causes, will never work in an irregular way, but who will work earnestly and energetically under a well-organized system. I believe that the institution of minor lay orders in the Church will do a great deal to enable us to sap the strength of Dissent in the land; and, so far from degrading, it will essentially tend to exalt the character of the Christian ministry. A Nonconformist preacher now can only compare himself to an ordained minister of the Church of England, but when there is a recognised lay agency in that Church, as well as ordained ministers, the Nonconformist will see that it is with the lay agent rather than with the ordained minister that he will have to compare himself.

You will find, too, that we should draw men from the same sources from which the Nonconformist teachers now come; and an organized lay agency would form at once a position into which Nonconformist teachers might honourably be received if they wished to unite themselves to the Church of England. It will be the means of opening a never-failing supply for the higher branches of the ministry of the Church; because, after all, though examination is a good thing, and a necessary thing, what can be a better proof of fitness for the full ministry of the Church than the practical evidence of zeal and ability which may be shewn among the Lay agents of the Church? I do not think it would be a healthy thing that all our ministers should be selected entirely from the lower classes of society; but I do think it a most essential matter, that our ministry should be formed of men from all orders and degrees of men amongst us; and that it should be seen that each man, if he be but an earnest and Christian man, and has the ability,— no matter what his rank or station in life may be,-may have a chance of rising to the highest dignities in the ministry of the Church of England.

MAJOR GENERAL DOBBS :—I come before you here as a lay-preacher-as one who has been preaching the Gospel for forty years—and who has practically entered into, yea experimentally realized my responsibilities as a member of the Church of Christ. After labouring in India for forty years in many capacities, I have come back again to my native land with the most intense desire to work with the clergy of Ireland. I have been labouring for these forty years in connection with all denominations of orthodox Christians, and though having a deep sympathy with all, I have come home to heartily work with the Irish clergy.

Here I would make a few practical remarks on this important question of lay-agency.

First of all, to be successful, there must be the most cordial unreserved feeling of love between the lay-agents and the clergy. If there be any jealousy between them, any suspicion or reservation, no good can be done. Therefore it is, I believe, absolutely essential towards progress and success that the clergy and lay agents should understand each other, that there should be the most free expression of feeling between them on every subject connected with their work. We all think for ourselves in this age, we can't help it, and there is not perhaps a single one amongst us who can agree in all respects with our clergy. There was a time when it was considered an insult to the cloth to speak against anything said or taught by a clergyman. That time is, happily, passed; still there are many who will not give an opinion in presence of a clergyman if they do not think the clergyman will approve of that opinion. Thank God I am free from that feeling, and say freely and openly what I approve of, and what I do not. There must be then this feeling of cor

diality and unreservedness between clergy and lay agents if they are to further the good cause.

There are several distinct agencies which might I think be employed at this present time to aid the parish clergy generally who are overworked. I would in the first place recommend a paid agency to connect the clergy with the lower classes. I have been in the army all my life, and what, I may ask, could a colonel of a regiment do without his adjutant, who knows the men personally and can communicate between him and them, knowing their peculiarities, capacities and requirements? Now there is such a difference between the higher and lower classes of society that unless through some agency like this I have alluded to, it is impossible for the clergyman to reach the lower classes amongst his people. It is, I am persuaded, absolutely necessary for the efficiency of the clergyman entrusted with a large congregation, that he should have a lay agent connecting him with the lower classes of his flock. Do not misunderstand me; I mean men of English education and of training taken from their own class, who may not have got a classical education in Greek or Latin, but yet who can do much to assist the clergyman in his work among the poorer ranks of life.

Then there is another sphere in which lay agency is needed, that is, in the direct preaching of the Gospel. I believe that that duty is not confined to the ordained ministers of our Church. I cannot conceive the idea of a man on receiving the love of Christ into his heart, and being convinced of his power to teach others what he has learned for himself, refraining from doing so. I never thought of asking any man's leave to preach what I believed and knew myself. I felt constrained to begin at once to preach the Gospel when I joined my corps, in a cantonment where there were two regiments stationed without a single minister of any kind in the place-though the youngest ensign of the force, I commenced holding two services on the Sunday, and an exposition on Thursday. At first I commenced writing out and reading sermons, but after some time I was waited upon by some of the men who told me that they could perfectly understand every word I said on Thursday, but that they could not understand one word of what I read to them on Sunday. I then determined at once to give up the writing out of sermons; while studying the Bible all day, I considered my subject well; but from that time to this I have never read a sermon. I believe the real power of preaching lies in our preaching what God has taught us, instead of composing sermons from books and other men's opinions. What a man knows in his own heart he should tell to others. I believe a band of evangelists such as these should be recognized by our bishops.

