though hitherto not so devoted a man, seems thoroughly inclined to follow in his predecessor's footsteps.
Church matters in the United States have, to the casual English reader, passed under a cloud since the Guardian's correspondent has been pleased to fill his inkhorn with blood. Now and then news of good omen reaches us, as when we hear that Dr. Coxe has been elected Assistant-Bishop of Western New York, or that, in spite of Bishop Potter's high-and-dry opposition, the New York Convention has been discussing the division of dioceses and the provincial system. At other times, English Churchmen are pained and humiliated to hear of eminent Churchmen, of whom they expected better things, giving the public accolade to the brutal and 'infamous' Butler. Next autumn the triennial Convention will reassemble, and we hope that it may separate after a legislative session spent in something more useful than the lengthened word fights of 1862. Of the Church in the (Confederate States we know still less; but, without precise information, we may make sure that the Clergy and the members of that Church are strengthening and ennobling their countrymen in their glorious struggle.
It would be a great oversight on our part if we were not to make some reference to the crisis through which our Church in Scotland has passed, and which has resulted, on the one hand, in the revision of its canons, and, on the other, in the tardily granted repeal of the prohibitory enactments with which the government of George II. was pleased to punish its faithful loyalty to the Stuarts, by refusing privileges which the converted Roman Catholic priest can claim for himself. All in all, that Church has full reason to be thankful, though not to rest. The Scottish Eucharistic Office is, to be sure, deposed from its status of 'primary authority,' which it would have been difficult to have sustained, but it is authorized nevertheless, and thus the Anglican Church still enjoys throughout all its branches the advantage of possessing within its communion, though rarely and locally used, a form of liturgy in which the primitive and Catholic doctrine is so grandly enounced, in words which, from not being identical with those of our own Prayer-book, are on that very account valuable as a support and an explanation of the English Use.
We may be asked. Do you, then, who favour this breach of absolute identity between the English and the Scottish Prayer-books, and who quote with approbation the reforming resolutions of the Sarawak Synod, acquiesce, as in consistency bound, in the agitation of those who, truly alleging the normal imperfection of human things, wish to see whether the 'Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments' cannot be mended? Our answer to this plea is, as the lawyers would say,
