advantages of the great Oxford move- 
 ment, whose services to the Church under the good pro- 
 vidence of God none but fanatics will refuse to recognise ; 
 but he did not allow personal admiration of great men to
 
 VIII.] ENGLAND AND ROME. 331 
 
 make him a merely passive follower. His correspond- 
 ence, as given in these pages, has shown how consistently 
 he declared his love to his own true Mother, in spite of 
 her many shortcomings, and how clearly he detected the 
 grievous errors of her great antagonist. The remedy for 
 those morbid souls who could not endure imperfection in 
 the Anglican Communion was, in his judgment, to be 
 found not in acceptance of the far more serious short- 
 comings of Eome, but in work in the Mission Field. He 
 did not bid them join himself in his work (which he said 
 had no hardships), but in tlie crowded cities of India or 
 China, in the plains of Africa, and among the unnumbered 
 islands of the Pacific, he thought there might be found 
 outlets for the excited and sensitive spirits of the Church 
 at home, often more sinned against than sinning, and in 
 which " men who were called rebels in England might be 
 free to serve God and to win souls." To what noble uses, 
 if only his challenge had been accepted, might he not have 
 applied the Spiritual powers of some of those men whom 
 morbid discontent, quickened by lack of sympathy, drove 
 into an acceptance of all the modern dogmas of Home ? 
 A remarkable letter has been preserved, in which he 
 poured forth his regret at the secession of one who at the 
 time possessed more real moral influence than he has 
 ever exercised in the Church of his adoption. 
 
 To THE Eev. Edwaed Coleeidge. 
 
 •' Border Matd," 
 
 At anchor off Wooloomooloo Point, 
 
 Sydney, »S'ep<. 22nd, 1857. 
 
 My deae, veey deae Feiend, 
 
 For such friends are indeed valuable, when we cannot 
 tell from day to day who will desert us next. Now it is 
 that we feel the value of the few of our staunch friends, 
 who we know will never desert us, while others, in whom 
 we trusted, are swelling the force of our opponents. I 
 am led into this train of thought by reading over Manning's 
 last letter to me, in which is the following passage : —
 
 332 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 " Through our dear friend Coleridge I have followed 
 the course of your labours, and seem familiar with your 
 works and aims. Need I say with what true sympathy, 
 and with what gratitude for your testimony that the 
 Church of England can live, and spread abroad from its 
 own Spiritual centre " ? 
 
 How little could I expect that the writer of this sen- 
 tence in 1 848 would so soon desert us ! AVhen the whole 
 world was o]jen to him, unencumbered with family, if he 
 felt dissatisfied with the Church in England, he might 
 have been tlie Xavier of the present age, and I could have 
 ceded to him at once one of the two signs of the terres- 
 trial zodiac which have been assigned to my nominal 
 charge. Among these fertile islands, crowded with living 
 souls, and altogether untouched, we might, with such a 
 leader as Manning, under God's blessing, have built up 
 such a mission work as the Church has not yet seen. But 
 these are vain speculations now that the step is taken, 
 and such men are not likely to return. All that we can 
 now hope for is that it may be found by experience, that 
 in the memory of their past character and in their written 
 works they have left behind them a better treasure than 
 any which they can carry with them to the Church of 
 Home. 
 
 Of the catholicity of his own Communion he never had 
 the shadow of a doubt : her deficiencies, which are acci- 
 dental and not organic, he thought would be remedied by 
 reverting to the primitive method of seeking the mind of 
 the Spirit in councils of the whole body. Of the corrup- 
 tions of Rome he was neither ignorant nor tolerant; in 
 the last Diocesan Conference over which he presided, he 
 said, " If there be any here, clergyman or layman, who 
 cannot find it in their heart to thank God for the Reforma- 
 tion, I will not undertake to argue with them. It seems 
 to me as clear as noonday that we have accepted the prin- 
 ciples of the Reformation, and I desire nothing more than 
 to be enabled, by God's blessing, to carry out those princi- 
 ples to the highest point of Spiritual life and energy, and 
 to the greatest perfection of practical administration. To
 
 VIII.] THE JUS CYPRIUM. 333 
 
 attain the first we must live by the rule of the Bible ; 
 to attain the second we mnst seek for the ' Spirit 
 of Counsel' to guide our deliberations," The doctrines 
 which divided less learned men and less humble souls 
 into rival camps were discerned by him as being in har- 
 mony, and were seen by him to meet behind the veil, and 
 to kiss each other beneath the shadow of God's throne : 
 truths which to shallow uninstructed minds appeared to 
 be antagonistic, were in his eyes so nicely measured out 
 as to produce a perfect equilibrium, like the physical forces 
 whicli guide the planets in their orbits. 
 
 Persons who were shaken in their allegiance to the 
 Church of England, and who yet desired to take no rash 
 step, were often led by confidence in his learning, his 
 sympathy, and his firmness, to make known their douljts 
 to the bishop. The results were by no means uniform : 
 some were retained, others were lost, but even those who 
 left the Church of their Baptism remember and still ex- 
 press their sense of his kindness and patience. And yet 
 in spite of his patience he had a ready and sharp way of 
 brushing away untenable and overstrained statements. 
 A clergyman in the diocese of Lichfield, doubtful of his 
 own position, and tempted to join the Eoman Church, 
 formally discussed the points of difference with one who 
 was well qualified to guide him ; nothing was to be done 
 hastily ; and it was agreed that the first four Oecumenical 
 Councils should be thoroughly studied, and everything 
 noted down which would seem to favour or to oppose the 
 Eoman claims. The Council of Ephesus presented the 
 chief points of importance : the Jus Cyprium, established 
 by the final canon of that Council, it was agreed, greatly 
 strengthened the Anglican claim to ecclesiastical auto- 
 nomy : but when the two friends came to read in Labbe's 
 Original Records the history of the Synod, it appeared that 
 the Synod returned thanks at its close to " vec5 IlauXft) 
 KupiXXft), KoX KeXeaTiVft), (f)vXaKi t^? Tr/o-Teeo?." The 
 waverer saw that the Synod called Pope Celestine " the
 
 334 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 Guardian of tlie Faith," and, elate at his discovery, went 
 to the bishop to talk the matter over with him. Too 
 honest to suppress what had happened, he left the Palace 
 only to confess to his friend, that after having with great 
 elation pointed out to the bishop that the great Council of 
 Ephesus had called a Pope " <f>v\a^ t?}? 7rLa7ew<i," the 
 bishop had entirely disconcerted him by saying, " I am 
 surprised at your flunking much of that, for it is exactly 
 what the Pope in the sixteenth century called our Eighth 
 Henry." 
 
 On another occasion the bisliop wrote to one, who after- 
 wards joined the Church of Rome : — 
 
 My dear Mk. 
 
 " I am very sorry to hear that your difficulty continues 
 to increase. 
 
 " If I were in your position I should feel no gTeater 
 difficulty than that of leaving my own 'field which the 
 Lord has blessed,' to fly to another field of which I know 
 nothing. The true wisdom in these times of over-excited 
 sensibility is to strive to learn ' in whatsoever state we are, 
 therewith to be content.' I can see many faults in the 
 Church of England ; but if I were to see none in the 
 Church of Rome I should think myself blind indeed. 
 And of the Church of my parents I can say with all my 
 heart, ' With all thy faults 1 love thee still' " 
 
 In disputes in matters of ritual he was always tolerant, 
 and increasingly so in later years. It was a subject of 
 regret to many of his friends that, for reasons already 
 given, he did not from his place in Parliament oppose the 
 Public Worship Regulation Act. That ill-starred attempt 
 at popular legislation was passed in panic and avowedly 
 for party purposes; it M'ould be very difficult to point 
 to any so flagrant a breach of the constitution during 
 the two preceding centuries : and by this time probably 
 its warmest advocates are disappointed at their abortive
 
 VIII.] OBEDIENCE TO LAW. 335 
 
 efforts. But if Bishop Selwyn offered no active oppo- 
 sition to the disastrous Bill in Parliament, in his diocese 
 the Act has proved to be a dead letter. He not only 
 discouraged litigation, but he weighed the moral value of 
 the characters and the antecedents of the complainants 
 who came to him with their grievances, and he declined 
 to abandon faithful priests and attached congregations to 
 the persecutions of puppet parishioners, who were the mere 
 tools of partisan organizations. In 1869, after the delivery 
 of the judgment by Lord Cairns, a vicar in the diocese 
 wrote to the bishop that he had long been in the habit of 
 nsing altar lights, and did not feel in conscience bound to 
 change his practice, but only to inform the bishop of the 
 circumstance. 
 
 This elicited the following letter : — 
 
 "I am very much obliged to you for your letter of 
 yesterday, so moderate in tone if not convincing in 
 argument. 
 
 " Eead Socrates' address to the Laws before his death, 
 in Plato, summed up by the French Mayor at the time of 
 the Eevolution : — ' Les lois, meme injustes, sont toujours 
 les lois.' 
 
 " I cannot agree with your reasoning. 
 
 "1. Because the law of the Church in this case is also 
 the law of the land : see Eubric, at the end of Calendar, 
 ' hij authority of Parliamcni! 
 
 " Whether lights on the altar be part of the law of the 
 Church in England is not for you or me to decide, but 
 for the Court appointed for that purpose by the same 
 autliority of Parliament. 
 
 " 2. Whether any future Court will decide in the oppo- 
 site way neither you nor I can know, but God only ; but 
 for the present, the point, as now decided, is the Law. 
 
 " You may think Sir E. Phillimore a better judge than 
 Lord Cairns, &c. ; others may think the contrary ; but the 
 law fixes the course of appeal from Sir E. P. to Lord 
 Cairns : and you cannot make the stream run back again. 
 In this case private opinions are of no value, especially as
 
 336 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [phap. 
 
 they contradict one another. But the law remains the 
 same, and takes effect. 
 
 " 4. Though you are doubtless a priest in the Church 
 Catliolic, yet your right to minister is by virtue of a law 
 of the Church of England. If you were to light candles 
 on the High Peak I suppose nobody would question your 
 
 right ; but your right to minister in Church to 
 
 the exclusion of other priests is a right given to you by 
 the law of England, and that law has defined, and the law- 
 making power may define from time to time, in what 
 manner you may minister. 
 
 " 5. If that law-making power should enact anything 
 which fairly involves the question whether we ought not 
 1o obey God rather than man, then the only course open 
 
 is to retire from to the High Peak, or some other 
 
 place where the Law puts no such constraint upon the 
 conscience. 
 
 " 6. But I cannot think that candles, or vestments, or 
 incense are matters which touch the conscience, because 
 nothing can be necessary to sah'^ation which is not con- 
 tained in Holy Scripture. Scruples of conscience I think 
 are wrong which go beyond the point of such necessary 
 things." 
 
 The vicar was not convinced, and told the Ijishop that if 
 he, as his bishop, required him to give up the practice of 
 lighting altar candles, he would obey, but that he could 
 not in conscience recognise the authority of the Civil 
 Court. The bishop made no such request, and indeed 
 never referred to the subject again. His views on the 
 peculiar position of a beneficed priest were frequently 
 given on the occasion of his instituting new incumbentF. 
 On one such occasion he said in the course of his sermon : 
 
 " The legal and ecclesiastical aspect of institution is the 
 appointment of a clergyman to the cure of souls in the 
 parish to the exclusion of every other clergyman of the 
 Church, and who alone will have authority over the parish 
 as implied by his institution. This implies on his part 
 obedience to certain laws, bv means of which liis conduct
 
 viiT.] INDUCTION TO BENEFICES. 337 
 
 in the ministry of the Chnrch is to be governed. If this 
 were a private building, maintained by private individuals, 
 it would be for those individuals to determine what sort of 
 agreement, what kind of rules, should be enacted by them 
 for the governance of the services of the Church, The 
 rules which govern the services of this Church are such as 
 have been eaacted many years ago by the joint consent of 
 the Church and the State, and the institution is guarded 
 by the authority of both. The Prayer-book, which the 
 minister is required to use, and none other, was jointly, 
 again, the production of Church and State. The Book of 
 Common Prayer was lirst prepared by the authority of the 
 Convocation of the Church, which was afterwards ratified by 
 the State. It would then be in vain to say that any clergy- 
 man could accept that pulpit, and be in a position to carry 
 out any other service than that prescribed by the Book of 
 Common Prayer. In order that this may be apparent to 
 him and all people, your new rector will have to make a 
 declaration in which he will solemnly give his assent to 
 the Thirty-nine Articles, to the Book of Common Prayer, 
 and of the Ordering of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, and 
 will promise to use the form of the administration of the 
 Sacraments prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer, and 
 none other. This is the security of the congregation 
 against any kind of innovation, for, by the declaration, the 
 minister is bound to conduct the services of the parish 
 according to the laws of the Church, agreed upon by the 
 conjoint act of the State and. the Church. 
 
 " As the Preface to the Prayer-book sets forth, no form 
 of words can be so used as to render it impossible for any 
 difference to arise, but in such cases where doubts arise 
 they are to be laid before the Bishop, and if the Bishop 
 has any doubt he may send it for solution to the Arch- 
 bishop. Because, then, there must be occasions on which 
 differences of opinion and disputes may arise, you will hear 
 the clergyman, who will now be instituted, take the oath 
 of canonical obedience to the Bishop of Lichfield and his 
 successors in all things lawful and honest, and another 
 oath of fidelity to Queen Victoria and her successors." 
 
 But if he thus claimed observance of the laws even 
 ot the civil courts, it must not be supposed that he did so
 
 338 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [cHAr. 
 
 on any other ground than that they were the laws : he depre- 
 cated as heartily as any could the appeal to " aliens from 
 other professions to judge on legal grounds alone of the 
 meaning of words which can have no meaning but by 
 their inward power and application to the heart, all the 
 questions which had been driven into courts of law 
 might," he thought, " have been settled without any such 
 appeal, if one party had been more conciliatory and the 
 other more tolerant. Even now," he said in 1877, "it is 
 not too late ; I still cling to the hope that the contending 
 parties in the Church will submit themselves to their 
 bishops. What I claim is that with which even inspired 
 apostles were content ; that dissensions and disputations 
 should cease, and that the bishops, clergy, and laity, 
 assembled with one accord under the guidance of the Holy 
 Ghost, should consider what is ueedful for the peace of the 
 Church, and send up to Parliament and to Convocation 
 our humble petition that we may not be left to seek the 
 solution of our doubts in courts of law, but that in the 
 spirit and very letter of the Preface to the Book of 
 Common Prayer, such changes may be made, according 
 to the exigencies of the times, as may make our Rubric 
 clear and our line of duty so plain, that there shall be no 
 longer room for litigation nor necessity for penal laws. 
 Choose you this day whom you will serve; whether 
 the letter of an antiquated law or the voice of the living 
 Church. " 
 
 The one town in the diocese in which differences on tlie 
 sulgect of ritual and kindred Church matters rnged most 
 furiously was probably Wolverhampton. In 1871 the 
 local branch of the Church Association made a vague 
 representation to the bishop against all who differed 
 from themselves, and added an expression of disappoint- 
 ment at the fact that the bishops did not apply them- 
 selves more heartily to the task of exterminating all 
 High Churchmen, and the document ended with the usual 
 threat, that if they did not do the bidding of the Cliurch
 
 VIII.] BISHOPS AS PUBLIC PROSECUTORS. 339 
 
 Association " the existence of the Establishment would be 
 imperilled." 
 
 The bishop replied in a lengthy address conspicuous 
 for patience, tenderness, and firmness. The complainants 
 were not complimented on their Protestantism or condoled 
 with on the wickedness of the clergy ; the bishop was no 
 worshipper of majorities, and cared nothing for violent but 
 indistinct utterances. He declared that, after three years 
 intimate acquaintance with his diocese, he did not believe 
 that there was a single clergyman within its limits who 
 was fairly and justly liable to the imputation of pro- 
 moting Eomish doctrine and teaching ; he was not aware 
 that the practice of confession, of which the memorialists 
 complained, had in any case gone beyond the limits recom- 
 mended in the Prayer-book ; and he added of his own 
 knowledge, that some books of devotion containing prayers 
 and forms tending rather to controversy tliau to edification, 
 which had been introduced, had been immediately with- 
 drawn from use at his request. To those who had 
 expressed their conviction of the bishop's determination 
 to enforce respect for the law, he said — •' If I am to under- 
 stand by these words that I am expected to assume the 
 office of a public prosecutor of the clergy for breaches of 
 the ceremonial law of the Church, I must say at once that 
 I do not so understand the duties of my office. I may be 
 called upon to act as a judge, and I must then inquire into 
 all complaints with the strictest impartiality. I am not 
 at liberty to regard some breaches of the law as of graver 
 importance and to pass by others as trivial. The Lords 
 of the Judicial Committee are clear on this point (Martin 
 V. Mackonochie, 23rd December, 1868) : — 
 
 " ' The bishop could have no jurisdiction to modify or 
 dispense with the rubrical provisions.' 
 
