which I may give in English: Heaven lightened on the left in thunder spoke And genial light was spread on every side. Another happy event to the Bishop of St. Andrews, and to the Church at large, was the consecration of his most intimate friend, Thomas Legh Claughton, Vicar of Kidderminster, to the See of Rochester. He was naturally invited to be one of the consecrators, probably the first time for more than two centuries that an Archbishop of Canterbury had accepted such aid from a Scottish prelate. At the same time he received authority from the Bishop of Oxford to confirm in two places in his Diocese-for my father at his benefice of Stanford-in-the-Vale, Berks, where he confirmed forty candidates, and at St. Peter's College, Radley, between Abingdon and Oxford, where he confirmed eighteen. At Rochester he was the guest of Archdeacon Grant, well known for his stirring and instructive Bampton Lectures on Missions,' who was afterwards, to my great advantage, a near neighbour of my own when I was Canon there (1883). Claughton was consecrated in his own Cathedral by Archbishop Longley on 11 June, 1867, and Bishop Wordsworth was naturally interested on such an occasion to trace out links of connection between Rochester and Scotland, and his own Diocese in particular. One there is which must strike every visitor to the Cathedral who inquires into its history. The Early English choir, which has been added to the rather solemn Norman nave-the most ancient of any Cathedral in England-was erected with the proceeds of offerings at the shrine of St. adopted, although scholars now agree that caelum, &c. is the more correct form. My uncle adopted it in his later years. See p. 21. William, the good baker of Perth, who gave every tenth loaf to the poor. His title to saintship was sealed, or perhaps rather created, by his murder on a pilgrimage to Canterbury in the year 1201-an opportune event for the monks of Rochester, who thus became possessed of a wonder-working shrine.1 The remains of his tomb are preserved in the north-east corner of the northern transept. Later associations 2 attach to Bishop Richard Neale, one of the consecrators of Spottiswoode in 1610, and to Bishop John Warner, who, in 1667, founded scholarships at Balliol College, Oxford, for the support of the Episcopal cause in Scotland. A yet closer friend to that communion was good Bishop Horsley, who, in 1792 (while still Bishop of St. David's), had first succeeded in repealing the oppressive penal laws, which, amongst other things, forbade clergy in Scottish orders from ministering to more than five persons in the same room. But there was a still more important business outside Scotland in which the Bishop of St. Andrews took part in this period, viz. the first Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Episcopate, held in 18673—a great venture which was much criticised at the time, but which has been abundantly justified by its results. The first suggestion of such a meeting came from the Canadian Church in February 1866. After the proposal My uncle preserved an interesting letter from Precentor Venables, of Lincoln, on this subject (26 November, 1867), in which he describes how the miracles worked at this tomb proved a convenient instrument for assisting the monks of Rochester in their rivalry with other religious foundations. St. William was formally canonised in 1256. 2 See The Lambeth Conference-a Synodal Address, Edinb. 1867, pp. 1 foll. and 17. 3 See Life of Bishop Wilberforce, by his son, R. G. Wilberforce, iii. 229 foll. (Lond. 1882), Life of A. C. Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury, by R. T. Davidson and W. Benham, i. 574 foll. (Lond. 1891), and The Lambeth Conferences, S. P. C. K., ed. R. T. Davidson (now Bishop of Winchester), and Bishop Wordsworth's Synodal Address. had been under consideration for about a year it was determined by Archishop Longley that the experiment should be tried, and invitations were issued by him, dated 22 February, 1867, and addressed to all the Bishops of our communion, who then numbered one hundred and forty-four. Of these, rather more than half (seventy-six) met in the Guard-room of Lambeth Palace-where the Conference of 1897 also met― for a four days' private discussion, of which, however, a report crept surreptitiously into the Guardian'-from 24 to 27 September inclusive. The chief figures at this gathering from the Colonial Church were Bishop Gray of Capetown, and Bishop G. A. Selwyn of New Zealand-men, both of them, in a way, of heroic character; and of the home Church, Samuel Wilberforce (then of Oxford); A. C. Tait of London, and Connop Thirlwall of St. Davids. The chief subject of debate was, naturally, the