Church suffers from a skeleton episcopate, it would be perfectly safe to put down bishops at stations suggested by the exigencies of each locality, such as variety of languages, and the like, with no territorial limits assigned to them as dioceses, but with a general understanding that Nelson's advice to the captains of his fleet, "Whenever you are in doubt what to do, you can never do wrong in bringing your ship alongside of the enemy," applied to the leaders of the spiritual contest. Wherever, as in the case of Selwyn, the motif of an episcopate is leadership in the work of aggression, the result is the extension and vigorous life of the Church. Where, as is too frequently the case, the motif is the "exercise of coercive jurisdiction," the result is repression of zeal, which either finds abnormal modes of action, or sinks into sullen apathy or morbid discontent. ual constitution. Everywhere his theme was unity between the mother and daughter Churches. The Privy Council has shown that the dream of a Church of England in Africa, or in Australia, or in New Zealand was a phantom, which mocked law, grammar, geography, and history; and when the legal tie proved valueless the people who put their trust in law, and who knew nothing of an Anglican communion extending over both hemispheres, foresaw nothing but chaos. Excellent was the ready retort which the bishop, who was expatiating on the intense affection of the colonial churches towards the mother Church, made to Lord Harrowby at the Wolverhampton Church Congress. The noble lord interrupted the bishop by saying sotto voce, "You have cut the painter." This, indeed, was a rash and unworthy charge often laid at the bishop's door, both in New Zealand and in England, but the retort was crushing: No! we have not cut the painter, it has parted of itself, and we are now engaged in forging a more endurable cable, like the in visible and immaterial bonds which anchor the Though relieved of the burden of the Melanesian work, the bishop found his troubles increasing on him in New Zealand. The wars, already mentioned as having been intermittent for twenty years, culmi nated in the Hau-hau superstition, a med-planets to the sun. I have learned in that ley of every creed, in which numbers of the people relapsed into heathenism. This was the heaviest trial that could befall the bishop, and it was just a trial that showed the true nobility of the man. Amid the cannibalism and savagery, to which whole tribes had reverted, the bishop wrote in 1863 to the Bishop of Adelaide : great Pacific Ocean, on which my islands lie like little gems, to pray for the grace of God to enable us to distil from the great ocean of the Catholic Church this essential salt of unity, and with that salt to season all our sacrifices, whether prayer, praise, or almsgiving, and whether at home or abroad, may that sacrifice be acceptable to God through the one perfect, all-sufficient sacrifice offered once for all. I have now one simple missionary idea beThe Wolverhampton Congress of 1867 fore me-of watching over the remnant that was the last appearance in public of good is left. Our native work is a remnant in two Bishop Lonsdale, and on his death the senses: the remnant of a decaying people, see of Lichfield was offered to Bishop Seland the remnant of a decaying faith. The works of which you hear are not the works of Wyn, and at once declined; it was not unheathens: they are the works of baptized men, til the sovereign and the primate pressed whose love has grown cold from causes com-it on his acceptance that he felt it his duty mon to all churches of neophytes from Laodicæa downwards. to yield. To have still held out would have been to contradict the guiding principle of his life, obedience; but how much it cost him to yield only those who were nearest to him know. As he said, at a meeting at Oxford, with a humor that was partly grim and partly sad: In 1867, the bishop paid his second visit to England. The Lambeth Conference he regarded as "the most important event that had befallen the English Church since the Reformation." He avowed that he came as a learner; but the part which he played in the assembly was that of a leader. He had seen the working out of his plans during the past twelve years, and now he was on surer ground, and he spoke with much more confidence. Events too had happened at home which had abundantly justified his policy, and had thrown There was one very painful task before the colonial churches on their own spirit-him ere the severance from his great work It may be objected that I am no fit advocate of missionary work, seeing that I have forsaken it. All I can say is, I have had nothing to do with the change, except to obey. TwenZealand, and I went; I am now told to go to ty-seven years ago I was told to go to New Lichfield, and I go. was complete; it was necessary that he should again visit New Zealand, to set in order the countless trusts and other organizations of which he was the chief sharer, and to arrange for a successor to himself. Before doing so, he organized in his new diocese synodical action in a manner more thorough than the slower progress of other English dioceses had attained after years of effort. He met the clergy and laity in forty-four rural deaneries, in each of three archdeaconries, and in one great diocesan gathering, where there were one thousand laymen and between five and six hundred clergymen. His plans were subjected to severe criticism, and much excitement was stirred up. Lord Harrowby objected to the term synod, and the obnoxious word threatened to split up the meeting; but with a sweet smile, which perhaps covered some lurking contempt for the puerile objection, the bishop