Chapter V. College and Clerical Work (1858-1865)

WHEN Machray returned to Sidney College at the close of 1858 he was twenty-seven years of age; in appearance he was a tall, reedy, loosely-made, and delicate-looking man. it was then the Christmas Vacation, and the College, except for the "Questionists" preparing for the approaching Tripos in January, was empty; his duties as Dean were light. Under the old Elizabethan statutes by which the College was founded it was provided that the Dean was, amongst other things, to hold every Friday during Term a Theological Disputation of two hours' duration from four to six in the afternoon; and that on Sundays, for the space of one hour, he was bound to expound some Article of the Christian Faith. But those strenuous days of disputations and expoundings had long passed away. Fifty years ago, as at the present time, the chief duty of a College Dean was the supervision of the conduct of the undergraduates within the College, and the holding of the Daily Services in the Chapel. He had to take notice of misbehaviour within the walls, to see that the men attended Chapel regularly, and to inquire into the reasons that sometimes caused them to be out of College without permission after midnight or after the College gates were closed.

There were two Services each week-day in the Chapel, one in the early morning, the other in the afternoon or evening immediately before dinner in Hall; and every undergraduate, unless specially excused, had to "keep," that is, be present at, a certain number of these Services, which consisted simply of Morning or Evening Prayer, as the case might be, including the Lessons for the Day, which were read by the Scholars of the College in rotation. On Sundays there was Morning Prayer, with the Litany and part of the Office for Holy Communion, but no sermon, beginning at ten o'clock in the forenoon; in the evening there was Evening Prayer before dinner. Sidney Chapel was small and had neither organ nor choir; the services, therefore, were not attractive in the popular sense, and the presence of the undergraduates at them was enforced as a matter of College discipline rather than from the point of view of religion. Undergraduates of a serious turn were wont to attend some church in the town on Sunday evenings after the Service in College; thus Machray, while an undergraduate, went regularly to All Saints'. During Vacation there were no Services except on Sundays; and the Questionists, being in their last year, would give him but little trouble. His full duty as Dean began with the Lent Term of 1859.

Soon after reaching Cambridge he called on Mr. Clayton, the Vicar of Holy Trinity, to whom he had written from Douglas. The two men had much in common, and a warm friendship speedily grew up between them. When William Carus, afterwards Canon, went to Winchester, Charles Clayton succeeded him in Trinity Church, and thus took Simeon's place (Carus was the successor of Simeon) as leader of the Evangelical party in Cambridge. This he continued to be till Bishop Bickersteth of Ripon, whose Examining Chaplain he was, appointed him Rector of Stanhope. He exercised a remarkable influence on many generations of undergraduates. Clergymen and laymen of Evangelical opinions, who sent their sons up to Cambridge at this time, had them introduced to him, and bade them go to the sermon which he preached at Holy Trinity on Sunday evenings; in his congregation there were generally upwards of a hundred undergraduates. He took a personal interest in these young men, holding a special prayer meeting for them at the commencement of each Term, and he got to know them individually by having them to breakfast with him in his rooms at Caius College. Machray liked him very much, admiring his earnestness and zeal, but he thought his views on Church matters were extreme. Machray himself was also an Evangelical, and remained an Evangelical to the end of his life, but one of his most salient characteristics was a strong common-sense not easily thrown out of balance, and this most useful of all gifts in practical affairs, or any other sort of affairs, made him a man of essentially moderate views.

When he and Clayton came to know each other intimately, and to understand each other, he exerted a great influence on his friend, which rendered him more tolerant in his criticisms of the acts and opinions of others. This, of course, came later. When Machray first met him in 1859 their conversation was concerned with Church work in and around Cambridge, in which work Machray wished with his whole heart to take as large a share as was possible in his position. He speedily, in one way or another, had what he wanted.

