An influential meeting was held last Tuesday, at the Mansion
House, in support of the fund for the endowment of the new See of Wakefield, which is to be carved out of the diocese of Ripon. The Bishop of Ripon pleaded earnestly and eloquently for the scheme, and stated, what was evidently new- to his audience, namely, that the diocese of Ripon, taking its population and area together, is the largest diocese in England. The most telling speech, however, was that of the Bishop of London, who enforced his argument by his own experience in the diocese of Exeter. He declared that a vast infusion of religious life and activity had resulted from the division of his late diocese both in the part which was cut off and in that which remained; and he emphatically asserted that no amount of increase in the number of Clergy or in their stipends would have produced a similar result. From this he inferred that the only true way of working any institution is to work up to its own ideal, and through its own essential organs ; and inas- much as the Church of England is Episcopal, her life can- not be properly developed except through her own constitution, of which the Episcopal office is a necessary part. We regret that this striking portion of the Bishop's speech has not been fully reported.
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