On Monday, March 25th, 1895, being the 33rd anniversary of the Archbishop's consecration, the following address was presented to His Grace after Divine Service in the Cathedral, Kingston, Ont.: --

TO THE MOST REVEREND JOHN TRAVERS LEWIS, D.D., D.C.L., LORD ARCHBISHOP OF ONTARIO AND METROPOLITAN OF CANADA:

May it please Your Grace:

To-day as you commemorate the thirty-third anniversary of your consecration as Bishop of Ontario, your Clergy desire to congratulate you most heartily upon having been spared to discharge, for so exceptionally long a period, the duties of your sacred office. Of those who were Bishops of the Anglican Communion within the limits of the British Empire at the time of your consecration, only one is now engaged in active work.

Your Grace has seen the number of your clergy grow from 55 to 135; of parishes, from 48 to 11I3; of congregations, from 91 to 281. Over 35,000 persons have received at your hands the Apostolic Rite of Confirmation. Besides the spiritual growth which these figures indicate, the material progress of the Church in this Diocese under Your Grace's administration has been equally marked, the number of Churches having increased from 70 to 230, and of parsonage houses from 19 to 84; while the contributions to Diocesan Funds have steadily advanced from year to year throughout this whole period.

But more gratifying than even this progress has been the happy disappearance of party feeling in your Diocese and the growing unity of spirit amongst clergy and laity as exemplified in Synodical and Parochial work. For many years past, all, have worked harmoniously together, sacrificing no principle but recognizing the duty and the benefit of united action.

It is a matter for deep regret that efforts have recently been made to destroy this unity; and we desire to express as strongly as possible our disapproval and condemnation of the means employed to accomplish this end, namely, the misrepresentation of your action in declining to be dictated to as to the terms upon which you would accept candidates for holy orders; your offence being that you yourself prescribe the conditions of acceptance instead of allowing the applicant to do so. Your Grace's practice is merely what every Bishop does, and must do if a Bishop is to have any responsibility whatever regarding candidates for ordination. They must be accepted upon some conditions, and these conditions surely are to be decided by the Bishop and not by the candidate or his friends.

So far as our relations with Your Grace are concerned, there is no need to assure you of our entire confidence in your justice, impartiality, and liberality of mind; but knowing how industriously misrepresentations of your action are being circulated throughout the Diocese, we feel that we, who know you best, ought to declare ourselves.

With every good wish and prayer for your well-being, and that of the Church under your care,

We remain, your faithful Clergy.

[Signed by 110 clergy of the diocese.]

THE ARCHBISHOP'S REPLY.

Reverend and Dear Brethren:

It is with gratitude to Almighty God that I desire to acknowledge His great mercies to me on this day when I enter on the thirty-fourth year of my Episcopate, and also to express my thanks to you individually -- my heart-felt appreciation of the kindness that has prompted your congratulatory address.

I join with you in thankfulness for the progress the Diocese has made in things spiritual and temporal, as indicated by the statistics you bring forward, and I pray that such progress may be maintained in the future, as it will assuredly be if the unity and co-operation which have hitherto made the Diocese conspicuous be not interrupted by the reckless agitation lately sprung up in Ottawa. It is a misfortune that you should feel constrained to take notice of it, but I do not see how it could have been avoided when your Bishop was so falsely and I fear maliciously slandered.

For the last two months, owing to illness and partial loss of sight, I have been unable to read or write, and therefore I was for a time ignorant of the real character of the meeting held in St. George's school house, Ottawa. At first I thought that it might have resembled that of Demetrius at Ephesus, of which St. Luke gives us this description: "Some, therefore, cried one thing and some another: for the assembly was confused; and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together." But I know now that the Ottawa meeting was worse than that of Ephesus. It was a wicked attempt to impose on the dupes there assembled. The prominent charge against me was that I had said that "I never would ordain a Wycliffe student." This was a base fabrication. I never said a word or wrote a line to that effect. I am not given to making sweeping assertions or declarations of policy which I know may have to be modified or changed under changed circumstances of the future. If the rioters at the meeting had charged me with the following misdemeanor they would have been strictly accurate, viz., that I withstood the insolent demand of a priest in Ottawa that I should admit to examination for Holy Orders three years hence a candidate of his selection on his conditions and not on mine. His followers, no doubt, are ignorant that it is the prerogative of all Bishops to ordain on their own conditions, not on those of irresponsible friends of candidates for Holy Orders, -- a prerogative I am not likely to resign at the bidding of a meeting which has shocked every right-minded Christian.

