G. A. Selwyn, D.D.: Bishop of New Zealand and Lichfield

by Louise Creighton

“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.