I am preaching the Gospel now in Ireland-I cannot help it. I know there are principles of government, and that we cannot get on without them; but that government in the Christian Church must be united with the most genuine unreserved feelings between the clergyman and lay agent. Let our bishops and clergy select men of known principles and character, who are honest, thoroughly honest, sound, practical men, but lay down no formal rules for them. Let them be careful, very careful, in selecting those who are honest and earnest, and then trust in their character, expe rience, and knowledge, and not cramp them by unnecessary rules and regulations. Let them first know that the men they select are true and faithful, and then being true and faithful to Christ

THE BISHOP OF OXFORD.--I wish first to take up the last words of the stirring address which we have just heard, and say that in my own diocese

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in England, and in one or two other dioceses, we have been acting under the authority of the whole Episcopate upon the plan of employing laymen as readers, and committing officially to them a work of evangelization ; and I do say with good effects. We have on sufficient testimony selected certain laymen, to whom the bishops have, with prayer, granted licences to assist the parochial clergy in any work in which those clergy desire their aid. I trust that this will be carried on further, because it is the way, in my opinion, of promoting an excellent work; for it combines two important elements-that burning individual zeal with the free expression of which just now each heart in this room must have been warmed, and that acting under order, and not purely on those impulses of individual feeling, which in the long run are too commonly weak, and must always be irregular in operation.

But the point upon which I am anxious to say a few words, is that upon which Mr. Bardsley was about entering when time failed him. I wish to suggest for your thoughtful consideration one or two things concerning this question of "sisterhoods" which he was about to speak of. Circumstances have led me to see and think a good deal about them. They labour, first of all, under this most natural imputation, that they are an attempt in our Reformed Church to imitate the system of Nunneries in another Church. Now I entirely sympathize with those who have a dread of any miserable attempt to mimic in our system that which is going on under another system from which we have been obliged by the deep necessities of the Gospel to depart. But I think it is a mere waste of power if an institution— capable of great usefulness-is thrown aside, merely because it has been misused elsewhere. Surely it is the part of Christian wisdom and duty to ascertain, if we can, what are the evil principles which have made it an abuse elsewhere; and if the institution is capable of existing, and did exist before those evil principles were injected into it, then to see whether it may not be possible to start it without them.

Now here the evils which we are to avoid are three.

First, there is no suffering vows of perpetual obligation to be made by women. I would never myself be connected with any institution in my own diocese in which this is not laid down as a foundation principle. that there shall be no such vows. I think that instead of such a vowed life being a higher life than one free from vows, it is a lower life. What would the services of these women be for one day if they were conducted not voluntarily but by force, carried on under the force of obligations contracted at a time when they were of a different frame of mind, and from which they would at the present time much desire to be free? Such services should be from day to day the free will offerings of redeemed hearts to their Lord and their Redeemer.

The second great evil seems to me to be closely connected with this system of perpetual vows, and it is the ready receiving of very young women, sometimes almost girls, into these societies. I say this is a great evil, and for this reason I think the primary obligation of the Christian woman is distinctly laid down for us by the Holy Ghost, through the pen of the apostle St. Paul: "Let the younger women marry." I am sorry, very sorry, indeed, that such words raise a smile amongst us, for I am speaking here in all deep seriousness to you the very words of God. Put aside, I beseech you, any connexion the thought may have with ideas which could make you smile, and consider the matter with all the seriousness you can give to it.

