PREFACEЕ.

OUR conviction has oftentimes been expressed in this Magazine, that to quote from one of its contributors" the measures which would most benefit the Church are not in the region of government, but in the region of service; that not by her courts and decrees, but by the practical arrangements of her ministry, she will best encounter the growing emergencies of the times in which we live, and still more of the times which are at hand; provided always that her conscious dependence is not on these methods, or any methods at all, but on the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,' from Whom the whole body, having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.'"

The principle in these words, which we have quoted from an article on the Diaconate by the Reverend Canon Bernard (vol. v. p. 326), has from the first guided the conduct of THE CHURCHMAN. The amazing growth of the town population of England, and the glaring disproportion between the endowments of the ancient parishes and of the newly-formed, in which are the masses; the feebleness of the administrative forces of the Church, really regarded as National, and the need for such conservative reforms as shall adapt a system which sheltered a population of ten millions to the requirements of a population of thirty millions; the tendencies of a utilitarian or even materialistic spirit under the increasing influence of democratic agitations, and the lack of worthy representation of the Church in the House of Commons-these