If, however, there is a past for which the deepest thankfulness is due, there is also a present which we may not forget, for in it our thankfulness, if it is real, must culminate. What a change has a century wrought for us! How unlike is 1884 to 1784! I do not much believe, my brethren, in numbering the people. I am sure that any boastful or vain-glorious numbering is but an evil thing. But surely when "a little one" has "become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation," we may gratefully recognize the merciful guidance and blessing of the Lord, Who has "hastened it in his time." In 1784, we see one single bishop of our communion, and one only, outside the realm of Great Britain and Ireland; and him with an unformed diocese and a future on which rested more clouds than sunshine. In 1884 time would fail him who should undertake to read the roll of regions occupied and churches organized. An American statesman once said, in words that have been often quoted, that England's drum-beat never ceased as it passed around the world. We can say that our English Te Deum, with its "Day by day we magnify Thee," rolls round the world as well, in unceasing and ever- increasing volume. Of the vast regions to which that solitary bishop went in 1785, there is no part or portion which is not now an organized diocese or a missionary jurisdiction, and the increase has been thirty, sixty, yea, an hundred-fold. Here the things that seemed ready to die have been so strengthened by Him "without Whom nothing is strong," that a bright and blessed present points to an even brighter and more blessed future; while, if we look to that great Church from which our successions ultimately come, we find her outgoings and advances limited only by the limits of the world itself. In the name of her Lord and King she has indeed taken "the heathen for His inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for His possession." Shall we dare from such a past and such a present to look forward through the years of a coming century? Those years are in the hand of God, and what they may bring to us it is not for us to know, nor need we ask. But we do know this, and it is enough for us to know, that if these Churches, holding fast "the form of sound words," and "holding forth the word of life," shall rise to the full measure of their opportunities and duty, in sole reliance on the power of Him Who died and yet liveth for evermore; in services of holy worship; in the proclamation of the remission of sins in Jesus Christ; in the tradition of His holy sacraments; in faithful, loving ministries to the bodies and the souls of men; if they shall so strive, then they shall have a work given them to do in the latter days, before the view of which the heart dies down in awe, and the voice is hushed in unutterable thankfulness. "Visions of glory, spare my aching sight; Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!"