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 AN ADDRESS 
 
 JntitOT^iTlim^^w^ (fpi^0pti[, 
 
 DELIVERED IN KING\S COLLEGE, 
 
 THE COUNCIL OF THE CHURCH INSTITUTION, 
 
 FEBRUARY 17, 1869. 
 
 CECIL RAIKES, ESQ. M.P., IN THE CHAIR. 
 
 BY THE 
 
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 ADDRESS. 
 
 It is generally admitted that the number of Bishops of the Reformed 
 Church of England has been for centuries inadequate to supply the 
 spiritual wants of the people, and it has long been the wish of good 
 men that all om- large Dioceses were subdivided, and our Episcopate 
 were increased.* The vast and rapid increase of our home population 
 has entirely outgrown the episcopal provision made for it more than a 
 thousand years ago. Indeed there are fewer Bishops now than in 
 olden times, I for we are informed from authentic records that every 
 Diocese, besides its own Bishop, had a Suffragan or Assistant Bishop, 
 and frequently two or three Suffragans at one time: for instance 
 Bishop Longland of Lincoln (a.d. 1529) had three at the same time; 
 and he assigned as a reason, in his petition for them to the Pope, 
 the great extent of his Diocese.\ 
 
 In the best ages of the Christian Church the Dioceses were much 
 smaller than they are in England at the present time. The Seven 
 Churches of Asia § spoken of in the Apocalypse were seven Dioceses, 
 each having its own Bishop, and the seven taken together were not so 
 
 * Bishop Burnet's Hist, of Reformation, i. 262. Yid. also Bishop Gibson on 
 Visitations, p. xii. Lond. 1717. Bingh. Eecl. Antiq. b. ix. c. viii. 
 
 f In the seventh century Pope Gregory advised Augustine, the first Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, to create two Metropolitans, each with twelve Bishops under 
 them, besides the British Bishoprics already established when he came. ( Yid. 
 Beda, Eccl. Hist. i. 29.) 
 
 X Yid. Pegge on the Winkburne Seal, Archoeologia, vol. vii. The late Bishop 
 of Lincoln said, in 1851, that if a Bishop of Lincoln "should wish to preach in 
 every church of his Diocese, and to devote one Sunday to each parish, it would 
 require more than fifteen years to make the circuit. ( Yid. First Report of the 
 Cathedral Commission, p. xvi.) 
 
 § These churches were all in the district of Proconsular Asia, Avhich was a little 
 larger than the counties of York and Lancaster; and in the eighth century there 
 were eighty Bishoprics in it. Bingham, b. ix. c. 2, 3, Usher's Dis. on Procon- 
 sular Asia.
 
 large as many of the Dioceses of England. At the Reformation 
 ArchbishojD Cranmer and the other Reformers, being desirous to 
 return as much as possible to the primitive usages of the Christian 
 Church, determined to increase the Episcopate by the subdivision of 
 Dioceses, although there was a regular succession of Suffragan Bishops, 
 and every facility to obtain them by the Suffragans Act of Henry 
 VIII. (26 Henry VJII. c. 14). Six new Sees were then founded, and 
 ten more were to be erected, and Parliament gave the necessary power 
 (31 Henry VIII. c. 9). 
 
 The preamble of this Bill, Bishop Burnet says, " was written with 
 the King's own hand. He also wrote a list of all the new Sees he 
 intended to found [out of the revenues of the religious houses]; which 
 were, Waltham for Essex, St. Alban's for Hertford, another for Bed- 
 fordshire and Buckinghamshire out of the monasteries of Dunstable, 
 Newenham, and Elston, another for Oxfordshire and Berkshire out of 
 the rents of Osney and Thame, one for Northampton and Huntingdon 
 out of Peterborough, one for Middlesex out of Westminster, one for 
 Leicester and Rutland out of Leicester, one for Gloucestershire out of 
 St. Peter's in Gloucester, one for Lancashire out of Fountain and the 
 Archdeaconry of Richmond, one for Suffolk out of Edmondsbury, one 
 for StalTord and Salop out of Shrewsbury, one for Nottingham and 
 Derby out of VVelbcck, Warsop, and Thurgarton, and one for Cornwall 
 out of the rents of Launceston, Bodmyn, and Tywardreth. Over these 
 he wrote ' Bishoprics to be made.' " * The design of our English 
 Reformers in this sub-division of our Dioceses was to promote the 
 principles of the Reformation. The number of our Bishoprics would 
 have been forty-three, besides twenty-six Suffragans, which would have 
 made a total of sixty-nine Bishops. 
 
