JUBILEE SERVICES, ST. PAUL'S CHAPEL.
__________

ON the 31st day of October, A.D. 1832, during the session of the General Convention in the City of New York, a remarkable service was held in St. Paul's Chapel, in the Parish of Trinity Church, in that city. On that occasion, four priests were consecrated to the Episcopal office, the Rev. John H. Hopkins, D.D., the Rev. Benjamin B. Smith, D.D., the Rev. Charles P. McIlvaine, D.D., and the Rev. George W. Doane, A.M. The Consecrator was the Right Rev. William White, D.D., then Presiding Bishop; he was assisted by seven of the nine Bishops who with him at that time comprised the American Episcopate; and the dioceses for which the four newly ordained prelates were set apart were those, respectively, of Vermont, Kentucky, Ohio, and New Jersey.

Of all the Bishops concerned in that memorable transaction, only one now remains on earth, the Right Reverend Benjamin B. Smith, Presiding Bishop of the Church in the United States of America.

Early in the summer of 1882, measures were taken with a view to a commemoration of the semi-centennial anniversary of an event which was justly regarded as one of great interest in the history of the Parish of Trinity Church as [3/4] well as in that of our Communion in this country. At the request of the Rector, the Rev. Dr. Mulchahey, Assistant Minister in charge of St. Paul's Chapel, wrote to the Presiding Bishop, and also to the Right Rev. Wm. Croswell Doane, S.T.D., Bishop of Albany, and son of the late Bishop of New Jersey, and to the Rev. John H. Hopkins, D.D., son of the late Bishop of Vermont, asking them to be present and take part in a service to be held in St. Paul's on the 31st of October. Replies having been received, informing him that neither Bishop Doane nor Dr. Hopkins could attend on that day, but that both could be present on the Sunday immediately preceding, and that it was doubtful whether the Presiding Bishop, owing to his advanced age and infirmities, could be present at all, it was finally decided that the commemorative service should be held on the 29th, being the Sunday preceding and nearest to the day; and the Bishop of Albany and the Rev. Dr. Hopkins kindly promised to come to New York, take part in the religious exercises, and deliver addresses appropriate to the occasion.

During the session of the Convention of the Diocese of New York, in the latter part of September, the Right Rev. Bishop Potter requested the Rev. Drs. W. F. Morgan, H. C. Potter, James Mulchahey, B. F. DeCosta, Robt. I. Howland, J. S. Shipman, W. F. Watkins, and H. T. Satterlee, to act with the Rev. Dr. Dix, as a Committee of Arrangements representing the Bishop, the Clergy, and the Laity of the diocese. This general committee was subdivided into smaller committees, to one of which, consisting of [4/5] Drs. DeCosta and Mulchahey, was assigned the duty of preparing an address of congratulation to the Presiding Bishop; and to another, consisting of Drs. Potter and Dix, that of deciding upon a suitable gift to accompany the said address; while Dr. Mulchahey was entrusted with the arrangements at the Chapel and the direction of the services to be held. An invitation to be present was also sent to members of the family of the late Bishop McIlvaine, who were residing in New York at that time.

Upon the re-assembling of the Vestry of Trinity Church after their summer recess, the subject was brought before them, and the following extract from their Minutes, contains the record of the action which was taken.

"The Rector having called the attention of the Vestry to the fact that the 31st day of October will be the 50th anniversary of a memorable service held in St. Paul's Chapel, at which the venerable Presiding Bishop of the Church, the Right Rev. B. B. Smith, was consecrated to the Episcopate, together with Bishops Hopkins, of Vermont, Mcllvaine, of Ohio, and Doane, of New Jersey, and that he had taken order for the commemoration of the event by special services to be held in St. Paul's Chapel, on Sunday, the 29th inst., being the Sunday nearest to the anniversary, at which time it is hoped that the Presiding Bishop may be able to be present, and in which services the Right Rev. Bishop Doane, of Albany, and the Rev. Dr. Hopkins have promised to take part by delivering sermons or historical discourses on the morning and evening of that day; it was thereupon

[6] Resolved, That the Vestry will attend the memorial services, to be held at St. Paul's Chapel, on the ensuing 21st Sunday after Trinity.

Resolved, That the Vestry present their respectful and affectionate congratulations to the Right Rev. Bishop Smith on the 50th anniversary of his consecration to the Episcopate, and hope that he will be able to be present and preside at the proposed commemorative services.

Resolved, That the Vestry unite with the Rector in cordially welcoming the Right Reverend the Bishop of Albany, and the Rev. Dr. Hopkins, on that occasion as representatives of two of the eminent prelates now entered into their rest, and such members of the family of Bishop Mcllvaine as are expected to be present at that time.

The above is an extract from the minutes of a meeting of the vestry of Trinity Church, New York, held on the ninth day of October, A.D. 1882.
G. M. OGDEN, Clerk."

In accordance with these arrangements, on the designated day, October 29th, being the 21st Sunday after Trinity, a special Eucharistic Celebration was held in St. Paul's Chapel, appropriate hymns, anthems, and selections from the Psalter being used at Morning and Evening Prayer.

At 10:30 A.M. the service opened with the 202d hymn as the processional, during which the bishops and clergy entered the church, in the presence of a full congregation, which included representatives of the families of the bishops [6/7] whose consecrations were commemorated, and many worshipers from the other churches of the city, besides those accustomed to attend regularly at St. Paul's.

The service was conducted, as usual, by the Rev. Dr. Mulchahey, assisted by the Rev. A. J. Thompson. The Rector, the Rev. Dr. Dix, read the ante-communion service, with the Rev. Dr. J. Henry Hopkins as Epistoler. The sermon was preached by the Right Reverend the Bishop of Albany, who afterwards, by the invitation of the Bishop of New York, consecrated the elements in the Holy Communion, and administered the same to a large number of communicants. [* Bishop Dudley and Bishop Gallaher were present in the congregation, having, by a misunderstanding as to the hour, arrived too late to take part in the service.] The post-communion prayers were offered, and the benediction given by Bishop Potter, and the service was concluded with the chant, "Nunc Dimittis."

The sermon, as preached by Bishop Doane, was as follows:

SERMON.

IT is a universal fact, wrought by the influence of time, alike the purpose of God and in accord with the wishes of the best and greatest men, that the results of a great life live not so much in earthly memorials labelled with its human name, as in the attainment and accomplishment of the work to which that life was given. For the lower end, a fulsome epitaph upon a tombstone or the pages of a [7/8] forgotten biography suffice. For the other, only a lasting impression upon men and things whose issues are immortal. I stand here to-day with this in mind, by invitation of the Rector and Vestry of this venerable Parish, to speak of the results which have grown out of a service, held half a century ago in St. Paul's Chapel, at which my father and three others received the grace and burthen of the Episcopal order. Of the four who knelt that day to receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of Bishops in the Church of God, one only lives on earth, in the serene and silvered dignity of honourable age.

The pastoral staff, the keys of heaven,
To wield awhile in gray-haired might.

The others, to use again John Keble's words,

Have followed Jesus out of sight.

Of the one who lives still it is not seemly to speak, save to renew to him the reverend affection of a loving son and brother in the Lord, and to assure him of the prayers and sympathy, the honour and duty of his brethren in the Episcopate, and of the Church throughout the land. May the Lord who has added to him 'length of days and long life and peace,' satisfy him with the longer life of Heaven, and "show him His salvation." Of the others, did they not live in the works that follow them, it would be only shame and pain to speak at all: and so I ask you, tracing out not the single line of the life that gave me mine, but rather the Church life, into whose fulness he poured the powers of his [8/9] own, to contemplate the things which God has wrought by His Holy Spirit, and through the instrumentality of men, in the half century that has passed since, in the glory and beauty of his first manhood, my father knelt here in the awful moment of his consecration to the Episcopate.

It is right to tell the personal story of the day, and I am glad to put it chiefly in his own words; and then pass on, as he would have me, to the larger and more general subject. I quote from my father's journal.

"Wednesday, Oct. 31,--Consecrated to the office of Bishop by the Presiding Bishop, assisted by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Onderdonk, Bishop of the Diocese of New York, and the Rt. Rev. Dr. Ives, Bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina. The service was in St. Paul's Chapel, New York. It was in and about this Church that my first meditations of the sacred ministry were entertained in the year 1818; and here, after the lapse of fourteen years I am called to the fearful responsibilities of its highest office. It is a day which absorbs, in the infinite importance of its transactions, the days and years of my whole life past. May its issues be blessed of the Lord. May He accept the offering of my heart and life, and by His heavenly grace assisting and enabling me make it promotive of His glory, and of the edification of His Church. Read before the service Psalms 20th and 21st, and, before retiring, St. Paul's 1st epistle to Timothy."

