Appeal to the Clergy.

May we venture to plead with the Clergy of all three divisions. To the first we say, "If you are honestly convinced that Truth is to be found in the Roman rather than in the Anglican Communion, why not go there at once and ease your souls? Surely you are not seeking to follow the wicked example set in England by men who remain in our Communion in order to do Rome's work of proselytism more effectually?"

Of the second section, Clergy who adopt ritualistic practices, but do not attach much, if any, doctrinal significance to them, deeming them merely "fanciful and innocent," we ask: "Are you acting loyally to the Church or by the people, whose salvation it is your function to 'help and not to hinder,' when, because of your own stubborn will and inflated conception of office, you indulge in practices, preach doubtful doctrine, or assume a lordship which page 14 results in driving from their Church men with their families, who were born in our Church, sealed with its seal, and nourished by its truths, long before you were ever admitted to the exercise of the Ministry. God calls to account the steward of His Vineyard as well as the humblest labourer therein. For your own sake, for your people's spiritual welfare, and for the triumph of God's Kingdom on earth, consider these things.

To the Clergy of the third class, the younger men, we would say in the words of the exhortation delivered to them at their Ordination, "Ye ought to apply yourselves, as well as that ye may shew yourselves dutiful and thankful unto that Lord, Who has placed you in so high a Dignity, as also to beware, that neither you yourselves offend, nor be occasion that others offend."

To the Clergy, as a whole, we say : "We give God thanks that it is but a fraction of your Order, who in this Diocese afflict the people in the direction we have dwelt upon. The great body of you we believe to be out of sympathy with the ritualistic movement in its grosser form. God keep you so, and save you from the influence of bad example! The establishment of this League will, we trust, assist you in your honest course. It will have a steadying effect on the Diocese, and, perhaps, beyond it. And we believe that, given wise counsels in the conduct of the League, the Church of New Zealand will, in future years, have reason to be thankful for its existence.

O, the pity of it, to see honest old-fashioned English Churchmen driven with their families from their Parish Church to seek the ministrations of the Pastors of other Christian bodies, or to join themselves to sects which, in the desperate effort to escape from the arrogance of a priesthood, are serving God under the guidance of lay Preachers only, or, worse still, "to forsake the gathering together," as the manner of most now is, and to drift away with the multitude of the careless and indifferent! The Reformation freed England from the superstition of the dark ages; there is grave danger that the restoration of that same superstition will plunge the Empire into a darker age of paganism, from which not even denominational schools will save it. For let the Clergy mark this—it was one thing for a sacerdotal caste, the sole repository of the Nation's learning, to impose on a benighted country a system as full of priestly claims as of religious error; it will be found a very different undertaking to set again the yoke of Ecclesiasticism on the neck of a Laity in whom has been fulfilled the saying "The truth shall make you free."