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Our Natal correspondent, when sending us the above Address, stated that he had no other news of importance to communicate. Every one was awaiting the 8th of January, when the Supreme Court was to deliver judgment in the actions brought by Colenso against the Dean of Maritzburg and the Rev. J. Walton. In his last letter, dated January 9th, he tells us that our opponents have carried the day, and can now in the outraged name of law do their worst; that our brethren in the faith are henceforth excluded from their churches, and that their clergy are driven from both their altars and their hearths :

"The crisis has at last arrived, and the blow is struck which we have been so long dreading. The Church in Natal is despoiled of all her property, which is given to a heretic, and the founder of the Church in this colony is driven out of his home to seek shelter where he can, for no crime but that he has been faithful to his Saviour, and refused to cringe before infidelity even though supported by the powers that be. This day judgment was delivered by the Supreme Court of the Colony in the actions brought by Colenso against the Dean and the Rev. J. Walton, in favour of the plaintiff with costs. The new acting judge was for granting an interdict prohibiting the Dean and other faithful clergy from officiating anywhere, in the churches or not! He could not, however, get the other two judges to join in such barefaced tyranny, or to make themselves ridiculous by allowing their ill-disguised malice to lead them to issue an order they could never carry out. Rights of property they can decide, the determination of rights of conscience belongs to a higher tribunal. The whole course of action followed by Colenso in this matter is peculiar. 'Only take my licence,' he says to the clergy, and you may preach whatever you please; I shall never call you to account for heresy.' It reminds one strangely of the edict of Darius that 'whosoever shall ask any petition of God or man for thirty days, save of the king, shall be cast into the den of lions;' or of Satan's address to our Divine Master, 'All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt' fall down and worship me.' I suppose we shall now have to huddle together like sheep into some building not half large enough to hold us, or else to worship in the open air, which, however, just now, in the middle of the wet season, is altogether out of the question. At any rate, the enemies of the Church have now done their worst, and we may hope for a gradual rise from this time, till in due season, her enemies all removed or vanquished, the Church shall come forth the purer, and prosper more than ever in her divine mission."

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It appears that though the three judges-the whole Court-concurred in supporting Colenso "in his character of trustee of Churchof-England property," one of them, Mr. Justice Phillips, refused to declare the Letters Patent to be valid. The Dean announced his intention to appeal, but whether he will do so has since become uncertain. It is stated that he will at once proceed to England, in conformity with the wishes of the Orthodox. These wishes were

expressed at a crowded and protracted meeting, when the Dean in the chair was supported by the Archdeacon, the Revs. F. S. Robinson, C. Maber,1 and many other leading Churchmen. The following resolutions were unanimously passed thereat:

"That we do, without delay, erect a temporary church."-"That the Very Rev. the Dean and Revs. F. S. Robinson and C. Maber, together with Messrs. Williams, George, Dickinson, Scott, Davis, Paterson, Jenkyn, Turnbull, and Spence, constitute a committee to carry out the provisions of the above resolution."-" That this meeting request the Very Rev. the Dean to make application to the Lieutenant-Governor for the use of the Council-chamber on Sundays for the present, and in the event of his being refused, that Mr. Collier's offer be accepted for next Sunday.". "That this meeting records its thanks to the elders of the Dutch Church for their kind and generous offer of the use of their church at certain hours after next Sunday."-"That the thanks of this meeting be given to Mr. Collier for his offer of the Dramatic Hall, on Sundays, for the sum of 251. a year, to be devoted as a contribution to the Dean's stipend."- "That the thanks of this meeting be presented to Mr. W. Marshall for his generous donation and land and building for sale on behalf of the new Church Building Fund.”- -"That all intention of appealing in the late case against the judgment of the Court be abandoned."- "That it is the opinion of this meeting that it is desirable that the Very Rev. the Dean should make preparations for visiting England."

