"Père Hyacinthe is becoming more and more the man of the Universal Church, without the least prejudice to that noble liberality which gives him so special an influence over our own people. I cannot doubt that your generous efforts will be succesful. Three years ago I had the honour of introducing this same cause to our English brethren, under the presidency of the late Archbishop of Canterbury, who commended Père Hyacinthe to the sympathy of English Christians. I venture to believe that these latter will consider, with us, that the more difficult and serious the times, on account of the renewed attacks of the enemies of Christianity, the more earnestly we are bound to maintain the contest, and to furnish the necessary means of support to that one of God's servants who is the best qualified to speak to his own countrymen, and most able to compel their attention.-Recevez, &c., "(Signed) E. DE PRESSENSE, Pasteur Sénateur." The Rev. W. S. LACH-SZYRMA, Vicar of St. Peter, Newlyn, Penzance. THIS subject is one of the most important topics before the Congress. Twenty-five years ago, when the first Church Congress was held, nay, twenty-one years ago, when I attended the Bristol Congress, the position of the Church of England was one of isolation in Western Christendom. How different is our position now. In every nation of Christendom there are theologians who witness to the truth of the Anglican position. In Germany some of the most eminent theologians of that great nation hold the main truths for which we have for ages been contending, for the old Catholics, in the main points, hold the same views as we do. Dr. Dollinger, Bishop Herzog, Professor Micherelis and others, contend for this. Nor is Germany alone. In France, the mightiest preacher of the French nation, Père Hyacinthe Loyson, in spite of persecution and prejudice, witnesses for the main points of the Anglican position. I would recommend any English churchmen who visit Paris, to see for themselves the work of the Gallican Church. Nay, more, in Italy itself Monseignor Savarese and Signor Campello, witness to the truth of what the English Church teaches. Now if divers able men, under different circumstances, without collusion, come to the same results in their calculations, there is reason to think that that calcu lation is accurate. Take an instance in science. Mr. Adams in England, came to a certain result in his calculations of the perturbations of the planet Manus. Leverrier, in France, came to much the same result. By divers processes they reached the same conclusion. The truth of their calculations was proved in the discovery of the great planet Neptune. For three hundred years the theologians of the Church of England have taught certain truths, and now some of the most eminent theologians of the Continent have come to the same conclusion. This point is one I press on the Congress as one of importance in this controversy. The Christianity of Britain was not first established by Roman missionaries, but by Gaulish or Celtic. In Cornwall there are two churches, Perran Zabuloe and Gwithian, as well as other Christian remains, anterior to the days of St. Augustine. So we do not owe our Christianity to Rome. The old Catholic Churches on the Continent have special claims on the sympathy and regard of English churchmen as witnessing to the truth of our position. The Rev. CHARLES GORE, Principal Librarian of Pusey House, Oxford. I SHOULD be unwilling to address this meeting simply on the ground that I am without the special knowledge which has been of advantage to those who have gone before me; but I think that no one who watches these controversies with interest can fail to be struck almost painfully with the fact, that, whereas we are appealed to constantly to be generous and large-hearted, the generosity and large-heartedness almost always stops short of that Church of Christendom which has reared so many of the greatest saints, has done such work for God, and perpetuated and maintained the Faith. It seems to me that a great part of this question turns on what we regard as the position of the Church of Rome in the world. If we regarded it as a Church which could supply nothing but husks to her children, which could not give the grace which their souls need, our course in these matters would be perfectly clear. But there is a passage, of which I should like to remind all present, in that great letter of Pere Gratry, in which, with a masterly knowledge of history, and incomparable powers of irony, he exposes the fallacies which underlay the dogma of the Papal Infallibility. There is a passage in that letter in which he says that what the Church of Rome has to offer is, in spite of all its errors, not husks, but the Bread of Life, by which souls can be united with Christ, and all those things which form the essence and the power of the Church of God. As we have travelled abroad, perhaps some of us may have listened with