“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 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 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 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 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: