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 ■ •m;';
 
 A CHARGE 
 
 DELIVERED 
 
 TO THE CLERGY 
 
 OF THE DIOCESES 
 
 OP 
 
 DUBLIN, GLANDELAGH, AND EILDAEE, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 VISITATION, SEPTEMBER, 1871. 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD CHENEVIX, 
 
 ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN, BISHOP OF GLANDELAGH, AND KILDARE, 
 PRIMATE OF IRELAND, AND METROPOLITAN. 
 
 HODGES, FOSTER AND CO., GRAFTON STREET. 
 
 PUBLISHERS TO TOE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 ITonbffit mib CambribgB : 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1871.
 
 PRINTED BY R. CHAPMAN, DUBLIN,
 
 A CHARGE, 
 
 ETC. 
 
 Keverend and Dear Brethren — 
 
 When I addressed you two years ago on 
 an occasion similar to that whicli lias to-day brought 
 us together, there was no longer any doubt that the 
 links which knit us to the State would ere long be 
 completely severed ; they were indeed half severed 
 already, and we were merely waiting the day when 
 that which was already accomplished in law, should 
 also be accomplished in fact. There was as little 
 doubt that those other far more sacred bonds which 
 united us to the Church of England, would from that 
 day forward only be maintained so long as it was the 
 absolute choice of the one Church and of the other that 
 their binding power should continue. It was evident 
 that it would be free to either Church to relax, or, if 
 it were so minded, wholly to dissolve them. Both 
 were facts of a significance and an importance which 
 no words of ours could exa2:o;erate. The consider- 
 ations growing out of the one and of the other will 
 
 A 2
 
 necessarily occupy the larger part of a Charge 
 delivered on an occasion like the present. And if, 
 in the needful dwelling upon these, I shall seem, my 
 Eeverend Brethren, to claim your attention for a 
 somewhat unreasonable period of time, you must bear 
 with me, having this in your remembrance, that only 
 once in the course of its existence can a Church pass 
 through such a crisis as that through which ours is 
 passing now ; and that such a crisis, if it give much 
 matter of thought and speech to us all, imposes on 
 one who occupies in it a post which, if of dignity, 
 is also of a very painful responsibility, duties which 
 even the sense of his own insufficiency must not 
 tempt him to evade. Where such a one sees 
 anything which, in his mind, will benefit the JChurch, 
 anything which is threatening its harm, he of all 
 men must not hold his peace, let his words find 
 what welcome they may. 
 
 Let me state, before proceeding any further, that 
 this is a Diocesan Visitation, and not a Provincial ; 
 and, moreover, that it is not my intention to hold a 
 Provincial Visitation during the present year ; I say, 
 ' during the present year,' for I wish to reserve for 
 maturer deliberation with the Primate of all Ireland 
 and with the Suffragan Bishops of our several Pro- 
 vinces, whether or not it will be well that these Visita- 
 tions, in the altered circumstances of our Church, 
 should be maintained at all. You are aware that in 
 England they have fallen into disuse almost from the 
 time of the Reformation ; indeed, to a considerable 
 
 ,uwc .
 
 extent, before it. Cranmer made some attempts to 
 continue them after tliat date, but these failed and were 
 not repeated. Here they have experienced no such 
 interruption, and have afforded valuable opportunities 
 to the Bishops of the Church for taking counsel 
 together ; nor have they, in my judgment, been in 
 other ways without their real value ; while certainly 
 the very hearty and cordial welcome which the 
 Metropohtans have ever found from those whose 
 authority for the time they superseded, the pleasant 
 and profitable opportunities of intercourse with Clergy 
 and Laity whom otherwise they might not have 
 known, which these Visitations admitted, would make 
 one regard the abandonment of them with regret. 
 Still it may be a matter of fair consideration whether 
 all, or nearly all, the advantages which these offered in 
 times past are not now obtainable in other ways. 
 And, though this could be only a secondary motive 
 for omitting them, and could not be allowed at all to 
 weigh were there primary reasons to the contrary, 
 we must not put out of sight that with the very 
 moderate incomes which the future Metropolitans 
 will receive, the expense of such Visitations could 
 not be to them altogether a matter of indifference. 
 It needs not to say that the visitatorial power of the 
 Metropolitan would still remain unaffected, however 
 this particular form of the exercise of it might cease. 
 
 So many subjects claim our attention to-day that I 
 shall not dwell with any fulness on our Diocesan
 
 statistics. One or two observations, however, may 
 here fitly find place. 
 
 The Confirmations of last year extended over the 
 whole of the United Diocese ; this year they were 
 restricted to Dublin and its immediate neighbour- 
 hood. The numbers in both years compare not 
 unfavourably with those of preceding years. At the 
 triennially recurring Visitation of 1870, there were 
 1971 confirmed; while the number at the Dublin 
 Confirmation of this year amounted to 970. On 
 looking back to the records of past times, I do not 
 find these several numbers have more than once 
 been exceeded. 
 
 I have consecrated four churches, all in the last 
 year — namely, at Kilcock, at Castlemacadam, at 
 Morristownbiller, and at Newtown Park ; the three 
 former taking the place of others, the last an addition 
 to our number. Three more are just ready for con- 
 secration ; one at Mulhuddart, where hitherto there 
 was none; the church at Delgany, greatly injured by 
 fire, has been so far rebuilt that its consecration will 
 be necessary ; while the Bethel chapel at Kingstown 
 has undergone so entire a transformation, that the 
 same will be needful there. Of churchyards or 
 cemeteries there have been consecrated three. 
 
 But while I am thus taking note of churches added 
 to our number, or of newer and fairer structures 
 which have risen in the place of old or ruinous or 
 mean, or of what else has been accomplished in this 
 line of things, I should be ungrateful, if, taking upon
 
 me to be spokesman for the whole Church, I did not 
 make especial mention of the noble restoration now 
 in progress of this our most ancient Cathedral; in 
 the language of Mr. Street, " one of the most beau- 
 tiful buildings (if not the most beautiful) with which 
 the taste and architectural skill of our forefathers has 
 endowed us in Ireland"; and this a restoration, as 
 was also the case with St. Patrick's, not carried out 
 by the combined efforts of a multitude, but by the 
 splendid munificence of a single Churchman among 
 us. Of him certainly it may be said, as of his 
 lamented forerunner in works like these, that he has 
 laid to heart the apostolic precept, " He that giveth 
 with simplicity." Of this, therefore, his kindness to 
 the house of God, and of other his gifts which went 
 along with this, I shall not say more. 
 
 The Marriage Law Amendment Act of 1870, itself a 
 necessary consequence of the disestablishment of the 
 Church of Ireland, empowered the Bishops to license 
 any church or chapel within their Episcopal jurisdic- 
 tion for the celebration of marriages between persons, 
 one of whom resided within the limits of the district 
 whicb should in that license have been named. I 
 have been requested from many quarters to put the 
 powers thus granted to me into exercise ; and in 
 some instances I have already done so. The course 
 which I have pursued, and propose to pursue, in this 
 matter is the following : To Clergymen making this 
 request I have declared my readiness to constitute
 
 the district regularly assigned to any churcli or 
 chapel into a marriage district attached to the same, 
 upon a written statement on the part of the Incum- 
 bent from whose parish the district will be drawn, 
 that he is consenting to this arrangement ; not myself 
 asking to know what agreement, if any, has been 
 made between them in respect of complimentary fees ; 
 but at the same time stating, when asked, that in my 
 judgment the small advantage of these ought to remain 
 with the present Incumbent, or with his Curate, to 
 whom he has often made it over, during his tenure of 
 the living ; — this, or some compensation for it. Should 
 such consent of the Incumbent be withheld, I reserve 
 to myself the right, after a certain period has elapsed, 
 of considering whether the refusal is unreasonable, 
 whether a fair arrangement has been offered and 
 refused ; and if it shall so seem to me, of granting the 
 license without requiring any such previous consent. 
 I scarcely, however, anticipate that any such cases 
 will arise. 
 
 In treating, as I now propose a little to do, of 
 various other matters which have grown out of dis- 
 establishment, let me say at the outset that I have 
 no intention of bringing the whole or the greater 
 part of the work of the Convention or of the Synod 
 under critical review. Such an undertaking would 
 carry me quite too far, and would oblige me to revive 
 discussions, which will better be left to rest, at least 
 for the present. Questions which, for good or ill.
 
 have been so settled that there is no likelihood for 
 many years to come of any such a reconsideration of 
 them as might issue in a decision different from the 
 past, I shall let alone ; and this even where I cannot 
 count the settlement which has been arrived at the 
 best. It is essential to the working of a Constitution 
 like ours, — of course I mean in matters which do not 
 touch conscience, — that when questions have been 
 once settled by decisive majorities, this settlement 
 should be acquiesced in by all, that the mischiefs inci- 
 dent on a reopening of them should not be challenged, 
 so long as no reversal of what has been done can be 
 reasonably expected. It is given to none to have 
 all things their own way ; and in these Church 
 arrangements there is probably not one of us but has 
 had, but will have often again, much to accept which 
 we do not like, which, it may be, we dislike very 
 much. Such are the conditions of our existence, 
 and unless we are prepared to fly asunder into a 
 thousand fragments, we must bow to them. 
 
 I shall wish, too, in any passing of judgment upon 
 what has been done or not done, never to leave out of 
 sight or to forget the altogether exceptional circum- 
 stances under which our work of reconstruction has 
 gone forward, circumstances in many respects as un- 
 favourable as they are exceptional. It was much for 
 the children of Israel of old, when they took posses- 
 sion of wells which they had not digged, and gardens 
 which they had not planted, and cities which they had 
 not built — all these ready prepared to their hand.
 
 10 
 
 This is in some sort the happy privilege of English 
 Churchmen, and I trust it may long continue theirs 
 — to inherit, that is, the fully formed scheme of a 
 Church, with its maintenance sufficiently provided by 
 tlie piety of other ages, and only the obligation upon 
 them to hand down what they have thus received, 
 enlarged and improved if it may be, and adapted to 
 such new needs as their own time shall have revealed, 
 to those that come after. Nor are they without their 
 own advantages, who, though they may inherit no 
 such rich legacy from the past, address themselves 
 with zeal and knowledge and not inadequate means to 
 the rearing of a new ecclesiastical framework, and see 
 stretched before them a field fair and open, unencum- 
 bered and unoccupied, on which to raise the decent 
 proportions of that spiritual building which already 
 exists in their mind's eye. Such a privilege the 
 founders of many of our colonial Churches have 
 enjoyed. 
 
