The Church Congress was opened at Carlisle on Tuesday with
an eloquent speech from the Bishop, Dr. Harvey Goodwin, the main thesis of which was that the sterility which Cardinal Newman once described as having fallen on the Church had passed away. No longer "could the miscarry- ing womb and the dry breasts" be attributed to the fruitful mother of successful children, and of varied and fructuous effort. In every department of philanthropy the Church was taking a leading share. This renewed life of the Anglican Church, which the Bishop described in a peroration of singular loftiness, he ascribed mainly to her renewed tolerance, and perception that "if we have thought in any true sense of the word, we must have diversities of thought." "Absolute unanimity can only be realised in that perfect unity of utter- ance which distinguishes the cackling of a congress of geese." Dr. Goodwin might have added, as new proof of the vitality of the Church, that she does her manifold work in fetters, being the one great living body permitted neither an utterance nor a movement. Each limb can act or signify will, but the entire body can do neither. The English Establish- ment is the one Church in the world which cannot of itself modify its formulae, its doctrines, or its discipline.
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