delight to the services in the Churches of Germany, and have seen that the Church is feeding the hard-working, the suffering, and the poor with something very different from husks, something that does make us desire that we could be more, as they are, the Church of the poor. We are told to go beyond sympathy, and to co-operate with these movements on the Continent, on the ground that they are doing exactly what we did in the English Church at the Reformation. May we be defended from an argument which would so utterly cut away the ground on which we stand! Our argument is that we have got a succession which has not only got the grace of the ministry, but has also jurisdiction in the canonical manner of the Church of Christ. Is there anything like this for the action we are asked to sympathise and co-operate with? St. Cyprian has been appealed to-St. Cyprian, who above all men upheld the right of the Episcopate, yes, and its essential limitations; who studiously maintained that the right of each individual bishop was limited to that diocese over which he was canonically ordained to preside. The Rev. J. J. LIAS, Vicar of St. Edward's, Cambridge, and Preacher at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall. I was glad Mr. Gore rose to give us his views, because it is one of the principles of this Congress that there should be full and free discussion. I can only regret that the five minutes' limit prevented him from giving us more fully the benefit of his opinion. We all know his ability and eloquence, and we should all, no doubt, have gone away much wiser than we came if time had allowed him to finish. But I feel bound to point out that he is entirely mistaken if he imagines for a single moment that we stand here to advocate the cause of the old Catholics out of hostility to Rome. We respect that ancient Church. We cannot enter her doors and see the crucifix on which our Saviour's image stands, without feeling that there is the truth of Christ crucified held forth to mankind. We have no hostility to the Church of Rome. We believe she is badly governed. We do not for a moment deny that she is able to feed the hungry, and to heal the sick, but we complain that to those who reject the decrees of the Vatican Councils she does supply nothing but husks. It is on this point, and this point only for refusing to accept the decrees of the Vatican Council-that they are excommunicated, that they are deprived of the rights every Christian has. Their children are denied the Sacrament of Baptism. If they wish to marry, they cannot have the blessing of the Church, and if they die they are denied Christian burial. That Sister Augustine, who was the counterpart of Sister Dora, was refused the last rites of the Church, because on her death-bed she said, "I cannot accept this decree," and Christian burial would have been denied her had not Reusch, one of the excommunicated priests, crossed the Rhine on purpose to say a few words of sympathy and affection at her grave. We are told that schism is the greatest of all sins, and we are reminded that unity is that for which our Saviour lived and died. I say that unity is worth nothing unless it be based on the supremacy of the conscience and the claims of truth. We are told, also, that these men ought to have submitted to the claims of Rome, and prayed for better times. That, of course, is a very plausible argument, but those who have studied the history of the last century have seen protest after protest on the part of wise and liberal men against the mistakes and errors which have been committed, not by the Church of Rome, but by her rulers. These men were silenced. And do these people owe no duties to those of their fellow-countrymen who, as we have been told, are drifting into infidelity in every country on the Continent? You see there the effect of Roman pretensions in the spectacle of a laity everywhere in antagonism to their Church. Do these men owe no duties to the laity of the Continent, in preaching a purer faith than the Church of Rome, with her unjust pretensions, can claim to do? And then we are told that the course taken by the old Catholics is contrary to canon law. I protest against any attempt to put off hungering souls with canon law. We are told, forsooth, that canon law forbids us to hold out the right hand of fellowship to men who are precisely on the same platform as ourselves, and who can stand before the face of Christendom and make out as good a claim to the title of Catholic as any people in the world. The Rev. W. H. OXLEY, British Chaplain, Palermo. I WISH to draw your attention to the Copts in Egypt, and to the need which the Eastern Church in that country has of our help. When I was at Cairo, I spent nine days making inquiries; and the results of those inquiries are contained in the form of "A letter to R. Few, Esq.," published by the Association for the furtherance of Christianity in Egypt, which is now