EPISCOPAL ORDERS IN THE COLONIES.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 444, 20 October 1877, Page 3

EPISCOPAL ORDERS IN THE COLONIES.

The ' New Zealand Wesleyan' has the following upon the above subject:—lc is well known that the attempt to connect the Episcopal churches in the colonies with the English Establishment by mear.s of the Queen's " letters patent" having come to nought, a colonial bishop possesses exactly the same political status as a Methodist Chairman of District, or any other good citizen, and that he has as much right to be called " his Lordship " as he has to be called "his Grace." At a recent meeting of one of the Synods of the disestablished Church of Ireland, a motion to dispense with the title " Lord " was objected to by one of the bishops present on the ground that he had been made a " Lord " by the "Queen's letter," for which he had paid £260 in " honor fees," but he added that if the Synod chose to refund him this sum, it might call him what it pleased. This suggestion wears somewhat of a mercenary look, yet we can hardly withhold our sympathy from a prelate whom it was proposed to deprive of what he had honestly bought and paid for. The case of colonial bishops is different. They have not been troubled with the expensive honor of a "Queen's letter," and their deliverance from a title which " affords a handle to the scoffer," and which must be sufficiently ridiculous even to themselves, might be effected without any pecuniary sacrifice. We can readily imagine that the bishops, for their part, would make nc difficulty. They are probably modest Christian gentlemen, to whom the consciousness of wearing borrowed pi nines is a sore humiliation. It is not their vanity that is to be accused, but that of the minor clergy, whose feminine love of millinery is a proverb, and for whom perhaps, it is a source of delicious exhilaration td purr about the legs of a " Lord " —even though he be one of their own making. It is true that the matter is one which concerns Anglicans alone. If our Episcopalian friends chose to call their chief pastor " his Imperial Majesty/' the outside world might thrust its tongue into its cheek, but tfould have no right to object. Upon another point, however, nearly related to this, we are not entirely indifferent. We are willing that " their Lordships " should be " their Lordships," but we object to the territorial titles which they are wont to assume. The " Bishop of Melbourne "is of course, simply the bishop of the Episcopal Church in Melbourne—a Church which does not number more than onefourth of the population. To the other three-fourths " his Lordship's " assertion —in his signature and otherwise—that ho is their bishop, is an affront. The same thing, of course, is true of the halfdozen New Zealand bishops, who divide the country between them, and charge themselves with our spiritual oversight whether we will or not. We are ungrateful enough to wish that they would mind their own business. An English bishop is an official of the State, to whom a certain ecclesiastical jurisdiction is assigned within a certain territory, and this is expressed in his legal title. To parody in this part of the word the territorial titles of the English Establishment is an offence not only against good taste, but also against truth, and the peace of the Churches.