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The Society sent the following answer:—
London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews.
My Dear Sir,
I am instructed by our Committee to acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 31st July, in reply to mine of the 27th, forwarding you the Committee's Resolution of the same date, and, in reply, I am desired to say:—
1. That, you seem to have forgotten, that when your Committee met on the 20th (your letter conveying their Resolutions being dated on the 21st), that Mr. M'Caul's letter to the Editor of the “Standard” was published on the morning of the 19th of July, when its publication must have come to the knowledge of one, or more, of the members of your Committee. At that time not one word was said in repudiation of Mr. M'Caul's letter, or regret for its publication, which letter did not confine itself simply to a protest against the Earl of Shaftesbury's proceedings in respect to his pamphlet, but enunciated as a fact that which was not true—that the Conference had arrived at “the painful conviction that many of the complaints against the management of the Jerusalem Mission were amply justified, and that after two days' searching inquiry many of the graver charges against the late Dr. Macgowan's conduct were conclusively established,” &c.
2. That, although you would now appear to repudiate Mr. M'Caul's letter by saying, “it was published without the cognisance of his colleagues,” you, nevertheless, proceed to justify it by saying, “but, after having seen a pamphlet which Lord Shaftesbury has printed and circulated;” and again, “inasmuch as his letter was elicited by Lord Shaftesbury's previous publication,” which you maintain to have been “in violation of the understanding upon which our Conference was constituted.”
3. That, while fully satisfied with the noble Earl's ability to defend and justify his own acts, in respect to the statement, which his Lordship has seen good to print and circulate amongst the Members of the Society in vindication of himself, but which he has all along declared to be a personal matter, and not in any way affecting the questions under inquiry, the Committee protests in the strongest terms against the unseemly manner, and the unwarrantable statements made by the Rev. Joseph M'Caul (the corresponding Chaplain to the Bishop of Rochester, and a member of the Conference), in direct violation of the understanding you refer to, and contrary to the facts of the case. No evidence whatever was produced at the Conference on the opposite side in defence of the Jerusalem Mission, or of the late Dr. Macgowan, while those questions had nothing to do with the subject of the Earl of Shaftesbury's statement, but which you and your colleagues persevere to urge as “a violation of the understanding upon which the Conference was constituted,” and consider, by your letter of the 21st ult. sufficient to justify Mr. M'Caul's letter to the “Standard” of the 19th, condemnatory of Dr. Macgowan and the Society.
Under such circumstances, our Committee feel that it would be useless to waste more time in fruitless conferences and correspondence, and have resolved upon proceeding, without delay, to put before the friends of the Society their reply to the charges brought against them by the Lord Bishop of Rochester and his friends, in Committee, dated February 22, 1866, a copy of which will be furnished to you, when ready.