 But our condition is neither this nor that ; is with- 
 out the special advantages of either. That it does not 
 possess those of the former state of things is plain. 
 Such have been violently withdrawn from us. But as 
 little do we enjoy those of the other ; for neither do we 
 build on that fair and open ground, unhampered and 
 unembarassed by the past; and with entire freedom to 
 shape and fashion our building as we will, to adopt 
 whatever may in the abstract commend itself to us 
 the most. Not so, but on ground, I shall hardly speak 
 too strongly when I say, oftentimes encumbered with
 
 11 
 
 the ruins, heaped with the shattered materials of a past 
 which has perished ; with materials which it is not easy 
 to clear away from our path, and still harder to make 
 subserve to our future plans. Assuredly they are 
 strange perplexities, unknown or nearly unknown to 
 any other, which we have to gird ourselves to meet. It 
 is ours, for example, to legislate for a Church,which for 
 many a year to come will be served by a Clergy 
 whereof one section, at present far the larger section, 
 and in the necessity of things the more influential, 
 possesses rights, a freedom of action, an indepen- 
 dance of position, which are not at all the portion of 
 the other. This is but one, though perhaps the most 
 signal, of those embarrassments which the great catas- 
 trophe of 1869 has bequeathed us. And although this 
 particular embarrassment must in the end pass away, 
 it will subsist for all that period during which the 
 Church is outwardly fashioning itself anew, to fulfil 
 the novel duties which are before it. Only such as 
 have been practically engaged in the arduous task of 
 seeking to blend those heterogeneous materials with 
 which we have to deal into a consistent and har- 
 monious whole, of working up the old to serve the 
 necessities of the new, of getting rid of that old where 
 it absolutely refuses to lend itself to these, can form 
 the faintest conception of the perplexities which the 
 task ofi'ers at every step, the amount of patient 
 thoughtful self-denying toil by which alone anything 
 like a callida junctura of old and new can be 
 efi'ected.
 
 12 
 
 It will be in the recollection of many who hear 
 me that the Committee of Organization suggested that 
 the General Synod should consist of numbers much 
 smaller than the Convention was willing to adopt. I 
 can perfectly understand the disfavour . with which 
 the proposal of the Organizing Committee was met, 
 and the rejection which it found. It was quite 
 natural that, so long as the Synod was predominantly 
 a Constituent Assembly, there should be an earnest 
 desire that as many as possible should participate in 
 that formative work in which it was engaged, in the 
 shaping and moulding of that external framework of 
 the Church, which, even while external, could not 
 fail to exercise so large an influence on its entire 
 future development. The General Synod has not lost 
 this constituent character yet, and, of course, will 
 potentially never lose it. Still it is to be hoped the 
 time will before long arrive when the main work of 
 legislation will have been completed, when the leading 
 lines of the Church's future polity will have been 
 definitively drawn, and when the questions will have 
 been settled which agitate us now so deeply. The 
 time, in my judgment, will then no less have arrived 
 when the Church would do well to consider whether 
 it be still desirable to come together in numbers so 
 large, so far exceeding those of any other Synod of a 
 Reformed Church that I know ; thus in the American 
 Church no Diocese sends more than four clergymen 
 and four laymen to the General Convention ; many 
 Dioceses send only two of each. We may then very
 
 13 
 
 fairly ask ourselves whether it is still necessary to bring 
 up such numbers to Dublin at so serious an expense, 
 and often at so much inconvenience to themselves ; 
 whether, for example, the work could not be done as 
 well by 312 as by 624 ; by one half, that is, of 
 the numbers now ensjacred. 
 
 I speak here with reference to our General Synod 
 alone. Our Diocesan Synods, though some of them 
 very large, are incapable of any such reduction. The 
 Church's ancient rule which gives to every clerg5Tiian 
 of the Diocese a seat in these assemblies has drawn 
 after it with us that twice this number of laymen 
 should also have seats therein. I did not originally 
 approve of this arrangement, but certainly should not 
 tliink of making any proposal to disturb it ; and I do 
 not therefore see that it is possible to diminish the 
 number in our Diocesan Synods. Here however the 
 inconvenience of bringing together so great a multitude 
 is not so strongly felt. The Synod sits for a much 
 shorter period ; of the members many are close to 
 their homes, none are at a great distance from them. 
 
 It is, perhaps, too early as yet to express any 
 opinion on the working of our Diocesan Councils. 
 Institutions do not always develop all at once either the 
 merits or defects that may be in them ; which it is often 
 only time that reveals ; but these Councils seem to 
 me to have proved thus far a success, and to promise 
 to be what their name implies, a help and strength, 
 iiot a hindrance and weakness, to a Bishop in the
 
 14 
 
 administration of his Diocese. The General Synod 
 seldom, I believe, came to a more important decision, 
 than when it resolved that these Councils should not 
 be made under any circumstances, least of all under 
 those suggested, Courts of Appeal. Fit for much and 
 for various work, for this they would have proved 
 utterly unfit ; and nothing, I am persuaded, would 
 have more effectually wrought to deprive them of 
 their proper character and true usefulness, than to 
 have had such responsibilities imposed upon them, 
 and, let me add, such temptations thrown in their 
 way. The regular attendance of so many of our 
 laity at the meetings of these Councils, the interest 
 which they take in the proceedings, the personal 
 service which, in one shape or another, they are 
 wilhng to afford, and the oftentimes distasteful labour 
 to undergo, may be fairly welcomed as a hopeful sign 
 of our future. 
 
 But while we owe much to others, none will grudge 
 that I should express my especial sense of the vast- 
 ness of the debt which, above all, we owe to members 
 of the legal profession. Judges, ex-judges, an ex- 
 chancellor, lawyers in busy practice, they have given 
 us assistance which none other, however well dis- 
 posed, would have been in the position to give, have 
 brought knowledge and experience to the solution of 
 perplexing problems, which none other but they 
 possessed ; in Committees, in Diocesan Councils, in 
 the Eepresentative Body, in particular Synods and in 
 the General, have been foremost and most constant
 
 15 
 
 wherever there was any work to be done. When- 
 ever the day arrives that we shall have left all our 
 difficulties behind, I cannot say how large a debt of 
 gratitude theXhurch of Ireland will, in my mind, owe 
 to these, how]|^impossible any such consummation 
 would have been, but for the help which they have 
 so ungrudgingly bestowed. 
 
 The two smaller Dioceses which, together with that 
 of Dublin, constitute this United Diocese, came to the 
 conclusion that they would best insure a careful con- 
 sideration of the matters immediately concerning 
 themselves, matters which might possibly be some- 
 times overlooked, if mixed up or merged in those 
 of the larger metropolitan Diocese, by remaining 
 separate, with their own Synods, Diocesan Councils, 
 and Boards of Nomination. I do not know that I 
 should have myself urged such a course ; but, seeing it 
 desired by others, I accepted it without reluctance ; nor 
 have I found any reason to regret this course. At the 
 same time some inconveniences have revealed them- 
 selves in the keeping apart, and mainly this, that in 
 the two smaller Dioceses, and perhaps even in that of 
 Dublin itself when standing alone, the number of the 
 Clergy is not sufficient to redress those accidents 
 which affect and disturb small numbers, but which 
 disappear when larger numbers are dealt with; not 
 sufficient therefore to yield those averages of age on 
 which alone secure calculations for the future can be 
 based. It is much to be desired that in matters of
 
 16 
 
 finance the three Dioceses should make arrangements 
 to act as one, and with entire solidarity between them. 
 I am happy to say that the Diocesan Councils have 
 resolved to recommend this to their several Synods ; 
 that of Dublin, from which the largest supplies will 
 be derived, and which, therefore, might be the least 
 disposed to throw in its lot with the others, generously 
 taking the lead in this recommendation. For myself 
 I will use the opportunity to say that I shall always 
 consider this solidarity to extend much further than 
 merely to matters of finance ; I shall regard service 
 in one Diocese as equivalent to service in either of 
 the other, and shall as little as possible, either in 
 thought or act, draw lines of demarcation between 
 them. 
 
 It would be strange if from a measure which, like 
 the Church Act, inflicted so much ill, some good could 
 not be extracted ; if, destroying so much, it did not 
 sometimes destroy bonds which cramped and confined 
 us, take out of our way obstacles that blocked our path, 
 but which we might not in ourselves have found the 
 courage or even the strength to remove. That con- 
 nexion with the State which was lately ours brought 
 with it many advantages ; but it seriously hampered 
 and hindered all efforts to fashion our external 
 arrangements according to the shifting needs of ever- 
 changing times. Many adaptations to new necessities, 
 acknowledged by all to be desirable, were yet prac- 
 tically unattainable. They are now placed within our
 
 17 
 
 easy reach, and we should be inexcusable if we did 
 not, without more delay, make them our own. It 
 requires no longer Eoyal Commissions, enormous 
 Blue Books, Acts of Parliament, hardly to be wrung, 
 if wrung at al], from a House of Commons which 
 had no time to bestow upon us, and which hated to 
 be troubled about us, for the carrying out of the 
 simplest improvement, for the removing of the most 
 obvious defect. 
 
 Now, one measure by which we can plainly better 
 our position is the recasting of parishes and rearrang- 
 ing of parochial boundaries. It is true, indeed, that 
 in any such measure much will have to be conceded 
 to old use and custom, and that the worship of symme- 
 try must not be carried too far. Still, admitting this, 
 there is ample scope for improvement here ; and 
 this, even supposing the number of our Clergy were 
 to remain undiminished. For, indeed, it is hard to 
 imagine anything more perverse or ill-contrived than 
 a great deal which we have inherited in this matter; 
 or the extent to which that which was not faulty at 
 the beginning, has become faulty now, through the 
 the various alterations which Time, the most effectual 
 of all innovators, have wrought. Thus we have frag- 
 ments of a parish lying at an immense distance from 
 its main bulk, sometimes like enclaves in the heart of 
 some other ; or whole parishes, if whole they can 
 in any sense be called, scattered hke the limbs of 
 Absyrtus over half a county ; we have churches and 
 
 B
 
 18 
 
 glebe houses, not only not central, but planted at tlie 
 furthest end of some huge parish ; large bodies of 
 our people within easy reach of some church which 
 is not their own, many miles remote from that which 
 is. Then, too, while a few of our parishes contain 
 an unmanageably large Church population, there are 
 too many, which, from the fewness of the Protestants 
 in them, offer so narrow a field of work even to the 
 most zealous, that the zeal itself, for want of healthy 
 exercise, is in danger of dying out ; till in the end, 
 because there is so very little to be done, perhaps even 
 that very little remains undone ; or, if the zeal lives 
 on, the man, shut up within those narrow lines, 
 impatiently eats his heart away, while he thinks of the 
 irrevocable years which are passing, and of all that 
 work for Christ of which he was capable, but which 
 he has no opportunity of working. 
 
