The supreme point of the solemn office is reached. A young priest, who has not yet seen thirty summers, holds the book from which the aged Primus reads the awful sentence of ordination and the charge which follows it; that youthful priest is Alexander Jolly, afterwards the saintly Bishop of Moray. The imposition of Apostolic hands is given; the work begun here in 1783 is consummated, and our Diocese rejoices in its first bishop. Nor is this all. The golden chain of the succession that starts from the Master's hand is stretched westward across an ocean. The "Church of Jesus Christ, The blessed Banyan of our God," sends out a branch to root itself in our western world; a branch which our eyes have seen "rise, and spread, and droop, and root again," until in its self-repeating life it has crossed this continent, and is firmly rooted on our, then unknown, Pacific coast. "Long as the world itself shall last, The sacred Banyan still shall spread; From clime to clime, from age to age, Its sheltering shadow shall be shed; Nations shall seek its pillared shade, Its leaves shall for their healing be; The circling flood that feeds its life, The blood that crimsoned Calvary."' [Footnote: Bishop Doane of New Jersey; _Ficus Religiosa_.] And here I pause to-day. Another year, please God, we must bring to remembrance what followed the consecration in Scotland, the newly-consecrated bishop's return to America, and the share that he and his Diocese had in organizing this Church in the United States. Here and now it is enough to have told the story--not as it should be told, but as I have had power to tell it--of his consecration. Standing above the honored sepulchre [Footnote: Bishop Seabury's remains rest under the chancel of St. James's Church, New London. ] that holds the mouldered remains of him who a hundred years ago knelt down in that distant land to receive the warrant of his high commission in the Church of God; in this fair temple, which replaces the far humbler one in which he ministered as a parish priest; beside that monument, which attests the loving gratitude of a Diocese that will never let his memory be forgotten; two thoughts--bringing with them a thankfulness too deep for utterance--fill mind and heart alike: the first, the thought of that brave, patient, self-sacrificing soldier of the Cross, who dared all and gave all, that he might win for us the precious gift that binds us to the historic Church and through it to the great day of Pentecost and the mount of the Ascension; the second, of those venerable fathers who, to communicate this gift, rose above all personal considerations, and put aside possibilities that might have daunted many a brave soul, because on their hearts was written--as with a pen of iron on living rock--that charge to all Christ's ministers which comprehends and covers all duties and responsibilities: "It is required in stewards that a man be found faithful."