york00orns

414 YORK.
ministration of the prelates who now occupy the
chairs of York and Ripon it would be unbecoming
to speak. " Addressed to living merit the voice of
legitimate praise can scarcely be distinguished from
that of flattery."
One observation may yet be permitted. Never,
certainly, since the Reformation, have so many
organizations, diocesan, archidiaconal, ruri-decanal
and parochial, been set on foot and maintained in all
the dioceses of England, as in the present century,
for the spread of religion at home and abroad, the
extension of education, and the various ministries of
mercy which have been devised for the mitigation of
human miseries, the promotion of temperance and the
rescue of the fallen. The object of each finds always
the readiest sympathy and the most cordial help from
the chief pastors of our Church, and in no period
more than our own has the personal activity of the
episcopate been brought to bear upon the masses of
the population with a more unselfish devotion or a
more ceaseless energy.
In all these manifestations of Christian love, the
great diocese whose more prominent historical features
it has been the object of these pages to portray, is
assuredly not one of the least conspicuous.
Concede, qu.«sumus Domine, famulo tuo metropolitano
nostro, ut pr/edicando et exercenuo
qvje recta sunt, exemplo bonorum operum a.mimas
suorum instruat subditorum, et .«tern/e rkmijne-
RATIONIS MERCEDEM, X Te PIISSIMO PASTORE, PERCIpiAT
: PER Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.