doing a very good work, by aiding the Coptic Christians to help themselves, and to reform their Church from within, by providing the means of sound Christian education on a thoroughly Catholic and non-proselytising basis. I desire, also, to impress upon English churchmen the great necessity there is for sifting into, and carefully inquiring into statements about the Eastern or any other foreign Churches, before accepting them as facts. When I was in Jerusalem some time ago, I was priviliged to meet five patriarchs at the house of my friend Dr. Chapman. A statement was circulating amongst our branch of the Church, to the effect that the Armenians still sacrificed animals, and in some way connected this with the sacrifice of the death of Christ and the Eucharist. This I had on no less an authority than Dr. Barclay, the then Bishop of Jerusalem, as well as from others of our community. I spent the evening conversing through an interpreter, Mr. Wiseman, a member of the Greek Church, with the patriarchs, and trying to gather information. At my request, he asked the Abyssinian and Armenian patriarchs the meaning and origin of this strange report, which caused them no little amusement, while they indignantly denied the possibility of any Christians sacrificing animals in any way. The story resolved itself into this. The Armenians being the wealthiest body in Jerusalem, not only receive their pilgrims into the convent, which adjoins the house occupied by Bishop Barclay, but also supply them with food; and the animals were slaughtered by the brethren of the monastery in the courtyard of the monastery. This, of course, I at once went and explained to Dr. Barclay, and the other English who were present. As I have now been working three years in Italy, I may be allowed to say that I have been privileged twice to be associated for more than six weeks, with a man whom I most deeply love and revere-Father Curci. I feel most strongly what the Bishop of Gibraltar said about our attitude on the continent. I went to Palermo as a missionary to our own seamen, who go there in great numbers-upwards of 12,000 a year-and also to the English residents, who are working there engaged in various occupations, and who in this present cholera time are behaving most nobly. I venture to think we can help foreign Churches best by disinterestedly entering into their difficulties, which are real enough, by setting them an example, by showing them our own churchmanship in its fullest and most truly Catholic side; showing them that we have the Scriptures; that we have the prayers and services in our own tongue; that we have the Sacraments duly and freely administered; and that we have even more than that, because we have the Holy Spirit of God freely moving amongst us. People in Italy have come to me, and asked me to advise them whether or not they should withdraw from their own Church. I have said, "For God's sake do not leave your Church: you have got the truth, try to bring it out, try to bring it to the front." It is not that I do not see; it is not that I do not deplore the dreadful idolatry; the dreadful trafficking in holy things; the fearful trading upon the ignorance and superstition of the people; the dreadful usurpation of the Madonna and the saints. It is not that I do not see and know all this, but I believe that as long as the Roman Catholic Church holds to the truth of the Incarnation, and to our Saviour Christ as being the Saviour, it is the duty of all her sons and daughters to abide by her, and to strive within her to bring the truth out, however hopelessly impossible it may appear, and however swamped she may be by modern accretions and accumulating dogmas. I have seen acts of the deepest Christian charity done to embittered Protestant foreigners, which (I shame to say it) I fear no English people could bring themselves to do; and, I have seen on the other hand, acts of grovelling idolatry. But the attitude of Padre Curci is that which commends itself to my mind. He has translated the Scriptures into the vulgar tongue, and written commentaries upon nearly all the books of the Bible (and every one is allowed to read the Bible, with the permission of the priest, which is seldom now refused. The Gospel, also, must be read once on Sunday in every parish church in the language of the people). I should advise Roman Catholics not to leave their Church and make fresh schisms, but rather to act in the spirit of Father Curci, whose personal piety and devotion is beyond all question, and who has suffered for the truth. He has been suspended-forbidden to say Mass -put into a monastery three times to do penance, and go into retreat under the most ignorant, dirty, and illiterate monks; and he has submitted to it all. But he has written his books; and the influence of that man is untold in thinking circles in Italy. One other thing I would advise our people when they are abroad, is to be true to