The record of the service from "the Banner of the Church" ought to find place here. Occurring as it did, during the Session of the General Convention, the Bishops were all [9/10] present except two. Dr. Wyatt and Dr. Wilson read the Morning Prayer, and the Bishop of Pennsylvania preached the sermon, from the text, Isaiah lxvi. 21, "And I will also take of them for Priests and for Levites, saith the Lord." The sermon is described as appropriate to the occasion and a truly practical discourse upon the topics discussed: "Why should a ministry exist in the Christian Church? and Why should it be distinguished by orders?" "The address to the candidates was brief, but very impressive. A passage from the oratorio of the Messiah, "Comfort ye my people," etc., was sung immediately after the sermon, and though we have heard loud censure as to some of the circumstances of this well meant addition to the usual service, we thought it seasonably introduced and fitted to add much to the interest and solemnity. Bishop White was assisted in the consecration of Dr. Hopkins, by the Rt. Rev. Bishops Griswold and Bowen, in the consecration of Dr. Mcllvaine, by the Rt. Rev. Bishops Griswold and Meade, and in the consecration of Bishop Smith, by the Rt. Rev. Bishops Brownell and H. U. Onderdonk."

I may be permitted for the sake of the two dear names I bear, to add my father's recollection of Dr. Wm. Croswell's nearness to him in the solemn service, as he recalled it after Dr. Croswell's death:

"And when our patriarchal White, with apostolic hands,
Committed to my trembling trust the Saviour's dread commands,
Thy manly form and saintly face were at my side again,
Thy voice a trumpet to my heart, in its sincere amen."

And Dr. Croswell's sonnet written on that day preserves the fragrance, alike of his affection and of his realization of the day's solemnity. "Ad amicum," he wrote:

"Let no gainsaying lips despise thy youth,
Like his, the great apostle's favorite son,
Whose early rule at Ephesus begun:
Thy Urim and thy Thummim--light and truth,
Be thy protection, from the Holy One:
And for thy fiery trials, be there shed
A sevenfold grace on thine anointed head,
Till thy "right onward" course shall all be run.
And when thy earthly championship is through,
Thy warfare fought, the battle nobly won,
And Heaven's own palms of triumph bright in view,
May this thy thrilling welcome be: 'Well done,
Because thou hast been faithful over few,
A mightier rule be thine, O servant good and true.'"

Starting from this chancel, widely apart as the four rivers from the Garden of Eden, God set the channels in which these lives were to run. Different in the places of their work, and divided in their deaths, they were one that day in devotion, one always in consecration, and one to-day, three of them, in adoration to their ascended Lord. East, South, and West, the currents of their influence flowed. The two Burlingtons bear still the tokens of two of their lives in Church and School, and hold the sacred dust of the two Bishops. Kenyon holds fresh and fragrant the memory of Mcllvaine, and Kentucky still remembers the labours and journeys of its first, and truly missionary bishop. Three of [11/12] them set their hands to the upbuilding of the homes of sacred learning, which God has made centres of influence in the land. And two lived (one, thank God, still), to be in the place of primacy, patriarchs of this American Church.

I take it to be an inherent element of Christian work, wherein, with the vast interval between, it likens itself to Christ, that it makes the man alike a giver and a gift--as the dear Lord was Builder and Cornerstone, Priest and Victim, Shepherd and the Lamb. He is a benefactor who invents the machinery that saves labour and abolishes time; and the inventor, rich by the value of his patents, who spends and gives his wealth wisely and well, is still more a blessing to his race and age. But in the process he keeps himself out, save to enhance his comfort and immortalize his name.

The Christian workman, on the other hand, gives himself, and his life enters into, and makes part of, what he does. The master-builders build themselves in, as the Apostles and Prophets are foundations on the Corner-stone. Only God's eye can see the place or measure the prominence of the life built in. But it is there, and it will be revealed. Meanwhile it serves a larger and a better end, when the hands that toiled, the heads that planned, the hearts that loved, are at rest and still, to look back on the growing beauty of the work, and honour so the workmen who had part in its up-building. As my father said of one portion only of his work, "I want no words upon my grave, the only land that I can ever own, but the record that it holds the dust of him whom God employed to found St. Mary's Hall."

[13] A survey, then, of the growth in the Church, and with it, of Catholic teaching, missionary enterprise and religious education, within the last fifty years, is the pleasant task which I have set myself to-day; in which most important points these four bishops were among the earliest and most earnest workers in America. Just which drops are theirs in the clear strong current it matters not; just what note has the tone of my father's dear voice in it, I am not particular to plead; only I know that with no stinted service, and with no uncertain sound, he poured his whole nature into the swelling stream of these now mighty and acknowledged witnesses and workers for the truth.

Partly because the battle sways from one to another side of the great field of warfare; and partly because, when victory is won, the condition of the accoutrements demands attention, the furbishing of weapons, and the polishing of arms; the great controversies of Truth and Order pass from the memories of men, or give place to other earnest contentions for some different part of the deposit of the faith. Nothing is more marked, in contrast with a half century ago, than what may be called the increased churchliness in the Church; the hold upon the distinctive doctrines, of creeds, and of the offices of the Book of Common Prayer; the Catholicity, in its best sense, of teaching, worship and practice. Like the busy work of a great building in its earlier stages, when trenches are dug and earth removed and heavy stones are hewn and laid, there was great stir and strife in our American Church about the first principles of "Evangelical [13/14] Truth and Apostolic Order," as the great Bishop Hobart, of this Diocese, phrased the watchword of fifty years ago. How deeply set and widely built on, as acknowledged facts, they are to-day, the Church is witness everywhere. This is no time nor place to rake the smouldering embers of old party controversies. What fire is left in them serves now to warm our common love and devotion. And their gray ashes may well be penitential memories of needless misconceptions, violated charity and mistaken zeal. Yet in the abstract, one may moralize about them and remember how, from Apostolic times, the treatises and the apologies, the inspired Epistles and the decrees of Councils, alike attest, that controversies gather and grow out of the tendency to disproportionate holding of the truth. There is no great and no little doctrine of the Faith, as there is no great and no little commandment of the law. But one age will lift into overshadowing importance some single set of beliefs, and the next will strive to lift out of the shadow the complementary teaching, which offsets and balances the exclusive holding of a partial and imperfect creed.

The four Bishops consecrated here held strongly, widely-varying views of the Faith once for all delivered to the Saints. It is a comfort to feel that those who have come after them have, on the one hand, buttressed and built up with sacramental teaching and ecclesiastical definiteness the subjective personalities to which the old-fashioned Low Church School was raised up of God to witness; while, on the other, the intense enthusiasm of personal religion finds [14/15] nowhere now such mighty preachers as in the successors of the old High Churchmen of fifty years ago. That is to say, Evangelicalism has become more Catholic, and Catholicity more evangelical, using the terms of the Schools; and the power of the Church to-day in England and America is in this fact. The mission preachers of our time, holding most strenuously the Sacerdotal and the Sacramental elements of the divine Institution, the Church, are the strong advocate's of conversion, of personal faith and holiness, of the spiritual life. And on the other hand, the doctrines of baptism and of the laying on of hands, of grace in Sacraments and of the grace of orders, find place, with repentance and faith, among those who once degraded them, from their equal position, in St. Paul's enumeration of the principles of the doctrine of Christ. Let us give God the glory; and recognize the courage of the men who dared, in the days when Catholicity was mistaken for its spurious counterfeit of Romanism, or in the dry days of cold and lifeless formalities, to prefer principles to popularity, and to insist upon declaring the whole counsel of God. Under the gradual uplifting to stronger and higher holding of the ancient Faith, one cannot too thankfully own the drawing together of men of divers views, so that such antagonisms and contentions as embittered religious controversy with individual persecution have become impossible. And the fact must not be lost sight of, in measuring the great advance in consistency of teaching and of practice that it has come about, not by the unassimilated absorption of one party into another, but by a better understanding among [15/16] men; by a kindlier construction of motives and beliefs; by a larger charity, that does not tolerate, but claims and rejoices in the varying opinions, where unity in essentials exists; and by the impartation each to each of the best and characteristic elements of thought and principle, from one body of men to the other. The salient points that tell what fifty years have wrought in doctrine and worship are such as these: far greater reverence and care in the conduct of divine service and in the administration of the Holy Sacraments, and greater importance attached to them; frequency and fervency of Holy Communions; multiplied services of every sort, from the quiet composure of the Church's daily order, to the intense services of missions and Lenten preachings and Advent Meditations; Feasts and Fasts observed; the far more careful training of candidates for confirmation, and the deeper solemnity of that grace-giving, sacramental ordinance; the bolder and simpler teaching of doctrine, alike in sermons, which are lessening in mere rhetoric and finish, and strengthening in the wealth of Scripture exposition and direct appeal; and in the few Sunday-school manuals which will survive the mass of trash that strews the land; the chanting and the choral service, the hymns and the hymn-singing, as they not only enrich the common worship of the Church, but make it the worship of God, and not the pietistic self-contemplation, in public, of individual holiness. These and their outward and visible signs of the cross uplifted on our churches, and borne in solemn processions, of altars duly built and vested, of Churches planned after the [16/17] general architectural laws which the Church has set her seal on, as most suggestive in their symbolism, and best suited in their character, for the kind of worship which centres about the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice: these are the tidemarks--ridging not merely the sand of shifting feelings, but the great rocks of established principles--tide-marks of that advancing wave, whose waters were just setting towards the flood half a century ago.