Such, then, was the posture of affairs when the last mail left Natal. That the Church at home is about to engage in new efforts for the termination of all these legal wrongs will be sufficiently gathered from the proceedings of Convocation recorded above.

We now leave our readers to their own reflections on the matters we have brought before them. Only let us bear in mind that "the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." Not by passion, but by patience and prayer, must the Church of God be rescued from her adversaries. In such a conviction, let us intercede for Natal throughout "the acceptable time" of Lent on which we have entered. Lord, hear the desire of the poor, prepare their heart, and let Thine ear hearken thereto; to help the fatherless and poor unto their right, that the man of the earth be no more exalted against them!"

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THE NEW "SOUTHERN" COLONY IN COLOMBIA. In an article in our number for August last on "The Anglican Diaspora in South America," we made incidental mention of the peopling of a new colony from the "Southern States," having for its capital Caroni; so named from the tributary of the Orinoco on which

1 The Rev. C. Maber is a new accession to the orthodox clergy in Natal.

it is placed. We said that if the number of settlers was as great as had been stated by the Bishop of Llandaff, far more would be required for them in the way of Christian aid than the S.P.C.K. grant of books towards a “Free Library.” Since then, we have received further information from trustworthy sources which confirms us in our augury of this young colony's ecclesiastical, as well as commercial and political, importance.

When the Confederation of Colombia was broken up, the State of Venezuela succeeded to its claim of sovereignty over a large territory, stretching, south and east of the Orinoco, to the British and Brazilian frontiers. This territory, of which the area is 240,000 square miles, hitherto left entirely to a few tribes of wandering aborigines, has now been made over by the Venezuelans to a company which will fill it with an English-speaking population, drawn chiefly, at least at the outset, from the Southern portion of the United States. Though allowed to remain in a state of nature up to the present day, the value and capabilities of this portion of South America have long ago been pointed out. Not only Schomberg and Humboldt, but Sir Walter Raleigh, have united its praise: Humboldt on quitting it exclaimed, "Farewell Paradise! When will the cupidity of man find thee out?" The lower districts yield all the productions of the tropics in the utmost profusion, and the upper those of the temperate zone. The Orinoco, and its tributaries—some of which communicate also with the Amazon-afford easy means of access to all foreign markets. The mineral treasures of the soil are discovered to be great; the climate is pronounced to be generally healthy for persons of European descent; and earthquakes, so frequent to the north and west of the Orinoco, are unknown in the territory assigned to this nascent colony.

The

The principal settlements at present effected are four in number: one on the Caroni; one on the Paraqua, its tributary; one on the Orinoco above Augostura, or Bolivar, as it is now termed; and one at Porto los Tablas, 200 miles from the mouth of the Orinoco, which serves as the colony's port of entry. Slavery does not exist; labourers will, if necessary, be sought for as in the British West Indies. goverment is framed on the "principles of the United States Constitution of '76." The depressed condition of the Southern portion of the United States, consequent on the termination of the four years' civil war, has evidently been a powerful impulse to the undertaking of this migration. Without entering into the part which political disappointments may have had to do with it, we may content ourselves with remarking, with one of its first promoters, that "in all countries, political difficulties and wrongs, whether actual or imaginary, have

always had the effect of producing colonies in foreign lands." Many from "the South" have gone to fresh homes in Brazil, but apparently the main bulk of the new settlers will find their way to the colony we are describing; and certainly no call for Christian aid has come to Churchmen so early and so loud from any quarter as from this. Mrs. Pattison, the lady by whose indefatigable exertions the "Free Library" above referred to is being collected at Coroni, communicates to us the following extract from a letter by one of the settlers, which very faithfully represents the general attachment to the Anglican Communion :