Some seven miles south-west of Cambridge there lies the small parish of Newton--a tiny cure of souls, with an area of less than a thousand acres, and a population under two hundred; the Dean and Chapter of Ely Cathedral were then lords of the manor, Mr. William Swan Hurrell, the local squire, being "Lay Rector." The neighbouring and somewhat larger parish of Hauxton was joined with Newton, and the Vicar of the united parishes, the Rev. George Williams, used to have Services in the churches of Newton and Hauxton alternately morning and evening on Sundays, but the gentry of the former wished to have two Sunday Services in their own Church of St. Margaret's, and an arrangement to that effect had been made. Prior to Machray's becoming Dean of Sidney, these Services had been taken by Mr. Kingsley, the Tutor of the College, who now was anxious to be relieved from them. Mr. Kingsley spoke to Machray about Newton and asked him if he would undertake the duty. Machray went out to survey the ground and to see the Vicar, and then agreed to accept the charge, but on conditions, which were that he was not to be licensed as Curate to Mr. Williams, and that that gentleman should allow him to visit in Newton, and to have a night school for the rustic parishioners should he think it desirable, just as if he were actual Incumbent; in other words, he wished to have the parish to himself, and Mr. Williams consented that it should be so. He made no claim to any part of the Vicar's income, but the Hurrells and one or two of the other gentlefolk of the place subscribed £40 a year towards his expenses.

The arrangement was not profitable pecuniarily, as he hired a pony-trap to take him from Cambridge to Newton every Sunday, and also at least once a week to enable him to visit in the parish. Among the first things he did was to start a night school, to which he went twice a week, generally going by train from Cambridge to Harston, a village about a mile from Newton, and walking the rest of the way, but he often walked to the school from Cambridge and back again, a tramp of fourteen miles. He was soon popular with his people; the gentry were particularly kind to him, and the school was a great success. He continued to have charge of the parish till June 1862, and it gave him many of the happiest days of this period of his life. Mr. Williams-Ellis writes of it as follows:

As a clergyman Machray was not satisfied by the scrupulous performance of College duties as Dean, but outside the College he voluntarily undertook parochial work. For some time he acted as Curate in the village of Newton, starting there, with the help of the squire, a night school, often trudging in dark wintry nights the seven miles there and the seven miles back through mud and rain. I used some times to accompany him. The school was well attended. There were youths of all ages, and there would be old plough-men with their heads on the desks holding their pens like pitchforks, and admiring the huge pothooks that they laboriously and slowly formed. I need scarcely add that he was so greatly loved by rich and poor that his very name has ever since been held in the deepest reverence and affection.

Machray at that time was very thin and tall, and almost consumptive-looking, with something of a "Dominie Sampson" appearance--seeming rather absent-minded, and always likely to take the wrong turning in a walk. Few who knew him in after years would recognise my sketch in the strong-looking, handsome, dignified Archbishop of Rupert's Land. Still he had always the same fine Dante expression of countenance, the same delightful smile of welcome for a friend, and above all, the same childlike simplicity of nature and the same unvarying kindness of heart.

The Service on Sunday mornings at Newton pre vented him from holding the Morning Service in the College Chapel; but this caused no difficulty, as his place was taken either by the Master, Dr. Phelps, or by one of the Fellows, all of whom were in Orders. It may have been because of his absence from the College Morning Service, but one of the few changes he made at Sidney while he was its Dean was to add a sermon to the Sunday Evening Service, which he usually preached himself. He was no longer a member of the Dudleian Society, as it was confined entirely to under graduates, but he continued to take an interest in it. He was on friendly terms with the students, who quickly came to appreciate his kindness and unselfishness. He was very sympathetic with nervous scholars who had to read the Lessons in Chapel in turn; he was known on more than one occasion to take them into Chapel when no Service was going on, and have them practise the reading of the Lessons until they had gained some confidence, As illustrating the relations that existed between himself and the undergraduates, and what they thought of him, the following incident, narrated by Mr. Williams-Ellis is given:

Some years ago, in a little, dark, crowded smoking room of a steamer on its way to Palestine, a discussion arose regarding Bishops. The Right Reverend Fathers in God were accused of luxury, idleness, driving about in carriages, and other similar worldlinesses. I said, "Well, I know one Bishop who, I believe, gives up the whole of his income to his Diocese, acts as Master in his School and as Professor in his College, and gladly under takes work for which no payment can be found. He is the most unselfish man I know, layman or bishop." "Is that Machray?" asked a man lying on a sofa in the dark. "So, he was my Dean at College." The man turned out to be a clergyman, an old College pupil, of whom I had not heard for many years.

