The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-08-08 00:00:00

THE MISSIONARY LABOURS OF ENGLA

AND ROME.

(From the Colonial Church Chronicle.)

The difference seems to be very remarkable between
the missions of Rome, and those of England. The Roman
missions have had a grand commencement and a splendid
promise, and then a grievous and shameful decline. Our
missions have advanced from the poorest beginnings, with
long years of anxious struggle and patient waiting ; and
then, at length, the development of unexpected blessings,
and the appearance of sure and settled results. We may
adduce the rapid and healthful expansion of the Church of
England, in its true apostolic form, throughout the United
states, the West Indies, and British North America, after
more than a century of cold neglect and heart-sickening
disappointments, that attended its establishment in all the
earlier settlements. Or if we regard its extension among
the heathen, we have never known a church, bearing the
appearance of a more sure foundation in the native soil,
than that in New Zealand, though for twenty years and
more it was "as a root in dry ground." And so likewise,
after a century of most languid effort and continual failure
in Hindostan, we have now seen springing up, from seed
sparingly sown many years ago on the borders of Tinne-
velly, the most promising plant ever witnessed in the East ;
a large and compact community of christians, weaned al-
together from their heathen customs, and exhibiting the
quiet and enduring feature of the parochial system of
England.
A further reflection has occurred to us while carrying
on this inquiry, which, if the facts bear it out, is one of
eventful interest. It would appear, that into some of those
fields of labour where Rome bad entered with such mag-
nificent promise, but where, in the lapse of ages, her
power has sunk, or been altogether driven back, the Church
of England, feebly indeed, and imperfectly, yet, we trust,
on sound and apostolic principles, has been introduced
and is making its way. It would seem as if Rome had
been tried and found wanting ; and that the providence of
God had opened the way for another and a purer church.
Just as the Spanish and Portuguese empires, under the
shadow of which the Roman missions went forth, have
been broken, and another empire, diverse in kind, yet
surpassing in power, has established itself on their ruins,
and England's maritime supremacy has superseded the
brilliant fabric which had been reared by the chivalrous
warriors that once issued from the Peninsula ; so it may
be destined, that, together with the English empire, the
Church of England should establish a more enduring as
well as a more faithful rule amid the ruins of those more
imposing structures which the faith of Rome had raised.
Thus, for instance, the apostolic system of England is by
degrees developing and extending itself, by a legitimate
authority, throughout Hindostan, where the Portuguese
empire and church had together formed some of their
noblest conquests. Thus again, suddenly and most un-
expectedly, a way has been opened for us into China ;
and two branches of the English Episcopacy, one about
immediately to be planted from England itself, and one
from America, planted on its borders, at the very time
when the Roman missions in that land are supposed to
be in deep depression.
Thus again, in a still more surprising manner, Borneo
has received a mission, which will, we trust, become the
centre of a vast movement to spread over the islands, and
the neighbouring continents, which were in other days the
scene of the triumphs of the Jesuits. Then again, the
Roman mission at Sierra Leone has been superseded by
that of England. And again to the west, as the French
colonial empire sank before the progress of Great Britain,
so the older Canadian Church of the French habitans has
been surrounded and overspread by the English. May
we only prove faithful to so momentous a trust ; and may
God give us grace to use the wealth and the might of this
vast empire to the extension of the Gospel, the Church of
our Lord l lest we too, being found wanting, should perish
with the greater condemnation, as we have been invested
with the greater power, and blessed with the purer truth.
There is one more striking characteristic of the present
condition of the Roman missions, on which we would add
a few words. While Rome has thus been driven from her
ancient fields of enterprise, or else has suffered her esta-
blishments to decline, she has been concentrating her
force upon those countries where she had in some
places the claim of previous possession, and in others that
of national supremacy, which, according to Catholic rule,
should form the guide to the establishment of the church.
The most powerful modern missions of Rome are to be
found either within the British Isles, or else in the more
open and defenceless field of the British dependencies.
As in our previous observations we were led to mark the
manifest tokens of the corruptions of Rome, exhibited in
the lamentable decay of many of her most noted missions,
so here we have to point out that unmitigated and unscru-
pulous hostility with which Rome has ever pursued all
christian communions separate from herself, and especially
her most powerful rival, and the one whose witness against
her is the most formidable, the Church of England. It
appears that the whole strength of the Propaganda, unlike
the rule of St. Paul, who would not " stretch" himself
" beyond his measure," or " boast in another man's line,"
is directed against the foundations which the Church of
England is endeavouring to lay within the bounds of our
own empire. North America and Australia have of late
years been the scenes of Rome's chief labours in foreign
lands. The following brief contrast will show the formi-
dable nature of her aggressions, and at the same time
condemn us for our own most inadequate and meagre
outlay in the cause of the Gospel and Church of Christ,
even within our own dominions.
In Upper and Lower Canada, the Church of England
has two bishops, about 200 missionary clergy, and numer-
ous catechists. Rome has in Lower Canada, one arch-
bishop, two bishops, two bishop-coadjutors, one hundred
and seventy-five churches, twenty convents, and ten
colleges. In Upper Canada, one bishop, one bishop-
coadjutor, and seventy churches. And at the Red River
settlement, two bishops. In Hindostan, we number three
bishops, and one hundred and three missionary clergy ;
while the Church of Rome maintains twenty bishops, one
hundred and sixty-eight European priests, four hundred
and seventy-two native priests, seventeen missionaries,
four colleges, ten convents and nunneries, and eight schools
for orphans. It is the same everywhere. A Romish
bishop reached New Zealand before Bishop Selwyn.
Bishop Broughton was painfully laying the foundations of
the Church in Australia, alone, and struggling with the
smallest possible means, when a Romish archbishop, and
a train of attendant bishops and priests, came and asserted
more than co-ordinate authority. When the Bishop of
Adelaide visits King George's Sound, a distant portion of
his diocese, containing no more than 200 persons, he will
find there a Romish bishop, a convent, and a college.
While Bishop Grey is opening his mission at Cape Town,
his diocese has been divided into two Romish vicariates ;
and before he reached his see, a Romish bishop had been
actually consecrated on the spot.