ment of the mission and the general government of the Church.'

The opposition was great, as it has been in every colony since. He was told that he was separating from the Mother Church, and forming a new sect of Selwynites. In tracing the growth and history of synodal action in all the branches of our communion, we find the British colonist, who is not generally profoundly versed in theology or ecclesiastical history, dead against all such organisation, on two grounds: first, that synods tend to exalt the priesthood (although practically the lay element is present in numbers, and with an influence that has in some places proved very mischievous); next, that, by establishing self-government, a Colonial Church ceases. to be the Church of England, and deprives herself of that which to the uncultured layman appears to be the palladium of his liberty, the paternal action of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the royal supremacy. It is in vain to tell such people that the Church of England cannot exist eo nomine in Australia, or in Africa, or in Canada, without flagrant injustice to the meaning of words; that if a missionary Church carries her original name into the countries which she occupies, there is no such a body as the Church of England, inasmuch as Christianity was imported into this island, and was not an autochthonous product. It has taken more than a quarter of a century to instil this fact into the minds of our colonial fellow-subjects, and the lesson is not thoroughly learned by them even now.

As Bishop Selwyn was the first bishop who organised a diocesan synod, so to the joint efforts of himself and Bishop Broughton are we indebted for the first effort in the direction of provincial synods. In 1849 Mr. Gladstone, with keen foresight of events that have since happened, had urged the Colonial Churches to organise themselves on that basis of voluntary consensual compact which is the basis on which all Colonial Churches are now content to rest, and was, as Mr. Gladstone remarked, 'the basis on which the Church of Christ rested from the first.' Following this counsel, in October 1850, the metropolitan and five bishops of the Province of Australasia met in Sydney. In their first manifesto they alluded to the existence of doubts 'how far we are inhibited by the Queen's supremacy from exercising the powers of an ecclesiastical synod,' and resolved 'not to exercise such powers on the present occasion;' but they laid down the principles on which future synods and conventions, diocesan and provincial, should be held. They provided for the subdivision of

dioceses and consecration of bishops; they defined modes of exercising discipline over the laity as well as the clergy; they published a statement of their belief concerning the doctrine of Holy Baptism for the comfort of those who had been perplexed by the recent judgment in the Gorham case; they made provision for the work of religious education, and established a Board of Missions charged with the evangelisation of the native blacks of Australia (for whom very little had been done by Churchmen), and for the heathen races in all the islands of the Western Pacific, the scene of the labours of Bishop Selwyn, of Bishop Patteson, and their companions.

The example set in 1850 in Australia was followed in 1851 in North America. The Bishops of Quebec, Toronto, Newfoundland, Fredericton, and Montreal assembled in Quebec, and addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, as their metropolitan, a statement of certain hindrances to the work of the Church, for which they sought a remedy. Their foremost want they declared to be diocesan synods and a council under a provincial metropolitan. They were met by the contempt of the press both in America and in England; they were denounced as ultra-sacerdotalists and the like, and were accused of attempting to trample on the rights of the laity. In time a new patent was issued to the Bishop of Montreal, by which he was constituted metropolitan. The patent has long since been known to be invalid, but it introduced one serious evil by which the office of metropolitan was tied to the see of Montreal. This caused many difficulties when the see was last vacant, and provision has now been made by which their recurrence is rendered impossible.

It must be remembered that at the time when the colonial bishops were thus working their way towards synodal action, the Mother Church had not even the limited measure of privilege which she now enjoys in the active functions of Convocation; a fact which adds very much to the credit due to those courageous men. In the same year

(1851), the diocese of Melbourne endeavoured to construct a Synod. A diocesan conference was held, chiefly, it would seem, with a view to getting an enabling bill through the local legislature. The attempt failed; it was repeated in 1854, and then the Victorian Legislature passed an Act enabling the bishop, clergy, and laity to provide for the affairs of the said Church.' This Act received the royal assent in 1856. It maintained the right of appeal to the Metropolitan, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to the Privy Council; and we may dismiss the history of this

diocese by saying that its spiritual progress seems to us to have been hindered by a failure on the part of its members to believe heartily in the Church's spiritual powers, and by a persistent attempt to rule it by merely human legislation, like any secular corporation. The large grants from public funds do not seem to have helped it. The supply of these grants was supposed to be unfailing. While they lasted, private munificence and personal self-sacrifice found no scope, and when they ended, these virtues, for lack of exercise, seemed to have perished. According to The Times' Victorian correspondent during the present year, this diocese, which has for so many years had about 12,000l. per annum of public moneys placed at its disposal for church-building, besides an equal sum for clerical stipends, has only a miserable shanty for its cathedral, in strange contrast with other dioceses that have been thrown more on their own resources, while it has been known in England as a mendicant at the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and other Societies. Bishop Moorhouse has declared that this shall cease. He has challenged the Melbourne folks to raise 100,000l. for a suitable cathedral, and it seems as though he would speedily see his wishes realised.

