BISHOP SELWYN’S WORK IN ENGLAND FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS
The primary object of Selwyn’s visit to England was to make arrangements
for the organization of the Church in New Zealand. The result of his
efforts in that direction has been told in the last chapter. But his
visit to England was fruitful in other respects also. He had no
intention of lingering there, and had written from his ship on the way
to England to his friend, Rev. E. Coleridge:
“Do not urge me to prolong my stay, but use your influence to get my
work speedily done, and send me to my own element again.”
He reached England with Mrs. Selwyn in the Spring of 1854, just when the
Crimean War was beginning, but in spite of the pre-occupation of the
mind of the country with the war, his energy and eloquence gained him a
hearing for the spiritual needs of New Zealand. He spoke and preached in
many different places, and four sermons which he delivered before the
University of Cambridge created a specially deep impression. He told his
hearers that those who came back from the Mission Field were not likely
to be able to add anything to the store of learning at home, but that
they might be able to bring to them “some deep experience from the
fountains of the human heart, some glimpses of primitive Christianity
granted to the servants of God in their lonely mission-field.”
He dwelt much in these sermons on the need for unity in the Church at
home; it was not then a question of re-union with other denominations
which concerned him; that question had hardly arisen yet. It was unity
within the Church itself that he felt to be so urgent. The controversies
which were distracting it when he returned to England had made a very
painful impression upon him. With characteristic tact he attributed them
to the increased interest in religious questions roused by the two
movements which had sprung up in the Universities during his absence,
the Tractarian movement at Oxford and the Evangelical movement at
Cambridge. These movements had made so great a change in England in the
thirteen years that he had been away that he could say: “now it is a
very rare thing to see a careless clergyman or a neglected parish.” He
said that it was easy to see how Christian zeal tended to religious
strife whilst it led to greater zeal in seeking religious truth. The
cure for the evils of controversy which he offered to young men was “to
enter into life burning to do their duty in that state of life to which
God may call them.” “The best interpreter of Christian doctrine is
Christian work.” He added: “For instance, in our mission work, our
standard of necessary doctrine is, what we can translate into our native
languages, and explain to our native converts. This we know to be all
that is really necessary for their salvation.” This test would suffice
until the Church should be able to set up tribunals of doctrine to
decide “whether the increase of knowledge in the present day would allow
of stricter definitions or greater fulness of language.” Much that he
said bearing on the special difficulties of the time is of universal
application. “There is reason to fear that a great delusion often lurks
under the plea of conscience. An over-scrupulous conscience may often be
the mere veil for a lack of charity.” He spoke of how a true conception
of the Church would lead men to work amongst the poor and the outcast;
“to deal with every single soul as if our own lives depended upon the
issue. If this be done the Church will soon by God’s blessing reabsorb
all dissent within herself, for every sect is still part of the Church.”
He believed that the great work given us by God to do was “too vast and
too important to be lost in unprofitable discussion.”
From thoughts of the Church’s work at home he passed on to her work in
the Colonies, and spoke of the call to provide for the spiritual needs
of the emigrants who were leaving England in thousands to people the new
lands overseas, and of how the Church had at first neglected this task.
England “had enlarged her empire but she had not extended her Church; it
was the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel alone that at first
helped to save the settlers from the guilt of first destroying their
native brethren, and then abjuring religion and denying God.” He spoke
of the need for “men of energy, and piety, and learning in every colony”
and said that the Church would be disgraced for ever if it neglected
either the needs of the poor at home or of the settlers overseas. He
urged the men listening to him not “to forget, in the comforts of home,
what it is to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ”; adding “I forbear to
speak of myself because it has pleased God to cast my lot in a fair land
and in a goodly heritage, in the healthful climate of New Zealand and
among the clustered isles and on the sparkling waves of the Pacific.
There is too much real enjoyment for me to be able to invite anyone to
unite himself with me as an exercise of ministerial self-denial.”