Machray lived in great harmony with the Master and Fellows of Sidney during these happy Cambridge days, but his chief intimates were the gentleman who contributes the above and other passages, the Rev. J. C. Williams-Ellis, and, somewhat later, John Rundell Cornish, now Bishop of St. Germans, Suffragan of the Bishop of Truro. In 1859 Mr. Kingsley resigned the Tutorship of Sidney on accepting the Rectory of South Kelvington, and Mr. Williams-Ellis, who had been Lecturer at Christ's College, was appointed in his stead. Williams-Ellis, who was Third Wrangler in 1856, was already a Fellow of Sidney. Dr. Cornish took his B.A. degree in 1859, and soon afterwards came into residence at Sidney as Taylor Lecturer. Within a few years he was elected to a Fellowship of the College.

The three men formed a close friendship of no ordinary kind, living much in each other's rooms, taking long walks together, talking eagerly on all the current topics of the University and of the bigger world that lay beyond it, sharing each other's thoughts and ideas, each adding something individual to the common fund. Dr. Cornish, like Mr. Williams-Ellis, frequently went with Machray to Newton. The partnership, as it may be called, lasted for four or five years, and during that period the three breakfasted in one another's rooms every day during term-time, and met, after the Church duties of the day were done, nearly every Sunday evening in Dr. Cornish's rooms, when generally some book of the day was discussed. Mr. Williams-Ellis writes:

About this time (1859) I became Tutor of the College, and it was from then on that Machray became my intimate and lifetime friend. He had been summoned up to College to act as Dean. Cornish (the Bishop of St. Germans) was Taylor Lecturer. We three always used to breakfast in each other's rooms, and partly as a concession to our Scotch partner, we always had a goodly supply of porridge. This at first we got sent up from the College kitchens; but finally we used to order our oatmeal from Scotland and cooked it ourselves in our rooms, and by the assistance of our imaginations we considered the result superb.

Machray and myself thought that we would like to take a medical degree, as, in possible circumstances, it might be useful to us. Machray even then looked forward to taking up missionary work. So we went to Professor Humphrey's most interesting Lectures in Anatomy, and to Professor Living's in Chemistry. However, we eventually gave up the idea, as we should have bad to spend a long period in hospital work. We once were very much amused by the answer of one of our undergraduates to the Professor's question, "What is nitrogen?" The examinee replied with confidence, "Nitrogen is a negative quantity." This reminds me of the answer sent in by a man of the same year as Machray to the question what was the old name of the Black Sea. The answer was "Negro-Pont."

St. John's College was the only College at that time which had a laboratory, but we got Sidney to allow one to be started in some ground-floor rooms. However, as complaints of disagreeable fumes were made by the occupants of the rooms above, the Sidney laboratory was removed to a separate building. We now and again tried some simple experiments in our own rooms. Once in rooms we began one. A fine india-rubber was conveying hydrogen to our experimental retort, when we suddenly discovered that the tube was on fire, and that the fire was stealing up to the explosive mixture. We used to accuse Machray of rushing into Cornish's bed room and bolting the door. This was probably unjust. I think we dived under the table as the safest place, and waited in agony for the coming explosion to blow the College to atoms. Finding after awhile that nothing happened, we recovered from our fright, and naturally accused each other of abject cowardice.

Machray, Cornish, and myself used to meet every Sunday evening or nearly so. One night I was reading aloud to them Essays and Reviews, which had just then come out (1861). Our custom was to discuss some book of importance on these occasions. Well, certain comments were made on this famous book; and I can see now, after all the years that have come and gone, Machray getting up and fidgeting about when any remarks were uttered favouring what was then considered an extra Broad Church or unorthodox view. Clayton, Tutor of Caius, was then the head of the Evangelical party in Cam bridge, and Machray was quite one of his best supporters. But Machray was always very reasonable--which Clayton was not, always. Machray was a strong Churchman, with an intense dislike to anything like Broad or unorthodox views.

