No one can write about Bishop Selwyn without expressing great indebtedness to the Rev. H. W. Tucker whose _Memoir_ of the Bishop, founded on the letters and papers entrusted to him by the Bishop’s family, contains most of what can be known about him. In this little book I have freely used Mr. Tucker’s _Memoir_, indeed the book could not have been written without it. I have consulted many other books bearing on the history of New Zealand and Melanesia, but my object has been to write about Selwyn, and about New Zealand and Melanesia only so far as they concerned him. I have tried to show what manner of man he was by telling of what he did and said, and to let him reveal himself by his own words and by his letters, rather than to attempt to explain him in my own words. I cannot claim to have had access to any new material, I have only selected from what is already published that which will enable my readers to learn something of the life and work of a man of distinguished gifts and a great leader in the Church. Louise Creighton. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE Birth 1809. Ordained Deacon 1833. Consecrated Bishop of New Zealand 1841. Reaches New Zealand 1842. First Voyage to the Pacific 1847. Visit to England 1854. The Maori War 1862-1865. Second Visit to England 1867. Bishop of Lichfield 1868. Death 1878. INTRODUCTION The life of George Augustus Selwyn has many lessons to teach us. In the position which he was called upon to fill, there were exceptional opportunities which his own natural gifts enabled him to meet in an exceptional way. He showed himself to be not only a devoted missionary and a capable organizer, but a statesman, able to grasp a big situation and to lay wise foundations for the future. As a missionary bishop, he had the care of a specially virile and promising race in the Maoris, and of the other very varied races that inhabited the countless islands of the Pacific. But he had also to provide for the spiritual needs of the colonists who came to his diocese in ever growing numbers, attracted by the rich promise of New Zealand. The claims made upon his time and thought by the colonists, the Maoris and the islanders had all to be met and adjusted, and in the midst of all the urgent demands for the pressing work of each moment, he had to be building up the church of the future. He could not think only of the native Church. His call was not only to be a missionary, to bring the heathen to Christ, but also to lay the foundations of a Church which was to witness to Christ in a land destined for a great future, as part of the British Empire. He had to consider how black and white could be welded into one nation, and into one Church. His could not be the simple straightforward task of the teacher or the evangelist. Yet he was ever at heart a missionary, animated by a true sense of vocation.