. The bright hopes of Marsden and of Selwyn have not
yet been realised, but many saintly souls have been gathered in, and a
faithful remnant still survives to hand on the light.

CHAPTER XVI.

AFTER THE WAR. THE COLONISTS.

(1868-1878).

The heart less bounding at emotion new;
And hope, once crushed, less quick to spring again.
--_M. Arnold._

If the religious condition of the Maoris was such as to cause lasting
grief to their teachers, there was not much in white New Zealand to
relieve the picture. For the crash of the war period had been even
greater than the foregoing pages have shown. Nothing has been said about
the troubles at Nelson, where the earnest and faithful Bishop Hobhouse
broke down under the factious opposition of his laity; nothing of the
depression which stopped the building of Christchurch Cathedral, and led
to the proposal for the sale of the site for government offices; nothing
of the closing of St. John's College at Auckland, as well through lack
of students as through lack of funds. But something must be said about
one trouble which had begun before Selwyn's departure, but reached its
acutest phase during the years that followed:

The colony of Otago, though founded as a Presbyterian settlement,
contained from the first a few English churchmen; and at the beginning
of 1852 an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. J. Fenton, began work in
Dunedin. He was greatly helped by the famous whaler "Johnny Jones," who
afterwards gave 64 sections of land in his own township of Waikouaiti as
an endowment for a church in that place.

When Bishop Harper was appointed to the see of Christchurch in 1856,
Otago and Southland formed part of his diocese, and his long journeys on
horseback through these districts were among the most arduous and
adventurous labours of his episcopate. He retained them until June 4th,
1871, when, as primate, he consecrated the Rev. S. T. Neville to the
bishopric of Dunedin; and on the same day, as bishop, resigned these
southern portions of his original diocese.

But there was another claimant to the office--one, moreover, who was
considered by the English episcopate to be its rightful occupant. How
could such an extraordinary situation have arisen? The blame must lie
(as Bishop W. L. Williams points out) somewhere between Bishop Selwyn
and the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Longley). Something that was
written by the former in 1865 caused the latter to select, and
event