It may be well to make plain to you my attitude towards Wycliffe College. Up to the present time I have never made any public statement on the subject, nor exhibited the least hostility to the college, though I never viewed its establishment with favour. Ever since I could reason on such subjects I disliked the multiplication of small Theological Seminaries. I believe that they beget narrowness which ends in bigotry. This is inevitable when young men of a certain theological stripe are hived together to be moulded to order by professors as narrow as themselves. The policy of the first Bishops of Canada, like Bishops Mountain and Strachan, was to concentrate the strength of the Church on the establishment of one or two great Universities where Theological students should be educated in the same buildings with students in Arts, as in the great Universities in England and Ireland. This course of action, if adopted, would ensure less bigotry, abler professors, larger libraries, and more spacious buildings. Wycliffe College, being an additional Theological Seminary, and in my opinion quite unnecessary, was therefore regarded by me with disfavour, especially by reason of the object sought to be attained by its erection, which was avowedly the overthrow of Trinity University, and that by the use of means which I shall not mention as I wish to avoid controversy.

I have been identified with Trinity College from the day of its foundation. I know its full history. I have fought its battles, and by virtue of seniority of consecration am now the Chairman of its Corporation. Is it not then too much to ask of even archiepiscopal good nature that I should view with equal esteem and favour a College intended to spring into popularity out of the ruins of Trinity College?

But this is not the only ground for my dislike to Wycliffe College. I seriously object to some of the text-books used there, notably and as a specimen Hatch's Bampton Lectures, a book characterized by my dear friend the late Bishop of Lincoln in my hearing as a gross perversion of the object sought to be attained by the founder of those lectures, the Rev. John Bampton. I also object to it as an authorized "book of reference" for candidates for Holy Orders.

But further, I disagree with a great deal of the theological teaching given in Wycliffe College. I give as an illustration the following passage taken from the Calendar of the College. Among the "Distinctive Principles" of this College is "An Historical Episcopate traceable to Apostolic direction, as conducive to the well-being but not necessary to the being of the Church." This I believe to be a fiction without a particle of support from the New Testament, primitive antiquity, or the Book of Common Prayer. It is a device manufactured by well-meaning but puzzle-headed people in order to escape from the dilemma of unchurching sects. But the device is insulting. It seems to say to those that are not members of the Church: "You have an existence, it is true, but not a good one. You are in what is called the esse of a Church, but not the bene esse," -- just as if the Apostles had transmitted to us a choice of Churches of various grades of orthodoxy -- as if the Catholic Church was like a railway train made up of first and second-class carriages -- and as if any sensible Christian would not prefer to be a member of a body that had a good constitution, to remaining a member of one that had merely a claim to existence! Now I do not believe a word of this figment, and I prefer that those ordained by me should disbelieve it also.

It is very painful to me to be forced to enter upon this subject at all. My intention has always been to let Wycliffe College alone to work out its own future. I have felt and still feel that it may be destined to do good. Candidates for Holy Orders trained there, or some of them, will no doubt revise opinions gained there when they have had more experience and a wider range of reading, instances of which are not wanting. For this and other reasons it was my desire to say nothing to its disparagement; but the provocation has been too great to permit me to be silent. The insults offered to myself would not have elicited a remark from

me, but I must notice those offered to our brethren in Ottawa. When men of high standing and long service in the Church, like Archdeacon Lauder and Rural Deans Bogert and Pollard, are hissed down because they manfully endeavoured to say a word in defence of their absent Bishop, a righteous anger must be felt. I tender to them my sympathy and promise them my firm support. They may have to withstand further opposition from the organization that has been framed to perpetuate discord; but they may rest assured that the good sense of the Church of England will never allow a club of self-constituted theologians, either in Ottawa or elsewhere, to regulate the affairs of the Church by usurping the functions of our General and Provincial Synods, and substituting for the canons and immemorial usages of the Church the resolutions of intimidation meetings where freedom of speech is not permitted and Evangelical religion is caricatured.

Meanwhile let us continue in the old paths and work on in faith; and, as that really Evangelical prelate, the Bishop of Winchester, said when threatened with an action at law by a candidate whom he rejected for his ignorance, "I sleep in peace."

Believe me, ever yours affectionately in the bonds of the Church,

J. T. Ontario.

(Source: CIHM 52925.)