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Title: G. A. Selwyn, D.D.
Bishop of New Zealand and Lichfield
Author: Louise Creighton
Release Date: November 19, 2019 [EBook #60731]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
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NEW ZEALAND
BY
LOUISE CREIGHTON
AUTHOR OF “LIFE AND LETTERS OF MANDELL CREIGHTON, D.D.” ETC., ETC.
“Here am I, send me.”
WITH 2 MAPS
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C. 4
NEW YORK, TORONTO
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1923
Made in Great Britain
The work that Bishop Selwyn did in laying the foundations of the Church in New Zealand, and his views as to Church organization have special lessons to teach us in these days. It is to bring these lessons to the notice of those who are unable to study larger biographies that this short life has been written.
No one can write about Bishop Selwyn without expressing great indebtedness to the Rev. H. W. Tucker whose Memoir of the Bishop, founded on the letters and papers entrusted to him by the Bishop’s family, contains most of what can be known about him. In this little book I have freely used Mr. Tucker’s Memoir, indeed the book could not have been written without it. I have consulted many other books bearing on the history of New Zealand and Melanesia, but my object has been to write about Selwyn, and about New Zealand and Melanesia only so far as they concerned him. I have tried to show what manner of man he was by telling of what he did and said, and to let him reveal himself by his own words and by his letters, rather than to attempt to explain him in my own words. I cannot claim to have had access to any new material, I have only selected from what is already published that which will enable my readers to learn something of the life and work of a man of distinguished gifts and a great leader in the Church.
Louise Creighton.
The life of George Augustus Selwyn has many lessons to teach us. In the position which he was called upon to fill, there were exceptional opportunities which his own natural gifts enabled him to meet in an exceptional way. He showed himself to be not only a devoted missionary and a capable organizer, but a statesman, able to grasp a big situation and to lay wise foundations for the future. As a missionary bishop, he had the care of a specially virile and promising race in the Maoris, and of the other very varied races that inhabited the countless islands of the Pacific. But he had also to provide for the spiritual needs of the colonists who came to his diocese in ever growing numbers, attracted by the rich promise of New Zealand. The claims made upon his time and thought by the colonists, the Maoris and the islanders had all to be met and adjusted, and in the midst of all the urgent demands for the pressing work of each moment, he had to be building up the church of the future. He could not think only of the native Church. His call was not only to be a missionary, to bring the heathen to Christ, but also to lay the foundations of a Church which was to witness to Christ in a x land destined for a great future, as part of the British Empire. He had to consider how black and white could be welded into one nation, and into one Church. His could not be the simple straightforward task of the teacher or the evangelist. Yet he was ever at heart a missionary, animated by a true sense of vocation. There are those whose own life of devotion and service is their chief witness for Christ, their great gift to His Church; but Selwyn was called to do more than witness for Christ by his life and his individual work. His work as an organizer was inspired by a desire for efficiency, for making the best use in God’s service of the men and the money entrusted to his care. But more than this, he had ever before him a vision of what the Church in New Zealand should be in the future. He saw it a Church, founded on the best traditions of the past, able to grow and expand to meet all the needs of the future, in communion with the Anglican Church throughout the world, that Church which he believed by its origin and history to be the branch of the Catholic Church best fitted to the genius of the Anglo-Saxon people. Rooted in the past, throbbing with the active life of the present, ready to meet the great possibilities of the future, the Church was the inspiration of all his efforts. But in his devotion to the whole, he never lost sight of the individual. It is the combination of far reaching xi views with tender care for each individual soul which gives him his special charm and makes him so valuable an example for others. Organization was never to him an object in itself. In the midst of big schemes, struggling with big plans, there was no service however menial that he was not eager to render to any sufferer however humble, there was no task however arduous that he was not ready to undertake. He lived intensely, and though life was to him a constant act of self-surrender, he could rejoice in it and in all that it brought to him of beauty, interest and affection.
PACIFIC OCEAN
George Augustus Selwyn had all the advantages of birth and education which would have made a brilliant career in England easy for him. He came of a distinguished family, and his father, a successful lawyer, was in a position to give him every educational advantage. Born in 1809, he was the second of four brothers, who all had brilliant school and college careers. His energy, his capacity for rule, his sympathy showed itself even when he was a boy. His sister says, “he was truly the family friend and counsellor, ever ready to help in all difficulties.” A specially tender tie bound him to his mother; she suffered grievously from nervous depression and he gave up much time in his holidays to cheering her. By her bedside he probably learned that tender care for the suffering which marked him throughout life. At the early age of seven he was sent to a large preparatory school at Ealing, and from there went on to Eton where he was said to be the best boy on the river, nearly the first boy in 2 learning and the greatest diver in the school. His exact scholarship and his skill in swimming and diving were all alike capacities which helped to fit him for his future life. Very popular in the school and distinguished in athletics, he never neglected his studies. One of his friends says that “he seemed to be always preparing himself for some unrevealed future of usefulness.” It was the same when he went on to St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1827, and entered with his usual ardour into both the studies and the sports of the university. Mathematics were very distasteful to him and in the class list of 1831 he was only a junior optime, but he was the second classic of his year. He rowed in the Cambridge boat in the first Oxford and Cambridge boat race.
When he left Cambridge, he spent four months in travel on the continent and returned to Eton as private tutor to the sons of Lord Powis. The same energetic life of work and play was continued in his new position at Eton. He it was who persuaded Dr. Hawtrey to draw up rules for bathing and boating on the river. Till then there had been no rules, and the river was considered out of bounds. He wished the boys to have freedom to enjoy the river, but to be obliged to learn to swim before they boated. He himself loved boating and long walks, finding his way across country by a compass; 3 he took part in steeplechases, and so learned to ride horses of all kinds over rough country. Whilst he enjoyed all these varied occupations which were to prove a preparation for the life before him, he had as yet not the slightest idea of going to work abroad. A letter written many years afterwards (1850) to his son shows how uncertain he was as a young man about his future career. “I remember that at your age, though I had some desire for the ministerial office I had not any fixed or devoted purpose of heart to undertake its duties, nor any steadfast resolution to frame my life so as to make it a preparation for it. It pleased God that much of the restless energy which then found its vent in mere amusement and running to and fro, as it seemed without point 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.”
Before long he began to study Hebrew and theology in preparation for his ordination which took place in 1833. Still remaining a tutor at Eton, he worked first as curate of Boveney and later at the Windsor Parish Church, giving up the curate’s salary for two years in order to help the financial difficulties of the parish. The spirit in which he worked is shown by the following remark in a letter to a 4 friend: “I believe that as clergymen we ought to be willing to be tied like furze bushes to a donkey’s tail, if we can thereby do any good by stimulating what is lazy and quickening what is slow.” He threw himself with zeal into every part of the work of his parish, developing new organizations of many kinds. By his devotion as well as by his preaching he won the warm affection of the parishioners, and together with all this parish work he kept up a close connexion with Eton. His old schoolfellow W. E. Gladstone, said of him: “he was attached to Eton with a love surpassing the love of Etonians. In himself he formed a large part of the life of Eton, and Eton formed a large part of his life.” Always a great organizer, he had much influence both amongst masters and boys, at a time when various reforms were being introduced into the school. The impression he made was of one who had a high ideal of personal and Christian life, not an ascetic, but one who valued bodily training and plain living, because they conduced to success in good work.
In 1839 Selwyn married Sarah Richardson, daughter of Sir J. Richardson, a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, in whom he found a companion ready to share with him all the risks and difficulties of an adventurous life. At the time of his marriage there seemed no prospect 5 before him beyond that of a successful ecclesiastical career in England. Full of work, full of zeal, with many friends, living in a place that he loved, and now with a happy home of his own, he was absolutely content with life. But it was ever his firm conviction that an officer in the Church was as much bound as an officer in the army, to obey the command of his superior and to go wherever he was sent. On his marriage he asked his wife never to oppose his going wherever he might be ordered on duty.
At that time the authorities of the Church were seriously considering the need of increasing the number of bishops in the colonies, since every year more emigrants left England for the newly settled lands beyond the seas. Amongst the leaders of the Church there were men who were determined that there should be no repetition of the past shameful neglect which had left the American colonies so long without a bishop of their own. The matter was brought forward by Bishop Blomfield of London, and a Colonial Bishoprics Fund was started. Thirteen countries were named as most urgently in need of Bishops, and amongst these New Zealand stood first. The Church Missionary Society had had missions established there since 1814, and Bishop Broughton of Australia had once been able to visit them, but could not do so 6 again. The most experienced of the New Zealand missionaries, Henry Williams, wrote in 1841 “Many questions of moment frequently present themselves, on which we possess no authority to enter. We much hope that a Bishop for this colony will soon make his appearance.” The formation in 1839 of the New Zealand Company, with the object of buying up land from the natives and encouraging settlers, had brought with it many new problems and difficulties. The need for a Bishop as head of the Church which was called to minister both to Maoris and settlers was recognized by all. The Church Missionary Society promised £600 a year for his support and it was hoped that the Government would give a like sum. The Crown was to appoint the Bishop. The first name suggested was that of Professor Selwyn, George Selwyn’s elder brother, but he felt unable to leave his Cambridge professorship. The bishopric was then offered to George Selwyn in a letter from the Bishop of London to which Selwyn, who had no personal desire for such an office and who had no wish to change his actual work, answered as follows:
“Whatever part in the work of the ministry the Church of England as represented by her Archbishops and Bishops may call upon me to undertake, I trust I shall be willing to accept with all obedience and humility. The same reasons which would prevent me from seeking the office of a bishop, forbid me to 7 decline an authoritative invitation to a post so full of responsibility, but at the same time of spiritual promise.... It has never seemed to me to lie in the power of an individual to choose the field of labour most suited to his own powers. Those who are the eyes of the Church and have seen him acting in the station in which God has placed him, are the best judges whether he ‘ought to go up higher.’ Whether the advancement be at home or abroad ... with whatever prospects or adjuncts of emolument or dignity or without any, the only course seems to be to undertake it at the bidding of the proper authority and to endeavour to execute it with all faithfulness.... Allow me to offer my best thanks to your Lordship for your kind letter and to place myself unreservedly in the hands of the Episcopal Council to dispose my services as they may think best for the Church.”
The actual offer had to be made by Lord John Russell and meanwhile doubts had arisen whether Parliament would be willing to grant the money proposed towards the Bishop’s stipend, but this uncertainty did not influence Selwyn’s decision. There were other difficulties which weighed more with him. A colonial bishop was in those days appointed under Letters Patent from the Crown, and these were so worded as to make it appear that the bishop’s right to exercise the spiritual functions of his office was derived solely from the Crown. Selwyn could do no more than make a formal protest against such wording. An absurd blunder was also made in the Letters Patent 8 through the ignorance of the Colonial Office, and jurisdiction was given to the Bishop over sixty-eight more degrees of latitude than was intended. In this way it came about that Melanesia was included in the diocese of New Zealand.
The New Zealand Company was ready to make grants of land for the purposes of the Church, but under conditions which should ensure that their property was benefited through the Church. They wished the Bishop to settle on the land they gave, and he was told that his future popularity would be sacrificed if he did not make his home and build his cathedral at the place they indicated. But Selwyn was going to promise nothing until he had himself studied the country. He said that he would “rent a house for his family and pitch a tent near to it a soon as he landed and the very next day begin daily service, never he hoped to be interrupted. He meant then to go away and visit all the islands and when his choice was made to move his tent thither and continue the services, and by its side build a wooden church, and outside of the wooden building to begin to build a chancel of stone in Norman style, and as soon as any part of the stone cathedral was finished the wooden work would be taken down.”
From the very first he wished to have some holy place set apart for the daily service of God, 9 and he carefully superintended the making of the church tent which was to be the first cathedral of the island church.
Amidst the important questions that occupied his mind during these busy weeks of preparation, details were not forgotten. His sister remembers “sitting up half the night helping him to make a water proof belt for his watch and pedometer. He meant to swim the rivers, pushing his clothes in front of him.” During all his preparations the thought of the great spiritual work to which he was dedicating his life filled his thoughts. One who was with him at the time writes: “He said the ‘Consecration Service’ had lately been his constant study, and that after next Sunday (his Consecration day) his existence as an individual must cease, and that all his own individual interests and ties must undergo the change with him. Sarah (his wife) knelt down beside him and looking up in his face said, ‘I know at any rate you will not love me any the less.’ He stroked back the hair from her forehead, kissed it, saying, ‘Surely not the less but the more.’ He went on to explain that what he meant was ‘that his very being, with all its powers and affections must now be dedicated to God in a more peculiar and solemn degree than heretofore, and be absorbed into higher powers and boundless affections.’”
He was consecrated on October 17th in the Chapel at Lambeth Palace. It was not yet the custom to hold consecrations in the Abbey or at S. Paul’s Cathedral. There was not room for the many friends who wished to be with him in the Chapel, which was crowded as it had never been before on such an occasion. Exceptional interest was felt in his going forth, due to the affection and admiration with which he was regarded by so many, and to the sense of the brilliant prospects at home that he was gladly giving up to go to a distant land only just emerging from barbarism.
Two days after his Consecration, Selwyn received an offer from the Rev. C. J. Abraham, one of the ablest Eton masters, to come and work with him in New Zealand as soon as he could be free from the special work he had undertaken at Eton. To this offer Selwyn answered at once:
“I am quite overwhelmed with joy at your letter and have just risen from my knees after having poured forth my thankfulness to God.... When I think of the position in which the course of His providence has placed me ... I tremble at the thought of my weakness, and though I know the sufficiency of Divine Grace, still I long for brethren of a like mind to share with me the labours and the joys of the coming harvest. Men talk of sacrifices as a loss. I thank God that the enlarged comprehension of His scheme of mercy, which He has lately given me, has made me feel that no worldly advancement could compensate for the loss of one single moment of the peaceful and thankful and yet humble state of mind which I have enjoyed since the scales of all earthly objects of desire fell 11 from my eyes.... I encourage you to cherish the feelings in which your letter was written, to dwell upon them; and in the end to act upon them; not on the spur of the present occasion, but with the calm, deep and deliberate devotion of a balanced judgment. Men think enthusiasm necessary to missionary enterprise. May we be enabled to show that the highest range of spiritual thought, the most entire and uncompromising obedience to the letter of the Gospel, being no more than our bounden duty, is compatible with the most perfect evenness of mind, and with the subdued and rational exercise of the understanding.
“Being called to the Episcopate at an early age I feel at liberty to look forward to a long course of pastoral superintendence over the Church in New Zealand. In that course many great and important changes must occur, for which I must be prepared.... Could I find a few men like yourself, who would silently work with me by the devotion of themselves and their means to the same cause, we should see year after year, parish after parish, archdeaconry after archdeaconry start into life, not with the mere appurtenances of temporal endowment, but with the provision of a living hand to give life and spirit to the institution.... Will you be one of the feeders of my Church, with the view of being in the course of time one of its pastors?”
During the farewell days spent at Eton and Windsor many friends gathered to show him their affection and to do him honour. At a meeting held in Windsor, he spoke again of the motives which had made him ready to go forth and of his readiness to go anywhere he might be sent, and of his deep thankfulness because “that land of promise, New Zealand, a land literally flowing with milk and honey, was to be his.”
The party that was to accompany the Bishop and his wife and child to New Zealand, consisted of his two chaplains, Mr. Cotton, Student of Christ Church, Oxford and Mr. Whytehead, Fellow of St. John’s, Cambridge, three missionary clergy, three catechists and two school teachers. Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Martin, wife of the first Chief Justice of New Zealand, travelled with them to join her husband. The Chief Justice, who had gone out a few months before, came to be one of Selwyn’s chief helpers and friends. The spirit in which he had entered upon his work is shown by the fact that he had impressed upon his wife that “the aborigines of their new country were to be worked for and cared for.” The voyage to New Zealand was in those days of course undertaken in a sailing ship, and the party were delayed some days at Plymouth waiting for a favourable wind. Those relatives and friends who had come to see them off were obliged one by one to leave. The Bishop settled himself in the ship on Christmas eve and held his first service on board on Christmas day. On the next day after prayers with those friends that remained, the last farewells were said and the little ship Tomatin was off on its long voyage.
Selwyn might speak of New Zealand as a land of promise, but he knew well that it had not yet emerged from barbarism. Its inhabitants, the Maoris, were a race splendidly gifted both physically and intellectually, but they were constantly involved in internecine warfare, tribe fighting against tribe, and all alike delighting to feast on the bodies of their captured foes. New Zealand had been discovered by Jasman, the Dutch navigator, in 1642, but no European had landed on the islands till Captain Cook sailed round them in 1769. His reports led to visits from traders, whose treacherous treatment of the natives was followed by cruel retaliations, so that the Maoris got a very bad reputation for barbarism. Their intercourse with some of the settlers in New South Wales, brought them to the notice of Samuel Marsden, a Government chaplain sent out to the convicts in Botany Bay. Marsden was a true evangelist, labouring under most adverse conditions and in 14 face of bitter opposition, to do what he could for the unhappy convicts. His heart was large enough to make him wish to help the Maoris also. He welcomed such of them as came over to New South Wales to his house in Paramatta, and put up huts for them in his garden, where sometimes he had as many as thirty at once. One of the Maori chiefs struck by what he saw of more civilized ways, implored Marsden to send someone to teach his countrymen, and when Marsden Visited England in 1806 he went to the office of the Church Missionary Society and told the committee of the rich field that New Zealand offered for their work. The C.M.S. was then in its infancy. So far it had only sent out five missionaries, who had gone to West Africa. Marsden asked them to send three mechanics to New Zealand. He thought then that the first thing to do was to teach the Maoris something of the arts of civilised life. It was not long before he discovered his mistake and realized that the first thing needed was the work of the evangelist, and that it was through the teaching of the Gospel that the foundations of an ordered life must be laid. At first the mission seemed doomed to failure, but Marsden never lost heart, till in 1822 Henry Williams, the man who was to lay the foundations of Christianity in New Zealand, was sent out with his wife and 15 two children. He had been an officer in the navy before his ordination, and his knowledge of seafaring ways proved of immense use in his new work. The C.M.S. sent him out with the injunction “to bring the noble but benighted race of New Zealanders into the enjoyment of the light and freedom of the Gospel.” With this object he laboured till his death in 1867, never once returning to England. Neither did Marsden forget the Mission. He visited New Zealand seven times, giving constant help and encouragement to the missionaries. His devoted work earned for him the title of the Apostle of New Zealand.
Henry Williams with his wife and children settled on the Bay of Islands, in the North East of New Zealand, at Paihai, a great resort of whalers. It was in this district that most of the early missions were established, Wesleyan and Roman Catholic as well as Anglican. Henry Williams was soon after joined by his brother William, and together, with wives and families they lived for nine years at Paihai. William showed at once an extraordinary aptitude for learning the language. His brother said of him he “appears not to learn it but it seems to flow naturally from him.” His presence at Paihai enabled Henry to travel and visit distant parts of the island with the view of extending the mission. The experiences 16 of these two brothers and their families belong to the romance of missions. They gained a remarkable knowledge of the Maoris and their customs, and won a great influence over them. Absolutely fearless in the way in which they exposed themselves to danger, they were often able to make peace between the tribes in the fierce conflicts which were constantly breaking out. The wrongdoing of an individual was punished by the most bloody vengeance on his whole tribe, and defeated enemies were killed and eaten. Unfortunately fire-arms had been introduced among the Maoris by the traders, and this made their warfare much more deadly. They hoped at first that the missionaries also would provide them with fire-arms, and by refusing to do so, the Williams were at the beginning reduced to great privations for want of food. They not only refused to give fire-arms in exchange for the necessaries of life, but never carried them themselves. The Maoris soon recognized the difference between them and the traders, but the beginnings of the mission were full of dangers and difficulties.
The savage attacks of the Maoris threatened several times to destroy the mission, but amidst all dangers, not only to himself but to his wife and children, Williams remained calm and unafraid. He gained an amazing personal ascendency over the Maoris, and exposed himself fearlessly again and again in order to stop their 17 feuds and bring an end to their repeated and cruel wars. It was not only the Maoris he had to fear, he met with much opposition from the settlers also, who objected to the efforts of the missionaries to secure fair treatment for the natives, and threatened to turn them out of the country. Williams was in no hurry to make converts. He would have no hasty baptisms. For each there must be a long period of probation; but when, after due preparation and testing, the first had been baptized, the number of Christians increased rapidly. Williams gave himself with great energy to language study. He found the Maori dialects very corrupt and difficult to reduce to order. In this work he was greatly helped by his brother William, who was an Oxford scholar, and who helped to fix the language and give it its grammar. Portions of the Bible were translated and the Maoris, old chiefs as well as young boys, after being taught in the schools set up by the missionaries, became eager readers.
It was the constant recurrence of native wars that weighed most heavily upon Williams’ mind. In 1832, he wrote of himself as “in much distress of mind at the present state of things in this land. All is dark, dreary and in dire confusion.” But he was not often cast down. The chief mission station, Paihai in the Waimate, where he lived, was a centre 18 of education and industry. Charles Darwin, visiting it during his voyage in the Beagle in 1835, wrote of it: “The lesson of the missionary is the enchanter’s wand. I thought the whole scene admirable and to think that this was the centre of cannibalism, murder and all atrocious crimes.”
In time some of the most bloodthirsty old chiefs died and the young ones were more ready to listen to the new teaching. They became eager readers of the Bible, they attended the schools, were ready to learn simple handicrafts and after their baptism gave up their desire to fight and seek revenge for every provocation.
After a time the missionaries who now had amongst their converts some who were eager to help in the work of teaching, were able to start other missions further south than the Bay of Islands, in the neighbourhood of the Waikato and the Thames rivers. Richard Taylor, one of the early missionaries, writes:
“The Gospel could not have made the progress it did or have obtained such a permanent hold upon the native mind, had it not been for the agency of the native teachers. In many places they were the first bearers of the Gospel, and some laid down their lives.”
