English Bibles, our glorious English Offices, our restored English Churches.  The thought of turning one’s back on all, and pushing out on the boundless ocean of opinion, may well fill the heart with foreboding—if not for oneself, yet for others!

Prospects.

A solemn future, it may be, is before us as a Church.  You have come, my Lord, to the government of this great central Diocese at a crisis unparalleled in our history.  The eighteenth century was a great truce of principles.  The truce was probably broken in 1829; efforts were made to re-establish the truce once more, but not with much success.  The Established Church, seemed hastening to become an established theory only.  But new life from God entered into her.  She again delivered her message to the growing masses of the people,—and with an energy before but rarely known.  True, our “Discipline” is not restored; but the voice of Worship is heard rising anew on every hand.—True, there is no startling growth of Sanctity—(the special token of a Church’s life!); but there is a very real zeal to do a work for Christ on earth.  With all the experience of an eventful Past to warn us, and the vast range of Sacred Ministrations still remaining, might it not be the glorious distinction of your Lordship’s Episcopate, that it gathered together all the remaining elements of our Spiritual System, so that “nothing was lost,”—and saved for posterity the grandest fabric of Faith and Truth among the nations of Christendom?—

But a darker alternative is possible—may Providence guide and protect your Lordship, that so it may be averted!—A nation finally unchurched;—a Bible keenly “criticised,” and unauthorized;—a Clergy descending to “use” a Prayer-book which they will not affirm that they BELIEVE; a People mainly divided between illiterate fanaticism and cold infidelity.

I am, my Lord,

Your Lordship’s faithful servant,
William J. Irons.