I turn to the question of Christian education, as this Church understands it, an education, that is to say, in the distinctive principles of the Catholic Faith. There is much popular misconception still, about this most important and fundamental duty. The thin veneer of a few verses of the Bible read, put upon the fabric of our Common School system of secular instruction, which necessarily is, and honestly calls itself non-religious, does not touch even the outer edge of the idea. Nor does the Sunday School amount to anything more than a well meant and misapplied attempt to make good the neglected reality: well meant and misapplied, because it is forced to do a kind of duty and for a class of children, for which and for whom it was never designed. It is better by far than nothing, and when the Pastor makes it part of his own care of the children of his Parish, or when it reaches the uncared-for children of ungodly parents, it serves often an important end. But the Church's work will remain undone until she asserts and is enabled to discharge the duty of the training, the discipline and the indoctrinating of her own children. I am very sorry that the valuable appendix [17/18] referred to in the admirable report of our General Committee on Christian education, is not printed in the journal. It is impossible to obtain, without great difficulty, the statistics which they must have gathered "of the progress made, and the opportunities afforded for the education of our children." It is imperfect enough to-day. The higher, the highest education of women in Christian Schools is fairly well provided for. There are no better girls' schools in the country, or in the world, than the Church Schools established and carried on in many of our Dioceses. And the great Church Schools for boys--not so many as the girls' schools--like Concord, Racine, Sing Sing, and Manlius, are the very best in the land. And this is true too, and growing truer every day, of our Church Colleges. But the great lack is in the feeders. The natural drift from secular schools, public or private, is to the secular college. And the great need of the Church is of parochial schools, good as the best, and able to compete in all profane learning, with the magnificent establishments supported by taxation; and adding to this the crowning and completing advantage of definite religious truth; sanctifying "all secular knowledge by the transcendent power of the Faith, and accompanying it at every stage with that careful Christian training in the Church, which if one receives as a child when he is old he will not depart from it." I may seem to be drawing a dreary picture of the present. But if this be so, go back to the year 1832--when St. James, and Hobart, and Lehigh University, and the University of the South were not--when Sing Sing was a military [18/19] school of good repute; when Muhlenberg had not begun his great work; when James DeKoven's bright star had not come above the horizon; when Shattuck had not yet consecrated the Concord homestead; and before the founding of St. Mary's Hall. Columbia, and the Philadelphia Academy, and Washington, now Trinity College, and the Episcopal High School of the diocese of Virginia, and Kenyon, and the New York Protestant Episcopal Public School, represented the educational work of the Church, some of them feeble in their infancy. Thank God to-day there is hardly a diocese without its high school for boys and girls; and we have learned the lesson that the best pioneer work with Mormons or among the heathen, for the Negroes or the Indians, in old and new dioceses alike, at home and abroad, is, first, the Episcopate, and next, the Church School growing out of it. And as in Flushing first began the fair and fertile garden of the Lord now spread so far and wide, in which our sons may grow up as the young plants; so we remember it was in Burlington that the foundations were laid of that gracious temple of which our daughters throughout the land are the polished corners. Let the past rather shame us into greater ventures, than satisfy us with the labours of those who are at rest.

I pass by, because they are of even later date, the splendid tokens of spiritual life--all in this last twenty years--in the organized workers and established works of mercy; the sisterhoods and deaconesses, and the hospitals and orphanages and houses of shelter, which are the inns, to which Christ, [19/20] the good Samaritan, brings the wounded in body and soul, from the desert roads of life, to be cared for by those who seek no repayment till He comes again.

And I pass on to the mighty outcome in missionary zeal and enterprise of these fifty years, before which one exclaims in wondering gratitude, "What hath God wrought!"

The year of grace, 1835, was the year in which this Church arose in energetic earnest to recognize her duty to the great continent of America, and to the greater field which is the world.
Robertson had gone to Greece in 1829. [* Dear Dr. Hill,--clarum et venerabile nomen--was sent too, about this time, and has only just come back to rest from his labours, to which my Father's benediction sped him.] Efforts had been made and failed that same year to send missionaries to Liberia and British America. And a single missionary to the Indians was in charge of the Oneida mission on the Fox River in Green Bay. Besides these, there were two missionaries in Michigan, two in Tennessee, three in Florida, one in Alabama, and one in Missouri; and the moneys given to general missions in the year were about $7,000.

In 1835, the Board of Directors of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society appointed a committee, of which my father was chairman, to consider the organization of the Society. He wrote the report, presented it, defended it, and devoted his life to the furtherance of its principles. Its essence, unchanged now except to make it more permanent by recent legislation, is, in Dr. Milnor's words, that [20/21] "the Church is the Missionary Society, and should carry on the work of missions by a board appointed by the General Convention." It is a striking fact that two of the Bishops consecrated here on the eve of All Saints' Day in 1832 were members of this committee, and had come simultaneously to the assertion of this seed principle. The report was adopted after long discussion "with great and gratifying unanimity." "In its adoption," my father writes in that same year, "the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United State has placed herself on primitive ground. She stands as a Church, in the very attitude in which the Apostolic Church at Jerusalem, when the day of Pentecost had brought the Holy Spirit down to guide and bless it, set out to bear the Gospel of its heavenly Head to every soul of every man in every land. As the Church, she undertakes, and, before God, binds herself to sustain the injunction of her Lord, to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Upon every one who in the water of Baptism has owned the eternal Triune Name, she lays, on peril of his soul if he neglects it, the same sacred charge. Her Bishops are apostles all; her clergy, all evangelists; her members, each in his own sphere and to his utmost strength, are missionaries, every man; and she, that noblest of all names, a missionary church--to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places may be made known by the Church, the manifold wisdom of God."

The first result of this was the election and consecration [21/22] of the first two Missionary Bishops of the Church; and so we may say, that out of this action came not only that great and glorious missionary Jackson Kemper, but the long line of his successors, treading haud impari passu, in his saintly steps; and out of it flowed also the results, whose earthly and material statistics startle us with the evidence of the divine blessing on the work, while their unknown spiritual issues are immeasurable and unimaginable, till the day of the Lord shall reveal them in the multitude of the redeemed about the Throne.

What we know is this; and it is far beyond the increase that runs parallel with our growth in numbers and in wealth; that the Domestic Committee have had $277,000 this year and the Foreign Committee about $174,000; and that in thirteen missionary jurisdictions and thirty dioceses in our own land, thirteen bishops and four hundred missionaries are at work; while abroad, not counting Mexico and Hayti, there are three bishops and twenty-nine missionaries. Laus Deo--as old Bishop Talbot I believe he was--wrote from my father's dear old Burlington, a century ago, Laus Deo apud Americanos. But let it be Laus Deo. The stone to be set up here is the stone Ebenezer. Hitherto hath the Lord helped us. What ought not the next fifty years to see, with such an impetus, by the mere force of accumulation, and as the evidence of the Church's claim upon and consecration of, the wealth of her sons. Non nobis Domine. What hath God wrought!

In that wonderful vision of Isaiah, from which was taken [22/23] the text of the consecrating sermon at the service we commemorate to-day is the great prophecy of the gathering of all nations and tongues to come and see the glory of the Lord in His holy mountain, Jerusalem. Horses and chariots, and litters and mules, and swift beasts; every means are to be used to bring men out of all nations for an offering unto the Lord. And of them, that is out of these so brought, the Lord will take for Priests and for Levites.

What is it but the solemn, threefold lesson of our Christian service; converted men to be strengtheners of their brethren; women that have slaked their thirst by that deep well of grace where Jesus ever sits to draw the water of Life, bringing their friends to own Him as their Lord; Philip finding Nathanael, and Andrew finding Simon; you and I brought by the mission of the Master and those whom He commissioned, constrained, because we believe, to speak; and as the grains of mica in the rock reflect light, and dullest, hardest walls re-echo sound, so we, making others sharers of our good tidings, and partakers of our privileges in Christ.

Again, has it no voice, out of this revealed purpose of the Lord, out of the blessed, beloved memory of the dead which some of us will gather up in our All Saints' commemoration, with deeper thanks to God for their good examples; has it no voice to speak to you, the called and chosen of the Lord, whom the world takes for its secular callings, its material pursuits, its learned professions, its arts and sciences, all well [23/24] enough in the way and while they last; has it no voice to speak to you, young men, because you are strong, saying, I will take you, and you, and you, for Priests and for Levites, to recruit the ranks of the ministry, to carry on the glorious message, and continue the gracious mission of the Master to remotest ages and remotest portions of the world; to heal souls; to plead at the bar of conscience, for Christ; to sow the seed, which is the word; to gather and dispense the true riches; to study the divine science of theology, the Revelation of God?

