Of course all this and much more can be discovered by a careful examination of the official papers of this Society. But as so few people take the trouble to make an examination, and as so many bishops have officially sanctioned its proceedings, persons are readily found to provide funds with which the unworthy work of a destruction of the dogmatic principle among Italian Catholics can be efficiently carried on.

Amongst the names of subscribers or donors the following appear:-The Warden of S. Augustine's College, the Bishop of Capetown* [who, be it noted, is prosecuting and excommunicating Dr. Colenso for doing in his lordship's province what Mr. Meyrick and his friends are attempting in Roman Catholic dioceses,] the Rev. W. Denton, the Rev. M. J. Fuller, John Walter Lea, Esq., Rev. R. T. Lowe, the Rev. Richard Seymour, Archdeacon Churton, the Rev. Dr. Oldknow (!), the Rev. Upton Richards (!!), and the Bishop of Salisbury (!!!)

A paragraph given below from the effective speech of an Irish justice of the peace, Mr. Dillon, with regard to the Fenian rebellion, will mutatis mutandis, equally well apply to the officials and policy of the Anglo-Continental Society. Mr. F. G. Lee, who-very wisely for the Society's sake was refused a hearing at the public meeting, by its president and chairman, the Bishop of Ely, hit on a very true and telling idea when he styled these persons "Ecclesiastical Fenians:"

"These unhappy people," maintained Mr. Dillon, "plotting in a foreign land, by means of unscrupulous agents, and for the sake of weakening those well-intentioned ties which were formed in better times between races of common blood, have succeeded in alienating many from a love of their mother-country, and in fostering rebellion and sedition in the homes and hearths of their miserable and misguided followers. Holding out promises which can never be fulfilled, giving pledges which will never be redeemed, enunciating principles which no civilized nation in its dealings with other nations ever adopted, their agents and allies have sown seeds of anarchy and dissatisfaction which are certain in the future to bear most miserable fruit. But those who pull the wires in a distant country are safe out of harm's way they plot and instigate, while the ignorant people who have become their creatures and slaves openly and covertly transgress the law. The people in New York in no degree suffer by the miserable evils which the Fenian fanatics here bring upon themselves. From a distance, safe in their security, they

We venture to hope that in calm moments the Bishop of Capetown may acknowledge the justice of his present trials, as a punishment for having belonged to this mischievous Association.

calmly look on with Platonic indifference while ruin, rebellion, and anarchy are carefully fostered by their deluded dupes."

How thoroughly the well-doctored Reports even point out the exact similarity between the political principles of the Fenians and the ecclesiastical principles of the Anglo-Continental aggressors, let our present paper indicate. These latter people are judged from their own mouths, and if we would be true and impartial to foreign Catholics, we must admit that, as far as unworthy tactics are concerned, Archdeacon Wordsworth deserves the title of Chief Head Centre, and Mr. Meyrick the next position of dignity, whatever it be. That bishops seriously believing, (as all must believe,) that the Roman communion is a portion of the One True Fold, should lend their names and give their money, for such rampant aggressions, is melancholy to contemplate. It shows, as we remarked at the outset, how the old-fashioned principles of Anglicanism are being cast aside and forgotten, how the dregs of two effete schools can act. The Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin, heads of the Irish Establishment, which has sunk so slightly into the affections of the people of that country, and has so utterly failed in its duty, that it may be accurately pronounced to be the most corrupt and impotent Church in Christendom, instead of labouring in their own barren dioceses, not barren in their natural aspect, for they are beautiful, but barren, dry, and desolate as regards grace, attempt to lead

*

* Archdeacon Wordsworth is an ecclesiastical Janus. He is doublefaced and a man of double policies. As regards the Irish Church he is a Conservative, ponderously preaching its careful preservation at Cambridge and Westminster Abbey, while he appears as a Radical and Revolutionist in his frantic diatribes against Italy and Spain.

+ A correspondent of the Clerical Journal, a Protestant publication, remarks that there exists in Ireland a species of vandalism, different from window-breaking-viz., a Puritanical objection to stained glass in churches unless the designs be suggestive of those patterns which a peep into a kaleidoscope will supply. Figures of saints or angels, or even of the Redeemer, are rarely admitted into an Irish church. He relates that not long ago a gentleman in Dublin offered to expend some hundreds of pounds in erecting in S. Patrick's Cathedral a stained-glass memorial to the memory of his parents. The design intended was the Crucifixion, but that would not do. People might mistake the picture for a crucifix, and fall down and worship the wicked image. Christ and Him crucified being thus tabooed, the Lord in Glory was substituted by the intended donor. But the Dean had never beheld the Lord in Glory; quoted, "Eye hath not seen," &c.; and could not imagine any possible representation in glass, or other material, which would not be positively sinful to show to a congregation! The unhappy memorialist, disappointed at S. Patrick's, turned in vain to other churches and other rectors. The highest authorities solemnly but regretfully announced that "public opinion" was so much against "The Crucifixion," that any such representation would be highly hazardous. It is added that, in the north of Ireland, at Downpatrick Cathedral, a similar

away public attention from their own admitted defects by expatiating on those of foreign Christians:

"DUBLIN, Sept. 20, 1865. "DEAR SIR,-I shall very willingly give my name, and whatever else I am able to give, to the Anglo-Continental Society. You are at liberty to put my name, as you wish, among the patrons.-Faithfully yours,

"R. C. DUBLIN.”

"Nov. 19, 1865.

"MY DEAR SIR,-I shall with pleasure become a patron of the Anglo-Continental Society, and I send five pounds enclosed as a subscription.-Yours truly,

"M. G. ARMAGH."

