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:■;

MISSIONS,

Ac.

CGMl»ILED

COLONEL LGWRT

HMiffAX, NOVA SCOTIA,

JAMiSS BOW£S h SONS, HOLLIS STRpT,

FOR SALE AT MISS KATZMAN'S, W. GOSSIP'S, & Z. S. HALL'S.

1868.

ji" ^t:

i.«':,»-j»Saai^fc&

CHURCH MISSIONS,

&c.

COMPILED

COLONEL LOWRY

''M Wi

HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA,

JAMES BOWES & SONS, HOLLIS STREET,

FOR SALE AT MISS KATZMAN'S, W. GOSSIP'S, & Z. S. HALL'S.

1868.

'^**-

INTRODUCTION.

Much of the substance of the following Lecture has been
addressed, in course of the last few years, to audiences in different
parts of the Dominion of Canada. In putting it in a more lasting
form before the Members of the Church, I would desire to repeat,
and to record the remarks with which I h^ve, on the occasions
referred to, prefaced it.

The Lecture is, to a large extent, a compilation from the
writings and accounts of others. It has been drawn from many
sources — from what I have read, from what I have heard, and
from what I have seen. Deeply interested in missionary work I
have for years noted down whatever has seemed to me note worthy
and reliable, or to tend to the elucidation of the subject, without
intending to make any public use of it, and, at times, without
quoting my authority. I jotted down, from time to time, from the
writings, or from the spoken addresses of the wise and good
whatever approved itself to my mind and heart. The allegory, and
to a considerable extent the language in which it is clothed, and
the subject introduced have been taken from the works of the late
Rev. Henry Newland.

In early life it was my great privilege to have been for a short
time in the Parish of which the present Bishop of Oxford was the
Hector, and in the many years which have since intervened,
wherever I have been within the reach of his Lordship's teaching,
I have loved to profit by. Often, too, when far removed from that
voice and mind of singular power and wisdom have I read, and
pondered on their weighty utterances. Years may have elapsed
since heard or seen, but the thoughts called up, and, not
infrequently, even the form in which they left their impress,
remain. Often they ma^ appear — sometimes almost insensibly to

3^1 ^3n

myself — in tho pages of this Lecture. To the reader and to myself
this acknowledgment is due: to the good Bishop I owe more than I
can ever express.

Throughout the following account of the Church's Missionary
history and progress I have used unsparingly, the thoughts and
words of others — where they have come homo to me with the force
of truth — rather than my own. Hence indeed is derived any value
which it may possess. I have for the most part only ventured to
confirm, or illustrate the statements made, by a reference to what I
have observed as I have moved through the world. To the Clergy
there will be little new in this brief treatise on Church Missions.
It is chiefly designed to enlist the interest and affection of the Laity
in a work in which, assuredly, all are equally concerned. As the
effort of a layman, who has passed the last seven or eight years in
this fair land of British America, and who amid the active
occupations of a Profession claiming his chief aHention, has ever
found a deep enjoyment in Church work, these pages may serve to
call forth a like interest in others. If they arouse a deter-
mination on the part of any to be more whole-hearted and in
earnest in the support of our Diocesan Church Societies, and to
build up the Church — in the integrity and completeness of her
organization — in remote settlements, as in our midst, my lay
sermon will not have been preached in vain.

Halifax, N. S., October, 1868.

;o myself
re than I

issionary
^hts and
the force
ny value
tured to

what I
e Clergy
Missions,
he Laity

As the

years in

e active

has ever

serve to

1 deter-
l and in

and to
of her
my lay

There was a very sinfjular and beautiful print once in the
Illmf rated News. It was the representation of the legend of St.
Christopher : a powerful giant, supporting his steps by an uj^rooted
fir tree, is bending under the weight of the Infant Christ, Whom
he carries on his shoulders. He is proceeding steadily along a
beaten path, followed by kings, priests, nobles, artizaus, and farm-
ers. Old and young, down to the very children, are following in
the steps of him who carries the Holy Infant, Whose hand is
stretched out in the attitude of blessing.

This is the symbolizing of a real Church Mission. The giant
upon whose shoulders is seated the Infant Saviour is the nation to
whom, for the time, Christ has committed the office of evangelizing
the world. It is a heavy duty, and the bearer bends under the
weight of it ; but in the act of performing it, he has acquired the
strength to perform it. His proportions are already gigantic ; he
out-tops by the head and shoulders all the figures that are around
him ; his limbs seem capable of sustaining far more than the weight
they curi-y ; and the fir tree, uprooted from where it grew beside
his path — that is to say, the natural advantages which present them-
selves in the very path of his duty — supports his steps ; for, be it
observed, he b not taking a devious or arbitrary course, but follow-
ing the beaten path — the path marked out to him by the Eternal
Wisdom, and direct Revelation of God.

The remainder of the picture explains itself; it is the natural
fruit of his labors. He carries the true Christ, and high and low,
rich and poor, young and old, kings and subjects, priests and shep-
herds, alike blessed by the outstretched Hand, crowd after the
giant that bears it. Willingly and cheerfully they swell his retinue,
and contribute to his earthly pomp and glory.

Now this has been for ages past the way in which our blessed
Saviour carries on the missionary work of his Church. " God,"
says an old proverb, "is a good workman, but He likes to have
men to help Him." In the Infant Church, as in the infant settle-
ment of the Israelites in the promised land, which is a type of it.
He governed by His own immediate power ; but from the tim^

when that prophecy was fulfilled, which assigns kings as the nursing
fathers, and queens as the nursing mothers of His Church — from
that time forward the infant Christ, the young Church, was carried
on the shoulders of some one nation to which it was committed. —
That nation was pre-eminent as long as it discharged its office.
Whenever it failed in that duty, the mission was entrusted to some
other nation, which in its turn became pre-eminent, till that nation
became unfaithful to its trust, and in its turn was relieved, not only
of the burthen of the Christ, which it was unworthy to bear, but
of the earthly pomp, and power, and strength, and glory, which are the
rewards, as well as the consequences, of bearing Him. " No cross,
no crown," is as true of nations, as it is of individuals. Kome first
received the holy burthen under Constautine ; th(>n Germany under
Charlemagne ; then Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella ; then
England under Victoria.

Each of the former once was faithful, and did the Lord's work
in the Lord's way, but each in their turn failed, and their earthly
as well as their heavenly power passed from them.

God grant that the Lord may find His resting place where He
has vouchsafed to choose it now ! God grant that England, the
giant that now carries Him, of whom it may be said now, as was
said with equal truth by her predecessor Spain, that on her empire
the sun never sets — whose ships and colonies and commerce and
wealth, are the purse and scrip which God commits to her charge
for a definite purpose — whose grandeur and power are not only the
consequetices of having borne the Christ, but the means of bearing
Him onward yet — God grant that she may profit by the history of
faded or fading nations, and may set forth her own glory by setting
forth that of her Lord's.

In endeavouring to show the cause of the comparative failure of
our Indian missions, I would not undervalue the present or past
sacrifices which individuals or societies are making, or have made,
in the cause of God's truth. We do not undervalue the labuors of
Schwartz or the self-sacrifice of Martin, when we show why those
labours, and that self-sacrifice have produced no adequate fruit.
Successive missions, if they be carried out in honesty and truth,
like successive Arctic expeditions, open the way to subsequent
explorers, and that nearly as much by their failures, as by their
successes. Still, we must treat those failures honestly ; we must
give honour to those who did their work faithfully, but we must
endeavor to point out how it came to pass that, though they all built
upon that foundation without which no man can build, that is Jesus
Christ — yet, that when their work came to be tried, as we read
every man's work will be tried, such a large proportion turned out

tlic nursing
irch — from
ras carried
nmitted. —

its office.
d to some
:hat nation
I, not only

bear, but
ich are the
* No cross,
Rome first
lany under
Ua ; then

)rd'8 work
ir earthly

ivhere He
jland, the
V, as was
or empire
lerce and
)r charge
; only the
f bearing
listory of
ly setting

'ailure of
or past
ve made,
juors of
ly those
te fruit,
truth,
sequent
jy their
'e must
'^e must
11 built
s Jesus
e read
ed out

to be of perishable materials, and such a very small residuum of
precious elements remained.

This is not the way people generally speak of missions in India,
or anywhere else. It is wholesome, sometimes, to look at our vir-
tues, provided wc do not make them a set-off against our faults ;
but it is still more wholesome to contemplate our faults themselves :
tiiey are not likely to blind us to our virtues.

Had it not been for our own faults, for those of the nation
which now bears Christ on its shoulders, might not India now be
Christian, or nearly so ? How long was it from the preaching of
St. Augustine before England became Christian ? How long was
it after the mission of St. Anskar before Sweden became Christian ?
Vet St. Augustine and St. Anskar were poor missionaries, sent by
u church almost as poor as themselves. They were not backed by
the influence and enterprise of a warlike, wealthy, and commercial
nation. Schwartz laboured for fifty years. Why was he not the
St. Anskar of India? Suppose we were living in the year two
thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight, and we were reading the
ancient history of England, as wc might now be reading the history
of Rome under Constantino, or of France and Germany under
Charlemagne, how we should wonder at that little insignificant spot
in the map of the world, which the geographer would then point
to as the source and origin of that mighty power, and call it Eng-
land ! how we should wonder when he pointed afterwards across
the broad expanse of British India, and said that all this had been
the dominion of a company of merchants from that little spot.

A few thousand of their countrymen, placed by the sovereign
of that country under their direction, were quite sufficient to
govern, and to legislate, and to ?dministcr justice, and to subdue
rebellion, and to carry on external wars and internal administration ;
for the people whom they governed obeyed them willingly.

" These are the people," will the Lecturer of those days be
saying, " whom the I'rophet Isaiah designates, when, in answer to
the question, * Who raised up the righteous man from the East, and
called him to his foot V declares, * I have raised up one from the
North, and he shall come.' "

It was not the force of arms, but the truth and equity of the
English character, that made all men flock to this empire for justice
and protection. This will be a wonderful relation when it appears
in history ; but a greater wonder remains behind — that this nation
Avhose rule was so eagerly sought — who had risen into supreme
power by the simple force of its character for energy and justice —
had governed that great land, its willing slave, ior a hundred or
more years, and had produced no effect worth speaking of on the

' i

III

i I

heathenism of the country. In evcrj element of strength, in ev<>ry
fruit of religion, the natives readily acknowledged themselves the
inferiors of their masters, but to the religion which produced this
difference they were not converted.

The religion lay open before them with its fruits ; they admitted
the fruits, but they did not admit the cause which produced them ;
they chose Christians for their masters, but they remained heathen.
This anomaly is more astounding than the other, and a most useful
lessou it is to enquire into the causes of it.

India has been, for the last one hundred years, English ; why is
not India Christian ? Perhaps the first reason that suggests itself
will be the difficulty of caste, and it is a real difficulty — we need
not deny it ; but if there had been no difficulties to encounter, the
world would have been Christian centuries ago. Had St. Anskar
and St. Augustine no difficulties to encounter in the wild roving
habits, the constant wars, the perpetual marauding expeditions,
which were then considered honorable by the nations they convert-
ed? The difficulty of caste is thii. The whole of native Hindoo
society is arranged in castes or ranks. Theso have nothing to do
with rich or poor — there are rich and poor in almost all of them —
they are classes in sanctity. They imagine that any man would
lose his caste if he associated in any way with a man in a class
below him. We may easily understand this from the Bible, where
we are told meat was set on for Joseph by himself, and for the
Egyptians by themselves ; for the Egyptians may not eat with the
Israelites, though Joseph was at that time Governor of all Egypt.
This may not possibly be a great obstacle in the way of government
— it was not in the case of Joseph — but it is a very great obstacle
indeed in the way of the missionary, because, according to the spirit
of his religion, the Christian is the brother of the lowest. What-
ever, therefore, the missionary may be, high or lo\\ , rich or poor,
in a religious point of view, according to the estimation of the
natives, he ranks with the very lowest : the man one caste above
the lowest cannot eat, not only with him, but with the very Gover-
nor of India, the very Queen of England, without being polluted.

