III

The following hearty tribute to the memory and worth of the late Bishop, is contained in the Journal of Education, for November, 1867;—a publication issued monthly by the Rev. Dr. Ryerson, Chief Superintendent of Education for the Province of Ontario :—

“Among several remarkable men who have, full of years and honours, passed from us during the last decade, none had distinguished himself more than the Honourable and Right Reverend John Strachan, D.D., LL.D., late Bishop of Toronto: a man remarkable for energy, courage, concentration of purpose, tact, and perseverance in whatever he undertook,—a man remarkable for his success in life, for the faithfulness and ability with which he fulfilled the duties of every office to which he was successively called whether as Parish School Master in Scotland, Grammar School Master in Canada, Parish Clergyman, Member of an Executive and a Legislative Council, President of a College, or Bishop of the largest Diocese in British North America—a man as thoroughly Canadian as any native of the country, remarkable for the genial qualities of private friendship, for acute discernment, disinterested and sound judgment as a Counsellor, for self-sacrifice, devotion and tenderness as a visitor of the sick and afflicted—a man without brilliancy of talents or attractions of oratory, but on all occasions occupying the first position in the spontaneous homage of those around him, by his strong sense, his vigorous understanding, his downright honesty, his resolute firmness, his unflagging industry—a man unrelaxing in his labours and unfailing in his faculties during a ministry of sixty-four years and down to the ninetieth year of his age—a man who bad long outlived the jealousy of distinctions and the enmity of parties, and who ceased 'at once to work and live' amid the respect and regrets of all classes of the population.”

We extract the following from a small work which appeared soon after the decease of the late Bishop, entitled "The First Bishop of Toronto: a Review and a Study,” by Henry Scadding, D.D. Cantab:—

“To the Bishop of Toronto the honour thus belongs of being the first practically to solve the difficulty which in theory besets the admission of lay members into Anglican Synods. His example has been widely followed in different quarters of the Empire; and it is probable that the custom thus inaugurated in a Colony will one day prevail within the Dioceses of the Mother Church. Of course, there, great prejudices have to be surmounted. We happen ourselves to have been present in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster, when such an innovation was mooted: to us, knowing as we did, what a reasonable thing in practice the custom seemed, it was curious to hear the consequences which imagination conjured up as objections to its adoption in England. The modern Church-congresses of England have also grown out of the successful Colonial experiment and are pointing the same way, namely, to lay representation in the Councils of the Anglican Church.

"And who can doubt but that a Convocation reformed and made real, and Diocesan Synods reformed and made real, with the lay element judiciously but frankly admitted, would bring back a fresh youth to the ancient mother at home? What is the secret of the anarchy of late years in the ancient historic Anglican Church, in respect to doctrine and practice? Is it not the absence of constitutional government? It is obvious to the casual visitor, there is no system observed in the working of that body as a whole, binding its parts together. Each beneficed presbyter may do as he wills. He feels himself amenable to no central delegation representing the body of which he is a local functionary. In every denomination but that which takes its name from an episcopate, there is a real episcopacy, an episcopacy without mystery. We mean that every Non-conformist body exercises over its members, official and non-official, a superintendence that may be felt. Whilst in the ancient Anglican Communion, there is at present virtually no government. What, again, has led to the alienation of large masses of the people from the historic Church, notwithstanding its powerful prescriptive claims? Has it not been the absence, now for a long series of years, of a representative assembly, sympathizing with the people, and having the power and will to deal from time to time, frankly and considerately, with grievances as they have arisen? Without a Parliament really legislating for the people generation after generation, rationally and justly, in what condition would be the civil affairs of the parent state? With the Anglican Communion in Canada and the other dependencies of England, it rests, to aid or hinder, as the years roll on, the renovation of the parent-communion at home; to aid, if by a steady and careful acquisition of intelligence on the part of Clergy and Laity, Synods, general and particular, be rendered fair representative bodies: to hinder, if by the repression of intelligence and the inculcation of theories that are impracticable, they become in their proceedings visibly one-sided.”

