The Church Congress was opened at Derby on Tuesday, with
a sermon from the Archbishop of York. The attendance has been largo, exceeding 2,000, and the proceedings of the most varied character, while the mark of the year has been a certain tolerance of differences of opinion. The Bishop of Lichfield, who gave the opening address, specially alluded to this as one of the good results obtainable from such meetings, and pointed to the variations in the dominant tone of the Apostolic Epistles as proofs that even Apostles differed among themselves. "It would not be impossible for a scoffing spirit to affix our modern party names to some of these writers themselves." The most hopeful means of healing differences was to bring men together to take counsel in brotherly love—a sug- gestion which the record of Parliaments does not quite justify. The meetings have been affected by the key-note thus struck, and the absence of bitterness in the discussions has been noteworthy. There has even been a feeling manifested that in presence of the new Paganism, the Church will be the better for allies, even if they be Dissenters or members of the Salvation Army, whose proceedings, it has been clear throughout the sittings, have made an almost inexplicably deep impression upon the Clergy. Whatever the subject, hardly a speaker ended his discourse without some allusion to the new sect, almost invariably betraying a certain wistfulness, as if he wished that the Church were, in success with the masses, as well as in claim, what the Bishop of Liohfield called it, " the true Salvation Army."
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