In 1838 Bishop Broughton came from Australia to confirm the candidates taught and prepared by the missionaries. He reported to the C.M.S. committee at home on the flourishing condition 19 of the Mission. The Christians were said to number thirty thousand, and Bishop Broughton urged the desirability of sending out a Bishop to superintend the work of the Church in New Zealand. The special conditions of the country demanded that the influence of the Church should be felt in all the new circumstances that were arising. Settlers were pouring in, many of them convicts from Australia, unprincipled men with no desire for anything but their own gain. Contact with them was teaching the Maoris their evil ways, and leading to much corruption and drunkenness. To the settlers the natives with their old established customs of land tenure, their great attachment to their lands, and their constant tendency to fight for their rights, were hindrances in their way. They desired only to exterminate them. The home government realized that this was not a state of affairs that could be left to settle itself. In the interests of peace, they determined that New Zealand must be made into a British Colony. This was strongly opposed by the C.M.S. who encouraged by the progress that Christianity had made amongst the Maoris, believed that before long the whole people would become Christian and believed that the arrival of colonists would only disturb the peaceful development of the natives. It was, however, impossible to imagine that a country as full of 20 resources as New Zealand could be left to its scanty native population. Settlers were sure to come, and it was better for all that a good and stable government should be set up in the land. An English officer, Captain Hobson, was therefore sent out to enter into peaceful negotiations with the chiefs, in order to establish the sovereignty of the Queen in New Zealand. This was not an easy matter, for the chiefs feared that to agree to this would mean that they would have to give up to the Queen of England the ownership of their lands. They had heard of what had happened in other countries and how the people had been reduced to the position of slaves by the coming of the white settlers. A great gathering of the chiefs was held at Waitangi early in 1840, when Captain Hobson explained to them what was proposed, and told them that “the shadow would go to the Queen and the substance would remain, and that they might rely implicitly on the good faith of Her Majesty’s Government.” The question was long discussed. The missionaries urged the chiefs to trust in the words of Captain Hobson. At last one of the chiefs said to him, “You must be our father, you must not allow us to become slaves; you must preserve our customs, and never permit our land to be wrested from us,” and the majority of the chiefs ended by signing the treaty of Waitangi. Captain 21 Hobson fixed the seat of government for the new colony at Auckland in the northern island, where the Maori population was densest, and which possessed splendid water communications in every direction.
The implications of the Treaty of Waitangi were by no means recognised by the settlers who were arriving in New Zealand in ever increasing numbers. They were attracted by the promises of the New Zealand Land Company. The Company had little understanding of the Maori customs of land tenure. It ignored the fact that in the opinion of the Maoris the whole land already had owners, with boundaries well known to the different chiefs, and it sold lands to intending settlers before it had duly acquired their ownership. In consequence, there were abundant possibilities for discontent on the part of emigrants when they arrived to take possession of lands which they believed were theirs by purchase, and for hostility on the part of the natives who felt that they had been betrayed. In this way the seeds of many future wars were sown.
In those early days of the life of the colony, natives and settlers alike needed Christian teaching and education to show them how to live in peace and develop the country. The newly set up government needed help from those who had lived and worked amongst the natives, in 22 their important task of establishing order and justice. New Zealand with its beautiful climate and its rich resources was bound to become a great and prosperous country. It was necessary that the foundations of its future greatness should be laid in principles of righteousness and justice. The labours of Marsden, the two Williams and others had established Christianity throughout New Zealand, what was needed now was organization to make their work permanent. Selwyn as he viewed the task before him felt the full joy of a born organizer and administrator. He wrote, “I find myself placed in a position such as was never granted to any English Bishop before, with a power to mould the institutions of the Church from the beginning according to true principles.” The ground was well prepared for his work. The year before his arrival Henry Williams could write, “The whole fabric of native superstition is gone—their weapons of warfare are laid by—their petty quarrels are settled by arbitration.” It was a too sanguine view as later events showed, but that it could be held at all was a sign of how much had been done.
Bishop Selwyn and his party left Plymouth on December 26th, 1841, in the Tomatin. The long voyage in a sailing vessel was spent in preparing for the work that was before them. To Selwyn’s great joy there was a Maori boy on board who could be used to teach him and his party the Maori language. Lady Martin thus describes the voyage:
“We had a quiet, prosperous voyage in a small barque which would be thought very squeezy nowadays. We had none of the modern luxuries required in steamers—no fresh bread, no stewardess to wait on us, no delicate fare. But we had compensations of an unusual kind. If we had plain living, we certainly had the opportunity of high thinking. Our party consisted of the Bishop of New Zealand, his two chaplains, both men of great gifts, and other clergymen and students. There were daily classes after breakfast for all who wished to learn the native language. There was no printed Maori grammar, only a manuscript grammar and vocabulary, and copies of S. Matthew’s Gospel, just printed by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. But we had a walking dictionary in a Maori boy, who had been brought to England by a gentleman and sent to school for two years. He was not a favourable specimen, for he had been the plaything of the servant’s hall in holiday time, 24 and had little more than superficial civilization. However, he was very useful on board, and undertook to teach correct pronunciation.”
The Bishop writes in a letter to his mother:
“On Monday, January 3rd, we began regular habits; reading the daily prayers at eight in the morning, and the Psalms and Lessons, in the original languages, each at their appointed hour. Besides this, there is a New Zealand class, comprising nearly all the party, and a mathematical class for the study of navigation. The whole of the morning is thus occupied, leaving the evening to the discretion of the party, and for preparation for the next day. On Church festivals when the full service is read, the Eton practice of a whole holiday is followed. The advantage of this regular plan is generally admitted, as, instead of the voyage being tedious, very few find the day long enough. We have taken different departments for the study of the New Zealand language. Mr. Cotton and Mr. Reay are making a Concordance of the native Testament. I am compiling from the Rarotonga, Tahitian and New Zealand translations of the New Testament, a Comparative Grammar of those three dialects, which are all from the same root and illustrate one another. I hope to be quite familiar with the three dialects by the end of the voyage, which will much facilitate the plan which I have conceived—and which may God give me grace to carry into effect—of extending the branches of the Church of New Zealand throughout the Southern Pacific.
“I am studying practical navigation under our captain in order that I may be my own Master in my visitation voyages.”
One of the clergy of the party was appointed as chaplain to the steerage passengers, two others as chaplains to the crew. There were daily prayers in the steerage, and the steerage 25 passengers attended all the public services. In Holy Week one of the six clergy on board was chosen to preach every day, and on a lovely Easter day, service was held on the quarterdeck when thirty-four communicated.
On April 10th Selwyn was able to write to his mother:
“I can now converse with Rupai fluently in New Zealand. My navigation has prospered, so that I can now find the ship’s latitude and longitude, and shape her course.”
On April 14th, 1842, the ship reached Sydney. There Selwyn had the opportunity of meeting Bishop Broughton and learning from him something about the affairs of the Church in this new world. Broughton was filled with affection and respect by what he saw of the new Bishop, and inspired with great hopes for the work he might be able to accomplish.
The Tomatin had received some damage in going up Sydney harbour, and the Bishop was too impatient to wait till its repairs were completed. He succeeded in chartering a small brig to convey him and a few others of his party to New Zealand, without waiting for the Tomatin. There had been those who dreaded the coming of a bishop, thinking that the conditions of New Zealand were not suitable for an ecclesiastical dignitary. Captain Hobson had said: “What can a bishop do in New 26 Zealand, where there are no roads for his coach?” The Bishop’s conduct soon dispelled all doubts. He landed at Auckland on May 31st. His first act on reaching the shore was to kneel down on the sands and give thanks to God. On the following Sunday, to the delight of all, he said prayers and preached in Maori. The next place he visited was Paihai, and Mrs. Williams thus describes his arrival in her diary:
“While Henry was engaged with his Bible class, William came in and exclaimed: ‘the Bishop of New Zealand on the beach!’ He went down and found the Bishop dragging up a boat in which they had come from Cape Brett, steering for this house with a pocket compass. The Bishop’s manner was most prepossessing. When summoned to tea, both the Bishop and his Chaplain seemed surprised at the long tea table of the two families of Williams, set for twenty-four.”
Henry Williams himself wrote to a friend on June 24th, 1842:
“The Bishop is now in my house having landed after dark on Monday evening last. We were all taken by surprise and put into an immediate bustle. I was delighted to see his face and to hear him speak and was relieved from many forebodings. I have seen very much of this good man during the few days of his sojourn amongst us. We have spoken freely upon various subjects in connexion with the Mission, and it is very remarkable that in no one instance have we had a contrary idea. He so fully enters into our views upon all missionary points, that I am at times under some apprehension of forgetting that he is our Bishop.... We are all of us delighted at the knowledge the Bishop has obtained of our language. He can to the surprise of all converse with ease and directness. 27 The Bishop observes moreover that he shall require all his clergy to acquire the language, that they may attend to the natives.... I feel fully satisfied to leave all the affairs of the Mission or my own as a missionary in his hands.”
In another letter he writes:
“He has captivated every heart by his kindness and courteous manners.... I am persuaded that nothing will escape his notice, however trifling the circumstance.... He is now going to make a tour of the Island visiting every station.”
Of his first Sunday at Paihai the Bishop himself writes:
“I administered the Lord’s Supper to one hundred and fifty native communicants and was much struck with their orderly and reverential demeanour. All were dressed in European clothing, and, with the exception of their colour, presented the appearance of an English congregation.”
The Bishop spent several days with this experienced missionary learning all he could from him about the condition of the country, about the complicated land question, and about the different mission stations. All that he observed and learned helped him to mature his plans for the future. He had chosen to be called Bishop of New Zealand because he did not wish, by taking the title for his see from one particular settlement to provoke the jealousy of others. But it was necessary to decide where he should fix his residence. The New Zealand Company wished him to go to Wellington where they had secured a great 28 deal of land and the agent went so far as to tell him that if he decided to settle at Auckland, instead of being looked upon by them with affectionate regard as their best friend, he would be regarded coldly as a prop of a rival settlement. Auckland was then the seat of government, though what was in a few years to become a beautiful city was still only a cluster of huts. Lady Martin described it as follows:
“Government House was only a one-storied cottage standing back from the road. A few wooden houses were dotted about, in which the Government officials lived. There were wooden barracks which contained about fifty soldiers; a supreme court-house, where the Judge held his court in the week, and which on Sundays was used as a church; a milliner’s shop, a blacksmith’s forge, and two or three stores. Butcher and baker were unknown, there was no beef or mutton to sell, and no roads for carts to travel along had there been.”
The climate was genial and the situation beautiful, and the Bishop hoped that Auckland might be the future cathedral city. For the moment, however, it seemed best that he should settle at the Waimate on the Bay of Islands. It had been the first headquarters of the C.M.S. mission and the Bishop went to inspect it immediately on his arrival in New Zealand. He described it as follows:
“I walked round the mission station and inspected Mr. Clarke’s house, which I decided would accommodate Sarah and such of the party as I might leave with her. The 29 house is a little out of repair.... The garden has been overrun with cattle, but most of the plants are still alive, and with a little care may soon recover.... Seen from a distance the Waimate presents the appearance of an English village with a white church and spire, comfortable houses and gardens. This is by far the most settled place in the country. I am informed that four hundred native communicants assemble at the Lord’s Table. This will probably be my headquarters for some years, till I can deliberately choose a site for my residence and erect substantial buildings.”
For the moment Mrs. Selwyn was to stay with the Williams, whilst the Bishop went off on a journey to visit the other mission stations. He was very pleased with what he saw of the missionaries and wrote:
“They seem to be very zealous and able ministers, and I think myself happy in having under me a body in whom I shall see so much to commend and so little to reprove. The state of the mission is really wonderfully good.”
A year’s experience satisfied him that he had been right in the choice of the Waimate for his residence and for his college. He wrote:
“Every day convinces me more and more that we are better placed here than in one of the English towns. The general laxity of morals, and defect of Church principles in the new settlements, would make them dangerous places for the education of the young, and render it almost impossible to keep up that high tone of religious character and strictness of discipline which is required, both as a protest against the prevailing order of things, and as a training for our candidates for Holy Orders. At the Waimate, I am fettered by no usages, subject to no fashions, influenced by no expectations of other men. I can take the course which seems to me best.”
Already before leaving England, he had thought out how to make the Church in New Zealand independent of home support as soon as possible. With this purpose he asked the S.P.G. to allow him to use what money they could grant him not in paying salaries to the clergy, but in buying sites for future churches, and lands which might provide for some endowments. He wished in the plans he made to avoid both the evils in connexion with endowments which he had seen at home and the dependence on annual grants. He proposed to have a general endowment fund so as to avoid inequalities of endowment, and he determined to allow of no private patronage. Into this general endowment fund he urged all those who received stipends from England, through the Societies or otherwise, to pay what they received, as he himself did. In time he set up in every settlement an archdeaconry church fund into which all money collected or given to the Church was to be paid, and out of which each minister was to receive his stipend. Deacons were to begin with £100, rising gradually to £300 as priests, archdeacons £400, and bishops £500 as soon as they should be appointed. In each case, if possible, a house was to be provided, though it was not guaranteed. In all his plans from the first, he aimed at keeping the Church completely independent of State control. He preferred 31 as he said, “to maintain the Church’s independence, and to commit her support to the free charities of God.”
These plans, thought out before he left England, he set himself to carry out as opportunity arose. He proceeded at once to buy suitable land for the Church. But whilst his fertile brain was thus full of plans for the future, he was equally keen to study the conditions of the present, and before even unpacking his books, he started on a journey to visit all the mission stations in the Northern Island. One of the first places which he stopped at was Wellington, which he reached by a small trading vessel. Here he spent three weeks, much occupied in nursing a young man who had come out with him from England, and from whom he had hoped much as a fellow worker. In this he showed his ability to turn his hand to anything and his tenderness as a nurse. One who watched him wrote:
“He practised every little art that nourishment might be supplied to his patient. He pounded chicken into fine powder; he made jellies, he listened to every sound; he sat up the whole night through by the bed-side. In short he did everything worthy of his noble nature.”
His care unfortunately was in vain and to his great sorrow the young man died. Chief Justice Martin, who was going to accompany him for part of his visitation, arrived 32 to find the Bishop pale and worn with his long nursing. The two friends then started on their journey. Most of it had to be made on foot, often wading through rivers. Sometimes it was possible to ride on horse back, sometimes to go in a canoe on the rivers. Both Bishop and Judge made light of any hardships they might meet. The beauty of the country was a constant delight, and it was a great joy to the Bishop to find the large and devout congregations of Maoris which gathered at the mission stations on Sundays. Where there were English settlers a service for them followed the native service. The Bishop writes: “I never felt the full blessing of the Lord’s day as a day of rest more than in New Zealand.” Everywhere they were warmly welcomed, alike by missionaries and natives, and the Bishop was much pleased with all that he saw. Of one evening he writes:
“The natives assembled in considerable numbers for evening service and scripture questions. After I had questioned them as much as I thought fit, I invited them to ask me their difficulties; upon which such a series of scriptural questions was asked that our meeting did not break up till ten at night, and then only because I explained that my party were tired and wanted to go to sleep.”
On another occasion he writes:
“The natives, on seeing us, sent canoes to bring us to the island, where we were received with all ceremony, welcomed with speeches, and presented with ducks, potatoes and 33 lake shell fish. I made my return as usual in Gospels of St. Matthew.”
Some of the stations were ministered to only by native catechists and on one occasion, he was much struck by the venerable figure and manner of a fine old blind man catechising his class. It seemed as if the Christian teaching of the missionaries was already spread throughout the whole land; little churches and schools were to be found in many places, the fields around the stations were well cultivated, industries were being introduced; the Maoris, a race famous for their ferocity, were learning to live quietly and peacefully. The Bishop writes:
“There is much to encourage me: vast numbers can now read and write well and when I have lectures of an evening, it amuses me to see the means they resort to, climbing up on stands inside the building, and many come half an hour before the bell rings, so anxious are they to hear the word of God explained. Some travel ten miles on the Saturday for the services of the next day.”
One of the most interesting stations visited was that at Waikanoe, where the experienced missionary, Rev. O. Hadfield, was in charge. From there the Bishop wrote:
“You would be surprised at the comparative comfort which I enjoy in my encampments. My tent is strewn with dry fern and grass. My air-bed is laid upon it. My books, clothes and other goods lie beside it; and though the whole dimensions of my dwelling do not exceed eight feet by five, I have more room than I require and am as comfortable as it is possible for a man to be when he is 34 absent from those he loves most. I spent October 17th, the anniversary of my consecration, in my tent on the sandhills, with no companion but three natives.... I was led naturally to contrast my present position with the very different scenes at Fulham and Lambeth last year. I can assure you that the comparison brought with it no feelings of discontent; on the contrary, I spent the greater part of the day, after the usual services and readings with my natives, in thinking with gratitude over the many mercies and blessings granted to me in the past year.”
After a night spent in Mr. Hadfield’s house, service was held in the chapel: “more than 500 had come from various parts, so that the chapel and the space outside the walls was quite full.” Later on during this journey, he was met by William Williams, whom he had decided to appoint Archdeacon of Waiapu, so that he might have the oversight of the eastern half of the Island. All that he had seen had strengthened his conviction of the need that from the first the Church should be organized on a firm basis, and as he could not be everywhere and oversee everything himself, he wished to have the help of archdeacons working under him. In spite of the large congregations of natives, he wrote that:
“This people is a very wicked people, and if ‘civilized’ without the influence of the Gospel upon it, they will not be benefited in any way. The influence of the immoral English living in the land is the greatest difficulty I have to contend with.”
At Ahuriri he found “a very numerous Christian community though they had only once been 35 visited by a missionary. The chapel was a substantial building capable of containing four hundred people. In the evening our canoe having stuck fast, we were left without tents or food till midnight; we then procured one tent, in which the first Chief Justice, the first Bishop and the first Archdeacon of New Zealand huddled in their blankets for the night. Surely such an aggregate of legal and clerical dignity was never before collected under one piece of canvas.” He describes a Sunday on their tour a few day’s later:
“The morning opened as usual with the morning hymn of the birds, which Captain Cook compared to a concert of silver bells. When this ceased at sunrise, the sound of native voices chanting around our tents carried on the same tribute of praise and thanksgiving, while audible murmurs brought to our ears the passages of the Bible which they were reading.... I cannot convey to you the least idea of the train of innumerable thoughts which are suggested continually both by the beauty of the scenery, the character of the natives, the various plants, insects and birds.”
The next Sunday there gathered on Poverty Bay “a noble congregation of at least a thousand, assembled amid the ruins of their chapel, which had been blown down.... After morning service the natives formed into classes for reading and saying the catechism—old tattoed and boys, and submitting to lose their places for every mistake with perfect good humour.” The Bishop’s tour took him right across the 36 centre of the island, where he walked over hills covered with fern trees, and sometimes enjoyed the rest of being paddled along a beautiful river. At one station that he visited he met the missionary, Rev. R. Maunsell, said to be one of the best linguists on the mission, and after consultation with him formed a “translation committee, composed of two clergymen and two catechists, from which he hoped in due time to get a standard copy of both Bible and Prayer-book to be published under authority.” The Chief Justice had left him to return to Auckland by sea, and on January 3rd, the Bishop also turned in the direction of Auckland and thus describes the last bit of his journey:
“My last pair of thick shoes being worn out, and my feet much blistered by walking on the stumps, I borrowed a horse from the native teacher and started at 4 a.m. to go twelve miles to Mr. Hamlin’s mission station on Manakan harbour. Then ten miles by boat across the harbour. After a beautiful run of two hours, I landed with my faithful Maori, Rota, who had steadily accompanied me all the way, carrying my bag with gown and cassock, the only articles in my possession which would have fetched sixpence in the Auckland rag market. The suit which I wore was kept sufficiently decent, by much care, to enable me to enter Auckland by daylight; and my last remaining pair of shoes (thin ones) were strong enough for the light and sandy walk of six miles. At two p.m. I reached the Judge’s house by a path avoiding the town, and passing over land which I have bought for the site of the cathedral; a spot which I hope may hereafter be traversed by the feet of many bishops, better shod and far less ragged than myself. 37 It is a noble site overlooking the whole town and with a sea-view stretching out over the numerous islands.”
On this journey of six months, the Bishop had travelled 2,277 miles, of which he had walked 762. His chief object had been to learn to know the country and its needs, so that he might plan his future work wisely. He notes with satisfaction that on this journey he met Mr. Williams on the exact day which he had appointed more than a month before, showing how, even in travelling through wild country, it was possible to be punctual.
When Selwyn got back to the Waimate, having learned much about the country, his first care was the College. He had hoped that his friend, Mr. Whytehead, who had come out with him from England would be its head. But to his deep sorrow, he heard that Mr. Whytehead had been taken ill at Sydney, and died three months after reaching the Waimate, leaving the memory of a saintly character to inspire those who should work after him.
The chief object of the College was to train clergy. Besides the College there was a boarding school, where Selwyn’s plan was to educate Maori lads and the sons of settlers together. He had most carefully thought out the principles upon which both college and school were to be founded. He believed that it was perfectly possible to civilize the whole rising generation 38 of New Zealanders; the one impediment was the difficulty of getting enough English teachers, for not only must education be provided, but also instruction in the “most minute details of daily life and in every useful and industrious habit.” “We are apt,” he wrote, “to forget the laborious procession by which we acquired in early life the routine duties of cleanliness, order, method and punctuality.” Men were needed to train the scholars who had no sense of their own dignity and thought nothing beneath it, “who will go into the lowest and darkest corner of the native character to see where the difficulty lies which keeps them from being assimilated to ourselves. They have received the Gospel freely, and with an unquestioning faith, but the unfavourable tendency of native habits is every day dragging back many into the state of sin from which they seemed to have escaped.... We require men who will number every hair of a native’s head, as part of the work of Him who made and redeemed the world.” He found that the bane of the native people was desultory work interrupted by total idleness, and their inclination to waste their occasional earnings on useless horses or cast-off dress clothes. He feared lest the sons of the settlers should grow up with a sense of superiority and look upon honest labour as disreputable, because of the class of servile natives who clustered round the 39 towns. So he desired “to raise the character of both races by humbling them” and teaching them the dignity of labour. All the students were to spend part of their time in some useful occupation for the support of the institutions. There were industrial classes, where printing, carpentry, carving and weaving were taught. Selwyn considered printing, of all trades, the best fitted morally and mechanically to train “the wayward and careless disposition of an uncivilized youth,” since, “to print at all, he must work orderly.” The youngest boys were to work in the garden, the elder ones to learn farming and forestry.
In the College, though the students were to take their part in the manual labours, he wished to preserve an academic atmosphere, and the students wore caps and gowns, at any rate on special occasions. Its chief purpose was to train the clergy of the future, as he could not hope to obtain a sufficient supply from England. He wrote:
“We must go to all orders of colonists and to the native people without respect of persons, and select from among their children the future candidates for Holy Orders.”
But since it was impossible to be sure that those so chosen would grow up fitted for the ministerial vocation, no pledges were asked of them, and the opportunities of secular training provided fitted the youth to enter upon other lines of 40 life, should it appear when the right time came that he was not fitted for the special studies needed for Holy Orders. He expected that strangers would hardly be able to understand the complex character of the Institution, but he wrote:
“There is an open and undisguised reality about our work, which seems to be highly favourable to the discrimination of character, and therefore to the due selection of instruments: a class of demure students with face and tone of voice and manner conformed to the standard which they believe to be expected, would be a poor exchange for a healthful and mirthful company of youths, as yet unconstrained by pledges and professions, who show their true character in every act of their lives whether of business or amusement.”
