Taking up, as I am to do to-day, the narrative of the events which
followed on, and were the outcome of, the election of our first
Bishop of which I spoke to you last year, and which gather round,
and centre in, his consecration at Aberdeen a hundred years ago, I
seem, as I try to reproduce those days and make them real to our
minds, to hear Words uttered so like to those which have just been
brought together that they appear to be the very echoes of that
far distant past. Enemies are crying, "What do these feeble Jews?"
Timid friends are saying, "The strength of the bearers of burdens
is decayed"--we cannot do the work. But brave hearts and loving
hearts murmured to themselves, "Our God shall fight for us"; and
among them all there was no truer, braver heart than that of
Seabury, as, taking up the burden laid on him, he set forth on his
quest--nobler than the knightliest of olden times--for that sacred
Deposit which he was to bear to our western world.

How fared he in his quest? In the answer to this question we shall
find the topic that invites attention now. And first of all,
something must be said of the documents and testimonials which he
carried with him. These were, so far as the clergy of Connecticut
were concerned, prepared by the secretary of the meeting held at
Woodbury (afterwards our second bishop), the Rev. Abraham Jarvis.
They are quite too long for reading here; but it must be said of
them that they are admirably conceived and expressed, and set
forth a much truer and sounder ideal of the Church of God in its
obligation to the State on the one side, and its spiritual duties,
under the one Headship of Him Whose "kingdom is not of this
world," on the other, than seems to have then prevailed in the
mother country. Two passages from the letter of our clergy to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, I venture to quote in proof of what has