thus attached to existing churches were to be formed into new districts. 4. Churches erected in these districts were to become vicarages, and their incumbents vicars. 5. The floors of all such churches were to be free. they recognized the power of convictions which could produce such results. It would be manifestly unfair to claim for Dr. Hook all the work of Church extension accomplished in Leeds during his vicariate. The Evangelicals also worked hard and well, but the vicar was the lead 6. Parsonages were to be built or ob-ing spirit. By a curious coincidence, extained for all such churches; and actly twenty-two churches, parsonages, and schools, namely, that number of each, were built in Leeds in the twenty-two 7. No church (old or new) was to be constituted a parish church, until the floor of it was free and a parsonage was pro-years during which Hook remained there. vided. In a letter to a friend, bearing date November 14, 1854, he says: 8. The patronage of the churches was to be transferred from the vicar (with one exception) to the bishop and the ecclesiastical commissioners. By this act, which, it will be seen, anticipated some important principles of subsequent enactments, and contained others still requiring to be enforced, Hook incurred a sacrifice of 600l. a year, about half the income of his living. His private means were small, and he had a large family as well as seven curates to maintain. Yet it was not simply a great pecuniary sacrifice. The old parish churches of the large West Riding towns enjoy a peculiar prestige, the fruit of ancient and hallowed associations, as the scene of holy services performed at seasons of the deepest joy or sorrow for the forefathers of widely scattered populations. The parishioners, not merely of new town districts, but of many a district chapelry and outlying hamlet, like to come for baptism or marriage to the old mother church, and still to look upon the vicar (par excellence) as their own spiritual head. Such a feeling must necessarily have had special attraction for so warm-hearted a man as Hook. And it must have been at the cost of a cruel wrench that he cut himself off from an influence, an unwillingness to part with which seems to be the last infirmity of noble-minded vicars. The effect produced by this self-denying act was prodigious, and the Church reaped unspeakable advantage from it. The men of the West Riding have been described as "sleuth-hounds after wealth," and Last week two churches were consecrated, making the number built during my incumbency amount to twenty. We laid the foundation of the twenty-first church the week before, and now we shall have done with church-building for a time. We shall have one church for every six thousand of the population, and, considering the number of Dissenters in each district, this is sufficient for the present. We must now turn our thoughts to multiply the clergy. I shall endeavor to prevail on men of fortune to support, for a certain period, additional curates in each district. We have one instance already: the munificent manager of Price's candle-factory supports a curate in one of our districts for three years. Hook's last act in Leeds was in harmony with his persistent, large-hearted generosity. He was presented with a testimonial, in the shape of a casket containing a large sum of money. He gave away the money to Church purposes, before he left the town, and took the empty box with him to Chichester. Thus fitly closed a pastorate which, in Bishop Woodford's emphatic words, "raised the whole ideal of a great town parish priest throughout the entire Church of England." Dr. Hook became Dean of Chichester in 1859, and for a few years Church work in Leeds took the form of consolidation rather than extension; but the year 1864 saw the commencement of the Leeds Church Extension Society, under the presidency of Dr. Atlay. At its first meeting 25,000l. was subscribed in the room, and a vote was taken immediately afterwards that none of the promised money should be drawn unless the amount were doubled within six months; at the end of that period the subscription list woman, told his intended father-in-law that he and Mary thought of "getting wed." "I think it's time exceeded 52,000l. What this society efyou did," was the reply. "Aye, but how much will fected is best told in the words of the you gie her?" "I shall give her 1000l." “ Nay, you'll gie her more than that." "No I shall not; her sisters had a thousand each, and she'll have the same." "Ah, but," rejoined the ardent lover, "you forget that Mary's the foulest of the lot." He had deliberately chosen the plainest of the family, in the expecta The district abounds in stories illustrative of the prevalent fondness for money, of which the following may serve as a quaint specimen. A young man, who had been for some time paying his addresses to a young report for 1875: tion that her father would give her a larger dowry to get her off his hands. During the past ten years the board has received 49,1317. out of the 54,000l. promised in 1864, and a few further instalments of subscriptions, when received, will bring up the total to 50,000l. Its expenditure has reached the sum of 46,000l., and its engagements will absorb about 4,000l. more. This expenditure has elicited upwards of 50,000l. from the ecclesiastical commissioners for endowment, and about 40,000l. from other sources in aid of the work of the society, making an aggregate of about 140,000/.