subjoins,—(1) Teaching of the Word of God, (2) Custom of the Primitive Church, (3) History of the Roman Catholic Practice, (4) Progress of Reform in England, (5) Roman Catholic apologies, to which Mr. Swete furnishes the requisite answers. As we believe that there is very great ignorance, even among well educated persons, as to what are the questions at issue between the Churches, and still more as to the nature of the arguments by which our opponents uphold their views, we think Mr. Swete's book, which presents botb bane and antidote in a clear, concise, and intelligible form, may be very serviceable. Mr. Swete would, we suppose, rank as a High Churchman, and we would not undertake to symbolize unreservedly with all his doctrinal statements; but we do not care to dwell on a few blemishes where there is so much deserving commendation.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

The Irish Church Bill has passed through both Houses of Parliament, and before these lines are in the hands of our readers will, in all probability, have become law. Some of the provisions of the Bill have been modified in the House of Lords, and some small endowment has been thereby secured for the future Church of Ireland. But in its main features the Bill remains the same as when originally introduced into the House of Commons. The separation of Church and State is complete, and the sanction heretofore given by the State to the religious teaching of the people of Ireland is withdrawn. That work must henceforth be dependent on the voluntary efforts of its friends. We trust that they will not be wanting, and that no feelings of soreness or resentment will be allowed to interfere with the one great object of upholding the cause of Truth. Happy indeed shall we be if our anticipations of evil should be proved to be unfounded, and if the measure should be found to be attended with the happy results predicted by its supporters.

Ample are the assurances given, by those who profess to know the feelings of the Irish Roman Catholics, of the effect which the measure will have in conciliating their co-religionists towards the Imperial Government; but we are unfortunately old enough to remember similar assurances given just forty years ago, and to have seen how completely they were falsified by the experience of a few short years.

Our relations with the United States of America remain unaltered. No attempt has been made to renew the negociations which were broken off by the rejection by the American Senate of the proposed treaty; and it seems to have been thought better to let the matter drop for a time, till men could look about in a calmer, and we hope juster, spirit. We have no other wish than that justice should be done, and if it should be decided by any impartial tribunal that any liability has been incurred by this country, the amount awarded will be cheerfully paid. In the meantime we are glad to see that the conciliatory policy pursued by the new President is producing the happiest results. Virginia has agreed to the complete political enfranchisement of its coloured population, and will, we trust, with the other Southern States, soon be re-admitted within the pale of the Constitution.

The effect of the French Elections has appeared sooner than was expected. Although the number of declared opponents to the Imperial Government in the new Chamber was small, the Emperor was not likely to be blind to the fact, that they were returned by the votes of nearly half the electors, and represented the opinions of many more. He at once accepted the resignation of his Ministers, and promised considerable constitutional changes. He appears, however, to have committed the common fault of rulers in such times, of doing too much or too little. He has done enough to offend and discourage his supporters, without conciliating his opponents. The changes promised are scarcely sufficient to satisfy the friends of constitutional government, and the new Ministry is composed of men who have hitherto professed the principles, without possessing the ability, of those who preceded them.

THE NEGRO BISHOP. From the time when the Primacy of all England was removed from the See of London to Canterbury, probably that “the archi-episcopal dignity might not be eclipsed and outshone by the regal diadem,” the cathedral church of Canterbury was, till the period of our blessed Reformation, the centre of all the religious life of England. Hundreds of thousands flocked to it on superstitious pilgrimage, as do the Hindoos to Gya or Juggernaut; and, when their idolatrous worship at Becket's tomb was concluded, “ sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.” But when all this was swept away, and the Mitre ceased to confront the Crown with more than equal pride, Canterbury fell back into the ordinary condition of a provincial city. The Archbishops removed to Lambeth and Croydon; the current of life, religious and political, swept past in other channels, and the Dean and Chapter, the majority of whom, with some illustrious exceptions, resembled too much those good easy men the monks of Magdalen, of whom Gibbon speaks, were left to conduct their routine of daily services, and to perform other functions, of which the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have since relieved them. We can hail with glad. ness a new life now pervading the glorious fabric. “Positis novus exuviis,” it is reassuming and reasserting, with some success, claims upon the sympathy of religious Englishmen: and seldom if ever has that cradle of English Christianity more fully vindicated its true position than on June 29th, 1865, when a vast assemblage poured into its consecrated walls, not to listen to oratorios, not to witness superstitious functions, not to gaze idly upon its architectural glories, but to behold Vol. 68.-No. 381.

