k 
 
 
 .-=*^ 
 
 p%
 
 CHARGE 
 
 DELIVERED IN 
 
 ST. MICHAEL'S CATHEDRAL, BRIDGETOWN, 
 BARBADOS, 
 
 BY THE RIGHT REV. 
 
 JOHN MITCHINSON, D.C.L., D.D. 
 
 BISHOP OF BARBADOS AND THE WINDWARD ISLANDS ; 
 
 FELLOW OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD ; 
 
 HONORARY CANON OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL ; 
 
 <3Vt his g&cmib DisiMioit of his prrccse, 
 
 ON 
 
 THE FESTIVAL OF ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST, 1878, 
 Being tfjc Stxtfj gear of jjte Consecration, 
 
 
 From the Author. 
 
 ©rforfc attfr Jtatowt: 
 
 JAMES PARKER AND CO. 
 
 1S79.
 
 SUMMARY OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Apology for a quinquennial Visitation. 
 
 The events of the period in the World and the Church. 
 
 The Eastern War, and the attitude of the English Clergy. 
 
 The New Court, and its failure. 
 
 The Ridsdale Judgment : even if faulty, entitled to obedience. 
 
 The Confession agitation : Confraternities : the true position of 
 Confession in the Anglican System. 
 
 The growth, wide-spread and aggressive intolerance of unbelief. 
 
 Study of recent evidential literature its best antidote, and sound 
 and clear dogmatic teaching its best prophylactic to the 
 young. — Scientific and philosophic hypotheses not to be 
 taken for proved facts on authority. 
 
 Necessity of study, and suspended judgment on Church con- 
 troversies of the day, e.g. Inspiration and Eschatology. 
 
 Approximation to the Anglican Obedience of bodies yearning for 
 reform in France and Spain, as well as Old Catholics, Ar- 
 menians, and other Eastern Christians. — Bolder and sounder 
 attitude of the American Church towards Haiti and Mexico. 
 — Divergence from the English Church of Nonconformists, 
 especially Wesleyans : possibility of re-union on the basis 
 of mutual independence of system, but defect of orders 
 remedied. — Analogy of Friars in the Mediaeval Church. 
 
 The Lambeth Conference: non-publication of debates. — The 
 questions of the Barbados Church Council, how brought be- 
 fore the Conference : replies of the Conference on the Pro- 
 vince of the West Indies, the extension of the Diaconate, 
 and Moravian Inter-communion. — Second Conference of 
 West Indian Bishops, and their advice. — Proposed Co-adju- 
 torship to the Bishop of Antigua. 
 
 Events in Barbados. — The troubles of 1876. — Fruitless attempt 
 at general re-consideration of methods, rectified by ruri- 
 decanal meetings of clergy. — Re-construction and division 
 of the old collapsed Diocese of Barbados. — Changes in 
 the clergy-staff of Barbados. — Principle of administration 
 of patronage defended. 
 
 B 2
 
 iv SUMMARY OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Church legislation during the period. — The public Cemetery. — 
 Experience as Cemetery Chaplain of Burial scandals. — 
 Need of changes in Burial Service. — Marriage : civil mar- 
 riage advocated, and relaxation of legal and of rubrical 
 obligations. — Confirmations : suggestions as to attire and 
 knowledge of Candidates. — The Eucharist : distribution of 
 Elements ; change of formula advocated. 
 
 Education. — Affiliation of Codrington College to Durham. — The 
 Education Act. — The Mission-house. — Examination of Chil- 
 dren in religious knowledge. — Public Elementary School- 
 teachers' Association. 
 
 Failure of the project of a new Cathedral for Barbados. — Sugges- 
 tions as to the legal adjustment of Cathedral and Parochial 
 rights and duties. 
 
 The Cathedral becoming a centre of Diocesan life. — Improve- 
 ment of Churches and Services throughout the Diocese. 
 
 Religious Statistics, as gathered from Clergy replies. — Low tone 
 of morality. — Religious apathy. — The Laity stand aloof from 
 Church-work. — Conclusion. 
 
 U1UC ;
 
 Jt Charge, &t. 
 
 NEARLY five years have elapsed since I last formally- 
 visited my Diocese, and addressed you in the 
 Charge which usually accompanies such periodic inspec- 
 tions, though you have had many opportunities since my 
 Primary Charge of learning my sentiments on the passing 
 topics of Church interest, in the form of Addresses to my 
 Church Council, and in Pastoral Letters to you from time 
 to time. 
 
 Five years exceeds the interval canonically fixed for 
 episcopal visitations. It could not well, however, in this 
 instance have been otherwise ; for one of those years, 
 1876, has by tacit consent in Barbados been suffered to 
 drop out of the calendar of Church-work, while for six 
 months of 1878 I have myself been absent from my 
 Diocese. 
 
 They have been five eventful years both to the world 
 and to the Church. . This is not the time or place to 
 speak of that sanguinary war which, by its hardly pa- 
 ralleled atrocities, perpetrated on both sides with a fiendish 
 rivalry in savagery, has imprinted an indelible bar-sinis- 
 ter on the escutcheon of modern European civilization. 
 Suffice it to remark on this, that since the thirty years' 
 war, which was in its character essentially a religious war, 
 no war in modern times has so entirely reproduced the 
 phenomena, and kindled the impetuous passions of the 
 Crusades, whether in the combatants or in the on-lookers. 
 It has been astonishing and painful to note how a large 
 section of the English clergy, comprising great and justly- 
 honoured names, blinded, as it would seem, by strong 
 pseudo-Christian sympathies with one of the combatants, 
 forgot that attitude of self-continence in matters political, 
 which best beseems the officers of a kingdom not of this
 
 6 A Charge delivered at 
 
 world ; and, most improperly in my judgment, endea- 
 voured to control and overrule the foreign policy of 
 the responsible Ministers of our Sovereign ; emulating 
 thereby that attitude, so justly censured, of the Roman 
 Catholic hierarchy in Ireland, (but more excusable in 
 them, as being avowedly an Imperium in Imperio,) of 
 constant and arbitrary interference in the general politics 
 of the nation. Nothing, surely, is more calculated to bring 
 the Church into discredit, and to give reality to the foolish 
 bugbear of " clericalism," than this attempt at usurpation 
 on the part of the clergy of functions and an influence 
 not legitimately their own. 
 
 These five years will be memorable in the history of 
 our Church at large for the culmination of the growth 
 of ultra-ritualism, and for the energetic, though, as it 
 would seem, abortive attempt made by the bishops and 
 the legislature to repress it. That attempt took form in 
 the Public Worship Regulation Act, which was passed 
 with such singular unanimity of political parties, and the 
 creation of the new Court, which was attempted to be 
 floated into general confidence by sailing under the colours 
 of the ancient Provincial Courts of Canterbury and York. 
 Rightly or wrongly, the Court has failed to obtain the 
 confidence, or anything like the cordial acquiescence, of 
 many even of those whose excesses would not bring them 
 within the scope of its jurisdiction. And though we may 
 deplore this, and feel that some coercive authority must 
 be recognized as final and entitled to prompt submission, 
 we cannot entirely marvel at it, bearing in mind the 
 jealousy which all Churchmen, whether lay or clerical, 
 naturally and properly feel at any encroachment, whether 
 real or apparent, on the part of Caesar on the things of 
 God, and any attempt to abridge or alienate those powers 
 of jurisdiction and correction, which they deem to be the 
 inalienable duty and prerogative of the spiritual power. 
 It was certainly to be regretted that the Act in question 
 was passed so entirely without concert or consultation 
 with the spiritualty, even without eliciting any formal 
 expression of opinion from that body which claims to
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 7 
 
 represent the order chiefly concerned. For, I suppose, 
 none of us bishops are weak enough to believe that we 
 are regarded by our brethren of the other orders of the 
 clergy as in any sense their mouth-piece or their repre- 
 sentatives. 
 
 The Court, however, has entirely failed to restrain the 
 admitted evil of clerical lawlessness ; and, whether from 
 the novelty of its procedure, unregulated as it is thus 
 far by usage and precedent, or from other causes, has 
 hitherto effected little but miscarriage of justice, and 
 collision with other jurisdictions. 
 
 Another most important event of the period has been 
 the Ridsdale Judgment, which was looked forward to 
 with eager anxiety, as a deliberate and final revision of 
 the Purchas Judgment, which was felt to be incomplete 
 and unsatisfactory, as having been given in an unde- 
 fended suit. 
 
 This Judgment, as you well know, had for its scope 
 the settlement of the ritual of the Eucharist. Its two 
 main points of general interest were the prohibition of 
 what are called the Eucharistic vestments, and the virtual 
 recognition of the Eastward position at consecration of 
 the elements as legal. Probably, this was substantially 
 the settlement of the long-vexed question which most 
 moderate men, uncommitted to the exaggerated intoler- 
 ance of either party, would have desiderated, as an equit- 
 able compromise, at once securing to the Sacrament its 
 due meed of reverence, and yet clearly differencing it 
 from the Roman Mass. And yet we may reasonably 
 regret that this Eastward position, which seems so per- 
 missible a construction (to say the least of it) of the 
 rubric before the Consecration Prayer, should have been 
 legalized in what many may deem an ungracious and 
 left-handed way, leaving it virtually open to unsettle- 
 ment in any parish where an aggrieved parishioner (or, 
 more probably, non-parishioner) may complain that he 
 fails to see the manual acts, (as though these were in 
 any sense essential to the due consecration of the ele- 
 ments). We may regret, too, that the prohibition of
 
 8 A Charge delivered at 
 
 vestments is made to depend on the interpretation and 
 virtual abrogation of the Ornaments' Rubric (which, you 
 will remember, was re-cast and adopted as part of the 
 statute-law of the land, by King, Lords, and Commons, 
 at the last revision), by what must always grate harshly 
 on constitutional ears, an injunction of a Tudor Sovereign. 
 
 All this is ground for legitimate regret ; matter for 
 free discussion, for free criticism ; for in a free country and 
 in a free church, just as we refuse to recognize infallible 
 authority in any ecclesiastical person or synod, so we 
 refuse to credit any tribunal, however august, with free- 
 dom from error and perchance unconscious prejudice. 
 Criticism, I say, is natural, lawful, even wholesome, so 
 it overstep not the limits of criticism, and demean itself 
 by imputing corrupt motives. More than this, it is the 
 indefeasible right of the defeated party to seek by all 
 constitutional means a rectification of the law which has 
 been interpreted to their disadvantage ; to move Convo- 
 cation and Parliament to relax restrictions, or to re-cast 
 in their interest and render clearer rubrics, the plain sense 
 of which they may deem to have been obscured by judi- 
 cial decisions. But nothing, in my judgment, can excuse 
 disobedience to the law as laid down by the highest court 
 of the Church and realm. Its decisions may be unsound, 
 may be unjust in the opinion of those whom they affect: 
 still, they are the final award of the final court, which, ac- 
 cording to the present settlement of Church and State in 
 England, has the right finally to decide controversies ; and, 
 reasonable or unreasonable, they ought to be promptly, 
 literally, and loyally obeyed. There are, of course, occa- 
 sions when resistance to the powers that be is a matter 
 of moral and religious obligation ; but it behoves all who 
 take upon themselves this most grave responsibility, to 
 be fully persuaded in their own mind that morality and 
 religion demand and justify an attitude which is, on the 
 face of it, so manifestly repugnant to the Word of God. 
 
