been made from high sources in the Southern Methodist papers, for some steps looking toward conciliation. We have not preserved them and cannot precisely restate them. One made by the ex-editor of the Southern Quarterly Review, Dr. Summers, was, as we recollect, something more decisive than the following: Let the northern board of bishops select three bishops, three elders, and three laymen, and offer to consult with an equal commission of the Church South. Let them hold an interview, and discuss with prayerful solemnity and sincerity this question: What can be done to harmonize the two great Methodist Churches in feeling and action? Let them then publish to the two Churches, either conjointly or separately, by report or address, the conclusions at which they have arrived. While these proceedings are in process, we would ourselves add, Let the prayers of both Churches be offered to Almighty God, in which, with full repentance for all that is wrong in his sight, individual and organic, we may implore the divine guidance to all that is holy and right, especially to such measures as will purify and unite us in love to a common Saviour, and make our harmony a rich blessing to our common country. And as we are, in the providence of God, destined to be citizens of one great nation, so let both Churches unitedly pray that all separating and disuniting causes may be removed; that the spirit of repentance for all past sin, of love and concord with each other, and of justice and equity to all men, may fill our hearts, that we may rejoice together in the greatness and glory of our one united nation, and cherish loyalty to its government as founded upon the principles of truth, righteousness, and freedom. Such a measure could make no near approach to reunion; it could exert no organic, only a moral, power. But would it not be a most Christian procedure, and produce a most salutary moral influence? Would it not be a spectacle on which the nation and its Churches, and the great Head of the Church himself, would look with approving interest? Might it not prevent years of heart-burning and mutual hostilities? Might it not save thousands of souls lost by our ecclesiastical wars and discords? Might it not do much toward restoring our country, purified by fire and blood from its greatest organic sin, to a unity of heart? Might it not hasten the renunciation of the spirit and doctrine of slavery from the hearts of Southern Methodists, and incline them to harmonize with the best Christianity of the age? And we believe that precisely as prayer shall prevail throughout our Church in the spirit of the Saviour's prayer that all might be one, so will such measures come into existence and move toward a blessed success. ART. VIII.-FOREIGN RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE. PROTESTANTISM. GREAT BRITAIN. COLENSO His Return to Natal - A New Aspect of the Controversy.-We have traced in former numbers of the Methodist Quarterly Review the history of the Colenso controversy from its beginning until the return of the bishop to his diocese. The arrival of Colenso in Natal, which occurred November 6, 1865, produced, as was to be expected, an immense excitement. The clergy of the diocese, with one solitary exception, were determined to disown Colenso as their bishop, and to accept a new bishop whom the Metropolitan of Capetown, with the consent of the other bishops of the Church of Africa, has declared himself determined to appoint for Natal. The attitude of both the Metropolitan and the clergy of Natal were approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury, as appears from the following letter of the Archbishop to the Dean of Natal: ADDINGTON PARK, CROYDON, October 8th, 1865. MY DEAR DEAN: On my return from a short tour on the continent, I found your letter of the 1st August, accompanied by the resolutions agreed upon at the meeting of the clergy and representatives and lay communicants of the diocese of Natal, in the cathedral, on St. Peter's day. The Bishop of Capetown has sent me his answers to the questions put to him by the assembled clergy and laity at Maritzburg, and I consider them to be judicious. I do not see how you can accept Dr. Colenso as your bishop without identifying yourselves with his errors. The bishops of the Church of England, I believe, with scarcely an exception, have either publicly prohibited Dr. Colenso from preaching in their dioceses, or have intimated their unwillingness to permit him to do so. At any rate, he has not, so far as I am aware, preached in any diocese, except on one occasion, so that the great majority of the bishops have withdrawn from all communication with him. As to the appointment of a Bishop of Natal, the Church in South Africa has been pronounced by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to be just as independent as any of the Nonconformist communities; and under this view is, I conclude, competent to elect its own bishop, without reference to the authorities in England, either civil or ecclesiastical. As regards the dispositions of the laity, the accounts from Natal greatly differ. The bishop, in a letter to a friend in England, claims to have met with quite a sympathetic reception. When he landed at D'Urban, he says a large deputation waited on him to present a very friendly address, signed by one hundred and forty-eight persons, after which they begged him to stay over Sunday and preach. The clergyman and his two churchwardens protested; but the church was crammed, both morning and evening, and "all went pleasantly." The Church people protested against the church-wardens' protest, on the ground that they had made it without having called a vestry meeting, and in distinct opposition to the wish of the congregation. At St. Addington the bishop received another warm address, signed by the two churchwardens and thirty others, and preached to the people. At Peter Maritzburg he was met within a mile of the town by a troop of fifty cavalry. In the town a large body of people greeted the bishop with cheers, and a kindly address bearing one hundred and seventy-one signatures. At Bishopstown the natives welcomed the bishop in the most demonstrative way. The Natal correspondences of the English Church