A GREAT BISHOP

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 152, 22 May 1942, Page 12

A GREAT BISHOP

Centenary of Selwyn AY 30 is the centenary of the landing of Bishop Selwyn in New Zealand, and this occasion will be marked by a special talk from 1YA at 7.15 p.m. on Wednesday, May 27. Characteristically, Selwyn had left the boat from which he had sailed from England at Sydney, and had embarked on the brig Bristolian in order to arrive the sooner to take up his work, If nineteenth century Britain is notable -as well it may befor the men of vigour and enterprise that it threw up and cast on to the far places of the earth, then Selwyn is notable among them. One can imagine him murmuring) like Cecil Rhodes, "So much to do, so little time to do it in," as he set about his work at the pace of a man determined never to miss a boat or an opportunity. For 26 years, his energy and unswerving purpose in Church organisation was felt by Maori and settler alike. Acknowledging no physical obstacles and girt with. exceptional physique and athletic prowess, he strode over hills and mountains, through bush and across rivers. In his first pastoral journey in New Zealand in 1843, he travelled 2,685 miles, 762 of them on foot. Equally characteristic of him was his determination to read as correct the error in his letters patent which, by defining the bounds of his see as up to so many degrees north instead of south, placed the whole of Melanesia under his pastoral care, In the assumption of this unintended burden he made a number of voyages in small and uncomfortable boats (later the special missionary boat, the Southern Cross, was purchased for the visits to the islands), at considerable personal risk to himself. Selwyn’s heart was in New Zealand, and particularly with the native peoples there and in the islands. In 1868, when he was first offered the see of Lichfield, he refused it. Only at the express request of Queen Victoria in a personal interview at Windsor Castle did oon accept the new office.