Fathers and brethren, honored and beloved in the Lord! as I stand here, this day, with a full heart but with trembling lips, the unworthy successor of him who, in this city of old renown, received a century ago the sacred deposit which he bore to the Western world; as I look on this truly august gathering which tells, as no words can tell, how God has blessed the vine planted in early, possibly in Apostolic, days in "Britain divided from the world," enabling her "to stretch out her branches unto the sea, and her boughs unto the river"; as I think of all that has come and gone in those hundred years in the marvellous growth and the awakened inner life, acting and reacting on each other, of the mother and the daughter Churches--for we all spring from one and the same noble stock--I can find no better words in which to sum up memories, thoughts, forecastings, than those which I have endeavored somewhat to unfold: "Then thou shalt see, and be enlightened, and thine heart shall fear, and be enlarged; because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee." And yet, one cannot but remember how far beyond all possible anticipations of those brave hearts that once made such a venture for Christ and His Church, are the things which our eyes look upon, and which are a part of our everyday life and experience. When those ten presbyters, whose priesthood had not been gained without trials and perils which only the deepest convictions could have nerved them to bear, met in that secluded unknown New England town, on the Festival of the Annunciation, in 1783, and laid the burden of seeking for the Episcopate on Seabury, what could they have seen about them but the disorganized elements of an apparently decaying life? When, on the 14th of November, 1784, in that upper room in this good city, those venerable prelates (whose names are to-day household words through all the length and breadth of what has been called "The Greater Britain of the Western World") handed on the high commission they had received in trust, what could their eyes have looked upon but scattered flocks under their few shepherds, which must meet, if they met at all, in uncertainty and peril, to worship God as their fathers had worshipped before them? Still, if they saw little around them to encourage and support, theirs (we may well believe) was the eye of faith that is strengthened to pierce the future. If they heard few words of cheer from men, there came upon their ears, from a Greater than man, words of strong hope and glorious promise. In that Transatlantic gathering, small and unnoticed as it was, the ten who came together heard, in the Gospel of the Annunciation, that "with God nothing is impossible," and in the song of the Blessed Virgin they were bidden to bethink themselves how "God remembered His mercy and truth toward the House of Israel," exalting "the humble and meek," filling "the hungry with good