“It has often been affirmed that every worthy human life is a drama—a poem; and that 'every man truly lives so long as he acts his nature, and some way makes good the faculties of himself.' We have been reviewing a career of the kind here described; a life unusually complete, with strongly marked beginning, middle, and close, earnestly occupied throughout with the most important human affairs. We have seen an early unfolding of special powers and aptitudes, and a grand ambition awakened by the consciousness of their possession; aspirations, as they proved themselves to be in the event, based on the nature of things. We have seen a discipline undergone; a discipline of long delays, of disappointment upon disappointment; each issuing in a clearer demonstration of the virtue of the man; of the genuineness of his faith, his hope, his self-control, his fortitude. Finally, we have seen the experience gained in the school of adversity practically applied in the period of prosperity, and every successive elevation in position, and every additional honour attained, used, not for the furtherance of petty or personal ends, but as a new vantage-ground for securing good to men on the widest scale and for the longest possible period.

“We have not touched upon private sorrows, all along mingling plentifully with the stream of outward, visible history; bereavements severing at last almost every earthly tie, and leaving their subject, in respect to blood-relationship, all but alone; although, in other, respects surrounded by

'that which should accompany old age,
As honour, lore, obedience, troops of friends.'

“Hear, however, the noble Bishop himself speak: 'My life,' he says, in 1860, ‘has doubtless been laborious, and, I believe, interspread by a larger number of vicissitudes than usually happen to individuals: but it has, on the whole, been happy. And now, when near the close, I can look back without any startling convictions, and forward with increasing hope'—Charge, 1860, p. 4.

“To the student of humanity, and of Divinity too, how beautiful and how consolatory is such a declaration! To the prime blessing of an organization of the best quality, was added uninterrupted health, and a constitutional imperturbability. His was one of those strongly-braced intellects that can rise superior to troubles which crush the hearts of ordinary men. As often as the emergency presented itself, he could summon to his aid the reflection—

'Tis but the fate of place, and the rough brake
That virtue must go through.
We must not stint
Our necessary actions, in the frar
To cope malicious censurers, which ever,

As ravenous fishes, do a vessel follow That is new-trimm’d, but benefit no farther Than vainly longing.’

He had the power to pass at will from one train of thought to another, and so divest himself of a mental burden. What a sense was there of cerebral cobwebs shaken off, for others as well as himself, in the sound of his brief, explosive, hearty laugh, suddenly heard above the murmur of conversation ip intervals of business at synodal or society meetings, after dreary discussions, threatening at times to be interminable. It was this superiority to the trials common to men that made him the stay he was found to be by many, when involved in serious perplexity and distress. Courageous himself, he inspired courage in others. Of the griefs laid before him, he discovered some view that was hopeful. He often saw something in relation to them, which the immediate sufferer did not. He thus often sent away from him with a lightened heart, those that had come to him desponding. The burden that had bowed them seemed half removed by being disclosed to him.

“From his Charges to the Clergy could be gathered a code of Anglican Divinity, and a manual of canonical life. But while his statements of dogma and rules for clerical practice are definite and precise, he makes them with consideration, as knowing that the persons addressed were accustomed to great liberty of thought and action. So far as related to himself, the theological convictions formed at the student period of his life, having been happily arrived at under a wise direction, received only more and more confirmation as years rolled on. He was, in this manner, enabled, as he himself testified, towards the close of his career, to speak at all times with boldness on the special topics connected with his office, and "with an inward satisfaction and firmness of purpose which, under the Divine blessing, has never changed." I have always been aware/ he tells his Clergy in 1860, 'that the best endeavour I could make to promote unity in the Church, was to seek after inward unity and peace in my own breast; because it is only by cherishing such graces that I can give consistency to my religious character, and cause its influence to pervade and penetrate the Diocese, and shed abroad in it the power of faith and charity. A profound remark, reminding us of Lord Bacon’s words: No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of Truth, a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene; and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests in the vale below; so also that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of Truth.

