PREFACE. WHAT Coleridge wrote upon a copy of Archdeacon Bather's first Charge*—that it "breathed throughout that spirit of Christian wisdom which is most surely attained by the habitual study of the Scriptures with the whole man"-is equally characteristic of them all. Those who can still remember the help derived, in the early days of their ministry, from the perusal of these Charges to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Salop, as they were published, in long series, between the years 1829 and 1847, will be glad to find some of the more distinctively practical of them gathered for the first time into a * The Rev. A. Ainger, Reader of the Temple Church, writes to me: 'My copy of Archdeacon Bather's Charge delivered in June, 1829 (the first apparently, because in it he speaks of his predecessor), has the following note, in Coleridge's own hand, on the title-page: 'The Archdeacon having sent me six copies of this excellent Charge, which breathes throughout that spirit of Christian wisdom which is most surely attained by the habitual study of the Scriptures with the whole Man, I consider one of the six as virtually intended by him for the Rev. H. De la Fite.-S. T. COLERIDGE."" |