Being a Course of Lectures Delivered at S. Petersburg in the Official Residence of the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod to Audiences Consisting for the Most Part of Members of the Orthodox Church of Russia

Chapter IV.
Some Account of the Present Condition of the Church of England

LET me sum up the principal points which I have been trying to set before you.
The Church of England began to be founded in the year 597 when S. Augustine of Canterbury and his companions, who had been sent from Rome by Pope S. Gregory the Great, began to preach the Gospel in the Kingdom of Kent, a region situated in the South-east corner of England. In Kent S. Augustine founded the see of Canterbury, which has ever since been the primatial see of the English Church.

The Northern and Central parts of England were evangelized by Celtic Missionaries from the great Monastic centre on the island of lona. But in 664 it was decided that the Southern and the Northern Churches should unite, and that the united Church should be subject to the metropolitical jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

For a period of more than five centuries, although the Church of England was in communion with the Pope, it had very little to do with him. But during the four centuries which followed the death of Henry I. in 1135, the forged decretals were accepted in England as genuine documents which were supposed to have been written during the first three centuries of the Christian era, and the result was that the Pope succeeded in obtaining a considerable increase of power over the English Church.

This state of things came to an end in 15 34, in which year the Provincial Synods of Canterbury and York put forth Synodical Declarations affirming that the jurisdiction claimed by the Pope in England had no warrant of Scripture in its favour. Four years later, in 1538, Pope Paul III. issued a bull deposing King Henry VIII. and excommunicating all Englishmen who continued to acknowledge him as their King. The Church and the Nation paid no attention to this bull, and the Bishops and Clergy continued to offer the Holy Sacrifice and to administer the Sacraments without taking any account of the papal interdict.

From 1538 to the present time there has been no inter-communion between the Church of Rome and the Church of England, except during a few years of the reign of Queen Mary. But no new Church was founded. The old Church of England went on without any breach in either its legal or its spiritual continuity. It continued to profess the Catholic faith, which was once for all delivered to the Saints. It preserved without any break the Apostolical succession of its ministry; and by God's great mercy it is to-day full of spiritual life and vigour.

I do not mean that the history of the Church of England reveals an uninterrupted manifestation of vigorous life. There have been times of persecution; as for example, when in the days of Oliver Cromwell the Bishops were expelled from their sees and nearly all the parochial Clergy from their parishes; and Calvinistic dissenters took possession of the churches. This tyranny lasted for seventeen years, from 1643 to 1660. During that time hardly any valid Eucharists were celebrated in public, and in most parishes baptism ceased to be administered. Nevertheless there were glorious martyrdoms. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Laud, was martyred first, and King Charles was martyred later. Both of them died for their adherence to the Catholic faith and to the Catholic organization of the Church; and numbers of the Clergy were spoiled of their goods, and lived in poverty and in some cases in exile.

But at last the tyranny came to an end. King Charles II., who had been living in exile, was restored to the throne of his ancestors; and the Church recovered her status in the country, the Bishops resuming their jurisdiction over their respective dioceses, and the parochial Clergy returning to their several parishes.

Again in the eighteenth century after the death of Queen Anne, German kings from Lutheran Hanover, who knew nothing of the Catholic principles of the Church of England, inherited the crown of Great Britain and Ireland; and through the working of various causes the Church seemed for a time to sink into a state of relative torpor. It is true that this phenomenon was not peculiar to England. A similar state of things existed during a great part of the eighteenth century in almost every country in Europe. But in England notwithstanding the general darkness there were some shining lights. It is enough to mention as samples Bishop Wilson of Sodor and Man, Bishop Butler of Durham, and William Law.

In the second half of the eighteenth century the state of things improved. · What is known as the Evangelical movement, although it was marred by its lack of theological, knowledge, and its weak grasp of Church principles, was nevertheless much blessed by God in its practical efforts tp promote piety, and to reclaim sinners, and to establish missions among the heathen, and to help forward great philanthropic enterprises such as that which resulted first in the abolition of the slave trade, and finally in the complete emancipation of all the slaves existing within the bounds of the British Empire. In order to compensate the slave-owners for the loss of their property, the English Parliament voted a sum of £20,000,000, or in other words 200 million roubles for that purpose.