Once more, thank God, it has its voice, the same sweet voice of comfort and assurance that has upheld the ministry in every age, in spite of all human insufficiency for its great trust. The venerable bishop, not with us here to-day, has leaned on it in the days of the years of his pilgrimage, and found it a staff that neither bent, nor pierced his hand. It was my father's strong, sustaining staff, in the first hour of that newly-taken and tremendous load of a bishop, and in every fiery trial of his life. It is the one only staff of all our weakness and unworthiness, to the earthen vessels of whose inefficiency God has entrusted the treasure of His message and His means of Grace. For it tells of our vocation; "I take you for Priests and for Levites:" that we take not this honor unto ourselves; that no man takes us, as Micah took the Levite of Bethlehem-Judah; but that the Lord takes us for His ordained servants; so that by secret call and sacred consecration we are ambassadors for Christ, [24/25] God beseeching men by us:--

Then fearless walk we forth,
Yet full of trembling, messengers of God,
Our warrant sure, but doubting of our worth,
By our own shame alike and glory awed.

Dread Searcher of the hearts,
Thou who dost seal by Thy descending Dove
Thy servants' choice, O help us in our parts,
Else helpless found to learn and teach Thy love.

So I come back to thank God for the good examples of three of his faithful servants, who have entered into rest, and of the one who lingers still in the calmness and serenity of venerable age, the link between the early and the present history of this Church; between its hour of feebleness and its hour of strength, its days of struggles and of triumphs begun; a link which we pray God long to keep un-broken. Whatever men have written over the resting places of those who are gone, God takes those very tombstones, and makes them milestones of the growth and progress of His Church, in this great land. Against infinite hindrances and tremendous opposition they wrought, and built, and strove. Let us, who have entered into their labours, see to it that we carry on the banner of the Cross with the clear blazon of its definite truths, in its mighty purpose of Christian training, and for its marvellous power of drawing all men unto Christ, till the chief Shepherd shall appear. And let us gather them in with ourselves in our Eucharistic commemoration, our Eucharistic supplication, in the language of the Collect for the day:

[26] Grant, we beseech Thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful servants pardon and peace, that being cleansed from all our sins, we may serve Thee with a quiet mind, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

___________

 

At the evening service, beginning at 7 1/2 o'clock, the processional was Hymn 190; the Second Selection was chanted, and the Creed and Prayers were intoned by the Rev. Dr. Mulchahey.

The "Cantate Domino" and "Deus Misereatur" were sung to Wm. Bayley's service in F. Hymn 187 preceded the sermon, and the services were concluded by an anthem from Joachim Raff's Oratorio, "Weltende Gericht neue Welt,"--"And the ransomed of the Lord," the closing collects, and benediction by the Bishop of New York, and Hymn 189, as a recessional.

The sermon, preached by the Rev. Dr. John Henry Hopkins, was as follows:

SERMON.

EXOD. xxv. 10. "Ye shall hallow the fiftieth year."

THE sight that was seen, on the eve of All-Saints' Day, fifty years ago, when four Bishops were consecrated together in this venerable Chapel, was at that time without a parallel on this side of the water. And, notwithstanding our great [26/27] growth since then, it has remained unique ever since. In 1859, indeed, during the session of the General Convention in Richmond, Virginia--not far from half-way in our half-century--four Bishops were consecrated on the same day, and in the same city; but not, as here, in the same Church: for the public interest was then so great, that no one building was large enough to hold the crowds who wished to be present; and so there were three churches in Richmond that witnessed, in one day, the solemn service of the Consecration of a Bishop.

In this Chapel, however, in the year 1832, the event which we commemorate was of far more striking significance, though the public was not then so well aware of its real meaning. During the first generation, after receiving the gift of the Apostolic Episcopate, this our American Church was well-nigh dead. The one hundred and fifty years of colonial experience had well-nigh starved her spiritual life; for through the entire period, the secular Home-Government had deliberately cheated the Church out of her birthright. To plant an Episcopal Church without Bishops was so ridiculous a contradiction in terms, that it is a wonder the folly of it could not be seen, even by statesmen. The circumstances of the Revolution, moreover--the fact that the clergy generally were loyal to their oath of allegiance to the king, and that the miserable union between Church and State loaded down the poor Church in this country with all the odium that had been so richly earned by the British crown--these things increased the inherent feebleness left by [27/28] colonial blunders and secular treachery. After the peace, the Church received her Bishops, indeed; but barely enough to keep up the Succession. For a long time it was doubtful if even this were secure; and it might easily have been necessary to send to England again for other consecrations.

And those earliest Bishops--so great was the popular prejudice against them--were almost entirely inactive. Nothing like aggressive work was dreamed of. To ordain those who applied for Orders, and confirm in the few places where numbers of candidates were awaiting Confirmation, was all that they attempted: except presiding in their Conventions, where a handful of clergy and a still smaller number of laymen came together once a year to compare notes as to their decay. In Virginia, for several consecutive years, they had not life enough even to hold a Convention. Many thought the Church in this land was sure to die. Not a few of her own sons--the first Bishop of Virginia among them--were ready to say: "She is dead."

There were some symptoms of life, indeed, in Connecticut and in New York. But the first real thrill of awakening hope was at the Consecration of Bishops Hobart and Griswold, together, in 1811. In twenty years after that--mainly owing to the energy of Hobart--a new spirit had spread throughout the whole Church, partly that of sympathy with him, partly that of active opposition to him, but both were symptoms of life and hope: for the most stormy of conflicts is better than the stillness of death.

Just before the consecration of the Four in this Chapel [28/29] fifty years ago, there were only eleven Bishops of our Church then living, two of whom were Assistants to the aged Bishops White of Pennsylvania and Moore of Virginia, leaving nine Dioceses provided for. To-day, the roll of our living Bishops contains sixty-five names. Of these, all are in active service either in the Home or the Foreign field except two, and there is only one Assistant--he who relieves our venerable Presiding Bishop of the care of his Diocese of Kentucky. In growing from nine to sixty-two in fifty years, a rate of increase is shown, which, if kept up for fifty years to come, will give us then, in this Church of ours, no less than four hundred and twenty-seven Bishops. And yet this rate of growth has not been so rapid as some people may think. It will astonish them to know that, in comparison with the total population, our Church is not so well supplied with Bishops now, as she was in the dead-and-alive period of the year 1800. In that year we had one Bishop to every 758,354 of the total population. In the year 1880 we had only one Bishop to every 822,226 of the total population. We commend this fact to those very wise men among us who think that we are in danger of multiplying Bishops faster than the increase of the population requires.

Let us next look at the growth in our clergy. In 1832 the total number of our clergy was but 592; and we had only one clergyman to every 21,733 of the total population. In 1880 we had 3,355 clergy, and the proportion to population was one to every 14,948--a very decided gain. But this gain appears far more remarkable when we see, on comparing the [29/30] numbers of clergy and communicants, that, fifty years ago, each clergyman averaged only 52 communicants; while, in 1880, each clergyman averaged 102 communicants--all but twice as many. This would double the growth as estimated from the number of clergy alone.

Now passing on to still another test, we find that if we compare the number of communicants with the total population--rapidly as this last has increased--there is further proof of growth. In 1832 the Church had only one communicant to over 415 of the total population; while in 1880 we had one to every 145--a really remarkable growth.

But a review of the past is not a source of unmingled gratification. Our growth would have been much greater, but for our own stupid obstructiveness--our marvelous slowness in making those practical changes, which are necessary before we can do the peculiar work which has to be done in this country. Let us look forward, then, instead of backward, and consider a few of the things which must be done.

Our old original idea, of one Bishop in each State or Territory, is clearly outgrown. Fourteen of our present Dioceses have been formed by subdividing the original State Dioceses, and all within the past fifty years: thirteen of them, indeed, within the past seventeen years; and several more are on the way already. It is clear that, in going on to more than four hundred Bishops, there will be an average of about ten Bishops to each State--some more, some less. And there must be some intermediate organization, between the Convention of a single Diocese, and our General Convention [30/31] which includes all. In ecclesiastical language, this intermediate body is known as the Province. As a general rule, each State will become a Province. And when the Province is formed, it will furnish a convenient Court of Appeal, which will go far to save us from all such scandals as the Hinman-Hare trial. It will give us a Judiciary as simple, yet as complete, as any other part of our Church arrangements, and thus remove one of the ugliest blots on our American Church system. It is to be hoped, also, that eventually the Provincial Synods will have all the legislative power which is needed, subordinate to that of the General Convention, instead of leaving it, as now, to the small individual Dioceses, where Constitutions and Canons may be made and altered (for the most part) without the consent of the Episcopate. And, still further, it is to be expected that these Provinces, when in fair working order, shall exercise their ancient oecumenical rights, in the consecration of Bishops and the erection of new Sees within their own limits, without interference from the rest of the Church; and that the trial of an accused Bishop shall be by the other Bishops of his own Province, and by no other, except, perhaps, in a case of doctrine.

Another good work has already begun--that of Liturgical enrichment and flexibility. But, in order to understand the necessity for this, we must first look around us.

