DR. AVERILL

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 52, 29 August 1913, Page 2

DR. AVERILL

FOURTH BISHOP OF AUCKLAND

Dr. Averill, Bishop of Waiapft, who was comparatively recently appointed Bishop, has accepted the Bishopric of Auckland, rendered vacant by Dr. Crossley's resignation. Dr., Averill will be the fourth Bishop of i Auckland. The first was George Augustus Selwyn, who, although Bishop j)f New Zealand, consecrated in 1841, yet had his headquarters in Auckland. In 1869, Bishop Selwyn having resigned and gone to England after years of strenuous, hazardous service, was requested by the Auckland diocese to appoint his successor. This was done, when Bishop Cowie was consecrated in Westminster Abbey, in 1869, and went out to Auckland. , By 1871 there wore six bishoprics in New Zealand, viz.. Auckland, Wellington, Waiapu, Chnstchurcb, Nelson, and Dunedin, each« With its own Bishops and* Synods, and all meeting in general Synod under the headship of the Primate, then Bishop Cowie, the first of the Primates of the Church of the Province of New Zealand. Bishop Cowie was succeeded by Bhhop Neligan, an Irishman, who came straight out from » hard-working London parish in 1903, and resigned on aecouht of ill-health in 191 L He was succeeded the same year by Dr. Crossley, who had been working for some years in Victoria, but who has recently resigned, also on account of ill-health. Archdeacon Calder, as Bishop's Commissary, has now carried oh episcopal work so far as possible unaer three Bishop* of Auckland. The Church of England form of worship was, however, first introduced into New Zealand by Rev. Samuel Marsden, m 1814, nearly 100 years ago, ahd Marsden vfefy readily accepted help and cooperation m later years from the Wesleyan Methodist Church. Auckland has some ecclesiastical buildings—some of great beauty in the treatment of their materials— which date from Selwyn's later years, notably the chapel and library at the Bishops' Court and the chapel at St. John's,, on the St. ! Helier s Bay road ; also, there are the | remains of the old Mission Station, Hohimaramara, or "Fountain of Light," as it is sometimes called, down on the I beach towards St. Helier's Bay. , B "> hc >P Averill, after active town work in England, and also after many years' similar work in Christchurch, will return (in Auckland) once more to city life, but his new diocese will take him many miles into the heart of the rough ; and roadless bush cotmtry of the North, and also into the remoter parts of the Maori country, both north and south of the diocese. a 11 * 8 n °t yet settled when Bishop Averill will take up his new duties--not, at any rate, until the Waiapu Synod has met, in October hext. , In regard to tho extensive character of the Auckland and adjoining Wellington dioceses, a movement is still on foot, and has been for some, time, to create a new diocese, to include all laranaki and much country that is how ih Wellington provincial district. Bishop Averill is the first Bishop to be translated from one New Zealand diocese to another, and his appointment to Auckland and that of Dr. Sprott's appointment to Wellington are but further instances of the tendency for New Zealand churchmen to now look at home rather than to England for their diocesans.