The Act of Parliament emancipating the slaves was passed in August, 1833. In July, 1833, another great religious movement was begun in England, which is sometimes known as the Catholic movement, sometimes as the Oxford movement, and sometimes as the Trac-tarian movement. This last name was given to it, because the first work, which those who started the movement undertook, was the publication of a series of Tracts entitled Tracts for the Times, the object of which was to recall to the memories of the members of the Church the Catholic principles which are professed by the Church of England, but which had fallen rather into the background during the sleepy times of the eighteenth century, and had been left in the background by the Evangelicals.

I will ask you to note carefully the way in which I have worded my last sentence. It must not be supposed that during the eighteenth century any change was made in the doctrinal formularies of the English Church, or in her Prayer-book, or in her hierarchical organization. Nothing was changed; but nearly everything was carried out in a negligent and inadequate way. Faith and love seemed to have grown cold in most places, and even where, as among the Evangelicals, there was a real revival of spiritual life, little emphasis was laid on the corporate life of the Church and on the sacramental channels of grace, which have been entrusted to her guardianship.

But now in Oxford this new movement began to show itself. Men began in quite a new way to take interest in the Church, as a Divinely founded and Divinely organized society; and this newly awakened interest extended itself to everything connected with the Church, her sacraments, her worship, her Apostolical ministry, her history, her traditions, her doctrinal formularies, her literature, her synods, her canon law, her theology, whether dogmatic, moral, ascetic, or mystical. The writings of the Fathers were studied, as they had not been studied since the death of Queen Anne,. New editions of the great English divines of the seventeenth century were published. And soon the movement spread from the university to the parochial clergy, whether in town or country, and to the laity. New churches were built; old churches were restored and beautified; great pains were bestowed on making the public worship of God solemn and beautiful; candidates for confirmation became much more numerous, and were in many places much more carefully prepared both spiritually and intellectually for the reception of that sacrament, than had been normally the custom, before the Oxford movement began; the religious life was revived first among women, afterwards among men; missions to the heathen were organized on a larger scale and more efficiently, and missionary Bishops were consecrated to superintend them; above all there was an enormous multiplication of celebrations of the Holy Eucharist, so that in most churches the Eucharist is celebrated on all Sundays and festivals, and in many churches it is celebrated every day. It seemed as if the prophetic vision of the prophet, Ezekiel, was being fulfilled, and the breath of the Lord was entering into the dry bones, and they lived, and they stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.

It will perhaps interest you and help you to realise the existing state of things in the Church of England, if I go a little more into detail in regard to some of the points which I have mentioned just now in a cursory way. I spoke of the careful way in which in many places candidates for confirmation are spiritually as well as intellectually prepared for the reception of that Sacrament. The spiritual preparation would include careful instruction on repentance, on the hatefulness of sin, on the need of self-examination, and of contrition and amendment of life; and in many cases the person under instruction is led to desire to make his confession to a priest with the view of receiving Absolution before he comes to the Bishop to be sealed by the Holy Ghost in the Sacrament of Confirmation.

And confession to a priest with a view to receive Absolution is practised not only in preparation for Confirmation, but also on many other occasions. Many people make their confession every month or every fortnight or even oftener. Others make their confession before the great festivals, Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. Others do so only when they have fallen into some grievous sin, which weighs upon their conscience, and hinders them from making their Communion.

There can be no doubt that the practice of Confession has enormously increased in the Church of England during the last eighty years. On the other hand, during the sleepy times of the eighteenth century it had very much diminished. But before the eighteenth century the proofs of its being widely used abound. It was customary during the seventeenth century for the Bishops, when they made inquiries as to the state of religion in the several parishes under their jurisdiction, to put such questions as these to the Church-wardens:--"Whether the Minister exhorteth those troubled or disquieted to open their grief, that they may by the Minister receive the benefit of Absolution." And again:--"Whether the Minister have revealed any crimes or offences, so committed to his trust and secrecy, contrary to the 113th Canon?" In the Church of Ireland, which was in communion with the Church of England, there was a canon which required that, whenever there was to be a Celebration of the Holy Eucharist, a bell should be tolled on the afternoon of the day before, so that if any parishioners desired to make their confession before receiving the Holy Communion, they should know that a priest was at hand, who would give them an opportunity of doing so. This canon was passed in 1634. [See canon xix. of the Synod of Dublin of that year (Wilkins's Concilia, iv. 501).]