4N

the consehe earth, tibed it cam barting these si they liste Paul's living

the consecration of three bishops, “whose sound was to go into all the earth, their words unto the ends of the world.”

Few who witnessed it can have forgotten the peculiar solemnity of the occasion : how heartily they joined in the sublime liturgy of our Church; with what interest they listened to the thoughtful eloquence of the present Dean of St. Paul's, the preacher on the occasion. The strains of Mendelssohn's glorious anthem, “How lovely are the messengers,' were dying away, when, conducted in solemn procession to the Archbishop and his suffragans, appeared the stately figure of the late Bishop of Peterborough, the Bishop elect of Tasmania, and one more whose rochet and white lawn dress threw into more complete relief the strongly marked features of the Negro; his air and countenance denoting profound humility, meekness, and self-possession. In due form they were presented to the Archbishop as “ godly and well learned men to be consecrated bishops.” The solemn questions were put as to how they were minded to behave themselves in the house of God. Once again, when fully robed, they were presented to the consecrating prelates; episcopal hands were laid upon them; to each the Bible was delivered with an admonition to make it the rule of their lives. Many thoughtful witnesses of the scene glanced forward in imagination to the very different careers which awaited the three Bishops thus standing at a common starting point-the one to preside over a settled diocese in the Established Church of England, another to build up a Church in a distant colony, another to do the work of an evangelist in central Africa--and they thought with praise and thanksgiving of the world-wide sphere through which our beloved Church stretches her benign influence, and scatters her benefits.

There were in that congregation also some of the representatives of those great philanthropists who originally devised the scheme of a free settlement on the West coast of Africa, to check the accursed scourge of the slave trade, and eventually to be a centre of civilization and Christianity on that coast. They remembered how often, in early years, they had witnessed the distress and disappointment of their fathers, when each arrival from West Africa brought tidings of the death of European Missionaries, and the hope of native agency was “long deferred.” But now the desired event had come, and the tree of life was bestowing its blossoms on the descendants of those who had desired to see this day and saw it not ere they rested from their labours ;while the hands of the Primate of all England and of his suffragans rested upon the woolly head of the Negro, and gave him the full commission to constitute a native church in West Africa, and to ordain elders amongst his sable countrymen.

There was also present on that occasion a group of European

Missionaries who had laboured in Africa, who had helped to train the new Bishop for the work of the ministry; and who now witnessed his elevation to the Episcopate without one spark of jealousy, but with the liveliest emotions of holy joy and of thanksgiving to the great Head of the Church.

One, too, was present whom few knew or noticed. The personal friends of the Bishop elect were accommodated with chairs in the chancel, which approached within a few feet of the communion rails. Immediately behind the Negro Bishop sat a venerable lady, who for thirty or forty years had weathered the climate of Sierra Leone. She was the widow of the late Dr. Weeks, Bishop of Sierra Leone. The Negro who now knelt by ber side to receive consecration, had been first received under her care when liberated from a slave ship, and, kneeling by her side as a boy of six years old, had first learnt to pray the Lord's Prayer. She early perceived in him an excellent spirit, and made him a parlour boarder, and gave him the name at his baptism of her revered pastor, Samuel Crowther, at whose Sunday school, in the parish of Christ Church, Newgate Street, she had once been a teacher. It was a part of the proceedings, that, after the consecration had been concluded, two of the suffragan Bishops descended the many steps from the communion table to the rails, and conducted the new Bishop to a seat among themselves. The venerable Bishop of Winchester, and the Missionary Bishop Smith, thus conducted Bishop Samuel Crowther to his elevated seat among the Bishops; and the eye of the writer of this article rested upon the countenance of Mrs. Weeks, as her former pupil left her side, and ascended between the conducting Bishops to his seat. There was no indication of the pride or emotion of a mother; but there was the radiant satisfaction of a mother in Israel, who receives an answer to many prayers, and the accomplishment of her fondest desires for the Church of Africa. This excellent lady has since entered into her rest, and what an entrance awaited her! From a comparatively obscure position in the Church below, exalted to the everlasting habitations, hundreds of the sons and daughters of Africa, whom it had been her privilege literally to turn from idols to the living God, were waiting to receive her.

Yet intelligent witnesses of the scene we are describing were not altogether absorbed by sanguine anticipations of the future. Some had misgivings that the Native Church was not sufficiently prepared for a Native Bishop. Others thought that a native of Africa could scarcely sustain the dignity and responsibilities of the episcopal office; others again feared for the influence which the elevation might have upon the Bishop's character. The Committee of the Church Missionary Society,