rose and said, "I had rather be in a conference with my Lord Harrowby than in a synod without him;" and so the difficulty vanished, and the bishop's scheme was floated. A glance at the Lichfield diocesan calendar shows how complete is the system of representation; a record of what has been accomplished will show that these gatherings have achieved useful results in the sphere which was proposed to them, of "practical, not legislative work." Before leaving for his hurried journey to the antipodes, the love of New Zealand colonists now resident in England took the substantial shape of a pastoral staff, which was presented to the bishop in London. The fourth General Synod of New Zealand was held under his presidency in Auckland, in October 1868; it lasted for fourteen days, and then came the painful severance. On the day of his departure all business was suspended: a farewell service was held in S. Paul's Church, and thousands thronged the streets and the quay to take yet another look at New Zealand's great apostle. The address from the Maori Church was pathetic to the last degree; it ended thus: Hardly less enthusiastic was the feeling in Sydney, where the bishop spent a few days. Of his work in Lichfield we can only write briefly. It is known to the whole Church how from the first he grafted on the traditions of a venerable episcopate the unconventional habits which had been formed among the colonists. His predecessors had lived at Eccleshall Castle, which was remote from the cathedral city and inaccessible to all, not being near to any railway station; Bishop Selwyn at once made his home in Lichfield, adding to the existing buildings sufficient rooms in which to lodge the candidates for ordination at the Ember seasons, and the other guests who were constantly coming to the palace for counsel and comfort. He established a scheme by which candidates for holy orders, who were unable to bear the cost of an university education, or even of a lengthened course at a theological college, could offer themselves for examination at intervals of six months, remaining in their secular callings, and so maintaining themselves, or working for a small stipend as lay helpers with episcopal licence, before coming to the college for their final course of study. By this means a supply of clergy was forthcoming, which gave the diocese the services of men well trained for pastoral work under the eye of the bishop. From the first all synodical arrangements had been made under a full convic tion that the diocese must be speedily divided; this, indeed, the bishop has not lived to see, but pending the solution of difficulties, some inevitable, some intentionally placed in the way of a consummation so much to be desired, the next best thing has been done. The services of his two suffragans in New Zealand, Bishops Abraham and Hobhouse, have been secured for the diocese, and it will henceforth be impossible to revert to the former system; an amount of work has been done, and machinery has been set in motion which it will now be equally impossi O father, greeting. Go to your own coun-ble to arrest or for one man to accomplish. try: go, the grace of God accompany you; go It was a disappointment to Bishop Selwyn on the face of the deep waters. Father, take that the subdivision of his populous diocese hence with you the commandments of God, had not been accomplished, and we releaving the people here bewildered. Who member hearing him express at a public can tell that after your departure things will meeting his great regret that the law be with us as well as during your stay? Our would not allow him permanently to alienlove for you and our remembrance of you will never cease. For you will be separated from ate from the income of his see 800l. per us in your bodily presence, and your counte- annum for each of the proposed dioceses, nance will be hidden from our eyes. Enough! as the Bishop of Exeter had been allowed this concludes our words of farewell to you, to do in the interests of the see of Truro. from your children. In the midst of the engrossing labors of his diocese, he never lost sight of the colonial and American churches, and of the duties which his office of permanent secretary of the Lambeth Conference imposed upon him. In 1871 he attended by invitation the General Convention of the Church of the United States, held at Baltimore his presence and his frequent utterances both in the pulpit and in either house of the convention caused the greatest enthusiasm. It was determined that a visit SO unprecedented should be marked by some permanent memorial, but the bishop declined to receive anything which should be personal to himself, and the result was a magnificent alms-dish, which he was asked to present to the English episcopate collectively, to be kept by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth, and used "on such occasions as might be deemed appropriate." The formal presentation was made in S. Paul's Cathedral on July 3, 1872, at the anniversary service of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and on the next day, a great anniversary in the States, Bishop Selwyn telegraphed the following appropriate message to the Bishop of New York: "Alms-basin presented yesterday in S. Paul's Cathedral. Independence is not disunion." Bishop Potter published the message, and added: some influence, not to say direction, in the work, our tale of missionary effort in India, in North America, and in Australia would have been other than it is. He denied that "any intellectual or moral incapacity shut out one single human being from the promises of the gospel." He had himself seen the Australian blacks and the Erromango natives, who had on two