 Among the other incidents of the period we must reckon 
 the outburst of popular indignation which assailed the 
 Society of the Holy Cross, when that most ill-judged
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 9 
 
 and mischievous Manual of Confession, which had the 
 sanction of their authority, was brought by Lord Redes- 
 dale before the notice of Parliament. May I be permitted 
 to express my doubts, in passing, whether such confra- 
 ternities are either expedient or wholesome in the Chris- 
 tian Church ; whether they do not rather tend to obscure 
 and weaken the sense of the great brotherhood of the 
 Church Universal, and the more restricted, but perhaps 
 more consciously realized, brotherhood of each Christian's 
 particular or national Church, as well as those lesser bro- 
 therhoods which bind the faithful together in love and in 
 good works, viz. the Diocese and the Parish. I am not 
 blind to the value of organization and association for the 
 purpose of achieving this or that special object, for the 
 better discharge of this or that special duty to the mem- 
 bers of Christ's Body ; but where there is no such special 
 extrospective scope, it appears to me that the principle of 
 confraternities militates against the full realization of the 
 fundamental doctrines of the one Catholic and Apostolic 
 Church, and of the Communion of Saints, by substituting 
 a more special, self-regarding, self-regulated obligation for 
 the more general. 
 
 That outburst of indignation was, like all other popular 
 clamours, indiscriminate and unreasoning. It has not, 
 however, been without its use to the Church, in winnow- 
 ing and sifting opinion, and in directing the attention of 
 many of her loosely-thinking children to the actual posi- 
 tion which Confession holds in her system, and to the 
 limits within which it must be worked. In answer to the 
 violent and sweeping denunciations of all confession of sin 
 to a human guide, it is sufficient to say, that the craving 
 for this as a spiritual discipline and aid is too deeply 
 seated in certain types of human nature for any religious 
 system to afford to neglect, ignore, or repress it. But, like 
 other impulses, it requires to be regulated. The principle 
 which the Church of England adopts in clear contra- 
 distinction to Rome is this, Confession in her system is 
 a medicine of the soul. In the Roman system, Confession 
 is its necessary food. With them it is essential to the
 
 io A C J uxrgc delivered at 
 
 worthy reception of the Eucharist ; it becomes part of the 
 regular routine of religious life, and increases in frequency, 
 the higher the standard of spirituality which is attained. 
 With us it is an exceptional mode of dealing with soul- 
 disease, a lower, not a higher state : it is compulsory on 
 none, even on the soul-sick : it is evidently contemplated 
 as a remedy and alleviation, to which rare or, at least, ex- 
 ceptional and unhabitual recourse should be had. I know 
 not how the teaching of the Church of England on this 
 subject, as fairly gathered from her formularies, can be 
 more clearly given than in the words of the Anglican 
 Episcopate recently assembled at Lambeth : — " No minis- 
 ter of the Church is authorized to require from those who 
 may resort to him to open their grief a particular or de- 
 tailed enumeration of all their sins, or to require private 
 confession previous to receiving the Holy Communion, 
 or to enjoin, or even encourage, the practice of habitual 
 confession to a Priest, or to teach that such practice of 
 habitual confession, or the being subject to what has been 
 termed the direction of a Priest, is a condition of attain- 
 ing to the highest spiritual life. At the same time, they 
 are not to be understood as desiring to limit in any way 
 the provision made in the Book of Common Prayer for 
 the relief of troubled consciences." 
 
 But even a more important and more ominous feature 
 in the religious history of these five years, has been the 
 marked advance and more unreserved outspokenness of 
 unbelief: more ominous, because it is easier for the excess 
 of belief, i.e. credulity and superstition, than for the de- 
 fect, to gravitate back to the mean. If it was found at 
 Lambeth to be practically impossible for a strong Com- 
 mittee, aided by the lucid sagacity of the Bishops of 
 Killaloe and Gloucester, to put forth any report on this 
 momentous question that could satisfactorily handle it ; 
 it stands to reason that I, who have neither the range 
 of reading nor yet the mental acumen necessary for such 
 a task, am utterly unequal to so doing in a Visitation 
 Charge. Without, however, attempting to particularize, 
 much less to discuss, the many forms and gradations of
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 1 1 
 
 non-belief, I may usefully draw your attention to one or 
 two points in connection with it. First, its universality 
 and its multiform character. It is not too much to say 
 that it pervades literature : it is no longer the apparent 
 logical tendency of a certain school of biologists : I do 
 not think it is an exaggeration to say, that you seldom 
 meet with a treatise, or even a paper, in our more thought- 
 ful and philosophic periodical literature, which deals with 
 cosmic or psychic phenomena, or problems, which does 
 not more or less argue on some hypothesis of self-caus- 
 ation or self-evolution. Secondly, its aggressiveness. It 
 is no longer a demand for equal toleration with belief and 
 orthodoxy, for candid recognition of the co-ordinate but 
 divergent lines of religion and philosophy, of faith and 
 reason. Agnostic and materialistic philosophy has dropped 
 the defensive attitude, and carried the war into the very 
 camp of faith. It gives no quarter. Its almost savage in- 
 tolerance (if I may without impropriety so describe it), 
 and its impatience of dissent from the dicta of its favourite 
 prophets, if it were not ominous as regards the future out- 
 look, would be grotesquely amusing. 
 
 You may perhaps expect me, my reverend brethren, to 
 indicate to you where you are to look for answers to these 
 attacks, not on Christianity alone, but on Religion ; for re- 
 futations of the many forms of Atheism and Scepticism 
 which, we cannot doubt, must have come in the way, and 
 undermined or imperilled the faith, of the reading or think- 
 ing members of your flocks. I confess myself entirely 
 unable to do so. It is impossible that there can be any- 
 thing like discussion, with the hope of agreement, between 
 systems which have no common ground, and which, in fact, 
 mutually exclude each other. I do not even recommend 
 you to study and endeavour to master the vast sea of 
 materialistic and sceptic literature with which the press 
 now teems. I recommend to you rather the constructive 
 method, of studying and mastering the foundations on 
 which your own Christian faith and, in fact, religion gene- 
 rally are based, not resting content with the excellent 
 manuals and standard books on Evidences of a century
 
 1 2 A Charge delivered at 
 
 ago, but keeping yourselves well abreast of the evidential 
 literature of the Church of our day, which, God be thanked, 
 is clear, full, able, and accessible to all. 
 
 One other consideration, or rather caution, I would ad- 
 vise you to impress on the sceptically disposed, or on 
 those who, as they grow up, are likely to fall within range 
 of temptation from this quarter. Do not be misled by 
 the authority of great names into accepting their dicta 
 as proved conclusions of Science or Philosophy. This is 
 a very real danger, and the source of much mischief both 
 to religion and to science. The exclusive appeal to autho- 
 rity is dangerous in religion, where the enlightened reason 
 is an important factor in the attainment and acceptance 
 even of revealed truth, (" I speak as to wise men," says St. 
 Paul; "judge ye what I say"). In science it is little 
 short of treasonable, and calculated to subvert the very 
 raison d'etre of science. And when we add to this danger 
 of accepting scientific and philosophic conclusions simply 
 and solely on the authority of the great prophets of science 
 and philosophy, the fact that these prophets have not 
 been careful (I put it most modestly and most guardedly) 
 to keep a clear line of demarcation between what is in- 
 ductively proved, or even inductively highly probable, and 
 what is mere brilliant hypothesis, ingenious, strikingly 
 probable, little short of an intuition or inspiration if you 
 will, but still mere undemonstrated hypothesis, you will 
 see the necessity for the caution I have given you, not to 
 be misled by the authority of great names into accepting 
 speculations as though they were incontrovertible truths. 
 
 I have advocated the study of evidential literature on 
 your own part, let me also advise you to endeavour to 
 secure, not the study of Evidences, (for to most young 
 minds this, like all ratiocinative study, is more or less dis- 
 tasteful and unfruitful, though there are exceptions,) but 
 clear, sound, intelligent, dogmatic teaching in all the articles 
 of the Christian Faith, as well as in the distinctive prin- 
 ciples, history and credentials of our mother Church of 
 England on the part of the younger members of your 
 flocks. And here I speak not so much (or at least by no
 
 Bridgetoivn, Barbados. 13 
 
 means exclusively or preeminently) of the children in our 
 elementary schools, as of the young persons of both sexes 
 of our upper and middle classes in society. Ignorance, or 
 at least haziness, as to what they believe and why they 
 believe, is, I am convinced, a fatally common predisposing 
 nidus for the malaria of scepticism to germinate in, on the 
 principle that the empty house (as the parable teaches) 
 invites the tenancy of the seven spirits more wicked than 
 the first 
 
 A clergyman, now-a-days, needs to find or make leisure 
 for study, if he would keep abreast of the controversies 
 within the Church, as well as with her outside warfare. 
 Many beliefs which we have come to regard as settled 
 theological dogmas — the precise foundation and bearings 
 of which have perhaps never been exhaustively pursued or 
 authoritatively and explicitly defined, because never seri- 
 ously called in question — have in our feverish age of enquiry 
 and speculation been arraigned and thrown into the cru- 
 cible of investigation. And there is no doubt that the 
 general sense and teaching of the Church will, as time 
 goes on, be found to have been considerably modified 
 by such discussions, without the least fear of imperilling 
 thereby the sacred deposit of the faith once for all de- 
 livered to the saints, which is the very palladium of the 
 Church's existence. I may mention two such contro- 
 versies, as illustrations of my meaning : the controversy 
 on the meaning, nature and limits of Inspiration, and the 
 controversy which is at present so deeply engrossing 
 thoughtful minds in the mother Church on what is called 
 Eschatology, i.e. the condition of the life beyond the grave. 
 In recommending you to read and ponder on the literature 
 of these controverted subjects — such books, for example, 
 as Canon Farrar's " Eternal Hope," and the thoughtful 
 discussions and criticisms which it has evoked — I am far 
 from counselling you rashly to discard cherished opinions 
 and convictions, recommended and hallowed by the un- 
 questioned acceptance of some of God's truest saints ; 
 I am still further from counselling you, yea, I rather earn- 
 estly dissuade you, from rashly and needlessly unsettling
 
 14 A Charge delivered at 
 
 the belief (so inextricably intertwined with conduct) of 
 your several flocks : but I do counsel you to careful, dis- 
 passionate reflection on these topics in your own study; 
 I do dissuade you from unenquiring, unreflective con- 
 demnation of opinions, which by their novelty may startle 
 and, perhaps, shock you as you first meet them ; and I 
 venture to propound to you as a sound principle of action 
 in the study of religious controversy, never to be more 
 dogmatic than the Church of which you are ministers, and 
 to be ever cautious of hasty limitation of terms which the 
 Church has not authoritatively defined. 
 
 The controversies of recent years have led me into a 
 digression. Let me return to the events of general inter- 
 est to the Church. No one can fail to have been struck 
 by the tendency towards approximation to the Anglican 
 Communion in one or other of its great centres, the 
 Churches of England and of America, on the part of 
 communities of anxious minds yearning for greater purity 
 of faith and practice, in the midst of corruption and degra- 
 dation and ignorance. Christians seeking a purer faith, 
 and yet clinging tight to Apostolic order and Catholic 
 tradition, seem to have recognized the Anglican obedience 
 as a natural point d'appui. And such I cannot doubt that, 
 by God's merciful Providence, it is destined to be, whether 
 in our generation or in the far-off future. You are all 
 sufficiently aware of the rapprochement which has taken 
 place between the old Catholics of Germany and ourselves, 
 and have read of the presence and active participation of 
 English Divines in their conferences. It would be prema- 
 ture to speculate whether this is destined to lead to more 
 organic theological union, or simply to more unrestricted 
 fraternal sympathy ; as, indeed, it would be premature to 
 forecast the future of this great movement (the most im- 
 portant since the sixteenth century) from within the 
 Church of Rome towards reformation of doctrine and dis- 
 cipline. You may not, however, be aware that overtures 
 for assistance, whether towards securing for their postu- 
 lants for orders better instruction in the faith, or towards 
 obtaining an apostolical ministry to supply the means of
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 15 
 
 grace, from which, through their attitude of antagonism to 
 Rome's corruptions, they are debarred, have been made, 
 and were discussed at Lambeth, from Spain and France, 
 as well as from the Armenians and others in the far East. 
 The American Church has already listened to such over- 
 tures from Haiti, and has consecrated a Bishop of the 
 negro race (whose friendship it was my privilege to form 
 at the Conference) to nurse up a native Church, destined 
 to be an independent branch of the Anglican Communion 
 as soon as its tutelage is ended, and it can safely stand 
 alone. She is already entertaining similar overtures, and 
 has resolved on similar action, in the case of Mexico. I 
 cannot help sympathizing with the greater boldness, in 
 such emergencies, of our American sister, and wishing that 
 we were equally prompt and equally helpful. I am well 
 aware that to encourage or create a schism in the Church, 
 even though that Church be corrupt, is a grave responsi- 
 bility, and is at best an unsisterly act. I am fully alive, 
 too, to the much greater soundness of self-evolved reform, 
 which was happily our own good fortune when we rebelled 
 against Roman usurpation. But how is reform to be self- 
 evolved ; how is a ministry to be perpetuated ; how are 
 the means of grace (the very life-blood of every religious 
 movement) to be secured, when there is no such spon- 
 taneous national unanimity reformwards, as there was in 
 our case, and when, without the grace of orders conferred 
 ab extra from some Apostolic source, the reforming move- 
 ment must die, or must forfeit its Catholicity, with all that 
 that involves ? The heads of our English branch of the 
 Communion, seem to me to incur a grave responsibility 
 to Christendom in temporising in such cases, and dashing 
 high hopes with good advice and mere words of sympathy, 
 and to be unintentionally subserving the cause either of 
 Rome or Non-Catholicism. Surely the American Church 
 is sounder-judging: heresy and schism are both terrible 
 evils, but of them it would seem that schism is the least. 
 
