300 EARLY REMINISCENCES boasted of having baptized from thirty-six to thirty-seven converts from Judaism, including in the number the children of converts. But his successor, Dr. Gobat, declared that Alexander had grossly exaggerated the number, which was actually three or four.1 Gobat earned for himself—and unfortunately for the English Church in Palestine—the detestation alike of the converted and the unconverted Jews, likewise the disgust of English residents, and furnished a theme to the infidel for taunt. He succeeded in making the subject of the Jerusalem Bishopric stink in the nostrils of all Christian people save the bigots of Exeter Hall. The moral and religious scandals resulting from Gobat's misrule became notorious. Mr. Holman Hunt, the artist, felt called upon to expose them.2 When Gobat died in 1879 was hoped that this unsatisfactory compromise would be dropped. But this would have been such a confession of blunders, that an Irishman named Barclay was consecrated to the discredited throne. He died in 1881, and all concerned felt that the experiment must be abandoned. In 1886 the agreement with Prussia was finally dissolved. Germany withdrew from the compact, on receiving back the .£15,000 given by Frederick William IV, so that this venture had cost the British Government a pretty penny. In 1887 the bishopric was reconstructed on a totally different basis. John Henry Newman wrote of the Jerusalem bishopric in his Apologia pro vita sua : " As to the project, I never heard of any good or harm it has ever done except what it has done for me." He was mistaken. It did a vast amount of harm in England and in the East, and never did one particle of good. This was the first disturbing blow dealt the Anglican Church. Another and more serious blow followed. In 1847 George Cornelius Gorham was nominated by the Lord Chancellor to Bramford Speke Vicarage in the diocese of Exeter. The Bishop, having examined him, refused institution on the ground that he denied Baptismal Regeneration, in defiance 1 Graham (Jas.), Jerusalem: its Missions, etc., 1858, p. 62.
- For an account of Gobat and his misconduct see Jerusalem : its Missions, etc.. by James Graham, late Secretary of the London Jews' Society in Palestine, 1858 ; Proceedings in re Hanna Hadoub, by Holman Hunt, R.A., 1858 ; The Jerusalem Bishopric, by W. H. Heckler, 1883 ; The Christian Remembrancer for 1858.
