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Useful Industry and Muscular Christianity: George Augustus Selwyn and His Early Years as Bishop of New Zealand

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Allan K. Davidson
Allan K. Davidson*
Affiliation:
St John’s College, Auckland, New Zealand
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Extract

Charles Kingsley in 1855 gave the following dedication to his novel, Westward Ho!:

To the Rajah Sir James Brooke, K.C.B., and George Augustus Selwyn, D.D., Bishop of New Zealand this book is dedicated, by one who (unknown to them) has no other method of expressing his admiration and reverence for their characters.

That type of English virtue, at once manful and godly, practical and enthusiastic, prudent and self-sacrificing, which he has tried to depict in these pages, they have exhibited in a form even purer and more heroic than that in which he has drest it.

Brooke, the adventurer, soldier, and colonial administrator, and Selwyn, the missionary colonial bishop, appealed to Kingsley as exemplars of what he called ‘Christian manliness’. One of Kingsley’s reviewers, T. C. Sandars, described Kingsley as ‘spreading the knowledge and fostering the love of a muscular Christianity’. The defining characteristics of this ‘muscular Christianity’, a term with which Kingsley was uneasy, were ‘an association between physical strength, religious certainty, and an ability to shape and control the world around oneself’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 37: The Use and Abuse of Time in Christian History , 2002 , pp. 289 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2002

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References

1 Charles Kingsley, Dedication to Westward Ho!, Feb. 1855.

2 Sandars’, T. C. review of Kingsley’s Two Years Ago (1857 Google Scholar), cited in Hall, Donald E., ‘Muscular Christianity: reading and writing the male social body’, in idem, ed., Muscular Christianity. Embodying the Victorian Age (Cambridge, 1994), p. 7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Ibid.

4 Davidson, Allan K., Selwyn’s Legacy. The College of St John the Evangelist, Te Waimate and Auckland, 1843–1992, A History (Auckland, 1993), pp. 10–11, 16, 68–9 Google Scholar.

5 Vance, Norman, The Sinews of the Spirit. The Ideal of Christian Manliness in Victorian Literature and Religious Thought (Cambridge, 1985), p. 24 Google Scholar.

6 Allen, Dennis W., ‘Young England: muscular Christianity and the politics of the body in “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”’, in Hall, ed., Muscular Christianity, p. 126 Google Scholar.

7 Tucker, H. W., Memoir of the Life ana Episcopate of George Augustus Selwyn, 2 vols, (London, 1879 Google Scholar), 2: 382.

8 Ibid., 1: 6.

9 Ibid., 1: 7.

10 Ibid., 1: 11.

11 Ibid., 1: 18.

12 Vance, Sinews of the Spirit, p. 26.

13 Tucker, Selwyn, 1: 15.

14 Curteis, G. H., Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand and Lichfield (London, 1889), p. 11 Google Scholar.

15 Tucker, Selwyn, 1. 24.

16 BL, MS Add 44,299, fols 77–8: G. A. Selwyn to W. E. Gladstone, Eton College, Windsor, 20 May 1841.

17 Tucker, Selwyn, 1: 65.

18 Auckland, , Museum Library (hereafter AML): ‘Reminiscences by Mrs S. H. Selwyn 1809–1867’, typescript (Auckland, 1961), p. 13 Google Scholar.

19 Auckland, St John’s College (hereafter SJC), Mise Arch 17/1: Edward Coleridge, ‘Account of the Dinner and Meeting at Eton and Windsor on the 30th and 31st Oct 1841’.

20 AML, Selwyn Papers, MS 273, vol. 5, typescript, pp. 4–6: [T. Whytehead,] ‘Journal kept by one of the passengers on board the Tormatin with extracts from Bishop Selwyn’s letters, Dec. 26 1841 to 11 Nov. 1842’.

21 AML, MS 273, vol. 1, typescript, p. 6: G. A. Selwyn to his mother, Tormatin, 18 Jan. 1842, Lat. 6 N., Long. 21 W.

22 SJC, Selwyn Papers, Mise Arch 9/10, vol. 2, p. 2: Sarah Selwyn to her aunt, Tormatin, 18 Jan. 1842.

23 Wellington, Alexander Tumbull Library (hereafter ATL), Microfilm MS501: William Bambridge, Journal, 3 Jan. 1842.

24 Ibid., 20 April 1843.

25 Tucker, Selwyn, 1: 132.

26 ATL: Bambridge, Journal, 31 Aug. 1843.

27 Tucker, Selwyn, 1: 134.

28 Ibid., pp. 134–5; I Thess. 4.11; II Thess. 3.8; I Thess. 2.9; Acts 20.34.

29 Tucker, Selwyn, 1: 135.

30 Ibid., 1: 136.

31 Ibid., 1: 138.

32 [ Selwyn, G. A.,] A Journai of the Bishop’s Visitation Tour Through His Diocese, Church in the Colonies, 20 (London, 1849), p. 23 Google Scholar.