* expended for Church purposes within the parish of Leeds within the last ten years. By these means the staff of the parochial clergy had been increased from sixty-nine to eighty-four, nine additional churches have been built and endowed with (including St. Chad's, built and endowed by the late Sir E. Beckett and the present baronet at a cost of 15,000.) an addition of 6,848 sittings, while seven parsonages have been provided. Two iron churches and one mission-room are licensed for divine service, the board having expended in connection therewith about 2,850. Upwards of. 3,000l. has been paid as provisional stipends to the clergy working in these and other conventional districts, and sites for two new churches have been secured. ("Tenth Report of the Leeds Church Extension Society," pp. 7, 8.) name figured in the subscription list for 2,500l. undertook to double his offering, if the full sum asked for by the bishop were obtained. Before Dr. Hook had completed his work of showing how the great manufacturing populations of the north of England might be won back to the Church, a vigorous effort for Church extension was started in the neighboring town of Bradford. No place in England, except Middlesborough, had grown so rapidly, and the Lords' committee on spiritual destitution in 1858 had reported that in none was there such deficiency of means of spiritual instruc tion. Of all the cases brought before us in evidence, the strongest is that of Bradford in Yorkshire. The borough of Bradford has a population of one hundred and thirty thousand, increasing at the rate of two thousand annually. It has within it the parish church and nine district churches; the population connected with the parish church is about 78,332, having no other church whatever; in the parish church are about fourteen hundred sittings, perhaps not two hundred of which, at the very outside, are free, and those sittings are in the aisles. ("Report from Select Committee, etc.," p. xi.) The report further states that licensed schoolrooms supplied six hundred more sittings for adult worshippers, and that the vicar and four curates had the whole pastoral care of this vast population, besides all the occasional and regular Church services and very heavy quasi-secular work. Yet, considerable as was the increase both of living agency and of church accommodation thus afforded, the spiritual necessities of the town had grown far more rapidly. The proportion of church sittings to the population, which was 147 per cent. in 1851, had fallen to 133 per cent. in 1874. The board of the Church Extension Society reported that even the effort of 1864, if repeated, would at the end of another decennium leave greater Such a revelation startled the laity of arrears than ever to be provided for. Bradford to efforts which have been conOnce more the Churchmen of Leeds gird- tinuous to the present day. A society was ed themselves to the work. The recent formed to erect ten new churches within death of Dr. Hook brought out strongly five years, and it carried through the work the old feeling of regard for him, and the of building nine of them, and a school bishop of the diocese, ever prompt in action chapel in the district assigned to the tenth. and deservedly confident of the generosity In this effort the Hardy family, whose to which he appealed, boldly asked for name has been associated with Church 100,000l. We do not forget that the extension in Bradford in and since the Church in Leeds has been signally fa- time of Dr. Crosse, took the lead. Mr. vored in Dr. Hook's successors. "Dig- C. Hardy offered to provide one church. nitatem nostram a Vespasiano inchoatam, a Tito auctam, a Domitiano longius provectam non abnuerim." But it reflects no slight credit both on their influence and on the noble spirit of the Church laity of Leeds, that the first report of the Leeds (new) Church Extension Society, issued in 1877, could announce that 56,8681. had been already promised; whilst one whose Mr. F. S. Powell promised another. Nor does the addition of six thousand eight hundred and seventeen sittings thus at once added to the church accommodation by any means exhaust the advantages directly flowing from the movement. In every instance endowments have been secured. In eight out of the ten, excellent parsonages and schools have been provided. Whilst the extent to which the church opportunities thus supplied