One of the most popular books of devotion among the members of the Church of England has been in past days the Practice of Piety, compiled by Bishop Lewis Bayly, who was Bishop of Bangor from 1616 to 1632. In 1714 it had reached its fifty-first edition; and there have been at least twenty-one editions, perhaps more, since 1714, making at least seventy-two editions altogether. A whole section of the book deals with the subject of Confession and Absolution. From this section I will quote the following passage:--"If any sin therefore troubleth thy conscience, confess it to God's Minister; ask his counsel, and if thou dost truly repent, receive his absolution. And then doubt not, in foro conscientiae, but thy sins be as verily forgiven on earth, as if thou didst hear Christ Himself, in foro judicii, pronouncing them to be forgiven in heaven."

There are a number of other English devotional writers of the seventeenth century who deal with this subject much in the same way as Bishop Lewis Bayly deals with it. I might mention the names of Bishop Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Cosin, and Bishop Wilson; and there are many more. But I feel no doubt that the practice of confession is very much more widely used at the present time in England and in the Anglican communion generally, than it was in England in the seventeenth century.

I pass now to another subject, the revival of the Religious or Monastic life in the Church of England. In the middle ages England was covered with Monasteries and other Religious Houses, mostly for men, but with a fair sprinkling also of nunneries for consecrated virgins. All these, amounting to more than six hundred in number, were suppressed, as Religious Houses, by King Henry VIII. A few of them were re-established as Cathedral or Collegiate churches with a chapter of secular canons headed by a Dean to minister in them; but nearly all of them ceased to exist in any form, and their property was confiscated by the rapacious king, and for the most part bestowed by him, as gifts to his greedy courtiers. Thus for three hundred years the monastic life in all its forms was stamped out of the Church of England, not by any action of the Church, but by the sacrilegious act of a tyrannous king.

But one of the results of the Oxford movement was to give back to our Church that dedicated life of poverty, chastity, and obedience, of which she had been so wickedly robbed.

On Trinity Sunday, 1841, Miss Marian Hughes took a vow of holy virginity during the Celebration of the Holy Eucharist in S. Mary's Church, Oxford. After seventy-one years that lady is still alive, and in extreme old age she still rules, as Mother Superior, the Convent of the Holy Trinity at Oxford, which she founded about sixty years ago. [Since these words were written, the venerable lady, to whom allusion is made in the text, has fallen asleep in the Lord. Requiescat in pace.]

In process of time other Religious Communities of women have been established in various parts of England, and in the United States of America, and in Canada, South Africa, Central Africa, India, and elsewhere; so that there must be thousands of Religious women, dedicated to God under the vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, belonging to the Anglican Communion.

The revival of the Religious life among men began at a later date than the similar revival among women. The oldest among existing Religious Societies of men is the Society of S. John the Evangelist, to which I have the honour to belong. It was founded forty-seven years ago, that is in 1865, by Father Benson of Christ Church, Oxford. It is primarily a Society of Priests, who after a noviciate of two or three years have been professed under vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience. The Mother-House is at Cowley St. John, a suburb of Oxford; and its members are commonly called the Cowley Fathers. It has also a house at Westminster, and a house at Boston in the United States of America; it has two houses in India, and two in South Africa. Besides the Fathers of the Society there are Lay Brothers associated with them, who also after lengthened probation take the three vows, which I have just now mentioned.

Other religious Societies of men have been founded and are flourishing, such as the Community of the Resurrection which has its Mother-House at Mirfield in Yorkshire, and the Society of the Sacred Mission which has its centre at Kelham, and the Society of the Divine Compassion at Plaistow, the Benedictine Community at Caldey, a little island off the coast of South Wales, and in the United States of America the Order of the Holy Cross.

I will say a few words about the objects which the Society of St. John the Evangelist sets before itself. Its primary purpose is the cultivation in its members of a life dedicated to God according to the principles of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience. Its members, when they are professed, part with any property which they may possess, and take life-long vows of celibacy, and promise to live in obedience to the constituted authorities of the Society in accordance with its Rule and Statutes. They daily recite together in their Chapel the offices of Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, and they have other rules concerning times to be set apart for private prayer, and concerning fasting and silence and other exercises of the Religious life.