He described the kind of men who were wanted in the Colonies: “men who
can live in the midst of disturbing elements and yet themselves remain
unshaken ... men who can stamp upon a new community an image of
themselves, and yet give to God all the glory ... men who can be
dependent upon their congregations, without being subservient; and bold
in rebuking sin, yet gentle in their admonition of the sinner. Above
all, we need men who can stand alone, like heaven-descended priests of
the Most High God, where a few shepherds feed their scattered flocks,
with no comforter but the Spirit of God—no friend but their ever present
Lord.” He was convinced that there were such minds amongst those
listening to him. “But they are as backward to offer as the Church is
backward to call. One or other must break through this natural reserve.
Offer yourselves to the Archbishop as twelve hundred young men have
already offered themselves to the commander-in-chief. Let the head of
our Church have about him, as his staff, or on his list of volunteers, a
body of young men, who are willing to go anywhere, and be anything.”
In his last sermon he spoke of work amongst the heathen. “There, too,
above all things, there was need for unity, ‘a real and visible unity’;
no inward and spiritual unity can act as an outward evidence: the keen
sighted native convert soon detects a difference of system.... We make a
rule never to introduce controversy among a native people, or to impair
the simplicity of their faith. If the fairest openings for missionary
effort lie before us, if the ground has been pre-occupied by any other
religious body, we forbear to enter. And I can speak with confidence
upon this point from observation ranging over nearly one-half of the
Southern Pacific Ocean, that wherever this law of religious unity is
adopted, there the Gospel has its full and unchecked and undivided
power. Nature itself has so divided our Mission Field that each labourer
may work without interference with his neighbour. Each island circled
with its own coral reef, is a field in which each missionary may carry
out his own system with native teachers trained under his own eye....
Many of these islands I visited in their days of darkness, and therefore
I can rejoice in the light that now bursts upon them, from whatever
quarter it may come. I feel that there is an episcopate of love, as well
as of authority ... above all things it is our duty to guard against
inflicting upon them the curse of our disunion, lest we make every
little island in the ocean a counterpart of our own divided and
contentious Church. And further I would point to the Mission Field as
the great outlet for the excited and sensitive spirit of the Church at
home. There are minds, by nature intolerant of rule, in whom not even
the spirit of the Gospel can implant an acquiescence in anything which
they believe to be an error.... Such men would be the very salt of the
earth, if they would but go out into the Mission Field.... They would
find satisfaction for their zeal in its free and unbounded range ... the
work itself will humble them ... will correct its own errors.... Is it
then a hope too unreasonable to be entertained that the power which will
heal the divisions of the Church at home, may come from her distant
fields of missionary work?... Let it be no longer a reproach to the
universities that they have sent so few missionaries to the heathen.”
These four sermons are a revelation of Selwyn’s inmost mind, whilst they
have a special interest of their own as throwing light on the condition
of the Church both at home and overseas in the middle of the nineteenth
century. They reveal his deepest thoughts on the questions which the
experiences of his own varied life had brought to him, as he dwelt on
them during his long voyages and his many journeys on horse and foot
through the wilds of New Zealand. They show us what the man had become,
what life had taught him; they tell of his hopes for his Church and its
work throughout the world.
These and his other sermons and addresses given during his visit to
England aroused much interest and produced a deep impression. One young
man after hearing his appeal, being possessed of £12,000 offered it all
to the Bishop for his work. The Bishop, however, refused to profit by
what might only be a passing impulse and would not accept it. He needed
money for his work, but still more he needed men, men of the right sort,
and to his great joy, one young man, of just the kind he needed, was
amongst the fruits of this visit to England. John Coleridge Patteson,
fellow of Merton College, and now working as a curate in Devon, had long
cherished the desire for mission work overseas. It had been aroused in
him by Selwyn’s farewell sermon at Windsor, when he was still an Eton
school boy. But he had felt it right to stay in England as long as his
father, who was old and in poor health, lived. Now it came about that he
met Bishop Selwyn whilst he was visiting his father, Judge Patteson, an
old friend. Walking with him in the garden, the Bishop asked him if his
life satisfied him, and Patteson told him of his desire at some future
time to go out as a missionary. The Bishop replied that if he really
meant this, he ought not to put it off, he should go when in full
strength and vigour. They talked long and earnestly and finally Patteson
agreed to leave the decision in the hands of his father and the Bishop.
