If experience gathered in the past is any pledge for the future; if work well done during years of patient toil is any assurance that work shall be well done in years which may yet remain; if thoughtful, careful preaching of the word of life, and the successful administration of the largest metropolitan parishes is any warrant for expecting the continuation of such ministry in a wider field of labour; then will no common hopes gather round this now Episcopate. Nor has there been wanting that highest of all training, the training of personal affliction. If we are taught to-day in the martyrdom of St. James, that the law of self-surrender is the law of ministerial success; if the voiceless tomb of the one Apostle and the silent dungeon of the other were the forerunners of the Church’s most rapid growth, when ‘the word of God grew and multiplied’ (Acts, xii. 24); the ministry of one, who has been taught in the same school, will issue, we may humbly hope, in a like result. Our Church claims to have inherited Apostolic doctrine, an Apostolic framework, and a history which dates from the Apostolic age. The ninety-eighth occupant of the See of Rochester can boast of a long and distinguished spiritual ancestry. Founded in 604, some ten years after the landing of Augustine, the See is, with the single exception of that of Canterbury, the most ancient in the kingdom; and has numbered amongst its Bishops such eminent men as Paulinus the apostle of Northumberland; Gundulph, the greatest of Norman architects; Cardinal Fisher, beheaded by Henry VIII.: Ridley, the martyr; Turner, the non-juror; Atterbury, the high-churchman; and Samuel Horsley, the mathematician, the orator, and the divine. The See of Rochester carries with it therefore, the prestige of a venerable antiquity; but its interest to-day lies not so much in the records of the past, as in the living wants of the present. Across the river which divides our city, lies a vast and dense population, soon to form part of this ancient diocese. Faithful men have been labouring there for years. The new Bishop goes forth amongst them, to guide, to stimulate, to encourage, and to strengthen. He will remember, as having enjoyed the liberty himself, that in the words of one whose name is warmly cherished in this place, ‘the independent and _quasi_ episcopal position of the rector is one of the most blessed safeguards of the Church of England’ (_Kingsley’s Life_, ii. 80): but he will also remember that a wise and tolerant rule is quite consistent with personal and official fidelity. He will remember too, aye, he will never be ashamed of confessing those great evangelical doctrines which have ever been the joy and strength of his ministry. It is the fashion with some to sneer at those doctrines, as belonging to a byegone age, as the fossil remains of an era, when light was scanty and intelligence rare. Brethren, there were giants in those days. Are we quite sure that there are any giants now?