THE RETROSPECT OF 1881.

THE Church year closes with a tableau grotesque to the cynic, joyful to the malcontent, but humiliating to men of loyal hearts. On one side a huge inquest of experts of the most different opinions consistent with common communion, and in the most responsible stations, spiritual and civil, are deliberating how decently to do away with a discredited jurisdiction; and on the other a blameless priest is languishing in a prison into which he was haled by the fatuous vindictiveness of a society of Christian persecutors, and who is kept there by the insolent vanity of an autocratic administrator, while dignitaries, tardily awaking to the unexpected results of their own illomened legislation, are vainly straining to procure his release. We could say much more upon Mr. Green's case, but we confine ourselves to two cautions. The first is, that while it is most important that Mr. Green should be released, he may yet be released at too ruinous a price, if his liberation should involve the haphazard adop tion of some powers of coercion more novel and more stringent than any which at present exist. Then with the various classes of persons calling themselves Churchmen, whether Royal Commissioners, Unionists, or Associationists, we very anxiously plead that it is in their hands, according as they deal with the emergency, to precipitate the great curse of disestablishment, or to restore the relations of Church and State on a more stable, because a more Church-like and constitutional, basis than that which we have inherited from the heartburnings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

We do not imagine that we shall raise much disagreement by remarking that the Synod of Manchester was a failure. Still it is an unconscious recognition of the extension of Church principles that such a proceeding should have taken such a shape. The defenders of the Synod point to the satisfactory character of the ceremonial in Manchester Cathedral, which the Bishop of Manchester proposes as his maximum; but inasmuch as he bases his recommendations not upon the merits of that ceremonial in itself, but upon the accident of its happening now to be in use in that particular Church, the suggestion wholly fails in offering the guarantees of stability needful for a concordat, even supposing that in itself the rite included a sufficient schedule of observances. But this can hardly be predicated of a cathedral ritual which does not include the Eucharistic dress ordered, by the Bishop's own confession, for cathedrals in the Advertisements and Canons. The Dean of Manchester, who never has set up the services of his cathedral as authoritative, may not be under any moral obligation to wear this dress, but the Bishop of Manchester, who does, is clearly in the wrong for upholding an imperfect compliance with the very law on which he takes his own stand as a safe

position from which to assail those whom he denounces as lawbreakers. Had the cope been enforced since the Purchas and Redesdale judgments in all Cathedral and Collegiate Churches, then the Bishops might, if they had thought such a policy conciliatory or wise, have taken a high line with ritualism. But so long as they shirk such enforcement they have no moral right to declaim against law-breaking. We believe that they are gradually opening their eyes to this fact.

The very successful Church Congress at Newcastle and the completion of the fund needful to endow the new bishopric in that town were more than an accidental coincidence. Two very able and personally most earnest men have been successively Bishops of Durham, and the comparison of fruitful results between the system of the one and of the other is as the handwriting on the wall. We trust that the coming Congress at Derby may lead to similar good results for the new see by which the old diocese of Lichfield will benefit.

We should not imagine that Parliament, during the coming session, will have much time or wish for the additional task of entering seriously upon Church legislation. We presume that the Cathedral Commission will present a report, and before the session closes one may also be expected from the Commission on Ecclesiastical Judicature. Those who value the purity of our old marriage law must, however, be on their guard against a surprise. The agitators for disestablishment in Scotland can hardly expect immediate success, but we trust that they will be unmistakably discomfited. The fulfilment of their enterprise would be a distinct strategic advantage to the enemies of the Church of England.

We

The death of Dean Stanley is the removal of a personality known and felt far beyond merely ecclesiatical circles. In his case 'De mortuis nil nisi verum' is an adage which may well rule the appreciation of him by those who differ most widely from his opinions. did in many respects differ emphatically, but we can now say that his eccentricities imposed themselves on the world owing to the charm of his personal address; and erroneous as may have been the way in which Arthur Stanley applied his first principles, such principles as the recognition of the historical element in the Christian Church, and of the living fact of the Church as the friend and the home of every soul, will, we believe, live and bear fruit under culture more steady and systematic, though less scintillating, than that of the enthusiastic Dean. In Chancellor Harington, a Churchman and scholar of the sound old type passed away. Participation in an unhappy judgment will be forgotten, while Lord Hatherley's earnest, loving devotion to the Church during a long lifetime will be gratefully remembered. Sir William Heathcote was the consummate type of the influential Church layman. It is no small honour for posterity to be able to name him as the absolutely one only person who ever placed Keble in any post of responsibility attaching to the ministry of the Church of England. To all with whom worship means not only the act of prayer but the devotion to God of all that is most