 On the other hand, it must be regretfully admitted, 
 that there appears to have been within the period a 
 growing divergence from the English Church on the part
 
 1 6 A Charge delivered at 
 
 of Protestant nonconformity. Whatever may have been 
 the cause, whether it be the decay of what is com- 
 monly styled Evangelicalism in the Church, and the 
 growth and rapid development of a party, the apparent 
 sympathies of which are with Rome more than with Pro- 
 testantism ; or whether it be the craving for religious 
 equality as the natural and logical outcome of religious 
 toleration, combined with a growing impatience of any- 
 thing like a dominant Church, with exclusive prerogatives, 
 and a social prestige closely connected with its position as 
 an establishment, — no thoughtful observer can be blind 
 to the fact that the attitude of dissent has, within quite 
 recent times, passed from that of rivalry (not incom- 
 patible with sympathy and even friendship) into undis- 
 guised hostility. . 
 
 Most markedly is this change of attitude towards the 
 Church observable in the Wesleyan body. Till recently, 
 that body of separatists from us (alas that they should 
 have drifted into a relation so alien to the avowed 
 principles and intentions of their pious founder !) recog- 
 nized a tacit and informal alliance with the Church in 
 England, especially on the subjects of religious educa- 
 tion and State establishment. On both these points it 
 will be found that the Wesleyan front is now entirely 
 changed. The disruption of this alliance is the more to 
 be regretted, when we consider the history of the great 
 Wesleyan movement, its general identity on all essentials 
 of doctrine with ourselves, its ardent spirit of missionary 
 enterprise, and, we may add, the abundant measure of 
 success with which these efforts appear to have been 
 sealed by the Holy Ghost. What good Churchman can 
 have failed to thank God that so much good has thus been 
 wrought, even though it may seem to have been in an- 
 tagonism to us, and in curtailment of our own progress ? 
 And yet, on the other hand, what good Churchman can 
 have failed to deplore recent separation — symptoms though 
 they be but trifling in themselves — such, for example, as 
 the assumption of the term Church, to denote alike the 
 Wesleyan community as an organization and body cor-
 
 Bridgetoivn, Barbados. 17 
 
 porate, and its 'several places of worship, as well "as of 
 the conventional courtesy title of Reverend for its mi- 
 nisters ; a courtesy which we all of us right willingly 
 accord as a mark of personal respect, and which most 
 of us deplore was ever made a matter of litigation, but 
 which, if it is taken to imply more than a respectful de- 
 signation of men who for their work's sake are justly 
 worthy to be revered, lies beyond the province of any 
 law-court to confer, and would on our part be an act of 
 disloyalty to the principles of our Catholic and Apostolic 
 branch of the Church to recognize. 
 
 But one cannot help feeling that the time has now 
 come, or cannot be far off, when great religious organiza- 
 tions like the Church of England and the Wesleyans, to 
 say nothing of other and, perhaps, more divergent bodies 
 of Christians, should through their respective leaders 
 enter into serious discussion, not on their points of agree- 
 ment which are confessedly numerous, and embrace all 
 essentials of the Christian Faith, but on the points which 
 hold them asunder, to see if some honourable concordat may 
 not be arrived at ; not fusion, not absorption, nothing that 
 will violate the organization or traditions of either — but 
 which will enable the ministers of both to work side by 
 side on terms of reciprocity, and of mutual aid and in- 
 tercourse in the great work of evangelization, each in 
 their respective lines, and according to their several uses, 
 — no longer as rivals, much less as enemies, but as mu- 
 tually helpful allies in a common army, under the one 
 great Captain of our salvation. 
 
 I cannot but think that the great, and now apparently 
 hopeless, divergence which keeps them asunder, would be 
 found to be the question of a valid and regular ministry ; 
 and by mutual conference, surely the essentials to validity 
 of orders and conferring of mission might be agreed on, 
 and shortcomings (if shortcomings there be in this re- 
 spect) remedied, with no violence done to any cherished 
 Nonconformist sentiment of independence of the shackles 
 of establishment and Acts of Uniformity, and with full 
 liberty to develope according to their own inherent life. 
 
 c
 
 1 8 A Charge delivered at 
 
 The existence within the unreformed Church of the 
 Middle Ages, of the minor religious orders, or Friars, de- 
 monstrates the possibility of the co-existence of settled 
 diocesan and parochial arrangements, with evangelistic 
 efforts on the part of these free - lances, as we may call 
 them, of Christendom, independent alike of Episcopal 
 jurisdiction and parochial autonomy, and subject only 
 to their respective generals or provincials ; and seems 
 to indicate an analogy which the post-Reformation Church 
 would do well to follow, and thus gather into one focus 
 all the rays, however apparently many-coloured, of re- 
 ligious zeal and missionary effort, so as to present an 
 united, although not necessarily uniform front, to the 
 great enemies of that one religion they all ardently 
 profess, viz., unbelief and godlessness at home, and hea- 
 thenism or (as we deem them) false, or partially false, 
 religious systems abroad. Looked at from the very 
 lowest and most utilitarian point of view, episcopal ordi- 
 nation, transmitted through the unbroken channels of 
 either the Anglo- Colonial, the American, or the Irish 
 Church, could not possibly render the ministrations of 
 the Wesleyan, or other dissenting preacher or missionary 
 less efficacious to those who now value them ; and it 
 would render them efficacious, as regards the ministry 
 of the Word and Sacraments, to those who cannot con- 
 scientiously now so esteem them, but who often ir- 
 regularly, and with more or less latent sense of incon- 
 sistency, now resort to them. 
 
 Among the most important events of general interest 
 to the Church during the period must be reckoned the 
 Lambeth Episcopal Conference. One hundred bishops 
 from the most distant parts of the world, and represent- 
 ing Anglican Christendom under its most varied aspects, 
 assembled under the presidency of the Primate of Can- 
 terbury. With two exceptions, the entire bench of Eng- 
 lish bishops attended, not indeed continuously, but with 
 more or less regularity throughout the session ; the entire 
 Scottish Episcopate was there ; nine out of twelve of 
 the Irish prelates ; eighteen from the Protestant Epis-
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 19 
 
 copal Church of the United States of America ; while 
 the Ecclesiastical Provinces of Canada, Rupertsland, South 
 Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and India, were more or 
 less largely represented ; five out of the six West Indian 
 bishops were there ; so that our section of the Church 
 had its full weight in the deliberations of the Conference. 
 Many of you doubtless have regretted, as did some of 
 ourselves, that beyond the formal issue of the adopted 
 reports of Committees, with a few words by way of pre- 
 face and conclusion, no authentic report was suffered to 
 transpire of the discussions of each day. It is undoubtedly 
 matter for regret that so many weighty, and really elo- 
 quent addresses, on some of the most important and in- 
 teresting topics that can occupy a Churchman's thoughts, 
 should have been practically lost to the Church, or at 
 least to the Church of to-day, and that the record of 
 them should be consigned to virtual oblivion among the 
 archives of Lambeth library. Few who were present could 
 fail to regret this, particularly in reference to the really 
 brilliant debate which took place on the different aspects 
 of infidelity, a debate which, to us who had the privilege 
 of listening to it, was in itself more than compensation 
 for a voyage to England and back. 
 
 It may be in your recollection that the Church Council 
 of Barbados addressed me before my departure to Eng- 
 land, and requested me, if opportunity were afforded of 
 discussing such matters at the Conference, to endeavour 
 to obtain some expression of opinion on the establish- 
 ment (if possible) of a Provincial Synod in this portion 
 of the Colonial Empire, and on the advisability of ad- 
 mitting to the Diaconate men who might at the same 
 time pursue some honourable secular calling. 
 
 Manifestly, the topics suggested fell naturally under 
 the sixth proposed subject for discussion, viz., the con- 
 dition, progress and needs of the various branches of 
 the Anglican communion. On the day, therefore, allotted 
 to the discussion of that subject, I anxiously waited for 
 an opportunity of bringing these questions before my 
 brethren. The morning sitting was long and interest- 
 
 c 2
 
 20 A Charge delivered at 
 
 ing, bearing upon the history of the Cumminsite schism, 
 and the relations of the Anglican Church to the so- 
 called Reformed Episcopal Church and its soi-disant 
 episcopate, the fruits of that needless and most un- 
 happy secession. The afternoon sitting was occupied 
 with interesting statements and debates, having refer- 
 ence to the present attitude and needs of the Irish and 
 Scottish Episcopal Churches. Time wore on, and it 
 became evident that the day's debate must close with- 
 out an opportunity being accorded of pressing any of 
 the problems and difficulties of the Colonial Church : 
 I knew many Colonial bishops were circumstanced simi- 
 larly to myself. I therefore rose, and after pointing 
 out to the Conference how I was circumstanced, and 
 reading to it from your address the instructions with 
 which I was entrusted by my Diocese, I moved that as 
 it was patently impossible in the short hour still re- 
 maining before the closure of the first session of the 
 Conference to discuss, or even to hear the different needs 
 and difficulties of the Colonial Church, a Committee 
 should be appointed to receive, during the fortnight's 
 recess, questions submitted to them in writing by Bishops 
 desiring the advice of the Conference on difficulties or 
 problems they have met with in their several dioceses, 
 and to report thereon to the Conference when it re- 
 sumed its sittings. This was seconded by the Arch- 
 bishop of York, and I had the satisfaction of a strong 
 and sufficiently representative Committee being named, 
 to deal not only with my own questions, but with those 
 of other bishops, both English and Colonial. 
 The Committee was composed as follows : — 
 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop of Manchester. 
 
 Chairman. Bishop of St. David's. 
 
 Archbishop of Dublin a . Bishop of Kingston. 
 
 Bishop of New York. Bishop of Antigua. 
 
 Bishop of Barbados. Bishop of Rupertsland. 
 Bishop of Chichester. 
 
 1 The Archbishop of Dublin did not attend the sittings of the Committee.
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 21 
 
 I submitted to it the following questions : — 
 I. On Provincial Organization. 
 
 1. Assuming a group of dioceses to desire to be com- 
 bined into a Province, what steps should they take ? 
 
 2. If difficulties lie either temporarily or permanently 
 in the way of a Representative Provincial Synod, can 
 the bishops of the Province alone form a Provincial 
 Synod ? 
 
 3. If so, ought their authority as a Synod to be re- 
 stricted, and, if restricted, to what extent and in what 
 directions, on the score that they are not strictly re- 
 presentative of the dioceses which form the Province ? 
 
 4. Does the Conference advise the creation of a metro- 
 political see, or that a primate be elected from and by the 
 bishops of the Province, or that the senior bishop for the 
 time being should be Metropolitan ? 
 
