catechumens and reception of lapsed converts. He thus described to the archdeacon an act of discipline at Batala, October, 1887:

'I had to pronounce a sentence of excommunication publicly and formally at the Batala morning service yesterday, in the case of an apostate moollah, who scornfully and defiantly has crucified the Son of God afresh. I had the church book brought up to the Holy Table, and erased his name from the list. For this purpose I have requested that church lists may be kept. The excision of the name solemnly symbolizes the real character of the transaction.'

For the extension of the Church the bishop's great hope under God was in the sudden appearance of some educated native leaders of apostolic capabilities.

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'As late as May, 1887, he wrote to me,' says Bishop Bickersteth, ""I wish I may be spared yet for two or three years to search about for native apostles in embryo, whom a word spoken for Christ might stimulate and inspire to go forth full of power from the Spirit of the Lord to awaken slumbering consciences, and lodge the arrows of the King in the hearts of His enemies."

Taking into consideration the tendency of Eastern people to follow great leaders in the mass, he held that one truly apostolic man, if God gave such to the native Church, would be able to do more for the kingdom of God than a large number of ordinary mission agents.'

The same feeling appears in the following letter to Mr. Bateman, called forth by a proposal to introduce the Church Army to his diocese:

Lahore, Aug. 22, 1886.

Much of the plan proposed by the Church Army for India would be after my heart. I have grave questionings, however, as to whether English working men could do the work effectively. Experience tends to show that they soon become dissatisfied here, if not dressed and treated as gentlemen: then come wives and families, and a burden we are all too poor, and our funds too exhausted, to meet. Nor do I think that we want local secretaries. These organisms within organisms sooner or later come to grief by clashing and colliding hopelessly. I do not see why men like Lewis and yourself, both itineratory and willing to be out and-out fakirs, could not take a real direction (something after the manner I so audaciously proposed for the societies at Reading Congress) of natives like T. and N. and others who

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In

would soon spring up to be like them, or better even. Church matters you are loyal and kind enough to consult with your bishop, who possibly might join the Church Army (entre nous) himself some day. This is a profound secret, please!.. The Belooch work and Kangra valley work would make a good centre to start with. I should rather like to keep the Jhelum and adjacent parts of the Indus in hopes of some day tracing my dear old friend Gordon's work out there. But that may be only a very thin and almost colourless air-castle.

You understand me right in feeling that what I craved and would fain wrestle for is a band, ever so small, of apostles and prophets. When they come, what are mere numbers and proportions? one teacher to a million, &c. ? and all those beautiful missionary mathematics which puzzle the brain, and vex the heart, and keep the Church's eye off the vital point of missionary effort - as, alas, they have too often kept mine? But one would gladly let one's own failures and misdemeanours be the warning (ibrat) of others. If only they might tread one under and walk over one's corpse into the citadel, which as yet no forlorn hope has ever entered, though it seems gathering about Amritsar !

His most important statement on missionary methods was given at the Reading Congress in 1883. As this is easily accessible to students of the subject, it is needless to do more than indicate the line adopted in it.

'In ages to come,' he inquired, 'what judgement is the Church likely to pass upon our missionary agencies?... I have a sorrowful conviction that the Church of the future will, in some important respects at least, profit rather from being warned by our mistakes than helped by the record of our wisdom, courage, abilities, and patient constancy and perseverance. . . . I should say that it is our attempt to invent fresh models and courses of action, instead of throwing ourselves with ventures of unfaltering faith into old missionary pathways, which must largely be credited with our failures and limited successes in the East. . . . The charge, if verified, falls not so much on the societies, or missionary orders, or on the Church whose handmaids they are, as on ourselves who represent them, and if nobody else is moved to contrition, I believe we ought to be. I hope we are, and that before this distinguished body of the clergy and laity of our Church.'

After describing the multifarious duties that sank the apostolate into a routine of commonplace labours, he appealed for communities to work in poverty and purity, and for communities of women also, led, if it might be,

as in olden days, by some great lady of blood royal; he pleaded for more decentralization; greater authority to be allowed to veterans upon the several fields in consultation with their bishops; while the societies threw all their strength more into the home work of raising funds and circulating information.

'I would yet pray you, brethren and fathers in Christ,' he concluded, to plead for a larger apostolate in the mission-field. Truer, I trust, we need not ask, but larger we do need of labourers approving their apostolicity in love, purity, power, poverty, and devotedness. ... Be it ours on our knees, in our closets, and in the presence and with the co-operation of our flocks, to weigh seriously the heavy responsibility attaching to us as a branch of the Catholic Church of Christ, built on the foundation of apostles and prophets, having a great deposit handed down to us from the days of St. Aidan, St. Boniface, St. Anschar, and others, a debt for whose faithful discharge we are accountable to the Church of God, and to the Church's great HEAD and HIGH PRIEST, the King and Saviour of men.'

