ordinary minds such errours beget restless wishes to realize false ideals; and when a man of arbitrary temper, like Laud, is invested with authority, they lead him, if they fall in with the bent of his mind, to work much mischief. Hence it seems to me that no slight service would be rendered to the Church, if any one could help toward setting men's minds right on the relation between unity and uniformity, and toward exploding the noxious errour that uniformity is indispensable to unity. For though the abovementioned illustrations of the mischiefs which this errour has caused, are taken from bygone ages of our Church, the need of the warning which they hold out is not gone by. At this day far too many persons are harassing themselves and their neighbours through their anxiety to establish a strict uniformity: too many are magnifying rites and ceremonies, vestments and postures, as if these were the essentials of Christian worship, and as if the peace of the Church might be compromised for the sake of attaining to uniformity in such things. At this day how few understand and recognize the great truth enunciated in the words quoted above, that differentiae rituum commendant unitatem doctrinae! Yes, my friend, let us seek unity with all our heart and soul, but not by the way of uniformity, which will never lead to it, but will waste our time by throwing up trippingstones at every other step. Let us rather seek it by those spiritual means which our Lord gave to His Church, by doing what in us lies to draw our brethren more and more to the one Faith in the one Lord through the one Spirit, whereby alone can any be brought to the one God and Father of all. Let us seek it, as our beloved father, Bishop Otter, sought it, by endeavouring

to inspire others with the same love which filled his own breast. The blessings which sprang from his brief episcopate may convince us, if we needed a fresh proof, that this is the true way to seek unity, the more excellent way, which has too commonly been abandoned for the barren, unprofitable way of uniformity.

to man.

From him, our beloved father, as I bid you farewell, my thoughts turn to another dear Friend, who has in like manner been taken from us to his reward. He too had the true principle of unity in his heart, the love of God, manifesting itself in overflowing love God has taken him from us to a world where all his yearnings after love and unity will be satisfied; but to us, to this Diocese, the loss is a heavy one; few could be so heavy. At our public Meetings, at which, in this divided and distracted state of our Church, discordant opinions and feelings will sometimes find utterance, it was ever his wont to call us away from these points of contention, and to pour a reconciling spirit over the whole; wherefore, whenever I had anything to do with the arrangement of such Meetings, I endeavoured to manage that our departed friend should close the discussion. For his Christian sincerity and earnestness and love, and his entire freedom from party-spirit, his ready recognition of every spark of divine grace, under whatever form it might shew itself, were known and appreciated by all; and every asperity of feeling was straightway dispelled, as soon as Robert Anderson began to speak. By the following Sermon I am especially reminded of him in more ways than one for he, in his usual affectionate manner, proposed at our Anniversary Meeting that I should be requested to print it; and since then, with that

gentle playfulness which so well became him, he has several times rallied me for my long delay. Moreover, when I came down from the pulpit, he was the first person who spoke to me; and as his heart was ever longing after that blessed Communion whereby the faithful become one with each other in their Lord, he exclaimed with reference to the wish I had exprest, "O why are we not going now to kneel before that table, and partake one with another of the blessed Body and Blood of the Saviour?” Such recollections become precious, when they belong to one, who, we may feel a confident trust, has entered into the perfect Communion of the Saints in the presence of the Lord.

To Bishop Shuttleworth we owe it that the next Anniversary of our Association was no longer destitute of its crowning blessing: and I trust that every fresh Anniversary will in like manner renew and strengthen the holy bond of brotherhood among the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese. In this wish and prayer, you, my dear Friend, I know, will join from the bottom of your soul. And now let me crave your forgiveness for this long, and, I fear, wholly unprecedented Dedication; in which, you will probably say, with one of your placid smiles, I have been quite acting up to my principles, and shewing a grand disdain for everything like uniformity. When I began, I thought a few pages would hold all I had to say; but the deep interest of the subject has led me on and how many things still remain unsaid, which, it seems to me, might serve to elucidate and establish the propositions I have been attempting to maintain! I have exprest many differences from the opinions you have given utterance to in your Charge; yet I believe the real

difference between us is far less than it would seem. At all events I trust in God that, so long as we are permitted to live and work together, we shall also be permitted to shew practically, that unity may exist without uniformity, and that the diversities of opinion and feeling, which on many subjects prevail between us, will in no wise impair the unity of affection by which we are bound to each other, or our unity of action in the service which we owe to the Church and her Lord. If I If I may without presumption apply words, which were spoken of wiser and holier men, may the surviver of us be enabled to say, as Archbishop Bramhall said of himself and Ussher, who in like manner differed from him on sundry points of opinion and feeling; "I praise God that we were like the candles in the Levitical temple, looking one toward another, and both toward the stem. We had no contention among us, but who should hate contention most, and pursue the peace of the Church with swiftest paces." Your affectionate friend,

Whitmonday, 1843.

J. C. HARE.

THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH.

Ephesians iv. 4, 5, 6.

There is one Body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

THE desire of unity is inherent in man. It pervades all the expressions, all the modifications of his being, and may in a manner be termed an elementary principle of his nature. It lies, very often without his being conscious of it, at the bottom of all the workings of his mind, which is ever seeking, in one way or other, to infuse unity into the objects of its contemplation, to bring them under one head, to arrange them under one law, to find out some analogy, some relation, some likeness and harmony amongst them. Hence it manifests itself more or less in the whole structure of language, in the speech of the rudest tribes, as well as of the most refined. For the whole of language, even among the rudest tribes, is made up of general terms; that is, of words which do not merely stand for one single act or object, but are common to several, and which always imply certain processes whereby the mind has exerted its unifying power in classing a number under one head. Every one who has watcht the development of the minds of children, must have noticed how rapid and powerful this unifying spirit is in them,

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