 "Again: 'Their lordships are of opinion that it is not 
 open to a minister of the Church, or even to their lord- 
 ships, in advising her Majesty, as the highest ecclesiastical 
 tribunal of appeal, to draw a distinction in acts which are 
 
 VOL. II. z
 
 340 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYX. [chap. 
 
 a departure from or violation of tlie rubric, between those 
 which are important and those which appear to be trivial. 
 The object of a statute of unifornrity is, as its preamble 
 expresses, to produce ' an universal agreement in the public 
 worship of Almighty God,' an object which would be 
 wholly frustrated if each minister on his view of the rela- 
 tive importance of the details of the service were to be at 
 liberty to omit, to add to, or to alter any of those details. 
 The rule upon this subject has been already laid down by 
 the Judicial Committee in ' Westerton v. Liddell,' and 
 their lordships are disposed entirely to agree to it. 
 
 " ' In the performance of the services, rites, and cere- 
 monies ordered by the Prayer-book, the directions con- 
 tained in it must be strictly observed : no omission and 
 no addition can be permitted.' 
 
 " If, therefore, I am called upon as a judge to enforce 
 the law, I must require compliance with the rule of the 
 Prayer-book in every particidar, e.g., — 
 
 " Daily service in the churches, when there is no reason- 
 able hindrance. Public catechizing. The use of the 
 surplice in all public ministrations. One or more of the 
 offertory sentences. The offering of the bread and wine 
 before the prayer for the Church jMilitant. The prayer 
 for the Church Militant. The whole exhortation to be 
 read the week before the Holy Communion. The longer 
 as well as the shorter exhortation to be read in the com- 
 munion oftice. Consecration at the north side of the 
 communion table. The delivery of the bread and cup to 
 each person with the appointed words. Notice of saints' 
 days and other holidays. The administration of baptism 
 after the second lesson. The use of the form for the 
 Solemnization of Matrimony at full length. The use of 
 the service for the Visitation of the Sick. 
 
 " This list of customary deviations from the rule of the 
 Prayer-book will be enough to prove how very difficult 
 and painful would be the duty of the bishop if he were 
 called upon to enforce obedience to the law." 
 
 The malcontents were not satisfied, and a Wolver- 
 hampton clergyman retoiled on the bishop that he had 
 more power than he chose to admit; he might issue 
 inhibitions against the clergy of whom their brethren
 
 VIII.] WORDS FOR PEACE. 341 
 
 complained; if this failed he might put them in the 
 Eccclesiastical Courts, " a crucible that few men would 
 like to undergo ; " but the bishop smilingly replied, " I 
 am not the man to do it, because I am for conciliation." 
 He then urged that the clergy should all meet together 
 in a friendly and forbearing spirit, discuss the points of 
 difference, praying earnestly and sincerely for the divine 
 guidance to help them to come to a right solution, and he 
 had confidence that in the end they would be able to 
 arrive at one common basis of agreement. 
 
 But this was the last thing which the complainants 
 were willing to do ; the persecuting instinct, one of the 
 most facile snares which the tempter puts in the way of 
 religious people, was strong within them, and they were 
 bent on gaining a triumph over their opponents. Both 
 parties found that the bishop, with all his tenderness and 
 yearnings after peace, was eminently "strong," and that 
 intimidation would be an useless weapon against him ; the 
 doubts which are expressed in the following letter to the 
 Vicar of St. Andrews, Wolverhampton, are eminently 
 those of a man who feared no one, but was only anxious 
 to discharge his own conscience ; his sense of the duty 
 of obeying the law, as the law, howsoever made, has 
 already been explained ; but he was not prepared to en- 
 force the law all round, as he thought, even if it were 
 possible, the result would not be worth the cost ; at the 
 same time he had scruples as to giving curates by his 
 licence a legal position in which they would not observe 
 the law ; but while he contemplated the withholding from 
 them this legal position, he never thought of starving 
 souls by inhibiting them from performing their oflfice for 
 the good of their people. 
 
 Bishop's Court, Isle of Man, 
 August 23rd, 1876. 
 
 My dear Mr. Bouington, 
 
 I am much obliged to you for your testimony to J\Ir. 
 
 's work, and I may say, once for all, that I have 
 
 great confidence in your judgment. 
 
 z 2
 
 342 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 I may add, that on any point on which 1 am clear in 
 niind, I am willing to bear any amount of obloquy. 
 
 Eemonstrances therefore of the Church Association, or 
 of any other unauthorized persons, will have no weight 
 with me. 
 
 But 1 will not disguise from you the feeling which 
 grows upon me of a conscientious difficulty, affecting no 
 one party in the Church in particular, in relation to 
 licences, oaths, subscriptions, presentations, institutions, 
 and all other legal acts by which or through which the 
 bishop appoints or sanctions the appointment of curates 
 and incumbents. 
 
 All these are purely legal matters, resulting from the law 
 of the land, and all questions arising out of them must be 
 decided by the law of the land. In many cases, as in the 
 Gorham question, the legal claim is mixed up with a 
 question of doctrine. The exact limit and boundary 
 between spiritual and temporal things it is as impossible 
 to define, as the dividing limits of body and soul in the 
 living man. 
 
 When therefore any curate or incumbent, whether on one 
 side or the other of Church parties, claims the right of 
 breaking the law, and I know that he is breaking the law 
 and intends to break it and justifies his disobedience by the 
 plea of conscience, that he objects to the Athanasian Creed, 
 or that he believes the Eastward position essential to the 
 Sacrament; am I free in conscience to license or institute 
 him ; and thereby to put him into a legal position, from 
 which he may defy the law. 
 
 The insurrection of the low church clergy against Mr. 
 Elliott's proposal to keep the law, and the explicit state- 
 ments of the conscientious duty of disobedience contained 
 in recent publications of the Church Union, seem to place 
 all bishops in an exceedingly painful position, as if they 
 were to bo the only persons who, in an age of excited and 
 even morbid conscience, are to have no conscience at all. 
 
 I have a letter from j\Ir. , which clears the subject 
 
 of much of its difficulty, to the ibllowing effect : — 
 
 " 1 have come to see that it is my duty, either to obey the 
 law^, when called upon to do so by lawful authority, or to 
 resign my prcfci'inent." 
 
 This is vciy diil'tient from tbe current talk "of breaking
 
 vui.] CONSCIENCE. 343 
 
 the law and taking the consequences," a spurious kind of 
 martyrdom which can expect no crown. 
 
 If these feelino-s should arather strength, and be agsjra- 
 vated by new and additional instances of that kind of 
 double dealing which uses the law for one purpose and 
 rejects it at pleasure for other purposes, I should feel that 
 I have no remedy left, but to leave all appointments about 
 which I have any doubt to lapse to the Archbishop and to 
 decline to license curates for the performance of unlawful 
 acts. It is not therefore necessary in the latter case, that 
 I should refuse them permission to otticiate, because my 
 stumbling block is the administration of oaths, and the 
 conferring upon them legal powers, while I know them to 
 be breaking the law. It is time that the clergy should 
 know, that we have not parted with our consciences in 
 being made bishops. 
 
 Every parish priest knows what this kind of conscience 
 means, and shows it in the vigorous manner in which he 
 exacts from his curates obedience to his own rules of 
 practice, and outward conformity at least with his own 
 teaching. 
 
 When the time conies Mr. 's claims will receive all 
 
 due consideration. 
 
 Yours very faithfully, 
 
 G. A. Lichfield. 
 
 At the time when this letter was being written a 
 prosecution had been commenced against the clergyman to 
 Mdiom it was addressed. As the bishop was patron of his 
 benefice, the representation was in compliance with the 
 act forwarded to the archbishop of the province ; months 
 elapsed during which the bishop and the vicar of S. 
 Andrew's had no communication ; the prosecution shared 
 the usual fate of its fellows under this unhappy law, and 
 broke down on legal grounds, after which the bishop wrote 
 the following letter : 
 
 The Palace, Lichfield, March 1st, 1877. 
 
 My dear Mr. Bodington, 
 
 I gladly and even tliankfully avail myself of this oppor- 
 tunity to resume unreserved pastoral intercourse with you,
 
 344 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 but I am only just returned (7.45 p.m.) from London, and 
 I must leave for Stoke at 8 a.m. to-morrow morning. I 
 hope however that it will not be much more difficult for 
 you to come to Stoke than to Lichfield. 
 
 We were all very much relieved by the failure of the 
 prosecution, with which however I had nothing to do, as it 
 Avas the Registrar's business to send on the representation, 
 and not mine. I was absent in the Isle of ]\Ian, and re- 
 turned on the 14th September, when I suppose I found 
 that it had not been sent on, and ordered it to be sent im- 
 mediately, as it was received by the Archbishop on the 
 15th September. Why it stayed so long in his office I do 
 not know. 
 
 Yours very faithfully, 
 
 G. A. Lichfield. 
 
 The aggrieved prosecutors were not disheartened by 
 their failure, and fresh proceedings were commenced ; 
 public feeling had in some instances been outraged by the 
 first experience of the Public Worship Act, and generally 
 it was felt that imprisonment for life on account of 
 conscientious scruples w^as rather an anachronism in the 
 latter half of the liberal nineteenth century ; nevertheless 
 the vicar of Hatcham was in Horsemonger Lane Gaol, 
 with no reasonable hope of ever being released, and it 
 seemed probable that Mr. Bodington would be the next, 
 but only one of many who would find themselves in 
 similar plight. It was suggested by persons of high con- 
 sideration that, the first prosecution having failed, the 
 bishop could arrest further proceedings, but the bishop 
 thought otherwise, and his reasons he thus stated : 
 
 The Palace, Licufield, March \2th, 1877. 
 
 My dear Mr. Bodington, 
 
 I have carefully read Mr. 's letter, with which I do 
 
 not agree. I do not believe myself to be master of the 
 situation. The l)ishops voted in a body for the reservation 
 of their own discretion without appeal to the Archbishop. 
 Both Archbishops voted for the appeal. When the law has 
 clearly transferred my discretion to the Archbishop, because
 
 viii.] S. ANDREW'S, WOLVERHAMPTON. 345 
 
 I am patron of tlie living, it would not become me to inter- 
 fere with the discretion of the Archbishop given to him by 
 a law, which in other cases would have given it to me. It 
 is the only part of the act for which I am responsible ; as 
 I gave no other vote. So far only am I responsible for the 
 P. W. E. act. I can therefore conceive the law saying to 
 me, how can you who voted to prevent the discretion of 
 the bishop from being transferred to the Archbishop, now 
 endeavour to deprive the Archbishop of his discretion and 
 transfer it to the bishop. The principle is an old one tliat 
 the bishop should not act in the case of livings of which 
 he is patron. It was carried out, I think, in the case of 
 Archdeacon Denison. 
 
 I shall of course gladly welcome any opportunity which 
 the Archbishop may give me of expressing my opinion on 
 the case, whether on the subject matters or on the persons 
 concerned. In the meantime the public during this in- 
 terval in which I am free to speak will know my mind 
 sufficiently from a correspondence which Mr. Andrew 
 promises to publish, in which my opinions will be found 
 expressed with no less clearness than his own, and will 
 probably please neither the Church Union nor the Church 
 Association. 
 
 " Inter utrumque legas." 
 
 I remain. 
 
 In all pastoral regard, 
 
 Yours very faithfully, 
 
 G. A. Lichfield. 
 Eev. C. Bodington. 
 
 The primate, as is well known, earned the gratitude of 
 the Church by preventing further litigation ; Mr. Bodington 
 had declared himself to be willing to follow the admoni- 
 tions of his bishop, and equally determined not to recognise 
 a new civil jurisdiction ; the following letter shows what 
 was the bishop's action when consulted by the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury. 
 
 The Palace, Lichfield, March \Qth, 1877. 
 
 My dear Mr. Bodington, 
 
 The Archbishop has sent me your letter to him, and I 
 have answered it to the effect :
 
 346 UVK OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 1. That I believe you and your congregation to be 
 thoroughly attached to the Church of England. 
 
 2. That the services are such as have been adopted since 
 the churches were built. 
 
 3. Tliat you have abstained from using vestments at my 
 desire, though solicited by your congregation. 
 
 4. That so far as I know the only points on which you 
 feel strongly are : 
 
 1. The Eastward position. 
 
 2. Lights at the Holy Communion. 
 
 3. The mixed chalice. 
 
 T should advise you to let the Archbishop know, as 
 stated in your letter, that you offered to give a " plain " 
 celebration as often as might be required. 
 
 May God's Spirit be with you on the 21st. Think most 
 of the mind of Christ and of the peace of His Church. 
 
 Yours most truly, 
 
 G. A. Lichfield. 
 Eev. C. Bodington. 
 
 Another prosecution was commenced in October, 1877, 
 and the Archbishop, before taking any steps in the matter, 
 requested ]\Ir. Bodington to meet His Grace at Lambeth. 
 At the interview, which took place on November 7, the 
 primate expressed his desire that the matter should be 
 settled by the bishop of the diocese. Mr. Bodington 
 therefore at once saw the Bishop of Lichfield, and the next 
 day the following letter was written to him as the result 
 of the interview. 
 
 Tin; Palace, Lichfield, Nov. 8t7i, 1877. 
 
 My dear Mk. Bodington, 
 
 1 . My own desire is, that in all the churches in my 
 diocese, the rubrics, as interpreted by the Court of Appeal, 
 or as ])lain in themselves, should be strictly observed. 
 
 2. But I find that in many churches the plea of custom 
 is alleged to justify a deviation from the strict letter of the 
 law, and these deviations are often cherished by the congre- 
 gations almost as a right. 
 
 8. Where any such claim of custom is alleged, I think 
 that great caution should be used in enforcing prompt
 
 viii.] S. ANDREW'S, WOLVERHAMPTON. 347 
 
 obedience upon an unwilling congregation, by legal pro- 
 ceedings. 
 
 4. But I am clearly of opinion, that even a minority of 
 parishioners has a right to demand that the services of the 
 Church should be performed for their benefit in their own 
 parish church in a strictly legal manner, at certain con- 
 venient times, at which they may be able to attend, without 
 seeing or hearing anything to offend their conscientious 
 scruples, and at which they may be assured that no ordi- 
 nance of the Church will be omitted, which they have a 
 lawful right to demand. 
 
 5. Without professing to assert any right or power to 
 authorize you to continue to perform any rites which have 
 been declared to be unlawful, I so far respect the feelings of 
 a large majority of your congregation, as to refrain from 
 urging you to bring all your services into exact and im- 
 mediate agreement with the law. 
 
 6. But T do hereby require you to offer to those 
 parishioners who desire the ordinances of the Church to 
 be performed in a strictly lawful manner, such convenient 
 opportunities as may satisfy their just and reasonable 
 demands. 
 
 7. The principles upon which this letter is based, apply 
 to all churches in which any addition or omission is custo- 
 mary in the performance of the services, rites, and cere- 
 monies, ordered by the Prayer Book. 
 
 I remain, 
 
 My dear Mr. Bodington, 
 
 Yours very faithfully, 
 
 G. A. Lichfield. 
 The Beverend C. Bodington. 
 
 The bishop's decision as given in this letter was at once 
 accepted by Mr. Bodington, who forwarded the letter itself 
 to the Archbishop of Canterbury, together with a state- 
 ment that he had undertaken to abide by the terms of the 
 bishop's letter. To those who knew how implacable was 
 the spirit which prompted these prosecutions, it seemed 
 doubtful whether the troubles were at an end ; the bishop 
 was one of those who doubted, and he wrote on 
 November 16 :
 
 348 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chAV. 
 
 The Palace, Lichfield, Nov. I6lfi, 1877. 
 
 My dear Mr. Bodington, 
 
 I fear that we are not yet out of the wood. 
 
 The Archbishop has referred the question to me on the 
 ground of the Preface to the Prayer I3ook. 
 
 But the Preface to the Prayer Book refers to things 
 doubtful. 
 
 But nothing is doubtful which has been decided by a 
 court of competent jurisdiction. 
 
 Your practices, liglits, mixed chalice, and eastward 
 position have been so decided. 
 
 Therefore the opponents will say there is nothing doubt- 
 ful to be referred to the bishop. 
 
 What then does the Archbisliop refer to me ? A dis- 
 cretion to decide whether the case shall proceed or not ? 
 
 No, the law has taken away that discretion from the 
 bishop when he is patron of the living, and has given it to 
 the Archbishop. 
 