beautiful in art, the successive deaths within the last year of Mr. Burges and Mr. Street-both cut off in middle age-are, humanly speaking, absolutely disastrous. In Mr. Salvin old members of the Cambridge Camden Society will recognize the architect, forty years ago, of the restoration of S. Sepulchre's.

CANADA. During the last ten years eighteen colonial or missionary Bishoprics have been established, but the past year shares with 1876 the distinction of having been barren in this respect. But if no new See has been established, we have to chronicle the consecration of a Coadjutor Bishop of Fredericton, and to congratulate the venerable Metropolitan of Canada on having a colleague who will cordially work with him, and (may the day be yet distant) will carry on the work which for thirty-five years he has himself done so wisely. Dr. H. T. Kingdon, for many years senior curate of S. Andrew's, Wells Street, and afterwards Vicar of Good Easter, in Essex, was consecrated on July 10 in the cathedral church of his future diocese, the sermon being preached by a Bishop from the States, the Right Rev. Bishop Doane, of Albany. While the Canadian Church thus testifies her unity with the Church of the United States, her oneness with the Mother-Church has been exhibited, not only by the adoption of the system of Missions,' but by the summoning of experienced Missioners from the Old Country to inaugurate the work in Canada. The Rev. Canon Wilberforce held a Mission in the spring in the city of Quebec, which, in spite of much adverse anticipatory criticism, convinced the gainsayers, and was recognized as a blessing both by the secular press and by numbers who came within its influence. It is to be hoped, however, that this movement will be very carefully watched; for restless excitement is the chief characteristic on the other side of the Atlantic, and missions must not run wild into revivals. In the States there is a large district over which successive revivals passed, and there was supposed to be a great religious reality amongst a devoted people. But the excitement passed away; there was no more novelty to arouse attention; the tow and the spark burned together; all religion died out; and it is now known as 'the burnt district. The question of emigration, especially in connexion with America, has received, as it demands, much attention of late, and the circular letter of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the clergy and laity of England, which was issued in the last week of the year, will serve to bring this important matter into prominence. An American (U.S.) Bishop recently declared that his Church had lost more by the leakage' of immigrants who landed at New York without introductions from their clergymen at nome, and, in many cases, not knowing of the existence of a Church in the United States in full communion with their own, than she had gained by all her labours among the heathen populations of the Far West. The great majority of our emigrants go to the United States, but a considerable number still prefer to remain under the British flag, and find in Canada, especially in the newly-opened regions of Manitoba and the Saskatchewan, an attractive settlement; for these it is good to think that particular

efforts are being made both in England and on the other side of the Atlantic.

WEST INDIES.-The resignation of the See of Barbados by Bishop Mitchinson will once more delay the assembling of the proposed Provincial Synod of the West Indies, which, first projected in 1873, has again and again been hindered, and still remains an unaccomplished scheme. In Guiana, under the rule of Bishop Austin, now in the fortieth year of his Episcopate, the work among Indians, Chinese, and Coolies continues to grow at a rate with which the staff are unable to keep pace.

AFRICA.-The South African Church is still in an attitude of expectancy awaiting the time when the Judicial Committee will listen to the appeal of the Bishop of Grahamstown against the incursion of the disciples of Dr. Colenso. Wars have harassed the land and hindered the extension of the Church in the Transvaal, in Kaffraria, and in some portions of the diocese of Bloemfontein. The disastrous settlement of Zululand under thirteen kinglets, which was the work of Sir Garnet Wolseley, seems already to have brought about its own condemnation. We shall be disappointed if any change in the civil circumstances of the country shall seem to missionary bishops or priests to justify them in abandoning their spiritual work. There has been no such policy in the past.