But the Society also aims at advancing the Kingdom of Christ in the world by missions both in England and outside of England, and by using all suitable means for helping the members of the Church to grow in holiness. Abroad, the Society carries on Missions among the Natives of India, especially in the diocese of Bombay; and also among the South African Kaffirs, both in KafFraria and at Capetown, the capital of South Africa. In England and in the United States of America we accept invitations from the parochial clergy to preach missions lasting ten days or a fortnight, to stir up and convert to God those who are living sinful or careless lives, and to move the devout to give themselves to God more completely. We also conduct many Retreats lasting three or four or five days, which are kept as days of prayer and silence, three addresses being given each day by the conductor. These Retreats are sometimes held in convents of nuns for the benefit of the nuns; sometimes in other places for the Clergy, or for lay-people, whether men or women, living in the world. Our Fathers also hear many confessions, and preach many sermons; and from time to time some of them write books dealing with spiritual or theological subjects.

But it must not be supposed that missions to the heathen and parochial missions and retreats in England and America are conducted only by members of Religious Communities. Foreign Missions among the heathen have been carried on by Bishops and Priests of the Church of England on an ever-increasing scale during the whole of the last century. At first the missionaries were mostly men who had been influenced by the Evangelical movement; but after the Oxford movement had begun and established itself, those who have been influenced by that movement have taken their full share in the great work. And there are now very few parts of the heathen world where missions of the Church of England are not established.

There are two great Societies, which act as the principal hand-maids of the Church in carrying out the work of Missions to the heathen. The oldest is the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which carries on a double work, namely (i) the sending of missionaries to minister to the Christians of European descent, who live in the British Colonies in different parts of the world; and (2) the sending of missionaries to the heathen in whatever part of the world they are to be found. The other great Society of this sort is the Church Missionary Society whic'h establishes its missions only among the heathen. The first of these two Societies was founded more than two hundred years ago, in the reign of William III., and it has always been very closely connected with the rulers of the Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury for the time being having always been its President. The Church Missionary Society was founded rather more than one hundred years ago by men who had been much influenced by the Evangelical movement. Its President has, I think, generally been a layman; and it has been less closely connected with the Hierarchy of the Church than its elder sister, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, although, as its name implies, it has always been a distinctly Church of England Society, and all its ordained Missionaries have been Bishops, Priests, or Deacons of the Church of England.

Besides these two great Missionary Societies there are other smaller Societies, which have been severally founded to evangelize the heathen in this or that particular part of the world. Of these I will only name the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, which has done and is doing a noble work in a very trying and unhealthy climate.

I cannot go into details about the fruits of these Missions. All over the world thousands of heathen men and women have been converted to Christ our Lord, and have been admitted through Holy Baptism into His Church, and many of them have proved by their holy lives that they have really given their hearts to Christ. Many also have been ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood, and three have been consecrated to the episcopate. God has also set His seal on the missionary work of the Church by granting to some of the Missionaries and to many of their Native converts the grace and glory of Martyrdom.

There was for example Bishop Patteson, the first Bishop of the Melanesian Islands in the Western part of the Pacific Ocean, who, though he knew that there was great danger in landing on a certain island, the island of Nukapu, nevertheless determined to land in the hope that he might begin the work of God among the wild inhabitants, and they slew him. That was in 1871.

And there was Bishop Hannington, who was consecrated to be Bishop of Uganda, a country near the sources of the River Nile. He sailed from England, and landed at Mombasa on the East coast of Africa, and then journeyed on foot during four months until he reached the frontier of the kingdom of Uganda. There he was seized and bound, and kept in confinement for eight days, and after that, by order of the heathen king of Uganda, he was put to death, and fifty of his followers were also slaughtered. This was in 1885.

And eight months afterwards, in 1886, this same wicked king of Uganda, when he saw that the holy religion of Christ was spreading in his country, gave orders that a number of his Native Christian subjects, some of them belonging to the English Church and some to the Roman communion, should be cast alive into the flames and burnt. And many of them died in this way, singing hymns to Christ our Lord in the midst of the flames, very much as in old days the three holy children, Ananias, Azarias, and Misael praised the Lord in the fiery furnace at Babylon.

I have tried to describe to you some of the fruits of the vigorous spiritual life which God in His great mercy has granted to the Church of England, since she woke up from the state of somnolence and torpor into which she very largely sank, after the country began to be ruled by the German Lutheran kings from Hanover, whose dynasty succeeded to the throne of England after the death of Queen Anne in 1714. But I am not at all wishing you to think that everything is perfect in the Church of England. We have, I hope, corrected many things that were amiss, but there still remain things which we deplore, and which we hope and pray that, in His own good time, God will enable us to put right.