have been laid hold of by the population, is testified by the subsequent necessary enlargement of several of the churches and schools, as well as by the erection of mission-rooms in more than one of the new parishes. In consequence of the stimulus thus given, new life has been infused into the Church in Bradford. The number of the parochial clergy has risen to forty-five. One large new church has been consecrated since the Ten-Church-Building Society terminated; two more rapidly approach completion, and others are projected. How far the relief thus afforded will be adequate we cannot yet determine; but the Diocesan Calendar" for 1877 returns thirty-nine thousand, six hundred and six souls as still attached to the parish church. Yet the progress we record is not a little remarkable for a town which not long since was regarded as the headquarters of Dis sent. Sheffield, scarcely inferior to Leeds in population, tells a similar story of considerable effort and of the need for renewed exertions. Shortly after his appointment to the see of York, Archbishop Thomson made an earnest appeal to the Churchmen of Sheffield, which led to the formation of the Sheffield Church Extension Society in 1865. This movement resulted in the erection of seven new churches, each now endowed with 2007. a year, including All Saints, built at the sole cost of Sir John Brown, and St. Silas at that of Mr. Henry Wilson; the latter being the second church built by its large-hearted founder. The labors of the first Sheffield Church Extension Society were brought to a conclusion in 1872, when the committee, in handing over the farther prosecution of their task to the Sheffield Church Conference, recorded a total expenditure of 31,2027., which had elicited further contributions of some 20,000l. more. So rapid, however, has been the growth of Sheffield, that, despite the work just described, the percentage of church sittings in relation to population had fallen from 14:25 per cent. in 1831 to 1125 in 1872. Three new churches already finished, and further works in hand, prove that Churchmen in Sheffield are both conscious of the emergency and are prepared promptly to meet it. It would require the iteration of a thricetold tale to go through all the West Riding towns in order, and recount the new churches raised in them during the past forty years. Halifax, Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Almondbury, Batley, Wakefield, and a host of other places, could in a greater or less degree repeat the story. Yet a little space must be devoted to a few offerings of exceptional importance and interest. The first place must be assigned to Mr. Akroyd's magnificent church of All Saints, Haley Hill, Halifax, one of Sir Gilbert Scott's finest works, and unsurpassed by any modern church for its wondrous combination of dignity and beauty, its elabo rate decoration, and its singular completeness and finish. Built in a commanding position near the old Roman road to Ilkley, its massive tower and graceful spire, rising to a height of two hundred and thirtysix feet, are a landmark that may be discerned from the range that runs from Westmoreland to Derbyshire, on those rare occasions when the sky is free from the smoke of a thousand factories. All that stone carving, rich marble, stained glass, and color can do to render God's house a thing of beauty, has been lavished on this munificent offering, which is believed to have cost the donor 60,000l. Yet this sum by no means represents Mr. Akroyd's gifts to the Church in this neighborhood. The church at Copley, where he has also large factories, mainly owes its existence to him, and hardly any effort for Church extension in the district has failed to receive from him most liberal support. A handy book, descriptive of the various institutions in Haley Hill and Copley, furnishes a remarkable example of the legiti mate and faithful exercise of the appropriate influence within the reach of all large employers of labor, and describes, besides ordinary parochial institutions, a girls' school for cookery; a building society, on a system most favorable to such workmen as desire to become their own landlords; a rifle corps; and a working men's college, which has been unusually successful in qualifying young men, by a scientific training, for responsible and lucrative appointments. The Church of All Saints, Bradford, built by Mr. F. S. Powell, is another glorious example of the love for the Church of England which so largely prevails in the West Riding. The building, with its entourage of parsonage and schools, represents an offering of some 30,000l., and its history will furnish a remarkable instance of Church progress. When its foundation stone was laid in 1862, there were five Dissenting chapels, but not a single day-school for the children of the five thousand six hundred souls then comprised within the district assigned to it, and no buildings for either Church