self-sacrifice. The mournful third Sunday in Advent saw the consecration at Lambeth of Mr. Staley to the episcopal throne of that remarkable group of islands in the North Pacific, which have, while still governed monarchically under a native dynasty—though in a great measure peopled by English and American settlers—grown up from a nest of heathen cannibals into a civilized, Christian, English-speaking, and constitutional commonwealth. Bishop Staley takes up his mission, not as an experiment, but on the invitation of the king himself, a Hawaiian pur sang, but an educated gentleman, and a Churchman by conviction. Who then can deny that this mission is one for which we may well auspicate good things in store?
The fourth instance of the English communion finding itself, during 1861, in contact with new independent governments differs from the three others. Two of those are missionary aggressions on the realms of darkness; the third the incorporation of the complete Church into a realm where Christianity and civilization had already penetrated. The fourth case is that of a great commonwealth splitting in twain, and the Church of the English communion in the seceding portion having at once the will and the way to recast itself in a Catholic spirit upon a national basis. Hitherto we have been able to look with pride upon the unestablished daughter Church in the United States. Henceforward we may be able to point with similar feelings to that which exists within the Confederate States.
There are, as we shall proceed further on to detail, some very interesting incidents of a strictly ecclesiastical nature which have grown out of the American secession. But, irrespective of these, the whole history of the sudden disruption of that menacing colossus of yesterday, which first came into existence four years after the birth, in the still British Boston, of the living Nestor of Parliament, is so full of teaching of a moral character, bearing upon the Church's mission in the world, that we beg no pardon for a short digression on its aspects. In what we say we shall throw ourselves back into November, and assume for the moment that no San Jacinto and no Trent had ever navigated the ocean. The antecedents either of President Lincoln or of President Davis are not germane to our present inquiry. What, as Churchmen, we are concerned to observe is, the internal condition of the once great republic, mainly peopled by the descendants of British ancestors, which speaks the English language, and which is now rifted by a secession which one side calls a rebellion, and the other a resumption of sovereignty. The comparative statistics hitherto of our communion north and south of the Potomac form not the only or the first consideration which presses on us. The Episcopal Church in the Northern States may hitherto