 5. Whence is the Metropolitan to derive his mission 
 as such ? 
 
 II. On the Diaconate. 
 
 1. May a diocese, if its circumstances, in the judgment 
 of its Synod or of its bishops, should require it, resolve 
 to modify the generally-received status of the office of 
 Deacon in the following directions : — 
 
 (a.) By recognizing it as practically as well as theo- 
 retically a distinct order of the Ministry, no more 
 necessarily leading on to the priesthood than the 
 priesthood does to the episcopate. 
 
 (b.) By admitting to the Diaconate laymen of any age 
 (over twenty-three), who are following any calling 
 not inconsistent with the Ministerial character or 
 with Ministerial usefulness, without calling them 
 from that vocation, or imposing any restriction on 
 the full discharge of that vocation. 
 
 (r.) By dropping the title of Reverend from the Dia- 
 conate, and confining it to the presbyterate ; styling 
 the deacon simply Deacon So and So, and by dis- 
 pensing with customary clerical attire in the case 
 of the deacon, except when performing Ministerial 
 duties.
 
 22 A Charge delivered at 
 
 2. If the Conference should deem this, or any of it, 
 lawful and not in itself inexpedient, — 
 
 (a.) Ought the above-sketched system to apply to all 
 deacons, or simply to those who do not contem- 
 plate seeking- the higher degree ? 
 
 (b.) What examination (beyond strict enquiry into life 
 and conversation) should such deacons be required 
 to pass ? 
 
 (e.) Ought exception to be made as regards intellec- 
 tual tests in favour of any persons, e.g., graduates 
 of Universities, or men advanced in life, or where 
 it is not intended to seek or give licence to preach ? 
 
 (d.) Should such deacons ever be advanced to the pres- 
 byterate without abandoning their secular calling 
 as a source of emolument, and " giving themselves 
 wholly to it?" 
 
 3. What limitations (if any) should a diocese assume 
 in availing itself of this relaxation (if allowed), in refer- 
 ence to the Diaconate ? 
 
 I also proposed a series of questions having reference 
 to the attitude of the Anglican Church towards Moravian 
 ministers, especially in these West Indian Islands. 
 
 The special questions submitted by me were : — 
 
 1. If a Moravian presbyter, or deacon, desires to be 
 received into the Anglican ministry, ought I to (a) or- 
 dain him absolutely ; (d) re-ordain him conditionally ; 
 (c) accept his orders as valid, and simply give him mis- 
 sion in the Anglican Church ? 
 
 2. Can I canonically and regularly commission a Bishop 
 of the Unitas Fratrum in my Diocese, either to confirm 
 or to ordain for me, or to do both episcopal acts, accord- 
 to the Anglican ritual ? 
 
 3. Am I justified in consenting, if called on, to con- 
 firm children, or ordain presbyters or deacons, or to do 
 both, for the Moravians, in their churches, and according 
 to their ritual ? 
 
 4. May Anglican presbyters and deacons, with their 
 Bishop's sanction, officiate and minister the Sacraments 
 in Moravian churches according to their ritual, and invite 
 Moravian presbyters or deacons to execute the functions
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 23 
 
 appertaining to their office in Anglican churches, and 
 according to Anglican ritual ? 
 
 These questions received the careful consideration of 
 the Committee, and the report on them severally was 
 thus finally adopted by the Conference : — 
 
 "With respect to the West Indian Dioceses, assuming 
 such Dioceses to desire to be combined into a Province, 
 we advise that the formal consent of the Diocesan Repre- 
 sentative Synods, if free (as regards their relation to the 
 State) to give such consent, be first obtained. 
 
 " The Bishops of the several Dioceses would then for- 
 ward such formal consent, or expressed desire, to the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, requesting him to give his 
 sanction to the formation of the Province. 
 
 " Whether the General Synod of the Province should 
 consist of the Bishops, with representatives of the clergy 
 and laity of the respective Dioceses, or should consist 
 of the Bishops of the Province only ; and, in the latter 
 case, what limitation should be imposed on the powers 
 of such purely Episcopal Synod, is a question which 
 ought to be left to the Diocesan Synods to decide, with 
 the approval of the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 "If the West Indian Dioceses be formed into a Pro- 
 vince, it seems desirable that a Metropolitan should be, 
 in the first instance, elected from and by the Bishops 
 of the West Indian Dioceses. 
 
 " The questions submitted respecting the peculiar cir- 
 cumstances of the West Indian Diaconatc appear, upon 
 full consideration, to be such as can be adequately decided 
 only in Diocesan or Provincial Synods. 
 
 "With regard to the questions now raised respecting 
 Moravian Orders, we recommend that the Archbishops 
 of England and Ireland, with the Bishop of London, 
 the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, and the 
 Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 
 the United States of America, the Bishop superintending 
 the congregations of the same upon the Continent of 
 Europe, and the Bishop of Gibraltar, associating with 
 themselves such learned persons as they may deem emi-
 
 24 A Charge delivered at 
 
 nently qualified to assist them, by their knowledge of 
 the historical difficulties involved, be requested to advise 
 thereon as circumstances may require." 
 
 On the first point, viz. the formation of a West Indian 
 Province, the advice of the Conference seemed so explicit, 
 that those members of the West Indian Episcopate who 
 were present at the Conference, resolved, as soon as its 
 sittings were finally closed, to hold a second Conference 
 of West Indian bishops in London, to mature matters, if 
 possible, for the speedy formation of the Province, and 
 the invitation of the several Diocesan Synods to incor- 
 porate themselves in it. 
 
 Under the presidency of the venerable Bishop of Guiana, 
 now the father of the British and Colonial Episcopate, the 
 Bishops of Kingston, Antigua, the Falkland Islands, Bar- 
 bados, and Nassau, met, and discussed the scheme of pro- 
 vincial organization. We agreed to a joint address to 
 each Synod and Church Council in the West Indies, in- 
 viting their several consent to be united with the rest in 
 a Province of the West Indies ; and we further request 
 a distinct utterance on the part of each such Body as to 
 whether it is their wish that the Provincial Synod should, 
 at least for the present, and until the different dioceses 
 have otherwise resolved, consist of the Bishops of the 
 Province only. 
 
 We felt, however, that the golden opportunity of mu- 
 tual conference as to details should not be lost ; and 
 though, technically speaking, we ought to have simply 
 put before you all these two questions, and waited for 
 your several replies, we could not afford to forego a dis- 
 cussion among ourselves of the details of the scheme which, 
 in principle, we hoped you would, with pretty general una- 
 nimity, adopt. We, therefore, agreed (prematurely, I grant, 
 but I think wisely, and economically as to time) on the ge- 
 neral scheme of a Province, constructed on the hypothesis 
 of a solely Episcopal Synod ; and this scheme, along with 
 the two questions which I have already read to you, it 
 will be my duty to lay in full before you, my reverend 
 brethren, and the lay representatives in Church Council
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados, 25 
 
 to-day, and before the several Church Councils of the 
 Windward Diocese during my approaching visitation tour, 
 and to obtain from you severally a definite reply in the 
 affirmative, or otherwise, which I may forward, with as 
 little delay as possible, through the Bishop of Guiana to 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 It may have appeared to you that the reply of the 
 Conference on the two other topics, the Diaconate, and 
 our relations with Moravians, was vague and unsatisfac- 
 tory. Permit me to point out the real value of the 
 opinion elicited in either case. 
 
 In my opening address to the present Church Council, 
 written on my voyage to England, and forwarded too 
 late for its actual purpose of an opening to your Session, 
 but printed for your general information in the "West 
 Indian," I wrote as follows, in reference to the extension 
 of the Diaconate, or rather its restoration to its primitive 
 theory as a semi-lay order : " It would not be according 
 to ecclesiastical order for such a step as this, practically 
 useful though it obviously would be, to be taken without 
 the consensus of sister dioceses, and (probably) the ap- 
 proval of the collective Anglican Church." The answer 
 of the Conference practically waives any such right of 
 approval on the part of the Church at large ; it defi- 
 nitely remits it for settlement to Diocesan and Provincial 
 Synods, and thus removes an obstacle in the way of 
 a prompt and early settlement of the question. It treats 
 the question, in fact, as one of those which (as the thirty- 
 fourth Article declares) "every particular or national 
 Church hath authority to ordain, change, or abolish, so 
 that all things be done to edifying." 
 
 With regard to Moravian intercommunion, I do not 
 think a wiser decision could have been arrived at. I 
 neither expected nor desired a direct and dogmatic an- 
 swer from the Conference, and my own wishes are exactly 
 met by what the Conference has counselled. Questions 
 of intercommunion between Churches are not mere matter 
 of sentiment, to be widened or restricted by the enthu- 
 siasm or jealousy of a majority, as either may happen to
 
 26 A Charge delivered at 
 
 be dominant. No Church, possessing, as ours does, the 
 priceless heirloom (so carefully, I may even say pro- 
 videntially guarded, in evil days of carelessness) of 
 an undoubted Apostolical descent, and of undoubtedly 
 valid ministrations on the part of its three Orders, is 
 justified in hastily complimenting this away, even from 
 the best of all motives, brotherly charity. And the ques- 
 tion of the historical descent of the Moravian ministry is, 
 as the Conference admits, complicated with some his- 
 torical difficulties. But this is the very reason why, in 
 the interests of brotherly charity, we should dispassion- 
 ately study and seek to solve these difficulties ; and I 
 know of no body of men to whom this solution may be 
 more confidently entrusted, than the above-mentioned 
 prelates, in association with learned theologians. It is 
 to me a matter of thankfulness, that the question of full 
 intercommunion with a body of Christians (towards whom, 
 in these dioceses, my sympathies have been so warmly 
 drawn), upon the principle of co-ordinate ecclesiastical 
 organization, and of organic unity without uniformity, 
 seems now nearer authoritative settlement than it has 
 ever heretofore been. 
 
 Before I leave the consideration of extra-diocesan af- 
 fairs, I am anxious to lay before you a matter on which 
 I shall also have to consult the Church Councils of my 
 two dioceses, and request of them a definite expression 
 of approval or disapproval. I refer to the negotiations 
 which have taken place between me and the Bishop of 
 Antigua, relative to his retirement from active diocesan 
 work, and my becoming his coadjutor. The position of 
 affairs is briefly this. The Bishop, as you are well aware, 
 is advancing in years : he has held his most laborious see 
 since i860, and as all who know him well acknowledge, has 
 never spared himself. In addition to increasing years, the 
 burden of seriously-impaired health is now laid upon him, 
 and his tenure of life, if he remains at his post in the West 
 Indies, has been pronounced on competent authority to 
 be very precarious. On the other hand, with his death 
 or resignation, his entire salary of ,£2,000 a-year from the
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 27 
 
 Consolidated Fund, absolutely lapses. Hitherto, he has 
 made strenuous efforts to raise an endowment-fund, but, 
 beyond a munificent contribution of his own towards it, 
 has made but little way towards raising what will entitle 
 him to claim conditional grants from S. P. G., S. P. C. K., 
 and the Colonial Bishoprics' Fund. It is at once to relieve 
 him of the heavy strain on his impaired physical powers, 
 and to ease his mind of the pressure of anxiety at the 
 apparent prospect of leaving behind him a permanently 
 vacant episcopal chair, that I have offered, subject to the 
 consent of my dioceses, and of the legislature of this 
 colony, of which I am a salaried public servant, to under- 
 take the coadjutorship of the Bishop of Antigua during 
 his life, if my own life and tenure of office should last so 
 long. The terms of the arrangement are as follows : he, 
 with the permission of the Crown, and of the episcopal 
 referees of Antigua diocese, will retire from the active 
 administration of the diocese, and reside in England on 
 half his salary, where he will still be able to render good 
 service, by securing a more regular clergy-supply ; and 
 will devote the remaining half, viz. ,£1,000 a-year, towards 
 the endowment-fund of the Bishopric of Antigua : I, in 
 the meantime, undertaking personally to visit his diocese 
 once every two years, or oftener, if any special emergency 
 necessitates my personal presence, and otherwise adminis- 
 tering the diocese with the assistance of Archdeacons 
 Branch and Gibbs. The conditions on which I propose 
 to do this are precisely those on which I now visit the 
 Windward Islands diocese, viz. that the Church-people of 
 each island visited should defray the entire expenses of 
 my visit to them. My Windward diocese, indeed, is the 
 only one which will have cause to complain of the pro- 
 posed arrangement, as they henceforth will have to take 
 turns with the diocese of Antigua in a biennial, instead 
 of annual, visitation. With the help, however, of my two 
 Archdeacons, Laborde and Webb, in that diocese, I have 
 no fear of Church-life there at all stagnating, owing to 
 my less frequent personal presence among them. So far 
 as Barbados is concerned, I doubt whether my coadjutor-
 
