doctrine in the township is a man who, eighteen months ago, ran off with a neighbour's wife."-(pp 40, 41.)

This pestilent sect will be described more particularly anon, and omitting matters noticed in the Bishop's first journal, we think it may now be desirable to give entire, or as near as may be, its concluding statements.

"On Wednesday, the 15th March," (1843), writes the Bishop, "I returned to Quebec.... The snow-storm had ceased; but for some miles we had to break the road ourselves, none of the country people having been out upon it before us. The whole of this winter-circuit was about 1030 miles, and occupied two months and a half.... The confirmations were forty-three,-the number of persons confirmed, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-three, -and four churches were consecrated. In 1840 the confirmations on the winter-circuit were thirty-eight; but this comprehended those in the Ottawa missions, then four in number, which I was now obliged to reserve for summer travelling, not being able, on account of the increased number of stations, to go over the same range of country in the same time."-(pp. 71, 72.)

The journal concludes with the following "general observations."

"Reviewing this whole journey, and all the evidences which it affords respecting the existing order of things in the country, it is impossible not to be affected by many heavy solicitudes and heart-rending reflections. It cannot be without feelings of sorrow and shame and fear, that in a mighty Government like that of Great Britain, which has spent millions in this country upon fortifications and military works, and which can allow a sum probably not short of £100,000 to be spent in a few months, (in a particular instance,) for little more than matters of parade, should suffer its own people,in broad and reproachful contrast, in every single particular, to the institutions founded for the old colonists, by the crown of France,-should suffer its own people, members of the Church of the Empire, to starve and languish with reference to the supply of their spiritual wants-establishing no institutions for educating and forming the youth of the country-making no provisions whatever for planting houses of God over the land, or for creating, training, and supporting an order of teaching priests' for the people-interfering with and abridging the means which do exist for the maintenance and perpetuation of religion in the country-declining to follow up in any efficient manner the plans laid down when the See of Quebec was established -limiting to the lives of the present incumbents the salaries which, in halfa dozen instances, are enjoyed by ecclesiastics of the Church Establishment -parcelling out among different religious bodies the very clergy-reserves which had belonged to the Church alone, and keeping the management of them in its own hands, under a system which impedes their profitableness, and threatens the most alarming sacrifices, in the shape of sales—leaving its emigrant children to scatter themselves at random here and there over the country, upon their arrival, without any digested plan for the formation of settlements, or any guide (had it not been for the Society which I am addressing) to lead them rightly in their new trials, temptations, and responsibilities. The value of the missions and other boons received from the Society may be well estimated from this melancholy survey of the subject. The influence which has presided over the proceedings of Government, in relation to the Church in these colonies, appears, in the mysterious counsel of Divine Providence, to have resembled some enchantment which abuses the mind. I

do not believe that there is any example in history of any public measures based more decidedly upon false data or distorted facts than those which have affected the interests of the Canadian Church; and here I allude specially to the information upon which the Report of a Committee of the House of Commons was framed, in 1828, and to the materials of which the late Earl of Durham made up his far-famed Report to Her Majesty, ten years after that period.

Progress of the Church.-Yet on the other hand, when we look at the advances which, through all these difficulties, and despite all these discouragements, the Church has been permitted to make, we have cause to lift up our hands in thankfulness, and our hearts in hope. The Church in Canada has two Bishops and more than one hundred and sixty clergymen; and in this diocese alone, which, in point of Church population, is of secondary magnitude, I have just shown that there will be not less than sixty-seven confirmations on the Visitation now in part accomplished. Now, there are persons living,—and yet far from any indications of decrepitude,-three of them are among my own acquaintance, who were confirmed at Quebec, by the first Bishop of Nova Scotia, the first, and then the only Colonial Bishop of the Established Church, in the whole empire, towards the close of the last century, at which time there were, I believe, half-a-dozen Church-clergy in all Canada. When I contemplate the case of our Missionaries, and think of the effects of their labours, I look upon them as marked examples of men whose reward is not in this world. Men leading lives of toil, and more or less of hardship and privation-often, with their families, in unpainted rooms, and with uncarpeted floors, the very consideration which attaches to them as clergymen of the English Church Establishment exposing them to worldly mortification, from their inability to maintain appearances consistent with any such pretension,-they are yet, under the hand of GoD, the dispensers of present, and the founders of future blessing in the land. There are many points of view in which they may be so regarded: for wherever a Church clergyman is established, there is, to a certain extent, a focus for improvement found: but nothing is more striking than the barrier which the Church, without adventitious sources of influence, opposes to the impetuous flood of fanaticism, rushing, at intervals, through the newer parts of the country, and those especially which lie along the frontier. Nothing else can stand against it. The irregular sects are frequently seen either to yield, through policy, and mix themselves with a stream which they cannot turn, or to be forcibly carried along where it leads them, and finally, to lose the stand which they had held.

