1 JANUARY 1870, Page 9

At last, Liberal Churchmen, and all Churchmen, if they could

but see it, have got a Bishop to be proud of,—a man who is as much better a Christian than ordinary English Christians as he is a much abler man than ordinary English men. Dr. Temple was met on Thursday morning by an address from the rural dean of Christianity and the clergy of the deanery (several of whom had opposed his election to the bishopric) with an address of respectful congratulation, and Dr. Temple's reply was almost unique in its magnanimity and hearty goodwill. "I have always felt from the beginning," he said, "that those who differed from me and who thought it their duty to express that difference, doing all that in them lay to oppose both my election and my consecration, were actuated by nothing but a sense of duty and a desire to fulfil God's will, as far as their conscience showed it to them. I felt quite sure that all your opposition to me was really honest, really kind, and from a desire to serve our Lord. And as I feel in myself that I have no other wish on earth than to serve that Lord to the beat of my ability, so I have always felt certain that there was a tie between us very much stronger than anything which could keep us apart. I felt that your conscientiousness must be more to me than any differ- ence of opinion could possibly be." This frank, generous, and masculine language has already gone far to reconcile many of the disaffected clergy ; and if Dr. Temple's life be prolonged, we shall be much mistaken if all England does not soon feel what it is to get a man with a thoroughly masculine faith and no petty suscepti- bilities upon the Bench,—a man who never thinks at all of his own position, but only of what Christ commands him to make of it.