pected about this time; but the particular way in which it came about was, perhaps, just at the moment, as unlooked for as it was creditable to the position and character of those who took part in it. The increasingly abnormal character of the ecclesiastical element that still lingered in our Parliament had become already sufficiently obvious; but between that stage and the semi-revolation of any forcible expulsion, there might have been still no small interval, had it not been for a timely effort of disinterested magnanimity. There had been a fairly maintained secret in the business; so that when the venerable and large-minded primate of that day rose in his place in the House of Lords, surrounded, as pre-arranged, by the full episcopal bench, and claimed attention to a most important statement, neither the House within nor the public without quite exactly anticipated the edifying and most memorable incident that followed.
The distinguished primate opened his brief but emphatic address by the remark that the spirit of the times had changed in a manner and in a direction which the Church could not but be bound to notice, and duly to consider, as to how it affected her usefulness for her own proper and great mission. Would that usefulness be greatest in resisting the modern spirit with its many claims, or in frankly acknowledging and yielding to it? The heads of the Church had well considered their problem, and the solution to which it had brought them. The Church, as it now stood, was helped—or, as he might alternatively put it, was encumbered—by three orders of special privilege, namely, the pecuniary, the ecclesiastical,