 I have entire confidence that the Committees, to 
 which the task of preparing plans for the removing, so 
 far as may be, these inconveniences has been entrusted, 
 will be able to reconcile in the main local feelings and 
 wishes with the general advantage of the Church ; 
 that they will be able further to set before us such a 
 scheme of parochial organization for the future, as, 
 without impairing pastoral efficiency, nay rather aug- 
 menting it, may be worked by a staff of Clergy which 
 will better correspond with the means which we have 
 at our command ; probably by one less numerous by a 
 fourth, or even by a third, than that which at present
 
 19 
 
 does the Churcli's work. Tims I see that in the 
 Diocese of Dubhn the Amalgamation Committee is 
 able to propose that what is now the work of 96 
 Incumbents and 88 Curates, 184 in all, shall be com- 
 mitted to 83 Incumbents and 45 Curates, or 128 in 
 the whole; so, too, in Glandelagh, that the work of 
 39 Incumbents and 15 Curates shall hereafter be 
 distributed among 26 of the former and 11 of the 
 latter ; nor do they in either case doubt that these 
 will be equal to its fulfilling. 
 
 Before leaving this subject, let me add that the 
 Diocesan Synod, which alone has legal authority to 
 sanction these changes, but which is a body wholly 
 unfitted for entering into the details of the subject, 
 will have just reason to complain, if, when it meets 
 next month, the Council shall not in each case have a 
 complete and consistent scheme to lay before it, which, 
 having maturely weighed and considered, this last is 
 able with confidence to recommend for adoption. I 
 sometimes fear lest after all we shall be found unready ; 
 and that a most injurious uncertainty may thus rest 
 for at least another year on rearrangements which for 
 innumerable reasons it greatly concerns should be 
 settled once and for ever, very much remaining at an 
 absolute stand-still till such a final settlement has 
 been arrived at. 
 
 Should it seem to you, my Brethren, that in some 
 observations which I am about to make on our financial 
 
 B2
 
 20 
 
 condition and prospects, 1 am saying little or nothirg 
 which is not already familiar to you, I will ask you to 
 remember that a Charge delivered just at this moment 
 from this Chair, may reach a wider circle of readers 
 than it could aspire to reach in more ordinary times; 
 and among these some who have lacked the oppor- 
 tunity of knowing, but who would gladly know, 
 how in these matters it is faring with us, and who 
 therefore would welcome information brought in a 
 trustworthy manner before them. I shall preface 
 my statement with a few general remarks. 
 
 Certainly if one thing would more than another 
 misbecome Irish Churchmen of this generation, would 
 hand us down to future ages as a generation 
 altogether unworthy of the crisis on which we were 
 cast, it would be this, namely, that we should shew 
 ourselves selfishly resolved to refuse to the last pos- 
 sible moment to accept our share in the charge which 
 sooner or later must come on the whole Church ; and 
 instead of lightening and making tolerable the burden 
 of its future support by this timely sharing of it, should 
 withdraw our shoulder from this burden to the last 
 possible moment, content that its whole weight should 
 rest on those who come after. One might well despair of 
 a Church, any large number of whose members should 
 seek in this ignoble fashion to save themselves at the ex- 
 pense of others. I see however no signs or tokens of 
 any such intention. We in this Diocese are certainly 
 not at all as forward as we ought to be in our prepar-
 
 21 
 
 ations for meeting what I characterized just now as a 
 future need — and such for some thne to come in the 
 main it will be; though here and there it is already a 
 present one ; — but this unpreparedness, much as it is to 
 be regretted, springs from no backwardness on our 
 parts, but simply from our not seeing with sufficient 
 clearness which way of addressing ourselves to the 
 work before us is the best, and by what methods the 
 thing which has to be done will best be done ; and 
 this, I feel sure, we very shortly shall prove. 
 
 The example of the Wesleyans in England, of the 
 Free Kirk in Scotland, show us that we have before 
 us a task which others have by no means found to be 
 beyond their strength. These bodies, poorer certainly 
 than we are, collect annually for Church purposes, 
 the first at the rate of more than twenty shillings, the 
 second at the rate of more than thirty-two shillings, a 
 head ; and as giving grows with the habit of giving, so 
 it has come to pass that, in the Free Kirk at least, the 
 sum contributed, large as it is, is increasing every 
 year, and this more than in the ratio of the increase 
 in numbers of the contributors. It is true that these 
 bodies have been trained to this giving, which most 
 of our people have not ; that they have the machinery 
 ready to their hand, which we are without. It is 
 here, I confess, that I have my fears, — namely, that 
 for a long time to come our organization will be im- 
 perfect ; that much which might have been gathered 
 in from willing hands and willing hearts, from that
 
 22 
 
 greab mass of our people wlio can only give a little, 
 but on whose accumulated littles we must in large 
 part depend, will never find its way into our treasury. 
 I saw with some dismay a statement made by one who 
 has devoted much valuable thought and care to the 
 consideration of the means by which the Church of 
 the future will best be sustained, to this effect — that 
 no Eeformed Episcopal Church has as yet organized 
 a good system of finance. Let us try if we cannot 
 make that this statement shall not be true any longer. 
 The matter is one of an importance which cannot be 
 over-rated. That it pay its way — this is the one con- 
 dition of healthy existence, indeed, in the end, of any 
 existence at all, for every society on earth, yea, even 
 for the heavenly Society itself, so far as it hves and 
 moves in an earthly sphere, and under earthly con- 
 ditions. To these conditions it must conform itself, 
 and to this, which there is no evading, above all. 
 
 And now to speak a little of what actually is, or 
 beyond all doubt will presently be, in our treasury. 
 Up to August 31st of this year, there was actually 
 lodged in cash with the Church Representative Body 
 of subscriptions and donations, the sum of £378,286. 
 Of this it is impossible at present to say how large a 
 part is localized and separated off from the Central 
 Fund for special objects ; but certainly a very large 
 proportion. Though the Church will not have the 
 free disposal of the sums which have thus a special 
 trust impressed upon them, yet doubtless it will find
 
 23 . 
 
 that through these the claims will have been con- 
 siderably diminished and lightened on the Central 
 Fund which it may have to distribute. 
 
 Beside this sum of £378,286, actually received, 
 with other sums promised, but as yet not paid in, 
 instalments, for instance, of donations spread over 
 several years, there are moneys which by numerous 
 parishes have been collected and retained for their own 
 use, of which no report has reached the Representa- 
 tive Church Body. "What these may amount to we 
 cannot at the present pretend even to guess ; but 
 the sum total cannot be small. 
 
 A sum of £500,000 has been paid to the Church 
 Representative Body in lieu of all those Private En- 
 dowments which Parliament did not claim a right to 
 take from us, but which by the Church Act have 
 become vested in the Commissioners. How much 
 will remain when all these claims have been satisfied, 
 no one could now affirm. This will only be known 
 when the year shall have expired, during which these 
 claims must be substantiated ; that is on June the 
 30th, 1872. Indeed till then we must continue in 
 ignorance whether aught will remain, or even whether, 
 this whole sum proving inadequate, it may not be 
 necessary to draw on our other funds for the satisfac- 
 tion of these demands. This however I am informed 
 by those best qualified to judge, is unlikely; and that 
 we may with tolerable security count on something 
 remaining in our hands ; some set this residuary
 
 24 
 
 portion at as much perhaps as one-half, or even 
 more. 
 
 I believe that by this time three-fourths of the 
 Clergy in every Diocese of Ireland have consented 
 to commute, the number so consenting being little 
 short of two thousand. Some ungracious remarks 
 have been made on the fact that this United Diocese 
 was the last to make up the required number. I 
 cannot assent to the justice of these remarks. In a 
 matter of such enormous significance, and that not in 
 a pecuniary aspect alone, there might very fitly have 
 been this hesitation ; and indeed I can as little con- 
 sent to the fairness of this same fault-finding, where 
 there has been the same refusal to the end. There 
 are many causes, none of them unwoithy, which may 
 lead men to decline to take this step. For myself, I 
 have never urged or advised a single Clergyman to 
 take it. I v/as the more careful not to do this, be- 
 cause by the terms on which alone the Eepresentative 
 Body has consented to Commutation on the part of 
 the Bishops, they are compelled to receive the larger 
 part of their future income, capitalized in a single 
 sum, and thus, in regard of that portion, are released 
 from an}/ financial hazards which may hereafter 
 attend the management of the Church's property, 
 and are left only to those hazards, probably much 
 more formidable, which their own inexperience in the 
 investment of money may entail. For this release, 
 however, we pay a price so high, that I for one
 
 25 
 
 would much have preferred to be dealt with as are 
 others ; the Church Body however, as you may be 
 aware, declined to accept the risk involved in the 
 payment of the whole of the Episcopal annuities, 
 the Bishops not being in number sufficient for the 
 elimination of those accidents of which I have already 
 spoken, which are apt to disturb calculations based 
 on a small number of lives. 
 
 The requisite number of Clergy having consented 
 to commute, we may securely count on the addi- 
 tional 12 per cent, which was held out to us as a 
 sort of inducement to bring our money transactions 
 with the State to the speediest possible close. 
 Without entering into minute calculations, and 
 indeed at present we have not the data for these, 
 this additional 12 per cent, may amount in all to 
 something over half a million. Let us suppose this 
 sum to accumulate at 4^ per cent., and the Repre- 
 sentative Body is able to place money in first rate 
 securities, yielding somewhat higher interest than 
 this, during 15^ years, which is the average expecta- 
 tion of life for the existing Clergy, and >at the 
 expiration of this time, were there no deductions 
 to be made, we should have something near about a 
 million which from this source had been derived. 
 There must however be serious deductions from this 
 amount. The management of so large a sum must 
 have cost some annual thousands ; and, which is a 
 far more serious consideration, the terms on which
 
 26 
 
 the conversion of clerical annuities into a capital 
 sum have been effected, I mean the life-tables which 
 have been adopted for the carrying out of Com- 
 mutation, are so little favourable, having in view 
 the longevity of the Clergy as a class, that much of 
 this will in all likelihood have been absorbed in the 
 payment of the annuities, which are a first charge 
 upon it, before the last annuitant will have passed 
 away. But scarcely all; and we may count on some- 
 thing not inconsiderable which shall in this way be 
 added to our permanent resources. I have not en- 
 tered here into certain other diminutions which this 
 sum will undergo through the action of Clergymen 
 compounding, as what is here lost in one way will 
 be recovered in another. 
 
