he had governed
entered upon a new phase. It was no longer _one_ in the sense in which
it had been one. It still had a general synod, and it soon elected
another primate. But no primate could be what Selwyn had been to the
Church. He had watched the beginnings of every diocese, and had
shepherded in person every settlement before it attained to diocesan
status. The general synod was no real substitute for the influence of
such a personality. It meets but once in three years; its numbers are
small; its powers are limited. The real life of the Church has lain in
the dioceses, and it is in diocesan histories that its own subsequent
history must be found.[16]

[16] It is to be hoped that such histories may soon be taken in hand.
That of the diocese of Waiapu has already been compiled by J. B.
Fielder, Esq., and I would wish to express my obligations to him for
lending me the manuscript of his work.

But the change went deeper still. Hitherto the Church had tried in
various ways to exhibit the Christian life in some visible polity or
order. But the spirit of competition and commercialism had been too
strong for her. The "smash" of the war period left the Church too weak
to attempt to mould the forms of the nation's life. All that she had
strength to do was to proclaim the old message to the individual soul;
to gather together the faithful for worship and instruction; and to act
the part of an ambulance waggon in the rear of the industrial march.
Her influence may have been really stronger than before: it probably
has been so; but it has been indirect, and it has been unseen.
Humanitarian legislation owes more to Christian teaching than its
authors generally admit, and it is by the humanitarian legislation of
the last twenty years that New Zealand has chiefly influenced the world.
Selwyn's successor in the primacy was Bishop Harper, of Christchurch;
his successor in the episcopal see of Auckland was Dr. W. G. Cowie; his
successor in the work of nation-building and social organisation
was--with whatever difference and at whatever interval--Richard John
Seddon.

But this lay in the future. The immediately succeeding phase of colonial
life presents the same contrast with that of the Selwynian period as
does the Hanoverian _regime_ with that of the Stuarts. It was the period
of immigration and of public works. New men came to the front--men who
did not know the indebtedness of the colony to the missionaries. New
idea