The Editor has endeavoured, as far as possible, to render accurately the proceedings of each meeting, and although the work has been heavy and anxious, it has been greatly lightened by the kind cooperation of nearly all the Readers and Speakers in correcting the proofs forwarded to them with as little delay as possible.

In a work so large as this, dealing with so many authors and subjects as it does, it is impossible to attend to every suggestion made by the various speakers, but as far as possible, any suggestion which seemed likely to add to the value of the Report has been adopted, and all important corrections and alterations allowed.

The proofs sent for correction were not returned by some of the speakers, and some were returned much after the time allowed. In one or two cases, also, the addresses of the Speakers could not be ascertained, and consequently the proof of their speeches could not be forwarded, but were corrected by the Editor. (The full address, as well as the name of each speaker, should be taken down at the time of speaking.)

It would be ungracious not to notice the courtesy and ready willingness of the printers (Messrs. Billing & Sons, Guildford) to do all they could to hasten the work through the Press.

The delay in the publication of the Report, which has now become of yearly occurrence, might be easily obviated if the Permanent Committee of Congress would lay down some definite rules with regard to the reporting of the discussions, and the treatment of the manuscripts of the Readers of papers. The rules in connection with the Social Science Congress seem capable of adaptation to Church Congresses, and fully to meet the wants of the case. The appointment also of a permanent Editor would be of advantage, and would greatly expedite the publication of the Report. The experience he gains in editing one Report would be of great service in seeing any subsequent Report through the press, and would enable him to establish a regular and orderly system for dealing with the papers.

The Congress of 1881 left behind it pleasant remembrances, good will towards the Church of England, and a belief in the reality and nobility of her work. May the perusal of the pages of this permanent record of that Congress be the means of bringing

And on earth peace among men in whom He is well pleased."

CASTLETOWN VICARAGE,

SUNDERLAND,

February 12th, 1882.

WM. P. SWABY.

THE SERMON

BY

THE BISHOP OF MANCHESTER,

PREACHED IN

ST. NICHOLAS CHURCH, NEWCASTLE,

ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1881.

"Unto me who am less than the least of all saints was this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; and to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which from all ages had been hid in God, who created all things; to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in heavenly places might be made known through the Church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”—Eph. iii. 8-12 (Revised Version).

THE last thoughts of a Christian man drawn out of the depths of a wide and varied spiritual experience are commonly the most precious, his last words the most memorable. And what are commonly called the "Epistles of the Imprisonment" contain the last thoughts and the last words of Paul. If we apply to spiritual phenomena the only reasonable canon of interpretation, we must suppose that his later horizon of vision was wider than his earlier, his convictions more settled, his sense of proportion quicker, his discrimination more penetrating, his faith more calm. "The thoughts of men are widened"-widened at once, and deepened -"with the process of the suns." And Paul's thoughts seem to have been no exception to this moral law. No longer dazzled with "the brightness of that light" in which his Master first revealed himself to his amazed soul-no longer helpless, though believing; no longer putting the question, as of a mind perplexed and overwhelmed, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"-his purged eye, purged, I take it, not by anything which he saw or heard when caught up into the third heaven, but by his actual experience of the methods of the Spirit of God upon the hearts of men, now seemed to see the height and depth and breadth and length of things--the limits of the possible and of the impossible the "unveiled face" still in presence of veiled mysteries; the dispensation committed to the Church, and the place and functions of human instruments in it; the gifts and graces

in their several scales, all measured by their profitableness to the use of edifying; the shadows and the substance; the transient and the immutable; the Christian temper and the law of duty; the place of each servant, according to his gifts, in the household of God; and the end and aim of all-that "the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, might make increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love."

All this he seems to see with intenser vividness and a clearer and fuller insight than he had ever seen them before. The foundation, of course, remains the same. How could that alter? But the stones which raise the building story upon story, are laid with a more careful and (we may say) tenderer hand. The wisdom of the Master-builder-the Architecton-is more apparent. "Each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord." The old warnings are there, the old trenchant tones even; traces of the old severity. The dogs of the concision--the evil workers-the spoilers through philosophy and vain deceit—those who subjected themselves, or would subject others, to ordinances-those who taught things which had a "show of wisdom in will-worship and humility and severity to the body," while they were of no real "value against the indulgence of the flesh"-about these he does not hold his tongue -how could he without unfaithfulness?-but he tells his readers of them "even weeping," and the tones of bitter denunciation, which are to be traced in the Epistle to the Galatians, and even in the First to the Corinthians-of the efficacy of which he had doubts even when he used them-have almost entirely disappeared. Still by manifestation of the truth commending himself and his message to every man's conscience in the sight of God, he seems to feel the power of "the meekness and gentleness of Christ," even more fully than when he first used that sweet phrase to the Corinthians, in strange juxtaposition with his "readiness to avenge all disobedience," and the possibility that he might come unto them again," not sparing," and "with a rod" in his hand.