 Our Glebe Houses, built for the most part out of 
 charges on the incomes of the Clergy, we ought as 
 little to have been compelled to purchase as our 
 churches themselves. At the same time, they were 
 placed within our reach at a price very much below 
 that which they would have fetched in the open 
 market. At present the information is wanting which 
 would enable us to say what sum of money these, 
 when they have been bought, as with very few excep- 
 tions they all will be, may be considered fairly to 
 represent, seeing that much will here depend on the 
 interpretation, not yet authoritatively given, of certain 
 words of the Church Act ; but competent judges set 
 their value to us at some £200,000 more than the
 
 27 
 
 price which will have been paid for them. Mr. 
 Murphy in his able pamphlet on the subject has rated 
 them still higher. The Representative Body will 
 give to the parish in most cases the right of pre- 
 emption ; will assist it with advances of money at 
 moderate interest, and to be repaid by instalments, 
 where it is willing to purchase ; and many parishes 
 have already signified their intention of securing for 
 themselves their own Glebe Houses, with glebe adjoin- 
 ing ; and many more no doubt will do the same, being 
 as this is one of the most desirable forms in which, 
 partially at least, the re-endowment of our parishes 
 can be effected. 
 
 The Representative Body will in many cases obtain 
 a certain sum available for the future uses of the 
 Church, where Clergymen compound as well as com- 
 mute ; and will make some profit by advances to 
 annuitants under Table 3, these having been so cal- 
 culated as to be at once a boon to those who may 
 wish to obtain such advances, and to swell a little 
 the Common Fund. None, however, could venture 
 to form at the present date even the roughest guess 
 of what from these sources will be obtained. 
 
 Here and there the burden on the Church of the 
 future has been lightened by the act of patrons, who, 
 having been compensated for the loss of advowsons or 
 other rights of presentation, have felt it impossible to 
 retain the compensation money in their own hands ; 
 and have re-endowed, or have declared their intention
 
 28 
 
 of re-endowing, the parish with all which on account 
 of that parish they have received. I cannot here 
 refuse to mention the noble example which has been 
 set in this matter by the patron of the parish of 
 Geashill in this United Diocese, who has so dealt 
 with the very considerable compensation money 
 which for the advowson of that parish he has received, 
 or will receive ; retaining only such rights of patron- 
 age as are allowed in sections 15 and 16 of chapter iii. 
 of the Acts of the Convention. The transaction, 
 which is complete upon his part, only waits the 
 approval of the Diocesan Council. 
 
 Besides what will thus be secured of permanent 
 endowment to such parishes, there may very well 
 accrue through acts like this a further gain, and one 
 of quite another order, to the Church. Even before 
 disendowment the hands which held and distributed 
 the patronage of the Irish Church were very few ; our 
 Church offering in this a remarkable contrast to the 
 English. Thie patronage was for the most part concen- 
 trated in the Crown and in the Bishops. But if there was 
 ] it tie variety then — too little, as I needs must think — 
 there will now be almost no variety at all. A certain 
 number of Trustee Churches remain in this Diocese ; 
 but in other Dioceses your eye may travel down 
 whole pages of Charles' Directory^ and you will find 
 the Board of Nomination in sole and undivided pos- 
 session of all. Now, however wisely and conscien- 
 tiously these may administer their trust, I count that
 
 29 
 
 it will be a serious drawback, and one which will 
 certainly tell on our intellectual, probably on our 
 moral and spiritual condition as well, if there should 
 be but one way of advancement in the Church, a 
 way open only to those who look at the great theo- 
 logical questions, I will not say of our time, but of all 
 times, from one point of view ; yet so it is likely to 
 prove. There may be honourable exceptions to this 
 rule ; there have been such already ; but still they 
 are likely to remain exceptions. Elected by the 
 same process, these Boards are likely very closely 
 to resemble one another ; the same spirit to ani- 
 mate them all. What will commend to one will 
 commend to another ; what is distasteful to one 
 is likely to be distasteful to all. It is therefore 
 very much to be wished that some other paths 
 of advancement should be open besides the pleasing of 
 these, that the non-pleasing of these should not involve 
 a probable exclusion from every post of influence, 
 honour, or emolument in the Church ; and I welcome 
 the fact that there will still survive a certain amount 
 private patronage among us, fenced and guarded 
 against any abuse as this sufficiently has been. In 
 any event there will be very little. It will not go very 
 far in redressing what may prove a serious weakness 
 and defect. Some little, however, it may be hoped 
 that it will accomplish. 
 
 One of our chief economic difficulties in the future 
 will be the maintenance of the Episcopate even on
 
 30 
 
 tliat moderate scale wMch alone we can regard as prac- 
 ticable in an unendowed Churcli such as ours. The 
 existence of this difficulty we may freely admit, with- 
 out in the least setting our seal to the epigram of 
 an English Reviewer, that Irish Churchmen desire 
 an Episcopal Church, only without Bishops. The 
 secret of the difficulty is not here, but in the fact that 
 while every member of the Church is aware that with- 
 out the priest or deacon the Church's services must stop 
 at once, seeing that if means are not found to provide a 
 ministry of these, there follows an arrest of its offices, 
 the need of the episcopal office, and therefore of a 
 reasonable maintenance for those who fill it, is not 
 in the same palpable manner brought home to 
 all ; just as every private knows that without captains 
 and colonel a regiment would not hold together for 
 a day ; while at the same time the necessity of generals 
 and staff officers may be altogether hid from him. 
 
 It will not fare otherwise, I may take this oppor- 
 tunity of observing, with our Cathedrals. They, too, 
 and their services are remote from the view, almost 
 from the knowledge, of large numbers of our people. 
 They appeal to sympathies which are not universal. 
 And yet, if some care very little or not at all for these 
 services, others care very much. Here then again we 
 have exactly the conditions Avhich make the establish- 
 ment of special funds for their support advisable. 
 Let the General Fund help in a measure, if such help 
 be needful ; but even without this help I shall not
 
 31 
 
 despair of our ability to maintain these services at 
 something of their present perfection. Under these 
 conditions it is much to be wished that an Episcopal En- 
 dowment Fund should be constituted in every Diocese, 
 having in view those vacancies which may be very near, 
 which with men well advanced in years cannot be very 
 far off. Effectual beginnings to such a Fund have been 
 made already by a Eesolution of the Representative 
 Body, (which was only reasonable), that whatever 
 profits may arise from the Commutation of Bishops, 
 and from the compulsion under which it has put such 
 of these as commute, of fining down the greater part 
 of their annuity, shall be placed to the credit of 
 such a Fund. It has not yet been stated whether 
 these gains will all be thrown into a common 
 stock, to be allocated according to some rule, or 
 whether, as seems more just, and as indeed the 
 only feasible plan, each Diocese will retain what 
 has been gained by the Commutation of its own 
 Bishop ; but in the latter event there will be a sum 
 of somewhere about £14,000 in this United Diocese, 
 with which to begin the Fund ; not to speak of the 
 value, whatever that may be, of the Palace, which 
 will have been made our own by the payment of the 
 moderate building charge which is upon it. If my 
 life should be spared for the ordinary expectation of 
 fife at my age, and my ministry by God's grace allowed 
 for the same length of time to continue, these sums, 
 accumulating during this period without any charge
 
 32 
 
 upon them, at 4 per cent., would amount to con- 
 siderably more than £20,000, when the Diocese was 
 thrown on its own resources. Much would remain still 
 to be done ; but here would be a sum, not contemptible 
 as the foundation of the Endowment. A comparatively 
 slight effort more, commenced now, — for it ought not 
 to be deferred till the need actually arrives, — and 
 not discontinued till the Diocese felt that in this 
 matter there was no further cause for anxiety, 
 would suffice. Nor can we doubt that help would 
 come from other quarters. Already the greater 
 number of English Bishops have allocated their 
 liberal contributions to this special object ; and I can 
 imagine others, who, not prepared to give to other 
 objects, would be disposed to contribute to this. 
 
 I have now, I believe, enumerated all the quarters 
 from which the coffers of the Representative Body 
 are likely to be replenished. The sums actual and 
 possible may appear considerable. In themselves, no 
 doubt, they are so ; but are as nothing when we call 
 to mind what charges will have to be met, not once 
 nor twice, but year after year, so long as the Irish 
 Church shall last, that is, I trast, till the Lord Him- 
 self of the Church shall come. Not in any salvage 
 from the past wreck, not in any sums at a first burst 
 collected, can we find the means which will correspond 
 to our future needs. These we can find, not in cis- 
 terns which must sooner or later fail, but only in springs 
 ever flowing, in wells ever drawn but never drawn
 
 33 
 
 dry, in an ever growing kindness of Irish Churchmen, 
 small and great, to the house and service of their 
 God, in an ever-increasing willingness to consecrate 
 to Him of that substance, which, whether much or 
 little, is his gift. A leading English journal, speaking 
 of our future financial prospects, said lately that the 
 Irish laity had done already as much and more than 
 could have been expected of them. I am sure they 
 will repudiate so equivocal a compliment, will make 
 common part with us in owning that it is as yet alto- 
 gether premature to use such language about any 
 among us. 
 
