THE LATE BISHOP OF WINCHESTER.

Waikato Times, Volume IV, Issue 221, 9 October 1873, Page 2

THE LATE BISHOP OF WINCHESTER.

Tiie Guardian, in an a 'tide on the late Bishop, says: — "For it is obvious, at the first glance, now that he is gone, that there isi no one who can fill tho place which he. filled. It seems to us beyond dispute that ho has been, the. greatest Bisliop the English Church has seen for a, century and a half. We do not say the greatest man, but the greatest Bishop : the one nmong the leaders of the English Church who best understood, the relations of his office, not only to the church, but to his times and his country, and who, most adequately fulfilled his. own conception of them. Wo aro very far from saying this, because of his exuberant outfit of powers and gifts : because of his versatility, his sympathetic nature, his eager interest in all that interested his fellows, his inexhaustible and ready resources of thought and speech, of strong and practical good sense, of brilliant or persuasive or pathetic eloquence. In all this he h»d equals and rivals, though perhaps he had not many, in the completeness and balance of his powers. Nor do we say anything of! hose gifts, partly of the intellect, but also of the soul and temper and character by which ho was able at once to charm without tiring the most refined and fustidous society, to draw to him the hearts of hard-working and anxious clergymen, and to enchain the attention of the dullest and most ignorant of rustic congregations. All these are, aa it seems to us, the subordinate, and not the most interesting , parts of what he was: they were on the surface and attracted not ice, and the parts were often mistaken for the whole. Nor do we forget what often offended even equitable judges, disliking all appearance of management and mere adroitness — nr what was often objected against his proceedings by opponents at least as unscrupulous as they wished him to be thought. We are far from thinking that his long career was free from either mistakes or fault* : it is not likely that a course, steered amid such formidable and perplexing difficirups, and steered with such boldness and such little afU-mpt to evade them, should not offer repeated occasions not only for ill-nature, butfor grave and serious objections. But looking over that long course of big Episcopate from 18 15 to the present year, we see in him in an eminent and unique degree two things. He had a distinct and 1 stateiman like idea of Church policy ; and he had a new idea of the functions of a bishop, aiid of what a bishop might do and ought to do. And these two ideas he steadily kept in view, and acted upon with increasing clearness in his purr ' pose and unflagging energy in action.- He grasped in all-its nobleness and fulness and height the conception of the 1 Church as a great religious society of Divine origin, with many sides and functions, with diversified gifts and ever . new relations to altering times, but essentially, and above all * things, a religious society. To serve that society, to call forth in it the consciousness of its calling and its responsibilities, to strengthen and put new life into its organisation, to infuse ardour and enthusiasm and unity into its efforts, " to encourage and loster everything that harmonised with its principle and purpose, to watch against the counteracting influences of self-willed or ignorant narrowneis, to adjust its substantial rights and its increasing aotivity with the new exigencies of political changes, to elicit from the church all . that could command the respect and win the sympathy and confidence of Englishmen, and make its presence recognised as a supreme blessing by those whom nothing but what was great and real in its benefits would satisfy :— this was the aim from which, however perplexed, or wavering, or inconsistent he may have been at times, he never really swerved."