changeable portions of the Service, so as to make our table the We have thus, according to the best of our ability, given a short account of the theory of Collects, and of the other prayers which form so prominent a part of Church ritual. The reader must remember in this, as in former papers on kindred subjects, that treatises, which might well take up a volume, have here to be compressed into the limits of a short paper. The briefest possible notice has to be taken of details which, if pursued at length, would be far more interesting, as well as far more instructive. In fact, we wish rather to point out to the reader what is worth his own study, than profess to lay before him the results of ours. We are bound to acknowledge the great assistance which in this and previous papers we have derived from the invaluable library of the Rev. W. J. Blew; without which it had been impossible for us to study many of the rare books which in the course of our investigations it has been necessary for us to quote. The value of the library itself can only be exceeded by the courtesy with which its contents are placed at the disposal of scholars. 64 ART. III.-1. Lectures on the Tinnevelly Missions. By the Rev. 4. Memorial of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 5. The Extension of the Episcopate viewed in relation to the Missions of Southern India. By the Rev. A. R. SYMONDS, M.A. London: (For private circulation). 6. Three Sermons on the Death of the late Right Rev. Daniel Wilson, D.D., Lord Bishop of Calcutta. By the Right Rev. the LORD BISHOP of WINCHESTER, the Rev. HENRY VENN, B.D., the Rev. JOHN HAMBLETON, M.A. London: Seeley, Jackson & Halliday. 1858. THERE is no result of the great religious movement which commenced just a quarter of a century back in the Church of England, to be compared, in the dimensions to which it has attained, the blessings which it has secured, and the ulterior effects which we may forecast from its adoption, with the extension of the Episcopate in the foreign possessions and dependencies of Great Britain, which we have witnessed during the last seventeen years. Within that period, twenty-two new sees have been erected and planted in every zone of the earth. Not merely have the funds (scanty, indeed, but accepted as sufficient) been provided for the chief pastors of the infant Churches among colonists and among heathen; but, what is far more, men, of several of whom no other section of Christendom could produce the like in their several posts, have been raised up to undertake the task of laying the foundations of fresh Churches, and to sacrifice themselves in extending the kingdom of Christ. Sanguine as were the hopes that were fostered by a return to this apostolical method of extending the Gospel of our Redeemer, the effects that have actually followed have far outstripped the fondest anticipations. We have seen Christian life rekindled amongst almost unchristianized communities, and in feebly-sustained missions. Emigrants, as in " South Africa for instance, have felt an old sentiment of attach-ment to the Church, which had almost died out, revive within them. At the invitation of the chief pastor, fresh clergy and missionaries have flocked around him; so that within a very few years the number of clergy in several dioceses has been doubled, trebled, quadrupled. As if endued with that singular power of reproduction which belongs to a particular class of animal organism, and by which they multiply themselves through subdivision, as soon as a new diocese has been formed, a demand has been made for its partition; it has separated itself into two, three, or four parts, as in New Zealand, or Australia, or the Cape, and straightway each separate portion, as it is cut off, has become at once a distinct and perfectly organized body. We need not speak of the vast energy of the clergy that has resulted from close personal supervision and encouragement, nor of the schools and churches that have been built, nor of the collegiate institutions that have been founded for rearing, eventually, a native ministry; but we cannot but notice how, almost before they were themselves settled, some of the newlyformed dioceses, looking beyond themselves and their own wants, have become centres of new missionary enterprise, showing themselves ready to impart even as they have received. A Board of Missions in behalf of the still heathen islands of Melanesia was formed a few years back at Sydney; and the late Bishop of Calcutta, with a true instinct derived from his position, designed to make his cathedral a centre of missionary action, and raised a fund for the endowment of missionary canons; although, from some circumstance or other, probably through increasing infirmity, he failed to mature the scheme, and has made over the large sum he had collected to the Church Missionary Society.' And we cannot but believe, looking to the future, that other blessings besides those enumerated are in store to bear their witness to the greatness and wisdom of this movement. The perpetuity of the Church of Christ in its Apostolic form is secured in those numerous communities, the powerful nations of future times, in which it has been planted. The Churches thus founded will be able to multiply themselves; they will exist as witnesses for the primitive rule and faith against the infinite subdivisions, and the various and lax doctrines of Christian sects on the one hand, and 1 It is not surprising that the late venerable Bishop, considering his time of life, should have felt himself unequal to organize a scheme demanding so much energy and labour. Nor is it surprising, from his known predilection, that he should have transferred the funds to the Church Missionary Society. But the Committee of this Society make a not very ingenuous use of this circumstance, when they draw from it the inference, that 'every modern attempt to establish missions in any other way (than by voluntary Missionary Societies at home) has failed.'