 But if we are poor, have we not pew rents to fall 
 back on. Now the danger of slipping, it may be by 
 steps almost imperceptible, into pew rents, not any 
 longer as an exception, but as the rule, of seeking to 
 meet by aid of these the necessary parochial expenses, 
 and the chief of these, the stipend of the Minister, is one 
 which lies very near us. It is one against which there is 
 the more need to watch, seeing that, if only the thing 
 is called by some other name, there will be many pre- 
 pared to accept it ; many voices raised in favour of a 
 scheme which will promise to work so easily, as indeed 
 'the way down ' is always easy ; ever seeks to win us to 
 walk in it, by flattering our indolence, our covetous- 
 ness, or some other wrong desire of our minds. Only 
 let us not fail to remember that the general adoption 
 of pew rents will go far to destroy, if indeed it will 
 not quite destroy, the national character of our Church. 
 
 c
 
 34 
 
 Some may wonder that after all which has befallen us I 
 should still claim this national character as belonging 
 to it. I see no reason for letting go this word and the 
 claim which it involves. The instinct by which with 
 one mind and one heart we all resolved that, whatever 
 else was taken from us, we would retain this, and 
 know ourselves by no other name than The Church 
 of Ireland has always appeared to me one of the most 
 hopeful auguries for our future. In our territorial 
 system, which we shall maintain, in our churches, 
 which we have never by any legal enactment estranged 
 from the use of all, we claim the entire land for our 
 possession, and offer to all that dwell in it those rich 
 treasures of the Gospel of the grace of God which 
 have been committed to our keeping ; or if we fail 
 and fall short of this, it is through the inadequacy of 
 our means, the impossibility of realizing our idea, 
 and through this alone. Surely we may say to all, 
 without one grain of assumption, without any lack of 
 charity upon our parts, or any provoking to a loss of 
 charity on that of others, ' This doctrine and disci- 
 pline which we have to offer we believe accords the 
 nearest with the mind of God as declared in the Scrip- 
 ture, as embodied in the practise of the Primitive 
 Church. It was committed to our fathers, and in 
 them to us, a sacred deposit, as we are persuaded, for 
 the good of this whole nation, and we are debtors to all. 
 Nothing is impossible with God, we will not there- 
 fore cease from hoping that in the end all will accept
 
 35 
 
 it.' These hopes, these pretensions of ours, may be 
 ridiculous in thesight of others; — " What do these feeble 
 Jews ?" — but assuredly there is nothing offensive in 
 them ; nothing, let me add, which forbids us to rejoice 
 from the heart in whatever work for Christ others, 
 who follow not with us, may be working. I see not 
 how a Church, which is not willing to relapse into a 
 sect, can make lower claims than these; and I should 
 regret as one of the deadliest wounds which we could 
 inflict upon ourselves, any step which, like a general 
 adoption of pew rents, by whatever name called, in 
 our parochial churches, should explicitly or implicitly 
 involve a renunciation of them. 
 
 Much of the passion with which the question of 
 Education was debated once among us has now 
 passed away. Time and reflection have done their 
 work, and yet not so, but that he who walks over 
 this field of controversy, may still, perhaps, be 
 walking on embers which it would not be hard to 
 kindle into a flame once more. I shall speak no 
 word to revive these sleeping fires. Only this I will 
 say, that the time seems now to have arrived which 
 calls, not indeed for any one to go back from the 
 position which he has once assumed, but for all of 
 us to consider, what position we will occupy in 
 view of that altered future which is before us. 
 We are, and have been, busy about many things, 
 the future government, the future support, the 
 future Prayer Book, of the Church ; but if we 
 
 c2
 
 36 
 
 omit or liglitly regard the future education of the 
 Church's children, we shall presently find that at the 
 very best we have reared tottering superstructures, 
 for the only strong foundations will have been 
 wanting ; which are men and women, trained from 
 their earliest years to love their Church, adorning the 
 doctrine which they have learned there, and able to 
 give some better reason for belonging to it, than the 
 mere accident that they were born within it. 
 
 Whatever else may be done or left undone, taken 
 up at once or deferred for a season, can there be any 
 doubt that the Church should have a Training 
 School, co-extensive with itself, and which, as a 
 Church, it should recognize and support ? I enter 
 not here into the question whether it would be possi- 
 ble to adopt and give a wider basis to that which 
 already exists, and which is sending forth, so far as 
 its means extend, masters and mistresses well trained 
 and fitted for their work ; and of whom we hear 
 honourable testimony from many sides. Be this as 
 it may, in one way or other the Church must resolve 
 to secure for herself an adequate supply of trained 
 masters and mistresses, and I believe the only means 
 by which she can secure them, is the training them 
 for herself No one who has not had experience can 
 guess the difference between the trained teacher and 
 the untrained, how far methods of teaching go, how 
 they multiply power ; how much, on the contrary, of 
 power is thrown away, of good energy wasted, spilt
 
 37 
 
 as it were upon the ground, where this special train- 
 ino; is wantino-. I trust we shall soon have both 
 the time and inclination to give to this subject the 
 attention which it deserves. 
 
 There are a few words which I would fain speak on 
 the future status of the Clergy ; and on the ways by 
 which we may best hope to resist, if indeed any effec- 
 tual resistance is possible, those forces which will be 
 at work to bring down, to the serious injury of 
 the Church, that status from what it hitherto has been. 
 And first, let me say for myself, that I shall oppose 
 by all means in my power any such modification of 
 our present arrangements as would give us a less 
 educated Clergy than that which we now possess 
 My rule has hitherto been to require of all candidates 
 for Holy Orders that they should have taken a degree 
 at Trinity College or at some English University ; 
 and only the rarest exceptional circumstances, or 
 such a necessity at I do not at present anticipate, will 
 induce me to go back from this rule. Even if it 
 should be necessary to relax it in other Dioceses; a 
 matter on which I can express no opinion, we might, 
 I think, in this wealthy metropolitan Diocese maintain 
 it stiU. For this maintenance, indeed, one condition 
 will be needful — namely, that such provision be here 
 made for those who in the future shall minister at our 
 altars, that we may hope to obtain and retain for 
 these the services of the most highly educated and
 
 38 
 
 most promising among those who have offered them- 
 selves for the work of the ministry. 
 
 And not in the matter of the degree only, but in 
 others as well, I shall decline to take any step which 
 should even seem to accept the fact, that henceforward 
 the Clergy of the Church of Ireland are to be drawn 
 from a lower rank of society, or to bring less know- 
 ledge and a smaller amount of qualifications to the 
 work than heretofore. I have received from various 
 quarters well-meant applications for Holy Orders, but 
 such as could only have been made on the assump- 
 tion that the standard of our requirements would 
 henceforward be lowered, that rules hitherto main- 
 tained would be relaxed, that in short we should be 
 thankful to receive almost any tolerable recruits who 
 offered themselves to this work. I take the oppor- 
 tunity of saying that we have by no means come to 
 this. We shall still, I trust, retain our hold on the 
 upper classes of Ireland, and draw our supply of 
 Clergy in part from them. That the middle classes 
 should contribute their quota to our ranks is very 
 much to be desired. It is so in England, it has been 
 so in Ireland. But I should deeply regret the day 
 when the Church was exclusively recruited from 
 thence, with the consequence which would soon fol- 
 low, that not the upper middle class, but the lower, 
 would furnish our only supply; this entailing another 
 consequence, namely that the whole social position of 
 the Clergy in a little while would be altered for the
 
 39 
 
 worse ; which, if a misfortune for them, would be 
 certainly not less a misfortune for those among whom 
 they move, and to whom they minister. 
 
 On the subject of the payment of the Clergy it 
 would be out of place to enter here into details ; yet 
 whatever plans may be adopted, there are one or two 
 ruhng maxims which should in no case be violated. 
 Thus assuredly it is of vital importance that the 
 Church should fix a minimum, below which it vdll 
 not sanction the planting of a Clergyman in any dis- 
 trict or parish ; being at the same time, as I trust 
 it will be, able and willing to make up this mini- 
 mum in such poorer parishes as, having honestly 
 done their best, yet cannot except with such assistance 
 from without raise the required amount for them- 
 selves. And let me here observe by the way, that 
 while the aim of the Church must be in the main a 
 providing of income for a future Clergy, not a going 
 back to make good the too scanty incomes of those 
 whose appointments date back to a period before dis- 
 establishment, yet I cannot but think that when that 
 minimum has been fixed for him who shall hereafter 
 occupy the post, and it is found that the Church 
 income of the present occupant does not reach even 
 that, it should be a distinct object and endeavour to 
 raise it to this point, which will thus have been recog- 
 nized as the lowest at which it can be reasonably ex- 
 pected that he who works that work can live. For the
 
 40 
 
 payment of whatever sum in the way of stipend a 
 parish may engage itself, I trust that it will be held res- 
 ponsible to the Church, and to it alone ; this of giving 
 and receiving being in no case allowed to become a 
 personal matter between a parish and the Clergyman 
 who may be appointed to minister the Word and Sa- 
 craments therein. I am spealdng here of such stipend 
 only as the Church may have insisted on, or as a 
 parish may, through the Church, have engaged itself 
 to find ; and not of any free-will offerings over and 
 above which a grateful people, having the means, may 
 choose from time to time to make to their minister. 
 Of these the Church ought not, unless requested, to 
 take any cognizance. But should a parish anywhere 
 fail to keep a distinct engagement which it has made, 
 it must find that it has to do not with the individual 
 Clergyman, but with the Church ; which shall see 
 that this engagement is fulfilled, or that those who care 
 not to fulfil it shall, after due notice, stand outside of 
 the Church's system, and in no way recognized by it, 
 until they have made good their faults of the past, and 
 are prepared to mend their ways for the time to 
 come. It is only so that the proper relations between 
 a Clergyman and his people can be preserved ; only 
 so will he be able to speak boldly and freely to them 
 on the duty of supporting the ministry, without the 
 suspicion that he is asking for himself Indeed I 
 may say that only so will he be able to maintain that 
 general attitude of dignity and independance which it
 
 41 
 
 is good alike for him and for them that he should 
 maintain. 
 