 Now, the population of England and Wales at that period was about 
 4,000,000, for whom our English Reformers, considered about seventy 
 Bishops ought to be had to promote their spiritual well-being. What 
 would those holy martyrs say now, when the population has increased 
 five fold f in the course of three hundred years, whilst only one ad- 
 
 * Bisliop Biirnct, Ilist. of Reformation, by Dr. Corric, p. 181. Parker, Lond. 
 1847. 
 
 f The population of Kn;^land and Wales at the Norman Conqncst was probably 
 1,250,000. At tbc RefornuUion, about 4,000,000- ( T7<7. First Report of Catbedral 
 Commissioners, p. 88.) Tbe population now is 20,000,000. The increase in the 
 first half of this century was ten millions, and equals tbe increase of all preceding 
 ages". (Census, 18ol, vol. i. p. 82, s. 8.) 
 
 % s
 
 ditional Episcopal See * has been founded in that time, viz. the See of 
 Manchester, and when, moreover, the office of Suffragan Bishop, which 
 " had been accustomed to be had in this realm," before and after the 
 Reformation, has become obsolete for more than two hundred years ? 
 If the design of the Reformers had been faithfully carried out, many 
 have thought England would have been saved many of her sorrows, 
 and especially the great Rebellion After the cessation of the appoint- 
 ment of Suffragan Bishops, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
 confirmation f and other episcopal duties were generally neglected ; 
 and Dr. Heylin says, in his Life of Archbishop Laud, J '-' had confii-ma- 
 tion been as diligently practised by the Bishops as it w^as piously and 
 religiously retained by them, it would have much conduced to their 
 safe standing in the Church, and procured a greater veneration for 
 their persons also." Many faithful men strongly advocated an exten- 
 sion of the Episcopate to bring about a better state of things in Church 
 and State, but our authorities refused to hear, and then came " that 
 fearful judgment which rent into shreds the network both of Church 
 and State." § 
 
 The Episcopate was withheld from North America for about one 
 hundred and seventy years. Petitions and expostulations were 
 addressed by the North American colonists to England, representing 
 the spiritual privations and hardships they were subjected to for the 
 want of an Episcopate ; and Archbishops Tenison and Seeker, Bishops 
 Sherlock and Lowth, united with them, || but the authorities in England 
 remained deaf to their entreaties:^ and many have thought that her 
 sinful conduct in this respect caused the rupture between the two 
 
 * Two Sees have been founded, Ripon and Manchester; but the total increase 
 is only by one, by the union of Gloucester and Bristol. Coventry was a separate 
 Episcopal See for several hundred years, and so Avas Bristol. 
 
 t Bingham, vol ix. p. 195. Baxter said, "Not one in a hundred is confirmed 
 at all ; because the Dioceses are so vast that the Bishop cannot do this and his 
 other offices for the hundredth part of his flock " (English Nor. Conf. ch. xix.) 
 
 X Life of Laud, Introduct. p. 10. 
 
 § Bishop of St. Andrews' Serni. Oxford. Ramsden Senn. 1857, p. 13. 
 
 II Vid. Historical Notices of the Church of England in the North American 
 Colonies, by the late Rev. Canon Hawkins. 
 