occasions killed the men who had come to them as messengers of the gospel; he had been present with one of the former race at the time of his execution, and "I must say," added the bishop, "that with all the imperfect knowl edge of our language, with all the difficulty of communication with that man that I had, he left upon my mind, at the moment that his irons were being struck off, the impression that he died with just so much of simple faith as was accepted by Jesus Christ from the penitent on the cross." Neither did wandering habits of any people shut them out from the gospel, although it laid on Christians the duty of wandering as they roved from place to place. Where this practical zeal had been shown, there had been no insuperable difficulties. He instanced the case of fortyfive hundred Dakota Indians who had thus been won by the American Church on their own western wilderness. He reminded them that the fabled origin of civilization came from Orpheus, who went out with his harp into the woods, and played such captivating strains that the wild cities in order that they might ever remain men of the woods followed him, and built within the sound of that music which so touched their hearts. But we say no; we tell these wild men of the woods, "Come into our cities, give up your wandering lives, and then we will play music to you;" so that the music is to be the end, and not the means; that the gospel is to be preached to them when they ners which nothing but the gospel can prohave first accepted that total change of manduce. Neither was the supply of men any difficulty, if only we accepted the plenary promise of the great Head of the Church to be with it always. It was in the faith and power of this promise that S. Paul commissioned Timothy to deliver the gospel which he had received from him to faithful men, who should be able to teach others also-five generations of the Christian Church comprised in two short verses of the Epistle to Timothy. It was in that strength and in that spirit that S. Paul directed Titus to go to Crete and to ordain him elders in every city. And who were those Cretans? Always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies; and yet those liars were to be the preachers of gospel | ing about by legal force changes in ritual truth; those evil beasts were to lie down with to which congregations were attached, he the Lamb of God; out of those slow bellies respected the wishes of a minority of the were to flow forth rivers of living water. people, to whom he thought it due that We have quoted from this unique ad- services agreeable to their convictions dress at greater length than our space should be provided at certain times; for warrants, because it was unfortunately the minority in this particular parish a little heard of in England, and it is due to minimum of bald services was secured, the memory of its author that it find some while the majority enjoyed the ornate worpermanent record. The bishop visited the ship day by day which they had learned to United States a second time, when the love, and thus a modus vivendi was seGeneral Convention was held in New cured by the bishop's wisdom and gentleYork in 1874. He had in 1872 conse-ness. The prisoners in Stafford gaol were crated the vicar of Tamworth Bishop of among the last persons to whom he minisTrinidad, thus linking by yet another tie tered. The canal population, so migrathe colonial churches with his own dio-tory in its habits as to defy parochial cese and with himself; and in the follow- organization, the bishop considered as a ing year he had moved in the upper house of the Convocation of Canterbury for a committee to consider the propriety of asking the Archbishop of Canterbury "to undertake an office, whatever it might be called, equivalent to that of patriarch in the ancient Church;" and he based his arguments for such a course on the needs and the interests of the colonial churches. To return once more, and for the last time, to Lichfield. His true conception of the episcopate here, as in New Zealand, put him at the head of the workers of his diocese; with genuine workers he had real sympathy, and he knew their value too well to think of reducing their numbers, or of breaking their spirit either by open persecution or by supercilious neglect. It was matter of real regret to the bishop's friends that he should have allowed the Public Worship Regulation Act to have passed without protest in his place in Parliament, and in that regret we confess that we still share to the full; but in the diocese of Lichfield the unconstitutional statute has been a dead letter, and the moral courage which the bishop showed in two cases where faithful priests were assailed by puppet parishioners at the instigation of the Church Association was worthy of himself. He knew that "Chinese exactness" (an episcopate phrase coined a quarter of a century ago in the interests of laxity) could not be attained. His wish was that all clergymen in all sections of the Church should bring their service into strict conformity with the rubrics in the Book of Common Prayer - but," he added, "I must use my own discretion as to the time and circumstances in which I should exercise any authoritative interference to bring about this exact compliance." In another case, while he thought that "great caution should be used" in bring special class, and he provided a special mission, intending in person to make the first voyage in the diocesan barge which he had caused to be built as a floating church. It is time to bring to a close this allimperfect notice of so worthy a life. It is difficult in one word to sum up the varied elements of a great and many-sided character. Mr. Gladstone, with