bishop signed by twelve thousand of the clergy and a hundred and thirty-seven thousand laymen. Tait held his own way calmly, and the trouble has long ago died away.

Similar excitement arose over the case of Bishop Colenso, who dealt with great freedom with the historical statements of the Old Testament. He was excommunicated by his metropolitan, Bishop Gray, of Capetown. Bishop Temple, with great courage, dissuaded Convocation from joining in this excommunication. He dreaded the establishment of an ecclesiastical tyranny unsuited to the conditions of modern thought and life. Speaking of Bishop Gray, he said: "I consider him to hold very strong opinions on one side, differing from myself and more than one-half the Bishops of the Church of England. He is fully entitled to hold these opinions; but I think there is this fault in his character that he is not content with merely holding these opinions, but that he wishes to make every other person hold them too. And therefore I do not wish to endow him with anything like absolute authority over the Church in the colony in which he presides." Changes in ecclesiastical currents are very surprising. The critical attitude of Bishop Colenso with

regard to the Old Testament is now shared by a large and increasing number of Dr. Pusey's own followers.

The controversy had shown the relations between the Church of England and the Colonial Churches to be confused and undefined. Bishop Tait asked Archbishop Longley to send a circular letter to the Colonial Bishops, asking their opinions on these relations. The Archbishop and his adviser, Bishop Wilberforce, of Oxford, thought such an inquiry unnecessary; so Bishop Tait issued one himself. The points to which the questions referred were: canonical obedience. to the See of Canterbury; appeal to some authority in England from the decision of Colonial Church courts; the royal supremacy; and unity of doctrine in the scattered branches of the English communion. This led to the first Lambeth Conference of Bishops, which took place in 1867. The action of Bishop Tait and others restrained the impulsive Bishop of Capetown, and secured, for a long time to come, the close connection between the Colonial Churches and the Church of England.

The Ritual question continued to disturb the Church. There were long debates in Convocation, both Houses of Canterbury finally

agreeing, on February 13th, 1867, that no innovations should be introduced without the consent of the Bishop. The matter was frequently discussed in Parliament, and a Royal Commission was promised. Lord Shaftesbury brought a Bill into the House of Lords to eliminate the eucharistic vestments, but it was thrown out by sixty-one votes to forty-six. The report of the Commission expressed the opinion that it is expedient to restrain, in the public services of the United Church of England and Ireland, all variations in respect of vesture from that which has long been the established usage of the said United Church; and we think that this may best be secured by providing aggrieved parishioners with an easy and effectual process for complaint and redress." In discussing this report, Bishop Tait illustrated his own practice: "For my own part I think I may say that I have always endeavoured to act in a large and kindly spirit towards those who are advocates of these practices. I desire that my own conscience shall be respected, and I desire also that the consciences of others shall be respected; and whether in matters of doctrine, or in allowable matters of practice, I think that within due limits in the National Church we ought, as

carefully as we possibly can, to act upon that principle. I certainly have had very kindly intercourse during the time of my episcopate with persons of almost every shade of opinion in my diocese, and I believe that if any blame is to be attached to me in these matters it is rather the blame of having allowed people to act for themselves than of having interfered, where I might have been expected to interfere, to restrain and curb their liberty." This would be abundantly shown by the account of his patient dealing with All Saints', Margaret Street; St. Alban's, Holborn; St. Peter's, Peter's, London Docks; St. Matthias', Stoke Newington; and St. Michael's, Shoreditch.

In a letter to the clergy he said: "Certain persons have taken upon themselves so to alter the whole external appearance of the celebration of the Lord's Supper as to make it scarcely distinguishable from the Roman Mass, and they endeavour on all occasions to introduce into the other services some change of vestment or ornament quiet alien to the established English usage of three hundred years. . . . . . The number of those who are so committed is, I am confident, very small. The Church of England from the Reformation has allowed great liberty as to the

doctrine of the sacraments; and though I fear it cannot be denied that a few are engaged in a conspiracy to bring back our Church to the state in which it was before the Reformation, I fully believe that most of those who advocate what we deem an excessive ritual would indignantly deny that they had any such purpose."

The establishment of one of Bishop Tait's greatest works, the Bishop of London's Fund, arose from the charge of 1862. The population of London, as he pointed out, was annually increased by about forty thousand souls, and all the efforts which had been made were inadequate to overtake these steadily advancing needs. Between 1851 and 1861 sixty-six permanent and twenty-one temporary churches had been opened, providing accommodation for about one-sixth of the increased population.

"The appalling fact accordingly transpires," said Bishop Tait, "that, whatever were our spiritual wants in this respect in 1851, all our great exertions have not lessened them, but have at best prevented the evil from growing worse."

He pointed out that there were three parishes in the diocese with a population of more than thirty thousand, and only a single church;