Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/160

134 of Bible and Prayerbook into the Maori tongue, and in so doing, in fact, creating the Maori written language and establishing its grammar. I may just mention the honoured names of Williams and Maunsell, amongst others, who were pioneers of Christianity in New Zealand. In 1842 Bishop George Augustus Selwyn arrived; New Zealand had been formally recognized by the Home Government as a British Colony; a Governor was resident in Auckland, which was rapidly becoming a place of importance. The Bishop came with Royal Letters Patent, constituting him Bishop of New Zealand; his income partly contributed by the Church Missionary Society and partly by the British Government. So far there was a semblance of Church Establishment for a short time, so long as New Zealand was a Crown Colony but this state of things was soon superseded by the granting of a Constitutional Government to the Colony, with its own Houses of Legislature. This, in effect, did away with the legal relationship between Church and State, such as it had been, and despite the Letters Patent, the Church became simply a religious body in the country, responsible to itself for its own good government. This state of things was realized even in those early days by such a far-seeing man as Selwyn, who set himself to meet the altered circumstances of the Church. With the aid of trained legal minds, such as Chief Justice Sir William Martin, Mr. Swainson, and others, he drafted a form of Constitution for Church Government. It explicitly declared, on the part of the Church in New Zealand, its adherence to the doctrines and Sacraments of the Church of England and Ireland, whilst it made provision for self-government. This was laid before a Convention of Church people,