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    lievers bowed was the crown of thorns ;—when wealth and worldly consideration , and courtly flatteries and the blandishments of the great , were no * the attributes and the appanages of priests and confessors , and the livery of bishops was not the consecration of " repose " But how has the Bishop of New Zealand revived at the antipodes the type forgotten and effaced at home ? Simply by living , and working out the faith he preached and the doctrine he taught . Armed -with no other authority than the word of his message—a message of good tidings—he has stood before the savages the living symbol of active faith ; and the presence of a sincerity so energetic , and a purpose so heroic , has won thousands upon whom words and formulas would have been as chaff before the wind .

    Unlike too many missionaries , Bishop Selwyn began his work at the right end : he laboured to humanise before seeking to convert ; he taught the savages how a being with a mind and soul should live towards his fellowman before he attempted to ingraft a new theory upon an old superstition . He first conciliated his rude disciples to the sublime privilege of intelligence , and to the responsibilities of reason and conscience , and only by slow but sure degrees moulded the thinker into the believer . Others have been , idly content to strew over th e confused terrors and aspirations that make up the aboriginal religion , a thin layer of evangelical formulas , as if conformity were Christianity . The result has been to substitute an ingenious hypocrisy and a lifeless vacancy for the rude but sincere sense of awe and mystery which had surrounded the life and consoled the death of the savage . Bishop Selwyn taught and proved to his untutored congregations that civilisation was not necessarily disease and -vice , nor Christianity a cloak for systematic rapine and aggression : that the Ch urch was not a government expropriator , nor a colonial quack in a sanctimonious disguise ; but , on the contrary , a bond of reconciliation , an authority of intercession , and a law of charity . We cannot wonder that New Zealand should be appealed to as a proof of that vitality which is denied to the Church at home , not by her enemies ,, but by her protectors . Is it that in England the Church is a corporation , in N " ew Zealand a camp ?

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    A TALKER WORTH LISTENING TO . The . Tahh-Talk of John Selden : with Notes by David Irving , LL . D . Constable and Co . Among the law-students who took chambers in the Inner Temple in the year 1604 , was one John Selden , the son of a musician , and the hardestworking scholar of his time . After having been called to the bar , he practised chiefly as a conveyancer and chamber-counsel . Gaining a large income by bis professional labours , famous among his brethren as the most

    learned in the law of any man in his day , John Selden was not content with great legal success and reputation . Versed in classical , oriental , and Gothic knowled ge , he made himself famous as a profound and voluminous writer on antiquities ; entered into a controversy with Grotius on a question of jurisprudence ; won the friendship of Camden , Jonson , and Butler ; and supplied not es to that prodigious and perfectl y unreadable poem , the Pobj-Olbion of Michael Drayton . Besides distinguishing himself in these various ways , he became a senator , representing in the House of Commons first Lancaster , then Great Bedwin , then the University of Oxford . Though the most moderate of men , he was more than once committed to custody for expressing himself too honestly in his speeches , under the reign of Charles I . But when Parliament began to resist the tyrant , he was appointed to the office of Keeper of the Records in the Tower , by a vote of the House . _ He died while Oliver Cromwell was still Protector of England , leaving behind him a well-earned reputation , as one of the most learned and industrious men that ever lived . Considering how much Selden did for himself , it is strange that his claims to the attention of posterity should rest , almost exclusively , on what another man has done for him . Such , however , is strictly the case . His reputation as a great scholar , a profound lawyer , and a moderate Parliament man , is not the sort of reputation that lasts for centuries . His works are confessed , by the very few learned men who have read them in later times , to be harsh , obscure , and unattractive in style . He would , beyond all doubt , not have been known now beyond the cii'cle of a few patient scholai-s Jind antiquaries , but for the possession of a gift which he himself most likely valued least of all the faculties that distinguished him—the gift of conversation . We know Selden , in these times , not by -what he wrote or did , but by what he said . His Table-Tallc is the one sound pillar on which the weight of his fame rests ; _ and that pillar is built up by another man—otherwise entirely obscure—his amanuensis , Richard Milward . For twenty years iViilw / ird ¦ whs the trustod friend and assistant of Scldon . During that period , fortunately for posterity and for his master , he committed to writing , from time to time , some of the best things which fell from the famous scholar ' s lips in his social moments . The collection of suyiugs thus made was published thirty-live years after Selden's death , and has lasted , through various new editions , as one of tho classical books of English literature , from that time to this .