"Millerism. This has been remarkably the case with the preaching of Millerism, which I have had occasion to mention, and than which anything more frantic or more mischievous can scarcely be conceived. In the meetings of the Millerites, persons acted upon by the vehement proclamation of close approaching judgment, enforced by the expedients usual in such cases for goading the human mind, fall into what are technically called, the struggles, and roll on the floor of the meeting-house, striking out their limbs with an excessive violence; all of which is understood to be an act of devo tion in behalf of some unconverted individual, who is immediately sent for, if not present, that he may witness the process designed for his benefit. Females are thus prompted to exhibit themselves, and I was credibly assured, that at Hatley two young girls were thus in the struggles, the objects of their intercession being two of the troopers quartered in the village. Revolting as such scenes may appear, yet when mixed up with the awful realities of future judgment, they take a prodigious effect, in the wilder and more sequestered parts of a country, upon a large portion of the popular mind; and while, in some instances, they are coupled with blasphemy and crime, in many more with gross inconsistency on the part of persons who cling in heart to their worldly interests, in others still with the danger of conse

quent unbelief upon the failure of the Miller prophecies within the time, (for some men have been known to say that they will burn their Bibles if these prophecies should fail,) there are other cases in which men, thoroughly persuaded of the immediate dissolution of all things, have forborne from making those provisions and preparations for another season, upon which, when it comes, their families must depend. These are delusions to which the words of the Apostle they shall proceed no farther, for their folly shall be manifest to all men," will eminently apply; but, in the meantime, they test the strength and soundness of the Church. She preserves her steady course, and rides, like the ark, upon the agitated flood. Her people are stedfast, and cleave with the closer attachment to their own system, from witnessing the unhappy extravagance which prevails around them. Others also, of a sober judgment, are wont to regard her with an eye of favour and respect. Without the check which she creates, the country round would, in a manner, all run mad. I do not wish to speak with severity of honest, although erroneous enthusiasts, and there can be no reason in the world for denying that there may be instances in which (although I am not myself aware of any such individual cases) unthinking sinners have been brought, by the alarm of Millerism, to a care for their souls. But the picture, upon the whole, if we would nothing extenuate, nor aught set down in malice,' is, I believe, correctly given in the foregoing remarks.

Loyalty of the Church.-Loyalty is another conspicuous fruit of Church principles in a colony. Loyalty, which in Canada has been proved and tried in many ways. And long may it so continue!-I have felt it my duty, in the cause of God and truth, to lament, in undisguised language, the policy of our Government as it respects the Colonial Church. But the Bishops and Clergy of that Church will never fail to inculcate a deep and dutiful attachment to the monarchy of England, and a conscientious reverence of deportment towards the powers that be. These feelings and principles are vitally interwoven with the system of the Church.

This, in fact, when built upon the right foundation, is a feature of that Christian fabric, a portion of those fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ to the praise and glory of God,' which it is the office of the Church to form, and which, with mixture, of course, of human imperfections, she is doing her part to form in this diocese. I have great hopes, for example, of the persons, as a body, who, under the training of her Clergy, have come forward to receive confirmation, or to be baptized as adults. I trust that they will not be found, in general, to have made a mere formal profession, or complied mechanically with a received custom. I always addressed them as persons engaging themselves, before God and man, to high and holy things, and as recipients of sacred and solemn ordinances; and far from encountering a repugnance on their own part to such a view of the case, I believe that it was usually what they expected and approved themselves.

Such, then, is the work of the good Society among us. Much, indeed, it has done much more we still need, and are likely to need, till we are put, beyond all present prospect, upon some less precarious footing in the land than that which we now occupy. God prosper its labours, and enlarge its resources!-this is the prayer of its grateful fellow-worker in the field, G. J. MONTREAL."

Having given these copious extracts from the Bishop's first Journal, we must be much more brief in quoting from the second. It gives an account of three very extensive tours of visitation, which he made in 1843 and 1844; and with the other Journals under notice, will enable the reader to form a pretty correct idea of the nature of a Canadian diocese. The first of these tours up

the Ottawa and Clarendon, the furthest mission to the west of the diocese, and upwards of 350 miles from Quebec, was performed in May, 1843. The next journey, or rather voyage, extended to the extreme eastern limits of the diocese, 450 miles below Quebec. The third was to the county of Megantic, on the south of the St. Lawrence. We regret that we must confine ourselves to the Bishop's summary of his entire visitation. The Journal thus concludes ;