And again:
“The only real endowment for St. John’s College is the industry and self-denial of all its members. Even if industry were not in itself honourable, the purposes of the institution would be enough to hallow every useful art and manual labour by which its resources might be augmented.”
All the members of the mission shared in the manual work, and all, including Mrs. Selwyn, dined together with the students in the Hall. She was much beloved by the natives; they called her Mother Bishop, and described her as “having great grace.”
At Keri-keri, a few miles from Paihai, what was to be the Cathedral library was set up, in the one stone house on the island, which had been used as a store for mission supplies. This 41 library was a very real joy to the Bishop, he speaks of a day in it as “a day of literary luxury” when he sat “looking upon the books, occasionally dipping into them. The very sight of so many venerable folios is most refreshing in this land where everything is so new”; and again “as a charming retreat for his wife when over-wearied with her many and varied duties.... The quiet is as unbroken as the most nervous person could desire, and in this respect entirely different from the inevitable noise of wooden buildings. Here also I may retire in my old age, which will probably be premature, and superintend my College at the Waimate without being subject to all its perturbations.... The charm of this library is that it is so utterly uncolonial. Its walls are worthy of a college. My books carry me back to the first ages of the Church. It is true that when I step outside the door I stumble over a mass of utilitarian treasures. Bales of blankets, iron pots, barrels of all kinds are the miscellaneous furniture of my ante-chambers; but within, everything that can most elevate and purify the mind is to be found. Leisure alone is at present wanting for us to use our treasures; but as the Church system is developed, and active archdeacons stationed at all the principal settlements, I hope to be able to give myself more to meditation and every 42 other profitable exercise, that there may be some abundance in my own heart to flow forth for the benefit of my diocese.”
Material things which might conduce to the well-being of his people were not forgotten by the Bishop. There were then already sheep in New Zealand, but he found that “the Maoris did not know how ‘to transfer the fleece from the back of the sheep to that of the man.’” He was distressed to see precious wool buried in the ground because the natives did not know how to use it, and wrote to a friend in Wales to ask about spinning machines suitable for the manufacture of coarse cloth in his native school, and for a supply of knitting pins for the children.
As was natural there were many interruptions to peaceful progress. News of a conflict between Maoris and settlers at Wairan near Nelson which lead to the massacre of twenty-three settlers, gave the Bishop “the gloomiest day he had yet spent in New Zealand.” This conflict arose as usual over a dispute about land, from misunderstanding of native customs, and from the little knowledge on the part of the settlers of the native language and character. Selwyn was afraid lest news of it should give a bad impression of the natives. He himself was convinced of the absolute safety of free intercourse with them and wrote:
43“We have no fastenings to our windows, even on the ground floor, and the door is rarely locked. In travelling I pitch my tent at whatever place I happen to reach at nightfall, and am always hospitably received. In the course of some hundred miles of travelling I have never lost anything.”
In 1844, the Bishop made a second long visitation of his diocese, and for the first time visited the southern island, then much more sparcely inhabited than the northern. It was not easy to get about on land; many rivers had to be forded and one of the party could not swim, so the Bishop’s air-bed had to be converted into a raft in order to convey him across the rivers. In one part of the island the Bishop was much troubled to find religious dissensions amongst the natives, some of whom had been taught by a Wesleyan missionary. He wrote sadly, “controversy has preceded truth, and as usual darkened true knowledge.” As his later policy showed, had he found a really strong Wesleyan mission established, he would not have attempted to interfere; but he found that the mission had only been roused into some sort of activity when other teachers had appeared on the field. He could not recognize that the mere fact of the residence of one missionary, entitled that one to claim the spiritual care of all the southern islands. Neither would he countenance intercommunion between Wesleyans and Anglicans as had been the custom in 44 some parts before his coming. But his personal intercourse with the Wesleyan missionary was most friendly. He writes:
“I stayed one day and a half in his house; but I told him that I could make no transfer of catechumens; that we must hold our own.”
He saw need for vigorous work in the south amongst the half-caste population, “where the fathers and mothers have been living together for some years, I married them and baptized their children: in all twenty-five couples married and sixty-one children baptized. I must have a visiting clergyman in the Straits as soon as possible, but where to find a man fit for the work I know not.... Many of the old whalers and sealers are settling down into a more quiet life, and are to a man anxious that their children should not follow the course of life which they have led themselves.” The problems he met with on this visitation made him think much of his future plans for the diocese, seeking guidance in framing them from the first three centuries of the Church’s history.
Amongst the Bishop’s difficulties were his relations with the Church Missionary Society. Whilst full of admiration for the work of their missionaries, he would not ordain the laymen among them except on the condition that he decided the sphere of their work. As the Society refused to accept this condition, the 45 Bishop would not ordain the catechists in their missions. He also refused to ordain any as priests who had not attained a certain standard of learning, and he waited to ordain any native till he considered him sufficiently educated. In all these matters, the Society had a different policy. They were accustomed to control their own missions from home and were not inclined to give way to a Bishop who had only come out after the missions had been well established. These and other difficulties and misunderstandings led to the refusal of the Society to rent permanently to the Bishop the wooden buildings at the Waimate, where he had set up his College.
As he could not stay at the Waimate Selwyn determined to move at once to Auckland which he had always intended to be the Episcopal See. When the Maoris in the Waimate district heard of his intended removal, there was much disturbance. Lady Martin describes the scene that followed. It was on what was called market day, when the Maoris brought their wares for sale, and before the traffic began there was school and cathechising in the chapel after morning prayers.
“The people had heard a rumour of the Bishop’s intention to remove to Auckland, and there was a great deal of speech-making on the subject. A powerful speaker opened the debate. The orator began by trotting slowly up and 46 down a given space, always beginning and ending each sentence with his run to and fro. After a while he got warmed up and excited, and then he rushed backwards and forwards, he leaped up off the ground, he slapped his thigh, shouted, waved his spear.”
It seemed more as if he were breathing out death and destruction than as if he were urging the Bishop to stay among his people.
“It was very amusing to see the two brothers Williams stand up and answer them. Archdeacon Henry Williams, a stout, old-fashioned looking clergyman with broad-brimmed hat and spectacles, marched up and down with a spear in his hand, and elicited shouts of applause. Then his brother drew a large space on the gravel, and divided it into three parts, and asked whether it was not fair that the Bishop should live in the middle of the diocese instead of at either end. There was a loud murmur of voices, ‘It is just,’ but all the same they did not like to lose him and his large party from among them.”
A month later, the Bishop, with his family and friends, started for Auckland. Mrs. Selwyn and their little boy rode, the Bishop walked, carrying his infant son swathed in a plaid to his side. As they left the Waimate, crowds gathered to bid them farewell. At Auckland the large party, together with the native students, had to live in tents till the college buildings were ready for them.
In order that there might be someone to superintend the Church in the Waimate district, Selwyn appointed Henry Williams to be Archdeacon of the Waimate, saying in his letter to him, “your long experience, and your great 47 influence with the natives, will give me the greatest confidence in delegating to you the charge of this portion of my diocese.”
In September, 1844, as a further step to that complete organization which he contemplated, the Bishop summoned a Synod of his clergy. Three Archdeacons, four other priests and two deacons met together with him, in order “to frame rules for the better management of the mission and the general government of the Church.” On this occasion they discussed only questions of church discipline and extension, but it was the beginning of that complete system of self-government which was to establish the independence of the Church in New Zealand.
The Maori chiefs regarded the treaty of Waitangi as the Charter of their liberties, and in the opinion of Bishop Selwyn it was “highly beneficial to the people of New Zealand since it gave them the protection of the British Government and assured them ‘that no land would be taken from them which they were not willing to sell.’” But the treaty was obnoxious to the members of the New Zealand Company, since it was a continual hindrance to their plans for the development of the Colony. They were constantly arousing the suspicions of the Maoris by their efforts to evade it. The conditions of the country were rapidly changing and as yet the new order had not been firmly established. On the one side were the fears and suspicions of the Maoris that they had been betrayed and would lose their lands, suspicions encouraged by those white adventurers who disliked the idea of a settled government. On the other side was what Selwyn described as “the discontented and insubordinate temper of 49 our own settlers.” He writes of the situation as follows:
“The one general imputation against all of us was a concealed intention of dispossessing the natives of their land, and reducing them to slavery. In support of this, the acts of our countrymen in other lands were related to them.”
The missionaries made constant efforts for peace and assured the natives that the British Government was determined to protect their rights and property. Great was their surprise and consternation when a Report of the House of Commons stated that “all lands not actually occupied by the natives are declared to be vested in the Crown.” Selwyn wrote:
“The natives of New Zealand cannot bear this uncertainty; they can see the merits of a question as clearly as we can; but if they detect us in a falsehood, or even in a change of purpose the reason of which they cannot understand, our influence with them is lost.”
It was in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Islands that there was most restlessness, and here the discontented Maoris gathered round a chief named John Heke. On a hill overlooking the village of Kororareke there was a blockhouse with a few soldiers and a flagstaff on which the British flag was flying. This was to the natives a symbol of British sovereignty. Heke was a Christian and had no hostility to the missionaries, nor did he desire to destroy the property of the settlers. It was the fear lest his people should be reduced to the condition of slaves that aroused his hostility. The Bishop writes:
50“Meetings began to be held at which John Heke was the chief speaker, the subject of discussion being the cutting down of the flagstaff. In the month of August, 1844, Heke assembled a party of armed men, and proceeded to Kororareke, where he spent Saturday and part of Sunday in alarming the natives and early on Monday morning, mounted the hill and cut down the flagstaff. I was at Paihai at the time, engaged in the native school, at the close of which the first words I heard were ‘the colour has fallen.’ I shuddered at the thought of this beginning of hostilities, so full of presage of evil for the future. Heke then crossed to Paihai, and with his party danced the war dance in my face, after which many violent speeches were made.”
The Bishop’s fears were justified; a troubled period of anarchy followed. Soldiers were sent for from Sydney to defend the settlers and their property. The fighting was most serious in the district round Kororareke. During the next two years the flagstaff was cut down on three more occasions, and the town of Kororareke was captured by the Maori rebels. The Bishop watched the attack from his little sailing vessel, to which he had brought some of the wives and children of the settlers for safety. Then he landed with Mr. Williams to recover and bury the bodies of the dead. He wrote:
“We found the town in the possession of the natives, who were busily engaged in plundering the houses. Their behaviour to us was perfectly civil and inoffensive. Several immediately guided us to the spots where the bodies were down upon this day of sorrow.... The state of the town after the withdrawal of the troops was very characteristic. 51 The natives carried on their work of plunder with perfect composure, neither quarrelling among themselves nor resenting any attempt on the part of the English to recover portions of their property.... With sorrow I observed that many of the natives were wheeling off casks of spirits; but they listened patiently to my remonstrances, and in one instance they allowed me to turn the cock and let the liquor run out upon the ground.”
That evening he rode to the Waimate and from there watched the burning of Kororareke, the whole sky lighted up by the blaze of burning houses. The next morning passing near the scene of desolation to get to his boat, he noticed how “all that had been devoted to mammon was gone, but heathen vengeance had spared the patrimony of God. The two chapels and the houses of the clergy remained undestroyed.” It was impossible to say what would be the result of this native success upon the “position and prospects” of the Christian teachers. But there were some hopeful signs, and the Bishop was clear as to the part he intended to play. “My hope is that by cautious and judicious management, the Church interest in this country may be kept clear of all political dissensions. On one point I think that I may speak decisively, that there is no evidence of any general or indiscriminate hatred of the natives towards the English settlers, or any disposition to bloodthirsty or savage acts of violence. The proceedings at Kororareke were conducted with 52 all the usages of European warfare.... In the midst of much that was fearful, there was much also that proved the indirect effect of religion and civilization upon the minds of the natives.... There are many signs which give us great hopes for the future.”
The Bishop exerted himself on every possible occasion to promote peace and to save life, exposing himself fearlessly in his efforts to bring off safely the wives and children of the settlers, who were conveyed to Auckland and there cared for by Mrs. Selwyn and the other ladies. But his absolute neutrality was not appreciated and he was called a traitor because he would not share in the general hatred of the natives. He did not allow his unpopularity to disturb him and wrote:
“The real subject of grief is the injury which is done to religion by the un-Christian feelings and language which many permit and justify in themselves. In this perversion of public feeling it becomes necessary to stand firm and let the flood sweep by.”
But his courage and devotion were amply recognized by those who witnessed it. The officer commanding the Hazard, the British vessel which had brought the troops from Sydney to the ill-fated encounter with the natives, wrote to him saying:
“There is not a single man on board who does not appreciate your conduct.... Go where you will, you will carry 53 with you the good wishes of all who saw you under the late trying circumstances.”
The disturbances had begun whilst the Bishop was on a confirmation tour. At one place he had confirmed 300 natives, and there were numbers of Christian natives quite ready to fight for him should he desire it. Now that there was a general fear lest the unrest caused by the rising of Heke should spread and endanger the settlements further south, the Bishop was anxious to visit them and do all he could to promote peace. On this journey he took Mrs. Selwyn with him. She helped in the work of spreading confidence by her ministrations to the sick. She felt no fear of any possible unfriendliness on the part of the natives, for as she wrote:
“If you live among them, you find them looking up to you and clinging to you in all points, and the fear ceases.”
To her great delight she was taken on a little bush expedition, as she longed to see with her own eyes how so large a part of the Bishop’s life was spent. During these next years he carried on the work of ministering to his people and administering his diocese in the midst of continual anxiety caused by the Maori unrest, consequent on the efforts of the New Zealand Company to get possession of the native lands.
The failure of the Governor, Captain Fitzroy, to restore order led to his removal, and Sir George Grey, a young and able administrator, 54 was sent from South Australia to take his place. Under his energetic measures conditions were improving, when news came from England that the pressure brought to bear upon the Colonial Office by the New Zealand Company, had led to an Act being passed through Parliament (1846) which set aside the Treaty of Waitangi and annulled its provisions. Against this both Judge Martin and Bishop Selwyn protested in no measured terms. They considered it a breach of faith, destructive of the honour of England and certain to put an end to all hope of peaceful relations with the Maoris. The strength of the Bishop’s feelings is shown in a letter to a friend in which he says:
“I would rather that he (Earl Grey, the Colonial Secretary) cut me in pieces than induced me, by any personal compliments, to resign the New Zealanders to the tender mercies of men, who avow the right to take the land of the New Zealanders, and who would not scruple to use force for that purpose.”
The Bishop’s protest led to his being spoken of in the House of Commons by the radical member, Joseph Hume, as “a turbulent priest.” Sir George Grey realized at once the impossibility of carrying out the instructions sent by the Colonial Office. He professed to believe that they were not meant to be carried out literally, and his representations led the English Government to agree to suspend the execution of the Act passed by Parliament for five years, during 55 which time Sir George Grey devoted himself to framing a new constitution for the colony.
Unfortunately the difficulties of the land question disturbed the relations of the Bishop with one of the most experienced and revered missionaries in the country, Henry Williams, whom he had made Archdeacon of Waimate. Williams, in order to make provision for his family, had bought land from the natives on which he had settled his sons, who cultivated it with great success. His claim to these lands was approved by the Council set up in 1844 by Governor Fitzroy to consider the whole question of land claims. In recommending the awards made to Henry Williams the Governor said, “that there could be no doubt that Mr. Williams had done more for the advancement and improvement of the aboriginal race than any other individual member of the missionary body.” But the missionaries by their defence of the rights of the natives were extremely unpopular with the New Zealand Company, and the good condition of the lands held by the Williams family, owing to their excellent farming, excited the jealousy of the incoming colonists. The new Governor, Sir George Grey, saw that questions of land tenure were the chief cause of all the troubles with the natives. In his early days, when only insufficiently acquainted with conditions in New Zealand, he 56 was much too ready to believe the accusations made by the Company against the missionaries of having used their position to acquire unlawfully large tracts of lands from the natives. He wrote home to the Colonial Office a private dispatch condemning in strong language the land purchases of the missionaries. Bishop Selwyn, who on other occasions had vigorously defended the missionaries against the Company, did not on principle approve of missionaries owning land for themselves. He wished that their sons should be trained for the service of the Church, and he appealed to the missionaries to teach their children “to renounce the barren pride of ownership for the moral husbandry of Christ’s kingdom in the harvest of souls.” In his zeal and eagerness he seems to have forgotten that all young men are not fitted to be missionaries or teachers. To him it was a plain issue; he did not sufficiently understand Williams’ position. To Williams it appeared that the Bishop was in alliance with the Governor against him, and he felt bitterly the seeming desertion of the man whom he had admired so warmly. When urged by the Bishop to give up the title deeds to his lands he refused. Strong in the consciousness of his own uprightness, he would consent to no compromise by which it might have seemed that he felt himself to be in the wrong. It was not his property that he was defending, but his 57 character, which had been impugned by the charges made against his conduct by the Governor to the Home Government. The whole matter was of course brought before the Church Missionary Society at home. They were plunged into great perplexity. They did not feel themselves strong enough to oppose the authorities both at home and in New Zealand, and they did not really thoroughly know the facts. They decided at last that the wisest course to pursue was to dismiss Henry Williams from their service. He made no further attempt to defend himself, but, deeply hurt at the treatment he had received after his long and devoted service, he left his home at Paihai and retired to his sons’ farm at Pakaraka, amidst the loud regrets of the people amongst whom he had lived and worked for twenty-seven years, and amongst whom he had hoped to die. He had defended himself warmly, with all the impetuosity of his nature, for he had felt himself to be a man cruelly caluminated. Now he would say no more. He continued to work amongst the Maoris in his neighbourhood, and a church was built for him by his sons in which he ministered. Meanwhile his brother went to England and explained the case fully to the C.M.S. In 1854 when Bishop Selwyn and Sir George Grey were both in England, they too, having no doubt arrived at a fuller understanding 58 of the matter, visited the C.M.S., and the Bishop expressed his wish that Williams should be reinstated, which was done.
The complexity and importance of the land question in New Zealand is shown by this painful controversy, in which men of the high character of Bishop Selwyn and Sir George Grey were led, in their zeal for order and for the rights of the Maoris, to condemn, on insufficient knowledge a man of the character and devotion of Henry Williams. He himself no doubt added to the difficulty by his impetuous character and his caustic way of expressing himself, but on the question in dispute itself, not a shadow of blame can be attached to him. Selwyn seems to have judged over hastily, and to have shown incapacity to see all sides of the question, in his desire that the missionaries should show themselves superior to all worldly considerations. Henry Williams believed that the Bishop was led away by his love of power, and that he was unable to give way when he first discovered that he had made a mistake. In later years friendly relations between him and the Williams family were fully resumed. How much he valued and appreciated the family, is shown by the fact that William Williams was amongst the first of the men he recommended to fill one of the new sees formed when his diocese was divided.
These three men, Selwyn, Grey and Williams, 59 were all equally anxious to uphold justice and the best interests of the Maoris, though they differed so seriously on this occasion. Selwyn’s attitude towards the Maoris made him most unpopular for a time amongst the settlers. His constant effort was to promote peace and to ensure prosperity and justice for all, but long afterwards, he would recall how his arrival used to be greeted by the settlers with “Here comes the Bishop to prevent us fighting with the natives.” One day when he was landing in a small boat from his schooner at Wellington, he heard a man asking his companion: “What’s that schooner that has come in this evening?” and the reply was, “Oh, that old fool the Bishop’s.” Jumping on shore at that moment he called out, chuckling and rubbing his hands, “Yes, and here’s the old fool himself.” He went on his way careless of popularity and heedless of the criticism inevitable in the case of a man of such vigour and so many activities.
He found relief from his many anxieties in the work connected with his college and schools at Auckland. These were beautifully situated about five miles outside the town. Gifts from England enabled him to erect solid stone buildings, a hospital as well as the schools; each year there was some improvement. There were playing fields where the Maori boys could play cricket, pastures for cattle and sheep, as 60 well as gardens, fields, a printing press, weaving and carpentering sheds. In 1846 there were already one hundred and thirty persons, English and Maori, connected with the College. All alike shared in the cultivation of the estate and lived together as one family. The Bishop wrote:
“I have given up house-keeping and have brought all my income to bear on the College.”
Mrs. Selwyn shared his work in every way in her power. She taught in the girls’ school and nursed in the hospital. In Judge Martin and his wife they had friends who sympathized with all their plans and gave them much personal help.
When visiting the mission stations round the coast in his little sailing vessel, the Bishop was always on the look out for new scholars. He wrote to a friend whilst on one of these voyages:
“Can you conceive a more interesting employment than hunting in this wild country for hopeful plants to stock my nursery at Auckland. One of my main employments during this journey has been to collect the children of the native settlements and examine them; and where I found anyone who especially pleased me, to invite his father to bring him up to my school. In no case have I met with a refusal.... I have no doubt that I can have as many as we can afford to maintain from all parts of the island. My Eton experience I hope will be of use to me in this search, for nothing used to interest me more than to form opinions of the character of the boys from their physiognomy, and then watch their progress through the school. I think 61 that I have heard you say as a dahlia fancier that Brown, of Slough, is in the habit of growing thousands of seedlings in the hope of raising one rare and valuable flower; and so people, in the hope of rearing some few who may hereafter be admitted to the ministry. That they have intellectual powers of a high order I have no doubt; what they want is an entire correction of habits.”
The Maoris had learned confidence in him, and men, old, prejudiced and bloodstained had come to desire a better training for their children. He had well advanced plans for a second College in the Southern Island, but this he was not able to establish owing to the pressure of other calls.
The Bishop’s desire was to educate the sons of the settlers and the Maoris together, and this was done at first. He wrote in 1849:
“I must be a tyrant, and to be a good natured tyrant is the difficulty. The explosive element in all countries having a mixed population, is the disposition of the one to domineer over the other. We are succeeding at last, I hope in amalgamating the two races in an equality of privileges and position; but it is uphill work; it seemed so natural to every English boy and man to have a Maori for his fag. I think that by God’s blessing we shall succeed at last, and if we do it will be a glorious measure of success.”
This growing work made the Bishop anxiously eager for more helpers. He wrote urgently to Mr. Abraham who had promised to leave Eton and join him as soon as he could. The work he saw before him was too great for one man. He wrote:
62“To move my diocese in any perceptible degree, I must multiply my own single force through a multitude of wheels and powers; alone I am powerless. Before me lies an inert mass which I am utterly unable to heave; and there is no engine ready by which I can supply the defects of my own weakness. I am bewildered by the multitude of details, and sometimes doubt whether I am right in complicating the episcopate with all the machinery of the subordinate ministries; and yet I feel that without that pervading influence, the whole system will be powerless.”