 2S A Charge delivered at 
 
 ship will involve any longer absence from this diocese 
 than I now habitually make, which, I need not point out 
 to you, is very far below the six months which the law 
 allows me annually for the visitation of the islands for- 
 merly belonging to the diocese of Barbados. The only 
 difference will be, what I myself shall feel in a largely- 
 increased island correspondence, and in the multiplication 
 of anxieties and annoyances ; for these are, I suppose, 
 inseparable from the episcopal office, and increase in 
 direct proportion to the extent of episcopal jurisdiction. 
 But you may perhaps still be disposed to ask, how will 
 this arrangement advantage the diocese of Barbados ? 
 I reply, in the first place, it is a sisterly act for a more 
 favoured diocese to stretch out a helping hand to one less 
 happily circumstanced, just as my offer is simply a fra- 
 ternal act of kindness from a younger to an elder brother ; 
 and consequently, one in which self-advantage finds no 
 place. It will, however, advantage this diocese, and, in par- 
 ticular, my successors in this episcopal chair, that Antigua 
 diocese should be provided with a bishop of its own, and 
 should not devolve, as it undoubtedly will, unless perma- 
 nently endowed, on the friendly, unpaid ministrations of 
 future bishops of this see. I am satisfied, therefore, that 
 in undertaking this additional duty while I am still com- 
 paratively young, and able to do hard work, I am re- 
 lieving this see of a prospective incubus ; and should 
 Bishop Jackson's and my life be prolonged for some years 
 to come, I shall be relieved (when he goes to his rest) 
 of heavy duties elsewhere, at a time when I too am be- 
 coming more unfitted by age to perform them efficiently, 
 and shall then be able to hand over Antigua diocese to 
 a bishop of its own, presumably in the full vigour of life, 
 with an assured, though it may be limited, income. 
 
 I said in the outset of my Charge, that these had been 
 five eventful years to the world and to the Church at 
 large. They have been so in our little world and Church 
 in these islands. 
 
 I touch but lightly on the disastrous events of 1876 
 in Barbados and Tobago. In Barbados, where they were
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 29 
 
 associated with serious political complications, we arc still 
 too much within their range to form a dispassionate judg- 
 ment on them, and the sores are still too recent to admit 
 of any but the most tender handling. I simply allude to 
 them to express my thankfulness, and at the same time 
 my surprise, that apparently they have left but such slight 
 scars on our Church-life. I had certainly feared a long 
 alienation of flock from pastor, as the result of animosities 
 then so disastrously aroused, and of old prejudices re- 
 kindled, and a marked diminution of religious influence in 
 consequence. Neither result, to any perceptible extent, 
 appears to have followed ; and, I repeat, that it is so is 
 a ground of sincere thankfulness to God on the part of 
 every good man among us, that that great social upheaval 
 has, on the whole, so little disturbed our religious equi- 
 librium. 
 
 Towards the close of 1876, feeling that those sad trou- 
 bles and disappointments might be useful to us clergy in 
 turning our attention to faults or defects in our religious 
 teaching, or in our methods of bringing the sense of re- 
 ligious obligation home to our people, I called all my 
 clergy together, with a view to dispassionately considering 
 our several systems in the light of recent failure, to taking 
 unreserved counsel as to our methods, and, if need be, 
 agreeing on altered lines in which to administer religious 
 instruction and discipline. I found, however, that the 
 time for calm reflection had not yet arrived, that discussion 
 would be unfruitful, and ran some risk of passing into 
 angry recrimination ; so I abandoned the attempt till 
 calmer times should come. It is a matter, therefore, of 
 sincere gratification to me to find that during my absence 
 my Rural Deans have acted on the extended authority 
 I some time ago gave them, to summon the clergy 
 only of their several deaneries into clerical chapter, and 
 have commenced a scries of such gatherings for the 
 free interchange of clerical experience, and for the discus- 
 sion of topics bearing on the welfare of the Church in this 
 diocese. Clerical isolation and want of united effort have 
 been serious hindrances to our Church-life here. It is
 
 30 A Charge delivered at 
 
 cheering to think, that this step towards united effort (if 
 only it be vigorously worked, and not suffered to die a 
 natural death) has been spontaneously taken. 
 
 When I held my primary visitation early in 1874, I was 
 simply consecrated and commissioned to be the bishop 
 of the Anglican Church in the colony of Barbados, with 
 power given by the act which regulated my salary and 
 status to undertake, if invited, the episcopal charge of the 
 other islands which had made up the old diocese of Bar- 
 bados. Tobago had then formally invited me to do so, 
 and I had consented ; and Grenada and St. Vincent were 
 already negotiating. Eventually all four islands invited 
 my supervision, and my commission was enlarged in 
 each instance by a supplementary commission from the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury. This, however, constituted a 
 merely personal union, which on my death or resignation 
 would be at once dissolved, and the same cumbrous pro- 
 cess would have had to be repeated on each fresh appoint- 
 ment to the bishopric of Barbados. In my first charge, 
 therefore, which I addressed to those several islands, I 
 advocated formal separation by Royal Warrant from the 
 old legally-constituted diocese of Barbados, (for it had 
 never been legally dissolved, and had simply fallen to 
 pieces from the failure of the Crown to act as regards fur- 
 ther appointments to the old see by letters patent), and 
 combination into a separate diocese by such authority as 
 we could find to replace the old authority of the Crown 
 as Supreme Covernor of the Church, viz. that of the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, the tacitly-recognized Patri- 
 arch of Anglican Christendom, at least within the British 
 Empire. This was agreed to by the several Church Coun- 
 cils, and St. Vincent, Grenada, and Tobago b were thus 
 lawfully incorporated into a diocese of the Windward 
 Islands, to be always governed, until further order lawfully 
 
 b St. Lucia is not incorporated in this diocese. It is by Royal Warrant 
 separated from Barbados. It now simply consists of two Protestant congre- 
 gations, voluntarily supervised by the Bishop of Barbados, in the same way 
 as Continental Chaplaincies in Europe are by the Bishop of London, but 
 without any clearly-defined jurisdiction.
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 31 
 
 be taken, by the Bishop of Barbados for the time being. 
 This new diocese is formed upon the principle of what is 
 termed " the consensual pact." On this principle of mu- 
 tual agreement, as elicited by the resolutions of the sev- 
 eral Church Councils, St. George's Church in Kingstown, 
 St. Vincent, has been constituted the Cathedral of the 
 Diocese, with a Chapter of six honorary Canons associated 
 with the Bishops as their Dean ; the diocese has been di- 
 vided into two archdeaconries, — a nece'ssary arrangement, 
 if their functions were to be real and not merely nomi- 
 nal ; and provision has been made for the assembling of 
 a representative synod of clergy and laity, which will 
 shortly meet me to legislate in Church-matters for the 
 diocese, in every government of which the State -made 
 laws affecting the Church have been repealed by dis- 
 establishment. 
 
 Several changes in the " personnel " of this diocese 
 have taken place since my last Visitation. Bishop Henry 
 Hutton Parry, formerly Bishop-coadjutor of this Diocese 
 and Archdeacon of Barbados, has been translated to the 
 Bishopric of Perth in Western Australia, where he has 
 been cordially welcomed ; and although domestic bereave- 
 ment (in which we all sympathize with him) has befallen 
 him in his far-distant home, he is doing the work of a 
 chief pastor of the Church usefully, acceptably and hope- 
 fully. On accepting that bishopric he resigned the arch- 
 deaconry, the emoluments of which lapsed on his resigna- 
 tion. As the office is now one without either distinctive 
 duties to discharge or emoluments to receive, I have re- 
 solved to hold it, at least for the present, myself, in pre- 
 ference to conferring it as a mere titular distinction. I 
 could have wished that as the archdeaconry lapsed our 
 legislature had made some provision, as they did when the 
 Bishopric lapsed, for a clergyman who might on the one 
 hand have been of material assistance to me in discharg- 
 ing the routine-work of the diocese as Chaplain, and at 
 the same time have served as a supernumerary clergyman, 
 to be employed at my discretion in supplying occasional 
 vacancies in this island, which atj present, owing to our
 
 32 A CJiarge delivered at 
 
 short-handedness as regards clergy, are provided for with 
 difficulty, and seldom satisfactorily. 
 
 Other vacancies have occurred among the clergy ; two 
 veterans have retired from active service on their pensions; 
 three have died. One of these is entitled to more than 
 a mere obituary notice. The Reverend John Bradshaw 
 was one of those rare men who relinquished a profitable 
 secular calling for the comparative poverty of the sacred 
 ministry, avouching thereby his conviction that he was 
 " inwardly moved by. the Holy Ghost to take upon him 
 that office and ministration." To that sacred calling he 
 wholly gave himself during a long and faithful pastorate, 
 ministering alike to the bodily and spiritual distempers of 
 the poorer members of his flock. Few men lived more 
 useful lives than he ; few of us shall carry to the grave 
 with us such sincere and heartfelt regrets as he did, alike 
 of high and low. 
 
 But though death has made hitherto such comparatively 
 small inroads on the ranks of my clergy, it has fallen to 
 my lot already to nominate to no less than six of the 
 eleven Barbados rectories, and to one of these twice. 
 This has arisen from the fact, that I have not hesitated to 
 move clergymen from rectory to rectory, where I deemed 
 the change might be beneficial to pastor or parish, or both. 
 For while, on the one hand, frequent changes and too 
 short incumbencies to allow of the man fully developing 
 his plans, and working out his system in practical detail, 
 are prejudicial to the welfare of a parish ; on the other 
 hand, change in a parish is often as salutary to vigorous 
 Church life as permanent fixity, even under a godly and 
 acceptable parish priest, " lest one good custom should 
 corrupt the world." Three of the vacant rectories I have 
 filled, with the concurrence of the counsellors assigned me 
 by law, with clergymen who had done long and faith- 
 ful service in the Windward Islands. I know that such 
 appointments have not found favour generally with the 
 clergy of this island, and have been subject to some severe 
 criticism outside. Let me once more justify the principle 
 which I have deliberately adopted, and to which I mean
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 33 
 
 in the main to adhere, though in the administration of 
 Church Patronage I decline to tie myself to any unbending 
 code. I consider it then most to the interest of Barbados 
 that those men should hold its most responsible positions 
 in the Church, who have given evidence by long, con- 
 tinuous (for this is the point) and successful service in the 
 unwieldy and most laborious charges in those islands, of 
 vigour, and tenacity of purpose in spite of hardships, dis- 
 appointments and isolation, as well as of ministerial capa- 
 city and aptitude to deal with other men : while it is fair 
 that men who are willing continuously and uncomplain- 
 ingly to stick to work, which, if not always unattractive, 
 is always laborious and engrossing, and burdened with 
 many more cares and inconveniences than beset a clergy- 
 man in this more favoured island, should feel that in doing 
 so they are establishing a prior claim to positions here of 
 greater emolument and comfort. The mere fact of long 
 service in another island does not oblige me to move a 
 clergyman to a Barbados rectory, unless I judge him to 
 be personally fitted for it, but it does give him a claim to 
 be considered when it devolves on me to fill up such a 
 vacancy. 
 