33 Selwyn, G. A., An Idea of a Colonial College. A Sermon Preached in the Chapel of St. John the Divine, Bishop’s Auckland (Eton, 1848), p. 8 Google Scholar.

34 SJC, MS 10/5/10, p. 9: Edward Hammond, ‘Personal Reminiscences of Bishop Selwyn’.

35 AML, Microfilm 35: William Cotton, Journal, 4 Sept. 1844.

36 AML, Microfilm 36: ibid., 12 Feb. 1845.

37 Ibid., 4 March 1845.

38 AML, MS 273, vol. 1, p. 183: G. A. Selwyn to [E. Coleridge], St John’s College, 30 Nov. 1847.

39 SJC: Hammond, ‘Reminiscences’, pp. 19–21.

40 Ibid., p. 24.

41 ATL, MS Microfilm 194: John Greenwood, Diary 1850–5, 17 July 1852.

42 AML, MS 283, p. 167: Thomas Henry Smith, Letters to his brother, 22 June 1847.

43 Ibid., 25 Nov. 1847, p. 233.

44 Ibid., 6 Jan. 1848, p. 256.

45 Porter, Frances, ed., The Turanga Journals 1840–1850. Letters and Journals of William and Jane Williams, Missionaries to Poverty Bay (Wellington, 1974), p. 395 Google Scholar.

46 Ibid., p. 425.

47 Garrett, Helen, Te Manihera. The Life and Times of the Pioneer Missionary Robert Maunsell (Auckland, 1991), p. 166 Google Scholar.

48 Davidson, Selwyn’s Legacy, pp. 67–9, 78–81.

49 ATL, MS J. F. Lloyd Papers 1786, Folder 1: J. F. Lloyd to Ellen [F. Lloyd], Auckland, 28 Dec. 1853.

50 Ibid.

51 ATL, Greenwood, Diary, 12 Feb. 1850.

52 AML, MS 335, A/3, f.220: William Leonard Williams to Jane Williams, St John’s College, 13 Feb. 1847.

53 ATL, Greenwood, Diary, 12 Feb. 1850.

54 Woods, Sybil M., Samuel Williams of Te Aule (Christchurch, 1981), p. 69 Google Scholar.

55 AML, MS 85, typescript: Cotton, Journal, 21 Aug. 1845.

56 AML, MS 273, vol. 2, p. 551: Sarah Selwyn to Mrs Coleridge, Te Waimate, 3 July 1844.

57 Ibid., p. 687: Mary Ann Martin to Edward Coleridge, Taurarua, 11 Aug. 1845.

58 SJC: Hammond, ‘Reminiscences’, p. 9.

59 Drummond, Alison, The Auckland Journals of Vicesimus Lush 1850–63 (Christchurch, 1971), p. 89 Google Scholar.

60 SJC: Hammond, ‘Reminiscences’, p. 39.

61 SJC, Australian Joint Copying Project (hereafter AJCP), Microfilm 1095: G. A. Selwyn to E. Coleridge, St John’s College, 27 Jan. 1847.

62 Laracy, Hugh, ‘Selwyn in Pacific perspective’, in Limbrick, Warren, ed., (Palmerston North, 1983), p. 121 Google Scholar.

63 SJC, CMS Correspondence, AJCP Microfilm 228, Reel 56: Robert Maunsell, Annual letter, Kohanga, Waikato River, 19 Jan. 1857.

64 Tucker, Selwyn, 1: 281.

65 Ibid., 1: 375.

66 Ibid., 2: 13.

67 Hilliard, David, God’s Gentlemen. A History of the Melanesian Mission 1849–1942 (St Lucia, 1978 Google Scholar).

68 Sohmer, Sarah H., ‘Christianity without civilization: Anglican sources for an alternative nineteenth-century mission methodology’, Journal of Religious History, 18 (1994), p. 193 Google Scholar.

69 Tucker, Selwyn, 2: 239.

70 Evans, J. H., Churchman Militant. George Augustus Selwyn Bishop of New Zealand and Lichfield (Wellington, 1964), pp. 252–3 Google Scholar.

71 Sharp, C. A., ed., The Dillon Letters. The Letters of the Hon. Constantine Dillon 1842–1853 (Wellington, 1954), p. 89 Google Scholar.

72 Davidson, Selwyn’s Legacy, pp. 109, 129, 135, 153, 160, 220.

73 Evans, Selwyn, pp. 191–2.

74 ‘Bishop Selwyn’, New Zealand Methodist, 20 July 1889, p. 1.

75 [ Selwyn, G. A.], A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of New Zealand, at the Diocesan Synod, in the Chapel of St John’s College, on Thursday, September 23, 1847 (London, 1849), pp. 104–5 Google Scholar.

76 Tucker, Selwyn, 2: 380.