 ^ Caswall's America, p. 132. " The few clergy in this country were all 
 ordained in England; and of the candidates who were sent from America to be 
 ordained in England, one-fifth perished or died from sickness." (Caswall, 
 p. 131.) On the loss to the Church, and also to Christianity itself, sec (.'aswall, 
 p]«. 1 '7-331.
 
 countries, and deprived England of ber fairest and largest North 
 American possessions ; and if the same unhappy policy which denied 
 the Episcopate to America continues much longer to obstruct the 
 extension of the Episcopate in England itself, it will probably produce 
 another rupture — it will precipitate the separation of Church and 
 State." * 
 
 But the time came at last, though culpably delayed, when America 
 obtained her desire, and this be it said to the glory of the Scottish 
 Episcopal Church; f and now, in less than one hundred years, the 
 Episcopate has increased to the number of forty-five, and that vast 
 continent is covered over with as many dioceses, whilst an American 
 dissenter, speaking of the American Episcopal Church after it obtained 
 an Episcopate, says, " Its history subsequent to the Revolution has 
 been marked by an ever-increasing prosperity. Nor has the spiritual 
 prosperity of the Church been less remarkable than its external growth. 
 It possesses a degree of life and energy throughout all its extent, and 
 an amount of vital piety in its ministers and members such as it never 
 had in its colonial days. It flourishes like a tree planted by the rivers 
 of water." J Can a stronger argument be used than this, for the 
 extension of the Episcopate at home ? Thank God, we see the same 
 blessed and glorious effects produced by the extension of the Episcopate 
 in all our colonies. Forty Bishoprics have been founded by the pious 
 munificence of the faithful sons and daughters of the Holy Church of 
 England ; nor would there be any lack of means to found new Sees at 
 home if the Legislature would grant the Church enabling j^oiver to sub- 
 divide her vast Dioceses^ and to increase her Episcopate, commensurate 
 with the increase of the population. But for 300 years the Episcopate 
 of this country has remained almost stationary, only having increased 
 by one. The consequence is, that, while on the one hand the Church 
 in America by the extension of its Episcopate has won one-half of its 
 existing Clergy and even some of its Bishops § from the sects ; and is 
 increasing in the ratio of more than double that of the population; || 
 
 * The Bishop of Lincoln's Sermon on the death of Canon Hawkins, p. 13. 
 ]868. 
 
 t Vid. Dr. Routh's Reliquiae Sacraj, Dedication. 
 
 X Religion in America, by Robert Baird, New York, 1856, p. 443. 
 
 § Bishop of Oxford's History of the American Church, p. 400. Cassell's 
 America, p. 2'^! . 
 
 II Caswall's AmerirM. p. .'-599.
 
 oil the other hand, our owu church, which denied the Episcopate to 
 her children in America for 170 years, being unable to increase the 
 number of her Chief Pastors in a degree commensurate with the 
 increase of her Clergy and people, within is torn asunder by factions, 
 and without is threatened with destruction from those millions who 
 have grown up as sheep having no shepherd. Alas ! she cannot say, 
 in reference to these wandering sheep, " I have nourished and brought 
 up children, and they have rebelled against me," since the average 
 number of immortal souls committed to the fatherly superintendence 
 of one single Bishop is 700,000, and 700 Clergy. Truly, " the harvest 
 is plenteous, but the labourers are few." May every faithful son and 
 daughter of our Church, therefore, " pray to the Lord of the harvest, 
 to send forth labourers into his harvest." 
 
 And now, what plan shall we adopt to remove the evils under which 
 the Church of England has suffered, and still suffers? The answer is 
 threefold : — 
 
 I. By the subdivision of Dioceses. 
 II. By the appointment of Suffragan Bishops under the Act oi\ 
 I Henry VIII. (26 Henry VIII. c. 14), or by a new Actj 
 
 * I altogether. 
 
 /III. By the resignation of Bishops disabled by age or other ^ 
 \ infirmity. 
 