Bishop Cornish writes that he also remembers the particular evening alluded to in the foregoing paragraph, and the book that was the subject of their criticisms. He adds that these Sunday evening meetings latterly were not confined to the three friends, for men came in from other colleges, so that there some times was a considerable number present at them. By this time Machray had a large circle of acquaintances, owing to the prominent part he took as secretary of several Church organisations in Cambridge, and for other and more personal reasons. He was an active member of the local Church of England Young Men's Society, and taught some of its classes; an honorary secretary of the Army Scripture Readers' Society, of the Church Pastoral Aid Society, and of several other religious Societies; he was also on the Committees of all the Evangelical Societies of the town and district with his friend Clayton. He was one of a small Committee for Church Extension in Cambridge, the others being Archdeacon Emery, the Rev. W. T. Beaumont of St. Michael's, the Rev. John Martin of Great St. Andrew's, and the Rev. C. Alfred Jones of St. John's. Of the last named Machray saw a great deal, and they became warmly attached friends; Mr. Jones took duty for him occasionally at Newton. When Machray became Bishop of Rupert's Land, Mr. Jones acted as secretary of his General Committee, and afterwards was one of his Commissaries, occupying that position for over a quarter of a century. Another of his Commissaries was the Rev. T. T. Perowne, now Archdeacon of Norwich, who with his brother, the Rev. E. H. Perowne, late. Master of Corpus Christi College, was intimate with him at Cambridge.

In the spring of 1862 the parish of Madingley became vacant through the resignation of the Vicar, the Rev. Thomas Field. The presentation to the living was in the gift of the Bishop of Ely, Dr. Turton, the prelate who had ordained Machray. Advancing years had caused Bishop Turton to lean more and more on the advice of Dr. Corrie, the Master of Jesus, who continued to be his Examining Chaplain; and Dr. Corrie, influenced probably by Clayton, suggested that Madingley should be offered to Machray, and the Bishop in June appointed him Vicar. Considered merely as a living, Madingley was not particularly desirable, for its annual income was only about a hundred pounds, and at that time there was no vicar age. But, for all that, it was attractive in other ways it could be held with a Fellowship of one of the Colleges; it was within easy reach of Cambridge, being some three and a half miles from the town; and the village of Madingley is perhaps the. prettiest in the county. It is, besides, a small parish, with less than two hundred inhabitants, and an area of 1768 acres, and therefore could be easily worked, from a Church point of view, from Cambridge. Since Machray's incumbency a vicarage has been built, and the church, a lovely little structure, has been restored. The church, which is surrounded with large and beautiful yew-trees, was held by many to have shared with that of Stoke Pogis the inspiration of Gray's Elegy. [Mr. Williams-Ellis succeeded Machray as vicar in 5865. A few years later the "Lay Rector," Miss Cotton, undertook to restore the fabric of the church. About £1000 was expended, towards which the Prince of Wales (now King) sent a donation. The old lead roof had to be removed; but as it was very thick, and contained, as usually is the case with such old roofs, a percentage of silver, more was obtained for it than the new lead cost. It had been noticed before the restoration that there were always great quantities of bees in the church. When the old lead was removed, there were found in the roof large stores of honey--the accumulation of years. Thu resulted in a contention between the churchwarden and the clerk of the parish as to whose property it was!]

But the chief feature of the place is Madingley Hall, a Tudor mansion built in the reign of Henry VIII., that stands in a park of two hundred acres; the church is just within the park gates. The Hall was for many generations the seat of the Cotton family. When King Edward, then Prince of Wales, was an undergraduate of Cambridge in 1861, it was lent to him as a residence; of this time Mr. Williams-Ellis relates an anecdote:

There was an old tumble-down van on the road half-way between Cambridge and Madingley, in which lived an old woman whom we generally found hunting for "rots" (rats) under the van. There was a story current that once the Prince, walking into Cambridge to attend lectures, was over taken by rain, and asked the old woman for the loan of an umbrella. She produced a rather dilapidated affair, and asked the Prince to be sure and hand it in to a certain stall in the market in the town, where she was going later in the day. When the Prince's messenger brought the umbrella, and the old woman heard that it was the Prince of Wales who had borrowed it, she exclaimed, "Oh, if I had only known who he was, I should have lent him my best one!"

When Machray became Vicar of Madingley, the fine old Hall was occupied by Lady King, daughter of Admiral Sir Charles Cotton an widow of Sir Richard King, and her family. Machray called immediately on his appointment, and received a cordial welcome. He soon knew every member of his flock, and quickly settled down to his new parochial work. But just at first there was a slight check. When he came to take possession of the parish, which he did according to old-time English custom by "ringing himself in"--that is, by ringing the church bell to intimate his institution as vicar--he was able to extract from the bell no more than two or three peals. Now an ancient superstition, by no means confined to Madingley, prophesied that no vicar should enjoy the living for more years than the number of peals of the bell when he rang himself in. The village wiseacres shook their heads, and thought that his time would be short. And, of course, he smiled. Yet in his case the prophecy was fulfilled, for three years had not quite elapsed when he was nominated Bishop of Rupert's Land, and his Consecration took place almost exactly three years after his ringing himself in at Madingley.