“There was a peculiar freshness and naturalness about his published Journals of Visitation. In them, without losing anything of dignity, he enlivens details which might be deemed merely technical and professional, by notices of matters connected with the physical aspect and progress of the country, His Journal of the year 1842 was published in London, by the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and has passed through several editions. The same features characterized his narratives of the acts of the year delivered in Synod. In the account of his voyage to England in 1850, given in a Pastoral, the touching story of ‘ Poor Thomas ’ will be remembered : a sailor on board the ship, who had been deprived of both his legs by frost-bite. After describing with minuteness the case, ‘ His fine spirit endeared him,’ the Bishop says, ‘ to all the passengers, and, when made acquainted with his simple plans, a subscription of fifty pounds was raised for his benefit; and two gentlemen belonging to Liverpool, with true Christian charity, engaged to see it appropriated in such a manner as to ensure the completion of his wishes, and, if necessary, to supply what might be wanting. The matter being thus satisfactorily arranged, Thomas was made quite happy/ This combination of a genial concern in homely, human matters, and a readiness and aptitude for high and complicated occupations, made him equally at his ease, whether conversing with Chinquaconse in an Indian hut at Garden River, crooning to himself some old Scottish air in the back seat of an uncouth stage-coach on the Penetan-guishine road, or exchanging courtesies with Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, and the gentlemen of his suite, in the saloons of Government House at Toronto. And herein he exemplified in himself what his well-known views were, in regard to the kind of men fitted to be ‘spiritual pastors and masters’ among the people of Western Canada.  It should make no difference whether it is a log or a sofa that you sit on/ we once heard him say, referring to emergencies that constantly occur where things are in the rough. ‘ I know how to content myself with earthen vessels, as my father did/ said an old Bishop of Chichester, in 1245, when Henry III. was withholding the revenues of his See : ‘ let every thing be sold, even to my horse, if there be need/ This was the spirit of the first Bishop of Toronto. It was this singleness of view in regard to duty under all circumstances, that made him intrepid in the midst of peril. The times of contagious sickness, in 1832 and 1847, found him unflinching in his ministrations. In the keeping of appointments, too, the same fearlessness was sure to be seen. We ourselves well remember an instance of this, when night and rough weather rendering a long pull in an open boat on the river at the Sault Ste. Marie by no means a trifling matter, the stand taken in respect to a distant engagement was in almost the identical terms used by the Roman general of old: ‘It is not necessary for me to live, but it is necessary for me to go.'

“Such a man as the great Bishop whose career we have been studying, is no shadow. Neither are the things which such men pursue, shadows. The results of the life of the first Bishop of Toronto are tangible realities. They may be sensibly participated in by all of the Canadian people that choose, or in the future shall choose, to avail themselves of them. And he himself is a reality. His example, his written and spoken words, his works and deeds, will together constitute a standard and type to which, in the fluctuations of the future, there will be a recurrence. His name will be one of the things which the generations following will not willingly let die. His spirit will be still palpably marching on.

“He built the principal Church-edifice appertaining to his own communion four times in succession; twice as a Cathedral-church for his Diocese; and, on each successive occasion, with increased grandeur and costliness. 'Twins of Learning' witness for him: he founded two Universities in succession, both invested with the character borne by such institutions as originally instituted, by Royal Charter,—procured in both instances by his own personal travail; the latter of the two by an individual and solitary effort, to which it is not easy to find a parallel. He saw them both in operation, investigating, conserving, and propagating truth, on somewhat different lines indeed, but probably with co-ordinate utility, as things are. The very Park, with its widely-renowned Avenue, the Champs Elyses of Toronto, in which the bourgeoisie of the place love to take their pastime, are a provision of his, that property having been specially selected by him as President of King’s College, with the same judiciousness and the same careful prescience of the need of amplitude for such purposes which guided him also in choosing the fine site and grounds of Trinity College.