 And when I speak of this attitude of dignity and 
 independence, I would entreat my lay brethren (for 
 I will flatter myself that my words may reach some of 
 them), not to imagine that I urge this merely or even 
 primarily in the interests of that order to which I 
 belong, but rather in the interests of the whole 
 Church, and if of any more than of others, then 
 primarily in those of the laity. Our deterioration 
 will be yours. You cannot withdraw from us any- 
 thing which rightfully belongs to us as ministers and 
 stewards of the mysteries of God without an injurious 
 reaction in one shape or another on yourselves. If, 
 having had too slight a share in the management of 
 Church afiairs in times past, you should now possess 
 yourselves of the whole, it may be very pleasant to 
 have all at your will, to be able to come down on and 
 repress at once everything which is not exactly to 
 your mind, to be ministered to by a Clergy who will 
 not venture to oppose you in small or in great. But 
 there will come a nemesis for all this. It will not be 
 long before every nobler spirit among our young men, 
 every one with a spark of independence about him, 
 every one who would have sustained the grander 
 traditions of the Irish Church, will decline to submit 
 himself to such a yoke, will choose other lines of ser- 
 vice in which to serve God ; or, if so mightily drawn 
 to the ministry that he cannot forego it, will seek
 
 42 
 
 ordination elsewhere, will resolve to exercise his 
 ministry in England, in the colonies, anywhere 
 rather than in Ireland; while there will remain to 
 offer themselves for the work here men of altogether 
 an inferior stamp, a servile band, craving to be put 
 into one of the priests' offices for a piece of silver 
 and a morsel of bread, and having no higher 
 thought, nor loftier aspiration than this. 
 
 And even granting that things may not come to 
 this worst, the loss will not be a slight one, if those 
 who deal with the highest interests of your souls 
 shall hereafter be men, not simply asking, ' What is 
 God's will, that we may declare it to those com- 
 mitted to our charge?' but men asking rather, 
 ' How much of God's truth can I venture to declare to 
 this people without alienating and estranging them 
 from myself?' There are, as we, my Rev. Brethren, 
 very well know, in all ages of the Church, aspects of 
 the truth (not always the same aspects), which are 
 popular, and aspects which are unpopular. He who 
 dwells only on the former, his conscience may not 
 severely check him, for it may still be the truth 
 which he is declaring ; while yet, being but half the 
 truth, it can never make those who stop short with 
 it, perfect and complete in all the will of God, may, 
 as is the nature of half truths, become positive and 
 dangerous error for some. There is a profound word 
 of warning in St. Augustine, " Ne corrigat a3ger me- 
 dicamenta sua." This correcting, or tampering rather, 
 with our medicines is what we are all continually
 
 43 
 
 tempted to do ; ourselves correcting, or else moving 
 those who are appointed as physicians of our 
 souls, to correct those wholesome medicines, which 
 only in their integrity, with their bitter as well 
 as their sweet, can bring about our spiritual 
 health. Which of lis, my Brethren, who live 
 under conditions of far greater independence than 
 will be the portion of those who succeed us, has 
 not known the temptation of falling in with such 
 wishes of our people, of making our words echoes of 
 their opinions, feelings, predilections, passions, instead 
 of * oracles of God,' which, having received from 
 Him, it is ours simply to declare, whether they please, 
 or whether they displease ? 
 
 The General Convention in its legislation on the 
 manner in which vacant benefices should be filled, was 
 honestly desirous to make impossible those abuses 
 which wait upon appointments exclusively parochial. 
 And certainly when we call to mind what too often 
 goes on in parishes in England — happily they are 
 very few — where the election is altogether in the 
 hands of the people, one of these parishes, Bilston, 
 having lately like a drunken helot exhibited itself for 
 our warning, and shown us the extremity of degra- 
 dation at which such elections may arrive, we should 
 be without excuse, if we had not made for ever 
 impossible among ourselves disorders and outrages 
 which would disgrace an election to the meanest office 
 in the land. With all this the Convention felt that the
 
 44 
 
 parishioners might justly demand a considerable share 
 in a choice which touched them and their hii^hest in- 
 terests so nearly ; and with the intention of satisfying 
 their just claim, devised, or, to speak more accurately, 
 adopted from the New Zealand Church, a scheme 
 which gives to the parish a potent voice in such elec- 
 tions, but only through those whom, chosen by itself, 
 we may presume the choicest and most trustworthy 
 of its members. 
 
 But although the scheme thus adopted was well 
 meant, and this share which the parish has in the elec- 
 tion must, in any case, be preserved, I am free to 
 confess that for more reasons than one it does 
 not, as a whole, commend itself to me ; nor, so 
 far as I may judge from the voices which have 
 reached me, to very many among yourselves. If 
 indecencies like those to which I have just referred 
 have been effectually excluded, there are other incon- 
 veniences which cleave to it ; and this appointment to 
 vacant cures, which ought to prove one of our strongest 
 points, — for much, in some sense everything, turns, 
 upon it, — is likely to prove one of our weakest. 
 
 In that state of things which has just passed away 
 a Clergyman regarded the Diocese in which he had 
 first made proof of his ministry, as in all likelihood 
 the sphere of his future work, as the sphere no less 
 within which that work was in due time to obtain 
 its just recognition and reward ; and thus every 
 year that went by, tlie more unwilling he became to
 
 45 
 
 quit it ; and this, not merely from having struck 
 his roots the more deeply there, but also from 
 feeling that with each succeeding year of labour 
 therein, he acquired more and more of a vested 
 interest in whatever preferment there might be there 
 to bestow ; and I believe I may say that, without 
 binding themselves to any absolute rule, the Bishops, 
 in whom so large a portion of the patronage resided, 
 regarded these years of service as constituting a 
 moral claim upon them ; and only rarely and under 
 very exceptional circumstances sought to fill up from 
 outside of the Diocese the vacancies which occurred 
 within it. But all this will probably be altered now. 
 It it is not to be expected, and certainly will not 
 prove, that Parochial Nominators will in the same 
 degree acknowledge this claim ; for myself I shall be 
 thankful if they acknowledge it all. They will receive 
 offers of service from a distance as readily, or nearly 
 as readily, as offers from those labouring in the 
 Diocese wherein the vacancy is to be filled ; some have 
 already, I regret to observe, by advertisement invited 
 these offers ; they will look abroad over the whole 
 land for the man who pleases them the best. It is 
 useless to complain of this ; but it is not the less to be 
 feared that the Diocesan feeling, which has a very 
 real value, will be seriously weakened thereby. The 
 number who will take home to themselves that old 
 admonition, ' Spartam nactus es ; hanc exorna,' wiU 
 grow fewer. With much of actual unsettlement, of
 
 46 
 
 moving hither and thither, with far more of this than 
 is good for a Church, the moral unsettlement will 
 be greater still. I can imagine nothing in its kind 
 more injurious to us than that there should be a 
 nomade band of Clergy, always on the move, or 
 waiting for a move ; rather pitching their tent than 
 building their house in the place where they tarry 
 for a while ; not loving much those whom they hope 
 so soon to quit ; and not loved much by those who 
 know them to be only waiting for a change. 
 
 There is another point connected with these elec- 
 tions, and the manner of conducting them which 
 demands attention. I need not remind you that in 
 the event of the vacancy of a cure, the Board of Nom- 
 inators are bound to come together and to elect one, 
 in the words of the clause under which they act, 
 " fitted and willing to undertake such cure." But if 
 one ' willing,' they must know this willingness, and 
 can only know it certainly from himself. This willing' 
 ness however there are many among our Clergy who 
 feel it a derogation from their proper dignity before- 
 hand to express. Some in my own Diocese, whom I 
 would most thankfully see set in more forward places 
 than now they fill, decline to express as much ; and 
 it is only by accident or by indirect ways that a 
 Board of Nomination will hear of their readiness to 
 accept a vacant charge, even if it should hear at all. 
 Such scruples of sensitive and honourable men claim 
 to be respected to the uttermost; and yet, having given 
 much consideration to the subject, I cannot see how
 
 47 
 
 elections, as now prescribed, are to go forward at all, 
 unless in some wav or other this knowledge has 
 reached the electors. It is said indeed that they 
 might proceed to elect, and afterwards discover 
 whether the man who was their choice would accept or 
 not. I cannot think that the knot is in this way to be 
 untied. It was comparatively easy for a patron in 
 old time to follow this course. He knew pretty well 
 whether A. or B. would take what he had to offer ; 
 and even if he was out in his reckoning, it was but 
 writing a letter or two more. But many of the pre- 
 sent Nominators in the necessity of things know very 
 little of the outward circumstances of the man whom 
 they select. If their choice has lighted on one who 
 does not care to move, there must be another delay, 
 another bringing together of seven persons, some of 
 them, it may be, from a distance, and all of them with 
 avocations of their own ; and the same process may 
 have to be repeated again and again. Meanwhile per- 
 haps the man who would have accepted the cure, who 
 was so well fitted for it that in him, had his willingness 
 been known, all suffrages would have met, is passed 
 by, none having divined the wilhngness which he had 
 declined to express. 
 
 I have dwelt on this matter thus fully, because, 
 knowing the importance which is attached to it by 
 many of the Clergy, I earnestly desire to see it placed 
 on a footing which shall satisfy scruples the most 
 delicate ; and if there be indeed any abatement of the 
 just dignity of the Clergy, which it so infinitely con-
 
 48 
 
 cerns should be maintained to the full, to ask from 
 them this statement of their readiness to accept a 
 benefice if offered to them, the requirement ought in 
 one way or other to be got rid of, whatever trouble 
 or inconvenience this might involve. 
 
 There is another point, not in the conduct of the 
 business of the Board of Patronage, but in the very 
 constitution of that Board, on which I must reluctantly 
 say a few words. The mode of electing Diocesan 
 Nominators, at least in tliis Diocese, has practically 
 thrown the entire choice of these, as well as that 
 of the Parochial Nominators, into the hands of the 
 laity, their voices being two to one in respect of 
 yours. I am persuaded that this was not the inten- 
 tion of the General Synod, and that the omission of 
 a clause to the effect that, in this as in other elections, 
 the Clerical Nominators should be elected by the 
 Clergy, and the Lay by the Laity, was an oversight. 
 This has been so strongly felt in some Dioceses that 
 
 •i 
 
 the Diocesan Synod, having the power, has resolved 
 that such shall be the manner of election. It would 
 be a step at once just and generous, were some layman 
 to move at the next meeting of our Synod, that here 
 also the error of that accidental oversight should be 
 be redressed ; and I am much mistaken if such a pro- 
 posal would not find a generous response, and all 
 gladly conspire to remove out of the way what else 
 may one day prove a troublesome rock of offence in 
 our path.
 
 49 
 
 None, I trust, will suppose that because I look with 
 disfavour on what we have here done I have therefore 
 any lurking wishes to bring back a condition of things 
 which, with its good and with its evil, has for ever 
 past away, which is inconsistent with our altered 
 position, and which no wishes of ours, were we idle 
 enough to indulge them, could restore. Before us, 
 and not behind, our help is to be sought ; and this 
 said, I leave this subject for the present. 
 
