BISHOP SELWYN.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2859, 13 April 1878, Page 2

BISHOP SELWYN.

It is with a feeling of profound regret we hare to refer to the sad event communicated by calogram to-day—the death of Bishop Selwju. Throughout New Zealand and Australia this day there will be oue universal expression of sorrow at the news, and we question if the notification of a declaration of war would have caused more general or poignant regret. Amongst the native population of this Colony—and the Islands of the Pacific when the sad news reaches them —the death of the revered prelate will be greatly felt. Bishop Selwyn was so long identified with this Colony and the Polynesian Islauds in missionary work, and his humility and self-abnegation were so conspicuously displayed during the long years of his residence here, that it may be safely said New Zealand has lost one of the greatest men ever associated with her history or affairs. We feel utterly unable to do justice to the memory of the deceased prelate in an obituary notice of this character, while as to the principal events of his life, or such as could be touched upon in a newspaper's columns, we believe they are already pretty well known. Bishop Selwyn' had scarcely reached the allotted span of years —the three score years and ten—having been born in 1800; .. Consecrated first Bishop of New Zealand in 1841, he devoted himself to the mission work and founding the Church of England in New Zealand until 1867, when he went home on a visit. While at home he was offered the Bishopric of Lichfield by Earl Derby, but declined it, and afterwards accepted the same only at the personal solicitation of Her Majesty the Queen. At home he has worked as bard in his rocation and ministry as he did while in the Colony, and has been foremost in every good work. His demise .will be regarded as a public loss, and coming so soon after the domestic affliction which lately befel his son, the present Bishop of Melanesia, will be double painful to the latter. The feeling of regret for the death of Bishop Selwyn will only be equalled in intensity by the sympathy extended to his sorrowing relatives.