ASIA.-Consolidation rather than progress has characterized the condition of our Indian Missions, if we except Tinnevelly, where the movement towards Christianity, which excited so much sympathy some few years ago, still continues to advance; and even here consolidation has been the mot-d'ordre. The veteran missionary Bishop Caldwell, whose health has been seriously threatened, having given his attention to the development of self-support among the native congregations, has transferred his own residence from Edeyengoody to Tuticorin with a view of opening new work among the high-caste people of that region. For the third year in succession the S.P.G. Theological College at Madras, which enjoys the advantage of the great learning of its principal, Dr. Kennet, himself an alumnus of Bishop's College, Calcutta, has submitted its students to the test of the Oxford and Cambridge Preliminary Theological Examination, with the gratifying result of high distinction being attained by these, the future native clergy of South India. The contingent which Cambridge has sent to the old S. P.G. Mission at Delhi has been reduced in number by sickness from six to four, and those who have remained have not been free from the effects of the great heat of the plains during the last unusually hot season. Oxford has followed the excellent example of its sister University by sending a mission to CalDisestablishment has been decreed in the case of the diocese of Colombo, five years' grace being allowed in which to make provision for the great change. The report of the meeting of the Church Assembly (as given in the 'Guardian' of August 24) shows that the attitude of hostility and obstruction, which the emissaries of the Church Missionary Society assumed so long ago as when Bishop Claughton summoned his first synod, remains unchanged.

cutta.

The Brahmo Somaj in Calcutta, whose members now prefer to call themselves 'Theists of the New Dispensation,' has been developing strangely. These Hindoos, whose boast it is that they are not Christians, have elaborated for themselves an Eucharist, the elements being rice and water.

AUSTRALASIA. The extension of the Episcopate seems to find favour at the Antipodes. Bishop Short, who was consecrated in 1847, has, in consequence of severe illness and great age, resigned his See. His successor will find it in excellent order: self-supporting and self-governed, with a cathedral built by voluntary contributions, an Episcopal residence under its shadow, a Theological College and a Collegiate School, grouping themselves round the Mother-Church of the diocese, and, almost unique among the Australian dioceses, an old and thoroughly established institution for the benefit of the aborigines. The recent colonization of the northern part of the colony has shown the necessity of dividing the See, and possibly next year will see two Bishops engaged in the work which Bishop Short singlehanded has done so wisely. The Diocese of Goulburn will immediately be divided, one layman having contributed 10,000l. for the endowment of a new See of Riverina. Bishop Moorhouse is in a fair way to see his cathedral built at Melbourne.

The Provincial Synod of Australasia, which by its constitution is bound to meet quinquennially, assembled in Sydney in October. In the absence of the Bishop of Sydney, who according to his Letters Patent (valeant quantum) is Metropolitan, the senior Bishop present, Dr. Hale, of Brisbane, presided. The Synod resolved that the Bishop of Sydney should be Metropolitan of the dioceses of New South Wales, and Primate of the whole of the Australian dioceses: provision was made for other provinces, containing not fewer than three dioceses, being formed and duly recognized, and for the trial of Bishops accused of (1) false doctrine, (2) crime or immorality, (3) wilful violation of the statutes of his Synod or of the constitution of his diocese, (4) habitual disregard of his consecration vows. A Synodical pronouncement on the Deceased Wife's Sister question was avoided by the unsatisfactory method of 'the previous question' being moved and carried. In these Colonies the civil law is at variance with that of the Church.

From Melanesia we have received accounts of the consecration in the last month of 1880 of the Patteson Memorial Church at Norfolk Island, and subsequently we have read with delight of the moral influence which Bishop Selwyn exercises among the savages of the Pacific Islands, who have learned to trust him before they have been led to accept his message. The captain of H.M.S. 'Cormorant,' who had been sent to Gaieta to punish the natives for an attack on a boat belonging to H.M.S. 'Sandfly,' wisely accepted the proffered mediation of Bishop Selwyn, and instead of the indiscriminate butchering of innocent and guilty, men and women, old and young, which has been the mode of retaliation hitherto pursued, the Bishop persuaded the chief to give up to justice the actual perpetrators of the assaults.

The Bishop of Christchurch has marked the completion of his