 How then can the Archbishop give back to the bishop 
 what the law has taken from him ? 
 
 If we had consistent and charitable opponents they 
 would say : 
 
 "The bishop is contending for the rights of congregations 
 resting not upon law but upon custom ; just as the evan- 
 gelical clergy defend clear transgressions of the law, on the 
 plea of custom." 
 
 But you have not consistent or charitable opponents : 
 they will say : " All that Mr. Bodington does is popish, for 
 which no custom can be pleaded as a defence ; all that we 
 do, in omitting the Athanasiau Creed, &c., is in the exercise 
 of our conscientious convictions, sanctioned by custom." 
 
 If prosecutions were carried out either against the 
 omissions of the Low Church or the additions of the High 
 Church, both M'ould be condemned, but the Church would 
 become too hot for any one to live in. 
 
 We come then to tlie recognition of custom, side by side 
 with law, and candid men will claim the benefit of it for 
 Ijoth parties. 
 
 The Low Clmrch party will probably continue to claim 
 it for themselves and deny the benelit of it to their High
 
 VIII.] GREEK CHURCH. 349 
 
 Churcli brethren. Therefore I conclude they will not accept 
 my decision and there will be no peace. 
 
 Yours most truly, 
 
 G. A. Lichfield. 
 Eev. C. Bodington. 
 
 But the Archbishop stayed the proceedings, and attempts 
 at renewing the persecutions since the bishop's death have 
 been arrested by the present bishop following the lines 
 laid down by his predecessor. 
 
 In addition to the usual troubles which arise where party 
 feeling runs high within the Church, Wolverhampton was 
 disturbed by the establishment of a Greek Church, in 
 which an Englishman who had acted as an organist in 
 Staffordshire officiated, having obtained ordination from 
 the Greek Church. The bishop, being applied to for direc- 
 tion, wrote, " I cannot look upon Mr. in any other 
 
 light than as a schismatic. He had no members of his 
 adopted Church in Wolverhampton. The Greek Church 
 had no footing and was not wanted there ; a formal 
 protest has been made to the authorities of the Greek 
 Church against his appointment. He has not applied to 
 nie for recognition. My advice therefore to my clergy is 
 not to take part with him in any of his public acts." 
 
 During his New Zealand career Bishop Selwyn had 
 always had the advantage of the advice of eminent 
 lawyers, who were also devout Churchmen; he came 
 himself of a legal stock, and was likely from hereditary 
 association as well as from his orderly instincts and method 
 of thought to pay great respect to legal decisions. The 
 late Sir John Patteson and Sir John Taylor Coleridge were 
 consulted by him at every step in his provision for the 
 synodal action of the diocese, and for the trusteeship of 
 its property ; he had also continually by his side his firm 
 friend Sir W. Martin, the Chief Justice of New Zealand, 
 who, after he had resigned the toils of official life, took 
 part in the education of young men in S. Stephen's 
 Native Maori School at Auckland ; but it is stated by one
 
 350 LIFE OF BISHOP SELW^N. [oiiAr. 
 
 who was ever in his counsels that in later years he had lost 
 all faith in lawyers and legal decisions on matters affecting 
 the Church. It Avas not merely that he saw how impos- 
 sible it was to endure judgments of the same court which 
 destroyed each other, or to believe that they were based 
 on strict principles of law, but he felt that the harsh, 
 unyielding action of the law tended to widen differences, 
 while the difficulty of enforcing its judgments brought the 
 law itself into contempt. On this account probably he 
 appointed Bishop Hobhouse, in 1874, to the office of 
 Chancellor, which had been held by the Eev. Thomas 
 Law. On the occasion of the solemn institution in the 
 cathedral, the bishop said that his reason for appointing 
 an ecclesiastic rather than a lawyer was that in all 
 differences that might arise betw^een the clergy and their 
 people he much preferred exercising the Christian prin- 
 ciple of conciliation and arbitration, rather than an appeal 
 to litigation. He then went on to say, " As I have known 
 Bishop Hobhouse for many years, and have seen his 
 power of conciliation and peacemaking among his brethren, 
 I believe he may be very serviceable in carrying out a 
 system of prevention which is always better than cure. 
 At the same time, I know him to be well acquainted with 
 ecclesiastical law and precedents." After this, Bishop Hob- 
 house knelt down and the Bishop of Lichfield said, " The 
 Lord God, the righteous Judge of all the earth, who is no 
 respecter of persons, give thee a right judgment in all 
 tilings, through Jesus Christ our Lord ! Amen." 
 
 Bishop Hobhouse was obliged by ill health to resign his 
 office after holding it only a few months, and was suc- 
 ceeded by the Hon. llobert Charles Herbert, who had been 
 one of the bishop's pupils thirty-five years before. 
 
 When the judgment known as the Purchas Judgment 
 was given, on which at one time so much stress was laid, 
 but which has since been grudgingly neutralised by the 
 same tribunal which pronounced it, the bishop at once 
 declared his unwillingness to proceed against any of his
 
 viii.] CATECHIZING AND SERMONS. 351 
 
 clergy who did not accept it ; he expressed at the same 
 time his hope that the temper of Churchmen would 
 incline to moderation and charity, and he deprecated 
 dragging their differences into courts, whose very com- 
 position prevented many good men from being bound in 
 conscience by their decisions ; he thought that tlie legisla- 
 ture should define the law instead of allowing judges by 
 their decisions to make the law. For himself he was quite 
 prepared to consecrate facing Eastward, and in so doing he 
 should not obscure the view of the congregation ; he did 
 not agree with the outcry of Eomanist tendencies against 
 many good and holy men, who, from motives of greater 
 reverence and desire to conform to the rubric, had long 
 consecrated in this position, but he advised that conscience 
 should not be allowed to run riot so as to outweigh things 
 of fundamental importance. As to the black gown he 
 agreed with the Archbishop of York in thinking that 
 " ministration " included preaching, and that the surplice 
 was the only legal vestment ; but if the afternoon sermon 
 tolerated the gown, it could only be said that it was itself 
 a deviation from the rubric, and superseded the far more 
 useful catechizing; the difference betw^een the two being 
 that "catechizing meant long texts and short sermons, and 
 preaching meant short texts and long sermons." 
 
 The laity are not prone to delate their clergy to the 
 authorities for neglecting their duty ; the people who tly 
 to the law-courts in the name of religion are generally 
 quite content with a careless and apathetic ministry ; thus 
 it is that the clergy w^ho fall short either in practice or in 
 faith of the standard of the Church can generally reckon on 
 doing so undisturbed. On one occasion, however, an 
 aggrieved parishioner reported to his bishop that his vicar 
 did not say the Creed of S. Athauasius at the times 
 prescribed by the Prayer-book : to the clergyman thus 
 complained of the bishop wrote the following letter : —
 
 352 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [phap. 
 
 The Palace, Lichfield, July 12tJi, 1873. 
 
 My dear , 
 
 I have received a protest from olijecting to tlie 
 
 omission of the Creed of S. Athanasius on Trinity Sunday. 
 AVitli his letter is an extract of one from you, in which 
 are the following words : — 
 
 " Our own bishop neither in public nor private has 
 urged the matter on his clergy." 
 
 Now that the Synod of the Province of Canterbury lias 
 declared the sense in which the Church directs tliat creed 
 to be understood, I hope that you will have no further 
 scruple in using the creed, as you have promised to use it, 
 and in accej-ting it, as you have already accepted it, as a 
 document which can be proved by certain warrant of 
 Holy Scripture. 
 
 ]\Iy own wish is a very small point in the matter, but I 
 do most earnestly hope that you will use the creed at the 
 appointed seasons. 
 
 I send a conspectus of the creeds, drawn up to 
 show, that the words objected to in the Creed of S. 
 Athanasius appertain to, and are implied in, all the 
 creeds. 
 
 1. That a definite faith is necessary. 
 
 2. That the maintenance of that faith to the end is a 
 condition of salvation. 
 
 I remain. 
 
 Yours very faithfully, 
 
 G. A. Lichfield. 
 
 The " Conspectus of the Creeds " here mentioned was 
 drawn up by the bishop and circulated widely in the 
 diocese at the time when the Athanasian Creed was being 
 assailed on all sides, and when a theory of future 
 punishment, which it is hard to distinguish from Univer- 
 salism, was being preached in certain pulpits, and com- 
 mended by the Secular Press, to the great delight of 
 Unitarian congregations, both in England and in America. 
 It is believed that many persons will be glad to have a 
 document so comprehensive and yet so simple, and under 
 that impression it is here given.
 
 ERED UNTi 
 t every on 
 S THIS : 
 
 TITY ; 
 
 the Substance 
 
 er of the Son 
 
 juiCK and tl 
 
 1 their bodiei 
 
 fe everlasting 
 fire. 
 
 i Son, neithii 
 
 LIEVE P 
 
 t at any new 
 iix as these are 
 Dreed is not h
 
 BOLT SCRIPT UliE 
 
 Bantiziiis them in the Nome of tin 
 
 Jathkb, Bud of tho SOS. aiic 
 
 of tho Holy Ghost.— 5. MiUl 
 
 Cftiist th->n hy Boari^hing Cnd oui 
 
 The heaveo and the hea 
 
 SriBlT 1 — Piohit rxjods. 7. 
 1 AM He; 1 am the fiist, I 
 
 also tho last— /wioA xlviii, 
 I AM Ali>ha and Omega, tliu 
 
 The Loni 
 AU powoi 
 AUmbe 
 
 |n t|c iarae of tbe gmim ^«i^ of tijc ^^ an^ of tljc i©I| (j^j^.^i ;. ^nicn. 
 
 EAItNESTLY CONTEND FOR THE FAITH WHICH WAS ONCE DELIVERED UNTO THE SAINTS.— S. Jud^, 3. 
 Whosoever will be Saved before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith, which Faith, except every one do keep whole and andefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly 
 
 AND THE CATHOLIC FAITH is this : 
 
 ENE CREED ATHANASIAN, CREED 
 
 BAPTISMAL CREED APOSTLES' CREED 
 
 
 All tliioEs that the Fatiiep. hath 
 
 The Lord your Gon is God of goda 
 
 and Lord of lords. — Dcut. s. 17. 
 
 Sly Lord and my God.— S. John 
 
 Tho Loni) is that Spirit.— 2 Cor. 
 
 The Lord your God is oxE Lord. 
 
 ilsB.- /W 
 
 Onk God and '. 
 
 God so hnA the Trorld that Hk 
 snvoRls OKLY DEoorPEN Son. 
 —S. John iii. 16. 
 
 Kino of Kinga and Lord of 
 
 Tuow nrt the CnmsT, the Son of 
 
 rorivcd that He might he Lord 
 
 also that ascended up far nhovo 
 bU hcAvens.' — Ephtt. iv, 10. 
 Sat on the right hand of God.— 
 S.Markxn.l9. 
 
 Tlte Fatheu jmlgPth no man, bnt 
 
 u iho Father.-^. 
 iosT, whom the Pa- 
 
 will 
 
 b>ith s 
 
 I Urn uuto : 
 h the S 
 
 Uuilt Upou tho foii„u„w«„ u, me 
 Apostles snd I'ropUeta,— £^)Am. 
 
 Thiiis ire eternal, that they might 
 know TiiEE, tho only true God, 
 and Jbndb Obrist, whom Tuou 
 
 u tho fonndation of tl 
 
 LAUD AM US 
 
 Such OS the Father is, a\ 
 
 viding tho Substance. 
 , anotller of the Sox, 
 
 OHoly, Bleawd, and Glori- 
 ona Trinfty, throo Per- 
 sons and ONE GOD. 
 
 BOOK OF COMMON 
 PRAYER 
 
 ONE GOD, 
 
 ONE LORD. 
 
 Mot one only Person, but 
 
 Substance. For that 
 
 1 
 
 > of tl 
 
 rho Path 
 
 1 incomprehensible, the Son i 
 
 and the Holy Gbobt incomprcbenaibte. 
 
 There is but Onb Livikg 
 
 power, and ot«mity, tho 
 Fatubb, the Sox, and 
 the Holt Ghost. 
 
 
 
 
 So the Fa lr is God tho bo\ la God and the Holy Gbost 
 IS Go 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 t.0 1 K h F EB Lord the Soi Lord and the 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 An" ME Lord 
 
 
 
 
 Almighty and Everlasting 
 
 
 
 
 
 F 1 tho Chnst an rmty to ac 
 1 ms If tob GooanlLOED 
 
 
 
 
 God, who hjut givun unto 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 us Thy Borvanta grace by 
 the confession of a true 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Faith to ocknowledgo tho 
 
 
 
 
 
 So tie u U lATHER not three Fnthera One Son not 
 
 
 
 
 glory of tho Ktemal 
 TftiKtrr, and in tho 
 
 
 
 
 
 thr e bon 0^E Holy Quo t not three Holy Ghosts 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 And in th s T I TV none s afore or after other Dono is 
 
 
 
 
 power of tho Diviuo 
 Mtjcstv to worship tho 
 
 
 
 
 
 gr at r or less tl an another 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Bnt the whole thre Persons are co eternal togt-ther and co 
 
 
 
 
 ni.TrY. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Wo Wech Theo that Thou 
 wjuidst keep us stedfost 
 
 
 
 
 
 So tl a in all th n^ as u aforvsa d 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Iho Uk n n T miTi and tho Tiunity in Us TT is to be 
 
 
 
 
 in this Faitu, 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 He then.rare that ill be saved, most thus think of the 
 
 AUth 
 
 Earth doth worship 
 
 GOD tho Father of hea- 
 ven, have mercy upon us. 
 
 IkiBD God, Heavenly 
 
 Tho SUkbb and PEBStRVER 
 of alWhinn* both visible 
 
 
 
 
 Trintty. 
 
 Evt 
 
 
 
 and invisible. 
 
 The Fath 
 
 K 
 
 TnB Father 
 
 Tho FATnRaismadeofnono; neither cr«atednor begotten. 
 
 
 <TRER of an infinite 
 
 
 
 
 [AK8B of Hea 
 
 en and 
 
 JUkeh ' of""HJa"von and 
 
 The Sou b of the Patoer alone, not made nor created, but 
 
 Tu"-^ 
 
 ^'nounible ■ true 
 
 GOD tho SOM, RedoemoT 
 
 Lord, the only deoottrn 
 
 The Sox, whichis tho Word 
 
 Earth, 
 
 
 Earth, and of all things 
 
 
 
 
 of tho World. 
 
 Son, Jesds Christ, Sok 
 
 of tho Patiiih, begotten 
 from evoriosling of the 
 
 
 
 vieiblo and invisible. 
 
 
 
 
 
 of tho Fatdkr. 
 
 nd in JESoe Cu 
 
 J8T, 
 
 ^CnmsT**"' ^'^ ^^"^ 
 
 j^.l^';; -■■■ "-■''■) •'"" , 
 
 
 
 By tho mystery of Thy holy 
 
 Jesob Christ, Thine only 
 Sew, who, by the opctn- 
 
 FiTflBR, 
 
 K ONLY Sox on 
 
 Lord, 
 
 The Okly Becoiten Sow 
 or God. 
 
 ^°l'J;.^, ; ■/,„;■,.■ ^.■:, ,, ', ; ";!,''GODand*s'uK°'" 
 
 Tnjv 
 
 art^ tho^_ KINO of 
 
 
 ntionoftheHoLYGnosT, 
 tlw Bu'bsta'n" "Jf tli'Tvi^ 
 
 God, 
 And of one Subtitanco with 
 
 
 
 Begotten of His Father be- 
 foro nil worlds. 
 
 °^Ul.' "'""" '" "'■■ '■■"'■■■'' '"°""*"' ^'^'^'^ '^^' 
 
 Tiioc 
 
 «th^E|^^^STINO 
 
 By Thy holy nativity and 
 circumcision. 
 
 gia JIarv. Uis mother. 
 
 the Father, 
 
 
 
 God op God, Liobt of 
 
 And Mam of tho substance of His mother, born in the 
 
 
 
 By Thy Baptism, fasting. 
 
 
 
 
 
 LiQBT, V8HY God of 
 
 world. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Very God, Begotten not 
 made, Being of one Sub- 
 
 Pebfect God and pbkpect Uah, of a reosoaablo soul and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 pcrfocl Nrtlnres, that is ti. 
 
