SOME HISTORICAL NOTES CONCERNING THE MELANESIAN 
MISSION. 
The founding of the Melanesian Mission was due to the vigorous 
bodily energy and the apostolic fervor of Bishop George Augustus 
Selwyn. The fact that the founder was a Bishop, and as such pos- 
sessed the power and authority to insure the success of his plans and 
ideas, and had in addition a certain assured sum of money at his 
back, caused the Mission to be stamped from the outset with a definite 
style and imprinted upon it a traditional method of work. In consid- 
ering this style and tradition, we must remember that the founder 
of the Mission was Bishop of New Zealand and was thus debarred 
from settling in Melanesia and leading the attack on its Heathenism 
from within. Since his home and his main interests and his more 
regular sphere of work lay outside Melanesia, and since also the carry- 
ing out of the work at all seemed to depend on himself, it is obvious that 
the only way for him to begin the evangelization of Melanesia was 
by taking boys from it to some place where he could have them trained 
with a view to their becoming the future missionaries of Melanesia. 
Quite apart, however, from the fact of the foundation of the Mission 
by a bishop and from its receiving thereby a definite and a fixed char- 
acter at the outset, and apart also from the difficulty of changing a 
practice once firmly established, those who know the influence which 
Bishop Selwyn exercised in the matter of fixing the constitution of the 
Church of New Zealand would naturally expect to find something of 
the same rigidity and fixedness in the traditional methods and style of 
work in the Melanesian Mission. It must also be borne in mind, when 
reviewing the style and methods of work adopted in the Mission, that 
its policy herein has not been the result of the deliberations of the 
missionaries themselves and has not stood in the definite following of 
the teachings of the experience of the many, with alterations from time 
to time to suit the varying needs, but has been in effect the regular and 
one may say almost the mechanical following of the lines laid down by 
the founder. For all that, the Melanesian diocese was an offshoot of 
the Church of New Zealand and as such might have been expected to 
show the same spirit of cooperation in religious matters between clergy 
and chosen lay representatives consulting together, yet the Mission 
never had a synod (though every diocese in New Zealand has one), and 
the conference of whites and natives held in 1911 was the first instance 
of any attempt made during the whole history of the Mission to gather 
the workers together and to take deliberative measures for the better 
carrying on of the work. 
Until the time, about 12 years ago, when the missionaries first 
tended to become permanent residents in the spheres of work in the 
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