Untitled - Electric Scotland

1863-67] HIS URKADTH OF SYMPATHY 499
at St. James s, Piccadilly, in the spring, and in the various
churches in the diocese ; attending the House of Lords and
speaking on all fit occasions ; and 1 did my best in Convocation.
My first Visitation and Charge belongs to this period (1858).
My second Visitation and Charge (1862) marks a second stage.
The endeavour to evangelise this vast metropolis soon showed
that an organisation far more systematic than anything hitherto
tried was necessary. Hence, from my second Charge, and the
instigation of the Diocesan Church Building Society, sprang the
Bishop of London s Fund. Had I accepted Lord Palmerston s
offer of York in 1862, I could not have brought this work to pass,
fresh to the diocese would have found a
and any one coming
have been able to
difficulty in organising it. What I personally
do in it is, I think, especially by the impression of fairness, to
keep people of very dissimilar opinions working together. To
those who have thus worked, I, and the Church of England, owe
the deepest debt of gratitude. Their exertions have enabled
a thorough system of organisation to be matured. And now my
two great illnesses of this year seem to point to that sort of work
which a Bishop can do in old age, if his life is spared and his
intellect preserved. To be sure I am only fifty-five, but at
present, for my health s sake, I must act as if I was old, quietly
directing rather than actively interfering."
In the following letter he sets forth in more detail the
comprehensive principle of action alluded to above. An
earnest and influential layman, who had actively co
the *
operated in inaugurating Bishop of London s Fund,
wrote, after a short experience, to announce his withdrawal
from the Council on account of the Bishop s readiness to
avail himself of the sympathy and help of every sort of
fellow-labourer. The Bishop replied :-
"
I assure you that we are truly sorry to lose you from the
Council. Of course you must act according to your conscientious
convictions, however mistaken they may be. . . . You
think, 1
gather, that those in authority ought to have taken steps to clear
the Church of persons who do not agree with you, or, rather,
with the section of the Church with which you find yourself in
harmony. Now I grant that the National Church must partake