 A considerable number of Clergy, three hundred 
 and fifty in all, a Bishop included, have recorded 
 their dissent from Canons passed at our last General 
 Synod ; some of the dissentients signalizing those 
 against which they specially protest ; others in more 
 general terms declaring their dissent from all acts 
 of the said Synod, from which they are intitled to 
 dissent under the provisions of the 20th section of the 
 Irish Church Act, and from such of the Canons as may 
 be covered by the words in that section used. A certain 
 number of these declarations of dissent possess no 
 legal value, not having been sent in until the month, 
 which is all tliat is allowed for the making of such pro- 
 tests, had expired. This fact, however, does not alter 
 their significance, which, as it seems to me, is more than 
 has hitherto been esteemed. I fear the httle rift, or the 
 faintest appearance of this, which, almost impercep- 
 tible at first, may grow into the mighty rent ; and the 
 possible beginnings of this Httle rift I recognize here. 
 
 D
 
 50 
 
 But whether this be so or not, one thing at any rate is 
 evident, namely," that this clause in the Act will be 
 largely used by the present Clergy for their own 
 protection, whenever they see, or think they see, that 
 the liberties which were theirs in time past are in 
 danger of being encroached on or diminished in the 
 future. 
 
 For myself, let me here say a few words on the 
 legislation which has called out these protests. I find 
 no fault with, but rather from my heart approve and 
 applaud, the taking of whatever safeguards may be 
 necessary to render impossible here such a travestie 
 of the worship which our Church intended to offer to 
 her children, inconceivable to any one who has not 
 witnessed it, as is now going forward in some English 
 churches. Improbable as it is that this, or anything like 
 this, should get a footing with us, yet if men's minds 
 are alarmed, let that alarm by all means be allayed ; 
 for it does unspeakable harm, helping to cast a sus- 
 picion on men who dislike and would contend against 
 such excesses, or any tiling approaching to them, as 
 earnestly as the loudest of these alarmists, and often 
 driving these last into mischievous exaggerations on 
 the other side. It was for these reasons that I 
 approved of the larger features of our legislation of 
 last spring, so far as this had these objects in view. 
 But this said, I will not hesitate to add that this legis- 
 lation was, in my mind, sometimes vexatious and 
 meddling, travelled into details, which, the cardinal
 
 51 
 
 points having once been secured, would have been 
 better let alone, went in several instances beyond the 
 actual need, making usages illegal which it would 
 have been wiser to have left indifferent, and in these 
 ways justif3dng too far the hard epithet, ' intolerant,' 
 which has been applied to it. It is very undesirable 
 to enact Canons, which will seem to have been enacted 
 only to be broken. It is already so faring with some of 
 these ; and they will be broken with impunity, for they 
 are of a character so petty, that he would have no 
 pubhc opinion of the Church to back him who should 
 attempt to enforce them. Then, too, an overmuch of 
 legislation oftentimes itself goes far to defeat the 
 very objects which it has most at heart. Those 
 against whom your legislation is directed, or who sup- 
 pose that it is directed against them, are provoked to 
 set their wit against yours, to show that, weave the 
 meshes of your net as closely as you may, they will 
 slip through these, defeat and make ridiculous all 
 the devices of your art. There is a proverb — it was 
 a favourite in its homely wisdom with my prede- 
 cessor — " Wide will wear, but tight will tear." There 
 has been, in my judgment, too much of the ' tight 
 which will tear' in some of our recent legislation; 
 and for myself I regret that I did not oftener and 
 more distinctly express my sense of this, while 
 matters were still in debate ; even though I might 
 not have judged that the matter was of such extreme 
 gravity as to call for further resistance. 
 
 D 2
 
 52 
 
 It is quite unnecessary that I should recal to your 
 remembrance the events which led to the suspension 
 for a time of all consideration of the suggestions made 
 by Master Brooke's Committee, and in the stead of this, 
 to the appointment of that which bears Dr. Salmon's 
 name, on a wider basis, and with a far larger and 
 still more arduous task allotted to it. I can scarcely 
 pass over altogether a subject which must be pro- 
 minent in the minds of us all ; and yet I should be 
 sorry to say one word by way of anticipating those 
 doctrinal dicussions which can hardly fail to arise, 
 first in that Committee itself, and, whenever it shall 
 have presented its Keport, in the General Synod and 
 in still wider circles of the Church. The fact that I 
 have the honour and responsibility of serving on that 
 Committee imposes upon me at least a present reticence. 
 It will meet in a few days, and I should ill go into 
 council with my brethren, having just committed 
 myself anew to one decision or another on those 
 solemn points which will inevitably in it be raised. 
 And as I shall abstain from any doctrinal pre-occupa- 
 tion of the ground, so too I trust that in the few 
 observations which I feel myself permitted to make, 
 I may utter no single word to render harder that task 
 which any how must be hard enough. If I dwell a 
 little (and this is all that I shall do), on the difficulties 
 which are before this Committee, and therefore before 
 the Church, it is only to the end that we may look 
 these fairly in the face, and apprehend clearly that
 
 53 
 
 the appointment of that Committee in no way resolved, 
 but only adjourned them for a while ; and, appre- 
 hending this, that we may not cry Peace and Safety, 
 while as yet we are far from having made these 
 securely our own ; but may address ourselves to our 
 task, as knomng it to be one in which miscarriage 
 would be only too easy, and in which miscarriage 
 might be fraught with direst disaster. Assuredly also 
 it is one, and of this too we may be fitly reminded, 
 in which we shall need wisdom, skill, moderation 
 such as are vouchsafed to few, and such as are 
 only to be obtained in answer to earnest prayer, if we 
 are not to be entangled amid rocks, shoals, and quick- 
 sands, which we do not dream of now, but from which, 
 when we are once among them, there may be no 
 extrication. 
 
 No one can reasonably object to the constitution 
 of Dr. Salmon's Committee. A spirit of generous 
 fairness presided over its selection. Those who were 
 the strongest declined to use their strength in their 
 own favour. This, I am sure, must of all be freely 
 admitted. Yet this cannot prevent me from saying, 
 that there appear to me two dangers before us, dn-ectly 
 connected with the Report which that Committee will 
 present"; both very serious ones. They are these. 
 Either the Revision recommended by this Com- 
 mittee may present itself to the majority of the 
 Synod, as so slight and superficial, so little reacliing 
 points on which they have set their hearts, so httle
 
 54 
 
 modifying or removing what they most object to, that 
 in disappointment and displeasure they may break 
 away from it altogether ; and, casting this aside, 
 attempt something far more thorough-going and 
 searching of their own. This on the one hand. But 
 then on the other hand, let the Revision as proposed 
 by this Committee reach far, so far as to satisfy the 
 expectations of this majority, it can hardly fail that 
 there will be a minority, first in the Committee itself, 
 and then in the Synod, who will feel that it violates 
 their deepest convictions, and who will absolutely 
 refuse to acquiesce in it ; and then we shall once 
 again stand face to face with the dangers which were 
 before us last spring ; but this time with no Com- 
 mittee of Dr. Salmon's in reserve, by aid of which to 
 adjourn those difficulties which we do not see our 
 way to overcome. 
 
 Now that this may very possibly happen, none I 
 think, can deny. For let us consider how matters 
 stand ; how they stand here ; how they would equally 
 stand in England, if the same crisis had arrived for 
 the English Church as had arrived for ours. 
 
 The greater, and certainly the more influential, por- 
 tion of those who desire certain changes in our for- 
 mularies, whether in this Committee or out of it, 
 embody and utter in this desire the convictions of 
 years, convictions which reach deep, which are 
 entwined with the very roots of their rehgious hfe. 
 And exactly in the same way those who resist
 
 55 
 
 these changes, embody and express in this resistance 
 their hfe-long convictions on matters which touch 
 them no less in their very heart of hearts. It may 
 be assumed that these and those are aHke fairly 
 acquainted with all which can be urged in support of 
 those conclusions which they have rejected, in oppo- 
 sition to those which they have embraced. On ques- 
 tions which have been, as most of these have been, 
 in earnest debate for centuries, there is httle which 
 can be said that has not been said already ; little new 
 to be learned by those who are even tolerably versed 
 in the past history of the controversies of the Church. 
 Ascribing the fullest sincerity to all, the most entire 
 openness to conviction, it can hardly be expected, and 
 certainly the past history of such Conferences does 
 not warrant the expectation, that the meeting together 
 of our Company, the talking over and debating among 
 ourselves of the points which will be brought before us, 
 will issue in any very serious modifications of opinion 
 on the one side or on the other. Men who have any 
 root in themselves are not so easily blown about, do 
 not so Hghtly veer from one point of the theological 
 compass to another. 
 
 And when some, wishing to still our fears, assure 
 us that very few alterations will satisfy them and 
 those on whose behalf they speak, and these extend- 
 ing but to a few words, we cannot derive from this 
 assurance all the confidence which they would fain 
 impart to us. It is impossible to leave out of sight
 
 56 
 
 that what some would count very sHght changes, 
 others would esteem very serious indeed. It is not the 
 mere amount of alteration which really affects the 
 character of a Church service, but the parts of the 
 service in which that alteration is made. There are 
 services which might be rewritten from first to last, 
 which yet if half a dozen words were retained, and the 
 remainder brought into doctrinal harmony with them, 
 would still continue essentially the same. Again, the 
 same services might be left almost untouched, with 
 not half a dozen words withdrawn or changed, and 
 yet their transformation might be complete, their 
 whole life, at least what some count their hfe, might 
 have gone from them. When in the Spanish bull-fight 
 the matador advances at last to kill the bull, he does not 
 hack and slash it with a broadsword ; he holds but a 
 little dagger in his hand, with a touch of this he dex- 
 terously divides the spinal cord, and the huge creature 
 falls a hfeless mass at his feet. Each one of our ser- 
 vices may have, so to speak, its spinal cord, which 
 once cut, the life will have departed from it. 
 
 But much, it is said, may be effected by mutual 
 compromise. Something, no doubt, in matters of 
 secondary and tertiary import, and I trust that all in 
 turn will show themselves yielding in these, but in 
 those of primary import, nothing ; for in the things of 
 God it is not as in the things of men and of earth. 
 In these last, if we give up anything, we may be 
 only giving up our own ; and for peace sake we may.
 
