His monetary gift proved of great value, for with it was afterwards acquired the estate at Tamaki, upon which the present St. John's College stands; but still more precious to the Church is the "sweet fragrance of his memory."
Whytehead's bequest was only one manifestation of the spirit which actuated the community throughout. The members lived with the bishop in one of the old houses at the Waimate mission station. He himself paid into the common fund the whole of his episcopal income of £1,200, and drew out as his proper share only £500. The farm was worked on communistic principles. Teachers and students must all take their share in manual labour. Lectures on Greek and Latin must be given in the intervals of ploughing, or printing, or teaching Maori children to read or hoe or spin. Each "associate" received a fixed salary; all profits went to the support of the institution.
The reasons for this insistence on manual training were twofold. Like Bishop Broughton, Selwyn had observed that "throughout the whole mission the delusion has prevailed that the Gospel will give habits as well as principles." He began, in fact, as Marsden had begun, with a strong insistence on the industrial side of education, for the sake of developing in the Maori a well-ordered and diligent character which the white man would respect, and with which he might co-operate in the building up of a united nation. The fervour and the teachableness of the Maori were to help the religion of the Briton: the energy and industry of the Briton were to balance the dreamy nature of the Maori.
But, secondly, the community thus organised on primitive and Christian lines was to be a spectacle and an example to the world. Selwyn did not read his Bible or his Fathers with the interest of a mere student. In the background of his thought lay the Socialist and Chartist movement, which was even then preparing for the explosion of 1848. The Church must show the true principle of brotherhood in active operation, and he hoped to attract to his community young men from the English universities, who were going over to Rome through discontent with the comfortable worldliness of the mother Church. "I have at command," he wrote, "a rill of water, a shady wood, a rocky cave, and roots of fern, for every one of these would-be anchorites." But the would-be anchorites found no attraction in the hard work which New Zealand offered, and the bishop's college was recruited chiefly from the grey-haired missionaries or their sons. From these he replenished the number of his clergy, which had been reduced by the drowning of Mason, and by the withdrawal of two other priests to England. His first ordination was that of Richard Davis, the farmer-catechist, in June, 1843; while in September three more students were admitted to the diaconate (Bolland, Spencer, and Butt), and thus at least for a time the ranks were filled.