This is a real difficulty then, but that it is a difficulty in prospect
rather than in actual operation is quite evident when we consider
that our Indian subjects are composed of two races — Hindoos and
Mahometans — that the difficulties of caste belong exclusively to the
former, and that our missions have made little mere way with one
of these classes of men than they have with the other. If caste
had been the real difficulty, we should have converted the Mahom-
etans by this time. The difficulties which have beset us are of a
more serious character, because they are traceable to ourselves ; and

i ■

gth, fn ev^iy
lemselves the
vrodvced this

hoy admitted
duced them ;
fled heathen.
I most useful

Hsh ; why is
ggcsta itself
Y — we need
counter, the

St. Anskar
wild roving-
expeditions,
ey convert-
ive Hindoo
hing to do
of them —
nan would

in a class
ble, where
id for the
: with the
til Egypt.
pvcrnmenr.

t obstach;

the spirit
What-

or poor,

n of the

c Jibovo

T Gover-

lluted.

prospect

consider

008 and

r to the

ith one

f caste

fahom-

i*e of a

Js; and

■i
1

though God will not render us responsible for those He puts in our
way, if wc do our best to overcome them, He will render us
responsible for thoic which wc put in our own way, whether they
arise from our sins, our negligences, or our jealousies.

It is idle to talk of our missionary successes in India as some do.
A few thousands have been here and there converted, there is no
doubt ; quite enough to show that we might have done better ; but
if we have converted thousands where we might reasonably have
been expected to convert millions, the mission cannot bo considered
anything but a comparative failure.

Might wc not reasonably have been expected to have converted
millions in India? Compare what has been done by modern
missions with that which has been done by ancient missions — that
of the German missionaries be/ore the days of Charlemagne. After
those days they wore supported by the arms of an Empire relatively
as powerful as that of England now ; but before those days the
missions were the unaided efforts of a band of devoted Churchmen.

How long did it take not only to establish Christianity in all
those lands, but absolutely to root out heathenism, so that no traces
of it remained ? Was it as long as since our first establishment in
India ?

And remember — these missionaries came from lands not much
advanced in civilization beyond the heathen tribes they converted,
while ours had the wealth of commerce, the arts and sciences of
civilization, the experience of ages, and the prestige of conquest, to
back it ? The comparison is humiliating ; yet it must be made if
we would profit by our past failures, ana turn to real account those
energies, M'hich, hitherto, we have suffered to waste away, like
water poured on the sands of a desert.

If of two missions, one has succeeded, and the other almost
failed, the first thing to be done is to see in what constitutional
element the one difiered from the other. Now there are many
examples we might take of successful missions. All Europe was
heathen, and now all Europe is Christian — therefore all Europe
was once converted by missionary exertions. We will however
choose that mission with which most of us are more or less acquainted
— I mean the mission of St. Augustine to England — by which we
who, among the numerous invasions of the heathen Saxons, had
well nigh lost all trace of our early Church — were once more
brought into the fold of Christ.

W^e need not consider this a Roman Catholic mission in the
modern acceptation of the term. In words no doubt it is so,
Catlu lie Christians who lived in Rome must be Ror.ian Catholics,
just as Catholic Christians who live in France are French Catholics.

f i

■. !

hi I
11

[

those doctrines, which win' f J' "°' *'"« in facf Aim ? ''f,*
crept into the ChurJh of R<f ^"^"'^>^ ^^" ^omisn^e onl K '"
doctrines of the Chuth ^T^ ''"^^ '^^t time In Tlf !, ^^ °°^
-.and .^: Me^Lt:; ^7"^., -4"whr ot? *«
And Gregory was the verv t,. ! ^Pos'les wore bcforn tk
another to bo styled uSsSfii T*"" *'^' "'"^'"d 'he c aj^ "f
Wlo when offered to himse]? ^"'^''P' »■"» ^l"- refused the ,fc
■Lne nistorv of fVi« • •

Bishop of Arle7;„ I """' ^"^ eonsoorated to ti «^°P ^"^

lifi°^4^^'i" ^-So^trL:^ "^'S ~:fed\^?:i;:

lact shows this • fV.o* -.i , "^ me mission, is nnf t^,^ , •'^ *^

^L-t in t w^t'e'rat-t ''-'^^""'« of Ko™; ttlt

F-eign Parts wLfcooiet of th''"««'™ °f 'ke Go'^lt
was no sonVfir ^ »ucieiy ot those men vehr. ,., 'Jospei m

Another d^ffl^"' '?"<■■"« 'tem: they were seMh .l^rV""^"
unfettered *AoTof'kt' "' ^^'^ head the" t I '^--f ''•
Ho was colVtent "^ T™' "'""■' "^-lainiJ and con! "•'"'P
*ouId sueeoed in 1 k,° f-'''"" <''<'^" m every o?tv"°?""«-

"^h&rjSer ° n «-" "■- -"s^'o^rof 1' •^''"^-"

through at fi rT I . ^^n^^orts about them W. f l- "'' "^^'^^ons
'he. suhstanoe, that is .„ s^ayX^S ^t^

-^^

iglish Catholics,
't- Almost all
ave one by one
those days the
what ours are
' before them,
the claim of
^used the like

len Bishop of

that so fine a

if possible to

out a band of

ben to place a

Bishop was
3 office by the
crated by the
3wn ; but the
'Ome, took an
rve the first
'• The only
e Gospel in
to go; there
the Church,
a Bishop
consecrating,
in which he

the money
at home ?
no doubt,
to lay their
of celibacy
though we
established

•sing their

children as

i" missions

they went
the Gos-

such mis-

lew their

must not
where

n to their

■

substance ; that the poor were supported by them, that Churches
were endowed, and missions furnished. A good many years after
this, when the worship of saints had crept into the Church, a writer
complains that " ten thousands were oflfered at the altar of St.
Thomas, before a thousand was offered at the altar of God." This
will give us some idea what offertories used to be ; we do not talk
about them by thousands now.

The mission of Augustine to England took plac-> early in the
year 597. Ethelbert was then not only King of Kent, but exercised
a kind of imperial authority as far as the Humber. He was married
to Bertha, a French Princess and a Christian. The mind of the
King was probably, on that account, prepared to receive the mission
courteously, and to listen with respect to what they had to say.
In answer to the interpreters sent by Augustine he granted an
interview, directing that it should be in the open air, as, it appears,
he had some suspicion of magic arts, and wished to see everything
himself, and form his own judgment. He was a man of strong
sense, and sound judgment, us his words will show. Augustine
arranged his monks in procession, and placed himself at the head ;
his tall commanding figure conspicuous amongst the rest. He was
"higher than any of his people from his shoulders and upwards."
As the missionaries slowly advanced they chanted under the guid-
ance of Honorius — Gregory's own pupil — one of those deeply
solemn litanies known to after ages as " Gregorian," and which,
heard for the first time by barbarian ears, must have deeply im-
pressed them. The King gave them a respectful welcome ; invited
the missionaries to be seated, while Augustine himself, under the
shadow of the ancient oak, which canopied the royal retinue, pro-
claimed by his interpreters in few and simple words the Gospel
message. The answer of the King was a very memorable one, and
deserves to be quoted for its rare sense. " Very fair," said he,
" are the words you have uttered, and the promises you make.
But to us these things ai*e new, and their full meaning I do not un-
derstand. I am not prepared to give my assent to them, and re-
nounce the customs which I have so long observed with the whole
Anglo-Saxon race. But you have come from far. You are strangers ;
and I clearly perceive that your sole wish and only object is to com-
municate to us what you believe to be good and true. You shall
not be molested. You shall be hospitably entertained ; we will
make provision for your maintenance, and we do not prohibit you
from uniting to your society any persons whom you may persuade
to embrace your faith."

The Missionaries conducted themselves with consistent simplic-
ity, and devoted themselves to the instruction of the people in the

^T'* MVffHI •

Gospel. Their labours were soon rewarded. Ethelbert declared
himself a Christian, and was baptized. Crowds speedily followed
the example, and Gregory states in a letter to the Patriarch
Eulogius that ten thousand were baptized in one day. The mission-
aries were soon established within the walls of Canterbury. The
King gave up his palace to Augustine for a residence, and on the
adjacent grounds the foundations of the first Cathedral were laid.
The house that Augustine first occupied after crossing to England
has lately been restored, and put to its original use. It is a College
for the education of missionary priests. I visited it eight years ago
when the late Bishop Mackenzie was about to proceed on his mis-
sion to Central Africa.

There were assembled in Canterbury Cathedral at the farewell
service on that deeply interesting occasion, over three hundred
Clergymen, and three thousand laymen. It would be hard, I
think, to efface from the minds of any then present the memory of
that solemn service, or of the earnest counsel that day delivered by
England's most eloquent Prelate.

" Who," said the Bishop of Oxford, " standing in this glorious
Building, as his eyes drink in its shadows and its lights, but must
cast back the glance of his memory along all the marvellous steps
by which, even unto this day, our course has been guided by our
God." " Go back," he said, "in thought to the time Avhen the first
Evangelize.* of Britain crossed, with the message of Christ's power,
and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, the neighbouring straits which
parted us from advancing Christendom. Compare the wild forests
and marshes of that day, compare their v/ilder inhabitants with the
sights and purposes of this day, and surely — looking around us at
home, and across the Westward waves to our daughter Church
in America we may say with more than the Patriarch's gratitude,
* with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two
bands.' "

As the Church increased, Augustine became Archbishop, and
his c'lief difficulties seem to have arisen after his elevation to this
high position. It is related that he was at a loss as to what liturgy
to use in the newly erected churches. There were, it is well
known, four principal liturgies in the early Church. The liturgy
of St. James, which was followed generally in the Eastern Churches
— the liturgy of St. Mark, which was followed in Egypt and
Ab7ssinia,~the Roman, claiming the authority of St. Peter, — and
the G-xllican, derived probably through Irenaeus from Ephesus and
St. John. In the small church of St. Martin, reserved to the
Queen, the Gallican liturgy had been hitherto observed.

tin

m
■m'

<A£f

Augustine greatly preferred that of his country, at the same
time that he did not wish to displease the Queen by substituting
it for the Gallican. In his difficulty he consulted Gregory, who
advised him, in arranging the services of the English Church, •* not
to tie himself down to the Roman ritual, or to the Gallican, or to
any other, but to select out of every church what is pious, religious,
and right, and so to form a new liturgy for the Church of England,
for," he added, " things are not to be valued on account of places,
but places for the good things they contain."

Had a missionary band been sent out in modern times, we
should probably have found it uncontrolled by episcopal or sy nod-
ical action, scattered over the whole south of England ; each mem-
ber of it collecting and teaching his own congregation in his own
way, and reporting his own good deeds to his own society at home ;
jealous of his brethren, and still more jealous of some rival society.
But these men, while they preached but one Catholic and Apostolic
Church, exhibited but one.

As the Church took root in the land it began to throw out its
branches. Canterbury became the metropolis or mother city of
the Church of England. It sent out its own missions to other
towns, just as it had been itself a mission of Rome. These missions
were exact models of the original mission, headed by Bishops, not
of foreign ordination, but consecrated from its own body. The
earliest missions from Canterbury were to Winchester and Selsey,
but those soon ramified till the greater part of the South of England
became evangelized, had their parishes and their parsons, and were
under the superintendence of their own Bishops.

The form of the Church was never lost : in the beginning it
consisted of thirty persons, the members who, with Augustine,
landed on the shores of Kent ; but in those thirty persons there
were Bishop, Priests, Deacons, and Laymen. It was a perfect
Church — the Apostles' /ellowMp, as well as their doctrine. It
never lost the form in which Christ had cast it, and so it never lost
the promise of His perpetual presence !

Now compare this with the efforts of our societies. A Church
produced a Church, but a society could not produce a Church.
Every failure experienced by our missions was not a failure of the
Church, but of individuals in it collected together, not by the rules
of Christ, but by rules of their own forming. Let me illustrate this
by a story of the great missionary Wolff.