And we find that, during this past fifty years, changes have been going on in every leading body of Christians in this country. Our Church has been steadily and remarkably [31/32] intensifying her own life from within: bringing out from her treasures things new and old; recovering lost portions of her ancient heritage; and making more and more prominent, in richness, splendor and power, her own distinctive principles. The Church of Rome in this country has not been doing the like, but is being slowly yet steadily modified by the atmosphere of America, so that her Romanism--in the masses of her people--is less and less bigoted and intolerant, and more and more unlike what it is at Rome, at Loretto, at La Sallette, and at Lourdes. On the whole, the American Romanists are quietly and steadily, though slowly, drifting toward us: for every change in them, that is not toward infidelity, must bring them toward us. All the great Protestant denominations are changing also; and not one of them is intensifying its own peculiar life from within. On the contrary, each one of them is rapidly losing its own distinctiveness, and is being modified from without; so that, in all their changes, they are actually drawing nearer to us, or--at the least--they are removing old sectarian obstacles out of the way of their people, so as to render future union the easier. The sharp crystallization of the sects in their original principles is steadily crumbling away. The Evangelical Alliance is, in itself, a confession that not one of the sects united in it is necessary: for each one of the members leaves his sectarianism outside, and yet all profess that they are at one in everything that makes up the integrity of the Christian faith. The Young Men's Christian Association is, in like manner, a confession that not one of the sects that [32/33] unite in it is necessary for the performance of good works. And if the sects are thus demonstrated, by their own favorite organizations, to be not necessary, either for the integrity of the Faith or for the performance of good works, why should they be kept up? Those two institutions are grinding the rocks to powder, and, in another generation, that powder will be good soil, through which the roots of the old Church Vine will run in every direction, without serious hindrance. Thus the changes of the past half century prove, that our Church is the living centre from which the changing influence has gone forth: and that the changes of all the rest are, therefore, such as to show, on the part of them all, a gradual approximation toward us. We are the common centre of gravity of all the varieties of Christianity in the land; and the only possibility of the future unity of all, is in their crystallizing around us.

During the past, in this country, we have been numerically so weak, that exclusiveness was absolutely necessary to self-preservation. Without that exclusiveness we should have been exterminated. Having now, however, proved ourselves strong enough to modify every other kind of religion in the land, we must look forward to another period, in which our chief activity shall be different. Having attracted all these other bodies toward us, the problem now is, to find out in what way we can most easily take them into actual organic union.

This, our peculiar task, is different from any that has been seen before, in any other part of Christendom. In [33/34] all other places, the pure stream of Apostolic Faith, Order, and Tradition, has, actually or theoretically, come down from the beginning; and the only effort has been to preserve it, pure and undefiled. With us, however, though we have this, yet, in a country which is the "home of all nations," we are brought face to face with all the existing varieties of Christianity; and many of these are closely identified with forms of nationality and language which do not disappear for several generations. Our problem, therefore, is to find out the simplest terms on which any vital union is possible: and we must make these simplest terms our organic law, in order that we may at length actually enfold those whom, as yet, we have only attracted, and who are often, to a great degree, unconscious of the attraction.

The securing of Liturgical enrichment and flexibility will enable us, if we are wise, to prepare for this future, in no small measure. Already a German Prayer-Book has been issued, which is not in all respects, a literal translation of our "Dearly beloved brethren," and so forth: but which pays a reasonable regard to those liturgical forms, and that liturgical language, to which our German fellow Christians have been accustomed in their own land; and adds a fair selection of their own grand old Hymns, set to their own noble Chorals. In other words, the Germans are brought into full communion with the Church, with as little change in their customary worship as possible; instead of making the change so great that no German could feel at home with it at all.

[35] The same should be done with Swedes and Norwegians and others. And why should not the same principle be applied to the Oriental and to the Latin Communions? And why not to all the Protestant sects? The door should be opened wide to all to return to the visible Unity of the Catholic Church, requiring of them as little change as possible from what they have been used to, instead of insisting on a total change of everything.

The main obstacle in the way of this is the fearful narrowness of our own people. The spirit of the old Acts of Uniformity of the British Parliament still survives among us, to an astonishing degree. People take it for granted that we ought to have a uniformity in everything. They generally go further, and insist that the compulsory uniformity shall be precisely that which each individual happens to have been accustomed to, himself. Of course, this is totally absurd. But it takes a long while for such absurd people to find out how very absurd they are. In the mean time, we must try to be patient, yet never cease our efforts to spread the broader and truer idea touching the comparative importance of things. Whatsoever is clearly necessary to the Unity of the Catholic Church should be recognized as necessary by Church law. And things that are not necessary to Church Unity, should not be made obligatory by Church law.

As to Liturgical uniformity, Rome is really the parent of the idea. For many centuries, Rome has employed every effort of finesse, fraud and force, to secure the adoption [35/36] of the Roman Liturgy, to the displacement of all national or local uses. Yet the true principle of diversity in unity is recognized even by Rome herself. She has a special Chapel at Toledo, in Spain, for the perpetuation of the use of the old national Mozarabic Liturgy, against which she used both fraud and force six hundred years ago. In Italy, she permits the use of the Ambrosian Liturgy in Milan, although that, too, cost hundreds of years of effort, in order that the Roman should be made dominant even in Milan. Still more remarkable instances are those of the Uniat and Oriental Churches, which, in accepting communion with Rome, have been wisely permitted to retain their own Liturgies and usages unaltered.

Now if Rome--the inventor and original patentee of the rigid uniformity system--yet allows sufficient variety to establish the opposite principle, why should we persist in being more Roman, in this matter, than the Pope himself? We must recognize the equal validity, and permit the equal use, of a variety of Liturgies. If our General Convention shall go so far in the way of Liturgical enrichment and flexibility as to make the attempt really worth the trouble, it will be found necessary to permit the continued use of our present Prayer-Book indefinitely, in all the congregations which may prefer it: or we may easily have a schism on our hands before we know it. And there is no reason why the English Book, and the Scottish Book, and the Irish Book--the political parts only being altered--should not be used, or the First Book of Edward VI., which is the best of them [36/37] all. And a French Book, a German Book, a Swedish Book, a Norwegian Book, a Spanish Book, an Italian Book, would be just as natural, and just as wise. A special book for services among the colored people, and another for use among the Indians, may also be needed.

And as our notions expand, suppose we go a little higher. The Liturgy of St. James is probably--in its essential parts--the same that was used by the Apostles themselves. Now if one of those very Apostles should reappear here in America, and should undertake to celebrate, using the Liturgy he had always used, is it not rather startling to think, that he would be liable to presentment and trial under our Canons for using a service not identical with the Standard Prayer-Book of 1871? And yet we call ourselves an "Apostolic" Church, although among us it would be unlawful for an Apostle to celebrate the Divine Liturgy in the very words which he used while on earth!

If, however, we can rise to this level, that all the Ancient Liturgies should be permitted among us, why not go one step further? There is no great Branch of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, which has ever embodied any formal heresy in its Communion Office. Why not show our Catholicity, then, by recognizing this fact in our Constitution? This could be done by adding to its Eighth Article these words, or their equivalent:--"While this Church is responsible only for her own standards, which she has herself set forth, yet she is willing to receive into union any congregation using any Liturgy that ever has been used in [37/38] any Branch of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, in any age."

And now what shall we say when we turn in the other direction? Shall we look only to the fully organized and ancient Branches of the Church? Or ought we not also to look tenderly upon those Protestant denominations, whose very existence is so largely due to our own short-comings, and which have been so wonderfully leavened by ourselves, that their steps daily draw nearer unto us, even though, as yet, they try to avert their faces, so that they shall seem to be looking another way? Many liturgical attempts have already been made among them,--all more or less deficient, indeed, either in substance or in tone; and yet, not a few of them embody special parts which are better even than our own. Why maintain a rigidity touching non-essentials in this direction, when we are ready to abandon it in every other?

And what are the essentials, when the Faith, the Apostolic Ministry, and valid Sacraments, have been duly provided for? If we are to insist upon the name by which other Christians shall be called, what shall we say about our own legal title, "Protestant Episcopal?" Is that Scriptural, or Primitive, or Mediaeval, or even Anglican? What detail of all our ordinary Daily Morning and Evening Prayer is of oecumenical obligation? No, dear Brethren: we are straitened, as the Apostle says, "in our own bowels." Our own excessive narrowness is our chief obstacle in the way of our growth. When we have opened our arms to all the other Branches of the Apostolic Church practically, in the way [38/39] already suggested, we should then do the like on the other side also, and add to the Eighth Article of our Constitution other words, stating, that "This Church is also ready to receive into union any congregation of Christian persons, who will, 1st: Accept the definitions of the Faith, as set forth by the undisputed General Councils; 2d: Have a Ministry of Apostolic Succession, given either hypothetically or absolutely; 3d: Whose members will accept Confirmation at the hands of a Bishop; and 4th: Who will pledge themselves to the use of only valid forms in the administration of the two great Sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist." When we can reach that level, with our arms wide open both to the right and to the left, we shall be "The Church of America," and there will be no trouble about the name. That will then be given to us by common consent.