It will be my objcct this morning to set before you some general considerations of a practical kind springing out of this last legacy to the Church of the great Apostle-of him, less than the least of all saints, to whom this grace was given to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. I will try to condense what I have to say into the smallest space. All inferences or references, applying to particular cases, I shall leave you to draw or make for yourselves. It is upon larger outline and broader principles of things that I desire to fix your minds. I have only one critical remark to offer upon the

text.

the

I have adopted the now almost universally admitted reading Oikonomia tou musteriou instead of the Koinonia of the Textus Receptus, which Alford thinks has all the appearance of merely an explanatory gloss-" the dispensation" or "stewardship" of the mystery, instead of the " fellowship." The manuscript authority is far higher. The thought seems to me more Pauline. He regarded himself as "a steward of the mysteries of God;" and now that his time on earth, as he had been forewarned, was short, he naturally wished to leave on record how, in his conception, at least, of things, this stewardship was to be discharged.

It would savour of the audacity of the schoolmen, intruding into things which I have not seen (I do not quote the words critically), and which assuredly have not been revealed, if I were to attempt to define with any precision how, through the Church, is made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly place the manifold wisdom of God. But we are told by another Apostle that the ministries of the Church on earth are things which the angels desire to look into, stooping from their high estate to gaze, with what feelings we know not-mingled ones, methinks, they must be-upon the wondrous methods by which the wisdom of God endeavours to prevail upon and soften the hard and wilful hearts of the children of men; and that is pretty nearly all we know, or need to know.

Whatever be the service that those angels are sent forth to do "for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation” (Heb. i. 14), its nature has been hidden from us-perchance, lest we should be tempted to "worship" them (Coloss. ii. 18), and the simplicity of our faith towards Christ should be perplexed rather than helped thereby. It is enough to know that amid the cloud of witnesses by whom we are surrounded, as we each run his race, there are the angels-we are "a spectacle to them" -and the whole Church, in all its alternations of success and failure, of defeat and conquest, is a "theatre" to them, upon which they look with fluctuating feelings of hope and fear, of joy and sorrow, of pity or shame.

They are the essential features of this Church of the living God -the pillar and ground of the truth-the instrument, at once human and divine, through which the manifold wisdom of that God was to be made known and justified to the world—to which we believe that we, by every legitimate title of lineal descent, belong as truly as did those "Saints in Ephesus," "faithful in Christ Jesus," in the Apostolic Age, that "Paul the Apostle of Christ by the will of God" dwells upon with such marked emphasis in this great Epistle. The notes that he indicates as the notes of the Church, are such as will last through all ages and amid all vicissitudes as long as there is revealed truth to be proclaimed, and a human but divinely endowed organisation needed to proclaim it.

"It is good for us," while the arena is clouded with the dust of lesser controversies, "to be here;" to rise, if possible, into a purer, holier atmosphere, less disturbed by the vehemence of modern passions and prejudices; to realise by no very violent effort of imagination, what this Church of Christ, builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit, was, in the design of her Divine Architect, intended to be; what, for a few brief years, she was; what it should be our effort to make her become again.

Her days of greatest increase were days of peace, not days of strife; when the faith, once for all, delivered to the saints, won its way, not because it had received the sanction of œcumenical councils, but by its own intrinsic power to persuade the souls of men; before articles got to be too curiously defined, or schools of religious thought formed themselves, and labelled each the other with human names—a golden age, indeed, of peace and charity and progress, which the perverseness and self-will of men, "seeking their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's,” first disturbed, and then destroyed.

How sweet and calm, amid the rage and tumult of the centuries, rises up before the contemplative mind, that vision, as the inspired historian has portrayed it, of the Churches of the first age-"Then had the Churches rest throughout all Judæa and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified, and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied” (Acts ix. 31). Is it, like other golden ages, a thing past, perished, never to return? If it be, I fear the Church's power for conquest will have perished too.

I signalise three of the Apostle's notes of the Church; three only, but they are the three chief, the three most truly fundamental. They are, love-unity-the true function of the Christian ministry. To take these in order:

I. The apprehension of divine things in their simplicity, proportion, grandeur, is only possible to the soul that approaches the contemplation of the great objective realities in the spirit of love. Faith energised by love-if I may adopt the rendering which has always commended itself most to my own mind-is the one availing thing. "For this cause," cries Paul, "I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that, being rooted and grounded in love, ye may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God" (Eph. iii. 14—19)— Dia tes pisteôs en agapé: "through your faith" but "in love."