Dr. Wolff' was travelling in some out-of-the-way place in the
far east, in the diocese of one of the Bishops of the Eastern, or
Greek Church, and in the course of his wanderings he fell in with
the Bishop. " Who are you ?" said his Lordship, looking at him

over suspiciously. "A poor missionary," said the Doctor. *' A
what. ?" said the Bishop. " A missionary," said Dr. Wolff, pulling
out his Bible, and opening it at the precise text he wanted. " I
am come to preach salvation to these poor people. * How shall
they call upon Him, on whom they have not believed, or how shall
they believe in Him of whom they have not heard, or how shall
they hear without a preacher V " " Thai is all very well," said the
Bishop, " but why don't you finish the text ? * How shall they
preach except they be sent V Who sent you ?" " Sent," said
Wolff. ** Yes, sent," said the Bishop — " My metropolitan sent
me, and his predecessors sent him, and I send my priests and
deacons. Now who sent you ?" " The Spirit of the Lord," said
Wolff boldly, for he was not a man to be put out of countenance.
**I hope you do not deny that Christ is able to send His own
messengers without human intervention ^" " God forbid that I
should doubt it for one moment," said the Bishop. "I know
that He sent Moses and Aaron without human intervention, and I
know that He superseded this very priesthood of His own
ordination, by sending, also without human intervention, the
Apostolic Priesthood, and what He did once, He can do again.
Still I have always observe 3 that whenever He sends any one
directly from Himself He is pleased to confirm His own appoint-
ment to the minds of His servants by signs and wonders. Moses
called down bread from Heaven. He and Aaron brought forth
waters from the rock. And when it pleased God to supersede
their priesthood, many wonders and signs were wrought by the
hands of the Apostles." " Where are your witnesses," continued
the Bishop, " what supernatural powers do you appeal to in proof
of your heavenly mission ?" This was a puzzler ; it had been so to
Mohammed several hundred years ago, bnt the prophet got out of
it by saying that he had written the Koran, which, as every one
could see, was a miracle in itself. Wolff could not say he had
written the Bible, so he fell a-thinking, and the result was he
came home not a better man — for a most excellent one he was
always — but a loiser man.

Till lately, as regards missionary efforts, the Church of England
had dropped that note of its Apostolic character : it had lost not
the power of reproducing itself, but the will !

Why — incredible as it seems — it is yet true that, for one
hundred years, there existed an Episcopal Church on this continent
without a Bishop, and the Church which had the protection of the
Government of England was that which was left without organiza-
tion ! In vain did the Church plead for redress ; year after year

•I

P 1

or. « A
\ pulling
cd. " I
ow shall
low shall
ow shall

said the
mil they
nt," said
tan sent
ests and
rd," said
itenance.
3is own

that I
I know
a, and I
is own
ion, the
again,
any one
appoint-

Moses
ht forth
ipersede
by the
)ntinued
in proof
en so to
»t out of
ery one
he had
was he
he was

England
lost not

or one
ntinent
of the
ganiza-
er year

did the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel make strenuous
efforts to remedy the evil, but — while the State permitted the
Roman Catholic Church to have what Bishops she pleased — the
sons and daughters of the Church of England in America were
left without th'j ministrations pledged to them at their baptism.

To what then but our own neglect can we attribute the growth
on this continent of such innumerable varieties of religious
denominations ? It is certain, too, that nothing so tended to bring
about the revolution which severed so large a portion of North
America from the mother country as the neglect of her spiritual
duties to her children.

The exertions which were made were those of indiviJuuls, and,
though they were not without that share of blessing and success,
never denied to holy purposes, and prayerful men, the nature of
that success was — what might have been expected — desultory and
uncertain.

This was the character of our Indian missions, and, to a great
extent, of all our missions.

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts,
which was founded in the year 1701, may in some sense be
considered a cast of the Church, and in these days when she
appears to be rousing herself and reassuming some of her ancient
functions, it may, perhaps, be moulded into an efficient implement
of united and vigorous missionary action. But at the close of the
last century society after society was set on foot, and these societies
were all more or less distinct from one another in doctrine and
government. The blame must be on ourselves : the Church in
those days was dormant and supine.

In 1792 the Baptist Missionary Society was formed ; in 1795
t\e London Society, conducted chiefly by the Independents, was
formed for the same purpose. In the following year the Scotch
Association was formed by the Presbyterians, and in 1800 the
Church Missionary Society was originated for the purpose of
Christianizing the heathen in Africa.

Seventeen years afterwards the Wesleyans consolidated a
similar association, and from that time to this many others have
been formed. All these disseminate in rivalry each its own
peculiar tenets in every quarter of the globe. What success
has attended these conflicting efforts to extend the Gospel, and
bring mankind into obedience to its precepts ?

" It is indeed,'* says Grant, " a melancholy reflection that from
our shores Christianity should go forth not in one shape, but in
shapes as many-formed as individual conviction and zeal can make
theni : that all our dissensions should be propagated and reproduced

iil

amongst the heathen ; that the gift of God, designed to bo the healer
of nations, should become the spring of strife and debate ; that the
Pagan mind, becoming just awakened to the truth, should have
that truth presented to it in a variety of forms, and when disposed
to look out from itself to receive the counsel of God, should thus
be thrown into utter doubt as to which of all these systems is the
right one." " We should like your religion," said a Brahmin, " if
there were not so many of them !" The deplorable effects of this
were very strikingly illustrated by the Metropolitan of New
Zealand at the Church Congress last year, at Wolverhampton.
Bishop Selwyn said : " When in the very heart of New Zealand,
on the shore of Tampo Lake, I went to one of the most remarkable
of the New Zealand chieftains, noted for his hospitality to
strangers, and when I asked him why he refused to be a Christian,
he stretched out three fingers, and, pointing to the centre joint,
said : * I have come to a spot from which I see three roads
branching. This is the Church of England, this is the Church of
Rome, and this is the Wesleyan. I am sitting down here doubting
which to take.' And he sat there at those cross roads doubting
till he died in a wonderful manner. One night there was a
land-slip, the village was overwhelmed, and that chieftain died in
unbelief because of the divisions of Christian men."

Christianity suffers for all this ; it must suffer. We must be
prepared for failures ; we must be prepared for the confounding
together by the heathen of the works of all the associations I have
referred to, whether within or without the Church, and for their
imputation of the faults of each to all ; while the Romanists, who
class us all alike as schismatic sects, are but too glad to attribute
the failures of any portion of them to a general withholding of
God's blessing from any missionary labours thus undertaken, and
thus directed. Can any of us doubt that God regards with anger
and displeasure our dissensions and schisms, and that these form
the chief obstacle to the extension of His kingdom ?

We are too apt to think of our missions as being sent to
ignorant and benighted heathens. In India this is not the case^ for
though ignorant of the true religion^ they are far from being
uncivilized, and many, very many, Mahometans and Hindoos are
well educated men. Now to such as these we must present
ourselves, not as giving an uncertain sound, but as fully convinced
of the truth of our teaching ; we must be models in discipline of
our own doctrinal theory. We have seen the aspect in which the
Church must have presented itself in doctrine to such men ; let us
see how they must have viewed it with respect to discipline.

At the time when our multifarious Societies began to disseminate

the healer
; that the
ould have
n disposed
bould thus
ems is the
ihmiii, " if
cts of this
of New
rhampton.
V Zealand,
cmarkablc
(itality to
Christian,
itre joint,
tree roads
Church of
e doubting
} doubting
ere was a
in died in

'"e must be
nfounding
ons I have
d for their
nists, who
) attribute
Lolding of
aken, and
vith anger
;hese form

ig sent to
le case, for
•om being
indoos are
3t present
convinced
scipline of
which the
n; let us
%e.
isseminate

their nuiltifarious doctrines, not only were incessant wars
devastating every Province, not only were Christians apparently
living iinafFicted l)y religious discipline and principles, not only
was the Church of Christ unseen in any visible form, but Christian
Oovernincnts denounced Christianity. I^aws p<isscd by Englishmen
rendered converts to Christianity incapable of holding offices as
civilians, and the good Bishop Hebcr relates that a corporal in the
then company's service was removed from it for havin<^ embrac(;d
Christianity. I have read, too, that the first Indian Bishop was
inducted into his spiritual domain by stealth, through a faithless
fiar of offending heathen prejudices.

What said Sir Tlt-bert Edwnrdcs on this subject and its
bearing on the Indian mutiny, at a meeting of the Church
Missionary Society in England eight years ago : " The Indian
mutiny was not caused by trying to disseminate Christianity : it
was caused, I tell you on the word of a spectator, on the word of a
participator in those events — by our keeping back Christianity
from the people ; it was caused not by a knowledge of Christianity,
but by an utter Ignorance of what it is. Our government in India
had systematically kept the knowledge of Christianity from its
native army. When by chance one solitary native soldier in the
Bengal Provinces was converted to Christianity, that instant he
became in the estimation of the Government unfit to stand in the
ranks of the army ; that instant, by virtue, or rather by vice, of
his being a Christian, he was expelled. What, then, was the
result of this policy pursued through a hundred years? The
Sepoy, ignorant of what Christianity was, judged it by the light
which he had within, which was darkness. He supposed it was a
thing he could catch like a disease by touching some Christian
person or substance. The Enfield cartridge made up, as they
supposed, with beeves' fat or pigs' fat was to their ideas the very
embodiment of a converting scheme. This was, in their estimation,
the happiest device that any Government could have hit on. They
did not blame the Government in their hearts for wishing to
convert them to Christianity : they thought that it was the most
natural thing for a Government to attempt. Religion is to the
native a reality. It is the thread- of his life. All his daily acts
are beads strung upon this string. His festivals, his feasts, his
\ fasts, his ceremonies, his domestic events all enter into his religion,
I and his religion enters into them. The native is nothing without
his religion ; it is the back bone of his existence. He cannot
therefore understand a Government ignoring religion."

Under such an aspect was the missionary's work to be
^presented to the Indian people! To the very same purport is later

intelUgcncc from China. Our miniHtcr even now will not folcrnte
the presence of a Protestant Missionary at Pekin. The only one
whom the Bishop of Hong Kong was able to leave on the occasion
of a visit he made a few years ago to the Celestial capital, would
appear to have been accredited there only aa a tcaihcr of the
English language! Why is it that more toleration is shown in
that capital to Roman than to English Catholics ? May it not be
that the French Government throw themselves heartily into the
work of pushing forward and supporting the mission of their
Church and faith. Already their converts in Pekin amount to over
two thousand, and a large elegant Cathedral is completed in one
part of the city, whilst in another a smaller Church has been
some time built. We have no house of prayer yet, and our only
missionary is a smuggled one. Remember moreover such facts as
these : when Carey, the Baptist Missionary, went out first to India
to preach the word of God, he was forced to betake himself to the
Danish settlement of Serampore, because the English were afraid
of having the missionary to the heathen settle in their territory.
Again, Sir Peregrine Maitland was compelled to return to England,
leaving a high official post, returning in disgrace, and so far as
man's orders could make it, a dishonored man, because he refused to
order Christian English soldiers to fire salutes for the most
accursed of the Hindoo idols ! " The element of Christianity,'*
says a writer on the subject, ** was in India entirely suppressed,
and our administration presented the spectacle of one of the greatest
Christian powers in the world sedulously bent upon ignoring its
own belief."

How would all this appear from the point of view in which
the Mahometans, and the Hindoos, or even the Chinese would see
it ? The Mahometan is a strict observer of his religious duties, as
those duties are taught him. Never does the sun rise or set on
him, but, having performed all his ablutions, having, as he would
say, washed his hands in innocency, and spread his carpet to keep
him from the pollutions of this sinful earth, he kneels do\^ n and
repeats his prayers. And this is done secretly or openly, wherever
he may happen to be at the time. I have seen it carried out with
the most wrapt but unobtrusive devotion on the crowded and busy
decks of a steamer. With him almsgiving is a set and regular
duty, scrupulously, though perhaps formally, performed. Fasting
with him is regular and severe ; terribly so 1 remember to have
thought it when I first visited Turkey in their Ramazan, or Lent
season. When the Mahometan enters his mosque, his shoes are
carefully put off at the door. So must yours if you would not be
hastily driven out again, as I saw some free and independent
citizens of the neighboring Republic driven from St. Sophia some

3t tolornte

only ono

e occuHion

al, would

!tv of the

showu in

f it not be

' into the

of their

nt to over

'ed in one

has been

our only

\i facts as

t to India

self to the

ere afraid

territory.

