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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.