 
 
 
 Pii'i .' til rl.i Father as touching His Godhiud, and inferior 
 
 
 
 
 
 aay^the^ ^°;,!;^-^"„ ;'.;;[ 
 
 
 
 Bv Whom .01 thicy, u . V 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 made. ^Vho for u, n 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 togotlier in one I'l-rsou 
 
 UoIyGuosII^ 
 
 d by tho 
 
 came down from 11. .>. ,,, 
 
 _ . II.- be GOD and Mam, yet He is not t^vo, but 
 
 " !. ; . .nversion of the GoDBBAD into Flesh, but by 
 
 When 
 The 
 Tito 
 
 Thou tookest upon 
 didst n^ort^horthe 
 
 
 
 VKHY God and VERY 
 
 Max. 
 
 "°°""""° 
 
 N Mary. 
 
 "'^JKiJ"^^ "' 
 
 One ajtogi'thor ; not by confusion of Substance, but by Unity 
 
 
 
 
 Tho AmiOBTY God make 
 tbee know and feel that 
 thsro is none other noin^ 
 
 Article 18 HotT Scrif- 
 
 Was Crucipibd, Dead, and 
 He Descended into Hell, 
 Tlio Third Day He Rose 
 
 And tho Th 
 
 Hand of God, the Father 
 
 From thence 'lie shall < 
 to Judge tho Qdick 
 the Dead. 
 
 Heaven, 
 s Bight And Sittf.Th { 
 
 And He shall ( 
 
 Descended ii 
 
 and they 1 
 The Holy G 
 
 By Thine sgony and bloody 
 
 By Thy CBOsa and passion. 
 By Thy precious Death and 
 
 BriUAL. 
 By Thy glorious Resubiieo- 
 
 under heaven given to 
 min, in whom and through 
 whom thou mayest n-eeivo 
 
 only the Name of oun 
 
 I8T, whereby 
 truly sulfered. 
 
 "cT: 
 
 a JvDOE the quici 
 
 -iae again with tht 
 
 idlgohito'llfeev 
 a to overhuting iiru. 
 
 : and the 
 ir bodies, 
 
 erlasting : 
 
 the glory 
 that Tnou shnlt 
 
 Chidy are wo boiuid to 
 pniso Tboo for the glo- 
 
 ritfia ItESUBRKCTlON of 
 
 Trv Son Jesvs Cubist 
 OUR Lord. 
 AsciAded up into Heaven. 
 
 Thot that sittcst ot the 
 right hand of GoD tho 
 
 of the Fath: 
 We beliovc that 
 
 Good Lord, delivi 
 
 r is of the Father and of the Son, 
 
 begotten, but proceeding. 
 
 The Foroitbnkbs of Sins, 
 
 Tho Lord and Giver of Life, 
 
 Who proGoedoth from the 
 Father, who with tho 
 Father and the Son 
 together is woruhipped 
 and glorified, 
 
 Who spahe by tho Prophets. 
 
 And we believe i£ one 
 
 ApOCTOUO 
 
 icknowledge one Baf- 
 
 He ascended foto Heaven, 
 And them sittcth tutil He 
 at the lout day. 
 
 ing from the Father and 
 the Son, is of one sub- 
 
 S^^'witlT'lho^ATunu 
 and the Son. VEBY and 
 
 > Apostles and Pro- Article 8 
 
 Chdrch, 
 
 haatst 
 
 Andw 
 
 <k for the Re^ 
 
 Built upon the foimdat 
 
 of tho/ ■ " 
 
 lowsbip iu tho mystical 
 bodyuf TlIT Son. 
 The mvslical body of Thy 
 Son which is the blc«ed 
 company of all faithful 
 
 Creed, ought thoroughly 
 
 U«ved. for lhi.y may be 
 proved by most certain 
 
 Siuc lUm flits. 
 
 IE CATHOLIC FAITH which except a man believe 
 Date Saiirt:i JiSts. fact Stmurttrna gibts. 
 
 FAITHFULLY HE CANNOT BE SAl 
 
 |n gate gaptijati Sttmns. 
 
 
 /fiift'//. 'I'nuloT, •Liberty 0/ Prmhitmng, 
 
 
 fflmiteB ria ffitebimiis. 
 
 G. A. LICHFIELD. 
 
 • 
 
 *
 
 VIII.] PASTORAL WOEK. 353 
 
 It is only where faith is thus firmly rooted and intelli- 
 gently built up, that spiritual work of the highest and 
 most abiding kind is done. In Lichfield the bishop every 
 now and then would put aside his distinctly episcopal 
 work, and refresh his spirit with that pastoral work, the 
 loss of which he often spoke of as one of the trials of his 
 position. Lichfield readers will possibly recognise the 
 locale of the following tale of work of this kind, which 
 the bishop once undertook. 
 
 A certain parish had 12,000 souls. The living was 
 sequestrated, not so much through tlie fault as the misfor- 
 tune of the vicar, who was a complete invalid. His creditors 
 allowed him 150/. per annum to live upon. How could 
 he keep a curate ? He did not keep one, and he was so 
 ill that he could not stay at home. The charge of this 
 huge parish was altogether neglected, so far as the Church 
 was concerned, except that a brother clergyman from a 
 parish four or five miles off went occasionally to give one 
 service on Sunday. Wlien Lent came, his time was 
 required for his own 12,000 people. Then it was that the 
 bishop, seeing the destitute state of the parish, and " having 
 compassion," like his Divine master, " on the multitude," 
 relinquished almost every other duty, and came and devoted 
 himself entirely to these sheep in the wilderness. He 
 visited the sick, cared for the dying, buried the dead, taught 
 the children, ministered in the Church, and had the satis- 
 faction of seeing seventy communicants on Easter Day. 
 The good work did not stop there — a wealthy London 
 parish offered to maintain a mission there ; the bishop got 
 a district cut off from this neglected mass, and found an 
 admirable curate, who set to work steadily and in earnest. 
 
 The people of the Black Country responded to this call — 
 they fell in with the schemes and works brought before 
 them. The wealthy Londoners paid most of the curate's 
 salary ; the poorer members of that London parish formed 
 themselves into a guild, and paid the rest. The Church- 
 people of both parishes worked for tlie building of a
 
 354 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [cuav 
 
 church. The church is built. The bishop was to have 
 consecrated it on Easter Tuesday, 1878. Dis aliter visum. 
 He was at rest on the 11th April, and was buried in Holy- 
 Week. This, and this alone, broke the dramatic unity and 
 perfection of the whole history. 
 
 No one valued more highly the privilege of leisure for 
 meditation and worship : this is mentioned many times 
 in his letters from New Zealand, where the pressure 
 of daily duties engrossed his time until, as he said, 
 " We have hardly time for prayer : " he had reckoned 
 such opportunities among the highest privileges of the 
 members of cathedral chapters : but he always insisted 
 on the combination of directly spiritual work and dealing 
 with souls with intellectual pursuits and the service of 
 the sanctuary. Tliis was insisted on with unusual force 
 in a letter to a very young clergyman, who had consulted 
 the bishop about joining a brotherhood, and was dissuaded 
 from doing so until he had acquired more experience. 
 
 The Palace, Lichfield, Nov. 2Qth, 1876. 
 
 My dear Mr. . 
 
 I rejoice at your change of plan. Mr. is one of 
 
 the best of men, and his work is a good and holy work. 
 But such works are not good for all alike ; and I think are 
 especially doubtful in their probable effect upon young 
 and inexperienced men. Pastoral work, like outdoor 
 exercise, is good for all. The experimental knowledge of 
 the heart cannot I think be learned from books or from 
 meditation ; nor even from the Word of God, unless the 
 commentary be sought by self-examination, tested and cor- 
 rected by close acquaintance -with the hearts and feelings 
 of other men. The death-bed and the school, the end and the 
 beginning of life, are the seasons most full of instruction, for 
 the simple reason because the mind in both states is least 
 under disguise. IMiddle age is the season of self-deception. I 
 think that I have found a hospital the best school of human 
 nature. The more diversified the range of characters, so 
 much the more complete is the lesson. I am very glad 
 tlierefore that you arc going to a place where you will be
 
 viii.] RELATIONS WITH DISSENTERS. 355 
 
 plunged in the full tide of human life. You will be a 
 better member of a brotherhood ten years hence ; if it 
 please God to call you to that office. 
 
 In his dealings with Christians of other bodies and 
 communions he was entirely consistent, and like most 
 persons who regulate their conduct on well-defined 
 principles, he pleased neither extreme. His learning as 
 well as his convictions forbad his doubting both the unten- 
 able and the unsafe position of Protestant Dissenters : it 
 was to save weak and unstable and ill-instructed Church- 
 folk from being drawn into Dissent that he ventured, while 
 an Eton tutor, on the then rare experiment of evening 
 services at Windsor : the dissenting teacher, a man of 
 mark beyond the limits of his own body, had already 
 gained an influence over Church-people whom the Church 
 had neglected, and was not well pleased at finding his 
 supply of proselytes arrested: but forty years later he 
 stood among the crowd around the grave in Lichfield Close 
 offering no mean tribute to the memory of him who on 
 conscientious grounds had opposed him. In New Zealand 
 it was the bishop's fate to discover in his earlier journeys 
 that the Wesleyans had in many parts of the Southern 
 Island carefully instructed their simple people in the 
 differences that existed among Christians, rather than in 
 Christianity itself: but he did not on that account dream 
 of withdrawing from any part of the diocese which had 
 been entrusted to him: his object was to minimise the 
 difference and so to aim at union. Among the islands of 
 the Pacific the case was different ; here were 200 islands 
 spread over many degrees of latitude, and having hardly 
 anything in common, except their unhealthiness, which 
 caused the English-speaking teachers on the few islands 
 that had been so occupied to expedite the perfecting of a 
 system of a native ministry. With these teachers, chiefly 
 Presbyterians and Congregationalists, from Scotland, from 
 England, or from America, and representing the divisions 
 
 VOL, II. A A
 
 356 LIFE BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 into which Presbyterianism has been split, he was on 
 friendly terms : he lent them all moral support ; he gave 
 their missionaries free passages in his Church ship, and 
 so far from attempting to proselytize, he never lost an 
 opportunity of exalting them and their influence in the 
 eyes of their people. Had all these islands been compacted 
 into a continent where divers forms of Christianity were 
 making their influence felt, consistency woidd have im- 
 pelled him to another line of action : as it was, he looked 
 forward to the time when the indigenous Christian con- 
 gregations, on whom no imputation of schism could lie, 
 would seek to be united to the Catholic Church, and then 
 he would have no difficulty in receiving them. So in 
 England, while no man was less disposed to ignore 
 fundamental differences, no man was less willing to 
 magnify small things. On a certain occasion he was 
 asked by a clergyman in his diocese whether he would 
 receive for Confirmation two persons who desired to be 
 confirmed but who were unwilling to sever their con- 
 nection with the Wesleyans, and he replied: — "If the 
 couple are willing to abide by John Wesley's rule of 
 coming to church to receive the Holy Communion 
 and bringing their children to church to be baptized, I 
 am willing to receive them to Confirmation on your certi- 
 ficate, and shall no more question their attendance to hear 
 any Wesleyan preacher than if he were one of our own 
 lay readers." The Roman Catholics he treated with the 
 same respect which he accorded to others, who let him 
 alone to do his work in peace ; and he honoured the work 
 which they did while he regretted the many openings of 
 which he had had the first opportunity of availing him- 
 self but failed for lack of help. During the Waikato 
 war he thankfully acknowledged the courtesy of the 
 Uoman Catholic chaplain who lent him the use of his 
 chapel for Divine Service, having previously removed every- 
 thing that could offend any sensitive Protestant who 
 niiirht be found amon" the soldiers. His fairness in deal-
 
 VIII.] TOLERATION WITHOUT COMPROMISE. 357 
 
 ing with Eomanists was the more creditable, inasmuch as 
 he was constantly accused of sympathising too much with 
 them, and was made the victim of the " No Popery " cry 
 which is the ever ready resource of the weak and the 
 malignant. The Eomanists for their part knew better, and 
 their native converts were led to believe that the English 
 Church was but a part of the system which kept the 
 country in subjection. At a remote spot in the heart of 
 the colony, he was once asked by some Eoman Catholic 
 natives, whether he was not obliged to have troops to pro- 
 tect him and his property at Auckland ? For some time 
 he was puzzled to find any basis, however improbable, on 
 which so wild a story could rest ; at last he found that it 
 referred to the fact that an old pensioner sergeant from 
 one of the pensioner villages founded by the Government, 
 used to come to St. John's College to drill the English and 
 Maori boys; so he said, "Tell your good priest that I 
 don't keep soldiers at Auckland to protect me, but ask 
 him whether the Pope is not obliged to keep French 
 soldiers at Eome to protect him ? " With all his toler- 
 ance and courtesy there was no sort of compromise, 
 nothing from wliich the most ignorant could infer that 
 differences of creed were of no account. Eather, his 
 acts of kindness and sympathy, interpreted by the rule 
 which he laid down of never joining in the religious ser- 
 vice of other bodies, even on the most remote island, 
 tended to mark more clearly the importance of the differ- 
 ence which separated but did not estrange. It may 
 truly be said that had the Home Episcopate during the 
 last hundred years possessed more of the Selwyn spirit of 
 wisdom, meekness, and firmness, Wesley's work would 
 probably not have been lost to us, and Eome would now be 
 poorer than she is, and the Anglican Communion would 
 have retained aud utilised those two reforming movements 
 which, starting from opposite standpoints, set forth the 
 necessity of personal sanctity, and protested against world- 
 liuess and apathy. 
 
 A A 2
 
 358 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 With his strong convictions fortified by learning and 
 conscience he ever insisted on the value of religious educa- 
 tion. The schools at Eton and Windsor, in which he took 
 so warm an interest, were but the prelude to his patient 
 labours for Christian training at the Antipodes and in Lich- 
 field. Beyond caring for the state of parochial schools 
 throughout his diocese, he gave unswerving support to the 
 schools at Denstone ; herein he w^as following in the 
 steps of Bishop Lonsdale, who rephed to some per- 
 sons who suspected romanizing doctrines in the founder's 
 intentions, " This is the Church's doctrine : you may dis- 
 approve of it if you will, but as Churchmen you have 
 no right to complain of those who follow it." On the open- 
 ing of the school in 1873 he preached the sermon in the 
 temporary chapel, formally instituted the provost, and 
 publicly expressed his confidence in the future of the 
 school, as the " home of sound learning and religious edu- 
 cation." The remedy for board schools he found in the 
 clergyman himself being the daily teacher of religion. In 
 a well-worked parish of moderate size there ought, he con- 
 sidered, to be no difficulty : " the clergyman sooner or later 
 would have everything his own way, for Dissent has no 
 root save in the indolence or the dissensions of the Church. 
 Board schools would be innocuous where the majority of 
 the people were attached to the Church and to their parish 
 priest: candidates for Confirmation would not be wanting 
 where the clergyman himself taught in both Sunday and 
 daily school, and the bishop's notice would be a mere 
 almanac and not a charge to the clergy." 
 
 The increase of tlie Home Episcopate, and especially the 
 division of his own See, found a very ardent advocate in 
 the Bishop of Lichfield. His arguments were so copious 
 that they seemed to be inexhaustible, and he never re- 
 peated them. In 1873 he made a speech, which only he 
 could have made, in Convocation, on the report of the 
 Committee of the Upper House on this question. He 
 said : —
 
 viii.] INCREASE OF THE EPISCOPATE. 359 
 
 "I remember that about thirty years ago an opinion was 
 started and accepted by many that there ought to be no 
 more bishops until they were provided with seats in the 
 House of Lords, and 4,000/. or 5,000/. a year. There are 
 two bishops now present who would not have been present 
 if that opinion had been allowed to prevail. I mean the 
 Bishops of Bangor and St. Asaph. It was proposed, to 
 the eternal disgrace of the Church, that one of these bish- 
 oprics should be abolished, in order to found a bishopric 
 in the rich city of Manchester, and I believe that, had it 
 not been for the exertions of the late Earl of Powis, tliat 
 scheme would have been carried out. Much of what we 
 have heard has tvirned on the question whether it is neces- 
 sary that a bishop should have a seat in the House of 
 Lords and 4,000/. or 5,000/. a year. The Bishop of London 
 has said that it is not expedient that there should be 
 different classes of bishops. Before the disestablishment of 
 the Irish Church there were four classes of bishops. The 
 Irish bishops had seats by rotation. We have one bishop, 
 who is not in the House of Lords, waiting for succession. 
 We have a Bishop of Sodor and Man, who never had a seat in 
 that assembly. Then there are the English bishops, like our- 
 selves, who have seats in the House of Lords. Thus there 
 were four classes of bishops carrying on their work with 
 out any feeling in the public mind of any difference in their 
 status — whether they were in the House of Lords or out of 
 it. During the fifty years that Bishop Wilson was Bishop 
 of Sodor and Man, I would ask if any one felt less 
 respect for him because he was not a member of the House 
 of Lords ? As a member of the House of Lords, I cer- 
 tainly do not wish to be turned out of it; but I do not 
 see why there should not be nineteen or twenty bishops 
 waiting for succession, as there is one at the present time. 
 With regard to the question of income, that has been said 
 to be a matter of great moment. Many bishops have 
 spoken of their own experience, and I may speak of mine. 
 I began with an income of 1,200/. a year. After thirteen 
 years it was reduced to 600/. After eighteen years it was 
 reduced to 400/. At the end of twenty-six years it was 
 raised to 4,500/. But amidst all these changes I never 
 found the slightest difference in position, in influence, or 
 in my means of exercising hospitality. I carried out in
 
 360 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 my diocese abroad as niiich hospitality as I have been able 
 to cany out in the diocese of Lichfield. The only ditier- 
 ence was in the style of entertainment : — 
 
 ' bene erat non piscitus urbe i)etitis 
 Seel puUo atque hcedo.' 
 