But while thus measuring our own growth during the past fifty years, and looking forward to that which is to come, what have we really been doing? We have simply been demonstrating our perfect unity and fellowship with the great work which the providence of GOD has been carrying on, and is now continuing, in His Church, all the world over, but especially in that part of it which speaks the same speech with ourselves. Whence has come the strengthening of our own distinctive principles from within? It has come from the wonderful Catholic Revival, which, like life from the dead, has penetrated every part of Anglican Christianity, from Australia and New Zealand to the Arctic Circle in Prince Rupert's Land. The whole history of the Christian [39/40] Church shows no revival that is to be compared with it. But other parts of the Church, though in less degree, have also felt the glow. During the past fifty years the great Oriental Church has begun to tingle with new life. The church in Greece itself is very near to full communion with us, owing and confessing a deep debt to our American Church in her revival. Constantinople and Bulgaria both have special reasons for sympathy and hope. The approximation between the Armenians and the Orthodox is steadily gaining in strength. Even the Nestorian body feels the drawing towards unity, and, like the Armenians, is looking towards England's Church. Throughout the vast Russian Empire, there is the free circulation of the Holy Scriptures in the vernacular, and there are signs of fresh vigor in every part. And the great Roman Church--the chief source and cause of divisions and schisms, rather than the "centre of unity" which she pretends herself to be--has during the past half-century undergone great changes, growing weaker, as every other part of the Apostolic Church is growing stronger. At the beginning of this half century, the Holy Father was still upheld by the secular support of four great countries--Italy, Austria, France, and Spain. At the end of it, not a secular power in Christendom will lift a musket to maintain the Pope; the King of Italy reigns in Rome itself; monastic property has been confiscated from one end of Italy to the other; the "Temporal Power" has disappeared; and the Pope calls himself a "Prisoner in the Vatican:" while, spiritually, two new dogmas have been added [40/41] to the Roman Creed, more indefensible than any previous additions; and a fresh schism has resulted--more weakening than any other since the days of the Reformation. Meanwhile, there is not even the semblance of life and growth in any part of the Roman communion except in Protestant countries, where the density of the Popery is so far thinned out by the surrounding atmosphere, as to give some chance to the remains of original Catholicity yet imbedded under the Papal system.

On the other hand, while the great hinderer of unity is thus growing weaker, every tendency towards unity, in other quarters, has grown stronger. The controversy of a thousand years between the East and the West touching the Procession of the HOLY GHOST, has, by the joint learning and wisdom of a Pusey and a Dollinger, been harmonized in the words of an Oriental Father, accepted by all Orientals: and--by the time organic action can be reached--the difficulty itself will be found to have disappeared. The perfect validity of Anglican Orders is acknowledged by the Old Catholics, and theirs by the Orientals. Moreover, our full communion with the Old Catholics, as realized at the opening of our last General Convention, along with the declaration of principles previously set forth by the Lambeth Conference, contain within themselves--the one theoretically, the other practically--the living germ of the Reunion of Christendom.

Even the innumerable sects of the Protestant world feel the impulse towards unity to be irresistible. [41/42] The Evangelical Alliance and the Young Men's Christian Association are indications of the tendency: but these are not all. The Protestant sects are the centrifugal forces of Christendom. So long as they continue to split up and subdivide, their original force is not yet exhausted. But when they begin to recombine, they show that the original impulse is exhausted, and the centripetal power again begins to prevail. The Pan-Presbyterian and Pan-Methodist meetings are proofs of this, and they will not be the last. In this, as in so many other good things, they followed the leading of the Church; for the Pan-Anglican, or first Lambeth Conference, was the beginning of the whole movement. Next after that was the Roman Council of the Vatican, which left Rome weaker and more indefensible than ever; its decrees being followed instantly by the collapse of the French Empire, and the loss of the "Temporal Power." Then followed the organization of the Old Catholics, and the happy relations established with them by the Orientals on the one side and by our own Church on the other. Then came the reclustering of the various groups of Presbyterians and Methodists. The second Lambeth Conference has met, with an hundred Bishops in attendance--a larger number of Bishops than ever assembled in the world, outside of the communion of Rome, for a thousand years,--and it has insured the meeting of a third. And so the good work goes on. Greater progress towards the Reunion of Christendom has been made in the last twenty years, than in all the rest of the thousand years that have elapsed since the great Schism between the East and the West.

[43] Nor are the signs to be seen, only within. While the great hinderer of unity is growing weaker, and the tendency towards unity in all other parts of Christendom is growing stronger, the aggressive force of the Cross upon the world outside is gaining in momentum day by day. India reckons her Christian converts by the hundred thousand. China is not far behind. Japan gives the most astounding example ever seen, of an Oriental Empire revolutionized in mind and spirit within a few years. The isles of the sea, the interior of Central and Southern Africa--all parts of the yet heathen world that feel the contact of Christianity--tell the same great story of accelerated advance all along the line. The heart of ancient Israel is softening daily more and more towards Him whom they pierced. It would seem as if the time were nigh at hand when all Israel shall believe. And while--as we have said--the Papacy is weaker than ever before, that strangely correlated Empire of Mohammedanism is honeycombed with decay, and is evidently on the point of crumbling into hopeless ruin.

Let us, then, lift up our heads and rejoice, and manfully do our part in the glorious work. If--as we see no reason to doubt--the fullness of the time is coming, and the omnipotent SPIRIT of Unity continue this onward march from henceforward at anything like its present rate of movement: then, long before the end of another Jubilee period, the yearning prayer of our dear Lord will be fulfilled, and we shall be One. The world shall then believe in Him who was incarnate of the HOLY GHOST and the Blessed Virgin Mary, [43/44] who died, who rose again, and who now reigns on high, until all things are put under His feet. He shall be "King of kings and Lord of lords;" yea, "the King of the whole earth shall He be called."

__________

 

The Venerable Presiding Bishop felt his strength unequal to a participation in the Sunday Services, but having expressed the wish to be present at a brief service in the chapel on Tuesday, the 31st, that being the exact semi-centennial date of his consecration, arrangements were accordingly made and due notice given for such a commemorative service on that day at 11 A.M.

At the appointed hour, in the presence of a congregation comprising the greater part of the clergy of the city and vicinity, as well as some from a distance and many of the laity, this service opened with the 519th Hymn as the processional, during which six Bishops--the Rt. Rev. Drs. Dudley, Assistant Bishop of Kentucky, Galleher, Bishop of Louisiana, Lyman, Bishop of North Carolina, Howe, Bishop of Central Pennsylvania, Clark, Bishop of Rhode Island, and Potter, Bishop of New York--together with the venerable Presiding Bishop, entered the church in their robes, preceded by the officiating Presbyters.

The Bishops took seats in the Sanctuary; the Rev. Dr. Mulchahey occupied the Prayer Stall, together with the Rev. Wm. White Montgomery, who being a descendant of Bishop White, the consecrator of the present Presiding Bishop, had been appointed his Chaplain for the day; while the clergy [44/45] who were to present the congratulatory addresses were seated in chairs conveniently placed in front of the Chancel.

The service, which was brief; consisting only of the Lord's Prayer and five Collects, viz.: that for the week, for St. John Evangelist's Day, for St. Peter's Day, for the Feast of Simon and St. Jude, and for All Saints, was offered by the Right Rev, the Bishop of the Diocese; after which Mendelssohn's Anthem, "How Lovely are the Messengers," was sung by the choir; and then the Rev. Dr. Dix presented to the Venerable Prelate an address engrossed with appropriate ornaments and illumination on vellum, from the Bishop and the clergy and laity of New York, as follows:

To the Rt. Rev. Benjamin Bosworth Smith, D.D., LL.D.,
Presiding Bishop:

RIGHT REVEREND FATHER IN GOD:--The undersigned the Bishop and Presbyters of the Church in New York, not only in their own names but in behalf of their brethren, the great body of the clergy and laity, hereby tender their respectful and affectionate greeting on this the fiftieth anniversary of your consecration to the Episcopate.

An eventful half century has passed away since the thirty-first day of October, A.D. 1832, when you, Right Reverend Sir, together with three other distinguished Presbyters, the Rev. Drs. Hopkins, McIlvaine, and Doane, in St. Paul's Chapel, Trinity Parish, New York, and in the presence of seven of the nine Bishops who, with him, then comprised the entire college of the American Episcopate, and [45/46] with their concurrence, were consecrated to the work and office of a Bishop in the Church of God, by the then venerable Presiding Bishop, William White, D.D., Bishop of Pennsylvania; this memorable event occurring forty-six years from the time Bishop White had himself left New York to receive his own consecration at the hands of the primate of the Mother Church in England. Thus two Episcopates cover the entire history of the completely organized branch of the Church Catholic in America, of which you stand to-day the venerated senior prelate.

Turning to the State, your life is found to extend over nearly the entire period comprehended in the constitutional life of the American government from the time of Washington to the present day; and throughout the greatest part of our national history you have been a thoughtful and enlightened observer of public events, and of the advancement of constitutional liberty. We can, therefore, but think of you on this anniversary, as forming a link between the past and present; reflecting at the same time, upon the wonderful changes and improvements that you have witnessed, not only in this country, but in the world at large. You have witnessed the extraordinary progress of science, discovery, invention, and civilization, and the irrepressible secular enterprise which has opened new pathways for the extension of Christianity in all parts of the globe. You have seen the Church in this country rising from feebleness to power, steadfastly asserting her Catholic creed and apostolic constitution, and becoming a great factor [46/47] in American society. You have witnessed the change that has taken place in public feeling respecting the Episcopal office, once the subject of distrust and supposed to be inimical to popular liberty, though now seen to be one of the acknowledged supports of republican order; while you have contributed to the growth of the present high degree of respect entertained for the Episcopal office by the meekness and humility with which you have borne its honors, and by the patience and courage with which you have endured its labors and its toils.