papers, on the other hand, represented the attitude of the laity as quite different, and left no doubt that the great majority of the active church-members would disown, together with the clergy, the jurisdiction of the bishop. On November 30 Bishop Colenso addressed a long letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, entering fully into the circumstances of the decrees of Natal and the proceedings of the clergy. The bishop declares that a sense of duty to the Church, of which he is a minister, to the sovereign whose appointment he has holds, and to the cause of truth and jus- "I feel, my lord archbishop, that I To this letter the archbishop, on Feb- LAMBETH PALACE, February 10. MY LORD: I have duly received your letter of the 30th of November, contain ing a complaint of a wrong which you imagine I have done you by a letter that I wrote to the Dean of Maritzburgh. In answer to this charge I have no hesi tation in avowing that, according to my belief, you have been 'duly and canonically deposed from your spiritual office, Church of Christ, as set forth in the conaccording to the common law of the cluding paragraph of the 26th Article of the Church of England, and I must decline to hold myself responsible to you for obtruded this opinion upon others in my entertaining such a belief. I have never capacity as Primate of the United Church of England and Ireland, but I have not hesitated to avow iny private opinion when it has been sought for. Nor, when my counsel was asked by those who from imparting it. I never expected that were in doubt and difficulty, did I shrink my letter would have been given to the public, nor am I responsible for the fact; but as those to whom I addressed it have thought fit to publish a portion of it, I do not disavow the sentiment therein expressed. At any rate, I could not have objected to the course they thus took from any apprehension that I might one day be called to sit as a judge in your case, because I have high legal authority for saying that there appears to be no mode of proceeding by which I could be legally called upon to act in that capacity. The censure therefore which you would impute to me on this ground proves to be entirely without foundation. As you ask me to point out the errors to which I have alluded, I have merely to refer you to the reasons for your deposition, as stated in the judgment of deprivation passed upon you, and to state my belief that for such errors in doctrine an English clergyman would have been ejected from his cure. I am not aware that I have ever indorsed with my approval every act of Bishop Gray's connected with your deposition, up to the time at which you wrote, as you seem to assert. No the present unhappy condition of the one can more deeply deplore than I do diocese of Natal; but let God be the judge with whom rests the responsibility of this lamentable division in a regularly Christ. May it please Him to guide into constituted branch of the Church of the way of truth all such as have erred and are deceived, and to restore peace where there is now, to our great sorrow, discord and dissension. I am, my lord, your faithful and obedient servant, C. T. CANTUAB. The Bishop of Capetown, in a letter to Colenso, offers to the latter to have the sentence of deposition (recently disallowed by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which Bishop Gray entirely ignores) revised by the Archbishop of Canterbury or by the Bishops of the United Church, but by no lay authority. In the event of Bishop Colenso refusing | Romanizing movement in the Church o to accept the above offer, the Bishop of England has recently once more manifestCapetown has declared his intention to ed itself with a power astonishing to both pronounce sentence of excommunication friends and foes. It is found that the comupon Colenso, as approved by a diocesan parative quiet which has for several years synod. and to nominate and consecrate a been observed by the leaders of the movenew Bishop for Natal. ment did not mean retreat, but prepations for taking new and bolder steps. The movement, in its new stage, is again led by Dr. Pusey, from whom, when first started, it derived its name. Dr. Pusey has recently come forward as an avowed champion of a union between the Churches of Rome and of England, laying down his views in a work entitled "Eirenikon," and a number of newspaper articles. The most outspoken of these letters is the following, addressed to the editor of a Roman Catholic paper in London, which we give entire, as a document of lasting importance: Bishop Colenso is aware that the public opinion in the Anglican Churches throughout the world is almost unanimous in demanding his exclusion from the Church. The only protection which he discovers for his anomalous position is the spiritual supremacy of the Queen in the Church of England. He therefore takes extreme ground in favor of State Churchism. In reply to an address presented to him by some of the prominent lay members of the diocese, he makes four points: 1. That the Church of the colonies has voluntarily made choice of the Church of England as her authority. 2. That the Queen's supremacy, as opposed to that of the bishops and archbishops, is the law, the great foundation principle of the Church of England; that the Queen, as representing the whole nation, is the supreme arbiter of all causes which may arise within its pale, spiritual as well as temporal; and that the bisops only exercise jurisdiction in the Church, as it is delegated to them from the Crown, and hold their courts in the Queen's name. 3. That the result of the second proposition is to give greater personal freedom than can ever be obtained by those who depend on ecclesiastical tribunals. Lastly, that he (Dr. Colenso) has a right, in the present state of the law, to say and teach what he conscientiously believes to be true. The subscription to the Colenso Fund, intended partly to help the bishop in his Chancery suit to recover his salary from the Colonial Bishoprics' Fund, and partly to testify to "the great services rendered by the bishop for the cause of free expression of opinion within the Church," amounted at the close of last year to about £3,700. On the list is the Right Rev. Samuel Hinds, D.D., late Bishop of Norwich, together with thirty-eight clergymen of the Church of England; two peers, (Lord Belper and the Earl of Lovelace;) thirteen members of Parliament; and a great number of men eminent in science or letters. THE ROMANIZING MOVEMENT-Import ant Letters from Dr. Pusey-He delares in favor of the Supremacy of the Pope, and of the Decrees of the Council of Trent.