inistry.

At peace with Henry Williams and the other missionaries; at peace with
the Church Missionary Society; at peace with the Canterbury colonists,
and secure in the loyal friendship of their bishop; he could now press
forward with a project which had long occupied his thoughts, viz., the
binding together of the varied elements of the Church into one united
and organised whole.

NOTE.--As throwing light upon the proposed bishoprics mentioned in
this chapter, and also as showing the thoughts which were at this time
passing through Bishop Selwyn's mind, it may be well to quote the
following passage from a letter written by him in England to his
friend the Rev. E. Coleridge (Aug. 14, 1854):

"If the organisation of the New Zealand Church had been a little more
advanced towards completion, I should gladly have availed myself of
the consent already obtained to the appointment of the Venerable
Archdeacon Abraham to succeed me in the See of Auckland; the
archdeaconries of Wellington, Waiapu, and Tauranga being, as it is
proposed, erected into bishoprics, and placed under the episcopal care
of the present Archdeacons Hadfield, W. Williams, and Brown. Knowing
the difficulties which are thought to stand in the way of the creation
of missionary bishoprics, I should then have gladly undertaken the
charge of Melanesia as my own diocese, retaining only such an interest
in New Zealand as might connect me still with the councils of its
Church, and give me a central home and resting-place among my own
countrymen."

The boldness and grandeur of this scheme have hardly been sufficiently
realised. An ecclesiastical province divided into small dioceses, with
missionaries at their head, and its primate spending his time in the
foreign mission field: what an object lesson to the whole Church New
Zealand would have presented!

CHAPTER XII.

ORGANISATION AND PROGRESS.

(1850-1859).

The inward life must not be separated in practice from the external
unity of the body of Christ. The law of unity is the essence of its
strength, its purity, and its holiness.
--_Bishop Selwyn._

"The urgent necessity of mutual communion for preservation of our unity
... maketh it requisite that the Church of God here on earth have her
_laws_." So wrote the judicious Hooker in that immortal work which came
to Bishop Selwyn as a legacy from his great predecessor, Samuel Marsden.
The bish