“The Anglican residue rescued by his prowess in the final disposition of the endowments for Public Worship, he so wisely husbanded by a scheme of commutation, that funds, which, in due course, were intended to be extinguished, were transformed into a permanence, applicable in all time to the aid and maintenance of Anglican interests.

“The chancel-apse that shelters the grave of the first Bishop of Toronto has acquired a double sacredness. St. James’s, Toronto, will be enquired for and visited hereafter by one and another from different parts of this Continent and the Mother Country, somewhat as certain venerable piles are enquired for and visited at St. Albans and Winchester, at Rheims and Mayence, for the sake of historic dust therein enshrined.

“But even without accessories of any kind, without the mystic prefix with which the ages of credulity would have marked his name; without the symbolism, sensuous and florid as of an unintelligent period, or spiritual and delicate as of an intelligent one, the mortal resting-place of the first Bishop of Toronto will have power to fascinate the imagination. As though there burned within it an undying lamp, a steady beam of light will be seen to issue from that sepulchral vault, streaming down the future of the Anglican Church in Canada, drawing and reclaiming, cheering and directing, many faltering steps.”

The following are selected from a short biography of the late Bishop, in the “Portraits of British Americans” by Fennings Taylor, Esq. :—

“Dr. Strachan may have been well excused if he regarded himself as the especial champion and representative of the Church in the State, since the peculiar duties which were associated with his appointment were such as he might neither omit nor evade. How thoroughly the Church of his choice had become the Church of his affections is written in almost every page of his published works. How ardently he desired 'to lengthen her cords and strengthen her stakes/ is seen in every effort of his active life. He neither questioned nor doubted the human blessedness of her office. He believed that the union between the Church and the State which existed in the old country, ought not to be put asunder in Canada, for, with the Earl of Eldon, he was of opinion 'that the establishment is formed, not for the purpose of making the Church political, but for the purpose of making the State religious.'

“The desire lay near his heart to make Canada resemble England, resemble her in religion, in manners, in character, in institutions, and in laws. To this end he sought to establish rectories in stated places, to cover the Province with a net work of parishes, and to establish in each parish a centre of religious and educational influence, as well as of social and intellectual refinement. The picture of the future, which his fancy sketched, may have resembled the actual picture which Cobbett saw from one of the . glorious uplands of his native country, and which he has vividly described in his nervous writings. In imagination, Dr. Strachan beheld a noble Province, divided into parallellograms and apportioned into parishes, each parish the centre of an accredited representative of that genial, well-mannered Christianity which is the popular characteristic of the Clergy of the national Church; the settled abode of one whose character would be respected and whose influence would be seen in the every day intercourse of common life. His desire was that religion and learning, re-acting on one another, should sanctify taste, elevate morals, purify manners, and blend with the hard and roughening influences of the backwoods, many of the social refinements and home attractions which grow around the old grey Church towers and within the trim parsonages of England. The machinery of Church work through the whole of its educational course, from the cradle to the grave, formed in his mind a vision of present loveliness and future peace.

“It is true, indeed, that the existence of the University of Toronto, as well as Upper Canada College, are indirectly due to his exertions; for in procuring a Charter for the predecessor of the first-named institution he laid the foundation of the present University. But though he is fairly referred to in the language of compliment as its founder, nevertheless the honour, so far as we are informed, was neither claimed nor coveted by him. On the contrary, he made little effort to conceal his feelings with respect to it, for he complained bitterly not only as one who had been despoiled of his posessions, but as one who had been robbed of his own fair child, and had been offered in its stead the lean and ill-conditioned offspring of another, alien in form, unlike in feature, and different in name, whom he could neither press to his heart nor recognize as his own. The University of Toronto was not King’s College. In those halls for education which he had striven to raise he dreamt not of a perishable home. The discipline of study, which he had hoped to see carried on there, like the discipline of teaching, which was to be continued elsewhere, was preparatory only. The matriculants in his esteem were candidates for immortal honours, for degrees in "the house not made with hands." The School, the College, the University, represented the approaches to the Church, and the Church was the vestibule of Heaven. They were essential parts of a prescribed pathway through which mortal man might pass from 'the city of destruction’ to 'the mount of God.'