Miss King, a daughter of Lady King who has been dead for some years, writes of Machray's incumbency of Madingley: "He was beloved by all, and who could help it? He exhibited, then as always, the same earnestness, singleness of purpose, and kindness of heart that made him later the great Archbishop whose loss all regret." Two events which occurred during the Madingley period of his life may be noted. During the winter of 1862-63 he prepared and delivered a lecture in London at Exeter Hall to the Young Men's Christian Association on "John Howe and the Times of the Puritans." The lecture, with others of the course delivered during that winter, was published in book form in 1863. It was the only thing of the kind he ever attempted, and he devoted a great deal of time and study to his subject. How he came to be asked to lecture in Exeter Hall, or why he selected this particular theme, is not known.

For the purpose of this biography this lecture is interesting rather because it shows the nature and thoughts of the man who delivered it than because of anything it says that is fresh or specially illuminating respecting the Puritans. The subject, he maintained, was a large one and a striking, as regarded both the actor of whom he was to speak and the times in which the man played his part in Church and State. With respect to John Howe he said: "Few men have lived so prominently in exciting times, and yet lived such a holy life; few men have suffered for conscience' sake, and yet abstained from so much as an unkind word." And as for the times--the days of the last generation of the Puritans: "They were thirty years during which England recklessly threw away and wasted the men who from their talents, honesty, holiness, and, above all, deep concern for immortal souls, would have been as salt in her midst. We degraded ourselves at home, and we were degraded abroad, and yet we owe not a little to their very badness. It was the completeness of the degradation of 1668 that made the completeness of the Revolution."

But, said the lecturer, he desired to add nothing to the bitterness of controversies; "it would be un pardonable to make the life of Howe a vehicle for a sectarian address." And he went on to declare that the study of these times and their bitter conflicts conveyed, and could convey, but one lesson that was worth the learning--"to moderate our own tone in our differences and controversies. Perhaps to those that follow us, much that we now toil for, as for life itself may seem shadowy enough." When the cause of the Puritans triumphed, they showed themselves as in tolerant as any of their opponents, and "intolerance was only another name for selfishness." After a survey of Howe's life and times, he characterised him as a man whose predominating traits were faithfulness with out bigotry, and an ever-outflowing love for others which made himself much loved. "Religion was to his own soul that living, delightful thing which he loved to tell others that it was. Like Faithful in the Pilgrim's Progress, he had sunshine all the rest of the way, and also through the Valley of the Shadow of Death." Machray wound up his lecture by a plea for unity founded on a wise and wide tolerance in the Church, and quoted, with high approval, a passage from Marsden's History of the Later Puritans, which affirmed that a National Church must stand on a generous basis, and must admit good men of every shade of orthodox piety, and that its terms of communion must be few.

The second event took place in 1864, and made a Red-Letter Day for Madingley. Rather more than a year after their marriage, the Prince and Princess of Wales (now King Edward and Queen Alexandra) paid a visit to Cambridge, where they were magnificently entertained by the University and the town. It was at the beginning of the month of June, the season when Cambridge and the famous and unrivalled "Backs" of the Colleges are at their loveliest and best--the "May Week," as it is termed, though the week generally happens to fall in June, which marks the end of the Summer Term and the farewell of one generation of undergraduates--undergraduates, strictly speaking, no longer. The Prince took a great pleasure in showing the Princess some of the memorials of his Cambridge undergraduate period, and amongst other places he took her to Madingley to see the Hall in which he had resided and the pretty village standing at its gates--never prettier than at this part of the summer. On Saturday, June 4, the royal party drove over to Madingley Hall, where they were received by Lady King and her daughter, with whom were Machray, as Vicar, and his sister, Mary Machray, who had come up from Scotland to take part in the "May" festivities. The little village throbbed with happy excitement, and the parishioners, in their bravest array, turned out en masse. The Prince and Princess con versed for a short time with Lady King and her guests, and then the Prince showed his old rooms to the Princess before driving back again to Cambridge.