England,

so far 08

refused to

the most

istianity,"

ippresst'd,

e greatest

noring its

in which
voiild see
duties, as
or set on
ho would
it to keep
o\^n and
wherever
out with
and busy
regular
Fasting
to have
or Lent
shoes are
id not be
ependent
ihia some

fifteen years ago. Provided with Firmans from our respective
Ambassadors at Constantinople, eight or ten American ladies and
gontlonuMi and myself presented ourselves for entrance at the
mosquo of St. Sophia. Wo were directed to remove our boots and
replace them by slippers, provided for the purpose. I obeyed,
and urged my companions to do so also, but they refused, and
persisted, against the remonstrances of the attendants, in making
their way into the mosquo, which at the time was occupied by
many worshippers. At length tl:o wrath of these attendants
became so great that the party wore forcibly driven from the
building, pushed down the stops which led from it, and actually
whipped as thoy fled along the street.

It was some consolation to the outraged feelings of my Ameri-
can companions that, altho' the unoffending member of the party,
tlie British oilicor fared worst on the occasion. For, not having
time to resume the use of my own boots, and being encumbered
with the loose Turkish slipper, I made but slow progress, and may
bo said to have formed the rear: guard, and so to have covered the
undignified retreat of the whole party.

Thus the Mahometan acknowledges that the place where he is
treading is holy ground, and when in, he creeps silently and reve-
rently to his place, where, as before, ho kneels upon his carpet.
Now what can we say to such a man as that ? He will admit that
he believes in Christ, that they — the Mahometans — had been
Christians once, " but," says he, " we had fallen into those bad
habits in which you Christians continue to this day, and so GodI
sent us another Prophet, Mahomet, to bring us back to the pure-
religion. Look at your people — they never pray, they never fast.
Some give alms certainly, but not all : it is evidently, therefore,
not apart of your religion. It was in Chri:5t's time, but you have
forgotten it, and as for your places of worship — supposing he had
over seen a church — they are not places of worship at all. They
are places occasionally open where people hear lectures, but not
where men go to kneel, and pray, as we do." This is supposing
ho had ever seen a church, but most likely he never would have
seen one. For many years there was not a church in India, and
even yet there are but few. The Christians who were to set an
example to the nations had not enough of religion to worship their
God once a week, instead of the every day of the Mahometans.
In vain would the missionary talk of the pure religion and its
strict requirements! The Mahometan judged not by what he
heard — for he heard so many different versions — but by what he
saw ! There was no visible representative Church : there was no
band of holy men actually doing what the preacher said God's law
i required. English troops were pushed far into the country, but,
till lately, they carried not God's Minister along with them. Sir

Charlos Napior, wIumi ci)nuuiiii(lin<^ in Soindo, s(!nt lioino liis^
solemn protest against tlx! ubscnce of ministers of the relif^^ion of
Englanu in the loice and IVovince committed to liis ijovcrnmcnt.

"One Catholic Church!" There was )ii>t a ('hiirch. Thero
wore Men's Societies. There was tlio ditVerence hetweeii Aligns-
tine's mission, and o»ir Indian missions! With Iho Hindoo the
case was still more dinicnlt. He worsliipped, indtfod, a multitude
of idols, but still ho would answer that there was l»ut one (Jod,
and that his idols were l)ut reminders of thi\t (Jod's [(crfectiona.
The very essonco <>f Hindooisni is sclf-tUMiial, as indeed in theory
it is of Christianity. In tlic Hindoo it is mixed up with all sorts
of impieties and absurdities, as might bo expected in men who
have not the spirit of Clu-ist to guide them ; but tiiero it is, and
they act up to it. They will sacriiice anything — their riches, their
children, tlicir very lives — 'to their sense of duty to Ood : monstrous
as that idea sometimes is in practice. iJut this is tlio essence of
tho Christian religion also — at least we profess that it is. Tho
missionary preaches it as he is bound ; but the Hindoo ropies :
" Look at us, and look at yourselves ; whoso religion is true, judg-
ing by the earnestness of its followers ? Look at us in our holy
pilgrimages over tho hot jilains of Hindostan ; look at us giving
up our children to the holy Ganges ; look at us leaving all, count-
ing our lives as nothing in the service of our God, and look at
yourselves. You count your lives as nothing : you leave your
homes and your friends as well as we, but it is in tho pursuit of
pleasure, whenever it is not in the pursuit of gain."

We say that our justice and our righteousness, and our great suite-
riority to the Lidian in everything which relates to truth, arc the
fruits of our religion, and so they are ; but they are not the fruits
.of Indian religion, and we cannot trace them to it. Self-denial,
and. worship, and purity of life, ought to be tho fruits of it too,
and these the Indian would appreciate, but ho cannot imderstand
;a religion without discipline. In such matters the visible Church
iis invisible to him.

Now this description is not the whole truth, and I know that
the Christian would have a great deal more to say for himself, but
I .think it is the truth as it would strike the mind of a Hindoo.
And upon all this comes the miscellaneous teaching of our uncon-
nected societies, and which is he to believe ? Unitarian, Presby-
terian, Baptist, Weslcyan, Independent, Church of England — all
these are Christian and Protestant — which is to be his instructor ?
" That they all may be one," said our Lord and ^faster, " as Thou
Father art in Mo and I in Thee : that they may be one in us : that
the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me." We, the pro-
fessed disciples of Christ are not one in Christ, and therefore it is
•that we preach Him in vain.

lioino IiJM
»;lifi;ioii of
vtTiirnoiit.
I. Tl.cro
M Angus-
indoo the
multitude

OMO (}()d,

3rl'ec;tions.

in theory

all sorts

moil who

it is, and

jIics, thcii'

iionstrous

Jssciico of

is. Tho

ropies :
•ue, jud^-

our holy
us giving
ill, count-
d look at
javc your
pursuit of

^I'cat supc'
1, arc the
tho fruits
clf-dcnial,
of it too,
ndcrstand
le Church

mow that
nself, but

1 Hindoo.
Lir uncon-
1, Prcsby-
;land--all
structor ?
' as Thou

us: that

the pro-

eforc it is

" See how these Christians love one OiKjthor," was tho iioathcn's
remark in tlu^ caily days of the Church. Alas ! what bitter irony
would such oxpnission carry with it now. If St. Augustine and
St. Anskar had had to labor ngaitist such difliculty a« this, we
might have been worshipping Thor and Odin to this day !

Necessary as a visible Church ujion Earth is, for those who
have been bronjdit up all their lives in the laws and obligations of
that (>hurch, n icb more is it necessary for those who have still to
learn them, and \v bo have no means whatever of arriving at the
knowledge of a spiritual ruler except by studying from sight and
practice his spiritual rules affecting the lives, and daily conduct,
and practice; of his followers. If then the ililVicuItics which have
hindered the spreading of Christianity in India, or elsewhere, lie
at our door, then are they those Nvliieb every one of us may help
to accummulatt!, ov may help to diminish. Those dilVicidties
maiidy have heen the apathy of the ('burch, our sinful schisms
from the Church, and our no less sinful divisions in the Church, —
tho backwardness of the country to stand, as Colonel Edwardcs
says, '■'' Avowrdhj as a Christian (Jovcrnment," and our own prayer-
less lives. Surely by these things have we shut up the kingdom of
Ood Irum the lieathen. Those who have stood wrangling at tho
gate entered not in themselves, but, what was worse than that,
them that would enter in they hindered. Tho blessed Sua of
Christ's Church would have shone upon the lands which lie gave
us for a |)ossession, but our own half-hcartedness raised the mist
lictwccn it and the land it was shining on. And yet, in sj)ito of
all these things some })ortion of success has been given to us. If
missions have not prospered as they should, they have not been
altogether fruitless. Now in Central Africa, at the Capo, at Sierra
Lcoiic, and amongst the Sandwich Islands, is the good work mak-
ing a progress, and in a way it did not before. A mission, too, in
its primitive integrity, is in contemplation for Madagascar.

Some of the minor obstacles, at which I have previously
glanced, would aj)pear to be already giving way in India, but bc-
I'oro our superior education, energy, and civilization, notour direct
missionary effort, or peculiarly Christian character. From all ac-
counts caste has little chance of maintaining itself against railway
influences. Tho papers tell us of all castes being huddled toge-
ther in one carriage, and in long Journeys having to eat their food
side by side. They also tell us of the native landed proj)rietors of
Oude having themselves taken in hand the suppression of infanti-
cide. From the constant travelling generated by railways, sacred
places cannot long remain sacred. Already, immense lengths of
lail are open, and — even if other agencies be not at work — a great
revolution of mind and feeling impends from this cause alone.

Itiy

Can we long remain insousible of how doop iutorest to our-
selves is the religious welfare of over one hundred and seventy
millions of fellow-subjects united under the same crown ? If our
people at large are insensible of this, it must be from not having
kept in mind what India may be to us, in numbers, if in nothing
else — for evil, if not for good ! " Between us and the people of
India," says Sir Herbert Edwardes, " the great want is the want of
a link. Wo arc divided by our religions. We stand aloof — the
heathen on the one side, and the Christian on the other — and find
nothing in our worldly policy to bridge the space. Wc shall," adds
that able soldier and good man, " only find that link in Chris-
tianity."

A new era has been born to us in 1857, and it is useless to try
and return to the old order of things. Surely the result of that
mutiny, in which, had not the people sided with us, they might,
from their numbers, have " smothered us with their very turbans,"
is enough to assure us that wo are still permitted to bear the
sacred burthen — that our country may yet bo the means of evan-
gelizing the great continent of India. Brought as we were within
one step of ruin, we have had re-consigned to our charge well nigh
200,000,000 of people.

But our more immediate dutv lies before us in the continent
on which our lot is cnst. We find it in making earlier and better
provision for furthering, through our Diocesan Church Societies,
the work of missions in the remoter parts of these Provinces, in
establishing on a more permanent basis and augmenting the pit-
tance of our missionary clergy, and in increasing their numbers.
This is plainly the first and most urgent call upon us, and it is one
which — if met eflfectually — must be met by a regularly-sustained,
and well kept up effort. To give this year, and to withhold the
next, will do but little good. Our duty in this matter is surely,
however, not confined to ourselves ; it is to speed the good work
across that portion of the continent committed to our charge.
Great on all sides would be the blessings which would flow from
sacrifices for such a purpose ; for is it not an universal law that in
blessing others, we are ourselves blest ? As the planting of a
vigorous colony strengthens by a reflex action the nation from
which it springs, so, in widened communion, in the fuller assertion
of her principles, and in blessings on her individual members, does
missionary work the Church Irom which it springs.

And the great country on which we border is not behindhand ;
for, see with what abounding zeal and energy does our sister
Church in the States now press onward the good work. I know
few things more interesting than the tidings which reach us of the
spirit which animates, and of the progress which attends her. I
know nothing grander or more ennobling than those blessed shoots

ofl

fr(

W£

reJ

M<!

cul

thf

teJ

ra.\

hal

thf

al(

StJ

3st to oiir-
id seventy
I? If our
not having
in nothing

people of
lie want of
aloof — the
—and find
lall," adds

in Chris-
less to try
It of that
ey might,
turbans,"

bear the
? of evan-
ire within
well nigh

3ontinent
nd better
iJocieties,
'inces, in

the pit-
lumbers.
it is one
istained,
lold the
i surely,
od work

charge.
3w from

that in
ig of a
•n from
ssertion
rs, does

dhand ;
r sister
. know
! of the
ler. I
shoots

of a loving charity which that Church put forth — from North and
from South — at the general Convention three years ago, just as the
war had terminated. And did not our own hearts kindle as we
read the words of Catholic greeting, on that occasion, to the good
Metropolitan of Canada — now gone to his rest, — and to the Prolo-
cutor of the Provincial Synod ? As I write, two of the Clergy of
this Diocese — one a veteran in the ranks of the Church — are at-
tending the general Convention now in session at New York. "We
may feel sure they will return gladdened by the welcome they will
have met from their American brethren, and strengthened by all
they will have seen and heard of the good work being done — not
alone in the East and Centre, but in the far West of the United
States.