 It has been alleged that in England it is not the rule to 
 look outside of a diocese to fill its more important cures. 
 I reply that, as a matter of fact, where considerations of 
 nepotism, or religious partisanship, or political necessities, 
 do not warp the selection of public patrons, (I say nothing 
 of private patronage,) those men are, as a matter of fact, 
 preferred to easier and more lucrative livings who have 
 shewn capacity after long service in laborious and unat- 
 tractive cures. And I make bold to say that if this princi- 
 ple were more universally adopted, we should hear less of 
 the dearth of curates at home and of missionaries abroad. 
 
 It appears to me that there can be but two grounds for 
 promotion in the Church, as in every other service, se- 
 niority and selection. The former is far the easier : but 
 would it be cheerfully acquiesced in by the laity ? The 
 latter is a most invidious task for a bishop to be called on 
 to perform, especially in a colonial diocese, where he is on 
 
 D
 
 34 A Charge delivered at 
 
 a footing of more or less intimate and familiar intercourse 
 with all his clergy, and where it is often most painful to 
 him to pass over men whom he personally esteems and 
 reveres, simply because he is bound to consider diocesan 
 interests as more paramount than private feelings. I 
 should be but too thankful to be divested to-morrow of 
 the most disagreeable responsibility of patronage of all 
 but purely honorary distinctions, if the Legislature of 
 Barbados, and the Church Councils of the Windward 
 Islands, would relieve me of it absolutely. As long as 
 I am lawfully called on to exercise it, I must do it accord- 
 ing to my conscience, and trust to the most favour- 
 able and charitable construction being put upon my 
 motives. 
 
 While still upon the question of nomination to rec- 
 tories, I wish to call attention to an act of the Legislature 
 passed in 1876, to amend a clause in the Bishop of Bar- 
 bados' appointment act, regulating the nomination to 
 vacant rectories. The clause originally assigned as the 
 bishop's counsellors the Rural Dean of the deanery in 
 which the vacant parish was situate, its senior represen- 
 tative in the Assembly, and the senior member of Council 
 resident in it, or, failing a resident member, the Presi- 
 dent of the Council. It so happened that then there 
 was no President of the Council in the island, nor, in 
 fact, is there such an official at the present time. The 
 act to which I have referred substitutes the senior mem- 
 ber of Council for the time being, i.e. either the General 
 commanding the Forces, or the Colonial Secretary. Few 
 who knew the late General commanding (Lieut-Gen. 
 Farren) as I did, could wish for a better and more faith- 
 ful adviser. I, for my part, am more than content with 
 his successor ; but I do not hesitate to say, that the 
 position in which this high military functionary is placed 
 by this Act of Legislature is incongruous, and (I should 
 think) distasteful to him, and it entirely nullifies what 
 appears to have been the intention of the original act, 
 viz., to protect the Bishop from possible mistakes in his 
 appointments, by the more distinctly local knowledge
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 35 
 
 which his advisers, as therein constituted, could bring 
 to his aid. 
 
 Of other legislative acts during the period affecting 
 the Church, I need but mention with approval that under 
 which special intercession is now made in public worship 
 for the Governor and Legislature, the act adopting the 
 new Lectionary and shortened services, with other less im- 
 portant relaxations of the Act of Uniformity ; the act 
 legalizing a Clergyman's renunciation of his clerical vo- 
 cation, and freeing him from the disabilities attaching to 
 that station, and from penal consequences on embarking 
 in secular pursuits ; and the act providing for a public 
 cemetery in St. Michael's parish. The passing of this 
 last-named measure has been a source of almost unmixed 
 satisfaction to me ; the question, as you may remember, 
 was being agitated on my arrival in this diocese in 
 1873 ; I laid down in my Primary Charge the principles 
 on which, it seemed to me, it ought to be settled. Last 
 year I felt compelled — partly to avert a serious scandal 
 as to the burial of the dead in the monster parish of 
 St. Michael, after the closure of its churchyards by the 
 Board of Health, partly, too, to protect the present Rector 
 of St. Michael from what appeared to me to be an un- 
 just attempt to force on him responsibilities which were 
 not fairly his, and to saddle his successors (as seemed 
 likely) with these in perpetuity — to undertake myself, with 
 some voluntary assistance from the Curate of St. Leonard's, 
 the burial of the dead in the new cemetery for five con- 
 secutive months. I consider that it was worth all the 
 trouble and discomfort which that somewhat incongruous 
 increase to my proper duties entailed, to have brought 
 about this satisfactory settlement, on the very lines within 
 which I hoped it would be settled ; and I owe my best 
 thanks to the new Burial Board for having, in their first 
 appointment to the Chaplaincy, consulted my known wish 
 that it should be held by a clergyman not fettered by the 
 cure of souls in a district of the parish. 
 
 Though the labour was irksome, I do not regret the ex- 
 perience it gave me of burials, and their abuses as preva- 
 
 D 2
 
 36 A Charge delivered at 
 
 lent among us. The total disregard of punctuality, funerals 
 often coming an hour or an hour and a-half after the time 
 specified, sometimes arriving after my departure from the 
 ground, when the shades of evening had already closed 
 in, and made reading impossible ; the heartlessness and 
 indifference of surviving relatives, especially in the case 
 of infants ; frequently no one to take part in the service ; 
 the little coffin carried under the arm of some indifferent 
 person, laid down by the grave and left ; pauper funerals 
 from the hospital or almshouses, consisting simply and 
 solely of the parochial hearse, containing the grimly plain 
 black wooden shell, with never a single mourner to follow 
 the poor destitute to the grave : even when the regu- 
 lation pair of mourners (insisted on in the cemetery rules) 
 appeared, frequent unwillingness to alight from the cab 
 and walk to the grave-side ; and even in the case of large 
 funerals, with all the adjuncts of banners and scarves (not 
 always in entire harmony with the gravity of the time 
 and place), only a few clustering round the grave to take 
 part in that most solemn of all offices; the rest idly 
 gossiping upon the paths or pastures in groups away, while 
 the grave service was being read, after escorting the 
 coffin to the grave-side. These were some of my ex- 
 periences as cemetery chaplain, and they forced upon 
 me the conviction that we need much improvement in 
 this respect at least. I- cannot help feeling that our 
 Burial Service, beautiful and most consolatory as it is 
 to the true mourner, is pitched in too high a devotional 
 key for all. It expresses aspirations which cannot be 
 expressed without unreality bordering on hypocrisy, or 
 at best an explaining away of terms, but over the grave of 
 the consistent believer. We need an alternative service. 
 I am fully alive to the difficulty, rather I should say the 
 impossibility, of allowing the individual clergyman to 
 determine which of the two he is warranted in using, 
 according to his estimate of the character of the de- 
 ceased. It appears to me, however, that the Church has 
 provided a sufficient classification into communicants and 
 non-communicants, the former being, as far as human
 
 Bridgetown^ Barbados. 37 
 
 cognizance goes, in a higher spiritual state. I admit 
 that the criterion is more or less illusory (as all human 
 criteria are) ; there will always be communicants whose 
 spiritual state does not entitle them to that privilege, 
 and there are many estimable and amiable Christians 
 who, from some mistaken prejudice or other, have shrunk 
 from being communicants ; but for practical purposes the 
 distinction is a real one, and sufficient to determine the 
 service to be used. The present office, which is essen- 
 tially one of thanksgiving, is not a whit out of place 
 for the devout communicant, who has passed from behind 
 the veil to the more immediate fruition of the Saviour's 
 presence. An office of more sombre and penitential cha- 
 racter, would be more in keeping with the Church's 
 attitude towards her non-communicant members. Be- 
 sides this, a short office for infants' funerals, and possibly 
 one for the unbaptized, would be desirable, with greater 
 choice as to the lesson to be read in the Burial Service. 
 
 Our circumstances here seem to call for radical changes 
 in regard of Marriage, as well as Burials. The statistics 
 with which you have furnished me in answer to my 
 Visitation Articles, shew that among us lawful marriage 
 is the exception, concubinage the rule: and the question 
 will fairly have to be looked in the face, — Is this state 
 of things compatible, or is it not, with the nominal pro- 
 fession of the Christian Religion ? I am convinced that 
 no perceptible change for the better will take place until 
 the State in these West Indian Islands, and in particular 
 in Barbados— not in the interests of religion, but in its 
 own interests, to check the growth of pauperism — adopts 
 the principle of Roman law that usus, i.e. proved cohabi- 
 tation, constitutes legal matrimony. This practically is 
 (or was) the law in Scotland, where the public recog- 
 nition of a woman as wife before witnesses, and the living 
 with her as such, constitutes a valid marriage. If the law 
 here saddled the man who was proved to have cohabited 
 with a woman for a given period, either continuously or 
 at intervals, with all conjugal and parental obligations, 
 one great obstacle to marriage would at once be broken 
 down, and less objection would be felt to contracting
 
 38 A Charge delivered at 
 
 matrimony in due legal or religious form. But there 
 are other causes which prevent or delay the actual solem- 
 nization of marriage among our people, who yet live to- 
 gether, though unmarried, in fidelity and concord. Fashion 
 with them necessitates a display both as regards apparel, 
 equipage and festivity far beyond the couple's means ; 
 and, as we know, fashion is a tyrant to which wiser peo- 
 ple than our simple peasantry think themselves forced 
 to bow. Could not this difficulty be met by altering the 
 law (which has been repealed in British Guiana), pro- 
 hibiting marriages except between the hours of 8 and 12 ? 
 Or might not clergymen be allowed (as, if I am rightly 
 informed, dissenting ministers now do) to marry in private 
 houses in the presence of competent, or (if it should be 
 deemed desirable), of official witnesses, such marriages 
 being duly registered as marriages privately solemnized. 
 These would, in my opinion, be salutary changes, as 
 facilitating the entrance lawfully on that estate which 
 is now so generally enterprised — at least in the outset — 
 illicitly ; but even then, our circumstances here would ne- 
 cessitate some authorized relaxation as regards the use 
 of the marriage service. 
 
 I could wish that the law empowering civil marriages, 
 i.e. the entering upon legal matrimony without the cus- 
 tomary religious service in church or chapel, were not, as 
 it is, a dead letter ; and I think it would be well that all 
 ministers of religion should be ex officio civil marriage 
 officers, i.e. empowered to unite parties in legal matrimony 
 without the customary religious service in church. Surely 
 such ratification of the civil contract alone would be more 
 seemly, than the profanation (for I can call it nothing else) 
 of the marriage service to cement an union which has been 
 anticipated by the parties, it may be for years previously. 
 At any rate, in such cases the clergyman ought to be au- 
 thorized by law to use only the espousals, or nave service 
 — the ratification in the face of the church of the marriage 
 contract — and to omit the Benediction service in the chan- 
 cel which follows it, commencing with the processional 
 psalm, which surely should be reserved for those who 
 enter on the marriage estate presumably pure.
 
 Bridgetoivn, Barbados. 39 
 
 In my Primary Charge I pointed out some abuses which 
 had then struck me in the administration of the rite of 
 Confirmation, viz. the extravagantly gay attire of the can- 
 didates, and the advanced age at which, on an average, 
 they were presented, which was, as I then pointed out, 
 wholly alien to the tenor and spirit of the Confirmation 
 Office. Though the statistics of my confirmations for the 
 last five years yield, on the whole, a lower average of age 
 than the previous ones, yet I do not observe any marked 
 difference in either respect. " De minimis 11011 curat lex" 
 is a sound maxim ; but I doubt whether the question of 
 the attire of Confirmation-candidates has not passed from 
 the domain of taste into that of principle. The simple, 
 untrimmed white dress, and a small plain cap, or coif, 
 to cover the head (which seems to be almost of Scrip- 
 tural obligation), are. no doubt, for girl -candidates, not 
 only a becoming, but a symbolically instructive attire : 
 for young and middle-aged women to deck themselves out 
 in actual bridal attire, with a view to renouncing the pomp 
 and vanity of the world, is not only contrary to good taste, 
 but is gravely misleading to them. More than one of you 
 have expressed to me your misgivings that the assumption 
 of this attire is one among the unworthy motives which 
 tend to swell our Confirmation-lists ; it is an excuse for 
 extravagance, and sometimes (I speak from personal ex- 
 perience) for mendicancy ; and I have repeatedly had al- 
 leged as a reason why a day I had named for a Confirma- 
 tion was unsuitable, the fact that the candidates could not 
 be ready ; which did not mean that their instruction and 
 spiritual preparation was incomplete, but that their finery 
 was not yet procured and made up. 
 
