OUR AGED BISHOPS.
[To THE EDITOR 07 THE " SPECTATOR:9 Sfu,—In the Spectator of May 7th, you have a note on aged Bishops, with special reference to Bishops of Chichester, Norwich, and Bath and Wells; and you suggest resignation of Bishops generally at the age of seventy-five. There are old men and old men. Now, if your counsel were followed, the Church would, I maintain, be an undoubted loser. For, to -take but two of the above prelates (I know less about the -third), the year before last I happened to be present at the Chichester Diocesan Conference, and nothing there surprised me (a stranger) so much as to see the venerable Bishop Durn- ford, who was nearly ninety, not only in the chair, but, as -chairman, as vigorous (and apparently not deaf) as one could wish to see any younger Bishop on the Bench. Then as to my own much respected Diocesan, Bishop Pelham, he presided over us at the Diocesan Conference held at Norwich in Easter week -of this year; and having myself attended all the thirteen annual Conferences that have been held there, the Bishop seemed to me rather more than less efficient as chairman. And if report says true, he is about to visit all the rural deaneries of his large diocese during this year. Whether his rumoured resignation has any foundation in truth, I cannot vouch.
Surely, Sir, it may be that Bishops even much younger may prove inefficient from weak health, while men as old and venerable as the above—all three, for what I know—if stopped at, say, seventy-five, would prove a loss of so much vigour and usefulness. I am writing, you see, quite disinterestedly of
[Doubtless there are some aged Bishops who would be much
missed if all of them retired at seventy-five. But the question is, whether the Church as a whole would not benefit by that arrangement.—ED. Spectator.].
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