 1. The Sub-division of Dioceses. The primitive Church of Christ 
 proceeded in the conversion of the world, first, by the creation of new 
 Sees; and then, as the Christian population increased, by the sub- 
 division of them. Our Blessed Lord in the Apocalypse designates 
 the Chief Pastors of His Church by the significant emblem of Stars, 
 — stars in His right hand.f Now, as the numbers of the faithful 
 multiplied, those stars were multiplied, and grouped together in con- 
 stellations. :f In other words, as the believers increased, in the same 
 ratio the Diocesan system and Provincial system increased likewise. 
 
 * The argument adduced at the time of delivery is not reprinted in this edition, 
 inasmncli as the object of it has been attained by the restoration of the Suffira- 
 gans Act, and the passing of the Resignation of Aged Bishops Bill. 
 
 t Rev. i, 20. Socrates terms Serapion, who was Bishop of Thmuis, "the 
 Angel of the Church of Thmuis." Lib. iv. c. xxiii. 'O rtis Qf/.htTuv Ixxk^ia-iKs 
 ayyO.os iioariuv. S. Aug. Ep. clxii. *' Divina voce laudatur sub Angell nomine 
 Priepositus Ecclesi^e." Vid. Epiphan. Hoer. xxv. Nicolait. n. iii. 
 
 X Bishop of Lincoln, Sermon on the R€v. Canon Hawkins, p. 18.
 
 and thus it was that the early Church, being knit together by thos^ 
 divinely appointed means, converted the heathen world to the Christian 
 faith, and "increased with the increase of God." 
 
 It was one of the fundamental principles of the early Church to 
 increase the Episcopate as the Christian population multiplied: and 
 that wherever a people wished to have a Bishop they ought not to be 
 denied. For instances, "The Second Council of Carthage decreed, 
 that whenever a people increased and they desired to have a Bishop, 
 they ought to be provided with one." * And our own Synod of 
 Hertford ,t held under Archbishop Theodore in the seventh century, 
 re-enacted as one of the most important Canons of the Church that, 
 " more Bishops should be made as the number of believers increased ;" J 
 and soon after this the Archbishop consecrated four or five Prelates in 
 each of the kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria; and his successor, 
 Archbishop Brithwald, divided the kingdom of Wessex into two sees, 
 establishing another in Sussex, were previously there was only one.§ 
 At the beginning of the eighth century the Venerable Bede || urged 
 upon Archbishop Egbert the necessity of the increase of the Episcopate 
 as the population increased. During the middle ages the English 
 Episcopate made great use of Suffragan or Assistant Bishops, for, 
 according to the list of Henry Wharton,^ there were as many as two 
 hundred and ninety- six Suffragan Bishops from the year a.d. 1016 
 to A.D. 1605, and in a letter to Strype he says, " If it please God to 
 permit me to finish my Anglia Sacra, I shall exhibit a perfect 
 succession of Suffragan Bishops in almost all the Dioceses of England, 
 for about two hundred years before the Reformation. " ** Hence we 
 see that the English Reformers deemed it necessary to increase the 
 Episcopate if the work of the Reformation was to be carried out, and 
 the English Church restored to the primitive usage of the Christian 
 Church: but alas, their pious design was frustrated by the sacrilegious 
 cupidity of the courtiers of Henry VIII., and our Mother Church is 
 still left " to strain herself in a painful struggle to do her work in the 
 
 * A.D. 390, canon 5. t A.D. G7a 
 
 X Vid. Bede, Eccl. Hist. I. iv. c. 5. 
 § Lingard's Hist. Anglo-Sax. Ch. vol. i. pp. 86, 87. 
 II Vid. Beda, ad Archp. Egbert. Eccl. Hist. B. i. 
 
 ^ H. Wharton's List of Suffragans. {Vid. Nichols' Bibl. Topog. of Britain, 
 vol.vi.) 
 