a knowledge dating from the days when they were schoolfellows, declared that it had throughout been "noble;" it is a comprehensive epithet, and covers all that gave to the life so much of beauty and of moral dignity, and it is in no degree extravagant; in all the varying conditions and surroundings of his career there was the same simplicity of life and the same transparency of character. It may be said with truth that he never uttered an evasive expression or gave ambiguous counsel; he saw the bearings of every question with great rapidity; his principles were already formed, and in obedience to them he fearlessly acted, and for popularity he had the grace not to care a straw. The great simplicity of his life which led him to surround himself with no adventitious pomp or dignity, which made him content when obliged to be in London with rooms in the Lollards' Tower at Lambeth, instead of the accustomed town house in a fashionable quarter, was not so much the result of habits formed in a more primitive colonial society as it was the very nature of the man himself. The strict economy which he practised in his personal expenditure enabled him to act up to the maxim of John Wesley, which he was so fond of impressing on others, "Save all you can and give all you can." A friend, whose guest he often was when in New Zealand, writes to us : Whenever he stayed in a settler's house his great desire seemed to be to give no trouble. He would insist on carrying his own travelling bags, would always tidy his room, and make his own bed, and I have known him surreptitiously to wash his own clothes. This was done with the knowledge that in New Zealand servants are scarce, and that the ladies of the household do many things for themselves and their families which ladies are not accustomed to do in England. He also refused to take wine when he was a settler's guest, not on grounds of total abstinence, but because he knew that in out-stations wine was scarce and expensive. His own hospitality was profuse but simple; indeed, he kept open house, every one who came to Auckland was welcomed, and knew that formal invitation was not needed. "I give good advice but bad dinners," the bishop used to say to his guests; the badness of the dinner being only a synonym for wholesome roast and boiled. At Lichfield, as at Auckland, he was given to hospitality after the same openhanded but unostentatious fashion. On a recent occasion two sisters of mercy who had been nursing a Staffordshire clergyman went, when their labors were no long. er needed, to Lichfield, intending to spend a few hours in the city before starting on their homeward journey. Walking from the station they met the bishop, who crossed the road, saluted them, asked them many questions about their work and their community; finding what was their errand he made himself their guide to the beauties of the cathedral, brought them to the palace, gave them hospitality, and when the time came for their departure they were sent off with many kind words and a fatherly blessing. The good sisters hardly knew whether they were awake or in a dream; no bishop had ever spoken a word to them before, and when they told their experiences to the other members of the society, the story seemed like a fable, and the event was chronicled in the records of the community as something wholly without precedent. The last hours of the great prelate were in beautiful consistency with his life of abundant labor and unselfish devotion. When the pulse was beating slowly, and the light of this life was flickering and waning, his thoughts, even amid the wanderings caused by bodily weakness, were with the distant islands for whom he had done so much, and to whose evangelization, when his own active labors in their behalf had ended, he had given his son. At one time he would exclaim, with kindling eye, "A light to lighten the Gentiles; at another he would murmur, "They will all come back; "as indeed the larger portion of those who sometime apostatized, have "OH, he did not say much," Law replied to Lottie's questioning when he went home in the afternoon. "He was very jolly— asked me to stay, and gave me lunch. How they live, those fellows! Cutlets, and cold grouse, and pâté de foie gras; something like. You girls think you know about housekeeping; you only know how to pinch and scrape, that's all." Lottie did not reply, as she well might, that pâtés de foie gras were not bought off such allowances as hers; she answered rather with feminine heat, as little to the purpose as her brother's taunt, "As if it mattered what we ate! If you had grouse or if you had bread and cheese, what difference does it make? You care for such mean things, and nothing at all about your character or your living. What did Mr. Ashford say?" "My character?" said Law, "I've done nothing wrong. As for my living, I'm sure I don't know how that's to be got, neither does he. He thinks I should emigrate or go into the army-just what I think myself. He's very jolly; a kind of man that knows what you mean, and don't just go off on his own notions. I think,” said Law, "that he thinks it very queer of you, when you could set me up quite comfortably, either in the army or abroad, not to do it. He did not say much, but I could see that he thought it very queer." "I could set you up-what is it you mean, Law?" Lottie was too much surprised at first to understand. "How could I set you up?" she went on faltering. "You don't mean that you told Mr. Ashford about Oh, Law, you are cruel! Do you want to bring us down to the dust, and leave us no honor, no reputation at all? First thinking to enlist as a common soldier, and then - me!" "Well, then you. Why not you as well |