 I suggest two remedies for this evil, on which I should 
 like the opinion of my clerical ruri-decanal Chapters ; one, 
 that the custom of the diocese be changed, which pre- 
 scribes or encourages white dresses and veils for the female 
 candidates, and that none, whether male or female, should 
 be presented except in plain and sober-coloured ordinary 
 Sunday attire ; the other, that Sunday Confirmations be 
 discontinued, as attracting crowds, and ministering to that
 
 40 A Charge delivered at 
 
 love of display which it is our duty gently, but firmly, to 
 repress in our people. 
 
 With regard to the age of candidates, no doubt the 
 average is a good deal raised by the few aged persons 
 which still appear on almost every Confirmation-list ; but, 
 even allowing for that, the bulk of candidates still consist 
 of full-grown men and women. Now it is, I confess, a 
 question with me — but one which I am not prepared 
 dogmatically to answer — whether it is ever expedient to 
 confirm persons very advanced in years. If it is, we need 
 a fresh Confirmation Office for persons of mature age, for 
 the present one is more or less incongruous. On one 
 point, however, I am clear, that in the case of all, and 
 more especially those of full age, an intelligent knowledge 
 of the truths of the Christian religion, and more particu- 
 larly of the obligations of the Confirmation promise, 
 should be insisted on, save where the circumstances of 
 the particular case call for exceptional treatment, as the 
 absolute condition of admission to that rite. I am aware 
 that this means reducing largely our communicant-lists ; 
 but would that be a calamity ? Have we not many 
 already on them who presumably are disqualified by 
 ignorance from a real appreciation of the nature and 
 sanctity of the Holy Eucharist? You will not, I know, 
 suspect me of ultra- Puritan leanings when I quote with 
 approval from the topics of exhortation to communicants 
 from the Westminster Directory of 1644 : " How necessary 
 it is that we come unto Communion with knowledge, faith, 
 repentance, love." And again, " The minister is to warn 
 that they presume not to come to that holy Table, not 
 only the scandalous and profane, but also the ignorant." 
 It must surely be ignorance, or it would be profanity 
 inconceivable, on the part of some of our communicants, 
 which sometimes, after ministering the cup, leads one to 
 regret that the mixed chalice has been declared illegal by 
 the highest court of the Mother Church, not for doctrinal, 
 or ritual, or antiquarian reasons, but simply because it 
 might diminish the temptation, which seems to master 
 some, to a greedy participation of its hallowed contents.
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 41 
 
 For this reason, I advise the use of lighter wines in pre- 
 ference to the more luscious in the Sacrament of the 
 Lord's Supper. The use even of real wine at all for this 
 purpose is far from being an universal custom of the 
 Catholic Church. 
 
 There is one point which must press heavily on you, 
 my reverend brethren, single-handed as you are almost to 
 a man, in connection with the celebration of the Holy 
 Communion, and that is the distribution of the elements 
 to each several communicant out of an average of 70, 
 100, or even over 200 (which some of you return), with 
 due obedience to the rubric which commands separate 
 distribution to each, with a somewhat long formula, the 
 result of a compromise between King Edward's two books. 
 I need not enumerate the many different expedients by 
 which this direction is commonly evaded by the over- 
 mastered clergyman, not only to spare himself, but to 
 avoid utterly wearying his congregation ; perhaps the 
 least objectionable of all is the widest departure from 
 both the letter and spirit of the rubric, viz. the recitation 
 of the formula for each kind to the entire railfull, and 
 then the silent distribution of the Bread and Wine to 
 each. Nor do I undertake to censure such evasions ; 
 but I point out that they are all opposed to the very 
 spirit and deliberate intention of the order. The ques- 
 tion was raised at the last Revision, and the alteration 
 refused advisedly, on the ground that " it is the propriety 
 of Sacraments to make particular obsignation to each be- 
 liever, and it is our visible profession that, by the grace 
 of God, Christ tasted death for every man." The relax- 
 ation I desire, to suit our special circumstances, is this, 
 that, where the priest is single - handed, or where the 
 number of communicants is very large, it should suffice 
 to recite aloud, before distribution, either for each railfull 
 or for the entire congregation of communicants, the pre- 
 sent formula; of administration in the plural number, and 
 then, in giving the bread and the cup to each, to say 
 simply, "The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ," "The 
 Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ" (which _was the most
 
 42 A Charge delivered at 
 
 ancient form), or, as an alternative, " Christ died for thee," 
 " Christ's Blood was shed for thee." These, however, are 
 departures from the ritual order of the Church, which it 
 must be for a Provincial Synod to approve, not for a 
 single diocese to ordain at its discretion. 
 
 A Visitation Charge would be obviously incomplete 
 without some reference to Education, and its prospects in 
 the diocese. Referring to my Charge of 1874, I find that 
 three of the points to which I then adverted on this head 
 are now either accomplished facts, or are on the high-road 
 to become so. Codrington College is now affiliated to 
 the University of Durham, and I have already had the 
 satisfaction of conferring (under commission from the 
 Warden of that University) the B.A. degree on six 
 Codringtonians, who have successfully passed the ex- 
 aminations for that degree ; and I learn that at the pre- 
 sent time there are no less than fourteen men, including 
 two old S. C. C.'s, up for the October, December, and 
 January examinations. 
 
 The Education Commission sat, and sent in its report, 
 and a well-considered and carefully-debated measure has 
 been the substantial fruit of its labours. To the framer 
 of that Act c , who by his unwearied industry and tact 
 steered it safe through all its parliamentary shoals and 
 reefs, this colony lies under a deep obligation ; and his 
 presence on the new Education Board is a guarantee that 
 the beneficent intentions of the Legislature will be care- 
 fully worked out, in all the different departments of that 
 many-sided subject. 
 
 By this Act, the Mission-house at Codrington College, 
 with the consent of the S. P. G., will become a training- 
 school for Elementary Teachers, and will exchange a con- 
 dition of profitless vacuity for one of almost priceless 
 utility to the cause of lower education in Barbados, and 
 perhaps in our neighbour islands. 
 
 Two other successful efforts have been lately made 
 towards improving Elementary Education : one has been 
 
 c J. \V. Carrington, Esq., B.A., Solicitor-General, late member for 
 St. James' parish.
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 43 
 
 the examination of selected children in our Church pri- 
 mary and infant schools in religious knowledge, under the 
 auspices of the Church Council of Barbados, the report 
 of which is already in your hands. As has been well re- 
 marked, if no other result of the deliberations of that 
 body could be pointed to, it would have amply justified 
 its raison d'etre. I earnestly hope the plan so auspiciously 
 initiated will be continued and extended ; and that upon 
 examination of selected children, inspection of all schools 
 in religious knowledge will be grafted. 
 
 The other effort has been the successful attempt to com- 
 bine in an association, of which I have the honour to be 
 President, the Public Elementary Teachers of the island 
 of Barbados, for purposes of mutual discussion on topics 
 pertaining to their profession, and on which their opinion 
 is valuable and instructive. Hitherto their debates have 
 been conducted with singular good sense, good temper, 
 and ability. It so chances that on Monday next they 
 will discuss the very question I propounded to you in my 
 Primary Charge, — " How can payment of school fees and 
 regularity of children's attendance be best enforced." 
 
 The project which was started some years ago, with fair 
 prospect of success, of rebuilding St. Michael's Cathedral 
 on a scale more suited to the importance of this colony, 
 and the position which, happily, the Church holds in it 
 as essentially the Church of the people, has had to be 
 abandoned. It was well taken up by several non-resident 
 proprietors, and by a few of our gentry here ; but it evi- 
 dently did not, as I had hoped, grow in popular esteem, 
 and the troubles of 1876 rather gave an excuse to, than 
 caused the diminution of, interest in it. Comparatively 
 little of the promised annual instalments were actually 
 paid up, some promised subscriptions were withdrawn, 
 and the tenders for the first section of the building (choir 
 and transepts), in accordance with the excellent and ori- 
 ginal design of Mr. Oakley, the architect, were so extra- 
 vagantly high, that the Committee have acted wisely in 
 resolving to abandon the enterprise ; and, after deducting 
 the expenses incurred in the preparation of the plans and
 
 44 A Charge delivered at 
 
 working-drawings, to return the money already contributed 
 to the Subscribers. The sister diocese will profit somewhat 
 by our loss, as some of the money that should have em- 
 bellished St. Michael's Cathedral, Barbados, will go to 
 add a chancel to St. George's Cathedral in St. Vincent ; 
 not such an one as we hoped for in this wealthier and 
 older diocese, but one more suited to the wants and 
 means of a disendowed diocese, where but little can be 
 afforded for the luxuries of religion. Some of our charit- 
 able institutions, notably the Goodridge Home, founded 
 by the munificence of a non - resident proprietor, but 
 hitherto unendowed, may fairly expect to attract to them 
 some of these liberated subscriptions : nor is it too much 
 to hope, that all the sums already paid in will be viewed 
 by their donors in the light of a deodand, once devoted 
 to sacred purposes, and no longer to be regarded as money 
 applicable to ordinary uses. 
 
 I have taken no steps towards giving effect to the sug- 
 gestions contained in my Primary Charge, as to collegi- 
 ating St. Michael's Cathedral Church, which is now simply 
 parochial, by engrafting upon it an honorary Chapter. 
 This is not because I am one whit less convinced of the 
 expediency of so doing, but because I have more and 
 more learned to recognize that some authoritative recog- 
 nition of the respective rights and spheres of authority 
 and duty, of the parochial and capitular authorities seve- 
 rally, is absolutely indispensable as a preliminary step. 
 
 At present, although, through the courtesy and loyal 
 co-operation with me of the present Rector of the parish, 
 there exists a tacit concordat hy which certain of the sen-ices 
 are recognized as parochial, regulated by him, — and others 
 distinctly cathedral, regulated by me, — there is nothing to 
 prevent a future Rector and Vestry of St. Michael's from 
 ignoring the Cathedral element altogether. The same is 
 true with regard to the seat-holders. They rent their seats 
 in the parish church of St. Michael's, and, as the law now 
 stands, are entitled to the use of these at every service 
 held in the church. As a matter of fact, their good feeling 
 (manifested in this and in many other matters) prevents
 
 Bridgetoivn, Barbados. 45 
 
 them from standing on their rights to the exclusion of the 
 large congregations which frequent the strictly cathedral 
 services, and they voluntarily waive undoubted rights, 
 often, I feel sure, at the cost of some personal self-denial 
 and inconvenience. But this position of sufferance ought 
 not to be that which a Bishop should occupy in his Cathe- 
 dral Church, and of itself makes the constitution of a ca- 
 pitular body inexpedient, till legislation has defined its 
 status relatively to the parochial element. Obviously, the 
 present is the best time for such legislation to be at- 
 tempted, during the incumbency of a rector manifestly 
 friendly to this co-ordination of the Parochial and Cathe- 
 dral elements, and before the creation of vested rights in 
 the person of a presumably younger man, who may succeed 
 him when he vacates the rectory. How it may best be 
 done is fairly a matter for discussion. Two modes suggest 
 themselves to me, which may be worthy of your consider- 
 ation. One is to regard the two elements as distinct, and 
 to define by law their respective functions and their re- 
 spective rights in the same building and its appurtenances, 
 leaving it to the two bodies by mutual consent to work 
 into each other's several systems, as much or as little as 
 they like. The other is to attach the rectory of the Cathe- 
 dral permanently to the bishopric, and, clubbing together 
 the salaries of Rector and Curate, to place under the Bi- 
 shop, as the actual workers of the parochial district, two 
 Vicars or Residentiaries, with equal and co-ordinate rights 
 and duties, at about £275 each. If this plan were adopted, 
 it would become necessary to detach the Chairmanship of 
 the vestry from the rectory, as it would be incompatible 
 with the general duties of the Bishop : but this would be 
 no revolutionary change, as the vestry is now virtually 
 no longer an ecclesiastical body, but the civil incorporation 
 or municipality of the City of Bridgetown and its suburbs, 
 charged with almost wholly secular duties as to local 
 government ; and it would be necessary to provide by law 
 what has recently been tried by consent as an experiment, 
 for the management of the monetary affairs of the Cathe- 
 dral (exclusive of strictly fabric repairs) by a Committee of
 
 46 A Charge delivered at 
 
 those who worship in it, and are presumably interested in 
 its welfare. 
 
