CHURCHES built at Wepener and Smithfield--Jagersfontein Diamond Mine--Consecration of new Church at Fauresmith--S. Cyprian's Church, Kimberley, built--Disaster during its erection--Its completion--Rev. W. T. Gaul appointed to Dutoitspan--His election to a Canonry--S. Augustine's, Kimberley--Rev. J. T. Darragh--Mr. Bevan returns to Phokoane--The Bishop's visit to Bechuanaland--Distinguished Laymen.

THE general work of the Diocese steadily progressed. On October, 26th, 1879, the Bishop dedicated a small church at Wepener, which Mr. Stenson served periodically from his Basutoland home at Mohali's Hoek. Going from thence to Smithfield, on November 2nd, he consecrated there a beautiful church, the funds for the erection of which Mr. Bell had been for several years collecting. The plans for it were the work of Mr. Hilder, a devout church architect, who, driven from England by pulmonary weakness, lived for some time among us. There are other works of his in the Diocese, but Smithfield is his chef d'wuvre, and is certainly one of the prettiest, if not the prettiest, of our churches. For sixteen years the services at Smithfield had been held in a schoolroom, and this House of God was the outcome of much self-denial as well as of persevering effort on the part of the Rector.

The discovery of diamonds in Griqualand West led to much prospecting, especially along the south-west border of the Free State. Several mines were worked at, but only one of them attracted a large population--that of Jagersfontein, some five miles from Fauresmith. At first services were held there by Mr. Steven, and on February gth, 1881, the Archdeacon dedicated a small church there. It was some time before there was a large resident population. So long as it could contain them, people preferred to have their homes at Fauresmith. The little church in that village which Mr. Clulee had built was now supplanted by a comely edifice, again the work of Mr. Hilder, which, having been opened by Archdeacon Croghan on February 6th, 1881, was consecrated on July 3rd.

The Bishop had then just returned from another visit to England. On his way thither he had taken part in the consecration of Bishop McKenzie at Capetown. Bishop Webb brought with him from England a band of lady workers; he was accompanied also by two priests, the Rev. Jas. Maxwell Lyte, one of the assistant clergy of S. Peter's, Eaton Square, that warm-hearted centre of interest in each and every work of the Diocese, and the Rev. H. C. Sanderson, M.A., who, among other parochial work, had for a time been assistant priest at the English Chapel at Rome. Mr. Lyte served the Bishop as chaplain, until his return to England about twelve months afterwards, and Mr. Sanderson joined the Brotherhood of S. Augustine.

The Diamond Fields had by this time become settled English communities. Family life had steadily increased. Griqualand West, at first a Crown Province, had become a district of the Cape Colony. Dwellings of canvas and wood had begun to give place to more substantial houses. There was great need of a larger church at Kimberley, and it was decided to import an iron building from England. This arrived in 1879. It was being erected, and was well on towards completion, when on a Sunday in December, while the Church people were worshipping in a hired building, a loud crash was heard. A sudden gust of wind had "lifted the building three feet from the ground, and it had dropped a pile of ruins, utterly shapeless, like a street of children's card-houses." There was nothing to be done but to buy fresh material, and to build again. By Easter, 1880, the new church was ready, and it was dedicated by the Bishop on Low Sunday. Archdeacon Croghan, writing at the time, described it thus:--"It is a fair imitation of a plain Perpendicular building worked out in wood and iron. The chancel is apsidal and well raised, separated from the nave by a screen with gates and stalled for a choir. The general effect of the interior is pleasing and certainly church-like."

An important measure, destined more and more to bear fruit as years went by, had been the preferment of Mr. Gaul to be Rector of Dutoitspan at the beginning of 1880. Mr. Holbech had finished the three years of help for which he had come out, and was returning to England. In Kimberley itself, in 1877, by Mr. Borton's energy, a church in what is called the West End, dedicated to S. Augustine, had been built. This was now being served by Mr. Tobias, who, after three years of self-denying work at Rouxville, had been ordained priest in 1879. Towards the end of 1880 the ill-health of his wife compelled Mr. Maude to resign the living of S. Cyprian's, and a considerable time elapsed before it could be satisfactorily filled; indeed, the object of the Bishop's visit to England in the winter of 1880-81 was principally to obtain a priest for S. Cyprian's. Such help as was possible was given from Bloemfontein. Archdeacon Croghan and Canon Miles both filled the post for a time, and when, in 1881, to the great comfort of the Diocese, Mr. Holbech returned, having determined to make it his home, he for a while took charge of S. Cyprian's.

With Mr. Holbech came the Rev. J. T. Darragh, who had graduated with distinction at Trinity College, Dublin. He was then in deacon's orders, but was soon afterwards ordained priest, and became assistant curate at S. Cyprian's. Mr. Darragh remained in this post for six years, serving the parish with great zeal. A work to which he was specially devoted was the care of the Cape people, as they are termed, persons of mixed race accustomed to the habits of civilised life. The "Perseverance Guild" into which he gathered them proved a very successful undertaking. On his way from England he had written an essay on "Casuistry," which had gained him a college prize. While still at Kimberley his University presented him with the degree honoris causa of Bachelor in Divinity. In 1887 he was selected by the Bishop of Pretoria to take charge of a work at the new gold-fields at Johannesburg, in the Transvaal.

The organisation of the Church in Griqualand West was still further advantaged in September, 1881, by the election of Mr. Gaul, at a Synod of Clergy held at Kimberley, to the Canonry vacated by Archdeacon McKenzie's elevation to the Episcopate, and his appointment to be Rural Dean of the district. S. Cyprian's Rectory remained vacant until 1882, when the Rev. W. F. J. Hanbury, curate of Shepperton, Middlesex, was appointed to it.