Let us remember that we, too, like that sister Church, have
remote settlements calling for reversion of past neglect, and yearn-
ing for our missionary help ; that we, too, have a continent to span,
and must send fortli men and means for the mighty work before
us. Shall we not, in responding to the cry for urgent temporal
want, which comes to us from the Red River Territory, give them
that, and more than that. The Bishop of Rupert's Land has been
pleading in the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec, for the spiritual
needs of his vast Diocese ; he seeks to establish a college there for
giving a proper missionary education to the young men who come
amongst them. Having myself heard his Lordship's earnest cry
for help on the occasion of a late visit to Montreal, I would fain
urge it in this Province, whither he has been unable to come. He
looks forward to the lime when the outposts of the missionary
army of the Dominion of Canada shall meet his, and pursue to-
gether their onward course to the West. May it be that the spirit
of our God, which of old woke up Apostles and Evangelists, may
be so breathed out in this our day, that there shall be no lack of

men saying, " Here am I — send

me;"

of labourers who, as the

Master calls them, shall go forth into His field, reapers-in of the
greatness of the harvest. Only let us be true to ourselves, and the
principles ^landed down to us through successive ages from the
earliest and mightiest days of the Church's teaching, and hallowed
by the truest missionary success. It is with the Church among
ourselves in this country, as with the Church in Southern Africa,
in New South Wales, and in New Zealand ; it must re-learn to go
alone, and not to wait on the slow movements, the tardy aid, and
often jealous co-operation — if not actual opposition — of earthly
powers.

Let us remember (it will lift us up to noble purpose, and real
achievement if we do,) that it is not when she has fullest coffers,
and most abundant revenues, when the world most smiles upon
her, when her ritual is the most gorgeous, and her power seems at

■"Hh,

■is

its height, that the Church is m'^st sui*ely doing her Lord's work
in the world.

Wo may here call to mind the incident of one of the Popes, on
being visited by a holy man to whom he was shewing the glories
of the Vatican. " You see," said the Pope, " St. Peter cannot now
say ' silver and gold have I none.' " " Neither can he say," was
the reply, " Rise up and walk."

Is it not well, especially at the present time in reference to
Ireland, to remember that endowments^ however convenient when
possessed, arc not of the essence of the Church, and in connection
with such fact, is it not also well to keep before our minds the
further fact that in ecclesiastical, as in civil affairs, individuals
cannot be absolved from the duty of providing f"»r and maintauiing
the body to which they belong — such duty is lii Ao to be lost sight
of when for a length of time it has been left to the inanimate
agency of tithes on land.

The Church ever most truly fulfils her divine commission
when, through the dark places of the earth, by i^eans of her
missionary ministry, " the poor have the Gospel preached to
them." Then is the Church not an abstraction, or an idea, but a
living thing ; and one great test of her vitality will be the presence
of that spirit of expansion which lives in the very charter under
which slie acts, and which animates her ministers and her laity as
far as in them lies, to feel that they are " debtors both to the
Greeks and to the barbarians, both tc the wise and to the unwise,
to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ." Shall we not then
rouse ourselves and our neighbors anew to take a greater interest
in the true and full development of our faith and missionary
work ? Let us realize more the immense importance of individual
energy in the cause ; each one must make such work his own
personal concern, bringing home to himself his reponsibility to do
something in it, and doing it in love. Let us remember how and
why we suffered a century ago, when good John Wesley and his
twenty-nine thousand followers — who alone in evil days had the
courage to arouse a sleeping Church, and to preach its forgotten
obligation — were persecuted, and at last lost to our communion.
Alas ! in his generation diligence and earnestness found little
room within the Church d fold. In our days Wesley would have
been a laborious and earnest Churchman. Let us remember, too,
how, later still, hundreds of earnest, energetic, evangelical men,
whe loved the Church, were driven from it to swell the rank's of
Protestant dissent, chiefly because they were in earnest in crying
out against the mere morality of those times. And how, yet later,
men of holy lives and earnest purpose, who pointed sternly to
forgotten duties, and discipline neglected, have been persecuted
and abused. How men, who were conscious that they had a trust

Lord's work

ho Popes, oil
g tlic glories
iv cannot now
he say," was

reference to
venient when
in connection
r minds the

, individu'^ls
I maintahiing
• be lost sight
he inanimate

commission
'"cans of her
preached to
n idea, but a
the presence
barter under
i her laity as
s both to the
3 the unwise,

we not then
3ater interest
i missionary
of individual
ork his own
sibiiity to do
iber how and
sley and his
days had the
its forgotten
communion,
found little

would have
Qember, too,
jelical men,
;he rank's of
Jst in crying
w, yet later,
i sternly to

persecuted
had a ti-ust

committed to them, and would preserve it intact, — who, belonging
to tlie Church of England, showed that they belonged to it by
relaxing nothing of all that it required, have been suspected and
spoken against, and some of them, it miy be, driven from the
Ciiurch they would and should have served.

[low invariably has it happened that those who have done good
to the Church, — those who founded it, — those who repaired and
restored its breaches, — have been for a time unpopular. In after
ages, when we have reaped the fruits of their labours and
self-denials, we honor them, but in their lifetime it has been far
otherwise. We liave seen how Wesley was persecuted and his
followers stigmatized — as earnest men still often are — as
" Methodists !" Again, how did party clamour seek to drown the
voice of truth and earnestness in such men as Venn, and Simeon,
and Wilberforce, and call them " Evangelicals !" And in our
own times how have Church reformers been persecuted, and

" nigh Churchmen,"
following instance

spoken

against
!" Let

the

ridiculed, and
" Tractarians," " Pusevites

illustrate and answer this matter. Tiie story is well-known, but it
will bear repetition : A stage-coach was starting from a certain
place in England. Its only inside passenger was a worthy,
comely, well-intentioned dame. Just before the coach drove out
of the inn yard, the guard opened the door, and a quiet,
parson-like, middle-aged gentleman, with a benevolent smile, took
his place beside her. Before they bad arrived at their respective
destinations, the parties in question had had time for a good deal
of conversation. Being each prepossessed with the other's
appearance and sentiments, they had formed what might be called
a stage-coach intimacy. The lady talked much, as ladies of that
age are apt to do, of the wickedness of the times ; " and then those
Puseyites," said she, " those wicked. Popish Puseyites, they are
worse than all put together ; what ever shall we come to ?"
" Puseyites, ma'am," said the gentleman, " what are they, and
what wick<^;dness do they commit ?" ■ * Is it possible, sir," said the
lady, " that you have never heard of those Puseyites, they are
turning the world upside down ?" The gentleman admitted that
he had heard of such people, but that he did not know a great
deal about them, and as for turning the world upside down, the
lady had just admitted that she did not see much good in the side
which was now uppermost. " Do you know," said she
confidentially, speaking in a low solemn voice, and laying her
hand upon his shoulder, " do you know that Dr. P»'sey himself
sacrifices a lamb every Friday ?" " Nonsense, my dear madam,"
said the gentleman, *' I assure you he does no such thing." " I
don't know what you mean by nonsense, sir," said the lady,
drawing herself up, and speaking with becoming dignity, " I

*--i^. -.■ , *iisil. Ji_'«5air^ .-■

-.-^^-li'S'^^'^j.i^v;;.

I '

1 1

1^ 1 1 1

suppose you do not mean to doubt my word ; and I assure you I
have it from the best authority — Dr. Pusey sacrifices a lamb every
Friday !" " But madam, my dear madam," said he deprecatingly,
" I am Dr. Pusey, and I never sacrificed a lamb in my life. I
have not the heart to do it, and I don't know how to do it either."

Remembering such things, and how easy it is to fall into a
harsh and unfair judgment, let us do all that in us lies to eschew
divisions amongst ourselves, and let us hope and pray that the
dissent we so much mourn may yet be healed. Even now we are
being permitted to see the dawn o^ a brighter day for the Church
of England, and it may be of an enlarged return to her
communion.

Which of us but must have been struck by the yearning for a
long time known to have been felt by some, but now openly
avowed by many, of the clergy and laity of the Established Church
of Scotland towards a much closer approximation to cur Book of
Common Prayer ?

I took the following extract a short time ago from a Scotch
paper : " In the Canongate, Edinburgh, a document was read on
Sunday, giving the unanimous opinion of the Kirk Session in
favour of standing during the singing, and kneeling during pray-
ers, in public worship. Both the ministers approve of the change."

And is there not a more marked significance than perhaps at
first occurs to the mind in the fact that the sons of four of the late
Presidents of the Wesleyan Methodist body at home are at this
time ministers of the Church of England ?

I read a statement in the Colonial Church Chronicle, taken
from a Church Review, published in " the States," to the effect
that within — I think — one year nine ministers of the Baptist,
Methodist, or Presbyterian denominations had been admitted to
holy orders in our church, whilst of fifty-five persons confirmed in
Emmanuel Cl'urch, Boston, on one occasion within the same year
forty-seven were from other denominations !

I observe, too, that it was stated by the Bishop of Rhode
Island, during a recent visit to England, that five out of every six
ol the present clergy of the Episcopal Church in the United States
had come from other quarters, not having been born or brought
up in that Church.

Again, " in not a few places," said the Bishop of New York, in
addressing the Convention of his Diocese last month, (September,
1868,) "• half of the candidates whom 1 confirm have come from
other religious bodies within a few years, and they have come, in
a large proportion of cases, with a real love for the Church's ways,
and a full acceptance of her principles. "The Church grows,"
adds the Bishop, " and people from without are flocking to her
courts like doves to their windows."

Roj

W01

Co(
Ch|
one
full
on'

8t0<

■,..,■ o^..^^.

'ssure you I
lamb every
3recatingly,
my life. I
> it either."
fall into a
to eschew
ay that the
low we are
lie Church
n to her

ling for a
>w openlv
2d Church
r Book of

a Scotch
s read on
ession in
■ing pray-
change."
3r]iaps at
f the late
e at this

e, taken
lie effect
Baptist,
litted to
rmed in
fne year

Kliode
'■ery six
1 States
>rought

ork, in
ember,
e from
me, in
ways,
rows,"
her

Mary years ago it was said by a devoted adherent of the
Roman Catholic Church " that if ever Christians should re-unite it
would seem that the movement must take its rise in the Anglican
Communion," and Bishop Williams, of the Protestant Episcopal
Church in the States, observes that " it has occurred to more than
one thoughtful mind in our day that, if ever this re-union — the
fulfilment of Our Saviour's latest prayer — shall come, it must be
on the basis of Polity, Ritual and Doctrine, on which Christianity
stood before diversities grew up."

May it not bo then that our reformed Church, holding, as it
does, the primitive ways — Evangelical truth with Apostolic order,
and inheriting by an indisputable succession from those on whom
the Great Master breathed His power, the transmitted authority
of Eis undying Apostleship — is being made the " preparing type
for the Church of the latter days." If it be a dream to hope so, at
least let us remember it will not make us dreamers to live, and
pray as if it wore indeed to bo so. " Oh," said the Dean of Cork,
now Bishop o'.' Peterborough, in a sermon preached last month in
St. Patrick's Cathedral, in Dublin, " Oh, if Christendom were one,
but for a single hour, what force could stand before it ?"

We have, as a Church, in our missionary labors, a large inheri-
tance of past neglect to be reversed, and, God be thanked, we are
not without many signs of healthier life. The need of men fitted
for the work by education, and training, and willing to go forth,
would seem at this time the greatest want. Would that there were
more, far more, of the sons of these Provinces preparing for the
Church's work, and ready to venture their all on the great deep of
God's providence. And difficult as may be, and as is the venture
of all miss' nary work, it must be borne in mind that it is less so
now than ever before. Time was, when he who would go forth,
must do so in the weakness of a single, solitary course. Now it is
not so ; for — look where we may — the seats of Apostolic rule and
strength are fixed, or being fixed for us. England's sons and the
sons of this groat Dominion freely go forth to fill up her armies
and navies, or to administer her most distant settlements : and
shall the Church lack sons to do her part, and win, against the
coming day, her crowns of victory ? Circumstanced as we are
now, it would not seem possible to discharge our duty in this work
except through the agency of Church Societies, and it is of great
use that, over and above the regular working of such societies,
there should be efforts of a more special kind — such as the ser-
mons at the late meeting of the Diocesan Synod in this city, and
meetings throughout the country — to arouse to greater energy and
stronger purpose the missionary work of the Church. Does there
not seem a danger lest our broad Catholic Episcopacy should
dwindle into the narrowness of congregational action, each congre-

t !