 ** App. to Strypc's Life of Ciaiimer, p. W-ki,
 
 9 
 
 nineteenth century with machinery which was deemed inadequate for 
 the sixteenth." * 
 
 A hundred and fifty years ago one of our most learned prelates, 
 Bishop Gibson,! writes in his work on visitations, "We must not 
 hope to see either Discipline or the Government of the Church in a 
 complete and perfect state as long as the several Districts to be 
 inspected and visited remain in so many instances so unreasonably 
 large; a just sense of which evil has long made it the ivish of good men 
 that a further division of Dioceses in places where it may be found 
 necessary were seriously attemjjted and acted upon, and that the evil 
 might be mitigated by the appointment of Suffragan Bishops^ 
 
 Joseph Bingham, the most learned English writer on the ancient 
 laws and usages of the church, in his ''Ecclesiastical Antiquities" 
 (Book ix. ch. viii.) strongly advocates the subdivision of our Dioceses 
 as the best means of carrying out the principles of the Reformation : 
 *' Every city or place of civil jurisdiction should be the seat of an 
 ecclesiastical magistracy, viz. a Bishop with his Presbytery. That 
 this was the general rule observed in the primitive Church I think I 
 
 have made it appear beyond all dispute If the Church of 
 
 England should think fit to add forty or a hundred more Bishops to 
 her present number she would not be without precedent in the practice 
 of the primitive Church." 
 
 The late Archbishop of Canterbury, in his Charge in 1847, when 
 Bishop of Ripon, said, " If, indeed, the Church expects her Bishops to 
 act merely as censors and correctors of their Clergy, and to discharge 
 a certain round of prescribed official duties, which may be measured 
 by the public eye, and are patent to universal observation, it might be 
 questioned whether their numbers were not commensurate with their 
 functions. But, if the Episcopate is to be regarded by om- people 
 generally not merely as a name, but as a living reality, a vital energising 
 principle — if our Bishops are to identify themselves with the Clergy 
 and people, and to throw their hearts and minds into their Dioceses, 
 to be known among their flocks, as St. Paul was among his, to be the 
 friends, the fathers, and the councellors of their Clergy, advising them 
 in their difficulties, arbitrating in differences, peace-makers when their 
 influence can avail, resolving cases of conscience when propounded, 
 
 * Bishop of Lincoln's Letter to Viscount Dungannon on the Subdivision of 
 Dioceses, p. 26. 
 
 f Yid. Visitation, p. 12. London, 1717.
 
 10 
 
 forwarding by their counsel every good work and labour of love — if 
 they are to be able to judge icith their own eyes as to the practical 
 working of each clergynian in his parish, to strengthen their hands in 
 their hours of trial and perplexity, to encourage the timid and arouse 
 the lukewarm, to let each congregation hear from time to time from 
 their own lips the words of eternal truth, and the jyoor parents of every 
 parish see, that, besides their own appointed Minister, there is the 
 Chief Pastor of the Diocese, who cares for the souls of their children, 
 and is furthering plans for their spiiitual benefit — if, I say, these 
 weighty charges really press upon a Bishop, I know not who can be 
 sufficient for these things, according to the present constitution of our 
 Dioceses." 
 
 These words he uttered twenty-two years ago, and he held the same 
 views until his death. No words can more forcibly set forth the 
 necessity for subdivision than these. Of course, if our Spiritual 
 Fathers in God are merely to discharge a certain round of prescribed 
 official duties, which have no real connection with the spiritual essence 
 of their high and holy office, and if they are to be merely the censors 
 of their Clergy, and to be little other than civil magistrates, then their 
 numbers are equal to their task ; but if, on the other hand, the Epis- 
 copate *' is to be a living reality, a vital energising principle " — " if 
 the spirit of the Lord is ujDon them, because he has anointed them to 
 preach the Gospel to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to preach 
 deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set 
 at liberty those that are bruised, and to preach the acceptable year of 
 the Lord," * — then it naturally follows that the vast Dioceses of the 
 English Church must be divided, and the Episcopate multiplied, or 
 the spiritual essence of the Episcopate will be lost, and then what 
 follows ? Alas, I fear to answer. 
 
