be so restful as that Yorkshire and Northumbrian coast, between Scarborough and Berwick-such quiet, charming seaside retreats, wild and stormy perhaps in the winter season. At Holy Isle the excavated cells of St. Cuthbert and St. Aidan were to me more interesting than the Norman cathedral, whose ruins are most imposing and massive.

If I had more means at command I should gladly multiply such visits to old historic scenes in quiet spots, but English hotels are ruinous.

It may be mentioned as a proof that the bishop was still possessed of considerable physical vigour, that he had formed a strong purpose to go to Lindisfarne, as far as possible, in pilgrim guise on foot. When the party were breakfasting at Bamborough the rain began to fall in torrents, and Mr. Knox insisted on ordering a carriage. At the time of starting it was discovered that the bishop had slipped away unnoticed. Some three or four miles on they overtook him in his shirt-sleeves, dripping wet, his coat over his arm, trudging gallantly onwards, and only consenting to be driven as otherwise he would have missed the train at Belford. Later the day brightened, but, with no opportunity of changing his soaked clothes, he went through a long day of sightseeing, and a heavy journey back to Whitby late at night, without being in any way the worse for it. His pleasure in the scenes of St. Cuthbert's and St. Aidan's ministries was so great that it seemed to act as a preservative against the rash exposure.

To MRS. MOULSON.

I

Aug. 26. Last night I took a festival sermon for St. Hilda's festival at St. Hilda's Church [Whitby] on 2 John 1 and 2. I spoke of her as the forerunner of all our valuable ladies' missions in Syria, Punjab, Japan, &c. I did not fail to commend Mrs. Mott and her work, and told them I should gladly receive help, and hoped that Yorkshire and Northumbria would still furnish princely and munificent lady-workers like St. Hilda!

Entre nous, I am almost settled to leave for Egypt about Oct. 25, and may perhaps stay a short time in Cyprus to inquire whether there is any reasonable hope of founding schools for Greeks and Moslems there..

May we realize what St. Paul meant by bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE.

PFANDER'S GRAVE 323

To MRS. MOULSON.

Sept. 12, 1890.

Entre nous I may possibly be some weeks or months in Egypt this winter. . . . Most of my friends discourage and dissuade me in the matter, but only oneself before God can be master of the whole situation, and be a kind of central focus, in which a kind of resultant harmony has to be established between providences, some concurrent and others discordant and conflicting. The only home-work of any importance suggested was four months' locumtenency for the Bishop of Exeter, in taking charge of his diocese during his absence in Japan.

Were I ten years younger such a delay at home would be of no great moment, but at my age a year spent in any fresh line blocks the way against any future work of a more grave and abiding character. I own to have been much perplexed. . . . Taking all the varied circumstances into consideration, and regarding them as prayerfully and thoughtfully as I can, I can but come to this, that when full light is not given one must accept the best light one has, and move slowly forward with some hesitancy but still more trust.

It is partly a comfort and partly a sorrow to feel how little it matters to the Church of Christ what line one takes, when strength is so enfeebled. How different was the case with Canon Liddon, whose death, taken in connexion with Bishop Lightfoot's, makes one almost feel as if the two pillars (Jachin and Boaz) of our Temple of the English Church had crumbled and fallen. The foundations are cast down, what shall the righteous do? Better it is to say, my strength will I ascribe unto God, and to act as the father of the Faithful, who staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief.

Yesterday I took Mr. Kelley (of Delhi) over to see the grave of my old master in missions, Dr. Pfander, at Ham, near Surbiton. We knelt by the grave to plead for the work in India. I was reminded of the day when I knelt with a brother missionary (Bambridge) by the grave of a very different man, yet honoured of God too-Cyrus the Great-near Pasargadae, his old capital.

I fear this has been sadly too selfish a letter, though it purposed to be one of loving sympathy. I took it for granted, it seems, that your unselfish and generous nature would find most comfort in partaking another's (a father's) perplexities and troubles (far lesser yet real), and that what comforts me might possibly minister comfort to you, for I feel that there is often much in common between our two ways of looking at things-at any rate, you have taught me often.

To MR. SHIRREFF.

Chislehurst, Oct. 24, 1890.

I propose a journey for a few weeks or months, or more, as God may appoint, to Egypt, perhaps viâ Tunis, to perfect myself

more in the Arabic tongue, and to inquire what is being done for Mohammedan missions most effectively in those parts. The C. M. S. think me too worn-out to attempt any fresh missionwork, and I am almost of the same mind with them; yet I feel as if a spark of ancient fire survived in my ashes, as in the tenants of Gray's country churchyard, and I have a shrewd suspicion that it is not my age alone which renders our C. M. S. friends to stand in doubt of me! But I try to think and believe the best of them, and plead for them as of old, perhaps more eagerly and earnestly than ever, though I am not often successful and acceptable in my pleadings, as might be expected at my age! . . . My pamphlets on the Greek Church have awakened some measure of sympathy, but none have volunteered for active service in that direction. To be heard amidst the Babel of voices in England, so as to reap practical fruit of one's pleadings, is increasingly difficult and almost hopeless.