In July, 1879, Mr. Bevan was enabled to return to Phokoane. Botlasitse, the chief who had expelled us in 1877, had by acts of hostility come into collision with the British authorities. In 1878 a war broke out, provoked by the murder of an English trader under circumstances of great cruelty. The chief and his family were made prisoners and lodged in Kimberley gaol, where Mr. Bevan had opportunities of showing to him and to his brother, who had been so bitter against us in 1877, many acts of kindness. In 1879 Botlasitse was allowed to return to Phokoane, but his power was broken. In August, 1880, the Bishop paid a visit to the Mission, where he confirmed sixty adults. Already the communicants numbered eighty, and there were fifty catechumens. Canon Crisp went with the Bishop, rejoicing to meet his old friends again, and picking out, in the church which they had put up from the materials of the larger one which had been pulled down, spar after spar which he recognised as having passed through his hands. The Litany-desk was one which had stood in his lodgings when he was a clerk in London. When the war broke out, one of the Christians had taken it to a far-off village by the Molopo river, where he had been a refugee. He had just returned, bringing it with him.

Bechuanaland had been shorn of much of its glory since Canon Crisp's visits to it in the early seventies. The beautiful trees which then adorned it had gone to feed the Kimberley furnaces. In 1882, a helper came to Mr. Bevan in the person of Mr. Deacon, from East Retford, where Mr. Bevan had served his first curacy. One marked feature of the work in Bechuanaland from the first was the ready assistance offered by the people themselves. This one and that would begin by holding services and teaching the Catechism at the cattle-posts and outlying villages, and end by bringing quite a band of converts to the Mother Station. In this way important offshoots began to be established around Mr. Sevan's chief work, and his year was soon mapped out in provision for the care of them. He would travel about among them in his wagon, spending a few weeks here, and three months there, catechising, baptizing, reconciling; living as simply as a S. Sturmi, refreshing himself with Dante and writing to his friends about some new book, which with his quick touch with the world of letters had been read by him before perhaps they had heard of it. One of these stations named by him S. Denys, grew up on the southern bank of the Vaal river, in the Boshof district of the Free State; another is at a place called Gestoptefontein, on the western border of the Transvaal, really in the Diocese of Pretoria, but under our care with Bishop Bousfield's consent. S. John's, David's old station, had been abandoned through political changes, and David had gone to work first near Bloemfontein, then at Modderpoort, but some of the converts had settled near the village of Christiana (also in the Transvaal), and these founded another station. [In 1893 Mr. Bevan wrote to the Bishop saying that some native Christians had formed a new settlement at S. John's, and that he had paid a visit to them.] A fourth station was near to Khunoana, a Barolong town, where a number of our Thabanchu Christians had settled after 1880. It was not till 1893 that a permanent church of stone was built at Phokoane, dedicated to S. Michael in memory of the first visit there in 1875 having been on Michaelmas Day.

On September 4th, 1880, there died at Bloemfontein, Mr. George Home, a representative type of those earnest laymen who have from the first actively seconded the Bishop and his clergy in the establishment of the Diocese. The journal of the first Bishop, describing his arrival at Bloemfontein, October znd, 1863, says, "At Mr. Harries' farm we met half-a-dozen Bloemfontein gentlemen who had driven out to welcome me, amongst them a Mr. George Home, one of the old inhabitants here, who was churchwarden when an English clergyman (Mr. Every) was placed in Bloemfontein years since. I told him I should consider him churchwarden again from this day." This he continued to be for many years. He sat in Synod in the first four sessions, represented the Diocese at the Provincial Synod in 1876, and was Secretary of the Finance Board from its creation till 1880. He was a kindly Christian gentlemen, devoted to the well-being of the Church.

Perhaps this is a fitting place to record the names of other unselfish laymen who have been foremost among the many who have given their time and substance to the work of the Diocese--of the late Mr. G. A. White, the accomplished musician, for fifteen years the honorary organist of the Cathedral and first Treasurer of the Diocese; of Mr. Alfred Barlow, his successor in the latter office, and still one of the Trustees of the Clergy Sustentation Fund; of Mr. Edmund Bourdillon, Registrar of the Diocese, twice Diocesan Representative at, and Secretary of, the Provincial Synod (1883 and 1891), one of the earliest and most frequent members of the Diocesan Synod, always more than ready, eager to serve the Diocese; of Mr. A. W. Beck, the busy merchant, whose immediate cares have always been laid aside to give advice, and whose interest in the well-being of the Diocese has been so keen and constant; of Mr. Frank Oldfield, for some years its Financial Secretary, and now the Treasurer of its Pension Fund; of Mr. Charles Welsford, to whom the South of the Free State owes so much; of Mr. Vincent of Clocolan, and Mr. A. E. Richards of Thlotse, both of them lay-readers, and the latter the friend and patron of the Mission of Sekubu; of Mr. Lagden, to whom Maseru and other works in Basutoland are deeply indebted; of the brothers (both of whom are now at rest) Mr. C. S. Orpcn in Smithfield and Mr. Francis Orpen at Douglas, Griqua-land West, by whose prudent watchfulness valuable property was secured to the Church; of Mr. A. A. Young of Karee-fontein, G. L. W.; and in Kimbeiiey, of Mr. B. T. Knights, of Mr, C. M. Bult, Mr. E. A. Judge (Civil Commissioner), Mr. Edward Jones, Mr. G. H. Goch, Mr. W. H. Rogers, and Mr. Cranswick; and in Bechuanaland of Mr. Tillard--Churchmen whose devotion to the Church's interest has continued year after year, who have stood in the breach when difficulties have oppressed her; the ready men on whom the clergy have always been able to look for support and for counsel in trials.

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