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.” 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.”

CHAPTER VI
CHURCH ORGANIZATION IN NEW ZEALAND

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 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 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 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.”