 The late Archbishop of Canterbury, impressed with these facts, at 
 the commencement of the Session of 1867, requested the Society for 
 the Increase of the Home Episcopate f to prepare the draft of a Bill 
 for the erection of three new Sees, viz., St. Alban's, Southwell, and 
 Truro, and also for the revival of the Act of Henry VIII. for Suffragan 
 Bishops to assist those Diocesan Bishops who may be disabled by age 
 and other infirmity; and, inasmuch as he considered that it would be 
 accepted the more readily if brought in by a layman, he requested 
 
 ♦ St. Luke, iv. 18, 19. f Office, 8, Parliament Street, S.W.
 
 il 
 
 Lord Lyttelton to introduce it in the House of Lords. The Bill passed 
 through Committee with very little alteration, but on the Report of 
 Amendments the Suffragan clause was lost, I believe, solely on the 
 ground that the House did not fully understand it. It was otherwise 
 with the principle of the Subdivision of Dioceses. This they under- 
 stood, and, with wonderful unanimity, the Bill for three new Sees 
 triumphantly passed the House of Lords; and the Church owes a great 
 debt of gratitude to Lord Lyttelton for his energetic labours in this 
 blessed work. 
 
 It was expected by some that the Bill would meet with less favour 
 in the House of Commons than in the Lords. But the result was not 
 so. The House of Conwions conciirred tvith the House of Lords in 
 affirming the necessity of an Increase in the Home Episcopate, but the 
 House was almost unanimous in opinion that the new Bishops should 
 not have seats in the House of Lords, and that the endowments of the 
 new Sees should be raised solely on the voluntary principles. In this 
 view both sides of the House concurred, and the Bill so amended in 
 this particular, and in some other matters of detail, was read a third 
 time and passed. 
 
 In this amended form the Bill went back to the Lords. Some of 
 the amendments which had been introduced into the Bill in the House 
 of Commons did not find favour in the House of Peers. In a very 
 thin House, at the close of the Session, it came finally before them, 
 and they re-introduced the former clauses ; and when it went back to 
 the Commons Sir Roundell Palmer declined to accept the amend- 
 ments, and the Bill was lost. 
 
 It is not too much to say, that thousands of the faithful members of 
 the English Church, both clerical and lay, deeply lamented that this 
 Bill, which had triumphantly passed both Houses of Parliament, for 
 creating three new Bishoprics, should have been lost under such cir- 
 cumstances; and that so "little weight," as the Committee of the 
 Lower House of Convocation report on Suffragan Bishops, '' was 
 attached in the debates upon the Bill to the question of supplying the 
 spiritual needs of our Dioceses, as compared with the weight attached 
 to the question of the temporal, social, Parliamentary, and financial 
 position of the Episcopate, present and proposed. Your Committee 
 feel it to be their duty to express their regret that this character 
 should have been stamped upon the debates, presenting an appearance 
 of a subordination of the spiritual essence of the Episcopate to certain
 
 12 
 
 of its tempvoral accidents." * It proved fatal to its final success, and 
 many have said that a golden opportunity was lost to the Church 
 which will never again be granted her. But I do not at all sym- 
 pathize with the hopelessness of success. Let the Church become 
 more spiritual, and let her ask for the power to extend the spiritual 
 influence of her Chief Pastors among the middle and lower ranks of 
 her people, and I believe it will be readily granted. 
 
 The subdivision of our old parishes, I do not hesitate to say, saved 
 the Church and State of England from anarchy and ruin. The 
 Reform Bill of 1832 is said to have effected a reformation among the 
 people, and the peace and quiet of our country for the last forty years 
 is attributed to it. The reformation, however, among the masses is 
 the work of the Clergy of our Church, effected, as I believe, by the 
 breaking up of the old unmanageable overgrown parishes. They have 
 been divided and subdivided, and every subdivision has been a real 
 blessing to the people. " It has been twice blessed. It has blessed 
 those who have given, and those who have received." So will it be 
 with the subdivision of our overgrown Dioceses. It will infuse new 
 life into our ancient municipalities, it will impart new dignity to our 
 country, it will give fresh vigour to our missionary zeal for the con- 
 version of the heathen at home and abroad, and unite the people of 
 our country in the spiritual and social bonds of piety, loyalty, and 
 peace. And then, if this is done, I am persuaded that the designs of 
 the enemies of our Church will come to nought ; and, although the 
 Balaks of the world may hire their obsequious Balaams to pronounce 
 curses against the people of God, yet they will only be able to say, as 
 Balaam said of old, " How goodly are thy tents, Jacob, and thy 
 tabernacles, Israel. As the valleys are they spread forth, as 
 gardens by the river's side, as the trees of lign-aloes which the Lord 
 hath planted, and as tlie cedar trees beside the waters." 
 
