serious efforts should be made to check immorality. A regular marriage tie should be encouraged and rewarded, and more humanity shown to negresses before and after childbirth. Married couples should not be separated from one another, or from their children. Instead of being wholly at the mercy of the managers as regards their clothing, food, labour and punishments, the slaves should be under known and fixed laws, with right of appeal against oppression or brutality, so that security of person and property might bring a little happiness into lives hitherto depressed and degraded; and it might be found possible to allow freedom gradually as a reward for a few of the slaves who were of marked industry and sobriety. In all these matters the Code Noir of the French plantation set an admirable example. An immense and God-given opportunity lay before the Society to train up gradually "a little community of truly Christian Negroes," which by its purity of life and domestic happiness and cheerful labour would be a standing example to influence all the British West Indies. It would render the Society's plantation a Model for all the other planters to follow. It would give it the glory of founding a New School for Piety and Virtue in the Atlantic ocean, of raising a noble structure of religion in the western world, of leading the way perhaps to the future conversion and salvation of more than five hundred thousand human beings, with all their countless descendants to the remotest generation. Less interesting studies in the history of religion might be propounded than to investigate how far Bishop Porteus's recommendations were carried into effect, and with what lasting result. Could there be a better spiritual tonic than the story of Beilby Porteus for any Churchman whose spirits may happen to be depressed at the slow progress of religion in England to-day? When we remember that the good bishop, scarcely more than a hundred years ago, hardly dared to hope that his clergy would live in their parishes, or that they would observe Lent, or hold more than one service each Sunday, or venture upon the promotion of Sunday-schools; and when we remember that it seemed beyond the bounds of all practical politics that a Christian nation should free its slaves; then surely we may, even the most fainthearted of us, take courage, and thank God that to the seed sown by His faithful workers in every age He grants even a richer harvest than they dare to hope or pray for. RICHARD WATSON, BISHOP OF LLANDAFF I Latitudinarian and political bishops-Watson's life as told in his Anecdotes His education, and appointment to Professorships of Chemistry and Divinity, and to See of Llandaff-His various interests and neglect of episcopal work-The age's acquiescence in episcopal sloth-The Bishop's indefinite Christianity, and eagerness for preferment-Anecdotes of George III-Story of a Confirmation. We have seen, in the preceding chapter how there was a time when with some justice the word bishop might stink in the nostrils of English Churchmen. In the eighteenth century, especially in its latter half, the office of a bishop was considered not so much “a good work" as a good position, bringing to its fortunate possessor a large income, an opportunity of learned (or unlearned) leisure, and a standing which stamped its owner, in the eyes of the world, as a success in his profession. In the second half of the century bishops were appointed almost solely for political reasons; indeed, it was largely understood that they were to support the Prime Minister who chose them. And Prime Ministers were very careful to choose men who would not unsettle the comfortable ease of the Established Church, or show any awkward "enthusiasm." The divines appointed were generally scholarly Whigs, whose zeal was largely for a latitudinarian Protestantism and the obtaining of promotion, their views being so eminently "rational" and vague that few could quarrel with them on any definite principle. Now and then unavailing protests against this state of things were forthcoming. Bishop Hoadley, a prelate notorious for his laxity of views and practice, who held the see of Bangor for six years without once entering it, had urged that prayer should be an "Address calm and undisturbed, without any Heat, or Flame, or Vehemence, or importunity." To which advice a critic, in a publication meant to rebuke the religious scandals of the age, retorted by drawing up the following somewhat scurrilous prayer, which he suggested might be of use, along Bishop Hoadley's lines of reasoning : Hang your Head care- Rub one Eye; A Form to be said over a Dish of Be in a Good Humour. O Give me Grace, it is Grace I want; Grant me a City House and a Country House: May I always live Absolutely and Properly, in such a Manner, and to such a Degree: May my lot fall in the Southernly Parts of Great Britain, where the Air is moderate; and may I never be forced (God bless his Royal Highness) into the Principality of North Wales. I confess I am unworthy of these Blessings, and so I have always been: Let me always escape my Deserts, and give me what I do not deserve for the sake of myself, my Wife and Children. Amen. Yawn. Stretch. Call for your Shoes and the Tea-Kettle. Tye your Garters. Among the chief evils which roused protests from time to time were two which naturally went hand in hand plurality, by which an incumbent might hold several livings, often at a great distance from one another; and non-residence, by which he might reside where he willed, so long as he placed an ill-paid curate in each of his parishes. Bishops would gaily hold a deanery or canonry, with a living or two, all in different parts of England, in addition to their see; and lesser dignitaries and parish priests naturally followed suit, when they had the chance. In charge of their livings such clergy would place curates, themselves rarely visiting their flocks except to receive tithe, whilst bishops of this kidney rarely visited the parishes of their diocese, and even sometimes resided outside it altogether. Every historian of the eighteenth century has this story to tell, and all quote one particular bishop as the prince of non-resident pluralists-Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff for thirty-four years, from 1782 to 1816. This divine never lived in his diocese at all, and visited it only upon rare occasions! Few autobiographies constitute such vivid mirrors of their writers' character as the bishop's very candid Anecdotes of My Life, in which, at the end of his long life, he puts forth his career, his ambitions, his disappointments. In our efforts, as a Church, to enter deeply into the spirit of repentance and hope,1 we could hardly find a better book than this to reveal to us the past neglect for which we need to offer repentance; nor could any book give us a much more real ground for hope if we venture to compare the episcopal life which it presents to our gaze with the multifarious activities and the revived spirituality of our modern episcopate. Let us dip, therefore, into Bishop Watson's 1 This chapter was written soon after the National Mission in 1916, the keynote of which was a call to " Repentance and Hope." K |