-See Statement to accompany Memorial of the Church Missionary Society, against the corruptions and despotism of the Papal monarchy on the other. And, in ages to come, they will fairly bring to the test whether the Apostolic polity of confederate yet independent Episcopates, or the centralized despotism of a single head, is the better able to maintain and propagate the Church of Christ over the face of the whole world. It was impossible that a thought of what had been thus exhibited in other parts of the world should not have vividly presented itself to the minds of those interested in the extension of the Redeemer's kingdom, on the recent disastrous outbreak in our Indian possessions. What deep thoughts and stirrings of heart, what momentous problems demanding solution, have been awakened by that melancholy tale of terror and of crime, are abundantly witnessed in the discussions, suggestions, earnest pleadings, and conflicts of opinion, that are yet rife in our public assemblies and journals, and are as far as ever from being settled. It seems as if the depths of society in that fated land had been suddenly broken up, and the foundations of the earth had been laid bare; and men, as they looked down, were appalled to see upon how frail, how rotten a basis our boasted empire had rested. All the innate wickedness of the human unregenerate heart, all the demoralizing, demoniacal influence of heathen idolatries, were found seething in the hearts, and under the fair exterior of the native population. Our hold upon them has been literally nothing; all has been wholly superficial. We have retained them neither by force nor love,-simply by opinion. The one great principle which underlies all individual character, and upon which human societies are built,-religion,-this has been kept quite out of sight and ignored; among a people, too, whose whole mind, habits, and life are saturated with the religious idea and sentiment. We treated the natives as we do children, tolerating and flattering their superstitions as harmless levities, while we undisguisedly contemned them; yet at the same time we repudiated, or nearly so, any religion of our own, and were contemned as well as hated in return. What wonder if Christian politicians, nay, all men of any deep Christian convictions, saw and felt that an amalgamation between these heathen multitudes and ourselves was an impossibility, while the very principles of all our life-social, political, and individual— were at variance; that human craft and policy were all unequal to the task of making one people out of Christians and pagans? What wonder if it should been felt that in this perilous outbreak,-threatening our whole empire in the East and our security at home, and pointing as with visible finger to the one damning spot, the Tρтоv yeudos which has brought forth this portentous disaster,-there was an evident Divine warning as there was a providential opportunity to make fresh efforts for Christianizing that heathen land, and healing the deep-seated ulcer that affects it? And what wonder, we will repeat, if the directors of our Christian missions earnestly set their minds to consider how they could best open out fresh missionary enterprises, how they could strengthen and consolidate their existing missions, how give unity and force and expansive power to them, and if, in so doing, they turned instinctively to that principle of Church polity, an Apostolic Episcopate, which had been found so fruitful, so full of evangelic blessing in other lands, and in all ages, and which had hitherto been only so very partially applied in our missionary conflict with the superstitions of the East? The consequence was, as our readers will remember, that one of our great missionary societies, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, under the presidency and with the cooperation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, held two meetings at the close of 1857, for the extension of their Indian missions, at which meetings the desirableness of dividing the present enormous dioceses, and of making the Episcopate a living, effective reality, was urged by more than one speaker, especially by the Bishop of Oxford in strains of unusual fervour, and was cordially accepted by the hearers. But this was only in continuation of more specific steps, that had been previously, and indeed at many different times, taken by the Society in this direction, and which it is necessary now to relate. It appears that in 1853 the Society addressed a memorial to Lord Aberdeen, then First Lord of the Treasury, praying that 'advantage might be taken of the legislation then necessary for the government of India, to extend the Episcopate in that country. Again, in 1856, 'the urgent necessity which existed 'for creating additional sees in India, was brought under the 'consideration of the President of the Board of Control,' by the Archbishop of Canterbury, accompanied by other Peers. Shortly after this, in the same year, a committee was especially appointed to consider the subject more in detail; and it was before this committee that a carefully-prepared paper was read by the Rev. A. R. Symonds, Secretary of the Madras Committee of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which seems to have acted on the Church Missionary Society somewhat as the greased cartridges did on the smouldering spirit of disaffection among the sepoys. It was the object of this paper to urge, as it does with considerable force and point, the strong claims and great need of Tinnevelly to be made a separate see, and to have a resident bishop, for the better organization of the numerous bodies of converts, and for extending missionary operations in that fruitful province. With steady and unwearied constancy |