Si;

I t

'r i

gation standing aloof, and alone, as though no otlicr Parish existed,
instead of presenting the sublime spectacle of a solid phalanx ?
Our hearts are not bound together as they should be.

When we calmly survey the field of missionary labor before us
on this Continent, its vastness and extent, and the issues involved,
we shall see that it is a work calling for united effort in the sweet-
est and strongest spirit of unity. Lut us of the Anglican com-
munioji everywhere draw closer our bands of brotherhood. Isola-
tion is indeed the bane of any Parish, or Diocese. " Great will bo
the blessing," observed the Metropolitan of South Africa, on a
late occasion in England, " on the distant Churches of the Em-
pire connecting themselves with each other, and with the Mother
Cluirch, as they will do, by spiritual ties enacted in Synods.
The Diocesan allying itself with the Provincial, the Provincial with
the National or (as hereafter, our Synods may include more na-
tions than one) the General, the General with the Oecumenical.
Only,' adds Bishop Gray, "let this principle of connection and
subordination be generally recognised, and we shall have adopted
a system which has stood tne test of ages, which was the recog-
nised system of the Church from primitive times to the great
division of East and West, and which would — had it been adhered
to — have preserved Christendom to this day in unity."

And every such meeting of the members of the Church serves
to keep us from falling into the groove of mere routine, to assert
her own missionary spirit, and by a rellex influence to warm and
invigorate our own hearts. It is the neglect to claim with the full
wholeness of a perfect faith the sure promises of our God which
weakens missionary work, and thins the ranks of our missionary
army.

Oh, for some Francis Xavier to arise in our Church, and to
show us what may be done by one giant soul acting under the
inspiration of a great faith and a great love ! Here was a man —
Roman Catholic though he was — penetrated with the conviction of
what he had to do, and doing it with a might which will live to all
ages, the astonishment of the world. If any will read a book, pub-
lished not long since by a clergyman in Ireland, called " Praying
and AVorking," they will there see what is being, and what has
been, done by missionary labour in Germany, and amongst the
heathen, in this century, by men in earnest in a good cause.
Wherever, in any age, or Church, or country, this spirit is wanting,
all true service is wanting too.

To this level the unsympathising world at large is ever working
to bring down the tone of God's servants ; the missionary spirit
seems to the worldly-wise so unpractical, so fanatical, so exagge-
rated ! Against such, then, within herself, must the Church bo
over struggling, and ever renewing by missionary effort her esti-

mat|

maj

iut(

hac
Sac
Bpri

witi

proj

our|

Ch^

ii-ish existed,
'd jjlmlanx ?

or before us
los involved,
II the sweet-
Jglican com-
ood. Isola-
reat will bo
f"ca, on a
the Eiii-
tlie Mother
i'» Synods,
vincial mth
nioro iia-
Icumenical.
ectiou and
^•e adopted
tlic recog-
tlie ^rreat
en adhered

roll serves
> to assert
warm and
th the full
jrod which
Qissionary

5h, and to
"der the
a man —
miction of
ive to all
5ok, pub-
fraying
^bat has
ig'st the
1 cause,
t^anting,

v^orking
7 spirit
3xagge-
rch bo
er esti-

mate of the blessedness of ministering to the lost. Look where yoii
may along the past, and never will you find her breaking forth
into missionary ministries of love, and not find her also receiving
back into herself, in larger volume, the blessings of l»cr Lord.
Such effort does indeed bless and revive the body out of which it
springs.

Against questioning unbelief, aid speculation on God's Word —
with which our time is so sadly conversant — missionary work may
prove both a protest and a safeguard. It may serve, too, to abato
our party spirit, to loose the hard knot which discord has tied, and
to show liow strong is the Spirit's life in our branch of Christ's
Church.

Oh, as wc think of the magnitude of the work of Church Mis-
sions — of the blessings which they are the means of bearing forth,
let us take a more real hearty share in it, and renew our interest
in it, and our labours for it.

As my previous remarks have been almost confined to the work
of missions to the heathen, and in our own colonies, a few words
with respect to the movement now going on in the Church of Italy
may, I think, proVe of interest to all. And since many have not
opportunities of hearing or reading much about it, I venture to
give some extracts from authentic sources, which have lately come
under my notice.

Some zealous Protestant communities have endeavored to take
advantage of the present circumstances of Italy for the propaga-
tion of tlieir own opinions. The Vaudois have established con-
gregations in Turin, Florence, <fec., and Britain has furnished mis-
sionaries from the Plymouth Brethren and the Free Kirk of Scot-
land. It would not, however, seem that their systems are at all
likely to attract the great mass of such a people as the Italians.

Ihere is reason, indeed, to fear that harm has already been done
in Italy by the proceedings of unwise propagandists. Dr. Words-
worth, in his journal of a tour in Italy, published a few years ago,
tells us, for instance, of an English clergyman who went to Rome
to circulate tracts among the Bishops assembled for the Japanese
Canonization. He was treated with much forbearance by the Ro-
man authorities, who sent him quietly away, paid the rent of his
lodgings, and gave him compensation for his confiscated tracts.
While we give all due credit to the benevolent intentions and zeal
of persons engaged in such like attempts, it may be questioned
whether the result of these irregular exertions can be regarded as
in any way good. It is stated in a late number of " The American
Church Review," that " some excellent persons, wh&se feelings and

^11

expectations were all the other way, have been convinced by ex-
perience of the impracticability of securing general or permanent
reformation in Italy on the principle of an entire rejection of every
feature of their former church."

We read that a distinguished Italian layman tol Canon Words-
worth, at Turin, that his countrymen are influenced by n .ional
pride to such a degree that they imagine that there is scarcely any-
thing good which is not of Italian growth ; that Italy has no need
of learning from any other country, but has a prescriptive right,
even from the time of her Ciceros and Virgils, to be the teacher of
the world. Therefore, the course of all wise reformers will be to
sho>v the people of Italy that genuine reformation is a restoration of
Italian Church polity ; and then there is some hope that it may be
accepted — but not otherwise.

No one can read what has been going on of late in Italy
without being convinced, I think, that much has not been done
towards breaking the ties which bind that nation to the history of
the past, and to the Communion of the Church of Rome. But
many books lately published tend to show that much has been done
in making the principles of our Church known to Italians, and
above all to such of the Italian clergy as are willing to receive
information.

It may be interesting to some to know that a society, called the
♦• Anglo-Continental Society," has been labouring for a few years
past to promote the translation and circulation of such works as are
suited to give a more correct idea of the doctrine and practice of
the Church of England. The purpose of its operation is declared
to be, " to raise up a spirit of reform within the bosom of the
Italian Church, which may eventuate in a national reform of the
whole Church of Italy, carried out by the authorities in State and
Church : not to establish a new Church nor to draw individuals out
of the Italian Church into separate communities, but to help
forward the internal reformation of the Italian Church by the
instructed mind of the Church."

As the Reformation in England was a great necessity, we can
never renounce the principles which led to it, nor can we draw
nigh to other Christians by any softening down of differences which
would involve a departure from first principles We may,
however, by such a society as this, in view of the restlessness and
unsettlement so apparent at this time in Italy — might we not
include Spain ? — ^present its people with a true picture of our own
position. We may show them that we were once, what they are
now, and that we have come out of the struggle a Christian Church,
a catholic Church, but a reformed Church, founded on the Holy
Scriptures, that they may be encouraged to foUow our example.

givt^
pies'
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The " Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge," has also
given powerful aid towards the object of making known the princi-
ples of our Church, by publishing an Italian translation of the
Prayer Book, and by liberally supplying copies of this for distribu-
tion, or for sale at a low price. " During last winter," observes a
corrcsj)ondent of Dr. Wordsworth, " I could not but feel thankful
to see that the seed thus sown was, in several instances, manifestly
yielding good fruit, in increase of sympathy with the reformed Epis-
copal Church, in the removal of misapprehensions, and in the for-
mation of a desire for analagous reforms in the Church of Italy."
The same writer tells of the effect on a parish priest near Naples,
with whom ho was acquainted. " Last year he was greatly inter-
ested in our Prayer Book, and in ' Jewell's Apology.' This year
I was thankful to f»nd in his case, as in others, that increased know-
ledge of the real character of the Reformed Episcopal Church,
manifestly led to increased sympathy with us, and desire for anala-
gous reforms in the Church of Italy. He gladly joined with us in
short morning and evening prayers, in which the Italian version of
our Prayer Book happily enabled us to unite, reading alternately
the Psalms "cx the day, with a lesson and a portion of the prayers.
He said afterwards. If we could but have our Church services in
our own tongue, and could have this intelligible reading of the
Psalms by priests and people, and the Scriptures read out in our
own tongue, in the reverent way that seems habitual to English
Church people, the face of things would be wholly changed in our
churches. Now unhappily our people too often come in chatting
and laughing, not heeding the service ; and when we complain they
say, • It is in Latin, and we cannot understand it.' " (As I write
the telegram indicates that the spirit of reform would seem to be
already at work in this matter.)

Again, Count Taska, an Italian nobleman, spoke as follows to
Dr. Wordsworth : " I lent a copy of the Prayer Book to a priest,
who used to rail at England as a land of schismatics, heretics, and
infidels ; and he confessed to me that the Litany in that book was
the most beautiful form of prayer he had ever seen.

After the battles of Magenta and Solferino, I was entrusted with
the superintendence of the Military Hospitals. I translated many
of the collects and prayers of the English Prayer Book into various
languages, and put them into the hands of the soldiers on their sick
beds. Almost all accepted and used them, and expressed the great
comfort they found in them. Some of the Boman Catholic clergy
and Bishops who visited the hospitals were delighted with them,
and I was wai'mly thanked for what I had done. At last, however,
it was discovered that they were translated from the English Prayer

hf'j

■t

'i|

1 1'

Book, and then one of the bisliops in my neighbourhood denounced
them as heretical." Father Felix, a Sicilian priest, writes : «' It is
indeed a great pity that the real i)rin(iplcs and true doctrines of the
Church of England are so little known to the communions which
differ from her. A fair statement of her doctrines would confer an
immenflc bencKt on her sister churches on the Continent."'

We read again that an English clergyman M'ho visited, in last
Lent, the I3enedictin(!S of Monte Casino, found several of th(! fathers
interested about our Prayer IJook. 'I'hey came more than once to
talk to him about it ; and at their request he left his copy with
them. Before leaving he asked one of them if he thought his and
our branches of the Church would ever be re-united ? " Yes, 1 do,"
replied the Benedictine, '* though n^^ither you nor I will live to see
that day ; but meantime remember that what you of the Church of
England can best do to promote re-union of the Church, is, not to
join us, but to help us in our attempts to purify ourselves."

More or less of the spirit of this last remark, seems to run
through all the works of a number of Italian gentlemen which I
have seen reviewed, and extracted from. They protest strongly
against leaving their church, but they are scarcely less strong for
more or less reformation in it. It seems worth Avhilc to cite here
a recent case in which, although the scene was in the heart of In-
dia, the actor and narrator was by birth a Neapolitan subject, and
therefore one whose evidence may be specially valuable as to the
best way of approaching the case and state of Italy. Father Felix,
a Sicilian capuchin, having gone to India as a missionary, with the
usual prejudices of his country and his class against Protestantism
of every kind, found himself disturbed by the papal decree in favor
of the Immaculate Conception, for, although he held this doctrine
as a matter of opinion, he was startled at its being erected into an
article of necessary faith. After much uneasiness he asked the
E iglish chaplain at the station where he was, to lend him some
books on the controversy between the churches, and received
from him Jeremy Taylor's " Dissuasive from Popery," and Pro-
fessor Harold Brown's " Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles."
** When I went home," he writes, " I felt a kind of uneasiness
in opening the books ; however, I prayed to God for light, and
took in hand Jeremy Taylor. The very title-page indisposed
me ; I felt it was too bad to call my religion * Popeiy,' and read
it with suspicion. I went on reading, but I found that there
was generally in it a kind of misrepresentation — I should say ex-
aggeration — of some points of the Roman doctrines; and I felt
that it was not fair to charge the adversary with consequences
drawn from an exaggeration of his principles. So I stopped

rca
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easiness
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I felt
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■fe

reading, and would have thrown away the book had it been my
own. I thought that nothing could be derived from reading Pro-
testant books ; for I said, ' truth has no need of misrepresentation,*
and I regretted having asked for the books at all. But, after two
days, happening to open Professor Brown's work, and to read a
portion, I find him so fair in representing the doctrines of the
Roman Church, so faithful and guarded in his expressions, remain-
ing a step behind rather than in advance of the truth, that it
conciliated my mind and my heart. What was more, I found each
point strengthened by the authority of the Fathers."