 " With regard to the extension of the Episcopate I may 
 speak with some authority, having taken part in multiply- 
 ing bishops in New Zealand from one to seven. This large 
 extension was at one time considered quite chimerical. 
 And when the proposal was first made to the Duke of 
 Newcastle, he asked where was the money to come from. 
 I said to him — ' I liope you will not interfere to prevent 
 the multiplication of bishops, because many things are not 
 necessary in New Zealand which are necessary in England. 
 Give us authority to consecrate as many bishops as we 
 can.' His Grace said — ' Do as you will, you are the best 
 judges.' Now what do we desire to do ? There are four 
 yjoints which ought to be kept clearly before our minds. 
 The first is — What is the work to be done ? The second 
 is — How many men are required to do it? The third is — 
 What funds are available for the maintenance of those 
 bishops ? And then — What portion of that fund will be 
 available for the maintenance of each bishop ? Now, is 
 not that exactly the principle on which the Ecclesiastical 
 Commission was founded and has been carried out? . . . 
 The income of the Bishopric of Lichfield is made up out 
 of the bishoprics of Durham, Winchester, and others ; and 
 the Bishop of Kochester is receiving part of the funds 
 taken from other bishoprics. Unless we are able to assume 
 that the present number of men are able to do the work 
 they are expected to do, the same principle should be 
 extended. H' w^e find it necessary that the number slioukl 
 be increased, if we find that the work is greater than the 
 men can do, there must be a further subdivision of income, 
 in order that a sufficient number of men may be maintained 
 to do the work in a satisfactory manner. Something lia.'j 
 been said about the necessity of a certain income being 
 essential to the position and influence of a bishop. Now, 
 I deny that altogether. Every man in England is rated 
 according to his means, and every one is expected to do 
 what liis neighbours do. If a diocese was divided or
 
 VIII.] INCREASE OF THE EPISCOPATE. 361 
 
 reduced, as the Bishop of Ely said, there would be fewer 
 parishes to contribute to, and public opinion as to the 
 income of the bishop would be much changed. Now, let 
 us say at once that we are as a body insufficient for the 
 work to which we are appointed — that we need not a 
 small, but a large extension of our numbers — that we are 
 adopting expedients which are good, but not sufficient for the 
 purpose — that we are providing suffragan bishops, coadjutor 
 bishops, and other aids ; but unless our numbers are supple- 
 mented, we cannot effectively fulfil the work required of us. 
 To what purpose are the surplus revenues of the cathedrals 
 now being applied ? To the subdivision of large parishes. 
 And why ? Because the clergyman in such parishes is 
 unequal for the work intrusted to him. We have carried 
 out a scheme for the benefit of parishes, but not of dioceses. 
 And how can ive resist the conclusion that it is necessary 
 to do for dioceses what is necessary for our parishes — to 
 make the work a real work ? Now, what is the character 
 of the work of our bishops ? Half a century ago some 
 thought that the bishops had no work whatever. When 
 the proposal was first made that there should be a Bishop 
 of Capetown, it was asked — Why appoint a bishop ? Will 
 not an archdeacon do ? The public mind was not at that 
 time sufficiently informed as to the spiritual duties with 
 which the bishops are charged. In the case of my own 
 diocese, an aged member of the Church at Wolverhampton 
 told me that he was one of three thousand who were con- 
 firmed in one day, after an interval of seven years since 
 the last Confirmation. Now, under such circumstances, 
 was it likely that the public mind should be well informed 
 as to the nature of the Episcopal office ? We have lost 
 ground. We ought to be multiplied, so as to be able to 
 become acquainted with every parish, and to spend a day 
 or two every year in each parish. Until that is the 
 case, we shall never have the Episcopal office presented to 
 the public mind as it ought to be. With respect to the 
 multiplication of confirmations, a good deal has been said 
 about the decrease in the number of candidates. An 
 increase of from 15 to 20 per cent, has taken place in my 
 own diocese. Now, why are the laity so ignorant on this 
 subject ? Because they seldom see a confirmation. This 
 ignorance will soon be removed if confirmations are held
 
 362 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 annually in every parish. Now, with respect to another 
 ])oint — Ordination ; there is a general complaint now, and 
 it was stated at the Leeds Congress, that examinations for 
 holy orders are more hurried than they ought to he. I 
 think the bishops should have more time for examination 
 and communicating personally w^ith the candidates ; and 
 for that purpose there must not be too many candidates at 
 each ordination. My diocese contains a population of 
 1,300,000 persons, and it is impossible that the work can 
 be properly done by less than three — certainly not less 
 than two — persons. Then, again, the institution of new 
 incumbents to the cure of souls by the bishop in person is 
 a most important element of good. If we multiply our 
 bishops — provided their work touches the souls and con- 
 sciences of men — no question will be raised as to their 
 incomes or their social position. The people will say — 
 tliis is a man who has done good to our souls, and we will 
 follow his instructions. Whatever may be said to the 
 contrary, I firmly hold to the principle that we must put 
 the work to be done first, and let a voice go forth from 
 Convocation to the whole of England that, whatever sacri- 
 fice may be required, the English bishops are ready in 
 God's name and for the sake of the Church to make it," 
 
 At a later date he said at the Shropshire Conference : 
 
 " We have a great variety of associations, many of them 
 excellent in themselves, and aiming at the highest objects ; 
 so we have artillery and engineers, cavalry and infantry ; 
 but we must have a commander-in-chief. Our general 
 staff has been starved. I do not wish to magnify my 
 otlice ; at all events it is no personal aggrandisement, for 
 a bishop is lowered rather than exalted by the multiplica- 
 tion of his order. I wush to be reduced one-half by being 
 one of twice the present number of bishops. The exigency 
 of the work requires it, and everything ought to give way 
 to that. No bishopric, as a rule, ought to contain more 
 than 500 parishes or more than 500,000 souls. That 
 number of population ouglit, if there were no dissent, to 
 yield annually 5,000 candidates for confirmation. The 
 supply of that number of parishes would require thirty 
 ordinations and thirty institutions annually. The bishop
 
 viii.] INCREASE OF THE EPISCOPATE. 363 
 
 ought to be able to visit each parish once in three years, 
 and to give a whole day to each for confirmation and in- 
 spection of the schools. To know his clergy and to be 
 known of them is as much the duty of a bishop as it is 
 the duty of a pastor to know his sheep and to be known 
 of them." 
 
 In the following year the bishop uttered his laments at 
 the needless hindrances in the way of dividing his see. 
 At the Derby Archidiaconal Conference, he said : 
 
 "The surplus revenues of the bishopric and cathedral 
 estates, brought into a common fund and supplemented by 
 large gifts from private benefactors, have supplied an endow 
 ment to the vast number of new parishes which have been 
 formed during the last thirty-five years. It is marvellous 
 that out of this common fund, to which the richer bishop- 
 rics contribute annually a large sum, not one penny is 
 allowed to be spent on the division of dioceses. The over- 
 worked parish priest may have his parish divided and the 
 new districts endowed ; but the overworked bishop is to 
 have no relief unless the laity come forward to provide 
 the endowment. In the case of Truro this has been done, 
 and the Bishop of Exeter will now be relieved of Cornwall; 
 but St. Albans still hangs on hand, though the Bishop of 
 Winchester has given up his London house for the endow- 
 ment of the new see. When I shall obtain the division 
 of the diocese of Lichfield it is impossible to guess. The 
 hindrance of property and money as usual stands in tlie 
 way. A new bishop must have not less than 3,000^. a 
 year, towards which I must not contribute more than 3001. 
 a year.^ It is all in vain that we can point to colonial 
 bishops, happy, useful, respected, upon less than a third 
 of that income, with needs tenfold greater than can befall 
 a Church by law established. It must not be. Bishops 
 must be of a certain type, their income must be fixed by 
 statute ; those who are below the scale must be raised up 
 to it ; those who are above that scale must be pared down 
 to it; the surplus must go to multiplying parishes; but 
 
 ' Because 4,200Z. is the minimum income of the bishops of the old sees.
 
 364 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 for a new bisliopric we must wait until 100,000/?. can be 
 raised. Tims the lower object is placed above the higher. 
 ' Episcopus,' says Bede, is ' nomen operis ; ' but we have 
 made it a name of ' income and state.' " 
 
 It was with a due sense of the paramount importance 
 of dividing bis See that he did, for him, a very unusual 
 thing, and refused to subscribe towards the extension of 
 the Denstone Schools. His sufficient reasons he set forth 
 in the following letter : — 
 
 The Palace, Lichfield, Nov. 17th, 1877. 
 
 My dear Mr. Meynell, 
 
 On the 27th September, 1877, at the Diocesan Con- 
 ference I asked the diocese for 50,000^., to meet another 
 sum of 50,000^., to be raised by the diocese of Lincoln. 
 The sum of 100,000/. to yield 3,000/. per annum, the 
 income required by Government, has to be supplied before 
 the Bishopric of Southwell can be created. 
 
 To this day I have not received one shilling. 
 
 You have announced publicly, that 50,000/. (the same 
 sum exactly as my requisition) is needed for Ellesmere 
 Lower Middle School. 
 
 Towards this amount you have already received 10,000/. 
 from twenty-eight donors of from 1,000/. to 100/. 
 
 It is not for me to estimate the comparative importance 
 of the two objects : any more than to make a comparison 
 between Ardingly School and a Colonial Bishopric. But 
 the plain result of the whole matter is this : that as I am 
 as much determined to have my new bishopric as Canon 
 Woodard is to have his schools ; and as there is much 
 more public sympathy witli tlie schools than with the 
 bishopric, I must save up all the money that I can to 
 meet the heavy tax which is laid upon us as the price of 
 the new bishopric. If I had been allowed to do what we 
 did in New Zealand, viz., readjust and divide our incomes, 
 as often as new bishops were required, I would gladly 
 have given a large contribution to Ellesmere out of my 
 remaining moiety : because when once released from the 
 " pomp and circumstance " of an English bishopric, I 
 could have lived down to my own needs, instead of up to 
 otlier people's notions. If tlic iinancial prospects should
 
 VIII.] POLITICS. 365 
 
 brighten and the Bishopric of Southwell he speedily estab- 
 lished, I may live to contribute to your last and most 
 difficult 10,000^. 
 
 Yours most truly, 
 
 G, A, Lichfield. 
 
 Probably no greater trial vexed the bishop in his 
 English Episcopate than the dull and obstinate obstruction 
 which legislation put in the way of his plans for the good 
 of the Church ; it was likely that he should feel them more 
 keenly than those who had never experienced the freer 
 life of a Church that was self-contained and self-govern- 
 ing. And this leads naturally to the question, what were 
 his politics as a citizen ? As in course of years he had lost 
 all faith in lawyers, so he had abandoned all hopes of any 
 politician caring for the interests, spiritual or temporal, of 
 the Church, where such care imperilled the success or the 
 power of his party. And as in Church matters no section 
 or school claimed him as their leader or representative, so 
 in secular politics he ranked under the standard of neither 
 party. If to tolerate no sort of abuse, however ancient, 
 or respectable, or fortified by prescription — if to make 
 every institution to work up to the full limit of its 
 capacity, and to expect from every man an amount of 
 service limited only by Ms powers — if to insist that per- 
 sonal interest and individual feeling are to be sacrificed 
 without hesitation to the real welfare of the Church or 
 the community — if to hold these convictions and to act 
 up to them at whatever cost is revolutionary or radical, 
 then assuredly during his whole career George Augustus 
 Selwyn deserved to be called revolutionary and radical. 
 If, on the other hand, to revere ancient precedents, and 
 carefully to follow and preserve whatever of good and 
 useful they possessed — to have studied the works of great 
 men of bygone ages, and so to have assimilated their 
 precepts as to find in them principles of guidance amid 
 all the novel combinations and emergencies of later times — 
 to be suspicious of the boastings of the empiricism wliich
 
 366 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 despises antiquity — to be always loyal, obedient to 
 authority, without thought of self, — if these are the criteria 
 of reactionary conservatism, then, indeed, throughout his 
 whole life he was a reactionary conservative. 
 
 i'ree of both parties, he was a Eeformer where abuses 
 demanded to be rectified, and a Conservative where attacks 
 were made, either wantonly or unjustly, on institutions 
 that were fulfilling their mission. The disestablishment 
 of the Church in Ireland he called spoliation, but he 
 never attempted to defend or to palliate the abuses which 
 brought on that Church the changes which have befallen 
 it. Wliile standing on the ancient ways he never stood 
 still. 
 
 In nothing was the bishop more sensitive than in regard 
 to the exercise of patronage ; his opinion was sought for 
 under peculiar circumstances. A clergyman in another 
 diocese, for whom a living was being held under bonds of 
 resignation, was struck by a pamphlet written by the 
 Bishop of Lincoln in which such bonds were strongly con- 
 demned : looking forward to being beneficed in Lichfield 
 diocese the clergyman sought the advice of his future 
 bishop, and received it in the following terms: — 
 
 "There are very few points, if any, on which I differ 
 from the Bishop of Lincoln, and on the subject of bonds 
 of resignation I entirely agree witli him. His distinction 
 is a very clear and sound one, that they are lawful in tlie 
 eye of tlie law, but not justified upon any sound principle. 
 I would never advise a patron to execute such a bond, 
 nor the son, in whose favour it was made, to take benefit 
 of it." 
 
 Tliis was an instance of his reforming instinct; liis 
 action in regard to the Burials Bill was an illustration of 
 his strong conservatism. It was no new question to him ; 
 he had provided against any such claim in New Zealand ; 
 but the claim was made partly because Dissenters neglected 
 to fence their cemeteries which had been given to them,
 
 VIII.] BURIALS BILL. 367 
 
 and partly because they disliked to be marked as Dis- 
 senters ; and when the same question confronted the 
 bishop in England his mind was quite clear. He said 
 only a few months before his death, " I have no concessions 
 to offer, no compromises to accept. I hold that our burial- 
 grounds belong to the National Church, to be governed by 
 its laws ; not to the nation, to be dealt with as they please. 
 If Parliament wish to take them, they must take them by 
 force ; and then, as dutiful and loyal citizens, we submit." 
 In February, 1878, he was chosen to present to the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury the declaration signed by 15,000 
 clergymen and by more than 30,000 laymen of position 
 and education against the proposal which the Earl of 
 Harrowby had made in Parliament. On presenting this 
 address the Bishop said : — 
 
 " In administering for ten years a diocese with a popu- 
 lation of 1,300,000 souls, I have never met with a single 
 grievance in connection with this burial question. The 
 grievance now alleged as so important for furnishing a 
 claim to break the ancient laws of the Church of England 
 has never come within my knoM'ledge. I have made many 
 inquiries on the subject among the clergy, and have never 
 yet found a single clergyman who could tell me that, in 
 the course of his ministry, he has met with such a grievance 
 as that which has been put forward as a justification for 
 this alteration in the Burial Laws. On the other hand, 
 the grievance proposed to be inflicted on the clergy is so 
 great, that I, for my part, should concur with the whole 
 body of my clergy in offering the utmost possible opposi- 
 tion to the Bill in all its stages." 
 
 In the same spirit the bishop advocated measures for 
 " Church Defence," an inconvenient phrase which is 
 generally limited to the exclusive defence of temporalities. 
 He would have sacrificed everything external for the sake 
 of the smallest particle of the deposit of truth ; but while 
 he had surrounded himself with no state or dignity save 
 the moral grandeur of a holy life and a great example, and
 
 368 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. viii. 
 
 led the simplest of lives, he was desirous of counteracting 
 the groundless statements which were assiduously circu* 
 lated in newspapers, to the misleading of ignorant people, 
 as to the claims, the history, and the constitution of the 
 Church ; and this he thought would best be done by news- 
 papers and other publications written in the interests of 
 truth. He was not enamoured of the scheme of controversial 
 lecturers, and hated discussions by which nobody was con- 
 vinced ; and he held that the attacks of the Secularists and 
 of the Liberation Society would be best met by a Church 
 united for action by previous counsels and deliberation. 
 
