THERE is but little of the romance of history associated with the story of the Nonconformity of the last hundred years. The Free Churches that arose in England a century ago began with all the advantages of toleration. Their members were not objects of persecution, and the chapels that formed their local habitations had no longer to be built in obscure courts that testified to the unpopularity, and possibly the irregularity, of their existence. Churches that have such an inheritance as ours lose, no doubt, much of the stimulus which those enjoy that have great traditions of heroism and fidelity through stern seasons of suffering for conscience’ sake. In the absence of such stirring pages from our history, we may well be thankful that so much remains which we may regard with especial gratitude to God, in the consistently true and honourable service rendered to the cause of Christ through four generations by the ministers and members of our Church. The story of Kensington Chapel for the hundred years of its history has been that of a succession of able and devoted ministers, supported by a Church of consecrated men and women, who have not unworthily represented the best traditions of the Nonconformity of the last century. Neither has the atmosphere of the Court suburb injuriously affected the definite and resolute Dissenting attitude of the community. The first document issued by the founders of the Church contained an explicit avowal that they were “Dissenters from the established mode of worship in this country”; and any subsequent movement of thought has only been toward a clearer apprehension of those great positive beliefs which form the permanent _raison d’être_ of a Congregational Church. Mr. Faulkner, whose history of old Kensington is full of interesting information, is a good Church and State man, and quite above suspicion as to the orthodoxy of his opinions; but he bears testimony to the Independents that we are “a sect, the most respectable, and usually considered the most enlightened among Protestant Dissenters.” Probably this was not committing himself to much in Mr. Faulkner’s opinion: and possibly some may be found who think that our special temptation has lain in the direction of our respectability; but we must accept, with all the graciousness of which we are capable, this tribute to the fact that our founders honourably sustained the traditions of our denomination. And what is equally remarkable, they succeeded in informing even an outsider like Mr. Faulkner of their primary contention—surely no small achievement!—for he writes of us: “They are amenable as a religious society only to the jurisdiction of Christ.” In other respects also he does no injustice to the Independent position.