 57 
 
 and often ought to, give up much of this. But in the 
 things of God, or which we at any rate beheve to be 
 his, there are Hmits to concession, and those hmits 
 very strict ones indeed ; and, seeing that we have a 
 right to assume an equal zeal for the truth and for the 
 honour of the truth, on the part of all who will take 
 part in these discussions, it will be only on matters 
 very subordinate that there will be room for this 
 allaying of differences by the concession of one party, 
 or by the mutual compromise of both. 
 
 One other ground of confidence is often urged. Is 
 not, it is said, the successful revision of the American 
 Prayer Book an evidence not to be gainsaid of the 
 safety with which this process may be carried through ? 
 Reference to this has been, and no doubt will be 
 again, so often made, that one is tempted to enquire, 
 Is it indeed a success ? and has it been so accounted 
 by American Churchmen? Doubtless the Prayer 
 Book has survived the ordeal to which it then was 
 submitted. It fared not with it, as it fared with 
 that aged father in Greek fable, whom his daughters 
 chopped small, and flung into a cauldron, being assured 
 that he would come forth from it renewed in youth 
 and vigour ; but for whom those pious offices of his 
 children brought no such TraXiyj^veaia as they looked 
 for ; seeing that unfortunatelyhe came not forth from 
 the cauldron at all. By the good hand of God upon 
 his Church nothing was then done, though something 
 was very nearly done, to set any division between the
 
 58 
 
 mother and the daughter Church. But what can 
 be concluded from this ? Alterations far more sig- 
 nificant than any which were made then are now 
 being urged upon us ; and even were this otherwise, 
 and we could feel certain that we should not be drawn 
 on to changes much more thorough-going, I have no 
 choice but to say that in my eyes this much lauded 
 Revision is far more of a warning, and, to use the word 
 in its American sense, a ' caution ' to us than an encou- 
 ragement. Theologically the alterations appear to 
 have been made at haphazard, and at random. If on 
 one side the Prayer of Oblation and the Invocation are 
 restored to the Communion Service, the restoration 
 of which would not be a very popular proposal in Ire- 
 land, in other places the Revision bears distinct traces 
 of that low-water mark of doctrine which at that 
 time was common to the Church on this side of the 
 Atlantic and on the other. None will be unjust 
 enough to blame American Churchmen of that day, 
 that they did not stand on a higher theological 
 level than that of their brethren here ; but we 
 may fairly regret, and I believe that many of our 
 American brethren share this regret, that by a revi- 
 sion at that time carried out much what was in itself 
 fleeting and ephemeral, which would presently have 
 had its day and disappeared, was fixed in permanence, 
 stereotyped for ever ; that precious truths, which, by 
 the accident of the moment were not prized at their 
 true worth, or were not prized at all, were given up,
 
 59 
 
 hardly again to be recovered; for it is easy enough to 
 lower the standards of a Church, but to raise them 
 again, to recover that which has been too lightly let 
 go, this is nearly impossible or quite. 
 
 Thus, it was a time when the Church realized but 
 slightly the immense significance of our Lord's descent 
 into Hades — a truth which, I believe, many of the dis- 
 cussions likely ere long to occupy the Church will 
 bring into ever greater prominance ; and so the 
 words in the Apostles' Creed, " went down into hell," 
 were in the " Proposed Book " omitted altogether ; 
 and when it was plain from the remonstrances of the 
 English Archbishops, that by this omission all intimate 
 communion between the Churches might be endan- 
 gered, were left to be used, or not used, at the pleasure 
 of the congregation ; were virtually given up, for this 
 compromise meant nothing less, to the shallow objec- 
 tions of an uninstructed and ignorant age ; the witness 
 therein contained against the Apollinarian heresy 
 effaced, and all the blessed hopes for them who 
 in the days of their flesh have not had the opportu- 
 nity of knowing Christ as their Saviour, which in these 
 words are wrapped up, were obscured, and so far as 
 the witness of the Creed extends, were withdrawn. 
 Or to turn to a matter less important, but in itself 
 significant enough, shall we praise or imitate them 
 whose ears were so nice that they could not endure 
 the reference in the Te Deum to the pure mystery of 
 the human birth of the Saviour, and must needs sub-
 
 60 
 
 stitute other words, to them less indelicate, for those 
 which have for fifteen centuries proclaimed that He, 
 the eternal Son, when He took upon Him to deliver 
 man " did not abhor the Virgin's womb." I would 
 venture to ask of them who so highly praise that 
 Revision, Is this the manner of emendation which 
 they desire ? I crave the pardon of my American 
 brethren in the faith, that I speak one word of fault- 
 finding like this ; but sometimes matters too dear are 
 at hazard to allow us to keep silence, however reluctant 
 we may be to speak. 
 
 But, my Rev. Brethren, quite apart from the par- 
 ticular question of Revision, there are dangers which 
 must evermore threaten a disestablished or unestab- 
 lished Church, from which one in connection with 
 the State is free. Let us look this fact in the face, 
 and recognize the existence of these dangers ; for 
 such are best shunned when they are known. A 
 distinguished English Clergyman, travelling not long 
 ago in Scotland, asked a humble member of the 
 Free Kirk, what in his eyes were the chief merits of 
 a Church such as his was, and why he preferred it to 
 an Establishment ? He answered with perfect strait- 
 forwardness, "Because in it the majority can turn 
 out the minority." Now this is a speaking out in the 
 baldest, but also the most instructive form, of what a 
 Church like ours has to fear — majorities tempted to 
 turn out minorities, demanding from them that they
 
 61 
 
 should yield their convictions or go. I do not mean 
 that matters come to this point at once ; but that 
 this is an issue towards which they tend, and at 
 which they may arrive. 
 
 I am not indeed unreasonable enough to expect 
 that the same breadth and toleration can exist in an 
 unestablished Church like ours as in an Establislunent. 
 It is no merit in the members of an Establishment, 
 but lies in the necessity of things, that this should be 
 more tolerant than the other. Many indeed will say 
 that it often is too tolerant; that, if the Church of 
 England may be urged in proof, it endures much 
 which it ought not to endure ; and that the State, into 
 a certain partnership with which the Church has 
 entered, being more eager for peace than for truth, 
 makes itself felt overmuch in regions into which it 
 has no right to intrude. Now, whether these be just 
 accusations or not, it is certain that many swift and 
 sharp methods, which would otherwise have been 
 brought into action in dealing with such as the majority 
 count offenders, become impossible; that the State 
 stands continually in the way, when it is sought to 
 draw theological lines more tightly; so to explain 
 terms of communion, that what was lawful to hold 
 yesterday shall not be lawful to-day; or when, in a 
 more laudable endeavour, it is sought to stop the 
 mouths of those who in the Church are teaching doc- 
 trines subversive of the very foundations on which 
 the Church is built. Now, I am not going to discuss
 
 62 
 
 the relative merits of establishment and non-establish- 
 ment. All which I desire is, to call your attention to 
 special dangers which beset us now, and which did 
 not beset us before ; which, indeed, beset not us in 
 particular, but every Church such as ours, which has, 
 under God, the awful prerogative of an absolute lord- 
 ship in its own domain — namely, the intolerance of 
 minorities on the part of majorities ; this uttering itself 
 in oppressive acts, in a forcing of the consciences of 
 the fewer number, until they have no choice but to 
 go, it may seem by an act of their own, but having 
 indeed been thrust out by those who were determined 
 that there should be no deflexion on the part of any 
 from the rigid lines which they had drawn. 
 
 I have allowed myself freely in this criticism on 
 some parts of our past action, in a somewhat anxious 
 outlook on some parts of our future ; but they 
 would misinterpret me altogether, who, because I 
 have so done, should esteem me a malcontent, who is 
 searching for what he can find fault with, or who 
 would willingly depreciate the authority and diminish 
 the influence of our Synod. Assuredly this would mis- 
 become none more than it would misbecome me, who 
 have experienced so much of favour, so much more of 
 personal good-will from the members of that Assembly 
 than I had any reason to expect ; ^not to speak of 
 hiojher motives and oblisiations which should hinder 
 one occupying a position like mine from attempting 
 anything of the kind. But none, I think, can justly take
 
 63 
 
 ill the freedom which I have used. "We do not here 
 believe in the infallibility of Popes ; we believe as 
 little in the infallibility of General Synods. But not 
 believing either this or that, disallowing all such pre- 
 tensions by whomsoever put forward, I for myself am 
 not the less strong to believe that God will fulfil his 
 promise to his Church, that He will lead it into all 
 the truth which is necessary for it ; that He will 
 lead it, not indeed all at once into a truth ready 
 made and complete in all its points ; but lead it 
 by far more instructive ways, through errors and 
 confusions, through mistakes and the confession of 
 mistakes, through the blunders of haste, of inexpe- 
 rience, of onesidedness, through a discipline which 
 will take the conceit out of us all, and bring 
 all to a confession not from the lips only but from 
 the heart, that He only is wise, even as He only is 
 holy, and He only strong. 
 
 My dear Brethren, our own immediate concerns 
 have, and not unnaturally at a moment like this, so 
 occupied our attention, that the wider interests of the 
 Church of Christ throughout all the world, of which 
 I trust we shall never forget that we are a branch, 
 have been almost, or quite untouched by me. Time 
 would here fail me, Avere I to attempt now to remedy 
 this omission ; and yet what matters of profoundest 
 interest to ourselves are going on everywhere round 
 us ; not in England only, but in Italy, in Germany,
 
 64 
 
 in Spain, and not in Western Christendom alone ; 
 all these travelling and tending toward some future, 
 the true lineaments of which we can only most 
 dimly discern. Is it good ? is it evil ? is there more 
 in it of hope, or of fear ? " The Lord reigneth," 
 this is all the reply which we can make to ques- 
 tionings such as these ; " He will be with his own 
 even to the end of the world." This is all, but this is 
 enough ; and whatever may be uncertain, one thing is 
 sure, this namely, that the best preparation for the 
 future, whatever that may be, is an earnest seeking 
 to do the work which lies before us in the present. 
 To seek to purify and deepen the springs of our own 
 spiritual life, to labour more for Christ, and for the 
 bringing of souls to Him, this must be right, this must 
 have its blessing for us, whatever else may betide. 
 To his grace, who can alone work in you a willingness 
 for this, who can alone enable you to bring this 
 willingness to good effect, I commend you.
 
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