We had the archbishop down here last night, and a grand speech he made to a very fair audience in the Parochial Hall on his Assyrian Missions. For fifty years, it appears, that sunken and degraded Nestorian Church has been pleading with the Anglican to come to their rescue, and save their falling into the gaping mouths of the Americans on the one side and the Jesuits on the other, from both of which they recoil with horror, naturally enough, as their missions mean scissions and simply swallowing them up with open maw! I begged for and received the archbishop's sanction and blessing for my proposed venture, if not of faith, at least of conviction, that I am not yet dismissed the service, and allowed the discharge of the veterani.

I cannot see that I have any right to waste my life's work at tongues, in spite of St. Paul's deprecation of them in comparison with charity.

Happily they need not be in opposition and contradiction.

. . This, I fear, will be my last from England for the present, if indeed my plans find accomplishment-for mother refuses to believe I shall really venture abroad again. However, I have got so far as to obtain a fresh passport and circular notes, and even a box of medical tabloids', which seems almost an indispensable requisite now of the missionary work; almost perhaps too seriously superseding the evangelist's functions. There seems a little danger of this depreciation of the soul-healing of the word in favour of the bodily healing: however, both seem

1 For the purpose of choosing these the bishop made a point of inspecting the explorer Stanley's medicine chest, which was on exhibition in London.

THE ARCHBISHOP'S BLESSING

325

embraced in the word 'salvation,' Acts iv. 12, if the Greek original is had regard to. The Archbishop of Canterbury came over on Thursday. I walked with him (he made me take his arm, thinking, I suppose, I was a worn-out man!) and talked over my plans for a journey in Egypt and other neighbouring lands. He seems to approve them on the whole, and I feel more assurance in having his sanction and benediction as the head of our Church.

On Friday next the great sentence on Bishop King's trial is to make its appearance. The Bishop of Hereford, whom I saw there last week, told me he was to leave on Tuesday to help in giving the finishing stroke to the transaction, which many, no doubt, are eagerly expecting. . . . Hereford is a place of much interest, and the scenery is striking and delightful. I stayed with the Dean (a widower with two daughters), the Hon. Geo. Herbert-of the same family with the poet. In the Hereford paper appeared an ode of welcome to me written by a lady of the old Cheltenham flock, who lives in Hereford now; you would have been amused at it.

.. Should I go to Egypt, viâ Tunis, as I rather propose, I shall see the spots sacred to St. Augustine's memory.... I sometimes wish my path had been clear all along to return to the Indian frontier. It seems hard at nearly sixty-six to start on a new line of action altogether: but events prove that I was rightly guided to throw myself into Arabic studies. But for that the world would have seemed shut against me like a blind wall without a door! As it is, I hope my studies may turn to some small account.

Prebeudary Edmonds has put out a valuable article on Henry Martyn's translation of Holy Scripture, and his burning desire to do something for the Arab tongue and races. How one could wish to be young again to throw fresh energies into such a work. Mackay's Life is deeply interesting, full of fire and solid matter, with records of scientific skill and exploits of no mean order. His life sometimes hung on a thread, that is clear. He was anxious to see Muscat taken up as a mission station. The finest Arabs in Zanzibar and inner Africa hail from Muscat, he says. I was greatly struck with the place when I spent six hours there visiting it as Bishop of Lahore, and read a little Arabic out of the Bible in the bazaars, I believe.

On the same date, writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had asked for further particulars of his plans, after alluding to possible work as a theological teacher for Greek Church students at Jerusalem, he said :

'There is one other suggestion I venture to offer which probably will have occurred to your Grace already. It is with

reference to the late Mr. Mackay's (of Uganda) strong and urgent appeal for the adoption of Muscat on the Oman coast, as one of our chiefest mission centres, because of the important bearing it has both on Zanzibar, and on the inland territories of our newly-acquired protectorate in Africa. "In more senses than one," he writes (as quoted p. 420 of his Life), "Muscat is the key to Central Africa. General Haig is convinced that in Oman, whose capital is Muscat, there are important openings for the Gospel. The Arabs who swarm over Central Africa generally hail from Muscat or other towns in the dominion of Oman.'

"The entrance into this field might for various reasons be claimed as justly the inheritance of the C. M. S. on the one hand, or the Universities' Missions on the other. Your Grace will be fully aware of the importance of our Church not being anticipated.

'Failing both these agencies, it is possible your Grace's Board or Council of Missions might express some intention of ultimately attempting to gain a footing on that coast. Muscat I visited as Bishop of Lahore in 1883 en route for Bushire, and were the bishop's plans to fail for the establishment of a high school for the Greeks, I should not refuse, I trust, if invited, to accompany, as unpaid volunteer, a small brotherhood enlisted to occupy that field.

'I have thus ventured to open my heart freely on these two points to your Grace, which I feel sure you will forgive, as you encouraged me to do so: and at least I have the comfort of feeling that I have your sanction and benediction for my present journey of inquiry and fresh trial of health and strength in connexion with what has been my life's chief work, though through circumstances it has been too scattered and broken.

'P.S.-I expect to leave quite early next week, and must devote this week to needful preparations.'

The only remaining letter to be quoted here is perhaps the last the bishop penned in England, and bears plain traces in its style of the great pressure under which he wrote it.

TO CANON EDMONDS.

MY DEAR CANON EDMONDS,

Dover, Nov. 2, 1890.

A formal preface to your published sermon I dare not hope to find time for on the very eve of starting for a fresh journey Eastwards (I leave to-morrow, if all be well), nor the calm thought and self-recollection required. I feel, however, that your attempt to call to the Church's remembrance the almost forgotten memories of H. Martyn's Arabic studies, and