The Bishop of Capetown writes to the Guardian to announce
that a second and competing Bishop has been selected to contest with Dr. Colenso the charge of " the Church in Natal." That section of the Church which professed a wish for a schism and a new bishop, instructed the "Metropolitan,"—i. e., Dr. Gray, and the Bishop of Grahamstown, in concurrence with the Archbishop of Canterbury, to choose a fit and proper person for the new bishopric, in case Mr. Butler (the clergyman elected) were hindered from accepting the nomination ; and they bound themselves to accept any person so chosen for their new bishop. The person fixed upon for this competitive bishopric is "the Rev. W. K. Macrorie, M.A., of Brasenose College, Oxford, formerly a Master of Radley College, afterwards Incumbent of Wapping, and since presented to the living of St. James's, Accrington, by the Hulme trustees." Dr. Gray has guaranteed the new Bishop 6001. a year as long as it may be needed, " which may very possibly be for ten or fifteen years," and as the subscription is at present only 7001. a year for five years, and is liable to decrease by the death of subscribers, he is naturally a little anxious about his pecuniary obligations. Dr. Gray is desirous, therefore, to have an annuity purchased for the remainder of Dr. Colenso's life, calculating apparently—what we imagine to be very doubtful—that when the present Bishop of Natal dies or retires, the competitive and schismatic Bishop will be accepted by the whole Church in Natal. It is quite a modern idea, this of an orthodox prelate's, to buy an annuity on a heretic's life. The Athanasians would not have given a halfpenny for an annuity on the life of Arius after he came out as an heresiarch. Dr. Gray evidently thinks Dr. Colenso's life as as " good" in the actuary's (not the moralist's) sense as before. Would he, not as a matter of taste, but as a mere matter of value, we wonder, prefer a deferred annuity on his period of future torment?