-The To the [R. C.] "Weekly Register," Christ Church, Oxford, Nov. 22d, 1865Sir: I thank you with all my heart for your kind-hearted and appreciative review of my Eirenikon. I am thankful that you have brought out the main drift and objects of it, what, in my mind, underlies the whole, to show that, in my conviction, there is no insurmountable obstacle to the union of (you will forgive the terms, though you must reject them) the Roman, Greek, and Anglican communions. I have long been convinced that there is nothing in the Council of Trent which could not be explained satisfactorily to us, if it were explained authoritatively, namely, by the Romish Church itself, not by individual theologians only. This involves the conviction on my side that there is nothing in our Articles which cannot be explained rightfully as not contradicting anything held to be bona fide in the Roman Church. The great body of the faith is held alike by both; on those subjects referred to in our Art. XXII, I believe (to use the language of a very eminent Italian nobleman), your [our] maximum and our [your] minimum might be found to hartion, it was not my office, as being a monize. In regard to details of explanapriest only, invested with no authority, to draw them out. But I wish to indicate their possibility. You are relatively under the same circumstances. But I believe that the hope which you have held out, that "the authorities in the Roman communion might hold that a reunion on the principles of Bossuet will unlock many a pent-up longingwould be better than a perpetual schism," pent up on the ground of the apparent hopelessness that Rome would accord to the English Church any terms which it the English mind that Christendom may would accept. May I add that nothing was further from my wish than to write anything which should be painful to those in your communion? A defense, indeed, of necessity involves some blame, since in a quarrel the blame must be wholly on one side or on the other, or divided; and a defense implies that it is This letter, of course, produced a sennot wholly on the side defended. But having smoothed down, as I believe, sation. The High Church party, as a honestly, every difficulty I could to my whole, are by no means prepared to go own people, I thought that it would not so far as Dr. Pusey. Many prominent be right toward them not to state where men of this party deemed it their duty I conceive the real difficulty to lie. Nor to express strongly their dissent from it. could your authorities meet our diffi- Rev. A. Gurney, the Anglican minister culties unless they knew them. You In the opinion of Mr. Gurney, he is no longer the leader of the Anglo-Catholic party, but stands virtually almost alone in thought, and represents scarcely anybody but himself." Says Mr. Gurney: will think it superfluous that I desired in Paris, and a very active partisan of that none of this system, which is now High Church ritualism, (though on the matter of "pious opinion," should, like subject of future punishment he thinks the doctrine of the Immaculate Concep- pretty much as Mr. Maurice,) not only tion, be made de fide. But, in the view strongly protested against the opinions of a hoped-for reunion, everything which of Dr Pusey, but declared a readiness you do affects us. Let me say, too, that I did not write as a reformer, but on the to unite even with the dissenters for the defensive. It is not for us to prescribe purpose of arresting this, Romanizing to Italians or Spaniards what they shall movement. hold, or how they shall express their pious opinions. All which we wish is to have it made certain by authority that we should not, in any case of reunion, be obliged to hold them ourselves. Least of all did I think of imputing to any of the writers whom I quoted that they "took from our Lord any of the love which they gave to his mother." I was intent only on describing the system, which I believe is the great obstacle to reunion. I had not the least thought of criticising holy men who held it. As it is of moment I should not be misunderstood by my own people, let me add that I have not intended to express any opinion about a visible head of the Church. We readily recognize the primacy of the Bishop of Rome; the bearings of that primacy upon the other local Churches we believe to be matter of ecclesiastical, not of divine law; but neither is there any supremacy in itself to which we should object. Our only fear is that it should, through the appointment of one bishop,involve the reception of that quasiauthoritative system which is, I believe, alike the cause and (forgive me) the justification in our eyes of our remaining apart. The movement has gone long past him, and has left him stranded, obstinately looking backward. He belongs to a generation of the past, the Church leaders of thirty years ago, who had to feel their way slowly and painfully into "Catholic truths," and most of them learned to associate them, almost inevitably, with a great foreign working system, and to gravitate swiftly or leisurely toward Rome. Most, not all; not the Hooks, Palmers, Gresleys; not Isaac Williams, perhaps a greater name. strances Dr. Pusey wrote several more Dr. The But although I intended to be on the defensive, I thank you most warmly for that tenderness which enabled you to see my aim and objects throughout a long and necessarily miscellaneous work. And I believe that the way in which you have treated this our bona fide" endeavor to find a basis for reunion on the principle debated between Archbishop Wake and the Gallican divines two centuries new position. But few dare openly to ago" will, by rekindling hope, give a express concurrence with his views; strong impulse toward that reunion. but many refrain from any dissent, and Despair is still. If hope is revived in even shield him from the attacks of the |