Perhaps the most serious of these things is the existence of strongly marked differences of opinion on important matters, which undoubtedly does exist in the Anglican Communion. There are what may be called three parties in the Church, which are commonly known by the names of the High Church party, the Low Church party, and the Broad Church party. I have sometimes been told by English people who have lived in Russia, that many Russians are very much puzzled by the names which have been given to these parties. I have been told that some Russians suppose that the Church of England is a sort of confederation of three separate Churches, each with its own liturgy, its own doctrinal formularies, and its own separate hierarchy. This is of course a complete mistake. The Church of England is one Church, which uses one Prayer-book, and has one set of doctrinal formularies, and is ruled by one hierarchy, and has one system of ecclesiastical laws. Just as in the English nation there are different political parties; there is the Unionist or Conservative party, and there is the Radical party, and there is the Labour party, but all these parties belong to the same nation, they are under one King and one Parliament and under one set of laws, although they do not agree in everything; so it is in the Church. And surely the existence of parties within the Catholic Church is no new thing. In the latter part of the fourth century and in the first half of the fifth century there was one party which was very numerous in the patriarchate of Antioch, and which emphasized very strongly the great truth that there are two natures in Christ, but who had not so clear a grasp of the counter-balancing truth that there is only one person in Christ. I am thinking of theologians like Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia and the Blessed Theodoret of Cyrus. These men all lived and died in the communion of the Catholic Church; but they were strongly opposed by another school of theologians, such as S. Cyril of Alexandria, S. Rabbulas of Edessa, S. Proclus of Constantinople, and others who had a much clearer grasp of the unity of Christ's person and perhaps at times a less clear grasp of the duality of the natures of Christ. Ultimately the Church cut off the more extreme members of both of these parties. The Nestorians were cut off on the one side, and the Monophysites were cut off on the other side; but one or two generations had lived and died before these purgings took place; and a man like Theodore of Mopsuestia, who was the teacher of Nestorius, died in the peace of the Church, and he was not condemned as a heretic until the fifth Ecumenical Council in 553, more than 160 years after his consecration to the see of Mopsuestia. [S. Chrysostom writing from Cucusus (Ep. 212, P.G. lii. 668) assures Theodore that "exile as he is, he reaps no ordinary consolation from having such a treasure, such a mine of wealth within his heart as the love of so vigilant and noble a soul." John of Antioch (Facundus, Pro Defens. Tr. Capitul., ii. 2) says:--"Theodore expounded Scripture in all the Churches of the East." B. Theodoret (Hist. Eccl., v. 39) regarded Theodore as a "Doctor of the Universal Church."] During all that long period his very voluminous writings had an immense circulation, and an immense influence, because they were the writings of a learned and highly esteemed Bishop of the Church, who during the space of five generations remained free from any authoritative censure. He was censured by individuals, and he was censured by a large party who had been trained in the school of S. Cyril of Alexandria, but until the year 553 the Church had not censured him.

I have called your attention to the existence of parties in the Church, differing from each other on important points touching the fundamental doctrine of the Incarnation, and continuing in the Church side by side for more than 160 years. And all this happened long before the breach between the East and the West. I have given it as one example out of many that might have been mentioned.

If we turn to later times and consider the Latin Church, think of the long antagonism which existed for centuries between the Gallican party and the Ultramontane party, who held contradictory views as to the nature of the primacy of jurisdiction claimed by the Pope, and as to the prerogative of infallibility also claimed by him. In 1870 Pope Pius IX. declared that the infallibility of the Pope was "the very fundamental principle of Catholic faith and doctrine," yet during the greater part of the eighteenth century every French Bishop-Elect had to deny that doctrine as the necessary condition of being consecrated to be Bishop of his see. [Pope Pius made this assertion in a letter dated October 28, 1870, and addressed to the Archbishop of Munich (see Dr. von Dollinger's letter to that Archbishop, in Dollinger's Declarations and Letters on the Vatican Decrees, pp. 100, 101).] And yet the Church of Rome and the Church of France were in communion with each other all that time.