 At the root of all his greatness there was the pro- 
 foundest humility and sense of personal unworthiness. To 
 a young clergyman who revealed to him his own burdens 
 the bishop wrote, " Your letter is an epitome of my own 
 past life. Continual self-reproach for (1) neglect of 
 opportunities, (2) want of self-control ; but what is worse 
 than all is the constant presence of these thoughts with- 
 out adequate correction of the defects. They have been 
 with me a continual thorn in the flesh, and messengers of 
 Satan. There is no other thought in which I can find 
 comfort than in the hope that these buffetings have 
 tended to subdue another enemy, self-complacence and 
 pride, and to teach me to rely only on the grace of God as 
 made perfect in weakness ; I have never sought for any 
 office nor work ; all that I have ever held have been offered 
 or thrust upon me ; once in the work, its duties have to 
 be done ; the very sense of unworthiness stirring and 
 driving the laggard spirit; not as urging one to do his 
 best ; for the very point of our compunction is that we do 
 not do our best, but praying God to accept whatever we 
 can do for the sake of the perfect obedience of His 
 dear Son, I commend to you the same thoughts of 
 comfort which have sustained me under the same diffi- 
 culties, and pray that God may make your burden lighter, 
 and enable you to bear it better."
 
 1878.] FAILING HEALTH. 369 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 LAST DAYS. 
 
 [1878.] 
 
 A SPLENDID physique and almost unabated vigour of mind 
 justified a hope that services so invaluable would be con- 
 tinued to the Church at large and to the diocese of 
 Lichfield especially, far beyond the span of years allotted 
 to man. The bishop did not look lil^e a man who had 
 nearly completed his seventh decade, and when the end 
 came it came with brief warning. In the beginning of 
 1878 there was no lessening of labour, nor any wish to 
 lessen it. Anxiety for the efficiency of the great central 
 institutions on which the well-being of the diocese de- 
 pended, led to the appointment of a particular Sunday in 
 January for a simultaneous Offertory in all the churches of 
 the diocese in behalf of the General Diocesan Fund, which 
 assisted the Theological College, Diocesan Inspection, the 
 Poor Benefice Fund, the Clergy "Widow and Orphan Fund, 
 and the Clergy Pension Fund. The usual arrangements 
 for Confirmation had been made, and had partially been 
 carried out ; the prisoners in the County Gaol had re- 
 ceived a special visit from the bishop, and had been 
 ministered to by him with no common interest or earn- 
 estness. Other Confirmations were approaching, when it 
 became necessary that the bishop should consult a London 
 physician. On Shrove Tuesday he returned to Lichfield, 
 and the same evening, soon after his arrival, went with 
 his accustomed kindness to see a friend who was ill. His 
 appearance caused great anxiety ; his face was flushed,
 
 370 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap, ix 
 
 and the left side seemed to be drawn down, as though by 
 paralysis; two days later he was again hard at work 
 writing, as his manner was, on large sheets of letter 
 paper, carefully folded, his review of the case of S. 
 Andrew's, Wolverhampton, which had been remitted to 
 him from the Archbishop. To a friend who called on 
 him he talked a little on the subject, and said 
 inter alia tliat "Mr. Elliot, of Bournemouth, had ad- 
 mitted that the Low Church party did not act up to 
 the Eubrics, and that he must tolerate botb parties in 
 slight and inoffensive deviations. De minimis non curat 
 Fcclesia." 
 
 Ember week followed, and three out of the four examin- 
 ing chaplains were away ; an unusual amount of labour 
 therefore fell on the bishop, although the number of can- 
 didates was below the average. It was an ominous sign 
 that he, always so careful and punctual, and doubly so in 
 all matters relating to his ordinations, had forgotten that 
 he would have to address the candidates on the Wednes- 
 day evening on the Gospel of the week. He devoted, 
 however, a longer time than generally was possible to 
 personal intercourse with each candidate. He was much 
 pleased with them, and his hopeful spirit rose with the 
 prospect of good, earnest, sensible men coming forward 
 for holy orders. 
 
 On the eve of the Ordination Day he addressed the 
 candidates with great earnestness and spiritual force on 
 the Prayer of Humble Access in the Communion Ser- 
 vice, especially on the words, " that we may evermore 
 dwell in Him, and He in us," and the passage from 
 St. John vi. 56. There were present those who had 
 listened to his words on similar occasions both in New 
 Zealand and in England, and they remarked that although 
 they had heard greater intellectual efforts, they had never 
 witnessed so wonderful a manifestation of spiritual power. 
 They sang Mr. Whytehead's Ordination Hymn, which 
 pleased him much, for he had recently been reading
 
 1878.] SHREWSBURY SCHOOL. 371 
 
 the memoir of his first chaplain, written by tlie Dean of 
 Chester, 
 
 After the Ordination Sunday there were increased signs 
 of weakness and of illness, and he was urged to rest and 
 to give up the Shropshire Confirmations ; but he said that 
 fresh air and change of scene would do him good, and 
 especially he wished to " go and confirm those dear boys 
 at Shrewsbury." ^ 
 
 ^ It is the custom at Shrewsbury School that wheuever a judge or a 
 bishop visits it the head boy asks for a holiday in a Latin letter. Bishop 
 Sehvyn was wont to answer the boy's request in a Latin epigram. "When 
 the Public School Commissioners removed the bishop ( = pontiff or bridge- 
 maker) from the office of visitor, nothing remained but to get the boys a 
 holiday from time to time. The first epigram which he wrote after his 
 deposition was as follows : 
 
 " Viro Reverendo 
 
 Henrico G. JSIoss, A.M. 
 Epus Lichf. S.P.D., 
 Jam rude donatus. 
 
 " Die mihi, Pontificis ne munere fungar inani, 
 
 Quo teueam flumeu ponte, Sabrina, tuum — 
 Anglia nempe suos jactant et Cambria pontes, 
 
 Tertius immisso plaustra vapore vehit — 
 Quem nunc ajilificem (proh ! fatum triste) videtur 
 
 Solus ' Asellorum pons ' superesse mihi — 
 Nil habeo quod agam, nisi dispensare Papaver, 
 
 Cessandi dominus desidiaeque pater- 
 Nil mihi Musarum cultus, nil cura Minervse, 
 
 Te solam jedituus, lenta vacuna, colo — 
 Lene, gubernantum corpus, medicameu adimple 
 
 Officio functum confice Pontiiicem." 
 
 In 1873 the Bishop wrote the following jeu cVesprit to the Head Master, 
 the Rev. H. G. Moss :— 
 
 " Dum sub monte Salem poscebat Etona salino, 
 ' Mos pro lege ' fuit norma latrocinii : 
 Sic ubi pontificem Salopes lucrantur alumni, 
 
 ' Mos pro lege ' sales desipuisse probat. 
 Annuit irridens pastor, moremque fatetur, 
 2i'7'jno modo accedat SivTfpov, esse ratum." 
 VOL. II. B B
 
 372 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [< iiAr. ix. 
 
 His coadjutors helped him as affection prompted ; but 
 he got through the Shrewsbury Confirmation with much 
 pain, and in the vestry he said, " I believe I have come 
 to the end of my tether." His friends had observed that 
 his address to the newly-confirmed was affectionate and 
 fatherly, even more than was customary, and they asked 
 him how, amid so much weakness and pain, he could 
 speak with such vigour; he replied, "I held on by my 
 hands and feet." The next day he returned to Lichfield, 
 and devoted himself to the duty of resting as diligently 
 as all his life he had given himself to work. " Quod vidt 
 valde vuU " was always true of him. He took interest in 
 all that W'Cnt on, was pleased with a hymn on Ordination 
 Vows, which had been sent to him in manuscript, and his 
 old sailor's sympathies were much stirred by the loss of 
 H.M.S. Eurydice. His sufferings and weakness increased, 
 and on Saturday, April 6th, when Bishop Abraham came 
 to see him early in the morning he said, " I have passed 
 through the fire since I saw you, but I pray that I may be 
 perfected through suffering like the Captain of our Salva- 
 tion." In his wanderings he had said, " I am getting 
 idle ; who is seeing to that work ? " His life for fifty 
 years had been incessant toil and self-discipline, but his 
 humility was as great as his energy, his ideal of duty 
 loftier than he could attain to. It was proposed to him 
 that he should receive the Holy Communion, and for three 
 quarters of an hour he gave fixed attention, and spoke 
 generally of faith in Christ, and to each person present he 
 said some appropriate words ; to his elder son he com- 
 mitted " the care of the orphans," ^ and when he had blessed 
 him he added, " The bles.^ing of liis fatber shall be upon 
 the crown of tlie head of him m'Iio is separate from his 
 bretliren." By a wonderful effurt of a devout will he 
 joined in the Gloria in Excelsis, and gave the Benediction. 
 On Tuesday, April 9, Bishop Abraham, who was going 
 to administer Confirmation at a distant spot, visited his 
 
 ' The children of Lord Justice Sehvyn.
 
 1878.] LAST HOURS. 373 
 
 friend before six o'clock in tlie morning. The curtains 
 in his bedroom were still drawn, and the light of day was 
 streaming into the room through the openings. Psalm cxxx. 
 had just been read, and when the words " My soul fleeth 
 to Thee before the morning watch " were uttered, he added 
 in i ones almost startling from their distinctness, " I say 
 before the morning watch." All were struck with the 
 strong feeling of thankfulness to God which he felt for 
 the sufferings through which he had been carried. The 
 words in the Visitation Service, " to be made like unto 
 Christ," in suffering were very precious to him. Amid 
 the wanderings caused by bodily weakness, his thoughts 
 were with the distant islands for whom he had done so 
 much, and to whose evangelisation, when his own active 
 labours had ended, he had given his son. At one time he 
 would exclaim, with kindling eye, " A light to lighten the 
 Gentiles ; " at another he would murmur, " They will all 
 come back," as indeed the larger portion of those Maoris 
 who apostatised have already returned ; and then in 
 the soft Maori language, which for a quarter of a century 
 was familiar to him as his mother tongue, he would say, 
 " It is all light." On Thursday, April 11, the end came. 
 He had been unconscious for hours, but gave signs of 
 pleasure at hearing Bonar's hymn, " A few more years 
 shall roll," which had been sung at the consecration of the 
 burial-ground at the workhouse at Stoke, and had much 
 affected the old pauper inmates. About noon, surrounded 
 by those who loved him well, who had shared his counsels 
 and his labours on either side of the globe, the Com- 
 mendatory prayer having been said by Bishop Abraham, 
 he entered into his rest. A few moments there were of deep 
 silence, and then, as was fitting, all stood up and recited 
 the Apostles' Creed, never more thoroughly realising the 
 mystery, or more thankfully professing faith in " the 
 resurrection of the body and the life everlasting." 
 
 On the following Tuesday the body of the great bishop 
 was laid, according to his own expressed desire, in a grave 
 
 B B 2
 
 5(4 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYX. [niAP. ix. 
 
 dug out of the rock, on which the cathedral of St. Chad 
 is built, and by the side of the grave of his old friend 
 Dean Champneys. The pressing duties of Passiontide 
 did not prevent 500 clergymen from paying the last 
 tribute of affection, and following him in orderly pro- 
 cession to his tomb : there were gathered on that occa- 
 sion men who had held the foremost positions in the 
 State and in the Church : there were also crowds of 
 humbler folk who had been made to feel day by day 
 that the bishop had always looked on poverty as having 
 a special claim on him. 
 
 Bishops came from America and from all the colonies of 
 
 the British Empire to attend the Lambeth Conference : 
 
 they had been invited by the bishop and the dean and 
 
 chapter to visit Lichfield, and worship in their " holy and 
 
 beautiful house," and many a bishop had looked forward 
 
 to the counsel that would be taken at Lichfield before the 
 
 formal w^ork of the Conference should begin ; but some, 
 
 before they left their own homes, had heard the sorrowful 
 
 tidings, others learned it at ports where they stopped on 
 
 their voyage, and all alike felt that the great attraction 
 
 which was drawing them from their widely distant homes 
 
 to meet at Lambeth had lost much of its power : they 
 
 went, many of them, to Lichfield to stand by tlie grave 
 
 of the friend whose guests they had hoped to be, and 
 
 as in the past pilgrims have gone to Bemerton through 
 
 love of George Herbert, to J^'ome through reverence for 
 
 JMshop Ken, to Hursley as the home of the revered Author 
 
 of the Christian Year, to Aberdeen as the scene of Seabury's 
 
 consecration, to Westminster and to Lambeth as the sources 
 
 whence the leaders of the hosts of the Lord have received 
 
 mission to compass the strongholds of heathenism, or to 
 
 build up young churches on new soils, so for many years 
 
 to come from Australia, from New Zealand, from America, 
 
 will travellers find their way to Lichfield out of reverence 
 
 for the memory of the wise master-builder who founded 
 
 the Church of Xew Zealand, and laboured hard to bind
 
 1878.] THE OFFERING OF THE POOR. 375 
 
 tosretlier all the Churches of our Communion in the bonds 
 of the Spirit. Other feet have already trodden down the 
 green turf which was placed around the bishop's tomb : 
 the colliery folk whom he loved so well, and who in their 
 rough fashion understood and valued his care for them 
 who remembered his conduct on the occasion of the dire 
 Pelsall Colliery Accident, when he stood between the living 
 and the dead and in tender words comforted the mourners 
 and bade the survivors learn the lessons which the calamity 
 taught, crowded into Lichfield at the usual Whitsuntide 
 holiday, and they too paid their tribute at the bishop's 
 grave. The circumstance was commemorated in graceful 
 verses which the author kindly allows to appear here. 
 
 JiT gtcmarmnt 
 
 a A. s. 
 
 1878. 
 
 Tuesday in Whitsun "Week, Lichfield, 1878. 
 
 " Tlie feet shall tread it down, even the feet of the poor and the steps of the 
 
 needy." 
 
 " In Lichfield's holiest burial-place. 
 
 Just where the earliest sunbeams fall, 
 A new-made grave is decked with flowers 
 Beneath the old Cathedral wall. 
 
 " Why is the turf around that grave 
 
 Trampled with marks of many feet ? 
 And where the grass was greenest, now 
 All black and miry as the street ? 
 
 " It is the Whitsun holiday. 
 
 The town is filled with working men, 
 And all the livelong yesterday 
 
 They came and gazed, and came again.
 
 37G LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 " Poor of the flock he loved so well, 
 
 Well may ye crowd— ye sons of toil ! 
 There lies no truer working man 
 lu any grave on English soil. 
 
 " The hand that held the pastoral staff, 
 That traced the Cross on infant's brow, 
 Had hewn the oak, had furled the sail, 
 Had reaped the corn, and held the plough. 
 
 " The voice that soothed with tender words 
 The mourner and the little child, 
 In stern brief accents of command 
 Was heard above the tempest wild. 
 
 " His life was work ; and when the springs 
 Of mortal strength began to fail, 
 And Keason's clear defining light 
 Was shrinking in behind the veil, 
 
 " The friend who watched beside his bed, 
 With ear intent to hear if aught 
 Yet faltered on the dying lips, 
 
 One mournful utterance faintly caught 
 
 " In low words murmured heavily — 
 
 ' Who's seeing to that work V he said ; 
 Is there no answer to that cry 
 Saviour of the faithful dead ! 
 
 " Thy workers die — but for their work. 
 Can that too die ? ^ faithless word ! 
 The Resurrection and the Life 
 
 Of all true work art Thou, Lord ! " 
 
 • "God buries His workers, Lut carries on the work." — Jolm Wesley.
 
 X J SIMPLICITY OF CHARACTEB. 377 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SUMMAKY. 
 
