NEW BISHOP OF MELANESIA.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1374, 27 February 1912, Page 4

NEW BISHOP OF MELANESIA.

THE REV. C. J. WOOD NOMINATED.

18l raleeraon.—lTd«b Association,l Auckland, February 2G. Cabled advice has been received that' the delegates appointed to select a man for Hie Bishopric of Melanesia, in succession to Uishup Wilson, liavo nominated the liev. Cecil John Wood, ol' Clergy House, Wimbledon. Mr. Wood is only iiti years old, but is noted for his scholastic. attainments. 110 was scholar ami exhibitioner of St. Peter's, Cambridge. Ho left the position of curate of St. Andrew's Church, liethnal Crcon, to become curate at Clergy Ilou-o, Wimbledon, which position he now holds, being the senior of eight curates. The I'ri mato of New Zealand lias been notified of the selection, and will shortly fix the date of consecration, which will take place at Auckland.

The dioceso of Alelanesia forms part of the 'Church of the Province of New Zealand, "The Melanesian Mission," said the Archbishop of Canterbury recently, "has always had a character of its own, and has been sanctified for ever by the life and death of Bishop Patteson, as well as by tlio devoted labours of the Bishops Selwyn, father and son." Its headquarters are on Norfolk Island, off tlio northern coast of New Zealand, and its sphere extends as far as the Solomon Islands in the north. The basis of the work, as founded by G. A. Sclwyn, first Bishop of New Zealand, hns been the training of the Natives themselves in schools on Norfolk Island, to become teachers of their own people. The work on tho islands has been carried on by the Bishop and other missionaries going to arid fro in the Southern Cross, the mission shin. Considerable progress has been mado towards the erection of a new central school for training Native teachers; and a hospital, in memory of tho late Dr. Wolchnian, and a memorial church to the second Bishop, John Solwyn, aro to be built on Florida, in the Solomon Islands, and it is probable that in (lie future the headquarters of the Mission will be in these islands, and not on Norfolk Island. Bishop Wilson rc- ' signed in 1911, to make way for an mimarried Hishop who could spend his whole time travelling. Since the martyrdom of the first Bishop, John Coleridge Patteson, in 1871, five others have laid down their lives for tho faith. Tho Mission has published very interesting books on the history and work in Melanesia, and Miss C. M. Yonge's "Life of Patteson" remains olio of the most touching of modern biagraphies.