especially in the East, strong traditional feelings of the solitary and singular dignity of the Episcopate. And many good and influential men will be willing theoretically to accept the Church doctrine of the See-Episcopate, who, in practice, will not be content to open it at once to every city in the United States. A limitation such as this will be accepted by them for the present, as a matter of safe and cautious experiment on the progress and growth of the Church, and in a few years the Church principle, without limitation, can come into operation.

But in another and a more important matter we would criticize the Memorial. It demands the power of division to be in the Diocese, and that it may be done upon a vote of the majority of both orders, passed in two consecutive annual convocations, and with the approval of the General Convention. The consent of the Bishop, it will be seen here, is not required. The Absolute Veto with which he is invested in the present article is wholly put aside, so that the Bishop comes in only with his Convention. For it is the Bishop and Convention that must pass this vote in two consecutive sessions. And there is no doubt that the influence of the Bishop in any vote whatsoever of importance is very great, especially if he be a man of holiness and zeal, and decision of character. His is a preponderating influence that will generally decide any question of such importance as this is, if it be firmly and distinctly expressed.

The Bishop, as we remarked in our last number, has actually, by the present interpretation of the Fifth Article, an absolute veto his personal consent is absolutely requisite - he need not even assign any reasons. He may say, "I have no doubt the time is coming for a division of the Diocese, and you are all of you ready to divide. You are ready to provide an endowment, a Church, a house for another Bishop, to do the work which all men see that I cannot do adequately over this great State. All the Clergy, and all the Laity of the Diocese have made up their mind unanimously – but consent is necessary my and I think that the time is not come. I will not give my consent." And so the thing comes to an end. We ask, has not this exertion of the absolute veto taken place, as a fact in more than one State?

Nay, so fully is the matter of an absolute personal veto established that Bishops have founded upon it new conditions, extralegal, lying outside our canons altogether. "I will not give my

consent, except so and so be done." Bishop Potter of Pennsylvania, a very good and able man indeed, we believe started this fashion. He agreed to give his consent to the erection of the Diocese of Pittsburgh on condition that forty thousand dollars were raised, as an endowment for the new Diocese. Other cases, also, might be cited. And really, if the absolute veto, the arbitrary personal consent, be the rule, we see not why it may not be run out to its full extent; why any conditions, not criminal, may not be made the choice of a High Churchman, or of a Low Churchman, or of the Bishop's nominee, or the exclusion of some person whom the Bishop wholly dislikes. The Church should prescribe the conditions legally and constitutionally of erecting a new Diocese, and not enact such a law that the personal will of any man, no matter how able or how good he may be, shall prescribe extra-legal, extra-canonical conditions to the erection of new Sees.

We would, furthermore, remark, that the words of the Article upon this point of the veto are ambiguous. They are these: "No new Diocese shall be formed unless with the consent of the Bishop and Convention of each of the Dioceses concerned, as also as of the General Convention." Now, manifestly this clause, upon the face of it, may mean, "The consent of the Bishop and Convention as canonically assembled," so implying only the consent of the Diocesan Convention, with the Bishop at its head-only one consent, and that legislative. And indeed this is the most natural and obvious meaning. But practically and in fact, the other interpretation is that which has always been acted upon. That is, first, the personal consent of the Bishop-an absolute veto, without reasons necessarily assigned. And, secondly, the consent of the Bishop and Diocesan Convention- two consents, not one. A principle which we may dislike and count, as it is, utterly wrong, but if it is to be altered it can only be done in General Convention, for it has a color in the wording of the Article, and has in all cases been acted on as the true interpretation.

the

We think it utterly wrong in principle, and at the same time that we think that it is so, we consider that in an oblique and indirect way, it has subserved the interests of common justice to our Bishops. Our Episcopate has hitherto been territorial Bishoprics of Pennsylvania, Ohio or Massachusetts, instead of those of Philadelphia, Cincinnati or Boston. Now suppose that they had been upon the See principle instead of territorial. The

Church in the State of Pennsylvania, we will say, would have constituted the See of Philadelphia. She would have raised an endowment over the whole State of Pennsylvania. Of course, naturally the Churchmen of Philadelphia, the See-city, would have given a very large proportion of the endowment, but still, since the power of the See extended over the whole State, contributions would have been raised over its length and breadth. Now suppose the See of Pittsburgh were contemplated, what would have been the case with the endowment from the very nature of the thing? The Trustees would have said, "This endowment is for the Bishop of Philadelphia,' not for the Bishop of Pittsburgh. Our Bishopric is still the Bishopric of Philadelphia. The Bishop has no less work to do after Pittsburgh is set off, but just as much, perhaps more. The very terms of the endowment make it belong to the Diocese of Philadelphia, and we do not cease to be that Diocese by your voluntarily setting up another. You are the Diocese of Pittsburgh, not Philadelphia or any part of it. But you may make collections for the endowment of your new See over the whole State, and we have no doubt that the people of Philadelphia. will contribute nobly to it." Is not that both just and equitable? We think that it is so.

