Untitled - Electric Scotland

CHAPTER XL
EVANGELISTIC WORK.
OPEN-AIR PREACHING EXETER HALL SERVICES WESTMINSTER
ABBEY AND ST. PAUI/S SERVICES IN THEATRES PRIMARY
CHARGE.
1857-59.
IMPORTANT as these controversies were, and deep as
was the mark they left upon his whole Episcopate, it
would be a simple mistake to suppose that they occupied
in other than a subordinate degree either the interest or
the energies of Bishop Tait. On the contrary, he was
frequently accused in those early years of his Episcopate
of devoting too little time to fat governance of his Diocese,
and too much time to the Evangelistic work, which the
critics of that day regarded as belonging rather to the
inferior clergy than to a Bishop. He had throughout
his life an excessive dread of what he described as over
much machinery. He used to complain, both at Balliol
and Carlisle, that more time was spent in discussing,
arranging, and systematising the work of the Foundation
than in doing it ; and when he came to London the same
difficulty, as he thought, confronted him in another form.
Bishop Blomfield had set himself with untiring zeal,
and with the largest personal generosity, 1 to the task of
Church-building in and around London, so as to overtake,
if possible, the gigantic increase of population. Although
1 His own contributions to the Metropolis Churches Fund and other
agencies amounted to at least ^"25,000.
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