 ******* 
 Having proved that these three things are desirable, and that the 
 spiritual wants of the Church demand them, if she is to accomplish 
 her mission in our oAvn land, without looking to the benighted millions 
 lying beyond, I now solemnly ask will the faithful Laity of our Church 
 come forward and help us to obtain them ? What we mean by the 
 increase of our Home Episcopate is this, " The diffusion of Evangelical 
 
 * Keport of the Comiiiittec of the Lower House of Couvociition of the Province 
 of Cunterbury. Hutriagnu Bishops, p. 1. 1868.
 
 13 
 
 Truth according to Apostolical order, and in the sphit of Catholic 
 love." We have wanted this for centuries, and we appeal to the 
 Laity to help us to obtain it for themselves, and their wives, their 
 sons, and their daughters, their servants and their workmen, their 
 neighbours and the poor lazars who lie perishing at their doors for 
 lack of knowledge. 
 
 The want of adequate spiritual oversight in our land is the source 
 from whence flow the many evils which afflict the Church and State. 
 The Church is torn asunder by schisms ; and millions of our fellow 
 countrymen are living without God and dying without hope, and are 
 as sheep having no shepherd. 
 
 His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1864, when Bishop of 
 London, publicly declared that there were in his Diocese more than 
 one million of souls unprovided with Divine Grace ; and there is every 
 reason to believe that this appalling spiritual destitution is not being 
 diminished, since the increase to the population of London amounts to 
 forty-four thousand souls annually. A similar state of things exists 
 also in all our large towns, and " the most palpable cause of this 
 crying evil is," as the Committee of the Lower House of Convocation 
 affii-m in their excellent Report on Suffragan or Assistant Bishops 
 (Feb. 18, 1868) " the impossibility under which the Bishops of such 
 over-peopled Dioceses lie of effectually grappling with it — a result 
 which, in the opinion of your Committee, can only be achieved by a 
 Bishop who shall, with a sufficient body of Clergy, devote himself 
 entirely to the exigences peculiar to the populations newly gathered 
 together in such Dioceses ; and, while the Committee believe that this 
 evil cannot be adequately met except by a large subdivision of such 
 Dioceses, they think it might be mitigated by a measui-e which would 
 meanwhile give to Diocesans the assistance of Suffragan or Assistant 
 Bishops." 
 
 " The Committee earnestly hope that nothing which has now been 
 said may be misconstrued as implying disparagement of the labours of 
 our Spiritual Rulers, But the fact remains, that now in the nineteenth 
 century the Episcopate of England is compelled to strain itself in a 
 fruitless endeavour to do its work with a feeble and antiquated 
 machinery, which our forefathers at the Reformation, more than three 
 hundred years ago, deemed insufficient, and which they desired to 
 improve. Indeed that machinery is weaker now than it was three 
 hundred years ago, inasmuch as the office of Suffragan or Assistant
 
 14 
 
 Bishops, which was in use at that time, has now been allowed to 
 become obsolete." 
 
 " And we solemnly appeal to the Bishops of our Church, with an 
 humble entreaty, that they would unite in using their influence and 
 exerting their endeavours, in their places in Parliament, as well as in 
 Convocation, to adapt that machinery, by the methods prescribed by 
 the Church of England herself, to the needs of the present times."
 
 4^oeref*T ««nd othier tales /
 
 
 '^^ 
 
 
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