Whether this were jest or earnest, this year, 1841, brought the dawn of his future life.  It was in that year that the Rev. George Augustus Selwyn was appointed to the diocese of New Zealand.  Mrs. Selwyn’s parents had always been intimate with the Patteson family, and the curacy which Mr. Selwyn had held up to this time was at Windsor, so that the old Etonian tie of brotherhood was drawn closer by daily intercourse.  Indeed, it was from the first understood that Eton, with the wealth that her children enjoyed in such large measure, should furnish ‘nerves and sinews’ to the war which her son was about to wage with the darkness of heathenism, thus turning the minds of the boys to something beyond either their studies or their sports.

On October 31, the Rev. Samuel Wilberforce, then Archdeacon of Surrey, and since Bishop of Oxford and of Winchester, preached in the morning at New Windsor parish church, and the newly-made Bishop of New Zealand in the afternoon.  Coley was far more affected than he then had power to express.  He says:  ’I heard Archdeacon Wilberforce in the morning, and the Bishop in the evening, though I was forced to stand all the time.  It was beautiful when he talked of his going out to found a church, and then to die neglected and forgotten.  All the people burst out crying, he was so very much beloved by his parishioners.  He spoke of his perils, and putting his trust in God; and then, when, he had finished, I think I never heard anything like the sensation, a kind of feeling that if it had not been on so sacred a spot, all would have exclaimed “God bless him!"’

The text of this memorable sermon was, ’Thine heart shall be enlarged, because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces also of the Gentiles shall come unto thee.’ (Is. lx. 5.) Many years later we shall find a reference to this, the watchword of the young hearer’s life.

The Archdeacon’s sermon was from John xvii. 20, 21:  ’Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word; that they all may be One, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be One in Us:  that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.’  And here again we find one of the watchwords of Coley’s life, for nothing so dwelt with him and so sustained him as the sense of unity, whether with these at home in England, or with those in the inner home of the Saints.  When the sermon concluded with the words, ’As we are giving of our best, as our Church is giving of her best, in sending forth from her own bosom these cherished and chosen sons, so let there go forth from every one of us a consenting offering; let us give this day largely, in a spirit of self-sacrifice, as Christian men, to Christ our Lord, and He will graciously accept and bless the offerings that we make’—­the preacher could little guess that among the lads who stood in the aisle was one in whom was forming the purpose of offering his very self also.