The Church in this Diocese needed, then, the very man whom God in his gracious goodness sent to it. The Episcopate had been vacant six years from the death of the second Bishop. Not all the evils, indeed, that must accompany so long a vacancy were felt; for the provisional charge exercised by Bishop Hobart, whose services and sacrifices were gratefully acknowledged then, and are gratefully remembered now, had guarded the Diocese from as many evils as any such charge could. Still, the necessity was obvious and pressing, and no one saw it more plainly than the clear-sighted Bishop of New York. With what faithfulness, patience, long suffering, meekness, wisdom and prudence, that long Episcopate was gone through, that life work done, I need hardly tell you. How the varied culture, the manifold training, the diversified acquirements, which so quietly, and because so quietly, therefore so successfully, did their work, were crowned and irradiated with heavenly grace, with a living faith in the Crucified, and with an utter abnegation of other strength or merit than that of Jesus Christ, you know, indeed, we all know, and we rejoice in knowing. That well balanced and well rounded Christian character, all whose parts were so harmoniously blended, and which, as it was mellowed by advancing years, and gathered round itself the clustering honors of old age, even as the sun gathers around his setting bright clouds and glorious colorings, became such a centre of reverence and love, you have seen living among you, and you need no words of mine to recall it to you here. We have been privileged, all of us, to look for years on years--may we estimate the privilege at its great worth--on the "path of the just," and we have seen it "shining more and more unto the perfect day." How truly may we say as we recall that long Episcopate with its manifold labors, its personal graces and its great results, "If you seek his monument look around you." See it in our College, placed after years of struggle on a firm foundation; in the work of Church-extension, so vigorous now, so weak and stinted five-and-forty years ago; in the little band of clergy multiplied five-fold; in the seven parishes that maintained a pastor increased to a hundred; in the peace that marked that pure and wise administration, and the sorrow that bore witness to it when it ended. It may all be summed in the passage of the Psalmist--I can never read it without the involuntary application--"So he fed them with a faithful and true heart, and ruled them prudently with all his power." The knowledge of all this, and the feeling of all this, was universal through our whole communion. Every where he was known as the good man and the wise ruler; and his exercise of the responsible office of the Presiding Bishop was welcomed with joy and rested in with confidence; and with the feeling that in his hands, under God, the Church was safe.