In the course of the same summer Machray, accompanied by his sister, spent several weeks in Switzerland, mainly at Interlaken and in its neighbourhood, where they indulged in some mountain-climbing. Machray came into residence again as Dean of Sidney at the commencement of the October Term, 1864. Some time in October of that year an event occurred which was destined to have the profoundest effect on the whole of his future life, for it was then that Dr. Anderson, the first Bishop of Rupert's Land, resigned his See; very soon afterwards it was offered informally to Machray, who consented to undertake it. The formal offer of the Bishopric by command of Queen Victoria was made in the beginning of January 1865, but the offer, and his acceptance of it, were not publicly announced for some months owing to special circum stances. These were that the Colenso case was then before the Ecclesiastical Courts, and it was thought that the decision which might be arrived at might prejudicially affect the whole question of the position of Colonial Bishoprics and the rights of the Crown to appoint to them. Dr. Colenso was appointed Bishop of Natal in 1853 by Queen Victoria; in 1861 he published a Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, which contained statements which were supposed to be of a heretical nature. Dr. Gray, Bishop of Cape Town, his Metropolitan, tried him for heresy, and condemned and deposed him from the Bishopric of Natal. Dr. Colenso appealed to the English Courts, and the sentence of deposition was set aside in May 1865 whereupon he returned to Natal and resumed his Bishopric, although Bishop Gray excommunicated him, and brought in another Bishop for the same Diocese, but under another title.

Apart from any matter of orthodoxy or heterodoxy, the decision of English law at least preserved, and affirmed afresh, the rights of the Crown with respect to Colonial Bishoprics. The Royal Mandate to consecrate Machray Bishop of Rupert's Land was not issued to the Archbishop of Canterbury until May 19, after the Colenso case was settled. Meanwhile Machray, it was arranged, was privately to communicate his appointment to the Sidney authorities and a few others who were deeply interested. The Crown was represented in the offer of the See by Mr., afterwards Viscount, Cardwell, then Secretary of State for the Colonies; Lord Cardwell is best remembered by the changes he introduced into the British Army, such as the abolition of the purchase of commissions and the institution of the "Short Service" system. Machray's name for the vacant Bishopric was submitted to him by the Archbishop of Canterbury, probably on the recommendation of the Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, the Rev. Henry Venn, who was perhaps inspired by Clayton; this great Church organisation supported at that time by far the largest number of the clergy in Rupert's Land, and would certainly be consulted in such an important matter as the selection of a Bishop for it. Machray had been for some years a prominent member of the Cambridge branch of the Society, and his character and powers of work were well known and appreciated by their chiefs in London. It is also probable that Dr. Tait, then Bishop of London, had something to do with suggesting Machray for Rupert's Land to the Archbishop. Machray was very intimate with Frederick Gell of Christ's College (afterwards Bishop of Madras), who was a great friend of Tait's, and his Examining Chaplain, and Machray had met the Bishop in Gell's rooms. Perhaps Gell mentioned Machray's name to Dr. Tait for the vacant See.

Apart from his duties as Dean of Sidney, Machray had taken a comparatively small share in the University. He was one of the University Examiners in 1859, and again in 1860. He did not deliver lectures or take any of the classes in his College. But that he had completely absorbed the spirit of Cambridge and its life was to be manifested in a remarkable manner when he came to deal with the problems connected with College-making and University-making in a new country. Most of his time was occupied with work of various kinds that belonged more to the sphere of the clergyman than of the College don--his parish of Madingley and the Church Societies of the town. During Term he frequently had undergraduates of Sidney and of other Colleges, and graduates too, to breakfast or "wine" with him, and these parties had always some thing of religion in the background: it would be unobtrusive, like the man himself but it would be there; occasionally some well-known Evangelical was present. He did not give up his Cambridge life, with its manifold activities, without deep regret, but the "clear call" summoned him from it.

He felt the parting from Madingley very much. A few years afterwards, in one of his Addresses to the Synod of Rupert's Land, he referred to this period of his career. He was speaking to his clergy of their duties and privileges as parish priests. He said "What an ambition there should be in every minister to find out what may give his people something fresh, edifying, and instructive every week! Often have I lamented that I never had the joy of being able to devote myself entirely to the office of a parish priest. It seems to me the most enchanting occupation in life, as well as the most solemn and awful. What can equal the charge of a number of immortal souls! What loving thought, what amazing interest their spiritual life should call out! When I was Vicar of an English parish I had College and University-duties, and many voluntary labours in connection with religious societies, and since I have been here I have had the care of all the Churches." On his resignation of Madingley he was given as a compliment by Dr. Harold Browne, who had succeeded Dr. Turton as Bishop of Ely, the nomination of his successor to the living, and he offered it to Mr. Williams-Ellis, who accepted it.