service or school. Before the church was consecrated, a large school was built and a day-school commenced. In a few years | under Sir E. Beckett's superintendence, it was found necessary to treble the and completed for 5,000l., are a singular accommodation at first supplied, and since refutation of the prevalent prejudice that then two large mission rooms and infant- the Gothic style is exceptionally costly. schools have also been erected. At the It was here that Dr. Vaughan performed end of thirteen years a thousand scholars a unique service to the Church, by fulwere in attendance in the Sunday schools, filling single-handed all the most valuable and upwards of eight hundred in the day-offices of a theological training college, schools. These results do not spring, as and thus raising up a body of earnest at Haley Hill, from the influence of any clergy, whose influence is now widely large employer of labor, but are the ready felt in Yorkshire and throughout England. and spontaneous appropriation by the At Mirfield the new parish church, anpeople of the means of grace and use- other of Scott's churches, built by public fulness which are through the Church subscription at a cost of 26,000l., stands provided for them. The borough of Brad-side by side with, and vastly overshadows, ford is of much smaller area than that the simpler structure of earlier days. of Leeds, but a circle drawn with a radius of three miles from the Bradford Exchange would inclose a population almost equal, if not superior, to that of Leeds in number, and it is hardly too much to say that through the whole of this circle Mr. Powell's support has been afforded to every form of Church extension. The name of Church benefactors in the West Riding is legion. At Leeds the Becketts and Beckett Denisons, Marshalls, and Gotts; at Sheffield the names of Sir John Brown and Mr. Henry Wilson already mentioned; at Bradford, those | of Hardy, Powell, Thompson, Hollings, and Taylor; at Huddersfield, the Earl of Dartmouth, Sir John Ramsden, the Brookes, the Starkies, and the Hirsts; at Halifax, Mr. Akroyd and Mr. Stocks; at Wakefield, Mrs. Disney Robinson; at Lightcliffe, Mr. Foster; at Skelton, Lady Mary Vyner. These are far from being an exhaustive list even of those who have given special offerings. πληθὺν δ ̓ οὐκ ἂν ἐγὼ μυθήσομαι οὐδ ̓ ὀνομήνω There is a large class of buildings, which occupy an intermediate position be tween the new churches and those which have been restored, and which are equally, with these, evidences and monuments of Church energy; we refer to the cases in which an entirely new structure has been substituted for an old parish church. Foremost in this category we place Doncaster parish church, perhaps the noblest work of Sir Gilbert Scott. Its rebuilding on so grand a scale was largely due to the unwearied energy of Sir E. Beckett, whose thorough mastery of Gothic details suggested some of the church's special and most striking features. The cost, 46,000l., at which this church was finished, and that of St. James's, Doncaster, a most satisfactory building, also erected To sum up the record of Church progress as seen in the erection of new churches we may state that since the year 1836 no less than two hundred and fortyfour new churches have been consecrated in the diocese of Ripon, of which forty-four were built to replace older structures which had become unsuitable, or had fallen into decay; leaving a clear gain of two hundred new churches, besides the additional accommodation almost invariably obtained when old churches were rebuilt. To this number must be added fifty-nine more, built since 1840, in that part of the West Riding which lies within the diocese of York, so that the full tale reaches two hundred fifty-nine in number. The work of church restoration throughout the West Riding has kept abreast of the erection of new churches. The staunch Protestantism of Dean Goode, the champion of Evangelicism, did not prevent his inaugurating the restoration of Ripon Cathedral on the true principle of strictly preserving its original features, and following it up with characteristic energy. He came to his deanery in 1860, and started the restoration in 1861. The work was committed to Sir Gilbert Scott, not a day too soon. This grand old structure, dedicated to St. Wilfred, with its singularly pure and beautiful early English west front, was hastening to decay. The foundations of the western towers were gradually giving way, and they were rent by fissures of an alarming character; the central tower was much cracked; the pinnacles, flying buttresses, window mullions, and ornamental work, were all extensively damaged. The roof of the choir, groined in 1829 with lath and plaster, was dangerously dilapidated; pieces of it frequently fell during service, to the terror of the verger, who used to congratulate his patrons daily on their coming out safely. The taste of the previous restorers had since