This, which wa» contrary to all his expectations, raised the
suspicion that the patristic quotations might have been falsified ;
but at Agra Father Felix found the means of satisfying himself on
this head, and after a time — having on full conviction made up his
mind to leave the Roman Church — he was received into communion
by the Bishop of Calcutta, and is now a Missionary of our own
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The eflfect of the two
styles of controversy on his mind (not that Bishop Taylor is at all
to be classed with the extreme opponents of Rome) may read a
lesson to all who take part in the discussions of religious questions.

As members of an ancient and Catholic, yet purified and reform-
ed branch of the Church, which, through God's grace, has for ages
happily combined the fullest and freest setting forth of the Bible as
the rule of faith and life, ought we not to try and show to others
(situated in many respects as our forefathers were) the way we
ha;'e found it good to follow, as an example which may encourage
them, if, in God's providence, they may be led to some similar
internal reformation in accordance with their own national tempera-
ment and circumstances ?

As the latest authentic intelligence on this important subject is
contained in the official preliminary report of the Rev. Mr.
Langdon, to the Italian Committee of the General Convention of
the Episcopal Church in the United States^-of which Committee
the Bishop of Maryland is Chairman — the following account is
given from the concluding portion of that report. It is so candidly
and impartially recorded, and opens out the whole case of the
present movement in the Italian Church so fully, that it enables
each one to form a pretty accurate idea of the merits of that move-
ment up io the middle of the present year. Mr. Langdon dates
from Florence, 4th July, 1868 : —

ITpasa now to apeak of those ecclesiartics, whom I have assigned to the
first-class, who retaining their poaitions, retain thus the power, when the time
is (ripe, to take active practical measures for. the accomplishment, of a
reformation in the Church.
3

<<iv

Of thoflo mon T can of courso only npoak in goneral terms ; but whiMi I
considur how slowly their viowH of tho nature of nucdud reform ar(( duv»dop-
inj;, and tho great neccsnity of caution on their part, I deem myself fortunate
to bu able to iipoak of thum at all with any certainty.

Ah a class no such lino of demarkation can be drawn between them and
other liberal clcrf^y, as would enable nio to make any definite estimate of its
numbers. It is a question of degree, shading off from the most advanced
reformers, to those who vaftuely and ianorantly yearn for something better
than tho present state of things, an<l wno would not yet so much as look at
the Eaaminalore. This Journal is sent direct to about GOO priests, besides a
probably larger number of school teachers, other laymen, lyceums, libraries,
journals", &c. Several priests who received it last year have indeed
withdrawn their names, cither on account of want of sympathy with its
advancing viows, on account of tho Papal condemnation and Episcopal
warnings, or on account of the increase of price ; but on the other hi.nd, as I
was assured by an eminent ecclesiastic, " Many who, a year ago, threw the
Eaaminatore contemptuously behind them, now read it with real pleasure."
The number of copies received by priests is, however, a poor basis for an
estimate ; for many take it in secret, while in other cases a single number is
regularly read by several besides tho receiver. One Monsicnore told me
that ten priests came weekly to bis room to read his copy. And moreover,
the numoer taken respectively in different Dioceses depends as much upon
the danger of persecution in consoqqenco, as upon the number of those in
sympathy with its teachings. Still, So far as wo can judge from so imperfect
a criterion, tho circulation of the Eaaminatore indicates that by far tho most
widespread interest in Reform is felt in Lombardy and Vonetia, but in tho
former to double the extent shown in tho latter. The same test proves that
tho interest for Reform is, next to these, far more widely spread among the

friests in tho province of Naples than in any other part of Italy. Even
'iedmont, which comes next, does not receive one-fourth the number, nor
Tuscany one-sixth, while the smallest subscription list is that of tho late Papal
States. This fact concerning Naples, I should say in passing, proves tho
existence of Reform elements, of wnich I know but little more tnan that they
are wholly distinct and separate from tho Emancipation Society or the
suspended priests, of whom I nave heretofore reported.

The reforming priests belong to every class, though they are chiefly found
among tho more intelligent and cultivated Prevosti and Farrochi, in and near
the larger cathedral cities and towns. 'Death frees these men from the fear
of bitter persecut'on of the Curia Romana; and it may serve to suggest what
class of men are ;\it enlisted in this cause, if I name the losses with which it
has met within a year past. Cavalier Andrea MetHni, Frovosto of one of the
leading churches iu Milan and Senator of the kingdom, was among the
Esaminatore's most devoted supporters. 'Monsignoro Bignani, one of the
Major Canons of the cathedral in the same capital, a learned man of
high-toned religious principle and wide influence, was also in earnest in this
cause. Frevosto Bartachine,oi a parish some fifteen miles from Florence,
was Dr. Bianciardi's most intimate friend, and his chief aid in the preparation
of his History of the Popes, and a frequent contributor to the Eaaminatore,
over the signature Dalvelo. These able, godly, and devoted men have
been taken, not from the leaderahip of the Reform school, but from among
many other ecclesiastics, their peers in every way.

During my last tour in Lombardo-Venetia I had the privilege of meeting
and conferring, in more or less unreserved freedom, witn some twenty-eight
or thirty, I may almost say, of such men as these; and the results of these
interviews have given me a hopeful confidence in the calmly and slowly

JMI

(op.

gfttlicrinf^ nowor of tlio Reform School in the Church of North Ftnly which I
never had lu-foro.

In one cnthudrnl nty, m a Canon of tho Duomo nn^urcd nie, thoro arc
over fiftv pripHtn in nvnipathy, more or Ions, with th« movomont. In another,
an (•(|nally fli""nj^ui!im'(l t'cchisiastir tolil m« that two-thinin of tho parinh
ch'rgy, an well as the same proportion of the cathedral Canonn, read the
Ksaminatvre with more or less approval, — a statement confirmed l)y several
l*revo8ti and other priests to wlu>m he took nie. These are indeed special
cases, but they are not entirely exceptional ; and there is reaMon to believe
that if two or three of tho most intolerant of the F^ombard and Venetian
Bishops could bo succeeded by Liberal mt'ti, tho statistics of Keform in their
ncighuorhood would bo almost as surprising.

Tho very fact that these men are Reformers, in howc^ver moderate degree,
implies of courso that they all unhesitatinuly reject the infallibility of the
Pope and of tho Roman Catholic ChureTi. Upon this point tliey can bo
considered as all substantiallv agreed.

So ttlso upon the nccesHity of very greatly restraining tht; power and
authority of tne Pope. As a general thing they adhere in theory to somo
kind of pre-eminence; for the Bishop of Rome. While none, I think,
acknowledge any superiority of order over that of the Episcopati, a general
conviction still remained that the Papacy must necessarily bo retained as a
centre of unity, a presiding officer, a supremo executive of tho Church. The
most conservative views I heard expressed, and the most advanced alike were
to my mind but resting places for their convictions. Under no circumstances
can I imagino the Popo consenting to accept such a position as the mo.st Papal
of these men would assign to him ; and as one of the most advanced himself
remarked, '* Why waste labor in discussing barren theories, which will bo in
duo time most satisfactorily controverted by the progress of events." But an
interesting illustration of tho extent to which at tho least they would curb the
Pap.il power, may bo given in tho words of an eminent ecclesiastic, a
Monsignore and cathedral Canon, and perhaps the most consorvativo
subscriber to tho Esaminatore I ever met. He was trying to prove the
necessity of. all other Churches gathering round tho Papacy, admitted tho
impossibility of it undor the present circumstances, and the noccssity of both
an abolition of the temporal and a modification of the spiritual power, but
added that it was absolutely essential to have a visible, living centre of unity.
'* There could be," he urged, "no harmony in the faith without it. It was not
necessary that all Churches should be in unison., but they must be in accord,
in harmony ; and therefore it was necessary to have a Maestro di Cavpella.
This was tne Pope — nothing more. The sacred music should bo set oeforo
him ; ho must not alter a note of it, — he must not add or take anything from
it, he had no authority to do that; but in strict accordance with tno music ho
must," — and here tno Canonico completed his sentence by the most
expressive pantimime, waving his hand up and down, to and fro, as if holding
an invisible baton, mairklng time crescendo, diminuendo, &c.

Another worthy Abate, speaking of the same subject, said : " It was
difhcult to foresee how the question of a Papal supremacy could be settled ; it
was only certain that it ought to be settled in some way, and that way should
be humbly sought for by us all together, in the spirit of humility and godly
love."

Most striking was the language in which some of these priests spoke of the
practical result of the Roman Catholic system. For instance, one who fills a
university professorship declared to me his conviction that religion had spread
over Italy just in proportion to the closeness of the relation which difllerent
parts of the land had maintained with Rome. He was " more hopeful for

Lombardy and Venice ; but in the late Papal States the priests had neither
considered themselves, nor been regarded by others, as a sacred ministry of
divine truth and redeeming love, but as instruments of a hated civil
misgovernment. They are therefore despised," — (it was a priest in full
standing who told me this 1) — " and have consequently ^o adj-respect. The
Papacy," continued he, " has praciicuUy crushed out common decent respect for
ChrUtianitp.*' Another very eminent dignitary of the Church in Lombardy
spoke ^ of the Pope as being " morally in schism — the schism not indeed
actualized, but existing morally." This same ecclesiastic also said plainly
that " the worship of the Church was very unreal, for the worshippers nad no
intelligent part in it." And on another occasion, when I was speaking of the
manner in which some one had defended the Romish Church against the
charge of practical idolatry, he replied, '' Our divines have two entirely
different religious systems: one to put forward in controversy, and '#hicii
exists only in theory f and another very different for use. What do the people
know, for instance, about the distinctions of dtUia and hyper dulia and latia ?
Our image and saint worship U practically idolatrous." And dtill again,
another learned cathedral dignitary, when I playfully used the words "us
heretics," replied soberly by putting his hand on niine, almost as if gently
rebuking my levity, "It is the Pope, caro, atid the Jesuits who are the
heretics ; the Jesuits who have the Pope now in their hand, using him like a
puppet. They have put away the worship of Christ out of the Church; and
they divide the actual worship between the Madonna and the Pope, in order
that by bringing the intellect and the heart under subjection to an unmanly
And sensuous religion, they may 'more easily subject the Church, and if
I possible, through the Church, the worl'd to their own rule."

The programmes of Reform arevery various. The c^uotatlons judt made
'<wiU give some idea of the kinds of need most realized. The sense of
'-corruption is often vague and general, rather than specific; very .maqy

• carefully limit their proposals for reform to matters of discipline, scrupulously
' reserving dogmas, but usually, I have noticed, on the assumption that dogmas

• of the faith, being positive and immutable, have of course not been changed.
Again, some draw a distinction between iihose which really are and those
which are decUn'Cd to be dogmas of the Church, Which is pretty much what
we should call a distinction between what, they ought to be and what they are.
A Monsi^nore, who was too conservative to' be able to approve of more than
the motive and general aim of the Esaniiiutiore, sdid to me '* that the

' <2ifctp2tn« and practical working of the Church needed a thorough revision;
but not so i\kQ. dogmas.*' He added, however, that " what he regarded as the
real dogmatic theory of the Church was, in many respects, very different from
the accepted theology of the day." He deniecl, for instance, that the Papal
decree of 1854 really made the Immaculate Conv.opiion a dogma of the
Church ; and he also spoke of saint worship, condemning the form which it
generally to6k, and explaining what he called catholic doctrine as only
inculcating "a reverential meditation and study of their example and
thanksgiving to God for tlie same."