    Comparing Soldon with two other famous talkers whose sayings htivo bocn recorded , wo must pronounco him to be , in our opinion , inferior to Johnson , but in most ways superior to Coleridge . lie has not Johnson ' s vast human sympathies , or Johnson ' s extraordinary wit and information aa a talker . But in general felicity of illustration ho seems to us to approach tho groat and good doctor closely . Tho clearness—the admirable- clearness—of his language is always on a par with the shrewdness of his observation , and tho vigour and wisdom of hia thoughts on most subjects . In tho first great of

    requisite intelligibility ho is fur superior to Coleridge . Ho lias no innguificoncQ of colloquial imagery , and tries no daring flights of mctaphysicul Bpcculation ; but m shrewd worldly wisdom—worldly in the hotter sense of the word—ho is far in advance of Coleridge , and consequently far more instmcliro and amusing to readers in general . Thuro ur « passages ia tho records of his talk- —especially tho passages in which women arc tho subjects of conversation—which give us no very pleasant idea of his disposition , for they present him in tho character of an nvvolorately hard-headed aind hardhearted lawyer , who will take only tho practical ( aoinotimos only tho cynical )

    view of all earthly subjects . But of the wisdom and shrewdness of the man of the extraordinary vigour and readiness of his intellect , and of his marvellous clearness of expression as well as of thought , almost every page of his Talk affords some striking example . His conversation embraces a wide range of literary , political , moral , and theological subjects ; and on every one of them he has delivered himself of opinions which are as important as instructive , and as true in our day as they were in his . Let us hear him oa one or two topics , which will probably be topics of universal interest as long as the world lasts . Beginning with Religion—will our orthodox readers permit us to quote what Selden has to say on a doctrine which has been rather fiercely handled in a controversial way of late ? Here are the opinions on the subject of Eternal Punishment of a man whose funeral sermon was preached by an . archbishop , and who is vouched for by Chief Justice Hale as " a resolved , serious Christian . '

    If the physician sees you eat anything that is not good for your body , to keep you from it he cries 'tis poison ; if the divine sees you do anything that is hurtful for your soul , to keep you from it , he cries you are damned . To preach long , loud , and damnation , is the way to be cried up . We love a man . that damns us , and we run after him again to save us . If a man lad a sore leg , and he should go to an honest , judicious chirurgeon , and he should only bid him keep it warm , and anoint -with such an oil , an oil well known , that would do tlie cure , haply he would not much regard him , because he knows the medicine beforehand an ordinary medicine . But if he should go to a surgeon that should tell him , your leg will'gangrene within three days , and it must be cut off , and you will die unless you do something that I could tell you , what listening there would be to this man 3 Oh , for tha Lord ' s sake , tell me what this is ; I will give you any content for your pains .

    Orthodox people—like the authorities of King ' s College , for instance , who only renounced their " love" of Mr . Maurice -when Mr . Maurice declined to " damn" them in return—may object to the conclusions to which these words lead , though they are spoken by " a resolved , serious Christian . " Of the wit , shrewdness , and clear common sense of Selden ^ they must , however , be allowed by everybody to furnish a notable example . Again , these few sentences ( from which certain controversial gentlemen whom we could mention might learn a valuable lesson ) show his wisdom and clear-sightedness in a very remarkable manner :