The avocation of the Christian woman under ordinary circumstances is family life—its obligations and its blessings. But we know that in a highly civilized and artificial state of society there are and must be many women who, by the providence of God, have no opening to devote all that God has given them in their hearts to this service of family life. We know that as life goes on, those persons become as it were stranded so far as the direct obligations of family life are concerned; and we see not unfrequently the energies of their deep loving hearts wasted upon miserable pets. We see them, and do we not grieve to see them thus wasted? What a tragedy it is if you regard it in its true light, that one, whom God has furnished with all that He has given to that great work of His-woman in her purity— should so miss her high calling, that a heart capable, with the love of Christ purifying it, of being a most precious instrument for doing His work in the world; that the heart of a living thinking loving woman should be cast into something like a forced solitude, and finding itself day by day more and more alone, should at last waste its sympathies and affections upon mere pampered domestic animals, instead of spending them in the love and services of God. If the young are not admitted into these societies; if St. Paul's rule is followed out, and those whom he calls widows, and those whom the hand of God has set aside from the other work, if these are encouraged to give themselves to the work of Christ, there is then a great gain secured.

The third essential point for the true success of Sisterhoods, is that these members should enter them not merely for the sake of cultivating their own religious life, but that the religious life itself is to be purified and elevated by works of charity; for such is our selfishness, even in religious matters, that if we come to regard only what is good for ourselves, a fearful morbidity takes possession of our hearts, and eats all the strength and healthfulness of our Christian life. Therefore it is that I say that if these Retreats are places into which women are encouraged to go, only to cultivate their own religious life, they will inevitably be lowered in their tone and character; whilst if they are connected with works of charity done to the Lord and for the Lord, then there will be an element brought with them which will perfect them and keep them clear from morbidity of feeling and selfishness of spirit. "Why need these places be dark," is the answer I would make to those who say, "Why should we send our females into dark places such as these?" Why should it be a “retiring from the duties of their station?"

We have women who have not got homes of their own in which they could work. And for such, these jointly-held houses provide a home where they can live with their fellows in rank and age; in which they can give and impart comfort; whence they can engage in works of charity; and instead of retiring into dark places, let their light and blessing shine upon all men. I believe to provide such means for such souls to do the work of Christ is a part of our Church's duty; and that the way in which we are to guard them from danger is by the Church providing for them rules and directions as safeguards, and securing to them its own pure teaching and its own simple habits of service and Scriptural form of worship, and so, indeed, sending forth her daughters to do Christ's work under her own guidance.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON, 1st OCTOBER.

HIS GRACE THE PRESIDENT TOOK THE CHAIR AT 2 O'CLOCK,

THE AMERICAN AND CANADIAN CHURCHES: THEIR ORGANIZATION AND PRACTICAL WORKING.

FLEETWOOD CHURCHILL, Esq., M.D. (President of the King's and Queen's College of Physicians), read the following Paper :It is not without great misgivings that I appear before you to-day; and I only do so in consequence of the absence of an authoritative communication from America.

For many years I have watched with the deepest interest the working and progress of the American Church. None could help feeling deep veneration for her maintenance of Catholic Truth and Apostolic Order, and for the saintly men she has produced: none could refuse admiration of the wisdom which has marked her course, and the zeal which in eighty-four years has multiplied her Bishops from one to forty-four, and increased her clergy to 2,530; and which, in the same period, has taken possession of all of the States, and nearly, if not quite, of all the territories of

America.

The time allotted for each paper is so short, that it requires some skill to compress the information I have to lay before you, without rendering it incomplete. At best it can only be an outline; and if on that account defective, I must throw myself on the indulgence of the meeting.

For this reason I cannot enter into any detailed history of the American Church, but must content myself with a notice of her initiatory movements in self-government. First, let me beg of you to realize the position of this new branch of the Church of Christ. It had no state patronage or state help; it had, I believe, but one endowment; it had no traditions, except those which prejudiced it in the eyes of the public, because it was a branch of the Church of England, and with England war had only just ceased. Moreover, she was probably one of the smallest religious communities; and in the midst of those who regarded the Episcopacy as a sin. She was emphatically a Voluntary Church; voluntary as regarded funds, and voluntary as regarded the obedience of her children she could not enforce her doctrine or discipline by law; nor did she claim to possess those spiritual powers assumed by another ecclesiastical organization.

The war with England, involving as it did the independence of America, and the separation of the episcopal clergy from the authorities of their church in England, led to the first attempt at corporate action. Anticipating the conclusion of the war, and its results, the Rev. Mr. White, Rector of Christ's Church and St.