Nor can we forget the part you have taken in the general advancement of the Church and its fostering of the missionary spirit. We recognize most thankfully your long devotion to all the great interests of the Church, and your deep sense of the responsibilities with which the Church is charged; beginning long before the time when you took your solitary way to your Western Diocese, then lying upon the verge of American civilization, and being practically further from the Atlantic seaboard than California of to-day. We desire also to recognize the value of your Episcopal councils, and call to remembrance the moderation, the toleration, the comprehensiveness, and catholicity which have ever been your manifest characteristics, and which you have exhibited in connection with an unwavering devotion to the principles of the Gospel, and the Church.

Permit us, therefore, Right Reverend Father, on this anniversary, so deeply interesting and important to the entire Church, whose sentiments we desire to represent, most thankfully to recognize the great value of the long service [47/48] rendered by you to the Church, at the same time, also, expressing our gratitude for the lengthened continuance of your laborious life, and cherishing the hope, that the richest blessings and consolations of heaven may attend upon the portion yet remaining before you shall be called to the full reward of the better life on high.

 

At the conclusion of the address, Dr. Dix, acting as a member of the Special Committee, presented to Bishop Smith, a chalice and paten, the gift of a number of the clergy and churchmen of this city. These sacred vessels of silver, gold-lined, and exquisitely adorned with suitable ornaments, attest at once the fine taste of the designer and the skill of the workman.

The Rev. Henry C. Potter, D.D., then presented a letter of congratulation addressed to the Presiding Bishop, by his Right Reverend brethren of the American House of Bishops; this letter was as follows:

 

RIGHT REVEREND FATHER IN GOD:--Your brethren in the Episcopate ask the privilege of offering you their fraternal and affectionate congratulations on the fiftieth anniversary of your consecration to the office of a Bishop in the Church of God.

To you alone of all the Bishops of this Church, has it been granted to look back upon an Episcopate of fifty years. We unite with you in thanks to the all-merciful Head of the Church that this gracious privilege has been bestowed upon [48/49] you, and we assure you of our hearty and united prayers to Him from whom all good things do come, that He will send upon you all the days of your life His peace, which passeth all understanding, and that when the Chief Shepherd shall appear, you may receive the never-failing crown of glory, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Your affectionate brethren in the episcopate. (Signed by fifty-five Bishops.)
NEW YORK, October 31st, 1882.

 

This letter was appropriately followed by a communication which had been received through the Rev. Charles R. Hale, D.D., from the Lord Bishop of Lincoln. Dr. Dix, in presenting it, said:

RIGHT REVEREND FATHER IN GOD:--I have another gratifying duty to discharge in connection with the actions of this day. Greetings reach you from across the sea; greetings which must deeply move and gratify you, crowning, as they do, your apostolical ministry with a fresh wreath of merited honor. The event which we are now commemorating within these walls is remembered to-day in England, in Scotland, and elsewhere throughout our great household of faith. We are told that you have already received a letter of congratulation from the Primus of Scotland, and another from Prebendary Meyrick, the Secretary of the Anglo-Continental Society. I hold in my hand one more, addressed to you by the Right Rev. Christopher Wordsworth, Lord Bishop of Lincoln, who sends you greeting from the Bishops of the [49/50] Church of England. It was his wish that this communication should be made to you at the time when similar addresses were presented, and I conclude my share in the day's proceedings by reading his letter."

The letter referred to was as follows:
                                                "RISEHOLME,
                                                            LINCOLN.

Praesulem Reverendissimum,
Benjaminum Bosworth Smith, S. T. P.,
Episcoporum Patriarcham,
in Episcopatus sui Iubilaeo,
in Vigiliâ Festi Omnium Sanctorum,
MDCCCLXXXII,
cum debitâ veneratione salutat,
Christophorus Episcopus Lincolniensis.

The Assistant Bishop of Kentucky then read the following Address of loving remembrance and congratulation, which, as he stated, had been signed at Louisville, Ky., by [50/51] the representative clergymen whose names were attached to it.

To the Right Rev. Benjamin Bosworth Smith, D.D., LL.D.

Grace be unto you, and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

RIGHT REVEREND FATHER IN GOD:--Accept from your diocese the salutation of honor and love now given in thankful remembrance of your long life and abundant labors in the service of our Redeemer. It is a blessing bestowed on but a few that they should attain to the age you have reached, and that your youth, manhood, and old age have been spent in willing service of the Church of Christ. We choose the fiftieth anniversary of your consecration as an epoch most worthy of thanksgiving and praise for the many mercies granted to yourself and to us in that long period which closes the thirty-first of October.

There live among us some who saw you in the cholera stricken city of Lexington, in 1833, at a time when the living could scarcely be found to dig graves for the dead, following the humble cart to the place of burial on foot, unsheltered from the summer's sun, there to perform the last rites of our holy religion. It was a matter noted at that time that yourself and the Romish priest were the only ministers of Christ who did not fly from the post of duty. A grateful people commemorated your undaunted faithfulness by an appropriate record, on a silver testimonial then presented to you.

[52] The best years of your life were spent in labor and self-denial for the Master's cause. At no time have you chosen to live a life of ease or self-indulgence. It was one of your earliest efforts to found a college and a theological seminary, in which the young men of the diocese might be trained for the holy ministry. The library and endowment of the theological seminary still remain, and are efficient helps to those seeking Holy Orders.

It was your lot to be the first Bishop of Kentucky; to find the diocese territorially large, with but few faithful Churchmen, and they widely scattered. To bind them in one; to extend the Church; to keep the ranks of clergy filled when salaries were small, labor constant, and adversaries numerous, was enough to test the patience and faith of any Bishop. We praise the Lord, that under these trials you never faltered. You never shrank back from long journeys and the hardships incident to your office while you had the strength to endure them.

At the age of nearly four-score years, when too infirm for diocesan work, you, the survivor of four Bishops consecrated October 31st, 1832, were called, in the providence of God, to fill the high office of Presiding Bishop. There is no civil title connected with your office; and yet there is no Bishop in the Church in any country that has received greater honor from all branches of the Anglo-Church and from the historical Churches, the Greek and the Old Catholic, as well as from many of the Protestant denominations of this age, than yourself, the Presiding Bishop.

[53] Farewell. May the presence of the Lord be with you, and bring you, when your work of patience and faith and love shall have been finished, to that blessed rest that remaineth for the people of God.
T. U. DUDLEY, D.D.,
Assistant Bishop of Kentucky.

Standing Committee.--Rev. E. T. Perkins, D.D., Rev. I. G. Minnigerode, M. M. Benton, Jr., Wm. F. Bullock, Clinton McClarty, Wm. Cornwall.

Clergy / Parish / Wardens
Rev. N. B. Anderson / Louisville / A. T. Johnson
Rev. S. E. Barnwell / Louisville / Thomas Cosby
Rev. Robert S. Barrett / Henderson / Thomas Soaper, S. K. Sneed
Rev. Mortimer M. Benton / Louisville / Wm. Babb, S. D. Tomkins
Rev. Charles E. Craik / Louisville / John M. Robinson, W. Cornwall
Rev. Virginius O. Gee / Bowling Green / L. Bacon, Wm. Abenchain
Rev. Lawrence Guevin /Covington / Danville / G. Cowan, M.D., A. S. McGrorty
Rev. E. I. Hall / Fulton / W. F. Coburn, W. P. Nolen
Rev. E. I. Hall / Harrodsburgh / T. M. Cardwell, Wm. Hoskin
Rev. I. T. Helm, M.D. / Louisville / John A. Hicks, Ephraim Rusk
Rev. C. H. Lockwood / Proctor
Rev. Alex. McCabe / Mt. Sterling / A. W. Hamilton, H’w’d R. French
Rev. J. G. Minnigerode / Louisville / James Bridgeford, Louis Tripp
Rev. E. A. Penick / Frankfort / Grant Green, F. C. Hughes
Rev. E. T. Perkins, D.D. / Louisville / W. T. Bullock, R. A. Robinson
Rev. Wm. M. Peltis / Newport / H. C. Gassaway, Z. B. Coffin
Rev. C. L. Pindar, M.D. / Fulton / J. W. Cowgill, T. M. French
Rev. W. D. Powers / Maysville / W. Wormald, L. W. Robertson
Rev. T. A. Tidball, D.D. / Lexington / A. J. Campbell, T. B. Wood
Rev. Louis P. Tschiffely, D.D. / Louisville / R. M. Kelly, J. M. Bodine
Rev. Louis P. Tschiffely, D.D. / Portland / Henry Pilcher, S. G. Cecil
Rev. Granville C. Walter / Louisville / F. Peele, Horace Gooch
Rev. George A. Weeks / Paris / David Keller M.D., W. S. Taylor
Rev. George A. Weeks / Cane Run, Jefferson Co. / David Meriwether
Rev. Geo. Stanberry / Lexington
Rev. George C. Sutton / Owensboro / C. H. Todd, Henry Megill
Rev. C. H. Shields, D.D. / Louisville / J. E. Hardy, W. S. Parker

On behalf of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, the following Address and Resolutions were then presented by the Rev. Dr. Potter, in accordance with the action taken by the Board of Managers, as stated in the minute prefixed; Dr. Potter being accompanied by Mr. William Scott, a lay member of the Executive Committee:

"New York, October 9th, 1882.--On motion of the Rt. Rev. Dr. Scarborough, it was resolved, That a special committee [53/54] be appointed to communicate the congratulations of this Board to the Rt. Rev. Dr. Smith, Presiding Bishop, upon the completion of fifty years in the episcopate, and that this Board attend the services that are proposed in commemoration of this semi-centennial in a body." The chair moved as such committee the Rt. Rev. Dr. Lee, the Rev. Dr. Potter, and Mr. Scott.
(Signed) A. T. TWING, Secretary.