    IDOLATKV . Idolatry is in a man ' s own thought , not in the opinion of another . Put case I bow to the altar , why am I guilty of idolatry ? Because a stander-by thinks so ? I am sure I do not believe the altar to be God ; and the God I worship may be bo-wed to in all places , and at all times . Not less justly does he think and express himself here : PUIlrE . Pride may be allowed to this or that degree , else a man cannot keep up Ms dignity . In gluttony there must be eating , in drunkenness there must be drinking : ' tis not the eating , nor ' tis not the drinking that is to be blamed , but the excess . So in pride * The next wise saying we shall quote , is as true now as when it was first uttered . Selden is speaking of

    WAR . We look after the particulars of a battle , because we live in the very time of war ; whereas of battles past "we hear nothing but the numbers slain . Just a 3 for the death of a man : when he is sick , we talk how he slept this night , and that night , what he eat , and what he drank ; but when he is dead , to only say , he died of a fever , or name his disease , and there ' s an end . Occasionally ,. Selden ' s wit fails him , and then he takes refuge in a quibble of the small and dreary kind , as in this extremely grim joko about

    GOOD WORKS . In Queen Elizabeth ' s time , when all the abbeys were pulled down , all good work 3 defaced , then the preachers must cry upjustilication by faith , not by good works . Sometimes he is atrociously cynical in speaking of women . Had he fallen in love , made an offer , and got his ears boxed for hia pains , when he said this about MA . N AN » WIFE ? 'Tis reason a man that will have a wife should be at the charge of her trinkets , and pay all the scores she sets on him . lie that will keep a monkey , 'tia lit he should pay for the glasses he breaks . Alter that , it will be needless to tell our fair readers that Selden was never married . lie makes a wonderful observation , in his capacity of cynical old bachelor , on

    THE WIVES OF IUSHOPS . You shall sec a monkey sometimes , that has been , playing up and down the garden , at length leap up to the top of tlio wall , but his clog hungn a great way below on thia side . Tho bishop ' s wife is like that monkey ' s clog ; himself is got up > very high , tukca place of tho temporal barons , but hia wile coinea a great way behind . When a bishop is compared to a lively monkey , and a bishop ' s wife to a heavy " clog , " it is time to change tho aubjeet , and get back to less dangerously i ' roe and easy talk . Let Selden tell us , ia an inimitably quaint way , a oupital story of

    A Itl . lNIJ FIDDLE K . A blind fiddler playing to a company , arid playing but sourvily , tho company laughed at him ; his boy that led him , perceiving it , cried , " Father , let uh begone , they do nothing but laugh at you . " " 1 lold thy puuuu , boy , " said tho fiddler ; " wo uliull have their inonoy priiHO . utly , and then we will laugh at thorn . " One noblu saying , and we must lmvo done . Selden , is talking of

    MOIUI * HONBBTY . They that ory down moral honesty , cry down that which in a groat part of religion , my duty towards God , imd my duty toward * mini . What caro I to hoc a man run after a sermon , if his cozens and choutn as ooou an ho coitioh homo V On tho other hand , morality muHtnol bo without religion ; for if no , it rimy change an 1 mho convenience . Religion inuHt yovom it . Ho that Iihh not mil l ion u > govom ) iin morality , in not a dram better than my mastiff dog ; ho long ati you Hindus him , iu »< l pluiwu him , and do not pinch him , hu will pluy with you an finely a * miiy lm , lie In a very good moral miwtifl '; but if you hurt him , he will ( l y in your J'uco , nixl t « nr out your throat . Beforo wo dose SuUWh Table- L'alk , wo must thank Doctor Irving for the excellent oditiou which han occasioned tho prosoiit notice . Tho profaoe ia full of useful fucta about Soldon , and tho note * ( Juroiigliout show genuine intelligence ; of rowoarch . On every account , wo win honestly recommend tha book to our readers .

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    November 18 , 1854 . ] THE LEADER . 1097

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 18, 1854, page 1097, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2065/page/17/