These words show what the organization of his diocese meant to him. He was planting a free and independent Church which was to endure, not doing a piece of individual mission work. Cherishing these wide plans for the future, he wanted helpers who could take his place when he had to be absent on his visitation journeys. “I have scarcely a person in the place,” he writes, “who has any eye for minute and careful arrangement, without which no barbarous people, I am sure, can ever be thoroughly Christianised. Throughout the whole mission the delusion has prevailed more or less, that the Gospel will give habits as well as teach principles. My conviction is that habits uncorrected will be the thorns which will choke the good seed ... to get that personal and parental care bestowed upon the native children which will qualify them to be hereafter Christian parents in every sense, is the difficulty which almost weighs me to the ground.” The smaller cares and the great visions of the future all had their place in 63 his mind, but he could not help fearing what might be the effect on an over-detailed mind of the increasing serving of tables. He felt that he specially needed the help of his friend when “the very causes which most require earnestness in prayer made him unable to pray as he ought.
“Expect nothing from us,” he wrote, “but bring with you as large a spiritual treasure as you can. Come to help rather than to be helped.” Two years later in 1849, when he at last heard that Mr. Abraham was able to come, he wrote to his close friend, Edward Coleridge,
“My heart beats with joy at the prospect of Abraham coming. O what a blessing it will be to a mind not only beginning to be overwrought but beginning to be conscious of it.... Abraham will sustain part of the spiritual and intellectual strain which falls upon the head of such an institution as this.... If I could but feel that I was so growing in grace as to increase in fitness for the work as the work itself increases, I could then bound over the sea and over every New Zealand forest and mountain with the lightest of hearts and the most buoyant of hopes. But if the work should increase faster than the supply of inward strength, and if help should be withheld in the form in which it would be most welcome, by the subdivision of the diocese, it is not any bodily decay which I fear so much as that overmuch service may make my mind careful and troubled about many things, and unable even in old age, to sit in contemplation at the feet of Christ.”
It will be remembered that through a clerical error, the Melanesian Islands had been included in Bishop Selwyn’s diocese. He did not forget this, but he believed that his first duty was to get to know New Zealand itself. When by his various journeys on land, on foot or on horseback, up the rivers in canoes, and round the coast in little sailing vessels, he had learned to know the work and needs of the Church in New Zealand, and had by a second Synod held in 1847 arranged for its organization, his thoughts were free to go out to the vast stretch of ocean and islands which by a mere accident had been entrusted to his charge. An opportunity to make a preliminary voyage to the islands was given to him by the request that he should act as chaplain on the Dido, a warship which was being sent at the end of 1847, to investigate the causes of an affray between the natives and two English vessels. The islands were much visited by traders chiefly in search of sandal wood, 65 and the conduct of these traders had again and again aroused the animosity of the natives, who had often avenged themselves by murder and treachery, so that landing on the islands was reputed very unsafe. On this first voyage to the Pacific, the Bishop learned a lesson of great use to him afterwards. He wanted to land on the Isle of Pines, an island which had a bad reputation. The captain and the officers of the Dido in vain tried to dissuade him, but he got into a small boat and rowed himself into the lagoon. There to his surprise, he found an English schooner. Its captain was trading for sandal wood and, when Selwyn asked him how it was that he could smoke his pipe contentedly in the lagoon of one of the worst islands of the Pacific, where a man-of-war was afraid to enter, he answered, “By kindness and fair dealing I have traded with these people for many years. They have cut many thousand feet of sandal wood for me and brought it on my schooner. I never cheated them. I never treated them badly—we thoroughly understand each other.” In talk with this man, Captain Paddon, Selwyn learned much about the islanders, how their confidence could be won and how to treat them, and also the necessity of avoiding those islands where unprincipled traders had aroused suspicion and anger. He used always to speak of Captain Paddon as his tutor.
The voyage on the Dido was a voyage of observation. The Bishop had to discover how the problems presented by Melanesia could best be met. There were already missions of various denominations at work in the islands. Heroic work had been done especially by the London Missionary Society. Both missionaries and Christian natives had suffered death for their faith. At Tonga he visited a Wesleyan station and made friends with Mr. Thomas, the senior missionary who had spent twenty years in the islands. Selwyn was charmed with his schools full of smiling children, and with the beautiful mission chapel, which he described as “a noble building, without nails, bound together with the cocoa nut rope, beautifully arranged in variegated patterns.” In visiting the missions of other denominations, the Bishop did not feel it right to join in their public services, but was glad, when their guest, to share their family prayers. In one island he found a village divided into rival factions by the rivalry of two native teachers, “separate chapels, services and systems attesting the power of Satan, even in this peaceful island, in dividing the house of Christ against itself.... This is one instance out of many, and it will surely strike every thoughtful Christian, that I, who have been charged with bigotry and intolerance for advocating unity and opposing dissent, should 67 have had the evils of schisms again and again brought under my notice by members of the English Independent body and of the Scottish secession.” How to avoid adding to the confusion caused by religious differences, was one of the chief problems which the conditions in Melanesia presented to him, but he seemed to see the future development clear before him. He was determined not to encroach on islands already occupied by other missions nor to “inflict upon those simple islanders all the technical difficulties of English dissent.” He wrote:
“Nature has marked out for each missionary body its field of duty. The clusters of islands together like constellations in the heavens seem formed to become new branches of the Church of Christ, and each a Church complete in itself. It is of little consequence whether these babes in Christ have been nourished by their own true Mother, or by other faithful nurses provided that they have been fed by the sincere milk of the word. The time must come, I think, when they will be no longer under tutors or guardians, for this present government by English Societies is admitted to be preparatory to the introduction of self-government by native Churches, and then I shall be free to communicate with every branch of the great Polynesian family as with bodies in no respect liable to the imputation of dissent or schism.”
Another problem was presented by the great variety of dialects spoken, sometimes more than one in the same small island. Selwyn wrote:
“Nothing but a special interposition of the divine power could have produced such a confusion of tongues as we find 68 here. In islands not larger than the Isle of Wight, we find dialects so distinct that the inhabitants of the various districts hold no communication with one another. Here have I been for a fortnight working away as I supposed at the language of New Caledonia and just when I have begun to see my way, I learn that this is only a dialect used in the southern extremity of the island, and not understood in the parts I wish to attack first.”
There were also difficulties caused by the unscrupulous conduct of the traders, and the fear of consequent treacherous action on the part of the natives. The number of the islands made it impossible to contemplate providing English teachers for each. The Bishop decided that the only way to meet the need was to aim at securing a sufficient supply of native teachers and to raise up a native ministry. As he thought over the call that came to him from this vast region, he reproached himself for the enforced delay in responding to it and wrote:
“While I have been sleeping in my bed in New Zealand, these islands have been riddled through and through by black slug, the bêche-de-mer, has been dragged out of its hole in every coral reef to make black broth for Chinese Mandarins, by the unconquerable daring of English traders, while I, like a worse black slug, as I am, have left the world all its field of mischief to itself. The same daring men have robbed every one of these islands of its sandal wood, to furnish incense for the idolatrous worship of Chinese temples, before I have taught a single islander to offer up his sacrifice of prayer to the true and only God. Even a mere Sydney speculator could induce nearly a hundred men from some of the wildest islands in the Pacific to sail in 69 his ships to Sydney to keep his flocks and herds, before I, to whom the Chief Shepherd has given commandment to seek out His sheep that are scattered over a thousand isles, have sought out or found so much as one of those which have strayed and are lost.”
In 1849, the year after his voyage of observation in the Dido, Selwyn sailed again to the Pacific, this time in his own little yacht the Undine, which he had used in his visitations of the coast of New Zealand and the adjacent islands. The Undine was a tiny vessel of only 21 tons. The Bishop was his own navigator, and had no charts to guide him in those unknown seas. He set to work at once to make charts and maps, which were afterwards thankfully accepted by the Admiralty. He was so good at managing a ship that the captain of a merchant vessel once said it almost made him a Christian and a Churchman to see the Bishop bring his schooner into harbour. The Undine carried no arms; from the first the Bishop, though taking all due precautions, was absolutely fearless in landing on the islands. He said: “Where a trader will go for gain, there the missionary ought to go for the merchandise of souls,” and again: “It is the duty of a missionary to go to the extreme point of boldness short of an exposure to known and certain danger.” His departure from Auckland is thus described:
“We have just parted with our Bishop, and seen him go off on his lonely mission voyage. Our feelings have been 70 strangely varied. We rejoice to see him enter on such a work, and are thankful for these opening prospects; and yet saddening thoughts and human fears will mingle with high hopes: fears of perils by sea and of perils by the heathen. Some at home and here talk of risks, and that the Bishop has enough to do in his immediate diocese, and that it is better to build up what is planted and the like. But it seems like a great instinct in our Bishop’s mind that he must dig foundations and hew stones, and heave them up single-handed; and they that come after him will do the polishing and ornamenting. Not that he is unfitted for the fine work. Few better able than he to construct and build up. But then everybody likes the nice work. Nobody likes the rough beginnings which have no present results and small glorification. Perhaps the very thing needful for him is to go with care on his lonely path sowing precious seed. We would fain see him go in a larger vessel. But he is anxious about incurring any extra expense. He has no fear and has run so many voyages in his little schooner that it is difficult to say much. He and his wife are scrupulously careful in all their own expenses while so large-hearted and handed in everything for the public good.”
The Undine started with a prosperous run of one thousand miles to Anaiteum, made in ten days. Such a voyage was a great rest and refreshment for Selwyn. He wrote to a friend in England:
“Few men are so entirely at their ease at sea, or so able to use every moment of time, perhaps more effectually because with less distraction than on shore. The effect of this is that in a voyage of reasonable duration I can master the elements of a new language sufficiently to enter at once into communications, more or less, with the native people. I feel myself called upon by these natural advantages to carry the Gospel into every island which has not received it.”
At Anaiteum a Presbyterian mission was established, and the Bishop in consequence did not attempt to begin any work there, but had much friendly intercourse with the Scotch missionaries. He met there according to appointment with Captain Erskine, commanding the Havannah, and the Undine accompanied the larger vessel in visits to some other islands. Captain Erskine considered the Bishop’s plan of travelling with no arms of any sort as “one of no little risk.” When he heard that some natives of an island, notorious for its hostility to white men, had been allowed to come on board the Undine, he wrote that he “was ready to allow that it required the perfect presence of mind and dignified bearing of Bishop Selwyn, which seemed never to fail in impressing these savages with a feeling of his superiority, to render such an act one of safety and prudence.”
The Bishop recognized clearly the risks he ran in visiting the different islands and wrote:
“It is quite uncertain from visit to visit in what temper the natives may be found. If any violence or loss of life should have occurred in the interval between the missionary’s visits, his blood may be required as much as that of any other white man.”
On this cruise, which lasted only two months, he went to New Caledonia, the New Hebrides and the Loyalty Isles, and came across many different men of many different kinds.
72“On one day it is my lot to keep company with sandal wood traders, and on the next with her Majesty’s Men of War. As sources of information, the sandal wooders are most useful companions; I have received much kindness and civility from them.”
He thus described his future plan for the conversion of the Melanesian islanders:
“To select a few promising youths from all the islands, to prove and test them, first by observation of their habits on board a floating school; then to take them for further training to New Zealand; and, lastly when they are sufficiently advanced, to send them back as teachers to their own people, if possible with some English missionary to give effect and regularity to their work. All the ordinary losses by sickness, violence and theft which occur frequently where missionaries are stationed at once on unknown ground will be avoided.”
From this first voyage he brought back five boys, enough to crowd his tiny cabin. They reached Auckland safely:
“The walk from Auckland to the College was most amusing from the frequent exclamations of surprise raised by my native companions at every new object which they saw.”
Some months afterwards he had to start on a second voyage to take back the boys to their own homes, lest they should suffer from the New Zealand winter. He could then write:
“We find that even this first experiment, small and imperfect as it has been, has opened to us a way for future these islands as strangers, but we have our own scholars as friends and interpreters to explain our objects. The report seems to be favourable, as we have now several 73 applications from the New Caledonian youths for leave to go to New Zealand. At present I have no intention of taking any, as the winter is coming on and they would find the change to our climate very uncomfortable. But if it should please God to prolong my life, I hope to return, and with increased means of information to select carefully the next class of scholars and to take them with me to New Zealand.”
He rejoiced in the beauty of the islands and felt hopeful about the future development of their inhabitants.
“It is not true that only man is vile, these people are the most friendly people in the world.... To go among the heathen as an equal and a brother is far more profitable than to risk that subtle kind of self-righteousness which creeps into mission work, akin to the thanking God that we are not as other men are.”
He wished to put this Pacific work on a permanent basis and believed that, if God would enable him before his death “to lay out the ground plan of a great design, succeeding bishops would not refuse to add each his course of stone to the rising edifice.” When shortly after his return from this cruise he went in September, 1850, to a meeting at Sydney of the Synod of the Church in Australia, one of his chief objects was to persuade the Australian Bishops to form a Board of Missions. especially with a view to the needs of Melanesia. His proposals were sympathetically received, the Australasian Board of Missions was formed, and 74 the Melanesian mission was solemnly adopted by the Australian and New Zealand colonies. Selwyn expressed himself as willing to do the active work of the Mission if Australia would assist him with the necessary funds. Money was raised in New South Wales to supply a vessel of one hundred tons, the Border Maid, for the Bishop’s voyages to and fro to the islands with his pupils, and Bishop Tyrrell, of Newcastle, New South Wales, an old Cambridge friend, agreed to accompany him on his first voyage in the new mission ship.
On his return to Auckland Selwyn at once founded a Branch of the new Board of Missions, thus making the New Zealand Church from the first recognize its missionary responsibilities; his ambition was to make his diocese the great missionary centre of the Southern Ocean. The carrying out of his many schemes had been made easier for him by the arrival this year of his friend, Mr. Abraham, with his wife. Abraham had at last found himself free to leave Eton and now came to be head of St. John’s College at Auckland. With him came Mr. Lloyd, another helper, and their arrival and the hopes thus given of further development so encouraged Selwyn that he was wont to call this year, 1850, his Annus Mirabilis.
The sight of what Selwyn had already accomplished made a deep impression upon Abraham, 75 which finds expression in a letter home from Mrs. Abraham.
“What do we find in him? All that he was; all that we believed.... You can feel the deep joy it is to feel this day by day pressed home to one’s conviction ... to find that it was not any mere fancy, any imaginary greatness or goodness, with which memory and friendship had invested him in absence, but that he was in his simple unvarnished reality, more than all he (Mr. Abraham) had thought and trusted to and reverenced for these nine years past—the entire renunciation of self and all belonging to him in comparison with the duty and the object of the present moment is so shown forth in his daily life, so transparently open to all who have eyes to see and hearts to receive the witness of such an example, that one must be dead and dull indeed not to feel continually the all-pervading power of such a life.... One feels that he is the one man to pioneer the way and lay foundations.... My husband owns that he cannot gainsay or resist the wisdom with which he speaks, though he is thankful to find the Judge quite joins with him in his feeling that a drag-chain rather than a spur is needed on his favourite Melanesian Mission; and is disposed to watch his widening schemes in that direction with a zealous regard for this country, which must after all be the real battlefield in behalf of the coloured race, and also with anxiety for the personal health and safety of the Bishop himself, which they all feel is certainly risked in each one of these voyages.... I do not wonder at the hold these islands have upon him, after hearing his stories of his intercourse with them, and especially about the boys he had here last summer.”
The Abrahams were both amused and impressed by the quiet way in which the Bishop walked “through any mention of State interference and ecclesiastical law apart from Church authority.” They saw at once how determined 76 he was to make the Church of New Zealand independent and self-governed, and to make it realize its responsibility for the education of the people. In his discussion on these subjects he went on to thoughts of the Church at home and of the work of Bishops there, and said that at home too the clergy must take education into their own hands by doing the work, and that there should be an “episcopate of £500 a year bishops, given to hospitality and not clothing flunkeys in purple.”
Abraham wrote his first impressions of St. John’s College, to Dr. Hawtrey, the headmaster of Eton.
“The Bishop and myself are the only persons in the colony almost who possess libraries; and the taste for such things has to be created, as at present a mere utilitarian idea of education prevails. Perhaps for the purposes of the settlers here and the clergy a practical education is the best suited, and I must confess that I quite quail before the attainments of some of my scholars, who will make most valuable missionaries among natives and round a sea girt isle. Only conceive what a thoroughly αὐταρκης man will be formed out of a boy who at the age of nineteen knows more divinity than most boys at Eton in the Sixth Form, who is thoroughly acquainted with French and Maori ... is a good musician and able to teach the natives singing—a good mathematician and able to sail the Undine from hence to the New Hebrides and back, taking sights and managing rigging.... Of course none of them are scholars in our sense of the words; they devote too little time to scholarship, having to pay for their support by bodily work, so that two hours a day, four times a week is all a boy gets of school. He is either printing, or farming, or 77 weaving, or digging, or making shoes, etc., the rest of his time. Altogether it is a strange life we lead here. I am sure I never realized it before I came, but I will try to put you in possession of our principle; and when I say our, I mean the Bishop’s—for only his vast head and noble heart could conceive and execute so complicated a plan.
“The first generation of converts to Christianity is passing rapidly from this scene, and the middle-aged folk now are very nominal Christians indeed. They have abandoned cannibalism certainly, and the horrors of frequent war, thank God, but their moral and religious state is very questionable. The old chief close by us is a heathen, and he and many of his people point to the bad lives of the Christian people as their stumbling block.... The fact is that they are not educated. The Bishop was told by the missionaries that it was impossible and visionary to attempt to break through their habits. His faith was too great to allow him to leave it unattempted, and his perseverance too strong to be easily deterred or baffled. He established the college, to which he draws as many as he can afford, which is only fifty. He first has a native school for children (it stands about a hundred yards from this; his house and the chapel is between us). There are twenty or twenty-five of these little brown mice, living in a wooden Swiss-like cottage, with a master (a candidate for Holy Orders) and an assistant, one of the scholars, to look after them. They learn English, arithmetic, singing, writing and scripture—dig in the garden, make and mend their clothes which are not extensive. When they are thirteen or fourteen they are drafted off into the labour departments (to which twenty-five more belong and live in different houses, under the superintendence of the students) and become either bakers or cooks, weavers or shoemakers, carpenters or farmers, etc., attending school half the day, and working the other half at their trade. All these working departments the Bishop is well able to superintend. He might have made a capital farmer, or a good carpenter or a weaver or a printer.
78“At 7 a.m. we all meet in chapel. At 2 p.m. hall, we all dine together. There is an upper table for the clergy and the ladies; the different departments dine together, presided over by their foreman, at different tables—plain, good, wholesome fare. From 4 to 6 school or work—at 6 tea in hall—7 chapel.... The attachment of the natives to the Bishop is wonderful. They thoroughly appreciate his care for them.”
Mr. Abraham’s presence made it easier for the Bishop to move about his diocese, now that he had one whom he could thoroughly trust to leave in charge at Auckland. When some little time after his return from the Synod the new mission ship, the Border Maid, arrived with Bishop Tyrrell on board, he started in it for another voyage to the Pacific, taking back with him four boys who had been brought over to school by Captain Erskine in the Havannah. Two of the boys were to be landed at Erromango, where some years before Mr. Williams, a member of the London Missionary Society, had been murdered. There the Bishop was very cautious about landing, though the boys assured him “No fight, no fight.” When the chiefs came down to meet him, he landed and went two miles inland with the boys to their home. There he knelt down and said prayers with them, bidding them tell their friends what they were doing, and what it meant. The boys wept when he parted from them on the beach. Other boys, who had been at Auckland, were 79 visited on their islands. On one island, Neugone, Samoan teachers were working and had built a chapel in which Selwyn preached in Samoan to a large congregation. They earnestly desired a permanent minister, but it was not possible yet to give them one, though not long after Selwyn was able to place Mr. Nihill there. Five boys were brought away for training. One young chief was most anxious to come, and wept bitterly when his father would not allow it. The Bishop comforted him by promising to call for him next time. The most anxious moment of the voyage is described in a letter from the Bishop of Newcastle to a friend:
“The greatest danger to which we were exposed arose from the natives at the Island of Malicolo. Only one ship is known to have visited this harbour before and the natives did not know one word of English or of the language of the other islands. Numbers collected on the shore as we entered the harbour and as we wanted to replenish our water we at once communicated with them.... The place shown by them as the best for obtaining water, proved so inconvenient, that the Bishop of New Zealand and myself rowed along the shores of the harbour to find, if possible, a more convenient stream or pool. We found one more accessible and returned after an absence of two hours to the ship. Whenever we left the ship, we always gave directions to the chief mate to allow a few natives to come on board at a time, if they came in their canoes, and wished to see the ship, and seemed quiet and friendly. On our return the mate told, us that they had allowed one or two small parties to come on board, but that afterwards so many came and looked so questionable, armed with their clubs and spears, that he thought it prudent to refuse 80 permission to them to come on deck. The Bishop of New Zealand still thought it important to procure some water, so we arranged that we should not both go in the boats as the place we had selected as the best for obtaining water, while I remained in charge of the ship. At dawn the boats went with casks to fetch the water. I was left in the ship with the mate and one sailor, and two or three of the native boys from the other islands. Within an hour after the boats had left the ship, two or three canoes came off to the ship, filled with huge men, most of them were armed with their clubs and bows and spears. In the first canoe the chief man was such a ferocious looking ruffian that I at once determined he should not come on board. Later, five or six other canoes came off to the ship, and there must have been at least fifty of these huge men in them, many armed. Every now and then one more forward than the rest would take hold of the ship and plant his foot on a slight projection, so that one spring would bring him on deck. No sooner had he planted his foot and looked up, than he saw me just over him directing him very calmly but decidedly to get back into his canoe. All this time the native boys from the other islands who were on board were in the greatest terror.... After two hours the men in the canoes consulted together, evidently came to the conclusion that it was no use to try any longer, and began to move off.... Next came the most anxious hour that I have ever passed. When the canoes had moved off a little way, they stopped and every eye was directed towards the two boats of the ship which were lying off the shore, where the water was being fetched from a pool about a quarter of a mile inland. The men in the canoes consulted together, then changed their places, filling the two largest canoes with those who were evidently the greatest fighters, and these two canoes paddled towards the boats.... The danger was lest the two canoes should reach the two boats and overpower the two men before the Bishop of New Zealand came down with his body of men from the water-pool. 81 I called to the mate and asked whether we could render any assistance? ‘None my Lord.’ I paced the deck a few seconds and then asked again, have we any means of self-defence in the ship? The answer was, ‘None.’ This information did not disconcert me; I felt it a duty to inquire whether anything could be done, and if anything could have been suggested should at once have set about it. But the thought that something fatal might happen on shore brought with it a sickening feeling of reckless disregard as to what might happen to myself. I therefore paced the deck and rendered the only aid I could render—that of fervent prayer to Almighty God.... I saw soon the canoes reach the boats: I saw two of the natives in one of the boats; I heard a noise and a shout from the shore—I could not trust my eyes when I thought I saw the boats move from the shore rowed by our own men—I gave the telescope to the mate and eagerly asked whether he could see the men in the boat and the Bishop with them. He looked and answered, ‘Yes, they are all there—and his Lordship steers the first boat.’ The Bishop on reaching the shore with his band of water carriers, had seen one of the ship’s boats waiting to receive them, surrounded by natives, who were brandishing their clubs round the boy left in charge and making all sorts of threatening gestures, while he sat unmoved only quietly resisting their efforts to take the oars from him. The Bishop and his water-bearers made their way steadily onward to the water’s edge. He said, ‘Go on,’ and they walked into the water lifting their casks higher and higher as they advanced. As they approached the boat the natives made off.”
