Body of the present day, after the lapse of more than twelve centuries (B). Yet if on the one hand this fills us with admiration for the long-sighted far-reaching wisdom, which could plan a Church to last for twelve centuries, and lay the full germs of its whole future organization, in what was then a heathen country, on the other hand it is plain that a scheme, which was any wise suited to the wants of England with the population and civilization of those days, can never be adequate to our wants now; when the population must be five or six times as numerous, and when the power of the World has been increast incalculably in such a number of ways, and is armed with so many new snares for drawing men away from God. If we consider what was the work the Church had to effect then, and what it is now,-how she had then to preach to bands of fierce, but simple, ignorant, open-hearted heathens, and has now to wrestle with all the perversions and corruptions of the human intellect, with all the refinements and debasements of social life,-how she then had to contend against Moloch, but now has to war against Belial and Mammon and Ashtaroth on every side, along with her ancient enemy,we cannot fail to perceive that the army of the Faith requires more captains in these days, even as the hosts which come against us are far more numerous, and have far more captains and wilier to lead them.

Or, if we look at the question from a different point of view, with reference, not to the war of the Church against the World, but to the wants and comfort of her own members,-surely, when we think of the fifteen millions of our population, and then of the six and

twenty members of our Episcopal Body, we can hardly help asking, What are they among so many? Although they may spend and be spent, how is it possible for them to do, what many of them would do if they could, worthily discharging the office of the chief shepherd in their dioceses? How can they be known by their sheep, even faintly and remotely? How can they carry on those relations of frequent familiar intercourse with all the clergy under their charge, which would be so beneficial to both? If we were to fulfill the idea of an Apostolical Church, the Bishop ought to be the friend, the counsellor, the guide of all his clergy: he ought to know their characters, their feelings, the eircumstances of their parishes, their peculiar wants and difficulties: and few measures would do more to strengthen the Church, than if a faithful and holy Bishop were to be seen from time to time exhorting and ministering to the people of the Lord in every Church in his Diocese. Such things however are quite impracticable now. Nor would they become practicable, nor would the wants of the Church be at all adequately supplied, unless the present number of the Episcopal Body were doubled, I should rather say, tripled. Even this would not give us a Bishop for every two hundred thousand souls; for which he ought to have a couple of hundred pastors under him. This may be deemed a very wild scheme. Would not those who so deem of it, have thought that of Gregory, when he commissioned Augustin to establish twenty-six Sees in the land of the heathen Saxons, still wilder? One of the lessons taught by history is, that great enterprises, if followed out resolutely and judiciously, are likelier

to succeed and to produce lasting results, than small ones : and this seems to be sanctioned by the prophetic declaration, Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.

That the opinions I have been expressing meet with your concurrence, I have reason to believe, since so large a number of you responded cordially to my invitation, when I consulted you on the propriety of petitioning the Legislature for the preservation of the two Sees in North Wales; and our petition conveyed a wish for a large increase in the number of Bishops (c). In its immediate object, as you are all aware, it failed; that is, for the time. Still I can hardly persuade myself that the projected transfer will ever actually take place, after it has been shewn so clearly that there is not the slightest ground for it; unless we are to count it a reasonable ground, that the Legislature will not retract a false step, by amending an Act in which it was utterly impossible that all the clauses should have been duly considered, and which was framed moreover during a very different state of national feeling, when few persons would have hoped that the revenues for a See at Manchester could have been drawn from better sources. At present, when it has been shewn so plainly, how a large part of those revenues may be raised, and when it is no vain trust that what might still be lacking would be collected without much difficulty from Manchester itself, and by ready contributions from other parts of the Church, I trust that we are not calling for too great a sacrifice from the framers of the Act for the regulation of Ecclesiastical Revenues, if we request them to alter a provision in it drawn up under very erroneous impressions. Will any one say that

it is beneath the dignity of the Legislature, to own itself mistaken? Surely our Parliament does not lay claim to this practical infallibility. On the contrary its fallibility has been too often evinced and acknowledged of late years, by the necessity for new Acts to correct the errours of those recently enacted and there is a becoming confession of this fallibility in the provision attacht to every Bill for its amendment, if needful, in the course of the same Session. As to the argument on which so much stress was laid, that, unless one of the Welsh Sees is abolisht, the new See of Manchester cannot be erected, because it is impossible, in the present state of public feeling, to obtain the admission of another Bishop into the House of Lords, -for my own part,-although we might justly urge that such an addition to the spiritual peerage ought not to be scrupled at, when such large additions have been made in the last two centuries to the temporal peerage, still, for my own part, I would much rather see a new Bishopric erected, the incumbent of which was to have no seat in the House of Lords. Not that I am insensible to the advantages which the Church, and the far greater advantages which the State derives from the spiritual peerage (D): but I know not whether an addition to the number of the spiritual peers is to be desired. The present number are amply sufficient to exercise a powerful influence in all questions in which religion and public morality are concerned; whereas a larger number might have too much weight in the struggles of political parties. At all events no observer of the spirit of this age would expect to obtain any large addition to the spiritual peerage. Therefore,

since the object we are anxious for is a large addition to our spiritual guides and governors in the Church, I should hail the establishment of a single See unconnected with the peerage, as setting an example, which will remove this difficulty, and therefore may more easily be followed.

You will not deem, I trust, that, in what I have been saying, I am either trespassing on matters which do not properly come under our consideration, or speaking of subjects on which you feel no immediate interest. For who can think of the spectacle which England at this day, in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, must present in the sight of heaven,-who, knowing anything of the schism upon schism whereby the Church of Christ is torn in this land, can call to mind how painful this sight must be in the eyes of Him who came in order that all His disciples might be one-who, having heard of the terrific revelations which have recently been made concerning the state of our manufacturing towns, can try to picture to himself what foul blots they must be in the sight of an All-righteous God, to whom the sins of the Cities of the Plain cried so loudly for vengeance, -who can think of these things, and not feel a longing to contribute what help he can, in thought and action, toward the removal of these withering plague-spots from our nation? And the more firmly we are persuaded that the Church which Christ establisht, with its sacramental ministrations, and the word of life committed to its keeping, is the only efficient remedy for all the evils upon earth, for the social evils no less than the individual, the more anxious shall we be to see that portion of it which has been set up in this land, put