 This biography will fail in symmetry unless some few 
 pages are devoted to an attempt to sketch the various gifts 
 and virtues, the elements of that personality which has been 
 the subject of these volumes. The very thought of this 
 necessity reveals the great difficulty of the task. In one 
 respect, indeed, the task is easy. Bishop Selwyn's career 
 was singularly simple, using the epithet in its literal 
 sense : he was a stranger to all double dealing, and his 
 mind and conscience recoiled from diplomacy and finesse ; 
 he had the courage of his opinions and was fearless and 
 outspoken, and yet (of how few public men could the same 
 thing be said ?) so gentle was he in the use of language that 
 among the many hundreds of letters and documents which 
 have formed the texture of this biography, and which 
 have at times dealt with subjects on which men have felt 
 so acutely that chief friends have been divided, not a 
 single paragraph has been suppressed, either because its 
 appearance would convict the writer of a self-seeking 
 policy, or would give pain to one living soul. Nothing- 
 appears in any of these documents, nothing has been 
 suggested by any who may have personally been opposed 
 to his action, which has at all impugned the uniform 
 nobility of his life and the healthy vigorous manliness 
 (virtus) which characterized his every action. " Qualis ah 
 incepto " might with truth be written on his tomb. Every- 
 thing that is generally associated with true heroism — con- 
 tempt of softness and comfort — indifference to applause or
 
 378 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 censure — cliivalrous defence of the oppressed and the 
 weak — hatred of aught that is mean and sordid — resolute 
 devotion to duty — obedience to discipline so implicit as to 
 seem to be without effort — unquestioning recognition of 
 the claims of duty in the smallest things as well as in the 
 greatest — all these are at once apparent, and examples 
 illustrative of them all are ready to hand ; in this sense, 
 therefore, it is not difficult to draw a picture of what he 
 was. It is when we proceed to sliow how under this 
 simple and uniformly consistent life a character existed 
 not only many-sided but almost myriad-sided, that the 
 difficulty begins ; and yet it must be evident to those 
 w'ho have studied the all imperfect portraiture which these 
 pages have given, that while he had the fervid zeal of S. 
 Paul, he had the tenderness which made S. Barnabas the 
 Son of Consolation, while he had the stern asceticism of S. 
 John the Baptist he had imbibed the spirit of the Beloved 
 Disciple, while he grieved over the necessity of serving 
 tables in the spirit of Martha, he loved to meditate on 
 divine mysteries at the feet of his Lord in the spirit of 
 jNIary, while he was indifferent to money as ever was 
 Devotee, who had burdened his conscience with vows of 
 poverty, he was careful almost to parsimony in the ex- 
 penditure of the charities, and shrewd and thrifty in 
 building up the endowments of the Church; though a 
 born leader of men, attracting by the force of his beautiful 
 character men of highest gifts and graces, he was humlile 
 and obedient, and regarded himself ever at the unconditional 
 disposal of his superiors ; with much of combativeness in 
 high spirit and resolute will, lie contended never for party 
 ends or opinions, but always lor the truth, and even then 
 the very existence of controversy gave him pain. 
 
 It was surely a wonderful combination that together 
 with the zeal that inspired a life with impetuous unceasing 
 effort, leading to the forsaking of all the world holds dear, 
 theie should liave been found a patience and humble 
 labouring at merely rudimentary details of M'hich there
 
 X.] PATIENT ZEAL. 379 
 
 was little hope of seeing any matured result. Yet was not 
 the early preparation for an unknown and unconjectured 
 future, a sort of daily acted, " Lord, what wilt Tliou have 
 me to do ? " a remarkable example of patient waiting on 
 God's will in the firm resolution to obey whatever call 
 might come ? The most sanguine view of the Melanesian 
 venture must have been limited, so far as the first agents 
 were concerned, to the establishing of friendly relations 
 with the heathen and to the acquisition of some of their 
 many strange tongues, in order that future bishops and 
 missionaries might enter into his labours ; nothing could 
 have been more ii-ksome to an elegant scholar than to 
 drive day after day elementary subjects into the unre- 
 ceptive brains of colonial-boi'n lads ; it was all foundation 
 work, but he did it as in God's sight. Still more unwearied 
 and watchful was his patience, the fruit of his zeal, in 
 the more immediately spiritual work of dealing with souls. 
 However often his efforts were repulsed he never relaxed. 
 One example must be quoted, and it is as good as a 
 thousand. 
 
 While coasting along the Northern Island of New Zea- 
 land the bishop was once a fellow-passenger with a 
 Deist who had with execrable taste shocked his fellow- 
 passengers by reviling Christianity. The steamer reached 
 the harbour at ten o'clock on a very dark night and 
 dropped her anchor some two miles from shore. The pilot 
 came off to fetch the mails, and the bishop agreed to go 
 ashore in his boat. The Deist asked to be allowed to go 
 too. Midway between the steamer and the shore a breeze 
 sprang up ; the boat was drifted out of its course and 
 struck on a shoal ; with some difficulty it was shoved off, 
 and five minutes afterwards it struck on a rock and was in 
 great peril. The bishop seized on the opportunity to 
 grapple with the man's soul, and asked him, " how he 
 could venture to meet his Judge, trusting in his own 
 merits and to the uncovenanted mercies of God who had 
 revealed the one way of Salvation in that Name which
 
 380 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [oiiap. 
 
 lie had been all the day blaspheming ? " The poor man 
 could only say, " I believe Pythagoras liad some theory of 
 repentance," and then the bishop pointed out that an 
 unknown theory was a broken reed to which to trust, 
 \vhereas Christians knew in Whom they believed : but 
 the man said it was too late then to change. 
 
 He was hard and exacting, it was often said, and not 
 untruly ; he never praised men for doing their duty, and 
 to none was he harder than, to none was he so hard as, he 
 was to himself. Brought up in the most aristocratic and 
 luxurious school, he ever trained himself to endure hard- 
 ness as a condition of useful service for God ; the raiment 
 of camel's hair and the leathern girdle seemed to him 
 more appropriate to the calling of the evangelist of 
 the nineteenth century, than purple and fine linen and 
 sumptuous fare. If at any time he exacted from others 
 more than they could perform, his very strictness was but 
 the result of his humility ; he never realized the fact that 
 he could do more, physically and intellectually, than other 
 men ; so lowly was his opinion of himself, that he thought 
 all men could do as he did, and was content with no 
 smaller measure of service ; the indifference which made 
 him feel at home on board ship, in INIaori huts, in his own 
 tent on a New Zealand Hill, or on his later journeys in 
 the Black Country, and amid his ministrations among the 
 Canal population, had become to him a second nature, and 
 he had no opinion of men who thought twice about putting 
 up with such discomforts : for any men who shrank from 
 disagreeable duty he had neither pity nor sympathy ; in like 
 manner he lashed out impetuously against aught tliat was 
 wrong, or mean, or cowardly : instances of this could be 
 produced in legions ; but it must be added that he often 
 regretted warm and hasty words into which a godly 
 jealousy for the right had tempted him. To one who 
 had neglected duty he said after reproving him sharply, 
 " I seem, sir, to have two duties to perform, first to take 
 you down and then to take myself down."
 
 X.] TENDERNESS. 381 
 
 In contrast and yet in combination with his heroic 
 Pauline boldness, which was indignant at the sight of sin 
 and meanness, there was the tenderest compassion and sym- 
 pathy with the weak and the erring. It was not merely the 
 loving, amiable disposition which had made him when 
 under his father's roof the family friend and peacemaker, 
 and which afterwards at Eton led a friend to write, " If 
 there were any misunderstanding among friends, he would 
 not rest till they were reconciled ; if pecuniary difficulty 
 fell upon any one, he would make every endeavour to 
 extricate him ; if his friends were ill, he was their nurse 
 and companion; if they lost relations or fell imder any 
 great sorrow, he was with them at any hour to console and 
 uphold ; he was the friend, the adviser, the comforter of all 
 who would admit him to their confidence ; " this amiability 
 and expressive power of sympathy did indeed make him 
 the very best nurse trained or untrained that sick man 
 ever had, led him to spend hours and hours beyond what 
 his spiritual duties demanded in the military hospitals, 
 induced him to be present with soldiers and ]\Iaoris when 
 they were suffering the horrors of amputation at the hands 
 of the surgeons ; but it was a far deeper principle than 
 mere amia,bility, it was the sense of his own need of 
 mercy and forgiveness tliat made him tender even to 
 weakness in dealing with sinners. In ISTew Zealand he 
 was often pained by the severity of the discipline which 
 the native teachers in their new-born intemperate zeal 
 were wont to exercise when left to their own discre- 
 tion. On one occasion a Maori woman met him with tears, 
 having been expelled from her village for an act of sin, 
 " Her tears and cries," he wrote, " in this wild and dis- 
 tant country touched my heart with the thought of the 
 universal prevalence of sin, and of its invariable fruit of 
 sorrow. The native teachers are often offended with me 
 for what they consider a mistaken lenity ; but I cannot do 
 otherwise than follow the example of our Lord, and leave 
 the issue in His hands."
 
 382 LIFE UF BISHOP SELWYX. [.UAr. 
 
 Still more difficult was it to induce him to exercise dis- 
 cipline on peccant clergymen ; he shrank from bringing them 
 to punishment and to deprivation, and always lioped that 
 even the greatest offenders would amend. So his strength 
 and his patience, his severity towards himself and his 
 gentleness towards others, seem not to be contradictions 
 or inconsistencies, but to justify the application to him of 
 Carlyle's words, " Uusubduable granite, pierciug far and wide 
 into the heavens like an Alpine mountain ; yet with clefts in 
 it, and fountains, and green, beautiful valleys with flowers." 
 
 landing himself at the head of a variety of missionary 
 machinery and organization that had accumulated without 
 system during twenty-five years, the early years of his 
 residence in New Zealand were well described by him as 
 his deacon episcopate : during these years he luid to attend 
 to an infinity of small details as well as to conceive and 
 undertake " enterprises of great pith and moment." There 
 were occasions when both the strain threatened to be too 
 great for his physical strength, and when he feared that 
 his spiritual life would be cruslied out by an overwhelming 
 burden of material cares ; great things and small, high 
 conceptions and menial tasks, all added their weiglit to the 
 burthen : from providing a system of government for the 
 Church, and endowing Episcopal sees and so founding new 
 Churches each with their hopes of future expansion, to 
 redeeming barren acres and making them into smiling 
 cornfields, or to teaching Papuan savages the first de- 
 cencies of civilized existence, these and all the intermediate 
 duties and functions weighed him down. And yet amid 
 these exaggerations of a Martha's service his spiritual life 
 was kept bright and vigorous, his care not being limited 
 t(j the things of the particular Church which he ruled, 
 l)ut his prayers and sympathies being given in the interests 
 of the Mother Church, his spirit rejoicing in her reform- 
 ing spirit and renewed life, and going forth with those who 
 were her champions and defenders. To considerations of 
 money he was so indifferent that poverty seemed unable
 
 X.] POVERTY. 383 
 
 to affect him ; he voluntarily gave up more than lialf of 
 his original income in New Zealand, and when that moiety 
 was taken away he still reduced the remaining portion, 
 and had all been taken from him he would have remained 
 at his post, had he followed apostolic example and worked 
 for his daily bread. So limited were his resources that at 
 one period he was obliged to make a visitation tour of 
 some months' duration quite unattended, carrying his own 
 clothes on his back ; but he made no complaint, and the 
 fact would never have been recorded had not others made it 
 known ; he never owned an acre of land in New Zealand, yet 
 so keen was his artistic delight in beautiful scenery that he 
 may be said, while " having nothing " to " have yet possessed 
 all things"; he answered to Wordsworth's description of 
 
 " The good priest, wlio faithfi;! through all hours 
 To his high charge, and tr^lly serving God, 
 Has yet a heart and hand for trees and flowers." 
 
 At Lichfield he surrounded himself with no worldly state, 
 and when in London his " town-house " w^as a set of rooms 
 sufficient for all purposes of health and comfort, but for 
 nothing more, at the Lollard's Tower. In each condition of 
 income, whether 400/. as in New Zealand, or 4,500/. as at 
 Lichfield, there was the same measure of hospitality ever 
 extended towards ail, and especially to the poor. John 
 Wesley's motto, " Save all you can and give all you save," 
 was often quoted by him, and he did not think that charity 
 began until after a tithe had been paid to God. " What- 
 ever your income," he wrote once to his son, " remember 
 that only nine-tenths of it are at your disposal." Preach- 
 ing in 1854, on behalf of the Tithe Eedemption Trust, the 
 bishop said : — 
 
 " We shall not touch men's consciences by going out at 
 0)1 ce into the field to search for some tenth sheaf of corn, 
 or some tenth lamb, which is exacted for the use of some 
 lay impropriator; but by carefully scrutinizing all our 
 items of expenditure, most of them the growth of ages
 
 384 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. [chap. 
 
 later than the establishment of tithe ; every exotic fruit, 
 exquisite fish, and pampered fowl ; every costly flower and 
 precious jewel, and goodly appirel ; every servant and 
 hoi'se and carriage ; every piece of plate and gorgeous 
 furniture ; every treasure of painting or of sculpture, even 
 every rare book ; and, above all, by looking closely into 
 those sources of revenue which are of modern years, the 
 rents of palaces standing where scarcely a cow fed a few 
 years ago ; money locked in the funds, and yielding 
 annually its untithed interest; of all and every one of 
 these items of expenditure, or of these sources of income, 
 it is our bounden duty to ask the question — Has it paid 
 tribute to whom tribute is due ? Has it paid its Redemp- 
 tion Tithe in thankful acknowledgment of the mercy of 
 that Saviour who bought us w'ith the price of His own 
 body and blood ? I am a stranger here, and I speak there- 
 fore with less confidence ; but my impression is, that the 
 tithe of which I now speak has not been paid. The proof 
 seems to be this, that misery, and want, and spiritual 
 destitution has gone on increasing, while the nation was 
 every year advancing in wealth and luxury. . . . 
 
 " What is the cure for socialism ? Surely it is the 
 return to the true spirit of the apostolic age, of which 
 socialism is a godless counterfeit. It is to take care that 
 no child, no widow, no orphan, no emigrant, no heathen 
 shall be neglected in the daily distribution of all things 
 needful, both for soul and body. What this may cost, 
 after so many years of neglect, it is as impossible to tell 
 as it is to calculate what portion of our income may be 
 required for the purposes of the righteous war in which 
 we are now engaged. All that we can call our own is 
 what neither our God nor our country demauds. Yea, let 
 Him take all, who gave all ; not only all these earthly 
 things, but his own Son, the brightness of His own glory, 
 and the express image of His person." 
 
 And with all this lavish expenditure for God there was 
 careful, even painful and rigid economy in the smallest 
 things, and this as a matter of conscience. He provided 
 for the insurance of Church property and the lives of the 
 clergy with the skill of a practical actuary, and carefully 
 nursed every endowment however small. It was a diffi-
 
 X.] . HUMILITY. 385 
 
 cult thing to teach the young men at the AVaimate that a 
 daily unnecessary consumption of even a little flour would 
 just settle the question whether one more Pagan lad could 
 be admitted and so be trained as a Christian, and in a 
 wider sphere it was not less difficult to make settlers 
 understand the sanctity of gifts of charity and the duty 
 of utilizing and husbanding them to the utmost. 
 
 It was no unimportant trait in his character that a man 
 who had drawn to a participation in his labours a Whyte- 
 head and a Patteson, as well as others, of whom as being 
 yet with us no mention can be made, should have ever 
 been humble in spirit, prone to consult others, to put off 
 even the accustomed authority of his position, to strengthen 
 himself by conference and counsel, and to hold himself at 
 the orders of his recognized superiors. He seemed more 
 than other men ever to " unite with self-forgetting tender- 
 ness of heart an earth-despising dignity of soul." Eeady 
 always to act on the combative instincts which were 
 within him whenever wrong and injustice raised their 
 heads, he was a lover of peace. His mind was receptive 
 i-ather than controversial, ready to accept and believe rather 
 than to entertain the speculative doubts which to a keen 
 intellect are not without their attractions and temptations. 
 The romance which surrounded much of his work at 
 the Antipodes led to a general impression that his physical 
 courage was very great ; that it might be said of him, as 
 Nelson said of himself, that he " never saw fear." But 
 this is an error ; he was naturally nervous, more for the 
 sake of others than himself, and herein he differed from 
 Bishop Patteson, who was a stranger to fear, and in his early 
 days in Melanesia had often to be called back when he was 
 going into danger. It was moral couraoe that overmastered 
 his natural fear, and it was moral courage that made him 
 on all occasions what he was ; the undaunted champion of 
 what was right and true, who feared nothing so much as 
 the reproof of his own conscience. 
 
 Commanding intellect and humble faitli, unswerving
 
 386 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP SELWYN. 
 
 [chap. X. 
 
 obedience and inexliaustiLle cliarity, tender heart and 
 dauntless courage — these surely were combined in George 
 Augustus Selwyn, and make his memory and example 
 a precious inheritance for all time. 
 
 " Lift up your hearts, ye Mourners ! for the might 
 Of the whole workl's good wislies with liim goes : 
 Blessiugs anil Prayers in nobler retinue 
 Than sceptred King or laurelled Couc][ueror knows, 
 Follow this wondrous Potentate." 
 
 Ju ^1;kc.
 