This adventure illustrates the firm and courageous way in which Selwyn met the difficulties and risks that attended these voyages, and the personal ascendency which he gained over the islanders by his courage and demeanour. Bold and fearless, he yet thought for everyone, 82 prepared for every contingency and knew how to choose the right persons to trust.
The Border Maid brought back from this voyage thirteen scholars from six different islands, amongst them two who had gone away with the Bishop and now returned after visiting their homes. The Maori scholars at the College went out to meet the long file of black boys on their arrival, and there were many greetings and much shaking of hands. Three weeks afterwards, on All Saints’ day, both a confirmation and a baptism service were held in the College Chapel. The Bishop writes in his diary that
“The candidates clothed in white robes represented people speaking ten languages, gathered from one fifth part of the world’s circumference, from east and west, and one-tenth part from north and south.”
The voyages to the Islands had to be frequent as the scholars could not stand the New Zealand winter and had to be taken back to their islands during the cold months. Their education was continued during the voyage. The hammocks in which they slept in the hold were rolled up during the daytime, and the hold became a schoolroom, where the same work hours as at the College were followed. In 1852 the Bishop, who was anxious to secure Christian wives for his young men, was able to his great delight to bring back two girls from the Islands. During the voyage he himself made dresses for them 83 out of a patchwork quilt, and on reaching Auckland proudly brought them up the beach, one on each arm, dressed in the garments he had made out of the quilt, ornamented with scarlet bows. His voyages gave him opportunities for showing kindness to other missionaries. This year he took out with him a Presbyterian teacher with his wife, a horse and much baggage and landed them at their mission station.
Between 1848 and 1852, he visited more than fifty islands, and had given into his care forty scholars speaking ten different languages. The Melanesian mission was very dear to his heart. He loved sailing about amongst the lovely islands, and delighted in the friendliness shown by the great majority of the people. But the New Zealand colonists did not look at all favourably upon this extension of his work, and did not approve of his being so much away from them. Some of his friends thought that he exposed himself to too many dangers. Even in England some said that he was neglecting his diocese. To this he replied that Melanesia was included in the diocese entrusted to him, and though it might be urged that this was only a clerical error, yet the Archbishop and Bishops who had consecrated him had “consigned to him the oversight over the progress of religion in the Coasts and Islands of the Pacific.” 84 Writing to his dear friend, Mr. Coleridge, he defended himself as follows:
“For seven years, during the troubles of New Zealand, I neglected altogether this part of my diocese, and now bitterly rue the consequences of this delay, as fields then untrodden by the foot of a missionary are now overrun with Papists and others.... Considering that within the last twelve months, I have visited every English settlement in New Zealand (except Whanganui) of 150 inhabitants from Stewart’s Island to the Bay of Islands, and that the larger settlements have been visited every year upon the average at least once, since I arrived ... and that I have visited on foot twice every mission station; and am now preparing, at the end of my ninth year, to visit them a third time, in the course of a walk of about one thousand miles ... considering, I say, all these things, I think that objectors had much better hold their tongues, and not ‘compel’ me to seem to ‘boast’ when I would much rather dwell in silence upon my own infinite shortcomings.”
His increasing knowledge of the islands confirmed his sense of the extent and importance of the work to be done, and he wrote 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 the work.”
As we consider in detail any portion of Bishop Selwyn’s varied work, we must never forget that behind the details of the moment, the great work needed for the future was ever present to his mind. Yet he was never lost in visionary schemes, details did not escape him, attention to them was one of the ways in which his great plans were made possible. All that he did, he saw in the light of the great call that he believed had come to him, to lay in New Zealand the foundations of a living Church, self-governing and independent. He had no desire to be an autocrat, but wished as far as possible to work with and through others. It will be well to bring together the various measures he adopted for the organization of the Church, whilst neglecting none of the work for education and evangelisation which was so dear to him. We have seen how one of his first acts had been to appoint in 1844 an archdeacon, that he might have at least one trusted adviser to whom 86 he could delegate some part of his responsibility. Then followed the first tiny Synod of his clergy, called two years later. He looked to the future, but he built on the experience and traditions of the past. He wrote to a friend in the year that the first Synod met:
“My first charge if I ever find time to write it, will be an attempt to deduce a plan of operations, suitable to the peculiar case of New Zealand, from the records of the first three centuries of the Church. In my endeavours to avoid all party shibboleths I am much assisted by the natural effect of the native Church in enforcing simplicity of doctrine and regularity of discipline. I hope to make this a fulcrum for moving the chaotic mass of the English settlements, which are more like a fortuitous concourse of atoms than anything else, with the additional disadvantage that every atom has an opinion and voice of his own, and thinks himself a mountain.”
He longed for the help of others in the great work before him, and for opportunities of consultation with wise and experienced men as to its problems. This first synod met at Waimate and consisted of three Archdeacons, four priests and two deacons. It was summoned “to frame rules for the better management of the mission and the general government of the Church.” It dealt chiefly with questions of church extension and with some of the difficulties found in all missionary lands, problems concerned with baptism and marriage in a population partly heathen and partly Christian. But humble though it was, it met with much criticism in 87 England, and was regarded by some as an unlawful assumption of authority and independence. It was the first attempted Synod of the Anglican Church since Convocation was suppressed in 1717. There were then no Diocesan Conferences or other authorised meetings of clergy and bishops. The Church was regarded as a State Establishment, and some regarded Bishop Selwyn’s Synod as an infringement of the royal supremacy, and blamed the Bishop for priestly assumption.
With one of the criticisms of his first Synod the Bishop was quite ready to agree. It was stated that it was not a true Synod, because the laity were not represented. In 1847 at his second Synod, he proposed a constitution of the Church in New Zealand, according to which representatives of the laity as well as bishops and clergy should meet together, and he inaugurated the discussions preliminary to its adoption. To this Synod he delivered his primary charge. In it he showed both how he looked back and how he looked forward in making his plans. He said:
“Our present meeting may be looked upon as one of a long series, beginning at the Council of Jerusalem, in which it the will of God by the assembling together of the ministers of Christ for social prayer and mutual counsel.... If I did not believe that our position in this country, both as regards the simplicity and primitive character of our 88 Church establishment, and its freedom from all political connexion, gives us good reason to hope that we may be enabled to avoid the evils into which other Synods have fallen, I should have shrunk from the course which I now propose to you, and fallen back upon the practice sanctioned by custom, if not approved by reason, of a formal charge ex cathedrâ, upon the authority of the Bishop alone. I might then have found as has often been the case, that some would have consented ex animo, some without consenting would have obeyed conscientiously, some would have denied that their promise of canonical obedience applied to the points of which they disapproved. At the best there would have been much to check co-operation and engender distrust.”
He went on to speak of the missionary obligations of the New Zealand Church, and said that New Zealand must become a missionary centre:
“We cannot consider our work accomplished till every dialect in the South Seas has its representative members in our Missionary Colleges ... however inadequate a Church may be to its own internal wants, it must on no account suspend its missionary duties.”
He expressed his horror of controversy:
“Of controversy in general I would say that it is the bane of the Gospel among a heathen people.... I can never forget the pointed illustration of the old chief of Taupo, when I asked him why he still refused to believe. ‘Show me the way,’ he said, ‘I have come to the cross road. Three ways branch out before me. Each teacher says his own way is the best. I am sitting down and doubting which guide I shall follow.’ He remained in doubt till a landslip burst from the mountain under which he lived, and overwhelmed him with all his house.... The course seems to be to teach truth rather by what it is than by what it is not. Let us give our converts the true standard and they will 89 apply it themselves to the discovery and contradiction of error.... Much of what has been said applies also to our relations with our own countrymen. We cannot expect unanimity, let us at least seek peace. Much has been written upon unity, but as yet little has been done towards a union of all religious bodies in one. This at least seems clear, that such a union, however highly desirable, must not be effected by a compromise of truth. When all shall have thoroughly examined the grounds of their own belief, and rejected such errors as they may find, then it is certain that all must come to unity of doctrine, because all will have been conformed to the same unalterable standard of truth.”
Of his own episcopal authority he said:
“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. Let it never be thought that I alone am interested in the good government of our Church, and that you are merely subjects to obey. Whatever interest I have in the work you have also.... I would rather resign my office, than be reduced to act as a single and isolated being. It remains then to define, by some general principles, the terms of our co-operation. They are simply these: that neither will I act without you, nor can you act without me. The source of all diocesan action is in the Bishop; and therefore it behoves him so much the more to take care that he act with a mind informed and re-inforced by conference with his clergy.”
The desire of the laity to take part in the work of the Church was shown by a letter addressed to the Bishop in 1850, signed by both clergy and laity, amongst whom were Sir George Grey and Chief Justice Martin. In this they spoke of the responsibilities of the New Zealand Church as being the most advanced and remote outpost of the Church of England, of the call 90 to them to aid in the foundation of a great nation and in moulding its institutions as well as of their duties to the heathen peoples in their neighbourhood. They stated their sense of the necessity for some speedy establishment of Church government amongst them which “by assigning to each order in the Church its appropriate duties, might call forth the energies of all, and thus enable the whole Church most efficiently to perform its functions.” To this letter an outline Constitution was appended, which had been drawn up by Sir George Grey during the enforced leisure of a sick bed. It proposed that a General Convention should be summoned, resembling “that which has proved so beneficial to our brethren in America.”
Selwyn had the advantage of discussing this matter at the Conference of Bishops in Sydney which he attended the same year. In a Pastoral Letter sent out in 1852, he explained further the objects he was aiming at. A Constitution was needed because the Church in New Zealand was not established by law, and therefore a large portion of the Ecclesiastical law of England did not apply to it. If they were to have laws to guide them, they must apply for the power granted to all incorporated bodies to frame their own bye-laws. He added a list of the general principles which should guide the framing of such 91 bye-laws. During the two following years, meetings were called in all the settlements in New Zealand to discuss these principles. He wished the constitution to have the full approval of the people and not to be imposed upon them by authority from above. The delight of the laity at realising that they were once more part of a living church is illustrated by the words of a farmer who said:
“When I heard the church bell ring this evening and summon me to the first vestry meeting I had attended for twelve years, and for the first time in this country, I was quite overcome and affected to tears.”
At these meetings the Bishop called the attention of the people amongst other things to the fact of their dependence for their religious ministrations on money sent from England, often from the savings of the poor. His plan was to endow every minister to the extent of half his income, and to leave the rest to be supplied by his own people. In this way the minister would be partially dependent on, and partially independent of his flock. The principles of the proposed constitution were thoroughly discussed at these various meetings, often by men who had little knowledge or experience to bring to the consideration of the matter. The Bishop bore patiently with questions and interruptions not always of the most courteous 92 kind. In a letter written by one who was present at these meetings it is said:
“I mention these facts to give you some notion of colonial church life in its less interesting and romantic features. There are 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 that the trials of colonial bishops do not so much consist in the 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 contact day by day with the rudest and coarsest spirits of unrestrained colonialism, which vaunts itself and prides itself in saying and doing the most offensive things in the most offensive way. Our Bishop has practically exemplified an old saying we used to have at Eton, ‘You must go on never minding.’”
The Bishop was willing patiently to let them talk, hoping that “they would feel their feet for themselves and stand all the firmer for it.”
In England there was a good deal of difference of opinion, even amongst great lawyers, as to the status of the Church in the Colonies, and the right of colonial bishops to hold synods or conventions of their clergy in order to legislate for the Church. Selwyn became convinced that, in order to get the matter settled, he would have to pay a visit to England and he began to prepare to return home for this purpose. He wished above all that the method should be determined by which more bishops could be appointed to aid in a work which it became 93 increasingly impossible for one man to carry on. Both in the colony itself and in England, many criticisms were made as to the way in which he apportioned his time between the three great claims made upon him, the evangelisation of the Maoris, the care of the settlers, and the mission to the Melanesians. In a letter written in 1852, he speaks of a statement he had drawn up as to the way in which he had spent his time during his ten years in New Zealand, and says:
“The results are curious and illustrative of the life of a colonial 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 settlements, distant one thousand miles at their extreme points, and requiring a voyage of two thousand five hundred or three thousand miles to visit them all. During the whole of this year of voyages, I was lost to all the direct objects of my office; but in that time my charge, journals, study of languages and navigation, and the chief part of my correspondence have been accomplished; all bearing upon that work for which I live, and to which such powers as God has given me of mind and body have been devoted. It appears that the English and native duties have occupied nearly equal portions of time, and the Northern (that is the Melanesian) 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.”
His methodical and orderly habits which made the arrangements of his tiny cabin a wonder to all who saw it, his exactness and 94 punctuality, alone made it possible for him to carry out such a multitude of varied duties. His visitations were carefully planned so that no part of New Zealand should escape his notice. On a tour round the Southern Island in 1851, he held forty-four confirmations, and confirmed about three thousand candidates. His programme for each day was marked with D.V. and where the engagement was fulfilled, he added D.G. After this particular tour he could write in his diary:
“End of confirmation tour on which every D.V. has been marked with a D.G. to the exact day.”
But the tour had its own special disappointment, for there were but few young people amongst the candidates for confirmation. This he attributed to the lack of schools, which he must now try to get the missions to provide. Meanwhile new settlers were constantly arriving. In 1847 a large number of military pensioners had been settled by the Government in the neighbourhood of Auckland. No provision for chaplains or for any religious ministry had been made for them. The Bishop set to work at once and provided each of these settlements with a little wooden church. He himself, and the young deacons working with him, conducted the services in these little churches. They went on foot through mud and mire every Sunday to the different settlements, the Bishop always 95 taking the hardest part of the work and the largest number of services. In the evenings all the clergy and lay readers met together at St. John’s for what was called the “Unity Service,” after being widely scattered for their different duties during the day, and joined with the students from the college, dark-faced islanders, English and Maori boys, in a last act of prayer and praise.
In 1850 an important new settlement was made in the Southern Island near Lyttelton. It had been planned in England and was carried out under the auspices of what was called the Canterbury Association, formed in order to send out a band of settlers belonging to the Church of England, accompanied from the first by a number of clergy and teachers, and a prospective Bishop, who came out to view the land before deciding whether he would accept the appointment. Selwyn was very glad to learn that some one was coming who would relieve him of the charge of the Southern Island, but he was not previously consulted as to the Settlement and doubted the wisdom of the arrangements made. He wrote:
“My growing unpopularity with the Company for advocating native rights is, I conclude, the reason why a plan like this of the ‘Canterbury Settlement’ is forced on in the same hurried and reckless manner which has caused all former disasters—without a single enquiry of any kind being 96 addressed to the Bishop of the Diocese. If I were a mere land agent, my local knowledge of every part of New Zealand both of the coast line and of the interior, with few exceptions, wherever human beings are settled, might have induced reasonable men to write to me before they pledged themselves to such a partial and profoundly ignorant body as the New Zealand Company. But the Company must sell land or die.... I cannot compromise myself to a recommendation of any site within the Southern Province unless the whole be accurately mapped, and facility given to every purchaser to know exactly what kind of land he is buying.... Wherever the settlements be formed, the actual surface of the country must be taken into account. Let the site of every town, village, school, church, etc., be marked before a single acre is sold.”
He wrote thus on seeing the printed prospectus of the Settlement. It had filled his mind with anxiety because of his intense love for New Zealand and his eager desire for anything that might benefit the Church and the country. But when the Canterbury pilgrims began to arrive, he hastened to Lyttelton to greet them. As soon as the Undine was seen to enter the harbour, two of the newly-arrived clergy hastened on board. One of them thus describes his visit:
“Both wore cap and gown, at which the Bishop seemed pleased (one wonders whether it would not have been truer to say amused), they gazed around with awe and interest until the awe at least was dispelled by the cordial reception they met with, and the unequalled charm of the Bishop’s presence and conversation. The marvellous neatness of that diminutive cabin and the ingenuity of its arrangements, are never to be forgotten.... On the 97 following Sunday the Bishop celebrated the Holy Communion in a loft over a good’s store, reached by a ladder, the seats being extemporised by resting planks on sugar barrels.”
The Bishop himself writes to a friend interested in the Settlement:
“Here I am among the Canterbury pilgrims; and a very good set of colonists they are, as far as I can judge. But a great mistake has been made in sending out too many at once, and in allowing any consideration to prevent their instant occupation of land. They are not allowed to choose till two months after their arrival, by which time many will have become demoralized by idleness and desultory habits.... I repeat again and again the same advice: send out your parochial staff ready organized—clergymen, landowners, labourers, not turned adrift upon an interminable plain: far less cooped up in a Dutch oven at Lyttelton; but to go at once to a parish known and chosen by themselves, and to a church and school already built; so that not one single day’s delay may occur in resuming those good habits in their new country which they have learned in England. I find neither church, nor school, nor parsonage in existence. Money enough has been spent, but all in civil engineering. Last Sunday I administered the Holy Communion in a crowded loft over a store. I do not care for these things if they are unavoidable; but where it has been part of the plan from the first to put religion in its right place, I do object to spacious and costly offices, long lines of wharves, roads, piers, etc., and not one sixpence of expenditure in any form for the glory of God, or for the comfort of the clergy. I shall, of course, make the best of the matter.”
A few weeks later another ship arrived, bringing more emigrants, several schoolmasters, and the Bishop designate. Selwyn who had been away on a further voyage, returned to 98 meet him, and at a conference with him and the clergy of the settlement, agreed to resign into his hands the southern portion of the diocese of New Zealand. The meeting was held in an unfurnished room in the immigration barracks at Lyttelton. It was brought to a close by the announcement made to Selwyn that the wind was favourable for his departure. Before leaving he expressed “his great thankfulness at finding such a spirit of unity among the clergy of this new branch of the Church of God,” and gave them his blessing. He returned again towards the end of the year to assist with his advice in the organization of the new diocese, so that all might be from the first established on a sound basis. But the hope that he was going at once to be relieved of the charge of the Southern Island was disappointed. The Bishop designate felt himself unfit for the post for which he had been selected, and returned to England. It was five years before a Bishop for this new diocese of Christchurch was sent out.
Bishop Selwyn’s immense responsibility continued unrelieved. He had not only the supervision of all the missions to the Maoris, the planning of the work amongst the Pacific Islands, but the provision for the religious and educational needs of the increasing number of colonists who were attracted by the rich promise of New Zealand. During these years he had 99 gained a full knowledge of the country. He wrote in 1853:
“The dim and visionary idea of New Zealand, which I used to brood over in 1841, 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.”
Towards the end of 1853, he had the great joy of ordaining his first Maori Deacon, Rota Waitoa, who had been for ten years his constant companion in his travels. It was a consolation in the midst of bitter sorrow, for he had been obliged temporarily to close the College at Auckland on account of the grave misconduct of two in whom he had trusted, and which put an end to his hope of educating together the Maori youths and the sons of the colonists. When the College was able to be re-opened it had to be for white scholars only, and other provision was made for the Maoris. Rota had adopted every Christian and civilized habit, and had risen from one post of usefulness to another and been found faithful and blameless in all. The older missionaries were doubtful of the wisdom of ordaining a Maori, believing that it was difficult to be sure that the tendency to barbarism was yet eradicated. But the Bishop’s confidence in Rota was not disappointed, and he served the Church faithfully till his death twelve years later. Unlike the ordinary natives 100 who were generally characterized by great self-conceit, he was unusually diffident of himself, and he was always eager to seize any opportunity of learning more. When he had worked for eighteen months in the village which had been put under his charge, he told his people that he must go up to the College to fill his seed bags again, having sown all that he took down with him the year before. The English, who saw him at the College on that visit, were “struck by the perfect ease and simplicity of his manner, without the least assumption of forwardness.”
This first ordination of a native marked an important stage in the growth of the New Zealand Church, but the difficult questions as to the constitution of the Church could not be settled without a visit to England, and the Bishop had now made up his mind, to undertake the long journey home. He started with Mrs. Selwyn and his younger son, the elder was already in England for his education, on the last day of 1853, having spent twelve years of arduous work in New Zealand. His desire was to do his business in England and get back as quickly as possible. He wrote during the voyage to his friend, Mr. Coleridge, saying that his objects were the subdivision of the diocese, the enactment of free powers for the Church in New Zealand to meet in Convocation of Clergy 101 and Laity and to manage its own affairs within certain limits, and the recognition of his plans as regards the Melanesian mission. He added:
“Pray use your influence with our friends now in power to give me quick dispatch, as Colonial Bishops being unconnected with the State, are not used to ante-chambers and only wish to get work done with as little formality as possible.”
As he had thoroughly discussed his plans with people in New Zealand he could say that he came authorised by his people “to take such steps as might be necessary for carrying into effect the wishes of his diocese.”
There was much consideration of his proposals and many discussions with the authorities, but it seemed to them impossible to give legal sanction for the organization of an independent colonial Church. At the same time they said that there could be no legal objection to colonial bishops holding synods within their own dioceses. Selwyn therefore gave up all attempts to get legal sanction for the proposed Constitution of the New Zealand Church of England. On his return to New Zealand he at once proceeded to make arrangements for the government of the Church and the final acceptance of its suggested Constitution.
Those members of the Church who were willing to administer its property were asked to associate themselves together on the basis of 102 mutual compact, and to establish a representative governing body to manage its affairs and regulate its extension. Selwyn summoned a general conference of Bishops, Clergy and Laity to meet on May 14th, 1857, and approve finally the Constitution. In his opening address to this Conference he said that as “the colonial churches must have laws for their own government, and as neither the Church nor the State at home is able to make laws for them, they must be free to legislate for themselves.” Whilst in England he had drawn up the outline of a constitution, based on his former proposals and guided by the advice of eminent legal authorities. This constitution he now submitted to the Conference for their final approval. In it the Church in New Zealand was described as a Branch of the United Church of England and Ireland, associated with the mother Church by voluntary compact, and free to govern itself through a representative body. It was to maintain the doctrine and sacraments of the Church of England, and to accept its book of Common Prayer. In the main the constitution followed the lines of that of the American Episcopal Church. The Church of New Zealand was to be autonomous and free from the State Legislature. This Constitution was revised in various particulars in later years, but for the most part it stands as it was originally settled. There 103 was much criticism of it at first, especially in the Canterbury Diocese, where more freedom for the various diocesan conferences was demanded, and objections were made to the powers vested in the central authority. For a time there seemed danger of a severance between that diocese and the rest of the New Zealand Church. Fortunately the firm and wise management of the Bishop effected a compromise on the various points in dispute. The Constitution was finally settled at the General Synod held at Christchurch in 1865 and at the same time steps were taken which completely separated the Church in New Zealand from the Crown, and gave it the appointment of its bishops.
