About six weeks only had passed since the delivery of this discourse, when Mr. Corrie was summoned to attend the death-bed of the Bishop of Calcutta, who was called to his rest after but a few days’ illness. Considering the peculiar circumstances of India, and the then novelty of episcopal rule in that country, it could scarcely be expected that Mr. Corrie, among others, should be able to recognise the wisdom of every act of Bishop Middleton’s administration, and the equity of the control which that able prelate claimed to exercise over the temporal as well as spiritual affairs of the chaplains to the East India Company; but his correspondence abundantly shows that he could well appreciate the Bishop’s character. With regard more especially to the cause nearest his heart--that of missions, Mr. C. considered it to have derived from the deceased prelate, exactly that kind of sanction which was then required; it wanted only official countenance, and the reputation of orthodoxy. To labour for the moral improvement and conversion of our heathen fellow-subjects, used to be regarded as characterising a party in the church, and as proceeding from a kind of fanaticism that would endanger the stability of our oriental empire. But the interest which Bishop Middleton had taken in the Missionary cause, had given reason to believe, that official dignity combined with a high reputation for sound judgment and secular learning, were not incompatible with the conviction, that our rule in India had every thing to hope from the spread of Christianity; and that it was not fanatical to suppose, that so vast an empire had been committed to our governance for the noble purpose of making known the Son of God, to a people who were ignorant of Him. Within two months of the death of Bishop Middleton, the Archdeacon of Calcutta fell a victim to the Cholera; and as that circumstance rendered it necessary for the Government to delegate the administration of the affairs of the See to other hands, Mr. Corrie and Mr. Parson were commissioned to exercise such jurisdiction as by law might be warranted, until a successor to Bishop Middleton should arrive from England. In a memorandum, penned about that time, Mr. Corrie writes:-- “Sep. 28th, 1822. This day sixteen years ago I first landed in Calcutta. How altered the state of society! Then Mr. Brown was senior Chaplain. He had at time dear Martyn in his house, and received Parson and myself into his family. Now he and his wife are numbered with the dead, and all their children returned.... How many other changes, also, in the state of the religious society of Calcutta, so that Mr. U. only remains of the friends of religion in his class of society of that day. How varied has been the scene of my own Indian-life!