 Although, however, no change has been made in the 
 constitution of the Cathedral as a Cathedral, much has 
 been done and is being done to make it the centre of 
 Diocesan life and work, thanks to the assiduous voluntary- 
 services of one of the masters at Harrison's College, and 
 the unwearied efforts of a valued recruit from a sister pro- 
 fession. The choral services of the Cathedral have been 
 maintained at a generally high standard of efficiency, with 
 fair regularity of attendance and general decorum of be- 
 haviour, which would contrast most favourably with my 
 earlier experiences of English Cathedrals: and the general 
 attitude of the choir, both men and boys, in spite of many 
 discouragements and repeated changes of their musical 
 director, has proved to me that tenacity of purpose in a 
 good cause, sound discipline, and unshaken loyalty to 
 their leader in spite of ridicule and adverse pressure, may 
 confidently be looked for from our people, though they 
 move but in the humbler walks of life. 
 
 To improved choral services I may add the revival of 
 Sunday Schools, and the making of a vigorous and per- 
 sistent effort to bring religious teaching and religious 
 influence to bear upon the young: and, as the natural 
 corollary of Sunday Schools, children's services. To these 
 we are simply feeling our way. Twice during this year, 
 on Good Friday and Christmas-day in the afternoon, we 
 have tried the experiment of gathering a multitude of 
 little ones of all ages, ranks, and complexions within these 
 spacious walls for an instruction-service, with happy and 
 hopeful results, and we look forward to carrying them on 
 more regularly after I have completed my visitation of 
 the Windward Islands. We are also now ready for that 
 department of work in a sea-port town which has been 
 recognized as obligatory by the Church Council of Bar- 
 bados, viz. ministrations to sailors in Carlisle Bay. The 
 ship for this sacred purpose is now ready, and we only 
 now wait for a sufficient force of Clergy willing to bear 
 their share with us in this important missionary work.
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 47 
 
 But it is not at the Cathedral only that there has been 
 a quickening of Church -life. All over this Diocese of 
 Barbados churches have been improved, enlarged, and 
 embellished, appliances for the more reverential perform- 
 ance of divine service provided, church music markedly 
 improved. The general current has set, irrespective of 
 party feeling (as it always should), in the direction of 
 greater reverence in sacred things. St. James' parish 
 church has been all but rebuilt, and is now one of the 
 most church-like structures in the West Indies, as far as 
 my experience extends ; St. John's, St. Peter's, St. Silas' 
 have added chancels; St. Ambrose, an aisle, gallery ; 
 St. Luke's, a sacrarium and organ-chamber ; St. Lucy's, 
 a bell ; St. Thomas', a thorough internal renovation, in 
 excellent taste and at considerable cost ; St. Leonard's 
 has added an organ-chamber, and has received many 
 other appropriate and costly ornaments from some of 
 those who worship there ; St. Stephen's has been entirely 
 renovated ; to say nothing of minor alterations and em- 
 bellishments : no fewer than twenty-three of you return 
 alterations and additions, of more or less importance, to 
 the fabric or ornaments as made in your several churches 
 and chapels since March, 1874, the date of my last Visit- 
 ation. All this implies interest on the part of clergy and 
 laity in the outward decencies of Divine Service. 
 
 Turning from things outward to things inward, I have 
 to thank by far the major part of my clergy for the 
 general promptitude and accuracy of the returns made 
 to my Visitation Articles. Some I have specially to 
 thank for valuable, thoughtful and suggestive remarks 
 upon the religious, moral and educational condition or 
 wants of their district. On the other hand, the perfect 
 accuracy of my generalizations is again marred, by a few 
 needless omissions and palpable blunders on the part of 
 some d ; while my convenience in preparing this portion 
 
 d For example, one of the most populous districts in the heart of Bridge- 
 town, returning its population as approximately 8,000, returns as the entire 
 number of Baptisms during the past four years, 207. The next district to it, 
 presumably equal in extent, returns 1,393.
 
 48 A Charge delivered at 
 
 of my Charge has been seriously interfered with by the 
 fact that several replies did not come to hand till after 
 the day specified, — the very latest I possibly could fix ; 
 while three did' not find their way to me till the very day 
 before my Visitation, and one only came to hand late last 
 evening, after these pages had been written. 
 
 From a digest of these replies, it appears that out of 
 a Church-population of slightly over 144,000, at the cen- 
 sus of 1 87 1, — now presumably considerably increased, — 
 there is an average of 11,874 at Sunday morning service, 
 and of nearly 10,000 at evening sen-ice, and about 4,000 
 communicants in average attendance at the Table of the 
 Lord : i.e. only 8 per cent, of the registered Church-popu- 
 lation are in habitual attendance at church on the Lord's 
 Day morning, and only 2f per cent, habitual Communi- 
 cants : and yet, during the last five years, I have myself 
 confirmed 4,681 persons in this island alone. The statis- 
 tics of marriages, burials, and baptisms tell their own 
 tale. During the four preceding years only 2,664 mar- 
 riages are returned, as against 16,170 burials; while the 
 baptisms for the same period number 25,787, of which 
 16,222 are registered as illegitimate, a?id only 9,565 as le- 
 gitimate. 
 
 At the conclusion of my Primary Charge, I deferred 
 anything like an exhaustive consideration of the moral 
 and spiritual condition of the diocese to some future oc- 
 casion, as having then insufficient data on which to form 
 conclusions. It so happens, that the occasion has arisen 
 when I deemed it my duty to state my conclusions on 
 this subject, and I have learned with regret that I have 
 given wide-spread umbrage by doing so, and that my 
 conclusions have been deemed by some to be unjust as- 
 persions upon a fairly blameless community. No one 
 would be more thankful than myself, if those conclusions 
 could be refuted ; but I venture to think that this will 
 not be successfully done by the tu quoque argument (how- 
 ever deserved), or by asserting (what no one doubted) 
 that vice is prevalent elsewhere. 
 
 On the present occasion, therefore, I prefer to quote on
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 49 
 
 this point the words of one of my own Rural Deans, on 
 whose calm judgment I place absolute reliance, who is 
 neither young, nor inexperienced, nor self-conceited, nor 
 unpatriotic: "There is still immense room for improve- 
 ment in the religious, moral, and educational condition of 
 the people. Illegitimacy still abounds. In some in- 
 stances the parents of illegitimate children, though un- 
 married, seem to live with each other faithfully ; but 
 there is a great deal of illicit intercourse, and there are 
 many instances of polygamy. Falsehood, wrong-doing 
 of various kinds, and petty thieving, — the outcome of 
 poor corrupt human nature, — are everywhere com- 
 plained of." 
 
 I almost shrink from weakening the force of these plain, 
 sad words, by quoting from other clergymen's replies ; but 
 " in the multitude of counsellors there is safety." Another 
 Rector writes, " Irreligion and immorality are very preva- 
 lent ; many children are growing up without school -in- 
 struction or training." Another considers that " the re- 
 ligious and moral improvement is by no means on a par 
 with the intellectual." Another writes, " I have no reason 
 to regard with satisfaction the religious condition of my 
 district : the congregations are entirely out of proportion 
 to the population. Morally, there is no change ; concu- 
 binage the rule, marriage the exception. Even the young 
 communicants fall into the prevailing evil habit of living 
 together before marriage ; it falls like a blight on all our 
 young members." Another deplores that " marriages have 
 been but few, and most of them of persons already liv- 
 ing in sin, or of persons who sought to cover their sin, 
 as proved afterwards. The difficulty with some is to 
 understand the marriage-vows, their meaning and im- 
 portance, as shewn by the bad treatment and desertion 
 to which some wives are subjected." One more corrobo- 
 rative testimony to the truth of this sad bill of indict- 
 ment : " The standard and tone of the religious life of 
 the people greatly need improvement. The large ma- 
 jority of the inhabitants of the district absent themselves 
 from church all Sunday ; in the evening, a few (compared 
 
 E
 
 50 A C J large delivered at 
 
 with the population) attend Divine Service. Not many 
 men, hardly any young men, are communicants. There 
 seems also to be very little knowledge of the Scriptures 
 among the people. The morality of the people generally 
 is also grievously low ; two-thirds of the births are ille- 
 gitimate. A bluntness of the moral sense, absence of 
 proper public opinion, love of dress and show, insufficient 
 sleeping accommodation in the cottages of the labourers, 
 and habitual neglect of the means of grace, are among 
 the causes of the deplorable immorality that disgraces the 
 district. The returns of the police courts also point out 
 that much dishonesty, and violent conduct and language, 
 prevail among certain classes of the community." 
 
 Such, my reverend brethren, are some of the terrible 
 problems with which we have to deal in that state of life 
 to which it has pleased God to call us ; and when we 
 endeavour to call attention to them with a view to grap- 
 pling more earnestly with them, we may fairly expect 
 from our lay-brethren, not angry denunciation as traitors 
 and slanderers, but more earnest co-operation with us in 
 our efforts for the common good. But this, as a body 
 they have hitherto withheld : all honour and thanks to 
 those, whether men or women, who have formed marked 
 exceptions to the general apathy. 
 
 One Rural Dean writes : " More workers in the way of 
 ministering to the religious wants of the people are needed. 
 I feel sadly my inability to cope single-handed with all 
 the work which is to be done. But how to obtain aid 
 in the work I know not ; I find my own time fully oc- 
 cupied in the routine-work of the parish." 
 
 A veteran town Curate, recognizes how much needs to 
 be done to improve the religious, moral, and educational 
 condition of the district, had he the strength and energy 
 of twenty-two years ago, when he first took charge of it, 
 or had he any lay-agency commensurate with the require- 
 ments of the case. A Curate in a laborious rural district 
 writes, " Lay help is sadly required ; I have not been able 
 as yet to find suitable district-visitors. There is not the 
 slightest help or co-operation afforded by the proprietors
 
 Bridgetown, Barbados. 5 1 
 
 and managers of the district (with a single exception), in 
 anything that is required for the good of the people." 
 And one of my elder brethren thus sums up his wants 
 and discouragements : " There are, alas ! other religious 
 wants, such as a larger average congregation, both on 
 Sundays and week-days, more prompt attention to the 
 call to Confirmation, a larger and better Sunday-school, 
 and some means of getting children in larger numbers 
 to public worship. But these can only be supplied by 
 a larger measure of God's blessing on ministerial effort, 
 and by the gradual awakening of the laity to their re- 
 ligious duties, their share in Church-work." 
 
 I now commend to the careful consideration of all, the 
 topics of this and of my previous Charge, for I have not 
 thought it necessary to repeat much that was then said, 
 and which still represents my unchanged convictions. 
 And I do so in the earnest hope that it may please God 
 to take away from us, as a community, all undue self- 
 complacency, and all fallacious sense of security, and to 
 enlist in a combined effort at better things all who love 
 their country, and all who believe that Christianity is no 
 mere form of sound words, but the power of God unto 
 salvation. 
 
 Drintcb bu |amts $hrl;tr nub Cc, (Crohn garb, ©xforb.
 
 1 1