"It is possible to imagine, though it is less easy to pourtray, the bitter trial through which he must have passed, as one idol after another was crushed at his feet, and scattered beyond his reach. It is true, indeed, that his mind was severely disciplined to disappointment, for the lamp of success very rarely brightened his vale of years. Yet though we make allowance for the fact that he was familiar with failure, it is not easy to analyze the emotions which must have visited him as he took note of the gradual growth of the University of Toronto. Even a stranger is struck with the external beauty of that visible expression of applied science. Like a gem of mediaeval art, fittingly set in a frame-work of verdure, it silently commands the admiration it receives. But it is not difficult to suppose that to the eye of the Bishop such unquestionable charms rather aggravated than diminished the anguish of his heart. It was hard for him to see such perfection of beauty separated, if not estranged from, the Supreme Author and Source of beauty. It was hard for him to see those brave old trees jubilant with joy, waving their glad arms around those curious carvings and dainty fretworks, and fiot to feel within his nature a root of bitterness with which they, at least, had no sympathy. It was hard to see such 'a fabric huge, rise like an exhalation/ on the very ground, near to the very spot which had been prepared and set apart by him for a purpose so similar, and yet so unlike ; oh ! it was hard to see and not to feel, in the overthrow of hope, how exquisitely painful is the irony of joy. Moreover, it was impossible for his clear mind to be insensible to the fact, that the noble structure which adorned these College grounds, like a jewelled casket, was correspondingly rich in its furniture of thought. There was the requisite machinery, including many of the pleasant and most of the necessary appliances for work, and there, too, were the human parts, the professors and’ masters singularly well chosen, to control and direct all. Beauty and culture were there, but the untravelled heart of the venerable Bishop yearned for its Christian cloister, for the voice of prayer and the song of praise, for the law and discipline by which learning had been hallowed in the ages of the past. He missed what he deemed to be the pivot of the system, for he saw not the central glory from which all education, in his judgment, should proceed. He mourned less for the success of his adversaries than for the slight to his Church, less for their triumph over him than for the missing Shekinah, the absent altar, the unoffered morning and evening service, and for what he regarded as the virtual eclipse of faith within those walls. Men may make light of creeds, catechisms, and confessions of faith, they may sneer at prejudices, discredit motives, and ridicule dogmli. Nevertheless, the picture of a good man's sorrow is no unworthy subject of contemplation. It is always touching for its sadness, and sometimes eloquent for its sublimity. Such sorrow sobers the sense, quickens the pulse, and touches the soul, for it appeals to our better nature, and reminds us of the goodness from which we have fallen. Thus, thought becomes cleansed and purified by contact with heavenly things. It is inflamed with the brightness of the better land and acknowledges the excellence of goodness in this. It throbs with virtue, and thrills with immortality. Its yearnings reach from the visible to the everlasting, from "the life which now is, to that which is to come".

“The Bishop's opinions, like his character, were not fashioned in a flexible mould, for they were not made of maleable, but of cast-iron. He was unbending in person and unyielding in action. His opinions were not sentiments, but convictions; moral properties of which he deemed himself to be the trustee, and from which he would not abate one jot or relinquish one title. Compromise was foreign to his experience, and concession was unsuited to his temper. Hence he had little respect for their researches, and none for their conclusions, who teach that the history of the Church of England, like the history of the Realm of England, is in fact a history of compromise.

