It was fortunate for all who were to come after them that those men of whom I speak were no dreamers or _doctrinaires_, and rode no "half-saddled hobbies" of their own construction. They did not undertake to formulate a creed adapted to the wants of the American mind and the demands of the eighteenth century; they had that which was for every mind and all time, in the One "Faith once delivered to the Saints." They did not attempt to compose a Liturgy or Forms for Sacred Rites and Services; these they also had, capable (doubtless) of adaptation and change "according to the diversity of countries, times, and men's manners," but still complete for all purposes of worship or ministration, being, indeed, the growth of all the Christian ages. They did not set themselves to create a new Church, or even to reason out just what might possibly be dispensed with here or omitted there because of "the present distress"; all they had to do, in that little secluded room where they were assembled, was to provide what was lacking in that organization which they had received; even as in that secluded "upper room" in Jerusalem where the eleven were assembled with the disciples, the vacant place in the Apostolate was filled up in anticipation of the mighty Pentecostal gift. And because they were humble enough, and therefore wise enough, to do just what they did, they "builded better than they knew"; builded on that only foundation that can be laid, even Jesus Christ; builded, also, as "wise master-builders," not with the "wood, hay, stubble" of man's gathering, but with the "gold, silver, precious stones" of the "New Jerusalem that cometh down from heaven." There is another thought that ought not be passed by. Says an old Father, speaking of the Episcopate: "_Nomen oneris non honoris"; "It is the name of a burden rather than of an honor." So here, the question was not, To whom shall we give the honor? but, Who can best take up and bear the burden? And what a burden it was! The wearisome quest for consecration, sure to be protracted and doubtful as to its result; the insufficient provision--if indeed any provision at all was made--for the maintenance of the bishop- elect during the period of his anxious waiting; [Footnote: Bishop Seabury wrote under date of Jan. 5, 1785: "Two years' absence from my family, and expenses of residence here, have more than expended all I had."] the return, if unsuccessful, with the certainty of being told that another might have succeeded where he had failed; if successful, with the alternative certainty of coming to a weak and despised Church, poor in this world's goods and "everywhere spoken against"; the life-long struggle with its tremendous uncertainties; surely, he who should undertake the burden of these things and many more besides, would need not only the "_robur et aes triplex circa pectus_" of the heathen poet, but the faith that "could remove mountains" also. Who was to be the man?