Before the public announcement of his appointment to the Bishopric, he was allowed to enter into communication with the heads of the great Church Societies, whose sphere of work lies mainly or wholly in Greater Britain and in foreign parts, and to whom he had to look for subsidies for his clergy. These Societies were the Church Missionary Society, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the Colonial and Continental Church Society, and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; through out the rest of this volume they will generally be mentioned simply under the initials by which, as a matter of fact, they are usually known respectively, namely, the C.M.S., the S.P.G., the C.C.C.S., and the S.P.C.K. Machray went to London and saw the chiefs of these organisations. He also met Bishop Anderson, and had long and intimate conversations with him respecting Rupert's Land, about which he was naturally anxious to have the fullest particulars. Much also he learned from Archdeacon Hunter, who had worked for many years in Rupert's Land as a missionary of the C.M.S., but was then in England and on the point of retiring from their service. in one way or another he got a tolerably clear impression of the situation in the field of labour to which he was about to go, and had made up his mind how to deal with it.

Towards the end of March, writing to Prebendary Bulloch, then Honorary Secretary of the S.P.G., he stated that he was to set before himself three main objects on his arrival in Rupert's Land--to encourage a Native Church, to induce each congregation to aim persistently at self-support, and to secure the ground for the Church of England. He was desirous of starting a Diocesan Fund, but as that meant an appeal to the public, the effort was postponed till his appointment was announced. Early in May, however, he had an interview with Mr. Cardwell, the Colonial Secretary; his acceptance of the Bishopric became an open secret, and he was alluded to in the press as Bishop-nominate of Rupert's Land. By this time he had become possessed of the belief that Rupert's Land was destined to have a great future. At a meeting of the C.M.S. held in Cambridge on May 15, at which the Bishop of Ely and Bishop Anderson were present, he referred to his conversation with Mr. Cardwell, who had said to him jokingly that if the statements about Rupert's Land in the American papers were true, one would be led to believe there had not been such a country since the Garden of Eden. Machray said, in his calm, common-sense way, that there was every prospect from the early opening up of means of communication of a large addition to the population of Rupert's Land, but it was impossible to calculate the extent of the probable increase. Yet from the beginning he had a conviction of the coming greatness of the Country.

His Consecration was fixed for June 24. A few days prior to the ceremony he preached the Ramsden Sermon before the University. This is a missionary sermon (the endowment for which was provided by a Mrs. Ramsden of Bath, on the suggestion of a treasurer of the S.P.G.) given once a year in St. Mary's at Cambridge, on "Church Extension over the Colonies and Dependencies of the British Empire." In his sermon he spoke of Rupert's Land and its special needs, and besought the sympathy and prayers of his congregation for himself and his Diocese. He had already been made D.D. of Cambridge, and Aberdeen had followed suit by making him LL.D. honoris causa. When the Public Orator presented him for the degree at Cambridge, he introduced him in a long Latin speech, in which he spoke of the work Machray had done in the town and neighbourhood, as well as in the University, and expressed the confidence of all in. the success he would achieve in the almost unknown land to which he was about to depart.

The Consecration took place in the chapel of Lambeth Palace on Saturday, June 24, the day being the Festival of St. John the Baptist. At eleven o'clock in the morning a procession, which had been formed in the Palace, entered the chapel; it consisted of the consecrating prelates, who were the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Longley), the Bishops of London (Dr. Tait) and Ely (Dr. Browne), the Bishop of Aberdeen (Dr. Suther), and Bishop Anderson, and of some friends of the Bishop-designate, among whom was Clayton. After prayers Clayton preached the sermon, taking as his text, "We preach Christ crucified," I Cor. i. 23. Dr. Machray was presented to the Archbishop by the Bishops of London and Ely, and duly and canonically consecrated Bishop of Rupert's Land. He was then a little over thirty-four years of age, and was the youngest Bishop of the Church of England then alive.

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