And, in conclusion, what, let us ask, do the officials propose to give, in place of that which they take away? Man being frail and prone to rebellion, they may readily enough destroy in the minds of hundreds, who will rise up to curse them in the last great day, the Roman Catholic conception of the Incarnation, with all its concomitant practices and telling realities they may attempt to feed Italians with the husk-like platitudes of obscure national writers, who were apparently more anxious to run in a via media groove than to teach boldly the faith of Jesus and Him crucified; but the old results of such an unphilosophical policy will ever occur and re-occur. They will but make new Gavazzis and Baron de Camins, fresh Murphys, Achillis, and Blanco Whites. They will but lead men who, when the sun of life is high in the heavens, can afford as misled, they themselves judge to forget their Redeemer, His Mother, and the Saints; but when the evening shadows lengthen, or when the end draws on, only to die the doubter's death, without consolation, without hope, in darkness and despair. Italian priests will never be transformed into via media Anglican clergymen, but into anti-Christian apostates.

If the supporters of the Anglo-Continental Society are honest in their desire for an impartial and sound Reformation in the Church Universal, by all means let them begin to work. Their true, proper, and legitimate field is England. Some of their friends and neighbours have been promoting such a reformation for many years. That reformation is known as

instance of antipathy to stained-glass occurred. The splendid memorial which was erected to the memory of Dean Blakely, (father to the inventor of the Blakely ordnance,) was relegated to vaults beneath the cathedral, where it is lying at this moment in neglect and dirt, if it has not been sold as broken glass.

the Catholic Revival, which is extending and spreading itself almost miraculously throughout the length and breadth of our beloved country. There has been a shaking amongst the dry bones of our dark valley, and life is there once again. The progress of reform and regeneration cannot be stayed. Misrepresentation, suspicion, clerical spies, hard words, episcopal charges, petty spite and public persecution, newspaper abuse, Puritan sermons, anti-Christian mobs, and public opinion have each in turn tried to stem the tide of truth and shut out the spreading light; but all in vain, and so the good work goes on. There is still much to do, as long as corporate Re-union is a thing of the future. The respected Prolocutor of Convocation,* who by sanctioning and speaking in behalf of this Association, commits many of the second order of clergy, of whom he is the special representative, to a fatal policy which they detest, might employ his great energies better than in assisting to carry spiritual fire and sword into another man's estate. † Archdeacons Wordsworth and Bickersteth should pause ere they determine on any further action in a destructive line. There is yet much to accomplish in construction and building up at home. Another archdeacon, Mr. Freeman, equally learned and far-sighted, has pointed out one of the several existing blots in the Anglican system, a blot which is "a corrupt following of the Apostles," and which it would be wise that every well-wisher of the Church of England, and especially responsible dignitaries, set themselves promptly and vigorously

to remove :

"Alas! our practice" [in regard to the Christian Sacrifice] may be stated in a few and fatally condemnatory words. The number of clergy in England may be roundly stated at 20,000. Now, it was lately affirmed in a Church Review of high standing, that the number who celebrate the Holy Communion weekly in England is two hundred: that is to say, if this estimate be correct, that one in a hundred of our clergy conforms to the Apostolic and Church law of the first centuries. This statement, it is true, proves to be somewhat of an exag

We most earnestly recommend those clergy who disapprove of the Anglo-Continental Society to petition Convocation against its proceedings. Such a line of action is open to be taken by a small number of people in any particular locality, and the influence thus brought to bear on our representatives in that assembly would become, by judicious management, very healthy and considerable.

Apropos of the Archdeaconry of Buckingham, a correspondent informs that in the whole of that ecclesiastical district, containing several hundred parishes, there is a weekly celebration of the Holy Communion in exactly FIVE!! Archdeacon Bickersteth, therefore, would do well to look at home before he needlessly recommends reforming nostrums for healthy foreign Christians.

geration. But to what extent? The real number of churches where there is Holy Communion every Sunday is, by recent returns, about 430. The number of churches in England is at least 12,000. That is to say, that there are in England at this moment more than eleven thousand parishes which, judging by the rule of the Apostles, are false to their Lord's dying command in a particular from which He left no dispensation. It will be said, the Holy Eucharist is celebrated in these parishes from time to time, only less frequently than of old. But who has told us that we may safely celebrate it less frequently? How can we possibly know but that such infrequency is direfully injurious? Take the analogy of the human body, which ever serves to illustrate so well the nature of the Church's life. Take pulsation, take respiration, or even food. Is not the frequency of every one of these mysterious conditions of life as certainly fixed as their necessity to life at all? Let pulsation or respiration be suspended for a few minutes, or food for a few days, and what follows but death, or trance at the best ?"-(Rites and Ritual, pp. 12, 13.)

And again collaterally :

"I will mention one very great scandal, the very canker and weakness of our whole parochial system, which has a fair likelihood of being removed by this means. Next to the infrequency of our Communions, the fewness of our communicants,-that is, in fact, of our bona fide members of the Church,-is our greatest and most inveterate evil. When this fewness is allowed its due significance, we must see and confess that the nominally Christian condition of this country is but an illusion and an untruth after all. Judged by our own Church's rule (which is the rule of Christ Himself), our communicants, and they only, are our people. The rest may call themselves what they will; or we may for euphony call them our flocks,' or 'God's people.' But one thing is certain, that in those Apostolic or early days to which we ever appeal, and rightly, as our standard, they would have been held to be reprobates, and no faithful members of Christ's body at all. Such then is our condition :-a miserable handful, even among those who are nominally members of the Church, having any claims to the title in reality."-( Ibid. pp. 23, 24.)

So Archdeacon Freeman apparently does not disagree either with ourselves or with Mr. Lee, who recommends that Anglicans should "continue to mend their own windows before they proceed to break those of their neighbours;" sound and timely advice which we take leave, in conclusion, most heartily and sincerely to endorse.

Since the above was written, a new Hibernian scheme has