As it was with the Catholic Church in the fifth and sixth centuries and also at other times; and as it was with the Latin Church from before the year 1400 to 1870 as well as at other times, so it is with the Church of England now. There are different parties within the Church. They all accept, or at any rate profess to accept, the same creeds and other doctrinal formularies; they all worship using the same Prayer-book; they are all subject to the same Bishops and the same Synods; but the High Churchmen lay very special stress on the corporate life of the Church and on her dogmatic faith and on her Sacraments and tradition and authority, whereas the Low Churchmen lay special stress on the Atoning Sacrifice of Christ and on subjective religion; and Broad Churchmen are apt to magnify the claims of reason and of criticism. There are good elements in each of these, but for myself I think that High Churchmen adhere most faithfully to the doctrinal formularies and traditions both of the English Church and of the whole Catholic Church, and that their more intelligent and devoted members accept all that is good in the specially emphasized tenets of the other parties, but add to them a peculiar love for the great truths connected with the Church and the Sacraments, which makes their whole view of religion more coherent and more effective in maintaining the full revelation of Christ in its purity, and in promoting holiness among both clergy and laity.

I think also that in the Church of England party-feeling is diminishing, and that the majority among Low Churchmen and among Broad Churchmen are more and more absorbing into their system the truths which in the past have been specially dear to High Churchmen.

It must also be said that there are large numbers of English Churchmen who would refuse to call themselves members of any party, but who love the Church and use its means of grace, and live its life, without paying much attention to party controversy.

Looking at the existence of these parties within the Church in as dispassionate a way as I can, I think that their existence, so long as the divergence of opinion is restrained within limits, is almost inevitable and tends to keep in the foreground different aspects of the manifold wisdom of God, some of which might be obscured, if we all looked at Divine truth from exactly the same point of view. Even among the blessed Apostles, while all of them held the one faith, it is surely true to say that S. Paul, at any rate in some of his Epistles, emphasized one side and S. James another. Our Bishops certainly do feel the responsibility which lies on them to act from time to time as befits the official guardians of the faith. Archbishop Thomson of York deprived a priest named Voysey of the cure of souls in the parish committed to him for denying the truth of the Incarnation. Bishop Gore, formerly Bishop of Worcester, now Bishop of Oxford, wrote a letter of expostulation to Mr. Beeby, a parish-priest under his jurisdiction who had published a heretical book, with the result that Mr. Beeby resigned his position as parish-priest and retired from the exercise of his ministry. Bishop Talbot of Winchester quite recently withdrew his licence from a Priest who had written a book which appeared to deny the Resurrection of our Lord's holy Body from the Sepulchre on the third day. I mention these cases as samples. Nevertheless it remains true that, partly owing to the difficulties connected with the cumbrous machinery of the ecclesiastical courts, partly owing to other causes, many persons escape censure who undoubtedly ought to be censured; and this lack of vigour in the enforcement of discipline in the matter of doctrinal orthodoxy is a weak point in the practical working of the Church of England. In time, if we are faithful, God will help us to find remedies for this disease.

In the meanwhile, though, as in the times of the blessed Apostles, "without are fightings and within are fears," yet we do not lose heart. God has wrought a wonderful work of renewal in the Church of England during the last 130 years; and that inward renewal has shown itself outwardly in many ways. I will speak now of only one of these ways, and that is the extraordinary extension of the organization of the Anglican hierarchy throughout the world.

In 1786 there were only 57 Anglican diocesan Bishops in the whole world. Of these 27 occupied English sees; 22 occupied Irish sees; and 8 occupied Scottish sees. These fifty-seven Bishops were scattered over seven provinces, namely two English provinces, four Irish provinces, and one Scottish province.

On the other hand in 1907, five years ago, there were 249 Anglican diocesan Bishops. Of these 216 were scattered over fifteen provinces, two provinces in England, two in Ireland, one in Scotland, one in the United States of America, two in Canada, three in Australia, one in India, one in South Africa, one in New Zealand, and one in the West Indies, besides 33 dioceses which are not as yet included in any province. Thus during 121 years the number of provinces has more than doubled, and the number of dioceses has more than quadrupled.

I hope that I do not mention these figures in any spirit of pride. I mention them in order to give glory to God for what He has wrought among us, notwithstanding our unworthiness.

And now I must bring this lecture and my whole course of lectures to a close.

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