In another sense, also, the time was opportune for an advance of the Episcopal Church. In the person of Bishop Hobart it had now a bold, energetic, and able representative of principles hitherto not much in favor in America--the thoroughgoing High-church principles of Archbishop Laud. Before this time the Episcopal Church had had very little to contribute by way of enriching the diversity of the American sects. It was simply the feeblest of the communions bearing the common family traits of the Great Awakening, with the not unimportant _differentia_ of its settled ritual of worship and its traditions of order and decorum. But when Bishop Hobart put the trumpet to his lips and prepared himself to sound, the public heard a very different note, and no uncertain one. The church (meaning his own fragment of the church) the one channel of saving grace; the vehicles of that grace, the sacraments, valid only when ministered by a priesthood with the right pedigree of ordination; submission to the constituted authorities of the church absolutely unlimited, except by clear divine requirements; abstinence from prayer-meetings; firm opposition to revivals of religion; refusal of all cooeperation with Christians outside of his own sect in endeavors for the general advancement of religion--such were some of the principles and duties inculcated by this bishop of the new era as of binding force.[306:1] The courage of this attitude was splendid and captivating. It requires, even at the present time, not a little force of conviction to sustain one in publicly enunciating such views; but at the time of the accession of Hobart, when the Episcopal Church was just beginning to lift up its head out of the dust of despair, it needed the heroism of a martyr. It was not only the vast multitude of American Christians outside of the Episcopal Church, comprising almost all the learning, the evangelistic zeal, and the charitable activity and self-denial of the American church of that time, that heard these unwonted pretensions with indignation or with ridicule; in the Episcopal Church itself they were disclaimed, scouted, and denounced with (if possible) greater indignation still. But the new party had elements of growth for which its adversaries did not sufficiently reckon. The experience of other orders in the church confirms this principle: that steady persistence and iteration in assuring any body of believers that they are in some special sense the favorites of Heaven, and in assuring any body of clergy that they are endued from on high with some special and exceptional powers, will by and by make an impression on the mind. The flattering assurance may be coyly waived aside; it may even be indignantly repelled; but in the long run there will be a growing number of the brethren who become convinced that there is something in it. It was in harmony with human nature that the party of high pretensions to distinguished privileges for the church and prerogatives for the