"But disappointment did not result in despair. There was dignity, as well as grace, in the way in which he accepted defeat. Indeed, his character never shone to greater advantage than when he snatched a triumph from an overthrow. His resources were as manifold as they were inexhaustible. At the age of seventy-two he ceased from strife, and bowing obediently to a painful law, he began with renewed industry to build afresh what we regard as the fairest, and what we believe will prove to be the most enduring monument of his fame. Sweet to him had been the uses of adversity, for though his contest with the civil power had been obstinate and exhausting, find though he had been worsted in that contest, nevertheless, his ascent from the 'valley of humiliation’ was luminous, if not with victory, at least with hope. In the strength of acquired wisdom and inherent faith, he appealed to new agencies, and called into use new instruments of work. He took a closer survey of the moral landscape, and examined afresh the most approved codes of Christian warfare; and he soon learned how to move and combine forces with which, until then, he was presumed to be unfamiliar, and in which he had placed but little trust. Thus was it, that by means of what we may truly‘call 'the weak things of the world, he confounded the things that were mighty/ Turning from Princes in whom he ceased to place his trust, and from laws, which, like reeds, had broken beneath his weight, he appealed to sentiment and religion, to faith and duty, to individual sympathy, and to individual sacrifice. In the sacred names of truth and justice, he invoked the aid of that voluntary principle which he had formerly discredited, and sought in the free will offerings of the many, what he had hoped to find in the munificence of one. He appealed to honour and self-interest, to the recollection of wrongs, and the conviction of right, and his stirring words called into life the latent enthusiasm of gifted souls. His heart was inflamed with the fire he had kindled. He would scarcely give sleep to his eyes, .or slumber to his eyelids, until he had erected a College wherein the Divine law should fill the chief place in the circle of the sciences. Thus he turned from the creature to the Creator, from human policy to the Divine Government, from man to God. He shut the statutes that the sunlight might shine upon the Gospel. He endeavoured to 'forget the things that were behind/ that he might, with an untrammelled mind, 'reach forward to those that were before/ and being impelled by memory and allured by hope, he moderated his appeal to the intellect that he might intensify his address to the heart. It was a brave sight to behold the heroic Bishop playing the roll of a voluntary. It was a brave sight to see one who had passed the period of life allotted by the Psalmist, stooping afresh to take up its burden, and submitting once more to the toils and sacrifices, the trials and disappointments which he had some right to lay aside. It was a brave sight to see one who could be indifferent to personal ease and conventional prudence, to the suggestions of comfort and the seductions of policy, setting himself to the duty of building in Canada a monument such as William of Wykeham erected at Oxford, not only where the work of education might be begun in the faith of Christ, but where, in the strength of the adorable Trinity, it might be continued and ended to the glory of God.

"Though there was a sting in his style, there was no spite in his nature. He might throw his antagonist roughly, but he would pick him up again kindly. Or should the issue of the conflict 'be reversed, he would accept his defeat with the grace of one who could respect his victor. Being 4 courageous, he was also a magnanimous man. His views were large views, and when they could be indulged without violence to his religious logic, they were generous views. Thus in his dealings with his Clergy, he recognized great latitude of opinion, for practically he had a just appreciation of the religious liberty which is consistent with the spirit and genius of the Anglican Church. His own principles were clear and well defined; nevertheless, he had a scholar’s respect for the learning as well as for the principles of other people, and hence he neither required an Islington password nor a Liturgical shibboleth from Clergymen who desired to work in his Diocese. In common with the great body of Anglicans he may have preferred the principles of Arminius to those of Calvin, but he did not on that account brand with an anathema, or blemish with a prejudice, those weaker Christians who could not receive the full measure of the Catholic faith.

“The benevolence of the Bishop was practised with systematic and discriminating gracefulness. Misfortune rarely appealed to him in vain, and poverty seldom left his house unrelieved; for compassion and charity were as conspicuous in his character as fidelity and endurance. With respect to projects connected with religion his liberality was a proverb. There were few Churches or Parsonages in the Province in regard to which the striking imagery of the prophet Habakkuk could not have been applied, for 'the stone might have cried out of the wall/ and 'the beam might have answered it/ and each have told the other that its presence there was due to the silver or the gold which were his gifts. Money with him was apparently regarded as nothing more than a talent to be used, as a trust to be administered. He loved it not for its own sake; and no surprise was expressed that he saved little and died poor. To Trinity College, the dearly-loved 'child of his old age' he had given his ungrudging help and his frequent prayers, and though at his death he had little besides his blessing to bestow, yet of that little he bequeathed ‘his dear College’ his ‘joy of grief/ as a mark of his affection, the valuable library which he had accumulated, and the costly plate which his Cornwall scholars had given to him.

