they have only enjoyed three or four times the ministrations of the Rev. Mr. Nash, who, amidst the multiplicity of his labors, sought and cherished this destitute congregation. And yet, notwithstanding these disadvantages, they have kept themselves together; they have regularly met for reading the service and sermons; and I found among them a knowledge of the principles of our Church, and a fervent attachment to its doctrines and worship, which astonished and gratified me. Confirmation was administered to about thirty persons, and the holy communion to as many. Could you have witnessed, brethren, the expressions of their gratitude, and their earnest solicitations, accompanied even with tears, for only the occasional services of a minister, your treasure and your prayers would have been poured forth to gratify them. I had not the treasure, but most assuredly I gave them my prayers, and I promised them my best exertions. I cannot leave their case, without applying it to establish the importance and inestimable value of our liturgy. But for that liturgy, and the constant and faithful use of it, the Episcopal congregation at the Ochquaga hills, and doubtless in many other places almost equally destitute, would long since have become extinct."

No wonder with such daily and heart-touching calls that diocesan missionaries was what he pleaded for, and that until his own children at home were fed, who were crying to him for bread, he was not forward to cast abroad that on which they depended.

One, however, of his previous labors he found himself compelled to cut off, the editorial charge of the Churchman's Magazine.' On his accession to the episcopate he had transferred it to the charge of his friend, the Rev. Dr. Rudd, of Elizabethtown, N. J.; but that such transfer was far from diminishing his watchful care over the interests to which it related, may be judged from the following letter in answer to a scheme of a more lax and popular kind in a neighboring diocese. The letter is given at large as exemplifying both his character and

his views.

'My dear Sir,

Your proposals in your first letter placed me under no small embarrassment. On the one hand I could not be insensible to the singular advantage which any publication would enjoy from talents, erudition, and taste so distinguished as yours; but on the other hand, it appeared to me (and your proposals evince the truth of my conjecture) that you contemplated a miscellany very different in design from the Churchman's Magazine. It is the object of your publication to support and enforce the points of coincidence among Christians, "discarding those on which there must be a difference of opinion.” Whether such a plan, however feasible in theory, is capable of being reduced to practice, or whether, if vigorously carried into execution, it would not exclude from the work many important doctrines of Christianity, are inquiries which appear to me worthy of consideration.

In my humble judgment, a publication which does not support and defend these points, gives up the distinctive principles of our Church, which the brightest luminaries defended while living, and consecrated in their deaths; and ceases to contend for Christianity in her primitive, purest, and fairest form. Some of these principles, indeed, may be unpopular, and though in reality they only can permanently secure "the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace," the advocates of them may be supposed to be influenced by a sectarian spirit; but this imputation ought not to have any more effect in deadening his zeal, than the opprobrium of being a sect every where spoken "against," had on the first defenders of the Christian Church.

Satisfied, too, I am, that the display of these principles, and the zealous defence of them have most essentially contributed to revive and increase our Church. In a late visitation through the Diocese, in company with Dr. Bowden, I found some of the most enlightened and zealous members of our Church, and persons of influence and standing in society, who traced either their conversion to the Church, or the confirmation of their attachment to it, to the display and defence of its principles in the various writings which from time to time have appeared; and most certainly to the same cause may be traced the zeal and spirit of the young men in this quarter, who have lately entered the ministry, and of others who are preparing for it.

These views, in connection with other circumstances, naturally excited the desire that the Churchman's Magazine should continue to support the principles which it has hitherto maintained, and that it should be conducted on a plan, which, without aspiring to high

Y

literary merit, would give the plain people of our communion what they much want, plain and solid religious information; and that of course it should be afforded at a price which would render it accessible to persons of this description. Your publication appears to aim principally at gratifying readers of a higher order, and the price will necessarily prevent its general circulation.

My cares and duties always prevented that attention to the work which was necessary to raise it even to the humble standing which I was desirous it should attain; and the change of my situation, and consequent increase of my cares and duties, entirely interfered with my charge of the work, I have at length concluded to fall in with a suggestion of the Rev. Mr. Rudd, and to transfer the publication of it to Elizabethtown.

I know you will not be displeased with the candor with which I address you. I cannot repress, however unpleasant, the apprehension, that your views of the best mode of advancing the interests of our Church, differ in some respects from those which, in common with others, I have been accustomed to entertain. Yet that very liberality which I sometimes fear will lead its votaries into an indifference to those distinctive principles which to the glory of our Church, have preserved her from the assaults of heresy, schism, and enthusiasm, will prompt you to excuse in me this honest difference of opinion, to believe me sincere in the sentiment that the prudent, the resolute, and dispassionate defence of those doctrines, of that ministry, and of that worship, which distinguish our Church from other Christian societies, is not incompatible with the promotion of the endearing charities of life, with strengthening the bonds of society, but is, in fact, the surest way of extending the kingdom of the Redeemer. Accuse me not, my dear Sir, of assuming

the office of a senior, in regard to one for whom, on many accounts, I feel veneration and esteem; but it did not appear to me possible, without this candid exposition, to account to you for my wishing to continue the Churchman's Magazine, under its present title, and on its original principles; and independently of this consideration, I felt prompted to indulge the liberty, which I trust you will excuse, of expressing to you my fears (I wish they may prove erroneous) that little good is to be expected to our Church from a publication, which, though it may not "abandon an iota" of her discriminating tenets, discipline, and worship, certainly asserts its claim to patronage, on its determination to keep them entirely out of view, as those "subordinate subjects on which there must be a difference among Christians," as the only means of discarding that sectarian spirit so long at variance with the spirit of amity and the bond of peace.

You see, my dear Sir, I have occupied the whole of my paper, and I have trespassed long on your patience; I conclude with assuring you that

I am, very truly, &c.

JOHN H. HOBART.'

The argument of this letter seems to have been for a time conclusive, but the Churchman's Magazine soon after this, coming to a violent end, through the destruction by fire of the printing-office and its contents, the scheme was renewed in a more open field of patronage, but, as the Bishop augured of it, was found wanting in a substantial basis, and soon fell to the ground.