But to return. In 1857 Bishop Gray held his first diocesan synod. Every parish, chapelry, or congregation sent one lay delegate; but it answered the purpose of agitators, both in Africa and in England, to declare that the movement was made in the interests of the clergy, and that opposition to it was 'a struggle for civil and religious liberty;' and one of the two great suits which dragged its weary length through some years of that troublous episcopate had its origin in the opposition of a certain clergyman, who pleaded that the bishop's letters patent were worthless, and who, poor man, could find, on the failure of these documents, no other ground of obedience to his bishop, who bade him give notice of the intended synod.

Gradually and tardily, as it seemed at the time, but rapidly, as it seems to us who look back on these important movements, colony after colony saw the Anglican Church framing for herself the means of self-government. In some dioceses, where the wisest bishops (perhaps in proportion to their wisdom) saw most clearly the urgent necessity of such legislation, it was found impossible, so great was the prejudice of the laity, at once to introduce it. Fredericton, for example, waited until 1866, and Newfoundland was still later in establishing its synod. In 1865 Bishop Claughton summoned all the clergy of the diocese of Colombo and the elected lay

delegates to meet him in synod; but the spirit which has since made itself more manifestly hostile to the present bishop was even then at work. The clergy who were maintained by the Church Missionary Society did not feel themselves at liberty to obey their bishop's summons without the consent, asked and obtained, of their 'superiors' in Salisbury Square; and the permission, when asked, was refused.

Thus, however, in the course of some fifteen years the Colonial Churches worked out for themselves such a measure of autocracy and autonomy as synods can give, with some few exceptions to be mentioned presently. We call these assemblies synods, because their founders and members call them so; they are hardly worthy of so venerable a title, and for their fitting designation we prefer the word 'Convention,' as used by the Church of the United States. The presence of the laity, in numbers so large and with powers so extensive, has no doubt added to the immediate stability, not to say popularity, of the Church, struggling for pre-eminence in a new condition of society amid the jostling of numerous sects; but it has not been without its serious evils. It is not to be expected that the pushing colonists have much time for the study of theology, and it is generally found that in proportion to a man's ignorance is his readiness to dogmatise (always, as he thinks, in an undogmatic spirit) on theological matters. Questions which to the learned, whatever their own views, seem to be compassed about with mystery, and to be approached with trembling and discussed with modesty, are to the thriving colonists mere figments of unpractical enthusiasts to be pooh-poohed by sensible men. Give the colonist his head, and he will soon run away with creeds and formulæ. 'Hang theology!' is his motto, and under a voluntary system, unless guarded and checked by the restraints adopted in the best-organised dioceses, he will go hard to carry the clerical votes with him. His tendency is to regard the bishop with jealousy and to keep him down, and make him put his office in commission; in the diocese of Brisbane this has gone so far that the bishop is now pledged to be bound by all the rules and regulations which may from time to time be made by the synod, and he undertakes immediately to resign his see if sentence requiring such resignation should at any time be passed upon him? We are not surprised to read in recent Queensland papers that the Church is utterly bankrupt; that no funds are forthcoming; that spiritual work is starved, and the bishop declares that his occupation is at an end if the laity decline to help him. Moreover, the lay colonist carries

with him into council the remembrance of his personal interests and the interests of his class; these conflict with the interests of the aborigines, whom we are prone to call 'inferior races,' who dwindle away before what with equal presumption we call our civilisation, too often represented by the opium drug, the whisky keg, and the rifle. It is the colonist's interest that the natives should disappear as soon as possible; with their disappearance all claims about land and the titles on which it is held also disappear, and we attribute to the lay influence in these assemblies two facts:

1. That moneys given by missionary societies in England for the conversion of the heathen need careful watching lest they should be diverted from their original purpose to the support of services and schools among the colonists, and thereby to the saving of the pockets of those colonists.

2. That in all dioceses, where synods exist, the local Church has done far less than was her duty, and in some has done nothing whatever, for the conversion of the aborigines, but has left that work to English Societies, to the Romanists, to the Moravians, the Congregationalists, and the Wesleyans.

Synods again have not had fair play at the hands of lawyers; they have been founded on the faith of documents which have been declared by their authors to be valueless, and thereby much perplexity has been generated. In 1861, both in Australia and Africa, the validity of letters patent was disproved, and on the strength of this blunder it was attempted to throw everything into confusion; those who had most faith in the Divine organisation of the Church were the least moved by this change; indeed they saw in it the readiest mode for placing the relations of the various orders of clergy and of the laity on the only sure basis, that of consensual compact. We cannot forbear quoting the conduct of two bishops in different parts of the world, famous in their generation, men who are a glory to their Church and generation. The Bishop of Newcastle (the one bishop who has never been home since his consecration in 1847) thus addressed his diocesan synod in 1869:—

'I lay on the table a summons I have just received from the metropolitan to attend the provincial synod. Shall I obey the summons? Yes. Do I acknowledge the Bishop of Sydney as my metropolitan? Yes. Do I then acknowledge the authority of the letters patent which profess to appoint the Bishop of Sydney as my metropolitan? No; in this respect I consider them utterly void in law. How then has the Bishop of Sydney become my metropolitan? I answer, by mutual consent. Every adult male of our Church has