This paper was unwelcome to some of the younger missionaries in particular, who were not quite prepared for such a public act of self-humiliation. In writing to remove misapprehensions of his true meaning by one of these, the bishop, after sundry explanations, added:

'I have simply, as God enabled me, and with much prayer, stated the results of my experience and my convictions. Wherein my brethren disagree with them (and I am sorely disappointed to find others, and yourself among them, do to so great an extent`, I must be content to make my appeal to the great Bishop and Shepherd of souls. In all that I have said I have felt sorely self-accused, and if none else is guilty, I am sure I am. I can hope but for a few more years to serve in the missionary ministry in any form, and I cannot be sorry to have spoken my heart out under a constraint which pressed sore on me, and which the society at home has taken most kindly. A few years more

will reveal the truth about these matters beyond what will be admitted and confessed now.

'The loss of your boy must have been sorely afflictive, and I grieve that my words should have tried you at such a time, when you must have needed refreshment and comfort. Having spoken once so plainly, and, as some think, unkindly and harshly, I am silent henceforth. "The Judge standeth before the door." To-morrow I enter on the seventh year of my episcopate; may our last works be far better, and more than the first.'

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The last subject connected with the native Christians on which the bishop's views need be recorded is one now rather coming to the front again, 'the Church's Boards of Missions.' Archbishop Benson, in a kind autograph letter, particularly invited French's presence and counsel on this matter for the Lambeth Conference of 1888, and in consequence of this appeal he wrote his views somewhat fully, both to the late General Maclagan (then secretary of the Canterbury Board), and to his younger friend, Bishop Bickersteth. His letter to the latter may be given:

Bussorah, Jan. 26, 1888.

I can conceive the Board (or rather the Church's Council of Missions, as I would prefer to find it called) becoming the centre of all our Universities' Missions, Oxford and Cambridge Missions, &c., and any such as may be founded on the same or like footing, it being understood that this Council, being composed of some bishops of our Home Church, with a few such divines as Canons Liddon, Westcott, and Bright, should be ultimately charged with issuing the Church's commission to the men sent forth in connexion with the University movements. The same Council would, in the next place, if it could be so arranged, act as the representative of the Church in its corporate action in the ultimate separation and sending forth of the nominees of our great Church Societies, so that the dismissal, if still thought necessary, from the Committee-rooms at Salisbury Square and Delahay Street, would be followed by a still more solemn and direct setting apart in the Church's behalf of those called to do the work of evangelists in its missionary fields. I have reason to believe that not a few of our young missionaries would hail thankfully such a forward step in the direction of crowning and confirming, and as far as possible perfecting, the Societies' operations and selection of agents by such a final act of formal consecration, which could hardly fail by God's blessing to contribute largely to the solemnity and dignity of the commission as derived from men entrusted by the entire body of the Church to administer this great office on its behalf.

Further, if, as seems most likely, the necessities of the work and of the Christian Churches with which the Anglican Church is called to deal in God's providence, should far outstrip the means of the great Societies and the various University Missions, would not the Church's Mission Council be the proper body, and in the best position, to make known the needs as yet unsupplied, and to summon to the help of the Lord those individuals or Christian communities whose abundance bore some proportion to the dimensions of the work to be done? It is possible that not

a few who resist the importunate pleadings of the agents of our Societies, might feel ashamed or reluctant to resist the united call and authoritative appeal of the Church, their mother. Probably such an appeal might call forth a considerable increase of voluntary, unpaid labours so as to realize as nearly as possible the Archbishop's desire and pledged assurance that the Board or Council should not involve any additional and separate money outlay, or appeals for resources. This would be likely to bring about a closer interaction and fellowship between the home and foreign episcopate. To many, however, it would appear little short of a revolution in our missionary procedure, which has struck its roots so deeply into our methods of Church work in the missionary field. Such a movement therefore would require to be presented to the English public with great discretion and caution. It need not interfere (so far as I can see) with the Societies' present mode of action. They would still present nominees having their views in harmony with the views they inherit from their founders and successive promoters. It is probable the line suggested in this letter is one which presents itself independently to many minds, and breathes the longing of many hearts already. If it is of the Spirit of order and unity, and tends both to the peace of the Church and to the better fulfilment of its high and holy mission, it will be brought about without a struggle.