“In matters of charity and benevolence as well as in matters of general philanthropy or local improvement, his were the sagacious counsels and the strengthening words, the guiding hand and the generous heart, the advice and co-operation that went far towards crowning exertion with success. Moreover, there was a phase of charity which shewed itself conspicuously in those exacting forms of civic courage which test our metal, and are perhaps more trying to personal endurance than any act of physical daring. ‘The pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that wasteth in the noon-day’ represent shapes of evil, before which brave men have quailed, and from which even valiant men have fled. But such terrors wrought no perceptible change in him. His holy faith and his sacred calling nerved him with strength, and both were harmoniously exhibited in his works. In fulfilling the duties which seemed to lie in his path, he was not accustomed to take thought of consequences. He believed that He who ‘considered the lilies’ would not overlook him. In the fearful Cholera seasons of 1832-4 his well-remembered figure 'seemed to be ever abroad, for the only difference he made was to redouble his exertions, and stick closer to his duty. In thus confronting danger with a Christian man’s courage, he reproached no one, while his example put many to shame, for he calmly discharged services from which they, who ought to have performed them, shrank with dismay. Having visited the sick, and prayed with the dying, he was frequently called upon to shroud the dead, to place them in hurriedly made coffins, and bury them in hastily made graves. As a good citizen, as well as a laborious minister, he endeavoured to practice what he preached. Religion with him was less a sentiment than a duty, and thus the pathway of his long life was less beautified with the blossoms than strewn with the fruits of benevolence. He did not seem to age in his tastes or his occupations. His memory kept green long after the memories of his contemporaries became seared and yellow. Youth always attracted him, and his affections turned with especial fondness towards little children, not only because they were the best human types of purity and innocence, but because their natures were bright and hopeful like his own. Many will remember with what unalloyed happiness he adapted his conversation to their capacity, as well as the exuberant joy with which his presence was looked forward to and greeted by them. He knew how to combine the offices of a Bishop and a friend, and he set no light value on the influence for good which might be exerted by one who could, in his life and conversation, shew the truth of the Psalmist’s experience, that the ways of religion are 'ways of pleasantness, and that all her paths are peace.’

"But the period was fast approaching when he was to close his eyes on the scenes of his toil afid his fame. The hand of time, it is true, was laid with rare gentleness on him, but he was not insensible to its pressure. The duties which he had heretofore been enabled to perform without difficulty became exacting and oppressive. His conscience rebelled against the intermission of any of those duties and hence arose his desire for relief and assistance. The Diocesan Synod appreciated his wish, and interpreted it aright when they elected as his coadjutor in the Episcopate, one who had been his pupil and was his friend, who had shared his thoughts and sympathized in his plans, and with whom he could confer with confidence, and act with affection. In 1866, the Venerable A. N. Bethune, D.D., and Archdeacon of Toronto, was duly elected to the office, and in virtue of canons, passed by the Synod in the previous year, he was on the 25th January, 1867, on the Festival of St. Paul, consecrated as the Bishop of Niagara, with an understanding that he should eventually succeed to the See of Toronto.

“The year which opened thus suggestively, was destined ere its close to fulfil the purpose for which its solemnities had made provision. The seasons of flowers, fruits, and faded leaves had passed away. ‘The chaplet of the year* was dead, and the ‘aJigry winds' of winter were ready to issue from their icy caves. The autumn festival of All Saints, the last in the annual cycle of the services of the Church, the ‘ drear November day' arrived, when the venerable Prelate, for whom an assistant had been chosen, was to be separated from the cares of his Bishopric, and when his soul, with ‘the souls of the righteous’ was to pass to ‘the hand of God,’ ‘where no torment shall touch them,’

"To soar those elder Saints to meet
Gather'd long since at Jesus’ feet. ”