Now look at the present state of affairs. Here, we will say, is an endowment raised for a Diocese called after a State. The work of the Diocese becomes so large that it must be dividedWisconsin or New York, into Wisconsin and Northern Wisconsin, New York and Western New York; why, by the very name of the Diocese every one feels that the fund also must be divided. And so the Bishop may be left with half the income which was pledged to him, by the very fact of his being elected to the entire Diocese. That is to say, the contract manifestly implied by his election and acceptance, as to his maintenance for life, may be broken by the division of the Diocese. In view of this possibility -the absolute veto, the personal consent without reasons assigned — assumes an aspect of justice which upon no other principle it could have. The Bishop elected for life, incapable of changing his position, or of being translated to a more affluent See, is thereby enabled to prevent his pledged income from being cut in two, his salary from being diminished by half. In other words, by this proviso he is enabled to keep intact the contract of maintenance upon which he was elected. Any one can see that this element

and basis of justice, as regards the Bishop himself, lie at the foundation of the absolute veto; even when it is wrong upon Church principle and ruinous as preventing and destroying the growth and propagation of the Church.

The proper method of remedying the wrong to the Bishop, and the wrong to the Church, is not the Wisconsin method of sweeping away altogether the absolute veto of the Bishop upon the erection of new Sees, but in the first place to enact

"That the endowment shall in all cases follow the See, be an endowment of the See of Milwaukee, or Philadelphia, or Boston, or Buffalo, except local arrangements to the contrary have been in existence.

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Secondly, In case of a new See being about to be erected in any State to permit collections to be raised over the whole State for the erection of the first See.

"And, thirdly, When it is requisite from local arrangement to have the endowment divided, giving the Bishop in such case only a right to forbid division of the Diocese until the endowment is either given up wholly to the old See, or until it is raised to its original amount."

We think this is necessary in the way of common justice to the Bishop, but when this one obstacle has been removed we do not see any justice to the Church in the personal power given to any man at his will to forbid new Sees, to prevent new centres of Church growth; no justice in any man's having the canonical power of saying, "My consent is requisite to the erection of a See in the city, within this State, and you cannot have it. The Church has given me the right of absolute veto, and I shall exercise it." No man, however good or holy he may be, ought to have the right absolutely, as our Bishops have now, with no more reason assigned than of saying, "I think of shutting out the Episcopate, our missionary order-the Apostles of the Church of God, from great States larger than European kingdoms, having three or four millions each of inhabitants and eight or ten great cities, in each of which there ought to be a Bishop, his residence, his Cathedral, and also the machinery of his Church work."

With the enactment of this principle in regard to endowments we think that the division of Dioceses may be safely left to "the Bishop and Convention," acting in two consecutive annual sessions, and to the General Convention; the principle of the See Bishopric being recognized, and that, for the time, no city of less

than twenty thousand inhabitants should be capable of being erected into a See.

ART. VII. THE FRENCH PULPIT. No. I.

THE Sermon, considered as a religious address to a mixed multitude learned and unlearned, righteous and unrighteous, was carried to a pitch of perfection by the three great orators of the Romish Church, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Massillon, which it has never attained in other hands; a perfection whereby their sermons have been at once profound in theology, powerful in argument, moving in pathos, delightful in style; a perfection, which being itself attained only after a lifelong study of the great models of ancient eloquence, has led all who have studied rhetoric in earnest to turn to them, as they themselves turned to the Great Athenian Orator, that they might learn how the same high character, the same powers of intellect, the same unwearied labor, which succeeded, after a lifetime of toil, in rousing a degenerate people to sacrifice their wealth, their time, their lives in behalf of their country, have, in another age and under another sky, been employed in leading men to sacrifice all this world has to give in behalf of Him whose servants they are, and who has provided for them a better country, even an Heavenly.

It is of these men we would write, knowing that we can count upon the sympathy of our readers as we attempt to unfold with all possible brevity, and the most naked simplicity, a theme which comes home to us, as Scholars and as Christians, and above all, as those who are standing in the Christian Pulpit.

As Epic poetry sprang into sudden completeness in Homer, and as Attic tragedy within the space of hardly more than a generation attained its perfection in Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, so the Pulpit Eloquence of France, in the age of Louis the Great, burst upon the world in a resplendence of power and greatness of which the previous century had given no promise, and to which the subsequent produced no likeness.

Bossuet was the first in time as he was in genius. He was born at Dijon in 1627. His career at school and college was brilliant, and prepared the way through the reputation he acquired and the