CHARGE,

&c.

REVEREND BRETHREN,

At the time when I made my Visitation of the Lower Province', for the inspection of the Churches and the Confirmation of young persons who had been prepared for that rite, the late Bishop of Quebec was still living and I was acting simply as his delegate. This circumstance, to make no mention of some other considerations which conspired with it, appeared to me to dispense with the necessity, if not to forbid the propriety, of my calling together any portion of my brethren to receive the episcopal charge.

The independent administration of the Diocese having since passed into my hands, (although no appointment to the See of Quebec has taken place,) and the protraction of those negotiations which were long ago set on foot for the erection of a separate

In the beginning of 1837, and for the district of Gaspé, in the Gulph of St. Lawrence, in the summer of that year.

See at Toronto, and of which the speedier issue, if successful, would have withheld me from making the Visitation of Upper Canada, having now decided me to leave that Province no longer without the personal ministrations of the Bishop, I have judged that it might be of mutual advantage that when thus engaged in completing the Visitation, I should meet my brethren in a body at those different points in the enormous extent of this Diocese, of which their convenience would indicate the choice 1.

I have expressed the hope that our meeting may be of mutual advantage, and although I wish to say as little as possible, I must here say something which personally regards myself. If I do not despair, that, by the Divine blessing, the advice which I am now about to offer, or other more familiar suggestions made during your stay, may be of use to you in the exercise of your duties, I certainly no less anticipate that I may derive benefit from the opportunity thus afforded of our taking sweet counsel together, and walking in the house of God as friends. I see among you those to whom I might say, I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God which is in thee

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They were assembled accordingly, for the Lower Province, at Quebec and Montreal. It was in compliance with the desire of the Clergy themselves in Upper Canada, a desire founded upon the obvious inconvenience of deliberating in two distinct bodies at a distance from each other, upon some matters in which it was necessary to come to one conclusion,-that the Visitation of the whole Province was fixed at Toronto, instead of being held both at that place and at Kingston.

by the putting on of my hands, and who of course are young in the Ministry, but I pray you to believe that I am ready to receive help from all, and want all the help that I can receive. I scarcely need assure you that I am sensible how much I need your indulgence of judgment, and your prayers that I may be guided and prospered in the task which has devolved upon feeble and unworthy hands. You will not suspect that they are words of course which I use. I do not affect to deny that I have had some experience of ecclesiastical affairs, or that there are circumstances which give me an adaptation to certain local peculiarities in the charge; and if I were not conscious, in addition to these considerations, of possessing such general qualifications as enable me in some small measure to sustain the respectability of the office,— above all, if I did not humbly trust that God has given me some concern for the grand objects of that as well as of other offices in the Christian Ministry, -I could not have been justified in accepting it, although if I had not done so, the Church in Canada, from circumstances with which you are acquainted, would have been seen for an indefinite time without a Bishop. But if I had reason to shrink beforehand from the charge, I do solemnly assure you, that in the occupation of it, I daily feel cause to tremble.

Among the difficulties now attaching to the charge, is one circumstance which in another point of view would seem to be an eminent advantage-namely, that I have to take up and carry on the labours left to me

by such a man as the Bishop of Quebec. It is not my purpose to enlarge upon the character of that devoted servant of the Lord, whose race, in our weak apprehension, seems to have run out too soon. Upwards of a year has now elapsed since his decease, and in accordance with the voice which was lifted to lament him in every quarter where his name had been known, we have rendered our testimony, in different ways, to his zeal in the cause of that Master for whom it was his glory to spend and to be spent. We all personally loved him: many of us were specially obliged to him, and for myself I can truly say, that his long and unvarying friendship for me is among the most treasured recollections of my life. But with such a name as he had and so nobly earned, and with some advantages at his command which I do not possess, he has bequeathed to me a task in the execution of which you will feel that I can ask no fitter prayer from you than that a portion of that spirit by which he was animated may be shed down upon me from the Father of lights.

Upon this occasion of our first meeting as we now meet, it appears natural and proper that I should call upon you to contemplate with me for our own profit, the actual state both of the Church of England at large, and of that portion of it in particular, which has been planted in the Diocese of Quebec. The position of the Church, whether general or local, is in some points of view, critical, and even alarming; and a very exact application may be made to the existing

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circumstances in which she is placed, of the language used by an ancient father, with reference to his own day upon the earth: "The times are difficult: those who conspire against us are many;" with the addition, as it respects too many of her professed adherents, of the words which follow," the genuine spirit of love has become extinct." Parties in the mother country very widely at variance with each other upon the subject of Religion, appear to have cast their heads together with one consent, and to be confederate against her; and from the character of the times, these parties are rendered formidable in a way which the merits of their cause could never make them. The ruling powers at home, perhaps in many instances feeling or conceiving their position to be one in which they can only say, non est ista nostra culpa sed temporum, are found scarcely to afford justice to interests which are identified with the cause of established authority and order, and the maintenance of what is venerable in human institutions; and the ungenerous cry of those who have found their own opportunities of advancement or distinction in exciting odium against the Church, aided by the unconsidered statements of others whose war against old prejudices is in fact the great prejudice of their own minds, has been allowed to prevail too far against claims which are at once legitimate in themselves and connected with the highest interests of man.

1

Χαλεπὸς ὁ καιρὸς, οἱ ἐπιβουλεύοντες πολλοί· τὸ τῆς ἀγάπης yvíjolov aτóλwλEv.-Chrysostom de Sacerdotio.