“I think it a burning shame that not a single Protestant Episcopal clergyman, so far as I know, is yet to be found in the whole State of Guiana. Could you not get the Bishop of London to send us out one Missionary? or would it be of any use to write to the Bishop of British Guiana or the Bishop of Trinidad ? 1 The Baptists and the Presbyterians have been asked to send here a Missionary. The Baptist Mission Board replied that they were too poor to increase their number of Missions. The Presbyterians of the South are too busy with supplying the Presbyterian Southerners settled in Brazil. . . . But we must not leave this colony to the Pope or to the Puritan entirely. The Episcopal people here are using a room for the reading of the Liturgy on Sundays, with the printed sermons which I sent them; but we are anxiously looking for a regular Mission. We are prepared to secure for a Missionary every comfort before he comes out. We have written to that effect tothe distance is great, and the mails still irregular. We have hitherto been too poor to do more, but we are now getting in a most successful crop, and are looking forward to the speedy establishment of regular commercial intercourse with England."

but

We understand that the Church people in the colony promise a thousand acres of glebe to each Missionary who shall go out; and that the first church-St. Paul's, Coroni-is to be begun early next year. In the above extract it will be observed that the writer speaks only of application to the Church of England and her West Indian daughter, but of course the more legitimate application will be to the Church in the United States; and especially in the Southern dioceses such an application will doubtless be readily responded to as soon as the facts of the case are properly brought before the Bishops and synods. Many in the Church of England who have lately evinced their sympathy with those dioceses by contributing towards the restoration of the University at Seewanee, will be greatly pleased by perceiving as one of the earliest fruits of the work in which they have aided the sending forth to the New South American Settlements of a band of pioneer

1 That is, the Bishop of Barbados, whose diocese includes this island at the mouth of the Orinoco.

clergy, like those which in other directions have made the name of Nashotah so famous among the modern "schools of prophets." Probably the matter will be brought before the whole Church of the United States at the forthcoming General Convention, and we may confidently predict for it a generous treatment by that body; for though the appeal lies peculiarly to "the South," inasmuch as the main emigration is from thence, the Church of the great Republic has abundantly shown that she will suffer no sectional partialities, no political reminiscences, to interfere with her Catholic-hearted action. Meanwhile we would commend to the best attention of those of our English readers into whose hands it may come, Mrs. Pattison's circular requesting further contributions of works for the "Free Library" at Coroni.1

Correspondence, Documents, &c.

DIOCESAN SYNODS.

[As the prominent manner in which the subject of Diocesan Synods is now being brought before the Home Church is very largely due to the prelate happily translated to the English bench from New Zealand, we yield with the greater readiness a place in our pages to the following contribution towards its discussion.-ED. C. C. C.]

SIR,-The above important subject was most wisely fixed upon by the Bishop of Norwich for consideration by his clergy in their RuriDecanal Chapters in September last; and as I was known to have taken a deep interest in the effort to revive them, inquiries constantly reached me as to the most accessible sources of information, and the wisest line to be adopted in replying to the Episcopal questions. I will now ask you to reprint the substance of the reply which I then printed for my correspondents, with the hope of fastening attention upon certain definite points, but without the slightest idea that all wisdom is confined to my own solution of them.

1.-For popular essays on the subject, see the Manchester and York Church Congress Reports; and see also a series of letters in the Churchman of August 16th, November 8th and 15th, 1866; January 3d, July 4th, 1867; and the 29th inst. by "Oxoniensis;" together with letters by Dr. Fraser in the numbers of the same paper for November 22d, 1866, and January 24th, 1867; and the (very questionable) Scheme for a Diocesan Synod (or Assembly rather) in the number for August 15th, 1867.

1 This lady writes:- "Where so many have rendered service, it is invidious to particularize, but I should be unjust if I did not make special mention of the donations of the Bishops of Llandaff and Barbados, Canon Dale, and Mrs. Clarke (widow of the late Archdeacon Clarke of Salisbury). I shall be thankful to receive any old books, religious or secular, if sent to me, with the donors' names inscribed, at the office of the American, English, and Venezuelan Company, Crescent, America Square, E. C."

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