When Sir John Patteson heard of his son’s wish, his first exclamation
was: “I can’t let him go”; but it was followed in a moment with the
words: “God forbid I should stop him.” When finally he spoke to the
Bishop on the subject he said: “Mind, I give him wholly, not with any
thought of seeing him again. I will not have him thinking he must come
home again to see me.” Selwyn thankfully accepted the gift. With his
whole heart he invited Patteson to come and work with him, saying, that
it would be a great comfort to have him for a friend and companion.
It would seem as if from the first Selwyn saw in young Patteson the man
he needed as Bishop of Melanesia. The same week that he received
Patteson’s offer, he wrote an appeal to his friend, Rev. E. Coleridge,
to help in raising the money needed for this bishopric. He said that if
only the organization of the Church in New Zealand had been a little
more advanced, he would gladly have undertaken the charge of Melanesia
as his own diocese. The sum of £10,000 for which he asked was speedily
collected. One of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Melanesian
Mission was Miss Yonge, the novelist, a close friend of the Pattesons.
Later on she gave the whole proceeds of one of her most popular books,
_The Daisy Chain_, to the support of the Mission. Now the readers of
_The Heir of Redcliffe_, which first won her popularity, made a special
contribution to help to raise funds to provide a new vessel, the
_Southern Cross_, for Selwyn’s use.
The Bishop had hoped to return to New Zealand in the _Southern Cross_,
but there proved to be faults in its construction, and its departure was
so much delayed that he was obliged to start on March 29th, 1855, in a
quicker vessel, leaving the _Southern Cross_ to follow. He had spent ten
busy months in England and though deeply grieved at parting from his
aged father whom he could not hope to see again, he was eager to get
back to his work.
Mrs. Selwyn and Patteson went with him, his two sons had to be left in
England for their education. The necessary parting from them was a
bitter grief, but he had faced what it would be some years before, on
the death of a baby daughter whom in his busy life he had only known for
twelve days. He had then written:
“I cannot and must not look to children as a source of personal and
domestic enjoyment, but may hope to rejoice, if it be God’s will, in
reports of their well doing.”
Patteson’s companionship was now a great source of joy and consolation.
He wrote:
“Coley Patteson is a treasure which I humbly set down as a divine
recompense for our own boys.”
He said of him that he possessed the three indispensable requisites for
his special task: “the sailor’s gift of enduring hardness, the priest’s
gift of drawing men by cords of love and detaining them by gentle
discipline, the linguist’s gift of quickly mastering many dissimilar
tongues.”
They reached Auckland sooner than was expected by their friends there. A
strange vessel was discerned threading all the intricacies of the
harbour, without having fired the gun for a pilot, and at once people
began to say: “there must be someone on board who knows what he is
about, and all the tides and currents of the harbour; and who so likely
as the Bishop.” His friends thought he looked dreadfully worn on his
arrival. Every one was painfully struck with his appearance, but the
cause was soon discovered. He had been up for two or three nights
piloting the ship down the coast and through all the islets. He soon
recovered his good looks and it was gladly recognised that he “was all
the better for English air and for the bracing of mind and body” that
his journey had given him.
Bishop Selwyn could now look forward to working under new and more
satisfactory conditions. The next few years saw the final steps taken
for the complete organization of the Church in New Zealand which has
been described in the last chapter. Instead of having the whole charge
of New Zealand he would now have four other Bishops working with him, as
well as duly organized synods by means of which the laity too would
share in the work of the Church. The lands which he had been careful to
acquire as sites for churches and to provide endowments could now be
vested in trustees, and proper attention could be paid to the rapidly
increasing number of colonists, attracted specially during recent years
by the discovery of gold in the Southern Island.