I met, soon after my arrival at Detroit, the Rev. Mr. R----, who had come to supply the pulpit of St. Paul's during the first Sunday of the Bishop's absence. It has always appeared to me that there was great wisdom in the views expressed some years since by our present presiding bishop--_that every diocesan should have a parochial charge_. His judgment, as delivered at the time to which I refer, was, that all our dioceses should be _small_, as they were in primitive times; that the mitre should have no worldly splendour or peculiar emoluments connected with it; that each bishop, like the rest of his clergy, should have his own parochial charge, to whom he should look for his maintenance. One reason assigned for this--and that is what I particularly refer to--was that as one of the great duties of a bishop is to preach the gospel, it is infinitely important that his heart should be burning with love for souls; and that he only who had a particular congregation, the charge of whose souls was upon his hands, would ordinarily feel a ceaseless and ever wakeful solicitude for dying sinners; and if he did not feel this he would not preach with the power and unction that become an ambassador of Christ, and the chief pastor of the church. Go to that man who, as a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ, has been spending his days and nights in prayer and toilsome labours to promote the spiritual interests of the flock committed to his care, and then visit him after he has been acting four or five years in the capacity of a professor or president of a college, and see if he does not recognize the truth of this doctrine, see if he does not sigh for that spirituality and burning love for souls, which once bore him on so cheerfully in his labours. However this matter shall be viewed, the bishops in many of our dioceses must have parochial charges, and this will constitute an important portion in the field of their labour. In this department of labour the Bishop of Michigan has been pre-eminently blessed. One could hardly desire a larger measure of popularity, either with his parish or in his diocese, than Bishop McCoskry enjoys. Every where the highest testimony is borne to the loveliness and excellency of his character, and the faithfulness and evangelical spirit of his ministry. This I heard from all quarters--from clergy and laity, Episcopalians and Presbyterians. Indeed I think the bishop's greatest danger lies in this quarter. May he still have grace as he hath hitherto done, amid all these praises of men, to count himself as nothing, and to sit as a little child at the feet of Jesus. When all our bishops become distinguished for their meekness and simplicity, for the fervour of their love, their spirit of evangelical piety, and their unquenchable zeal to exalt Christ, and rescue dying sinners from the iron grasp of the god of this world, we shall then indeed see a return of primitive days, and evidences of a truly apostolic church.