Whilst in England the Bishop had also made plans for the division of his Diocese and secured the appointment of three new bishops to whom in the old way letters patent were to be granted by the Crown, and they were consecrated in England. After this the Bishops in New Zealand were chosen by the Diocesan Synods.
The first General Synod under the new Constitution met at Wellington in 1859. The Bishop in his opening address spoke of it as the fulfilment of hopes cherished during a period of fifteen years. He told of the difficulties that had to be surmounted before his hopes could be realised, and how the Constitution was founded on the basis of mutual and voluntary compact. 104 The property of the Church was to be held by trustees; the Church was to be governed by diocesan Synods, and their work was to be co-ordinated under the General Synod. In the work of all these Synods the laity were to have their full share. He spoke of the danger lest they should be tempted to rely on mere external and material organization, and trust to it rather than to the life of the Spirit, but said that it would be vain to seek for spiritual life by neglecting outward organization; they must trust to the quickening spirit to make them living stones, so that each doing his appointed work and using his own special gift, they might see to it that their Church should grow into a holy temple of the Lord.
He spoke of the chains with which the Church of England had been bound by her past history; of the abuses “which had been encrusted on her system,” such as private patronage, the sale of spiritual offices, the inequalities of clerical incomes, and the repeated efforts which had been made to remove them. From these chains the Colonial Church was saved; as faithful children it was their part to show how glorious might be the purity of her doctrine and the holiness of her liturgy, free from those chains.
There were to be diocesan boards to appoint the clergy, whose maintenance was to be provided by the Diocesan Synods, partly from 105 endowment funds, and partly by voluntary contributions. This was a principle dear to Bishop Selwyn’s heart, which he had advocated ever since he came to New Zealand. The discipline of the clergy was to be in the hands of a Tribunal appointed by the Diocesan Synod and presided over by the Bishop. The electors to the Synods were to be those who declared themselves willing to obey the laws of the Synod, its members must be communicants. He then described what would be the duties of the Synods. Finally he dwelt upon their responsibilities for the native races in New Zealand and Melanesia, and on the urgent need to raise up a native ministry. He rejoiced over the faithful men who had already been ordained, but said it was impossible not to feel some doubts as to the future stability of the native Church. He said: “My recent journey through the Mission Stations has left me in a balanced state between hope and fear”; fear caused by the signs of decaying faith, and by the fact that the native youth were “departing from the example of their fathers, given to self-indulgence, drunkenness and sloth.” He was convinced that the time was coming when it would “be found impossible to carry on a double government for the Colonial and the Missionary Church,” but their blending must be a gradual work though it should be begun immediately. It was with 106 great thankfulness that he told the Synod of the formation of the new missionary diocese of Waiapu for the Southern Island, to which he hoped to consecrate Archdeacon William Williams. “One whose age and experience had often made him feel ashamed that he should have been preferred before him.” The three new Bishops of Christchurch, Wellington and Nelson, who had been appointed in England, were present at the Synod and joined with him at its close in consecrating William Williams, who was thus the first Bishop to be consecrated in New Zealand. Selwyn wrote of this to a friend:
“I wish that you could have been present to see our little church at the Antipodes, represented by its four Eton Bishops, 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 perturbations of a native school for the purpose of training up the New Zealand youth to take their place in the new order of things.”
This brief account of the organization of the autonomous Church in New Zealand has been carried to its fitting conclusion in the account of the first meeting of the General Synod and of the first consecration of a Bishop in the country. Bishop Selwyn had accomplished the great work which gave New Zealand a self-governing 107 Church, with a constitution sufficiently elastic to allow it to develop in accordance with its own needs, and yet safely established on those “fundamental principles,” which would for ever secure its union with the Mother Church. By his skill and zeal in bringing this difficult matter to a safe conclusion, he had not only secured a great future for the Church in New Zealand, but he showed the way to other branches of the Anglican Church in other parts of the world. His clear vision, his talent for organization, his indomitable perseverance, his conspicuous power in managing and persuading men, had all combined to make it possible to realize his object in the short period of eighteen years, amidst all the pressure of other work, the strain of constant journeyings to and fro by sea and land, and the cruel anxieties of native wars. What had been achieved filled him with thankfulness and hope for the future. He had worked throughout in full co-operation with others, and on true democratic principles, as befitted a Bishop in a new land. He had no desire to be an autocrat or to win credit for himself.
The primary object of Selwyn’s visit to England was to make arrangements for the organization of the Church in New Zealand. The result of his efforts in that direction has been told in the last chapter. But his visit to England was fruitful in other respects also. He had no intention of lingering there, and had written from his ship on the way to England to his friend, Rev. E. Coleridge:
“Do not urge me to prolong my stay, but use your influence to get my work speedily done, and send me to my own element again.”
He reached England with Mrs. Selwyn in the Spring of 1854, just when the Crimean War was beginning, but in spite of the pre-occupation of the mind of the country with the war, his energy and eloquence gained him a hearing for the spiritual needs of New Zealand. He spoke and preached in many different places, and four 109 sermons which he delivered before the University of Cambridge created a specially deep impression. He told his hearers that those who came back from the Mission Field were not likely to be able to add anything to the store of learning at home, but that they might be able to bring to them “some deep experience from the fountains of the human heart, some glimpses of primitive Christianity granted to the servants of God in their lonely mission-field.”
He dwelt much in these sermons on the need for unity in the Church at home; it was not then a question of re-union with other denominations which concerned him; that question had hardly arisen yet. It was unity within the Church itself that he felt to be so urgent. The controversies which were distracting it when he returned to England had made a very painful impression upon him. With characteristic tact he attributed them to the increased interest in religious questions roused by the two movements which had sprung up in the Universities during his absence, the Tractarian movement at Oxford and the Evangelical movement at Cambridge. These movements had made so great a change in England in the thirteen years that he had been away that he could say: “now it is a very rare thing to see a careless clergyman or a neglected parish.” He said that it was easy to see how Christian zeal tended to religious strife whilst 110 it led to greater zeal in seeking religious truth. The cure for the evils of controversy which he offered to young men was “to enter into life burning to do their duty in that state of life to which God may call them.” “The best interpreter of Christian doctrine is Christian work.” He added: “For instance, in our mission work, our standard of necessary doctrine is, what we can translate into our native languages, and explain to our native converts. This we know to be all that is really necessary for their salvation.” This test would suffice until the Church should be able to set up tribunals of doctrine to decide “whether the increase of knowledge in the present day would allow of stricter definitions or greater fulness of language.” Much that he said bearing on the special difficulties of the time is of universal application. “There is reason to fear that a great delusion often lurks under the plea of conscience. An over-scrupulous conscience may often be the mere veil for a lack of charity.” He spoke of how a true conception of the Church would lead men to work amongst the poor and the outcast; “to deal with every single soul as if our own lives depended upon the issue. If this be done the Church will soon by God’s blessing reabsorb all dissent within herself, for every sect is still part of the Church.” He believed that the great work given us by God 111 to do was “too vast and too important to be lost in unprofitable discussion.”
From thoughts of the Church’s work at home he passed on to her work in the Colonies, and spoke of the call to provide for the spiritual needs of the emigrants who were leaving England in thousands to people the new lands overseas, and of how the Church had at first neglected this task. England “had enlarged her empire but she had not extended her Church; it was the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel alone that at first helped to save the settlers from the guilt of first destroying their native brethren, and then abjuring religion and denying God.” He spoke of the need for “men of energy, and piety, and learning in every colony” and said that the Church would be disgraced for ever if it neglected either the needs of the poor at home or of the settlers overseas. He urged the men listening to him not “to forget, in the comforts of home, what it is to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ”; adding “I forbear to speak of myself because it has pleased God to cast my lot in a fair land and in a goodly heritage, in the healthful climate of New Zealand and among the clustered isles and on the sparkling waves of the Pacific. There is too much real enjoyment for me to be able to invite anyone to unite himself with me as an exercise of ministerial self-denial.”
He described the kind of men who were wanted in the Colonies: “men who can live in the midst of disturbing elements and yet themselves remain unshaken ... men who can stamp upon a new community an image of themselves, and yet give to God all the glory ... men who can be dependent upon their congregations, without being subservient; and bold in rebuking sin, yet gentle in their admonition of the sinner. Above all, we need men who can stand alone, like heaven-descended priests of the Most High God, where a few shepherds feed their scattered flocks, with no comforter but the Spirit of God—no friend but their ever present Lord.” He was convinced that there were such minds amongst those listening to him. “But they are as backward to offer as the Church is backward to call. One or other must break through this natural reserve. Offer yourselves to the Archbishop as twelve hundred young men have already offered themselves to the commander-in-chief. Let the head of our Church have about him, as his staff, or on his list of volunteers, a body of young men, who are willing to go anywhere, and be anything.”
In his last sermon he spoke of work amongst the heathen. “There, too, above all things, there was need for unity, ‘a real and visible unity’; no inward and spiritual unity can act as an outward evidence: the keen sighted native 113 convert soon detects a difference of system.... We make a rule never to introduce controversy among a native people, or to impair the simplicity of their faith. If the fairest openings for missionary effort lie before us, if the ground has been pre-occupied by any other religious body, we forbear to enter. And I can speak with confidence upon this point from observation ranging over nearly one-half of the Southern Pacific Ocean, that wherever this law of religious unity is adopted, there the Gospel has its full and unchecked and undivided power. Nature itself has so divided our Mission Field that each labourer may work without interference with his neighbour. Each island circled with its own coral reef, is a field in which each missionary may carry out his own system with native teachers trained under his own eye.... Many of these islands I visited in their days of darkness, and therefore I can rejoice in the light that now bursts upon them, from whatever quarter it may come. I feel that there is an episcopate of love, as well as of authority ... above all things it is our duty to guard against inflicting upon them the curse of our disunion, lest we make every little island in the ocean a counterpart of our own divided and contentious Church. And further I would point to the Mission Field as the great outlet for the excited and sensitive spirit of the Church at 114 home. There are minds, by nature intolerant of rule, in whom not even the spirit of the Gospel can implant an acquiescence in anything which they believe to be an error.... Such men would be the very salt of the earth, if they would but go out into the Mission Field.... They would find satisfaction for their zeal in its free and unbounded range ... the work itself will humble them ... will correct its own errors.... Is it then a hope too unreasonable to be entertained that the power which will heal the divisions of the Church at home, may come from her distant fields of missionary work?... Let it be no longer a reproach to the universities that they have sent so few missionaries to the heathen.”
These four sermons are a revelation of Selwyn’s inmost mind, whilst they have a special interest of their own as throwing light on the condition of the Church both at home and overseas in the middle of the nineteenth century. They reveal his deepest thoughts on the questions which the experiences of his own varied life had brought to him, as he dwelt on them during his long voyages and his many journeys on horse and foot through the wilds of New Zealand. They show us what the man had become, what life had taught him; they tell of his hopes for his Church and its work throughout the world.
These and his other sermons and addresses given during his visit to England aroused much interest and produced a deep impression. One young man after hearing his appeal, being possessed of £12,000 offered it all to the Bishop for his work. The Bishop, however, refused to profit by what might only be a passing impulse and would not accept it. He needed money for his work, but still more he needed men, men of the right sort, and to his great joy, one young man, of just the kind he needed, was amongst the fruits of this visit to England. John Coleridge Patteson, fellow of Merton College, and now working as a curate in Devon, had long cherished the desire for mission work overseas. It had been aroused in him by Selwyn’s farewell sermon at Windsor, when he was still an Eton school boy. But he had felt it right to stay in England as long as his father, who was old and in poor health, lived. Now it came about that he met Bishop Selwyn whilst he was visiting his father, Judge Patteson, an old friend. Walking with him in the garden, the Bishop asked him if his life satisfied him, and Patteson told him of his desire at some future time to go out as a missionary. The Bishop replied that if he really meant this, he ought not to put it off, he should go when in full strength and vigour. They talked long and earnestly and finally Patteson agreed to leave 116 the decision in the hands of his father and the Bishop. When Sir John Patteson heard of his son’s wish, his first exclamation was: “I can’t let him go”; but it was followed in a moment with the words: “God forbid I should stop him.” When finally he spoke to the Bishop on the subject he said: “Mind, I give him wholly, not with any thought of seeing him again. I will not have him thinking he must come home again to see me.” Selwyn thankfully accepted the gift. With his whole heart he invited Patteson to come and work with him, saying, that it would be a great comfort to have him for a friend and companion.
It would seem as if from the first Selwyn saw in young Patteson the man he needed as Bishop of Melanesia. The same week that he received Patteson’s offer, he wrote an appeal to his friend, Rev. E. Coleridge, to help in raising the money needed for this bishopric. He said that if only the organization of the Church in New Zealand had been a little more advanced, he would gladly have undertaken the charge of Melanesia as his own diocese. The sum of £10,000 for which he asked was speedily collected. One of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Melanesian Mission was Miss Yonge, the novelist, a close friend of the Pattesons. Later on she gave the whole proceeds of one of her most popular books, The Daisy Chain, 117 to the support of the Mission. Now the readers of The Heir of Redcliffe, which first won her popularity, made a special contribution to help to raise funds to provide a new vessel, the Southern Cross, for Selwyn’s use.
The Bishop had hoped to return to New Zealand in the Southern Cross, but there proved to be faults in its construction, and its departure was so much delayed that he was obliged to start on March 29th, 1855, in a quicker vessel, leaving the Southern Cross to follow. He had spent ten busy months in England and though deeply grieved at parting from his aged father whom he could not hope to see again, he was eager to get back to his work.
Mrs. Selwyn and Patteson went with him, his two sons had to be left in England for their education. The necessary parting from them was a bitter grief, but he had faced what it would be some years before, on the death of a baby daughter whom in his busy life he had only known for twelve days. He had then written:
“I cannot and must not look to children as a source of personal and domestic enjoyment, but may hope to rejoice, if it be God’s will, in reports of their well doing.”
Patteson’s companionship was now a great source of joy and consolation. He wrote:
“Coley Patteson is a treasure which I humbly set down as a divine recompense for our own boys.”
He said of him that he possessed the three 118 indispensable requisites for his special task: “the sailor’s gift of enduring hardness, the priest’s gift of drawing men by cords of love and detaining them by gentle discipline, the linguist’s gift of quickly mastering many dissimilar tongues.”
They reached Auckland sooner than was expected by their friends there. A strange vessel was discerned threading all the intricacies of the harbour, without having fired the gun for a pilot, and at once people began to say: “there must be someone on board who knows what he is about, and all the tides and currents of the harbour; and who so likely as the Bishop.” His friends thought he looked dreadfully worn on his arrival. Every one was painfully struck with his appearance, but the cause was soon discovered. He had been up for two or three nights piloting the ship down the coast and through all the islets. He soon recovered his good looks and it was gladly recognised that he “was all the better for English air and for the bracing of mind and body” that his journey had given him.
Bishop Selwyn could now look forward to working under new and more satisfactory conditions. The next few years saw the final steps taken for the complete organization of the Church in New Zealand which has been described in the last chapter. Instead of having the 119 whole charge of New Zealand he would now have four other Bishops working with him, as well as duly organized synods by means of which the laity too would share in the work of the Church. The lands which he had been careful to acquire as sites for churches and to provide endowments could now be vested in trustees, and proper attention could be paid to the rapidly increasing number of colonists, attracted specially during recent years by the discovery of gold in the Southern Island.
A fortnight after Bishop Selwyn reached Auckland on his return from England, the Southern Cross, the new mission ship, arrived. She was first sighted on a very wet day, and as soon as the Bishop was sure it was her, he called Patteson to come with him to meet her. Patteson describes the scene:
“I hurried on waterproofs knowing that we were in for some mudlarking. Off we went, lugged down a borrowed boat to the water. I took one oar, a Maori another, the Bishop steering. After twenty minutes pull we met her, jumped on board, and then such a broadside of questions and answers. Mudlarking very slight on this occasion, but on Tuesday we had a rich scene. Bishop and I went to the Duke of Portland and brought off our things ... the custom is for carts to go over the muddy sand ... in went our cart, with three valuable horses, while the Bishop and I stood on the edge of the water. Presently one of the horses lost his footing, and then all at once all three slipped up. Instanter Bishop and I had our coats off, and in we rushed to the horses, such a plunging and splashing but they were all got out safe. ‘This is your first lesson in mudlarking, Coley,’ was the Bishop’s remark.”
Before Selwyn could sail for his first voyage in 121 the Southern Cross, he was called upon by the Governor to go to make peace in a native quarrel, which threatened to lead to trouble with the settlers. The disturbance had arisen in the neighbourhood of Taranaki, called by the colonists New Plymouth. A chief had tried to sell some land, the ownership of which was disputed, to the English, and another chief, Katatore, had shot him down in cold blood, unarmed. The settlers fearful of the disturbance that might follow, asked that some troops should be sent to protect them, but the Governor, thinking that the presence of English soldiers would only add to the difficulty, begged the Bishop to go down to see whether he could bring about a peaceful settlement. The Bishop started at once accompanied by Dr. Abraham and his faithful Maori Deacon, Rota. They had a hard fortnight’s walk through difficult country to the Pah, that is the camp, of William King, a well known native chief, who had taken the part of Katatore, and here they met with a friendly reception. The next day the conference began in Katatore’s Pah, and Abraham thus describes what happened. They found “one hundred 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-be flash criminal at Newgate came up to us. It was Katatore, a little cunning, 122 ill-favoured looking rascal, dressed in a black paletot, moleskin trousers, boots and a little black 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 growling; but his own people did not seem disposed to support him on that point, nor to question the Bishop’s judgment.”
Some days after, the soldiers arrived, and the natives grew very excited thinking that the Bishop had broken faith with them; but he reassured them and finally after giving good advice to both sides in the dispute restored peace. Abraham writes:
“It was very striking to see the men’s delight when he wound up his speech with their old song, the Maori equivalent for ‘Lady bird, lady bird, fly away home.’ All the good advice seemed to tell but little, but this quotation set the whole party on the alert.”
During the days spent in this work of peace-making, Selwyn held many services with both colonists and natives, and persuaded the colonists to provide themselves with churches. 123 Whilst waiting for the steamer which was to take him away, he with his party set to work to mend a road full of great holes, which he had in vain tried to persuade the people to mend. They made the road passable in a day and a half’s work; and were watched by the passers-by with amusement, but unfortunately not with shame for their own idleness.
The Bishop was violently attacked in the local papers for his conduct in the Taranaki dispute. In one of them it was said:
“Bishop Selwyn is again lending his blighting influence to New Zealand, has again taken the murderer by the hand.... 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 through the medium of a dark skin.”
He was accused of preventing the sale of land to the settlers in New Plymouth. Thinking that some members of the Church might have been offended by the reports they had heard of his opinion and conduct, he felt it to be a religious duty to explain his opinions in a pastoral letter to them. In this he stated what he considered to be the cause of the hostility between the Maoris and the settlers. He said that land had been acquired too hastily without sufficient investigation of the titles, and went on:
“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 124 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.”
He referred to the strong feeling amongst the Maoris for their land, and to their accurate knowledge with regard to its ownership, saying: “No menaces of military interference are likely to have any effect 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.” He expressed his conviction “that the lives and property of our fellow settlers, scattered as they are, can only be preserved by the greatest forbearance and the strictest justice in our dealings with the native people.”
On Bishop Selwyn’s return to Auckland, he ordained a second Maori Deacon, Levi, a man of 38, whose character had had long testing, and whose final preparation for ordination he had begun immediately on his return from England. He was now free to set off on his first voyage with Patteson in the Southern Cross. This was to be a visitation tour to the Chatham Islands and to the Southern settlements in New Zealand. Selwyn was able to leave the vessel in charge of Patteson and to make some long journeys on foot. He had planned a journey of 125 one thousand miles and fixed the exact time which it should take. A week before the appointed end he wrote to Mr. Abraham asking him to meet him at a certain place at 1 o’clock on the day fixed. Mr. Abraham writes:
“As my watch pointed to the hour I looked up and saw him emerge from a bush looking well, wiry and bushy. He had walked five hundred and fifty-miles and ridden four hundred and fifty in the course of the last three months, having examined and confirmed one thousand, five hundred people. He was alone nearly all the way and had great difficulty getting the horses he did, so engaged are the people in their cultivations, etc., that they could not spare time to go with him.... 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 would then 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 woman’s 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.... The last month’s journey was the worst, perhaps, as he was obliged to leave his blankets behind to lighten his shoulders, and had to sleep under his tent with nothing but a thin maude these cold autumnal evenings.”
The thought that soon there would be another Bishop to care for these scattered southern settlements must often have cheered Selwyn during his lonely wanderings.
His thoughts were now turning to the Pacific 126 Islands which he hoped would be the sphere of Patteson’s future work. On Ascension Day, 1855, he left Auckland in the Southern Cross again. Ascension Day was his favourite day for starting, for he felt the charge ringing in his ears: “Go ye and teach all nations.” He went first with Mrs. Selwyn and Patteson to Sydney. He wished to get permission to set up his school for the young Melanesians in Norfolk Island. He had become convinced that it was impossible to go on bringing the young islanders to school at Auckland, and then on account of the climate, to have to take them back after a few months to their own homes. This was much too expensive and wasteful a method to be continued, and he wished to find a suitable island where a school and a centre for the mission might be set up. Norfolk Island struck him as eminently suited for the purpose. It had been used as a convict settlement, but this had now been given up. Selwyn had visited the island with Sir George Grey, who approved of his idea, and wrote to the home government asking that the disused prison and a portion of the land should be granted to the Bishop for his school. Objections were made in some quarters because of another proposal for using Norfolk Island. There had been discovered in a Pacific Island named Pitcairn, an English population who proved 127 to be the descendants of a certain John Adams, the leader of a mutiny in a Government vessel called the Bounty. Adams had brought up the children of the mutineers who survived and their descendants with great care, during the years in which they had lived unknown and separated from the outer world. Now that they had been discovered in their lonely home, it was considered that they were too many to go on living on the little island of Pitcairn, and the English Government intended to transport them to Norfolk Island. Objections were made in England to the idea of bringing native islanders from the Pacific to live alongside with the Pitcairners, lest they should corrupt these interesting descendants of English mutineers, who, it was asserted, had grown up in a state of primitive innocence under a patriarchal system. Bishop Selwyn, however, urged that it would be good for the Pitcairners to help in the work of training the natives and of navigating the Mission vessel. But the Governor of New South Wales would not agree to his proposal. The Bishop was much interested in the Pitcairners and waited to see them on their arrival at Norfolk Island before he started for the Pacific. He was warmly welcomed by them. The careful provision of John Adams had seen to it that they were brought up as Christians, but naturally none of them had been confirmed. 128 It was decided therefore to leave Mrs. Selwyn on the Island to teach and prepare the girls and women for confirmation, whilst Selwyn and Patteson went for their cruise to visit the northern Pacific Islands.