their colours; to support their own churches; and to show as united a front as they can to the sceptical or Romanist world around them, not to be always talking about Protestantism, for that has done more harm than anything, by confusing the English Church with the various foreign Protestant sects in the minds of foreigners, but to claim to be what they are-Catholics-Anglo-Catholics if you like, but still members of the one great universal Church of Christ throughout the world. CONGRESS HALL, MORNING, OCTOBER 9TH. FRIDAY The Right Rev. the PRESIDENT in the Chair. THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. (a) THE INTELECTUAL TRIALS OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. (c) THE DIFFICULTIES OF PRIVATe Devotion and THE AIDS TO IT. The Right Rev. the PRESIDENT. I HAVE to state that Lord Mount-Temple, who was to have read a paper, is unable to be present in consequence of the funeral of Lord Shaftes bury. Of course we all feel that in his position he must do honour to Lord Shaftesbury, and I am sure that there is none here present who does not, in his heart and with his lips too, do honour to the memory of that great and good man. PAPER. (a) INTELLECTUAL TRIALS OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. The Rev. H. FOOTMAN, Vicar of Nocton, Lincoln. "This is life eternal, that they may continually advance in the knowledge of Thee, the only true God, and of Him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." Here is a declaration as to the nature of the Divine science; and here, too, is a definition of that spiritual life, to some of the intellectual trials of which I am asked to refer. The trials which beset this life, through the sides" (as Paley would say) of the intellect, are many and mighty, and are felt by a constantly increasing number of men and women throughout the civilised world. They will be still more widely and deeply felt in the coming generation. It is necessary, then, that these trials should be faced steadily, bravely, and at once, although any earnest effort so to face them may involve us in much reading and thought, in much speech and listening, which cannot but be painful. Conscious communion with God, however, through contrition and confession, through prayer and praise, through Scripture and Sacrament, must be at least as precious to man as his bodily health. The physician does not refuse to approach his patient, because the disease is painful or repulsive, or threatens to become epidemic. We must not be less brave or less kind than he. I. "To know the only true God." This very expression puts us at once in opposition to what is now commonly known as agnosticism. We are certainly threatened from the side of the intellect with a very serious trial, when in the name of science we find the devout mind is taken to task for its want of modest self-limitation, and when humble faith is made to wear the air of intellectual foolhardiness, and charged with the sin of unwarrantable #appnoía. There are moments when we realise the frailty of our capacities, even at their best, and when we feel unusually sensitive to the agnostic's reproachful imperative, as, in the name of reason, he orders us off the boundless ocean of the infinite, and commands us to desist from the essentially unreasonable task of attempting to place our finite and fragile minds in a position of intelligible relation with that Absolute One, of which we only know that we can know nothing. Of course, we may give way at times to our religious emotions at least those of us who are so constituted that we cannot help it may do so. Only (so through the sides of the intellect comes the trying taunt) when we come to our reasonable condition again, we must always recollect that we have been giving way to our unaccredited subjective susceptibilities, yielding to that theological bias by which men have been sometimes benefited, sometimes injured, but always deceived. To this scientific decree there is sometimes added a logical puzzle, which helps to make us feel stupid, as such puzzles often do. "How," so runs the railing interrogation-" how can you know anything of that of which you cannot predicate anything, since all predication is limitation, and the subject here is, ex hypothesi, infinite ?" The puzzle and the decree together constitute no inconsiderable intellectual trial; but we begin to breathe more freely when we get to understand the difference between the logical predication of an attribute and the real possession of an attribute. Predication, as a step towards definition, may limit the subject (logically), but the possession of an attribute is essential to existence, and the addition to the being of new attributes, so far from being a limitation, is an extension of reality. Further, we begin to breathe freely when we find that after all our agnostic knows something of the absolute, and can impose upon it, by a daring feat of ontology, this |