the date of Lord Hampton's return, and that there are others which are not included in it, because less than 500l. has been expended on them, we shall be quite within the mark when we assert that a million and a half has been contributed during the last forty years to this one single element of Church extension. placed under the transept roof a zigzag | tual expenditure almost invariably exceeds cornice made in papier-mâché, to imitate the actual estimate, that additional Purbeck marble! It was found necessary churches have been built and restored to excavate under each tower to a great depth in order to make a solid foundation. The external roof of the choir was raised to its original elevation, and the plaster ceiling replaced by a roof of oak, and covered with lead. Chapter-house, crypt, library, and choir were all thoroughly restored; the condition of the last before Sir G. Scott took it in hand, with its unsightly galleries and dark closets, being almost indescribable. Unhappily, Dean Goode did not survive to see the completion of a work of which he had been the life and soul so long as his valuable life was spared. The restoration occupied ten years, and cost 40,000l. It is more important and interesting to inquire how far the effort represented by such an outlay has been crowned with success. Spiritual results cannot indeed be measured by statistics, yet the degree in which the services of the Church are accepted, and especially the number of those who amongst so independent a race present themselves for confirmation, afford a fair measure of the spirit which the clergy throw into their work, and of their hold over their parishioners: The Bishop of Ripon's charge in 1876 supplies the information we require. During the last three years I have held 142 confirmations. The whole number who have been confirmed is 19,207, or 1,632 more than were confirmed in the former triennial period. The whole clerical staff of the diocese is 708. The whole number of clergy when the see of Ripon was formed was 373. . . . The number of baptisms for the last three years is 83,866, being an increase of 5,410 as compared with the number baptised in the three years in 125 churches in 1870, and in 193 preceding. The weekly offertory was estab churches in 1876. These figures speak eloquently enough, and require no further comment. It is impossible to dwell in detail on all the other important restorations effected in the West Riding during the last halfcentury. These witnesses, "with silent but impressive eloquence," as Bishop Bickersteth happily expresses it, "to the piety, munificence, and hearty attachment of Churchmen to the National Church" abound in every direction. Wakefield parish church, with its beautiful spire, which dates from 1329, has been rendered, under Sir G. Scott's skilful handling, worthy of its original design, at an outlay of 23,000l.; the last 600l. required being raised in a fortnight in 52. subscriptions. The Abbey church at Selby, the parish churches of Bradford, Sheffield, Huddersfield, Keigh-lished ley, and indeed of almost every large man facturing town and village, stand out in fresh beauty, and the country districts have not lagged behind the towns. Lord Hampton's return gives 171,071/. as the amount expended upon church restoration in that part of the West Riding which lies within the diocese of York, and 299,050l. more in the diocese of Ripon, making a total of 470,1217. Large as these figures are, they fall far short of the sum actually contributed. How universal the movement has been may be judged from the fact, that in the four hundred and seventytwo parishes in the diocese of Ripon only eleven churches are now in urgent need of restoration. To the foregoing outlay we may now add the amount given in Lord Hampton's return, in order to complete this branch of our subject. We find that the estimated cost of the new churches in the West Riding within the diocese of York was 283,463, and within the diocese of Ripon, 703,2417., making a grand total of nearly a million sterling. And if we take into consideration the facts, that ac The multiplication of new churches has not led merely to a large increase in the number of overworked and underpaid clergy. Contributions for the building of parsonage houses, and for the augmentation of endowments, have been poured forth in a stream of steadily increasing volume. For these objects there was raised in the diocese of Ripon 67,8787. in the three years ending with 1867; 55,7167. for the three ending 1873; and 82,944/. for those ending 1876. The total contributions for Church purposes during each triennium are too significant to be omitted. In 1873 the Bishop of Ripon reminded his clergy, This is the third time in succession that at my triennial visitation I have referred to what has been raised in the diocese for what may properly be called Church extension. In the three years terminating with 1866 the amount |