The Late Bishop of Auckland.

In common with the rest of the members of our Church in this diocese, the Council exceedingly regretted that the health of Bishop Neligan should have broken down in the manner it did, and we joined most fervently in. the hope so generally expressed throughout the provincial Church that his return to England and prospective engagement in work of a much less trying character than can ever be looked for in the domain of a colonial diocesan, would effectually restore him to full health and strength.

But it would be rank untruthfulness to say that the League does not deem a change in the occupancy of the See of Auckland an advantage. Bishop Neligan, with all his large powers in matters of organisation, and in other directions, had his drawbacks. He failed, from the first, to understand the spiritual feelings and aspirations of the people of our communion in the Auckland diocese, even as he failed to gauge the loss which our Church, and he himself as its local head, sustained because of his alienation of the sympathy and co-operation of our Nonconformist friends in the work of Christ. These two blemishes by themselves would wreck all hope of a successful episcopacy to even a much more powerful and ecclesiastical mind than that possessed by our late Bishop. The Diocese of Auckland is essentially Protestant, and, notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary, will remain such when the teaching and methods of a few Romanising "Priests" who have come amongst us have disappeared, remembered only as a transient incident in our history, sometimes brought to mind by the discovery on a bookstall or elsewhere of a "Priest's Prayer Book," 'The Catholic Religion," or that more attenuated, but no less hurtful, production, a "Mirfield Tract."

But, notwithstanding any faults or failings our late Bishop may, in the estimation of many members of our Church, have possessed, all of us unite in the prayer that God may abundantly bless him in his new sphere of work, for which, we doubt not, he will be considerably assisted by the six years' experience he has obtained of the religious needs of a people in a diocese possessing, in some degree, education, knowledge, and spiritual grace.