 INDEX TO VOLUME 11, 
 
 VOL. II. c a
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Apale, George Nelson Hector, 5 
 Abraham, Rev. C. J. (Bishop of Wel- 
 
 Ungton), 6, 42, 43, 55, 78, 273, 372 
 Anaiteum, 7 
 
 Acland, Sir T. D., the late, 60 
 Adams, John, 64 
 Anarchy in Church, 141, 143, 144 
 Athanasian Creed, 351, 352 
 Ashwell, Rev. B., 2, 189 
 Adelaide, Bishop of, 193 
 America, visits of Bishop Selwyn to, 
 
 286 et seq., 319 et seq. 
 Alms Dish, American, 302 et seq. 
 
 Bishop Wordsworth's Unes on, 
 305 
 Anglican Church, Mission of the, 320 
 Ai'tistic sense. Bishop Selwyn's, 383 
 Augustine's, S., College, 30 
 Ahu Levi Te, 40, 43, 53 
 
 B 
 
 Barnabas, S. Day, 68 
 
 Bayonnais, French man-of-war, 76 
 
 Blackburne, Rev. S., 79 
 
 Barbados, 307 
 
 Barge Mission, 317 
 
 Bei-tha, Queen, 6Q 
 
 Bible, Analysis of, 37 
 
 Bingham's Antiquities, 228 
 
 Brighton Church Congress, 325 
 
 Border Maid, 5, 8, 10, 331 
 
 Browne, Professor Harold (Bishop of 
 
 Winchester), 57, 147 
 Broughton, Bishop, 267 
 Body, Rev. G., 315 
 Brotherhoods, 316, 354 
 Bodington, Rev. C, 341, 343 et seq. 
 Bonds of Resignation, 366 
 
 Bonar's, Dr., hymn, 373 
 Bull, Rev. C, 22 
 Blunt, Professor, 58 '' 
 Burials Bill, 366 et seq. 
 
 G 
 
 Cambeidge, sermons at, in 1854, 33 
 
 Chatham Islands, 52 
 
 Caledonia, New, 75 
 
 Carliugford, Lord, 160 
 
 Champneys, Dean, 204, 375 
 
 Capetown, Bishop of, 232 
 
 Chapel at Lichfield, 247 
 
 Chapter, Lichfield, 273, 284, 315 
 
 Canada, Church in, 320 
 
 Cairns, Earl, 335 
 
 Clergy, supply of, 276 et seq., 328 
 
 Celestine, Pope, 333 
 
 Creeds, conspectus of the, to face p. 
 352 
 
 Christchurch, Bishop of, 68, 261 
 
 Chichester College, 275 
 Bishop of, 325 
 
 Confirmation, 2, 81 
 
 Coleridge, Rev. E., 6, 28, 61, 206, 331 
 
 Commodore barque, 22 
 
 Cross, Southern, 35, 60, 68, 76, 211 
 
 Constitution of New Zealand Church, 
 69, 97 et seq. 
 
 Cho, John, 74 
 
 College, fruits of, 77 
 
 Coleridge, Sir J. T., 87, 131, 349 
 
 Convocation, speeches of Bishop 
 
 Selwyn in, 141, 307, 358 
 
 Questionings in, 146 €t seq. 
 
 Cookson, Dr., 241 
 
 Conference, Synod or, 253 
 
 Conferences, Lichfield {see Synods, 
 Diocesan) 
 
 Cowie, Rev. W. G. (Bishop of Auck- 
 land), 267, 307
 
 390 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Confirmations in Lichfield 268 et seq. 
 
 329 
 Courage, Bishop Selwyn's, 385 
 Church and State, 210, 257, 253 
 Cuddesdon College, 275 
 Curteis, Rev. G. H., 285 
 Church defence, 3G7 
 
 D 
 
 D.V. and D.G., 3 
 
 Daltou, Rev. C. B., 229 
 
 Deuison, Sir ^Y., 60 
 
 "Defenceless hands," 17S 
 
 Departure for England (1807), 228 
 
 Derby, Earl of, 23(> et seq. 
 
 Denstone School, 358 
 
 Deist, appeal to a, 379 
 
 Dissenters, relations with, 7, 9, 73, 
 93, 355, 356 
 
 Divisions, e\il of, 234 
 
 Discipline, Bishop Selwyn's unwilling- 
 ness to exercise, 381 
 
 Dunedm, 223 et seq., 307 
 
 E 
 
 ExGLAXD, visit to, in 1854, 22 
 
 Object of, 25 
 
 Left, 35, 37 
 Eceleshall Castle, 241 
 Ember- weeks, 2S2, 370 
 Edensor, 248 
 Exeter Synod, 250 
 
 Surplice Riots, 232 
 Ellesmere Schools, 3(}4 
 Eclipse, H.M.S., 185 
 Episcopate, extension of, 358, 363 
 Eliot, Rev. P. F., 370 
 Eton, sermon at, 27 
 Entlironeinent of Bishop at Lichfield, 
 
 244, 247 
 Education, reiifHous, 358 
 Enrt/dice, H.M.S., 372 
 ElyS^Tiod, 250 
 
 Fable!?, jEsop's, 204 
 Falkland Islands, 26 
 Farquli.ar, Sir "\V., 62 
 Feild, Bishop, 320 j 
 Frcdericton, 321 
 Fun<l, Diocesan, 250, 3G.'J 
 
 G 
 
 Gate Fa. the, 196 
 Grace, Rev. Mr., 198, 208 
 
 Gratitude, barque, 20 
 
 Gladstone, Right Hon. W. E., 88, 89, 
 
 228 
 Geddie, Mr., 7 
 George's-in-the-East, S., 232 
 Grey, Sir George, 21, 89, 159, 174 
 Greek Church at Wolverhampton, 
 
 349 
 Gold, discovery of, 11 
 Gloucester and Bristol, Bishop of, 
 
 149 
 Govett, Archdeacon, 241 
 
 H 
 
 " Hastings, Battle of," 58 
 Hawkins, Rev. E., 42, 69, 91 
 Hamilton, Bishop, 147, 150 
 Hau-hauism, 197 
 Harrowby, Earl of, 235, 254 
 Halifax, 320 
 Hebrides, New, 73 
 Hector Nelson, 78 
 Herbert, George, 256 
 Herbert, Hon. R. C, 350 
 Home, Sir Everard, 11 
 Hobhouse, Bishop, 78, 350 
 Howe, Bishop, 288 
 Hume, Joseph, M.P., 173 
 
 Ireland, Church in, 108, 272 
 Intercession, Days of, 306 
 Inglis, Mr. and Mrs., 7 
 Jris, H.M.S., 76 _ 
 
 Industrial training, triumph of, 11 
 211 
 
 Jekemie, Professor, 58 
 
 Jerusalem Bishopric Act, 212 
 
 Jenner, Bi.shop, 225 et seq. 
 
 Jewry, S. Lawrence, services at, 231 
 et seq. 
 
 'Joshua,' Maori deacon, 164 
 
 John's, S., College, Cambridge, chapel 
 consecrated, 271 
 
 Justification by faith, the teaching of 
 Easter, 4 
 
 Juno, H.M.S., 62 
 
 Judicial Committee of Privy Coun- 
 cil, 34, 260, 339 
 
 Jubilee of American Board of Mis- 
 sions, 288, 190 
 
 '«/«s i\/priuvi,' 333
 
 INDEX. 
 
 391 
 
 Katatore, 43, 53 
 Karaka Adama, 43—45 
 Kawau, 77 
 
 Kerguelin's Island, 41 
 King, W., 4(3, 51, 1(34, 172 
 Kiug New Zealand, 161 et seq. 
 Kidderminster, 194 
 Kingston, Bishop of, 321 
 Kohunarama, 8, 79, 222 
 
 Ladybird, Ladylnrd, &c., 46 
 Lambeth Conference (1867), 139, 227, 
 228 
 (1878), 155, 290, 323 
 Lifu, 8, 74, 75 
 Lichfield, 139, 237 et seq., 244 
 
 Palace Chapel, 204 
 Lightfoot, Dr., 241 
 Lights on the Altar, 335 
 Litigation, 338 
 Lloyd, Rev. J. F., 93, 241 
 Longley, Archbishop, 145, 224, 239 
 London, Bishop of (Dr. Tait), 152, 
 
 228 
 Lonsdale, Bishop, 235, 246, 251, 358 
 Lollard's Tower, 383 
 
 M 
 
 Maori, declension of race, 1 
 
 MaHcolo, 7, 65 
 
 Mackenzie, Bishop, 33 
 
 Maria Santa, 65 
 
 Mai, 70 
 
 Martin, Sir W., 88, 131, 223, 235, 245, 
 
 349 
 Maunsell, Archdeacon, 2, 168, 169, 189 
 Mauku, 170 
 Maori Church, farewell addresses of, 
 
 265 et seq. 
 Manning, Archdeacon, 331 
 Martin v. Machonochie, 339 
 Melanesia, plans for the Mission to, 
 29, 70 
 Endowment of, 30, 31 
 Melbourne, Bishop of (I'erry), 12, 88 
 ' Mediator ' speech, 181 
 Melanthraeia, 257 
 jl/cum and Tumn, 272 
 Medley, Bishop, 321 
 Missionary Bishops, 212 
 Missionary work, I'rinci2^les of, 291 it 
 
 seq. 
 Minnesota, Bishop of, 297, 320 
 
 Missions, Home, 314 
 
 Foreign, 319 
 Michael and George, SS., Order of, 
 
 327 
 Mota, 74, 211 
 
 Monarchical idea of Episcopate, 89 
 Montreal, 320 
 
 N 
 
 Nabong, George, 20 
 Native ordination, 17 
 Native ministry, 301 ct seq. 
 NahotlCs Vineyard, 45 
 Nengone, 8, 21 
 Newcastle, Duke of, 185, 212 
 Nelson Bishopric, 210 
 New Zealand, departure for, in' 1855 
 37 
 in 1863, 259 
 New Jersey, Bishop of, 287. 
 Newfoundland, 320 
 Nebraska, 321 
 Nihill. Rev. ^Y., 7, 8 
 Norfolk Island, 21, 59—61, 63, 70, 74 
 
 O 
 
 Otaki, 201 
 
 Otago, 224 
 Organic Union, 323 
 Objections to Synodal action, 255 
 Obligations, pastoral, 195 
 Ordination of natives, 227 
 Ordinations at Lichfield, 284, 370 
 Opotiki, 198, 199 
 
 Paul, S., 9 
 
 Patteson, Rev. J. C. (afterwards 
 
 Bishop), 8, 28, 36,37,42,59, 67, 71, 
 
 75, 79, 131, 193, 212, 214, 261, 305, 
 
 322, 385 
 Patteson, Sir J., 62, 65, 72, 87, 131, 
 165, 349 
 Port, 74 
 Pastoral letter to Church-people at 
 
 Taranaki, 47 et seq. 
 Pitcairn Island, 59, 60, 63 
 Patent Letters, 88 
 
 Petition to resign, 135 
 Payne, Rev. S. W., 192 
 Patriarchate of Canterbiury, 307 
 Pari.sh, a neglected, 353 
 Peria, 180 
 Petition of New Zealand Bishops to 
 
 the Crown, 223
 
 592 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Pennsylvania, Bishop of, 290 
 
 Peak, High, the, 336 
 
 Pelsall Colliery, 375 
 
 Privy Council, action of, 34, 2G0 
 
 Pirimona, lli9, 170 
 
 ' Pig-stye ' hospitality, 178 
 
 Verses on, 17S 
 Pinder, Canon, 275 
 Phillimore, Sir R. J., 335 
 Philpotts, Bisliop, 250 
 J'ortlauil, Duke of, 37, 42 
 Plymouth, New {see Taranaki) 
 Polygamy, 57 
 Potatau Chief, 161 
 Poverty Bay, 198 
 
 Potteries, five days' work in the, 248 
 ' Frohationer System^ 'Ildi et seq. 
 Pott er-Selvvyn" Prize, 325 
 Pohtics, Bishop Selwyu's, 365 
 Public Worship Regulation Act, 334, 
 
 339 
 I'unch, lines in, 242 
 
 Q 
 
 QuEEK, H.M. the, 240 
 Queen's Redoubt, 174, 188 
 Quebec, Bishop of, 229, 321 
 
 R 
 
 Eathri, murder of, 53 
 
 Rawle, Bishop, 307 
 
 ' Ramah ' at Lichfield, 318 
 
 Reformation, principles of the, 332 
 
 Renata, 177 
 
 Regiment, H.M. 57th, 185 
 
 Eewi, Chief, 209 
 
 Ryle, Rev. J. C, 315 
 
 Richardson, Sir J., 88 
 
 Ritualism, 142, 338 
 
 Rivington, Rev. L., 315 
 
 Rota "\Vaitoa {see Waitoa) 
 
 Rome, Church of, 332, 334,357 
 
 S 
 
 Santa Cruz, 7 
 Siapo, 8 
 
 Sailing Orders, 38 
 Swainson, Mr., 85 et seq., 131 
 Swain.son, Canon, 275 
 Stanley, Dean, 229 
 Sancroft, Archbishop, 241 
 Selwyn, W., Q.C., 37, 39, 55 
 
 Rev. Professor, 57 
 
 Lord Justice, 271 
 Selwyn, Rev. ^V., jun., 160, 103 
 
 Consecration of Rev. J. R., 325 
 
 Shrewsbury School, 371 
 
 Sydney, 61, 267 
 
 S. Stephen's Day, 1865, 206 
 
 School, 349 
 Sermon on consecration of Bishop 
 
 Patteson, 214 et seq. 
 Stevens, Bishop, 290 
 Sierra Leone, 307 
 Schools for Maoris, 2 
 Schoolmistress, native, 2 
 Solomon Islands, 7 
 Shovel, Sir Cloudesley, 11 
 Southern Cross {see Cross, Southern) 
 " Synod or Conference," 253 
 Synod, Farewell of New Zealand, 261 
 Synodal Action, 84, 139, 140, 223 
 Synods, General, 108 et seq., 138, 201, 
 260 
 
 Diocesan, 129, 250 et seq., 254, 
 328 
 Stockmar, Baron, 240 
 Stoke-on-Trent Church Congress, 325 
 Surly, 41 
 &ti/x, steamer, 76 
 
 Taeai^aki, 43, 47, 162, 165, 172, 183 
 
 Tasmania, 70, 175 
 
 Taratoa, Henry, 77, 204 
 
 Thatcher, Rev. F., 93, 260 
 
 Taniwlia Te, 159 
 
 Tataraimaka, 181 et seq. 
 
 Tamahana Wiremu, 181 
 
 Tauranga, 193 
 
 Talke, 249 
 
 Taupaki.Rev. M., 267 
 
 Teira Te, 163, 186 
 
 Theological College at Lichfield, 274 
 
 Tenderness, Bishop Selwyn's, 378 
 
 Thirlwall, Bishop, 229 
 
 Trinidad, 357 
 
 Tithes, 383, 384 
 
 Thol, John, 7, 8, 10 
 
 Thompson, W., 167, 183 
 
 Trower, Bishop, 260 
 
 Toronto, 320 
 
 U 
 
 Ua Horopapera Te, 195 
 Uses of Synods, 251 
 
 Victoria, brig, 21, 59 
 Vanua T^ava, 73
 
 INDEX, 
 
 393 
 
 Vestry meetings, 93 it scq. 
 Yolkner, Eev. Mr., 198, 206, 208 
 
 W 
 
 "Waitoa Eota, 2, 17, 40, 43 
 Waiapu, Bishop of, 79, 127 
 AVaitara, 83, 163 et seq., 181 
 War, Maori, 156 et seq. 
 Prayer during, 203 
 Waitangi Treaty, 158, 173 
 Waikato, 163, 164, 173, 175 
 "WTianganui, 180 
 
 Warren v. Wesleyan Society, 308 
 Wynyard, Col., 11, 46^ 
 Webster, Daniel, 20 
 
 Wellington, Bishop of, 186, 267, 271 
 Westbury, Lord, 223 
 Wells CoUege, 275 
 Westerton v. Liddell, 340 
 Whytehead, Rev. T., 370, 385 
 Windsor, Holy Trinity Church, 27 
 Wilberforce, Bishop, 146 it seq. 
 Williams, Archdeacon W. L., 241 
 Whipple, Bishop, 320 
 Wolverhampton Church Congress, 
 
 139, 232 et seq., 246 
 Wood, Bishop, 241 
 Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln, 305, 
 
 366 
 Wolverhampton, S. George, 319 
 Eitualism at, 338, 341, 370 
 
 END OF VOLUME IT.
 
 LOKDON 
 
 R. CLAY, SONS, AND TATI.OR 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 001 297 352 5
 
 ^^ 
 
 J ^ 
 
 
 li