Under all the circumstances, then, it is no wonder that when the War of the Revolution ended, and the question came to the minds of thoughtful churchmen how the Church should strengthen "the things that remained that were ready to die," their first thought should have been for the Episcopate. The Faith of the Universal Church they had in the historic Creeds. Its Worship was preserved for them in the Book of Common Prayer, But how to provide for the perpetuation of the "Doctrine and Sacraments and the Discipline of Christ as the Lord had commanded and as this Church had received the same," that was the great practical pressing question with which they were brought face to face. Ordination, Confirmation, and the government of the Church must of need be secured. Nor can we greatly wonder if what no entreaties had been able to obtain while the colonies were a part of the British Empire, seemed now to many an almost hopeless undertaking. The surrender at Yorktown in 1781 was to many American churchmen the death-blow to their hopes for an American Episcopate. There were men enough to see the difficulties and discouragements, to talk and write and speculate about them; but where should those men be found who would grapple with them, and by grappling with them overcome them? I answer, they were found in those ten clergymen who met at Woodbury in 1783, "Men that had understanding of the times." And is it not always somewhat after this sort, when any great step is to be taken, and there are manifold difficulties in the way? Do not men dwell on the difficulties, and exaggerate the dangers, and suggest expedients and makeshifts, till some one, without fuss or noise, takes the step, and lo! the mountain has been levelled and the way lies open? Depend upon it, there is a wealth of wisdom in these simple lines: "From an old English parsonage down by the sea, There came in the twilight a message to me; Its quaint Saxon legend deeply engraven, Hath, as it seems to me, teaching from heaven; And all through the hours the quiet words ring, Like a low inspiration: 'Doe the nexte thynge.'" And what the next thing was for this Church when these western colonies became a nation, we have already seen.