"We go over a great deal of space in Canada to effect things which, at present, are upon a very humble scale. I find that the aggregate of all my journeyings about the diocese (and I have travelled 4000 miles out of it during the past summer), upon this last triennial Visitation, with the addition of the journeys here mentioned to La Chine and Lennoxville, amounts to 4,328 miles. In the case of Rivière du Loup, I travelled 228 miles, going and returning, to visit one little insulated congregation. And now I have finished (reserving the notitia of each mission here mentioned for an Appendix) this history of the diocese in successive parts; and although chequered with scenes of a more prosperous aspect, it is a history of scattered and often feeble congregations, enjoying but scanty and imperfect provisions in religion; with churches standing unfinished for years together, or sometimes with no churches at all; with poor missionaries enduring hardships like good soldiers of Jesus Christ, yet labouring for a few here and a few there, so that all, in some eyes, perhaps, looks unimportant-priests and people alike, of destiny obscure.' But are they not, if rightly regarded, the very objects for Christian sympathy and help? And is it not with something far different from a disdainful smile' that the English Church and people, in their grandeur,' will hear ' these simple annals of the poor' in the colonies? For myself, I cannot but view it as a privilege for which the deepest thankfulness is due, that I have been permitted, with whatever feeble ability of my own, to follow up the work of my venerated predecessors, and to carry out the designs of the Society, still enlarging from year to year, in such a field,a Society which may truly be said, under God, with reference to the Canadian Church, to have kept a light in Israel,' by cherishing among this people the means for the pure teaching of the gospel and the unadulterated worship of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and by promoting among them, at the same time, the retention of primitive order, and the habitual recourse to apostolic ordinances; conducting its proceedings in concord with the chief pastors of the Church upon the spot, and strengthening their hands to its power, yea, and beyond its power, in the progress of the work. Here are seventy confir mations, performed in successive journeys of the extent just described, to produce a result of 2,136 individuals confirmed in the last triennial Visitation. But who, even if the souls of these individuals and of all the families connected with them, were not worth our care, who hath despised the day of small things?' Over this extent of country the scattered labours of the Church are diffused, and the episcopal ministrations are statedly carried; and in all these different spots have the individuals openly professed the truth of God, and recognised their Church membership by a solemn act. The fathers to the children,' and children's children, will make known that truth; and that Church roots herself in a soil, gradually spreading on the right hand and on the left, which must be covered hereafter by a prodigious growth: what that growth shall be must depend, in human calculation, upon what is done in the present stage of the colony. The sacraments adminis tered, the vows undertaken, the prayers offered, the word preached, the pastoral watchfulness exercised in the recesses of snow-clad forests, or upon the borders of the turbulent gulf, through the provisions established by the So

ciety for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, are precious in the sight of God, and pregnant with an important future among men.'

Such is the Church in Canada. The volume noticed in our last

Philip Musgrave; or Memoirs of a Church of England Missionary in the North American colonies" (Canada-East)-will furnish further details. Our simple object at present is to call attention to facts, and submit the case to the consideration of our readers. We must leave them to judge how far the following remarks are verified by the state of the case, as presented in our sketch, and to what extent the Church in Canada may be regarded as having accomplished its mission.

In his last Charge, Mr. Archdeacon Manning observes :

".... Nothing perhaps has exhibited in bolder outline the true spiritual nature of the Church, stripped of the disguise of secular array, than the Episcopate of our colonial churches. This has, probably, been to many the first clear expositor of an article of their baptismal faith. It has taught him that the Church of England has no founder but our Divine Lord; and that its powers, like its Head, are not of this world.

"Surrounded as we are by the elements of change, every day advancing, and already conscious that the British Empire, having forfeited its religious unity, holds its onward way to still further estrangement from the ecclesiastical order bequeathed to us by our fathers, no one, I think, can fail to entertain a sort of foreboding that, in the Church of our colonies, we see in foresight the Church of England as it may be hereafter. Much as we must lament this, let us lose no time in lamentation. We already see it abroad, separate from the world, and supported upon its own inward energy and life. We thus can measure of what it is capable, what it can endure, and what achieve. In helping it, we are preparing ourselves for our future work, it may be far greater trials than we have yet been called to front. The church in our colonial empire is the anticipation of a church wider, poorer, mightier, less endowed, but lacking nothing, having the signs of an apostle and the work of an evangelist. If we would preserve and perpetuate what remains of an ecclesiastical state, it must be by restoring to full power and action the internal and spiritual life of the Church; and by learning to depend on this alone." 1

There is probably a measure of true prophecy in this passage, and we are much impressed with the idea, that if we could fully realize the state of things as regards the Church in Canada, we should approach pretty nearly to what may even be realized among ourselves, should the changes be effected in our ecclesiastical position which seem, alas! but too certain. Whether " the internal and spiritual life of the Church" is to be restored and perpetuated, whether at home or in the colonies, by an extended and independent episcopate, or a revival of other supposed dormant powers of the Church, such as the Archdeacon contemplates; or whether the present aspect of the Colonial Church is so peculiarly instruc

A Charge delivered at the ordinary Visitation of the Archdeaconry of Chichester, in July, 1846. By Henry Edward Manning, M.A., Archdeacon of Chichester.