DEATH OF BISHOP SELWYN.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5319, 13 April 1878, Page 3

DEATH OF BISHOP SELWYN.

The announcement contained in onr telegraphic columns to-day of the death of the Eight Eeverend Doctor George Augustus Selwyn, Lord Bishop of Lichfield, will be received with very sincere sorrow throughout this colony. Amongst the many eminent men on the Bench of English Bishops there are none who bore a higher character as a Christian, a scholar, and a gentleman than the Bishop of Lichfield, and his name will be ever identified ■with the history of New Zealand, of which colony he was the first Anglican Bishop; and the Church has been greatly indebted to his indefatigable labors, which were not confined to New Zealand, but extended over the whole of the islands in the South Pacific. He never spared himself in his efforts to spread Christianity amongst the uncivilised inhabitants of Polynesia. Ha was a great traveller, and in the early days of the settlement of the colony underwent many hardships and encountered many dangers, and was ever the friend of the weaker race. During our troubles with the Maoris he, in keeping with his Christian character, always advocated peace. When the Waikato war was raging. Bishop Selwyn was zealous in the work of his Master, and was never deterred by any consideration for his personal safety from prosecuting the duties of his sacred calling. In the days when rivers were hnbridged and roads almost unknown, Bishop Selwyn travelled from one end of the country to the other, and many are the stories of his pluck and endurance. He was the highest stamp of man to carry on missionary work. Bishop Selwyn arrived in Auckland, in the Britomart, in 1842. He visited England in 1853, and again in 1867, when he was appointed Bishop of Lichfield, which high appointment he accepted with reluctance (owing to his attachment to this colony), and we believe only consented to take the English Bishopric at the personal request of his Sovereign. He returned to New Zealand in 1867, and was on board the Taranaki when she was wrecked in the entrance to Tory Channel He left New Zealand again in 1868 to take the Bishopric of Lichfield. A son of the deceased prelate is the present Bishop of Melanesia.' We extract the following paragraph from l; Men of the Time “ Selwyn, the Eight Rev. George Augustus, D.D., Bishop of Lichfield, son of the late William Selwyn, Esq., of Richmond, Surrey, barn in 1809, was educated at Eton and St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he took his degrees as junior optime in mathematics and first-class in classic. While acting as tutor at Eton and curate of Windsor, in 1841, he was consecrated first Bishop of New Zealand. He gained the respect and admiration of the natives, and in the course of his missionary journeys guided a small ship many thousand miles to and from the scattered islands of the Southern Pacific. In 1857 he succeeded m obtaining from Government a division of his diocese. He was appointed Bishop of Lichfield in December, 1867.”