Before leaving Sydney, a crowded meeting was held by the Australian Board of Missions to hear Bishop Selwyn speak on the Melanesian Mission, and at this meeting Patteson was introduced by the Bishop as his dear friend, one for whose companionship he ought to thank God. After this they took Mrs. Selwyn to Norfolk Island and sailed for the Pacific. They went first to the Presbyterian mission at Anaiteum, and deposited goods and letters that they had brought for the missionaries, Mr. and Mrs. Ingles. Patteson much admired their schools and wrote of their work as full of hope and encouragement. After this many islands new to the Bishop were visited. Near one of them they came across a brig with a sandal wood trader who was notorious for “dark deeds of revenge and unscrupulous retaliation upon the natives.” In the past the Bishop had been one of those who had helped to bring him to justice, but he had remained friends with him and had baptised his only son. Now he introduced Patteson to him, saying, “Mr. Patteson is come from England on purpose to look after these islands.” He was convinced that the knowledge 129 that there were those who watched their doings would have a restraining effect upon the traders.
Patteson was able to learn from the behaviour of the Bishop how to be on the look out for signs of danger. Selwyn’s quick eye was always on the watch and without any apparent suspicion of fear, he was ever on the alert to detect any slight intimation of possible danger. On one occasion whilst they were happily bartering fish hooks for cocoanuts, the Bishop, to Patteson’s surprise, made a sudden sign to come away. When they were in their boat he said: “I saw some young men running through the bushes with bows and arrows, and these young gentry have not the sense to behave well like their parents.”
The Bishop’s method in his work among the islands has been described by one who watched it as follows:
“On first invading the land he tries 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 hundred people are standing and shouting; he then plunges into the water arranging no end of presents 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 the 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. The old chief with innate courtesy sends the 130 tomahawk to the rear, to show that he is safe and may place confidence in him. The Bishop pats the children on the head, gives them fishhooks 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 him to read or the like; and he brings forward this specimen and sample, and tries to make them understand that he wants some of their boys to treat in like manner. The Bishop gets as many names written down as he can and picks up as many words as he can; establishes a friendly relation, and after a while swims off to his boats. 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 him while he goes to the neighbouring islands. So he learns their language enough to tell them what he has come for.”
During this trip with Patteson, he landed on sixty islands, and they brought back thirty-three scholars, who were looked upon as Patteson’s boys. They stopped at Norfolk Island to hold what Selwyn described as “one of the most remarkable confirmations in the history of the Church. The whole adult population of the Pitcairn Islanders, except those who were too feeble to attend, presented themselves to me in nine classes to be examined and confirmed.” The eldest of the candidates, a woman over seventy, was a daughter of John Adams. The service was held in the old convict chapel, which opened on to the prison yard, “in every corner heaps of rusty fetters and cast-off 131 garments.” The Confirmation was followed by a Celebration of Holy Communion.
This time the boys from the Islands had again to be taken to Auckland as no other place was ready for them. Selwyn wrote from there to Judge Patteson expressing his delight in the help given him by his son:
“I do indeed most thankfully acknowledge the goodness of God in giving me timely aid when I was pledged to a great work without any steady force to carry it on. Coley is the right man in the right place physically and mentally.... You know in what direction my wishes tend, viz., that Coley, when he has come to suitable age, and has developed as I have no doubt he will, a fitness for the work, should be the first island Bishop.”
Some years would have to pass before these wishes could be fulfilled, but already in 1856, Selwyn had the joy of welcoming Dr. Harper, appointed Bishop of Christchurch, who came out with all his family, immediately after his consecration in Lambeth Chapel. Selwyn went to Christchurch to meet him in the Southern Cross and wrote in his diary:
“Went on board at 8 took off the Bishop and his whole family 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.”
Bishop Harper was installed at once and Selwyn wrote:
“This day fifteen years I left England, and this morning 132 I woke up with a thankful feeling that my load was at length lightened by the transfer to the Bishop of Christchurch of one-third of New Zealand.”
Both he and the colonists in the other provinces were impatient that the remaining dioceses which had been fixed upon should be speedily completed. Selwyn wrote:
“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 mile of travelling. In all other respects of organising institutions 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.”
Selwyn’s care for the interests and needs of the colonists in New Zealand never distracted him from the wider mission field amongst the heathen, which was ever so dear to his heart. The arrival of Bishop Harper was followed in a few months by the meeting of the Conference at Auckland, which finally settled the constitution of the New Zealand Church as described in the last chapter. Whilst Selwyn was busy with it, Patteson made a voyage alone to take back the boys from the Islands, as the New Zealand winter was coming on. The Conference over, Selwyn started with Patteson for a long cruise in the Pacific, first leaving Mrs. Selwyn at Norfolk Island to carry on her work amongst the Pitcairners. A long and prosperous voyage followed during which many islands were visited. 133 In three there were urgent demands that they should be given a teacher, but the Bishop had none to give. All that could be done was, wherever possible, to persuade boys to come back with him to be taught. Finally after a cruise of four months they returned to Auckland bringing with them thirty-three Melanesians, gathered from nine islands and speaking eight languages. They had visited sixty-six islands and landed eighty-one times, wading and swimming; they had visited amongst others, some islands where the London Missionary Society had been at work, and where the native teachers had been left for a long while without any English missionary. They now gladly turned to Bishop Selwyn for advice and help. But nearly all the islands they visited were still untouched by any missionary work. A second voyage was made that year, and on that occasion, the Southern Cross ran aground, in the lagoon at New Caledonia. After many exertions she was got off the ledge on which she had stuck, but it was impossible to be certain that her bottom was uninjured. There were no divers to be got, but as one who was present described the scene: “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 134 Bayonnais (a French warship that was in the harbour) 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 detriment of his hands, which were cut to pieces by 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 guns.”
When this accident happened, the Bishop was on his way to call for Patteson who had been left on the Island of Lifu with his scholars. Now the Southern Cross had to be taken to Auckland to be repaired and contrary to his usual punctual habits, he was a month late in reaching Lifu. There followed a rapid voyage back, picking up scholars by the way till forty-seven were collected, amongst them three young married women and two babies; with the crew there were sixty-three persons in the little ship. Patteson writes:
“As you may suppose the little Southern Cross is cram full, but the Bishop’s excellent arrangements in the construction of the vessel for securing ventilation, preserve us from harm by God’s blessing. Every day a thorough cleaning and sweeping goes on and frequent washing, and as all beds turn up like the flap of a table, and some thirty lads sleep on the floor on mats and blankets, by 7 a.m. all 135 traces of the night’s arrangements have vanished. The cabin looks and feels airy; meals go on regularly.... A vessel of this size unless arranged with special reference to such objects, could not carry safely so large a party, but we have nothing on board to create, conceal or accumulate dirt.”
School and prayers were held regularly every day. Part of the Bishop’s own cabin was screened off for the three women and two babies; and he himself looked after them, washing the babies and tending the women when sick.
Selwyn was grateful indeed that it was now possible happily to leave all these new scholars at Auckland under Patteson’s care, for plenty of work awaited him. He had to start off at once on a confirmation tour of one thousand miles and then be at Wellington early in the coming year for the meeting of the first Synod. The year, 1858, that was drawing to a close, he described as “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.” These two, both consecrated in England were old friends; his fellow worker, Archdeacon Abraham, had been appointed Bishop of Wellington, and Rev. E. Hobhouse, Bishop of Nelson.
In 1859, after the Synod was over, Selwyn made his last voyage to Melanesia again in 136 company with Patteson. They touched at Lifu where they had before visited the native teachers belonging to the mission of the London Missionary Society. These men, as they had not had an English missionary among them for a long while, implored to be connected with the Anglican Mission. But they were told that two missionaries from L.M.S. were on their way from Sydney to Lifu, and that it would do harm to have two rival systems on the island. Patteson writes:
“They acquiesced but not heartily, and it was a sad affair altogether, all parties unhappy and dissatisfied and yet unable to solve the difficulty.”
They called at Lifu again on their way back and found that the two missionaries had arrived, but learned also that there were two French Roman Catholic priests in the north of the island who were attracting many to them. So again possibilities of true comity disappeared, and the simple islanders were disturbed by the unhappy differences between Christians.
After this voyage, Bishop Selwyn left to Patteson the whole guidance of the Melanesian mission. He had served his apprenticeship under the Bishop and gained a full knowledge of the nature of the work, and had shown that he possessed the gifts necessary to carry it on, so that he could be given full responsibility for 137 what had been to Selwyn one of the most delightful parts of his great work.
To Patteson it had meant much to begin his work in close association with one whom he loved and admired as he did Bishop Selwyn. He still looked constantly to him for help and support. He wrote to his father:
“Of course no treat is so great to me as the occasional talks with the Bishop. Oh! the memory of those days and evenings on board the Southern Cross. Well, it was so happy a life that it was not good for me, I suppose, that it should last.”
It was not yet possible to move the school for the Melanesian boys to Norfolk Island, but a more sheltered spot was found for it temporarily, opposite to the entrance of Auckland harbour. St. John’s College was reserved entirely for the sons of colonists. A new master, Rev. B. Blackburn, had been found in England by Abraham who, as Archdeacon, had been its head till he was appointed Bishop of Wellington. When Mr. Blackburn was offered the post he accepted saying with what intense pleasure he would work under as great a man as Bishop Selwyn. To which Abraham answered: “he is a great man and would appear so to his valet if he had one.” Blackburn was not disappointed when he first saw Selwyn on arriving at Auckland. He described him as “a king every inch of him; he would rule by a look, but 138 stoop to perform the most menial office without the slightest loss of dignity.” After helping to carry the newcomer’s luggage from the ship, the Bishop suggested that they should go to the chapel to give thanks for their safe voyage, and after a little service of prayers and psalms laid his hands on each, down to the baby in arms, giving them his blessing. Mr. Blackburn writes further:
“Bishop Selwyn had a love of work, and great power 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 Roman Catholic) the Bishop felt it was his duty to provide for them: he 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 used to say that it was a shame he was not a general. The naval men were equally enthusiastic about his seamen-like qualities. They all agreed that he would have made a first rate admiral.”
In 1861, Patteson was consecrated first Bishop of Melanesia. Lady Martin describes the consecration: “It was altogether a wonderful scene: the three consecrating Bishops, all such noble-looking men, the goodly company of clergy and Hohua’s fine intelligent brown face among them, and the long line of island boys and of native teachers and their wives were living 139 testimonies of mission work.” To Selwyn, Patteson was like a son, and in the sermon preached at his consecration he said, as he gazed on one so dearly loved: “May Christ be with you when you go forth in His name and for His sake to those poor and needy people.” The consecration marked the final achievement of independence by the New Zealand Church. So far no bishop had been appointed in the Church overseas except under letters patent or under mandate from the Crown. If this necessity for constant reference to government authority in England had continued, the progress of the Church would have been subject to needless limitations. Selwyn, always marked by wisdom and caution as well as by his zeal for the development of the independent Church, after much anxious consideration, suggested to the Colonial Secretary that the difficulty about the appointment of a bishop would be got over if the New Zealand bishops were allowed to exercise the powers inherent in their office, as bishops of a distinct province of the Church, without any mandate from the Crown. This was allowed, and henceforth the Church overseas was free to develop on its own lines, without interference from the Colonial Office and its legal advisers. Thus after nineteen years of work, the Bishop who had been given the sole charge of New Zealand, and who had started 140 the mission to Melanesia, saw himself surrounded by five brother bishops, with the missionary obligation of the Church to the Pacific islands fully recognized, and entrusted to a man whom he loved as a son, and who was specially gifted for this work.
Bishop Selwyn had helped to make peace at Taranaki (New Plymouth) in 1855, but discontent continued to smoulder both amongst the Maoris and the Colonists. The English continued to be eager to acquire more land and not scrupulous enough as to the means used to acquire it. Disputes about title deeds and the right to certain bits of land were frequent. The Maoris were suspicious of the constant encroachments of the British power. They felt that by degrees their country was passing from them into foreign hands. They had no representation in the Parliament which had been set up in New Zealand by the Constitution of 1853, and practically no share in the general government of the country. Colonel Browne, the Governor, was obliged to report to the Colonial Office in England the unsatisfactory state of affairs. The difficulties were increased because the respective powers of the Governor and his 142 executive were not clearly defined, and by the want of sympathy with the natives shown by the colonists. Maori chiefs were often treated with indignities when they went to Auckland. Bishop Selwyn said that “he was quite ashamed to travel with his native deacons, men who dine at his own table and behave there like gentlemen, because he cannot take them into public rooms where a tipsy carter would be considered perfectly good society.”
After the first trouble at Taranaki had been settled for the time, Bishop Selwyn uttered the solemn warning which he was so soon to see justified that “while nothing is more easy than to extinguish the native title, nothing will be found more difficult than to extinguish a native war.” Slowly the country was drifting towards war. In the Waikato country, the Maori chiefs held a conference in 1857, at which both Selwyn and the Wesleyan missionaries were present, and the chiefs chose a king for themselves. No rebellion was meant, for they put up the flag of their chosen king and the Union Jack side by side on the same staff, and the Governor did not think it necessary to take this king movement seriously. In Taranaki, the chiefs had also formed a land league and refused to sell land to the whites. This was very irritating to the settlers along the coast, who saw land, of which they were in great need, 143 lying idle. When one chief of his own accord sold some land to the whites, the chief of the Maori land league refused to allow the sale. The Governor, however, maintained that the sale was legal, and sent troops to the spot to support the rights of the purchasers. This was the beginning of long and disastrous war. At first the Maoris gained some advantage over the troops and the settlers were much alarmed. It was feared that the war would spread to the Waikato, and the general anxiety increased when the irritation of the natives was inflamed by the discovery of a Maori, lying killed by a gunshot wound in the forest thirty miles south of Auckland.
A body of armed Maoris gathered to avenge his death on the settlers, who fled in terror from their homes. Selwyn at once hastened to the spot to make peace. He rode twenty-four miles through the night, and then walked through the wood wading in mud up to his knees to the place where the fighting party were expected to land in their canoes. He wrote to his son:
“We could see at once by the open and bright expression of their countenances, that they did not mean mischief. The afternoon was spent as usual in much talk upon the subject and ended with evening service in a large house, filled with about two hundred men, with their arms piled around the central pillars.... We were glad to find that they were inclined to go back quietly.”
Afterwards he visited and pacified other natives 144 in the district, and encouraged the settlers to return to their homes, promising to remain with them till the danger was past. One of them wrote afterwards:
“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 he conducted in our little schoolroom divine service, and preached a sermon never to be forgotten—inspiring trust and confidence in God.”
Selwyn’s plea which he submitted in a formal memorandum to the Governor, was that the rights of the New Zealanders as British subjects should be considered identical with those of the English, that the rights of the Maoris to the soil where the title deeds had not been extinguished should be recognised; that all native customs in connexion with proprietary right should be respected, that disputes should be submitted to a competent tribunal, and that for the moment there should be an armistice. But he was not listened to, and the settlers denounced his conduct as political interference. They said that “no right to interfere between Her Majesty’s Government and her native subjects could be allowed to any minister of religion.” In his reply to these criticisms he said (1861) “as the earliest settlers in this country—as agents employed by Government in native affairs—as intimately acquainted with the language, customs and feelings of the 145 native race—and above all as ministers of religion having the highest possible interest at stake—we assert the privilege which the Crown allows to every man of laying our petitions before the Crown and the Legislature.”
In this difficult moment Sir George Grey was asked to return as Governor to the Colony which he had administered so wisely and where he was respected by all. For a moment there was peace, but as the soldiers were still in the land there was no sense of confidence or security. The Bishop went on with his efforts for peace, and his consequent unpopularity with the colonists continued to grow. He attended a great assembly of the natives in the Waikato, and from there went on to the English settlement at Taranaki where he was met on the beach by a mob who shouted: “Three groans for Bishop Selwyn,” and followed him with groans till he turned round and faced them saying: “Now it is more English-like to look me in the face and tell me your grievances.” This they did with much frankness, interspersed with rude outcries. They accused him of grasping lands for the Church, of loving power, of reviving all the old abuses of England. From this he went on to discuss matters with the natives, who for the most part received him with much friendliness, though at one place they said that no minister should go through their land. But he slipped 146 off in the dusk to the next village and when he came back, 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.” Alone and unarmed he went through all this disaffected district. He knew the people well and sometimes by a joke, sometimes by a serious word, sometimes by a parable could turn aside their anger and win them to listen to him.
The natives at this time were very indignant because the Governor had forbidden them to have arms; and one chief had said to him: “My custom is to give my enemy a weapon if he has not one, that we may fight upon equal terms. Now, O Governor, are you not ashamed of my defenceless hands.” Soon after this an English carter and his boy were murdered by the Maoris. Shortly afterwards, the Bishop, on his travels through the country, was sitting round the fire with a large party of natives, who were telling him some of their national myths. He said: “Now I will tell you a ghost story. There was once a man who dreamt that he was sitting with a large party round the fire, when out of the fire rose the figure of a man who said, ‘O Governor if I had an enemy and he had no weapon, I would give him one before we 147 fought. O Governor were you not ashamed of my defenceless hands?’ The people all applauded, but the dream went further. ‘After a time another figure rose up slowly out of the fire, with a white face, very pale, with blood streaming down; the figure was dressed like an English boy and held a bullock whip. He too stretched out his arms to the Maoris and said, ‘Were you not ashamed of my defenceless hands?’” The Bishop refused to interpret the story, but it was passed on amongst the Maoris, and told by many a camp fire. All knew its meaning.
On one of these walks, the people in a particular village were persuaded not to receive the Bishop, but to offer him a pigstye for his night’s shelter. The Bishop at once set to work to turn out the pigs, clean the stye and make himself a bed of clean ferns. This made the astonished Maoris say: “You cannot degrade that man from being a gentleman.”
For some time an uncertain kind of peace prevailed, but the irritation among the natives was all the time on the increase, and the trouble more and more took the form of hostility on the part of the natives as a whole to the whites. The chiefs in the Waikato began to gather their forces to come to the help of the Maoris in the Taranaki district. Bishop Selwyn, anxious to check the growth of this hostile 148 Maori feeling, went to a Conference of Maoris, where on the Sunday the Maori chief preached to the assembled people on the text: “Behold how good and joyful a thing it is, brethren, to dwell together in unity”; and spoke of the gain it was that the Maoris were now joined together as one brotherhood under a Maori king. When the next day the Bishop was allowed to speak to the people, he said: “Here I am a mediator for New Zealand. My word is mediation. I am not merely a Pakeha (Englishman) 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 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-castes. Your dress is half-caste—a Maori mat and English clothes; your strength is half-caste—your courage Maori; your weapons English guns.... Therefore I say we are all half-castes; therefore let us dwell together with one faith, one love, one law.” He proceeded to implore them to allow the Waitara case about the disputed land to be tried by law; and that all together should set right the wrong which had been done by men on both sides. Finally he turned to the whole 149 assembly and said: “O 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 proposals by which we shall all live in peace and happiness.” Some were convinced, but the majority refused to give up the lands. It was not long before hostilities began. Sir George Grey came down to investigate the question of the claim to Waitara, but he brought troops with him and the suspicious Maoris felt this meant war. They ambushed a small party of soldiers consisting of two officers and seven men, and killed all but one. Sir George Grey, though in the meanwhile he had discovered that the Maori title to the Waitara was sound, felt that British authority must be vindicated and the murderers punished, so fighting began.
We are not concerned to follow in any detail the course of the war, but only to speak of Bishop Selwyn’s activities during it. Ten thousand troops had gathered in the country and there was not a single chaplain with them. The Bishop therefore joined the army as chaplain. He hoped thus not only to minister to the troops, but to be in a position to protect his native teachers and Christians. He lived in camp, pitched his own tent and shared the life of the soldiers, who admired him for his courage and endurance. An English officer 150 describes how he first saw him. Looking through his telescope he perceived the figure of a man on foot rapidly making his way to the mission station; after a while he came to a small stream, and was observed feeling for its bottom with a long stick; when it proved too deep to be forded he stript, tied his clothes in a bundle on his head and swam across. Selwyn was on his way to warn a native clergyman of the coming of the English soldiers, and to protect him and his school.
During the trying months of war which followed, he did all he could to help both sides, and thus earned the criticism of both colonists and Maoris, they could not understand his position, nor perceive that his one desire was to mitigate the cruel sufferings of war. “If there must be war,” he said, “our great effort ought to be to debrutalise it, and the army from the General downwards, have shown every willingness that it should be so.” He held constant services for the soldiers, attended to the wounded, buried the dead, and fortunately got permission from the War Office to appoint three other chaplains to assist him. During these days he wrote (December 4th, 1863): to his sons in England:
“It is a strange thing to be moving up the Waikato with an army, after twenty years of an annual visit of a peaceful kind. To see the hills crowned with English forts, and 151 steamers smoking on the river, is a strange and to me a painful subject of reflection.”
He sought for wounded men, both Maori and English, in the swamps after an engagement, fearless of stray gunshots. A naval chaplain, who was helping him, was riding with him one day through dense bush, said to be infested with Maoris, when they came to a part of the road cut up with deep ruts on the side of a steep hill. The Bishop jumped from his horse and proceeded to fill up the ruts so as to save the wagons for provisioning the troops from being capsized. Further on, he found an Irish soldier lying drunk and bareheaded, and got down to drag him into shelter saying: “Those men do not know the danger of sunstroke.”
To the misery of watching these scenes of war was added the bitter disappointment of seeing the conduct of the natives. Selwyn 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.”
The Maoris could not understand the Bishop’s presence with the English soldiers and looked upon him with suspicion as having gone over to the cause of their enemies, not recognising that he could not leave the troops without some one 152 to minister to their spiritual needs. The English officers soon learnt to love him and to admire his devotion and courage. On a Sunday he would ride many miles, holding seven or eight services in the day. There was a long ridge of about two miles exposed to the fire from the Maoris below which connected two redoubts. The Bishop rode along it at full canter, and the officers used to watch him through their field glasses. They would see a puff of smoke and then the Bishop still galloping along, and say: “It’s all right, they missed him.”