Others of the. reforming ecclesiastics were quite ready to admit the need
for reform' in respect to dogmas also. A t>ery bble set or papers contributed
to the Esamindtore about two years since, and afterwards reprinted in
pamphlet form ; and the programme of the Lettre Piacentine, without making
any such distinction between discipline And dogma, avows the necessity of
revising the whole system of the Church, and testing it, — ^preserving or
rejecting everything according as it is found on an honest inquiry to be
sustained or condemned by Holy Scripture, as interpreted and illustrated by
ihe primitive CounciU and early Fathers of the Church.

^T<r-

Ither

fy of

livil

full

'for

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finly
' no

the

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>ple

Naturally, therefore, this school of ecclesiastics unite in exaltins the Holy
Scriptures, and insisting . upon their free circulation in the vulgar tongue
among the laity. TibonPs work upon this subject has been more than once
referred to ; and I have yet to find a single exception among these priests to
their adherence to the great principle, tnat tlie loundations of reform must be
laid and the value and permanence of its results secured in the widespread
and thorough study of tne Word of God, by the people as well as by the
priesthood.

This was the subject of a very earnest conversation in one instance, where
were present an eminent cathedral dignitary, two prominent Frevosti, and
two Curati. A brief extract from my notes of this conversation will fairly
illustrate the feeling on this subject.

One of these Frevosti spoke of the prevailing ignorance of the Bible as
being one of the chief difficulties. He asked me wnen, by whom, and from
what sources our English Bible was translated, congratulated us upon having
one common version, whose language was familiar alike to all, whereas the
continental nations had different versions, and no one had that hold upon the
reverent affection of the peoplf> that it ought. He thought this one cause of
the want of reverence for the Bible prevailing in Europe ; and he laid great
emphasis upon the need <of one common, faithful, authoritative Italian version,
freely given to the people. Others of those present a^eed with him and
spoke of the prevailing ignorance of the Bible, as depriving the priest largely
of his power to teach, since the people would not understand anything beyond
the dements of expository teaching. Indeed all felt this ignorance or the
Bible to bo the great obstacle to Reform, since so few realized or felt the
force of an appeal to Holy Scriptures, or its supreme claim upon their faith
and obedience.

None of these ecclesiastics propose any immediate step, but generally
regard the work as in the stage oi preparation. I asked one — a pre-eminently

osed to do. " Senta caro," repliea

leading mind among them — what he propi
he ; this is God's work, not man's. Fo

or God's work He makes His own
occasions. It is for us to prepare for His time ; and when He is ready for us
to act, He will both indicate to us clearly the time and show us the way."
Again, another said, that he looked forward to the proposed Council to be
held at Rome, as it was then thought, in December next, believing that this
would, in some way, prove an era in the Church, and make clear before their
feet the path of the Kalian Reformers. " From that Council God will make
His purposes ito evolve themselves in a way which we little suspect, and
which the Curia Romana and the Jesuits assuredly do not look for. In this
hope and confidence he looked lupon Garibaldi's expedition of last Fall, and
defeat at Montano, as most providential. Had he succeeded, the Council
could not have been held, and perhaps not on the other hand, if he had not
undertaken this attack on Rome ; for it was their triumph and the return of
the French which had emboldened the Fope to venture upon this step.
Certain it is, that since these events the Papal Court has exhibited an
arrogant confidence that quite surpasses itself^ and which is perhaps
necessary to the ends which God has in view in this coming Council. Tms
certainly is the view of many of the leading Reformers, while others look to
it, and wait for it as the last hope of a reforming policy on the part of the
authorities of the Church — whose failure is essential to their willingness to
act independently.

It was a fond dream of some — ^indeed at one time it was that of Cardinal
d' Andrea — that the Pope would invite to such a Council, should he summon
it, the Oriental and Anglican Episcopate ; that they would attend, and that
measures should be then and there devised to bring about the re-union of

Christfcndom. It was a hope which manifestly sprang iVom the heart rather
than the judgment ; for I should think that these men knew too well the
constitution of the Roman Curia. But that there exists a widespread
yearning among the liberal Italian priests, for some such a result is a most
tangible fact, indeed I have had reason to believe that the growing desire
for such mutual consultation, and for the reunion of the Church, is a real
power even among some who are not primarily reformers. An ecclesiastic,
noted for his eloquence as a preacher, the elevation of his religious views, and
his warm-hearted philosophic liberality — a Catholic Canon moreover, in whose
study I spent a delightful hour of conference on these subjects — spoke very
earnestly to this effect : He frankly told me that " he did not take the
Esammatore, because he thought it too advanced and wanting in proper
deference towards the authorities of the Chiirch." But he added, " that in a
day when rationalism and infidelity were progressing so fearfully, it was no
time for Christians to be expending against each other the energies which
should all be directed against the common enemies of Gon, of Christ, and of
the souls of men. There should be but two- bodies — believers and unbelievers.
The great need of Christianity was the restoration of unity, and no one body
should entrench itself in an arrogated infallibility and demand of all others
simply submission. The Latin, the Greek, and the Anglican Churches should
all meet, on the assumed ground that there might be errors on all sides, and
with the determination on each side that no sacrifice, which does not involve
the Faith, should be wanting to bring about reunion."

Others more advanced in their views, and more independent in their
course, already begin to look with singular interest upon our Church. I was
assured by more than one, to quote language used by a prominent ecclesiastic,
•♦ that the Lambeth Conference, its introductory resolution and Encyclical,
and its general tone and spirit, so thoroughly and truly catholic, had made a
profound impression on the Liberal, and especially on the reforming priests
of Italy, and had already exercised an influence in encouraging the Reform
movement."

I was everywhere questioned about the Anglican Church, but especially
about the American branch of it. This was doubtless in part because of
my own nationality ; but since their ideas of Reform are mr more clearly
defined and advanced in respect to corruptions in discipline, and since our
system in some leading points is substantially identical with their own ideal,
they have shown an intense desire to know more of us. Their whole scheme
of a " Free Church in a Free State," together with such degree of central
authority as they yet concede to the Pope, creates a strong, but per. ips not
wholly unnatural prejudice, against the established condition of the Cf: iirrh
of England, whose practical results to the Church they greatly exag^jor .•>!'>.

Again and again I have had occasion to detail, as weU as my knowJ/iLve t'
Italian would admit, the exact facts about our ecclesiastical anatomy ; '. le
whole process of electing, confirming, and consecrating a Bishop ; the consti-
tutional and practical working of our Diocesan and General Conventions ;
and the functions of the laity, and modes of securing their active interest and
participation in the work of the Church. In this latter point the presence of
the layman already spoken of as joining me on this tour, and his own testi-
mony, created the deepest interest, — such as none can understand who do not
know how almost universally the intelligent laity of Italy are alienated from,
if not arrayed against the Church and religion. As an illustration of this in-
terest I may mention, that in one cathedral city of North Italy, a number of
ecclesiastics, with a cathedral dignitary at their head, have united themselves
for the express purpose of a correspondence with our Church, in order to
acquire accurate information concerning it. Again, a learned and well
known ecclesiastic of the Reformed School proposed a correspondence be-

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tween himself arid me in'the columns of the Esaminatore, a proposition wbieb,
of course, I was obliged to decline as beyond the scope of my mission.
Another, and one of toe most able as well as eminent in position of these
priests, expressed the feeling that the possibility of substantial commuoity of
principle between our Church and themselves was full of hope to them; and
he was anxious that great pains should be taken on both sides to understand
each other more thoroughly. •' Perhaps," he said, " God may permit a for-
mal conciliation between us !" " But," he at once added, as if apologetically,
" understand me — I do not speak of a conciliation between your Church and
Borne as it now is. That is absurd to talk of— indeed, impossible, except on
terms which would be disgraceful to you. But perhaps God may grant some
time a conciliation between you and us on a, pure and primitive basis."

* * * * « « • «#'■

Rome has alienated the laity from all interest in religious matters whatsoever,
retaining herself the power to exact what she herself wants from ignorance and
superstition ; and over ecclesiastical incomes she possesses absolute control. Truly
God only can raise up for the impending struggle either the pecuniary os moral
power of maintaining it.

At a time when the summons has just gone forth for a quasi CEcumenical Coun-
cil at Rome, — a Council which will be an era in the religious history of the age,
and which will put an end to the last lingering hope of Reform from the Pope or
the Curia Romana and the Jesuits, — a Council which will, in my opinion, draw a
clearly defined line between the Ultramontane oc Jesuit and the truly Catholic
elements of Latin Christendom, — I cannot believe the Church will fail to watch
with the intensest interest the developments of Reform principles and genuine
Catholic yearnings in the Church of Italy. For this reason I trust I shall be par-
doned the length at which I have trespassed in my reports upon the Committee
and tiic Church. I am, dear sir, faithfully yours,

, MM. CHAUNCY LANGDON.
To Jambs S. Mackie, Esq.,

Sec. ad int. and Treas. Italian Committee, New York.

I conclude with a very few remarks on the subject v of the
Eastern, or Greek Church, which numbers some eighty millions in
its Communion. From all we can gather — from writings in this
Continent, at home, an4 in Russia— there does seem to be an
earnest desire, on the part of that Church, to escape from isolation,
and to seek, as well as to accord, sympathy with other communities
of Christendom. " If there be one matter upon earth," said the
Bishop of Oxford, at a meeting at Canterbury, " which it would be
a blessed thing to help forward, it would surely be the interchange
of the visible acts of communion between our branch of the Church
at Home, and in America, with the orthodox branches of the
Eastern Church." •'• sum i tr-- '■:-• -l ■ (i' '.-' ^ :■!!■■

The position of our Bishop of British Columbia, whose Diocese
is actually conterminous with a Diocese of the Russian Church, and
the position of ecclesiastical affairs in California, have suggested the
necessity of this step.

As I do but glance at this subject, I recommend any who may
feel interested in it, to read for themselves some remarks about it
contained in the February nuniber of " Good Words," for 1865.
How wonderful the thought of re-uniting, the two great. brauches

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of Christ's Vine, which, shooting forth centuries ago from the same
parent stock in Asia Minor, and trending, the one towards the
£ast, and the other towards the West, have, at length, so extended
their growth, as to encompass the Globe, and are now beginning to
intertwine their foliage in Asia and America ! From the coasts of
India and China our Missionaries are moving onward. Soon the out-
posts of the two Churches will meet face to face. Upon the success
of the movement now going on, depends whether they shall meet as
rivals, or as brethren beloved, and though differing in rites, and lan-
guage, and manners — ^yet of the " one Lord, one faith^ one baptism"

I have lately seen letters from different Dignitaries of the Greek
Church, expressive of an irrepressible longing for unity with ours.
Dr. Hill — the American Missionary of the Church, at Athens,
whom I had the pleasure of meeting there sever^ years ago—
writes : " how very much, of late, the Greeks have been attracted
by our service !*' He says, "Our little Church, and the order and
solemnity of its Divine worship, are themes of the admiration of
the clergy and laity of the Greek Church. I d'ec^re my intimate
persuasion that the silent influence of the American mission in
Greece, during the last thirty years, and the effect produced by the
public services of our Church— leading first to enquiry and then to
satisfactory information respecting our Protestant doctrines and
worship— have gradually brought about a striking change in public
opinion." " My conclusions," he adds, " drawn from my interviews
with the Greek clergy, and from examination of what is really
taught and held in the Church' of free Greece, are that the Holy
Scriptures, and the Evangelical doctrines drawn from that pure
source, as set forth summarifyin- the Nicene Creed, are the only
standards to which she clmgs with pertinacity^."

Does not our Church, then, present a centre of communion to
all other bodies of Chriistians in the world ?

It has been wett remarked as strange, but as showing -th^
longing which exists for christian unity, thtit, at a period 'when
the States were convulsed" with civil war, the Fathers of the
American Church should have met quietly in Synod and discussed
the best mode of extending thb right hftnd of fellowship to "their
brethren of the Eastern Church !

- : ' ' ' ■ f '

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May the prayer of Archbishop Laud be ours : — ; -

"Bless, O Gracious leather, Thine Holy Catholic Church, ftll* it with
Truth and Grace ; where it is corrupt, purge it ; where it is in error, ■
direct it; where it is supeniAitious, reetify it; where it is amiss, refiArm
it ; where it is right, strengthen and confirai it ; where it is divided- and^
rent asunder, heal the breaches of it, O Thon Holy €hie of Israel."

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