RIGHT REVEREND AND BELOVED FATHER IN GOD:--To us has been assigned the pleasing duty of conveying to you the warm congratulations of the Board of Managers of our missionary association, in accordance with their action above recited. On the 31st day of October, 1832, you were consecrated, together with three other honored brethren, to the sacred office in the Church of God. Your associates, who received at the same time that solemn trust; the venerable fathers whose hands were then placed upon your heads; many others who have since been called to share in the same arduous duties, have gone from their earthly labors and toils to the rest which remaineth for the people of God. Your days have been prolonged by Him who holdeth our souls in life, and we still enjoy the benefits of your matured experience and wisdom, if not more active exertions. You have been permitted to witness the marvellous growth and expansion of the Church, which at your entrance upon its ministry was a body comparatively so small and depressed.

[55] In the Board of Managers there was recognition of the fact, that although not nominally a missionary Bishop, you became such in reality when you entered upon your assigned work. The distinct organization of the missionary episcopate was subsequent to your consecration. But when you were appointed to lay the foundations of the Church in what was then the frontier of our country, and to seek for Christ's sheep which were dispersed abroad through what was almost a wilderness, you were virtually sent forth as a missionary Bishop. You have fully known the hardships, difficulties and discouragements of pioneer work, and look back upon a path in many places rough and toilsome. But you labored not in vain. The good seed has not perished in the furrow, and the harvest will be gathered in due season. The Church gratefully remembers your self-denying labors. Your brethren, Bishops and laity, unite in loving congratulations, and devoutly thank our Heavenly Father for your lengthened term of usefulness, and for the measure of health and ability still vouchsafed. Cheered by the assurance of their affection and sympathy, sustained by the grace of Him who has never failed to help in your time of need, may you finish your course with joy, and find at evening time that there is light.

(Signed), ALFRED LEE, H. C. POTTER, WM. SCOTT.

[56] This was followed by the reading of an address from the Church Temperance Society, by the Rev. W. F. Watkins, D. D., as follows:

To the Rt. Rev. Benjamin B. Smith, D.D., LL.D., Presiding Bishop and President of the Church Temperance Society:

RIGHT REVEREND AND DEAR FATHER IN GOD:--At a recent meeting of the Executive Committee of the Church Temperance Society, the fact of the approaching semi-centennial anniversary of your consecration to the episcopate was appropriately referred to, and by a unanimous resolution I was appointed to convey to you, our first president, the hearty congratulations of the committee. It is a duty, the performance of which, I assure you, sir, affords me very sincere pleasure. We recall with thankfulness your prompt and cordial acceptance of the presidency of our society, thereby giving to its work the sanction of your honored name and the impetus of your unqualified indorsement. The movement, which was new to our Church, is no longer a doubtful experiment, but an assured success. And we venture to hope that among the many happy recollections of your long and useful life, not the least gratifying will be the thought that to you it was given to lead our beloved Church in her first organized efforts to suppress the great evils of intemperance. Your own example, venerable sir, has been an eloquent testimony, for which we are profoundly grateful. It is an example, we are glad to say, which a constantly increasing number of both clergy and laity are following. [56/57] That the peace of God may keep your heart and mind through Christ Jesus; and that the smile of God may illumine your remaining days on earth, and guide you into His presence forever, is our fervent and united prayer.

At the conclusion of the address, Bishop Smith spoke these words:

"Since the 8th of January, almost fourteen years ago, when I became Presiding Bishop, I have uniformly received from my dear brethren, and from the Church at large, the same tokens of respect, confidence and affection as if I had received from some Higher Authority a title which might have authorized me to expect some deference; and for which I can never be sufficiently grateful to you, my brethren, and to my Heavenly Father."

The venerable prelate spoke with difficulty, and excused himself from further words on account of his rapidly failing strength.

The Gloria in Excelsis was then sung; after which, with a voice strong and clear enough to be heard in every part of the church, he gave the Benediction. As he withdrew, supported by his brother Bishops, the 491st hymn was sung.

 

POSTSCRIPT.

THE letter from the Primus of Scotland, referred to in the foregoing narrative, was received on the 31st of October, but a short time after the Bishop had left his house to go to St. Paul's Chapel; he found it on his return home, together with another, also congratulatory, but of a more personal and private character, from the Archbishop of Canterbury. With the kind permission of the Presiding Bishop, the letter of the Primus is printed here.

To the Right Reverend Benjamin Bosworth Smith, D.D., LL.D., Lord Bishop of Kentucky, Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America:

MY DEAR LORD AND BROTHER IN CHRIST:

The Bishops of the Episcopal Church in Scotland send through their Primus, their hearty and affectionate congratulations to your Lordship, on your attaining the Fiftieth Year of your Consecration to the Episcopate in the Church of God.

And on an occasion such as this, they cannot refrain from congratulating you also on the marvellous things which God has wrought, in your day, for the Church over which you have for so many years presided. Born only ten years after the consecration of its first Bishop, the noble-hearted Seabury, the course of your life has run parallel with that of [58/59] American Episcopacy for nearly a century. During that long period you have been permitted to see the seed sown by your first Bishop multiplied more than sixtyfold; and to witness a growth and expansion of your Church which has scarcely a parallel in the History of Christianity. The grain of mustard seed has, in your day, become a great tree, and has already shot out into branches far and wide into the world.

To have had a share, however humble, in the accomplishment of so great a work must be to you a cause of deep and heartfelt thankfulness, and of deeper yet to know and feel, that, when God, in His own good time, shall call you to your eternal rest, you will be leaving the Church you have loved so well, and served so long, in a happy state of activity, prosperity and peace.

I have the honor to subscribe myself, my dear Lord Bishop, with the highest respect and regard, your affectionate Brother in Christ,
ROBERT,
Bishop of Moray, Ross and Kaithness, Primus of Episcopal Church of Scotland.
EDEN COURT, INVERNESS, Oct. 19, 1882.

The letter of Archbishop Tait, or so much of it as related to the occasion, is as follows:

ADDINGTON PARK, CROYDON,
Oct. 21, 1882.
MY DEAR BISHOP SMITH:

I cannot allow the deeply interesting occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of your Consecration to pass without [59/60] adding to the many good wishes and congratulations which you will receive those of myself and my family.

I trust that this letter will reach you on the 31st of this month. I shall not fail to pray for you, that God's blessing may be with you in what remains to you of life, as manifestly as it has been in the many eventful years that lie behind you.

A. C. CANTUAR.

The Rev. Prebendary Meyrick sent the following communication:

BLICKLING RECTORY, AYLSHAM, NORFOLK.
MY DEAR LORD BISHOP:

My friend, Dr. Hall, assures me that you will not consider it intrusive if I write a few lines expressive of my heartfelt respect and good wishes for you, the Patriarch, in respect to age, of the whole Anglican Communion, on the occasion of the Anniversary of your consecration fifty years ago.

You have spent already a long life in our Master's service, and I trust that He has good and useful work for you to do for many a long year yet. It is for us presbyters to pray that His guiding hand may be with you, and that when His work is done, He may receive you as one that has been faithful, to His eternal rest and happiness. It is a blessed thing that the Church on each side of the Atlantic is so united in Christ that we have our share in your joy.

Believe me, my dear Lord Bishop, your faithful son in the Lord,
FREDERICK MEYRICK.
OCT. 17, 1882.

[61] From the Right Rev. T. B. Fuller, D.D., Bishop of Niagara, the following letter was received:

BISHOPHURST, ONT., Nov., 1882.
RIGHT REVEREND AND DEAR BISHOP:

Allow me to add my humble expression of congratulation on your having had vouchsafed you the very extraordinary privilege of living to witness the fiftieth anniversary of your consecration, and of seeing the Church of which you are the chief pastor, extend as it has done since 1832.

I cannot ask God to give you many years more, but I can ask Him to bless you in those which He may have in store for you.

Asking you for your prayers, I am, Right Reverend and Dear Bishop,
Yours very truly,
T. B. NIAGARA.

Project Canterbury