case of Bishop Colenso of Natal, who had been deposed by Bishop Gray in a sentence signed December 1863, but who was in various ways upheld by the Civil Courts to which he had appealed. This matter had been excluded from the agenda paper; but it was found that so many Bishops had come together in the hope of discussing it, that it could not be kept back from consideration. While no one defended Colenso's opinions and proceedings, there was a good deal of feeling among members of the home Episcopate of the danger of independent and, perhaps, overbearing action on the part of the representatives of some of the Colonial Churches. This feeling led to a division between men like Gray and Selwyn, to whom Wilberforce generally lent his aid, on one side, and Tait and Thirlwall on the other. The former were champions of colonial independence, and thought that the Mother Church had much to learn from the colonies; the latter were in favour of the principle of Establishment and desired to do nothing to provoke a conflict with the State. Objection was taken to the constitution of the South African Court, and to the method of trial; and it was felt that a court of first instance, especially if some of its members had previously expressed themselves strongly on the subject afterwards brought before them judicially, could hardly deliver a judgment from which there was no appeal. We have seen this difficulty in the the Forbes case; it was even more acute in that of Colenso. In regard to the principle of Establishment, Wordsworth was at one with Tait, and, as the latter remarks,' endorsed what he said. He further acknowledged certain imperfections in Bishop Gray's procedure, but he thought them almost inevitable under the difficult circumstances. He did not, unfortunately, make any minute notes as to his part in the Conference, but it is evident from Bishop Gray's 'Life,' and from letters addressed to him later by Archbishop Longley and Bishop Tozer, that he had taken rather a prominent part in amending and drafting various resolutions, particularly the paper signed by the great majority of Bishops about the Natal difficulty,' as Bishop Tozer describes it (13 February, 1868). This must have been the following, signed by fifty-five Bishops: We, the undersigned Bishops declare our acceptance of the sentence pronounced upon Dr. Colenso by the Metropolitan of South Africa, with his suffragans, as being spiritually a valid sentence' (Gray's Life,' ii. 350). His opinion on the subject generally will be found more at length in the next chapter. Among the by-events connected with this Conference was a series of sermons by Bishops in St. Laurence's, Gresham Street, in the week preceding it. It was here that Bishop Wordsworth first delivered his sermon on 'Euodias and Syntyche,' already referred to. 1 Life of A. C. Tait, i. 380. Being N suddenly called to supply the place of the Primus on another interesting occasion-the reopening of Chichester Cathedral (14 November)-he repeated the same sermon, for which he received the warm thanks of Dean Hook. He wrote the same night: Ten thousand thanks for your glorious, manly-permit me to say-English sermon. I send you my sermon on the consecration of Bishop Luscombe. I wrote to the Primus, Bishop Gleig, to know how I was to describe the Bishops-he would not hear of their being named from their Sees. Bishop Sandford told me that until his new chapel was built he never ventured to wear a surplice-when he first went to Scotland his chapel would have been pulled about his ears. Bishop Jolly told [me] that when he was preaching as a young man some soldiers were seen approaching the village, and all his congregation fled, leaving him in the pulpit alone in his glory. In the previous month of October Bishop Wordsworth had also taken part in the Wolverhampton Church Congress, so that he was now well known and appreciated in England. Dean Stanley, a few years later, wrote of the Chichester sermon (after remarking that Oxford divines used to speak of the Church of England as Judah, and the Church of Scotland as Samaria): The most accomplished scholar, the most purely Oxford theologian among the Scottish Bishops, has in these latter days spoken with a far truer and nobler sense of the mutual relations of the two Churches, and entreated them to be at one with another on the equal terms of "Euodias and Syntyche."'1 These incidents, which were refreshing to himself and helpful to the Episcopal Church, were not, however, without their bearing upon the Reunion movement in Scotland. The Presbyterians of Inverness were, unhappily, not a type of the general feeling towards Archbishops and Cathedrals; The Church of Scotland, p. 176, ed. 2, 1879. |