CENTENARY YEAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 May 1942, Page 4

CENTENARY YEAR

* LANDING OF BISHOP SELWYN. CELEBRATION THIS MONTH. A commemoration of great interest to members of the Anglican Church will take place on Saturday, May 30, when services are to be held at Judge’s Bay to mark the landing there of 1 Bishop George Augustus Selwyn on his arrival from England 100 years ago. The appointment of a bishop to New Zealand followed closely upon the establishment of British sovereignty and came 27 years after the Rev. Samuel Marsden had left the first missionaries 1 at the Bay of Islands. Selwyn, who had had a distinguished career at Eton and Cambridge, was consecrated in Lambeth Palace Chapel on October 17, 1841, and set sail from Plymouth in the barque Tomatin on December 26. The barque reached Sydney on April 14, but went aground in the harbour and was damaged. Being impatient to get to his diocese, Selwyn obtained passages for himself and a few of his party in a small brig, the Bristolian, which sailed for Auckland five days later and arrived at Auckland on May 30, 1842. Selwyn’s first act was to kneel down on the sand and give thanks to God. Then as the sun rose he climbed the hill to the small house of his friend the Chief Justice Mr (later Sir) William Martin, who had arrived the previous September and whose wife had come out in the Tomatin to join him. The next day the bishop went to stay with the Governor and Mrs Hobson. The following Sunday he conducted service in the Auckland courthouse, there being as yet no church, and delighted the natives present by using Maori as well as English. Thus began Selwyn’s 26 strenuous years of work in New Zealand. When he sailed from Auckland in October, 1868, to take up his duties as Bishop of Lichfield, the colony had been subdivided into six dioceses, the missionary diocese of Melanesia had been established, five bishops were holding office and the Church had been provided with a democratic constitution that served as a model to other parts of the Anglican Communion. The centenary celebrations will begin with Holy Communion at 7 a.m. in the historic little St. Stephen’s Chapel, which Selwyn erected near his landing place. In the afternoon a procession’of (bishops, clergy and laity will march (from St. Mary’s Cathedral to Judge’s Bay, where a thanksgiving service will be held.