He was comforted sometimes by hearing of truly Christian acts done by Maoris. One Maori General was an old pupil of the Bishop’s; he himself tended a wounded English prisoner all through one night, and when the man asked for water and there was none in the Maori camp, he crept out through the fern into the English lines and brought back a calabash of water for the dying man. The Maori clergy to the Bishop’s great comfort were faithful all through the war.
Lady Martin thus describes the effect of the war:
“One by one the large flourishing schools on the Waikato and Waiapu rivers had to be closed, with their branch village schools under native teachers, which had become centres of light. The fine country which we had seen covered with wheat and crops became a battlefield—the mills were closed, the churches built by the natives were often used 153 as barracks for the troops ... our bay became deserted. No invalids were brought to be nursed, no canoes heavily laden with produce skimmed across the harbour. It seemed as if the pleasant intercourse with the Maoris, which for twenty years had made our lives so bright was at an end.”
In 1864, a new horror was added to the war by the sudden appearance amongst the Maoris of a fanatical sect, which gathered round an insane chief who professed to have received revelations from the angel Gabriel. His followers called themselves Hau Haus. In a condition of wild excitement, indulging in excesses of every kind, they marched through the land claiming the allegiance of other natives. Infuriated by meeting resistance from some loyal Christian natives, they vowed vengeance to all missionaries. It was in this mood that they reached Poverty Bay, just as two missionaries, Volkner and Grace, arrived in a small schooner bringing medicines and food for the people in the Bay who were suffering from an epidemic of fever. Volkner was seized and murdered next morning in a revolting way, whilst Grace was taken prisoner. As soon as this news reached Bishop Selwyn he hastened to Poverty Bay to try to rescue Grace. At Poverty Bay he found Bishop Williams in whose diocese it was, and with him a great crowd of loyal natives. He described his adventures in a letter to Mrs. Selwyn:
“Went to the Bishop’s house, found all well and thankfully 154 acknowledging the steadfastness 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 four hundred native warriors in brown skins.”
These men expressed themselves determined not to allow their Pakehas to be touched, but they would not help to attack the murderers of Volkner. They even made conditions about the release of a Maori prisoner before they would write a letter asking for the release of Grace. Selwyn had to send a schooner to fetch this prisoner and then went off with the letter demanding Grace’s release to Opotiki, and sent boats to the shore which brought off Grace and other white people who were there. He then, to his great regret, had to hasten back to Auckland for the Synod; he believed that the English clergy and others in that district were still in great danger. He doubted, however, whether he could have done more to help them as he had now become such an object of hatred and suspicion to the rebel Maoris.
After a year of fighting the Maoris were driven back and dispersed. No regular peace was made but both sides were weary of war, and the English troops were withdrawn. It was many years before the interior of New Zealand was really at peace and safe for settlers.
At the end of the year (1865) the Bishop wrote to an old friend in England:
“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. 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 that I took in the Waikato campaign has destroyed my influence with many. You will ask then ‘Did I not foresee this? and if so why did I go?’ I answer that I could not neglect the dying and wounded soldiers. Then there were many wounded Maoris brought in from time to time to whom it was my duty to minister. Add to this two of our mission stations had been occupied by a native clergyman and catechist, whom no threats could induce to leave their posts after the English missionaries were advised to retire. It was my duty to see they were not injured when our troops advanced.... This has thrown me back in native estimation more, I fear, than my remaining years of life will enable me to recover.... 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.... The real cause of war in New Zealand has been the new constitution, and the cause of the greater bitterness of the strife has been the new element of confiscation introduced by the colonists against the will and express orders of the Home Government.... A Maori cares more for his land than anything else.... We have every reason to think that the worst is now past.... We shall probably settle down upon the unsatisfactory basis of the questionable possession of one or two millions of very indifferent land, and of the entire repudiation of the Queen’s authority over the whole interior of the Northern Island. This is the result of seeking first ‘the other things’ instead of the ‘one.’”
The war was drawing to a close in 1864 when Bishop Hobhouse, after accompanying Selwyn on one of his journeys to the camp, wrote the following description of what he saw:
“He was still obliged to provide for the chaplain’s duties, though the army was no longer massed, but was spread into numerous out-posts stretching as far as ninety miles from Auckland. This involved his starting every Friday with such clerical companions as he could get; calling at the various stations throughout Saturday to do any pastoral duty required amongst the troops, and planning with the officers how to make the most of his services on Sunday.... After forty-five miles we reached the Waikato river ... when the steamer arrived it was found to be towing some barges filled with the families of the new Australian settlers, a corps which had been raised in the Australian towns.... The arrival of these families was an opportunity for pastoral work.... The Bishop plunged into the barges.... One woman, the mother of a family was nearing her end. He induced the captain to put her on shore opposite to a wooden church which had been riddled by shot and dismantled in the war. Inside that inhospitable ruin he proposed to stay the night as the comforter of the poor woman, and bade me proceed to the nearest military post and await his arrival. Early on the Saturday morning he arrived after an unbroken night watch, during which he had seen his poor patient’s death, had committed her body to the grave and had made arrangements for the charge of her children. Without any sleep, he then hastened to depart on foot to the missionary station, where we had been expected overnight. During the many hours of the day as we passed over the fields of action with their gloomy records of ruined churches, abandoned paths, down-trodden enclosures, the Bishop poured out his heart to me more freely than was his wont. The scene was sad enough to have overwhelmed him with acute regret and despondency 157 for the future. The Waikato tribe more than 10,000 strong, the most advanced of the powerful tribes in civilization and churchmanship, with churches and a complete set of schools endowed by themselves, were now driven from their fertile valley, estranged from British rule, and perhaps alienated from the Christian faith. The missionary work of forty years seemed all undone and the Bishop himself was regarded as a traitor. Yet all these gloomy reflections were put away, and his only thought was how to minister to the new settlers now pouring in from the Australian towns.... As we passed over the scene of bloodshed he said: ‘I have been in every action I could possibly reach. It was my duty to minister to the wounded natives as well as to the British.... Indeed I always ministered to the fallen Maori first so as to give a practical answer to their charge against me of forsaking and betraying them. It was needful that I should be in the midst of each fray and between two fires; but I was never hurt. I lay on the ground at night and shared soldier’s fare.’”
Whilst recalling all that he had gone through, the Bishop’s missionary zeal still enabled him to make plans for fresh enterprises and to sketch out new work amongst the settlers. But there were thoughts poured out too about what he could do when no longer fit for the active life New Zealand demanded. He thought he might best serve his Master by retiring to Canterbury, and helping to train the next generation of missionaries at St. Augustine’s College. But the time of retirement was not yet, and the next day after a night spent sleeping on the ground, he took eight separate services for the troops.
Many are the stories of his utter fearlessness during the war. One settler years afterwards 158 wrote to an Auckland paper saying that he was sure many of the settlers owed their lives to Bishop Selwyn’s untiring watchfulness. He told how once when returning to their homes at Mauku, after a sudden flight, through fear of a Maori attack, the Bishop appeared and, refusing all refreshment, asked merely to be allowed to leave his horse for the night. He said he must go on at once to Purapura which was some nine miles away, and to be reached only by a bush track; that he needed no food as he had some bread in his kit, but would probably be back next morning. At 4 o’clock next morning he duly appeared, drenched to the skin, having walked all through the night and having had to ford a creek. He then told them that the day before he had heard that a band of the fiercest Maoris were on their way to attack the settlement, and he had gone to see the chiefs assembled at Purapura to persuade them to forbid their war party to go on. This they had promised to do, but said the Bishop, I will stay till all danger from these wild spirits is past. During the night he was up and out in a moment if there was any unusual noise. The following Sunday he held a service in the little schoolroom, preaching a sermon never to be forgotten, inspiring trust and confidence in God.
At the end of the war, Bishop Selwyn was granted the same medal as was given to the 159 soldiers; and the officers and men among whom he had ministered subscribed to give him money to ornament his private chapel.
The prayer which he drew up to be used in all the churches in New Zealand, deserves to be recorded here as showing his inmost mind about the war.
“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 guided by Thee in all things, that the dominion of our Queen may be established in this land in justice and mercy according to Thy Holy Will.
“We commend to Thee oh 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 Holy Spirit may so rule in all of us as to keep us from every unbecoming and unchristian temper; from all cruel, unmerciful and vindictive thoughts.
“And we beseech Thee, good Lord, to restrain the evil passions of men, and to deliver this land 160 from the misery of strife and bloodshed and to pour 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.”
It is to be noted that he did not bid them pray for victory.
The discovery of gold in the Southern Island had brought such a rush of new settlers that it seemed necessary to divide the Diocese of Christchurch and form a new Diocese of Dunedin. All were agreed about this, but unfortunately a controversy arose as to the actual appointment of the new Bishop. Selwyn, eager to see someone appointed as quickly as possible, wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, with more definiteness than the Rural Deanery Board at Dunedin was prepared for. The Archbishop with unexpected promptitude, appointed and consecrated Dr. Jenner, Bishop of Dunedin, but the Rural Deanery were not prepared for this, they said that the necessary money had not yet been collected and refused to recognise the appointment. This unfortunate incident shows the difficulties that lay in the way of the Colonial Church, and its relations with the Home Church in the early days, before 162 experience had regulated the situation. During the period of delay, Selwyn went himself to Dunedin to try to promote the raising of the money needed. In this way he saw the goldfields and was able to judge of their needs. He wrote from there (1866) describing the hurry of the life, where everything had to be improvised to meet the rush of new arrivals eager for gold. “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 forgotten on the road.... Upon the whole as the thing had to be done I am not sorry to have had to go over this province. Part of my object is to visit as many of the diggers as I can and to hold services wherever I find them disposed to attend. There was a large party of them on board 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.” It is not necessary to follow the long controversy over the filling of the See of Dunedin, since after this the matter did not really concern Bishop Selwyn. 163 It was not till 1871 that the difficulty was settled and a Bishop appointed.
Writing to E. Coleridge at the end of 1865, Bishop Selwyn had said: “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 it will be well for us to be more sparing of our visits.” When, however, he received a summons from the Archbishop of Canterbury to attend the first conference of Bishops of the Anglican Communion, which was to be held at Lambeth in 1867, he felt bound to go. He had always regarded it as a duty to obey the orders of a superior in the service to which he had given his life, and his desire for the general restoration of synodical government in the Church, made him consider the proposed Lambeth Conference as of supreme importance. He left his work in New Zealand with deep regret and there was much sorrow amongst his people at parting with him even for a time, increased by a lurking fear that he might never return. Before he left, his friends met in the little Chapel at Auckland for a last Communion together. There were seventy communicants too many 164 for the chapel to hold and they overflowed into the study behind. One who was there writes:
“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.”
It was a disappointment to Selwyn to find on reaching England how little interest was shown in the Lambeth Conference, how few even of the clergy realized its importance. He wrote:
“From 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 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.”
At the Conference he was described as “well nigh the most conspicuous figure and certainly the most attractive spirit there.” Mrs. Selwyn writes that he came back from the meetings “sometimes quite happy, and sometimes quite desponding, the precious time being so frittered away.” He was distressed at “the want of previous arrangement, at the lack of all formality or of anything to give dignity in the eyes of the public or honour to the brethren.” After the Lambeth Conference, he went to the Wolverhampton Church Congress. There he 165 had the support of other Bishops from overseas in claiming that the Church in the Colonies should have the right to manage its own affairs. He himself spoke on Missions “doubtful how he could concentrate the lifetime of twenty-five years into twenty-five minutes.” He did express the spirit in which he had worked when he said: “I do not know what failure means.” He ended with an earnest appeal for unity, the appeal which comes with ever growing force to the Church at home from the mission field, and which again and again falls on deaf ears:
“The best assistance you can give to us in our missionary work is to be united amongst yourselves.... I have learned in that great Pacific, on which my islands lie like little gems, to pray for the grace of God to distil from the great ocean of the Catholic Church this essential salt of unity, and with that salt to season all sacrifices, whether prayer, praise or almsgiving, and whether at home or abroad may that sacrifice be acceptable to God.”
Shortly after the Wolverhampton Congress, the Bishop of Lichfield died and Lord Derby asked Selwyn to be his successor. Selwyn answered immediately that after having taken counsel with no one but God in prayer: “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, 166 requires all the effort of the few friends that remain to them; (2) Because the organization of the Church in New Zealand is still incomplete; (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 C.M.S. will continue their annual grant of £400 to my successor.” These were the chief reasons he gave to Lord Derby and he ended his letter with these words: “I could work with all my heart in the ‘black country’ if it were not that my heart is in New Zealand.”
The matter was not allowed to rest there. The Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to Selwyn asking him to reconsider his decision. The Queen sent for him and expressed her wish that he would accept the bishopric. Selwyn then wrote to the Archbishop:
“I had no other reason for going (to New Zealand) 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 soldier of the Church I shall probably feel bound to do whatever my commander-in-chief bids me.”
To his dear friend, Sir W. Martin, he wrote first:
“My own desire to return to New Zealand is so strong, that I cannot altogether trust my own judgment on a question of conscience.... How I wish I could take counsel with you. I have no one here, except Sarah (his wife), who can 167 even feel the force of the argument on the New Zealand side.... The point of obedience is the only one upon which I see any light.... 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.”
A month later, when he had felt it to be his duty to obey commands and accept the bishopric of Lichfield and all was settled, he wrote again:
“I shall go to work immediately to raise an endowment fund for the bishopric. Most of the furniture in the ‘palace’ will be left as an heirloom to the See, with the library.”
He had told the Archbishop before his appointment that it would be absolutely necessary for him “to go back to New Zealand, if only for a few weeks. Everything there was left at short notice.”
On January 9th, 1868, he was enthroned at Lichfield and for more than a year he was Bishop both of New Zealand and of Lichfield. How he viewed his new work is shown by his determination to give up at once Eccleshall Castle, the house in the country twenty-five miles from Lichfield in which his predecessors had lived, and to settle in the old palace in the Cathedral close. He set to work at once to visit the forty-six rural deaneries in his immense diocese, in order to gain some idea of what his work would be, and he began to lay plans for synodical organization in the diocese. Punch had some verses about his appointment in which it was 168 said that he had been called “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.”
He sailed for New Zealand in the summer and reached Auckland in time for the General Synod of the Province in October, when six Bishops were present. Patteson was there, having come from Melanesia in the Southern Cross, filled with intense grief at the prospect of losing Bishop Selwyn. He wrote:
“I don’t think I ever quite felt till now, what you have been to me for many a long year,”
but he went on to say:
“It is perfectly clear to my mind that you could not have done otherwise. I don’t grudge you to the mother Church one atom.”
In his address to the Synod, Selwyn dwelt upon the advantages of the independent position of the Church. “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 branches of our Anglican Church now scattered over the world: aim at one common standard of faith and ritual in all essential points, treasure up the memory of all the blessings and privileges which we have inherited from our Holy Mother, that 169 it may be seen that by none is she more honoured and beloved than by the most distant of her children.” The address which was presented to him by the Synod shows how he was regarded. It is only possible to quote some sentences from it. “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 life blood may circulate with fresh vigour throughout the body. How can we ever forget you? Every spot in New Zealand is identified with you. Each hill and valley, each river and bay and headland is full of memories of you; the busy town, the lonely settlers’ hut, the countless islands of the sea, all speak to us of you.”
An address from the Maoris in the Waimate was brought to him by their own Maori Priest which said:
“Sire our thought with regard to you is that you are like the poor man’s lamb, taken away by the rich man.... 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.... This is our lament for you in a 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 said:
170“You leave here these two peoples—the Maoris and the Europeans.... Go to your own country; go, the grace of God accompany you. Go on the face of the deep waters. Father 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 ...”
Selwyn left New Zealand full of hope for its future, confident that the Maori Church would revive and that “The remnant is taking root downwards and bearing fruit upwards.” He exhorted his Synod not to forget that remnant of the faithful Christian Maoris, saying that no increase of European population should make them “forget that it is still a remnant in the great congregation of Christ.” His departure from Auckland was a sort of triumph. All shops were shut, and he and Mrs. Selwyn, who was raised up aloft in a high seat, were dragged by four horses to the pier in a brilliantly coloured triumphal car, amidst the hurrahs of the excited people, the Bishop stretching out his hand for a last shake as he passed through them.
The pain of parting did not prevent him from looking on with eagerness to the work which lay before him. At Sydney he wrote to his dear friend, Judge Martin, and told how he had watched for the last time the familiar landmarks of the coast as he passed them, adding:
“And then the thought came upon me with great bitterness that I should never see the dear old land again. But 171 the mind has now settled down upon its new bearings, and the magnet of English interests and work begins to draw me on.”
Six months after he had left England he was back again, and at the age of 59 he settled down to the great new work that lay before him. With the details of that work we are not here concerned. During the ten years of his work as Bishop of Lichfield, he showed the same unbounded energy and devotion which had characterised his life in New Zealand. The experience gained there was turned to account in all he did and planned. From his clergy he demanded the same energy and devotion to work which he showed himself. He gave much attention to the training of the clergy and to the development of the Theological College which had been established at Lichfield. Sometimes he was considered exacting and hard because he demanded and expected so much of others. He had no patience with slackness and was not one to tolerate excuses. When a student to whom he remarked: “I have not seen you at chapel lately,” answered, “No, my Lord, I have had a bad cold,” he retorted: “I think your cold must have been bad since the beginning of term.” Always exact and punctual in keeping engagements himself, he could not tolerate failure in this respect in others. But the students recognized his anxiety 172 to help each one in the College and knew that he was unsparing of his time in guiding their studies. One of them writes:
“We felt as we went forth to our work that we knew our Bishop, and that he knew us.”
The missionary spirit which had inspired him in his work in New Zealand and Melanesia, found its opportunity in the work he did in the Potteries and the dark places of his diocese. It was inspired alike in the Pahs of the Maoris, in the Pacific islands and the slums of England, by his profound conviction that under every human skin God has planted a human heart, and that it is the business of God’s servants to go and find it. So he visited workhouses, gaols and infirmaries, and started a barge mission amongst the people on the canals.
Many great questions agitated the Church during the ten years of Selwyn’s English episcopate, and in all of them he took active part. He laboured especially to make the Councils of the Church a reality and to bring about that Synodical government which he had always believed to be so desirable. In consequence, he used his influence to promote a second Lambeth Conference, as a means of bringing into close federation all the branches of the Anglican Church. But as was to be expected what lay nearest to his heart was to make his Church a really missionary Church. 173 When he first came to Lichfield he found that about two-thirds of the parishes in his diocese did nothing for foreign missions, but he soon made Lichfield a centre of missionary activity for the whole Church and the place to which missionaries from far distant lands looked for help and counsel. No fewer than five missionary bishops were chosen from among the clergy in the Diocese. In 1871 at the invitation of the American Church, Selwyn went to the Triennial Convention held at Baltimore. Intercourse between the different branches of the Anglican Church was not then so close and intimate as Selwyn longed for it to be and as it has since become, partly through what he himself was able to accomplish. During the Convention, the American Board of Missions held its Jubilee, and to it Selwyn gave one of his great missionary addresses. He spoke of the coldness and backwardness shown in regard to Christian missions, which he attributed in part to the imputation of failure and asserted that there is no such thing as failure in the works of God, and asked how with the feeble efforts made, we could hope to evangelise the world; in part also he attributed this backwardness to the idea that there were races incapable of being taught, and contradicted this error by asserting “that there is not one single being on the face of God’s earth, who is shut out from the promises of the Gospel 174 by any difference of intellectual or of moral capacity.” This belief he was able to illustrate from his own experience. The success of missions he attributed to the fact that “missionaries had been found who, instead of expecting wild men to conform to ours have made our habits conformable to theirs, who have followed them from place to place and won their confidence, who have lived the same rough lives that they have lived.” He told the Americans of the immense privilege that was theirs, owing to their vast population, of undertaking the charge of the larger nations of the earth. The Bishop of Quebec, who was present on this occasion, spoke of it as the grandest missionary meeting he had ever witnessed, and said that Selwyn held the magnificent audience under the spell of his burning thoughts.
It was after Selwyn’s return from America, that he heard in the year 1871, the crushing news of the murder of Bishop Patteson in one of the Melanesian Islands. Patteson was dear to him as a son, he called him the most perfect of men, and the news which he felt to be so disastrous for the Melanesian Mission seemed to make him at once ten years older. Patteson’s death bore abundant fruit, for it attracted attention to the cause in which so gifted a man had laid down his life. Those who had scoffed at missions were forced to think, and when we compare the way 175 in which they were spoken of by Sidney Smith with the estimation in which they are held now, we can believe that the death of the martyr bishop was one of the causes of the change. Two years afterwards, Selwyn’s own son went out to work in the Pacific and in 1877 was chosen by the General Synod of New Zealand to be Bishop of Melanesia.
It is impossible here to give any account of Bishop Selwyn’s many activities and interests during these last busy years of his life. He never spared himself, nor sought the ease and comfort which he had long learned to do without. Sometimes his indignation with those unwilling to face hard work and self-denial showed itself in sharp and hasty words, which he afterwards regretted, for he was really one of the meekest and tenderest of men. To one whom he had reproved perhaps too sharply for neglected work he said: “I seem Sir, to have two duties to perform, first to take you down and then to take myself down.” Sir William Martin who had so closely watched his work in New Zealand wrote of him:
“To him work was no drudgery. He was the willing servant of a loving master; paying little regard to praise from men, rather turning aside from it, and giving to others the credit of what he had done or spoken well. There was no moroseness or asceticism about his religion. He enjoyed as few do, the beauty of the world. Being strong in faith he was daring, direct and fearless; stern too, when 176 sternness was needed; yet withal tender as a woman to the sick, the suffering, the penitent and to children.”
In March 1878 his splendid strength began to fail. But, though weak and suffering, he would not give in, and held a Confirmation at Shrewsbury on the 24th. When in the vestry someone remarked on the vigour he had shown, he answered: “Yes, but it was like holding on to a ship in a storm. I held on by my hands and feet.” Sinking into a chair he added, “The end is come.” This confirmation was his last public act. He went back to Lichfield the next day. Then came days of weakness and suffering during which he still followed the work going on in his diocese, and bade farewell to those near and dear to him. In his wanderings he thought of the work to be done and said: “I ought to be there, I fear I am getting idle.” When Sir William Martin came to see him, he turned to thoughts of New Zealand days. His beloved Maoris were present to his mind and he repeated several times “They will all come back.” Maori words rose to his lips in his wanderings and almost his last words were in Maori, “It is light.” He died on April 11th, 1878, glad to pass from his work to that fuller light in which he so fervently believed.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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