ional powers, will by and by make an impression on the mind. The
flattering assurance may be coyly waived aside; it may even be
indignantly repelled; but in the long run there will be a growing number
of the brethren who become convinced that there is something in it. It
was in harmony with human nature that the party of high pretensions to
distinguished privileges for the church and prerogatives for the
"priesthood" should in a few years become a formidable contestant for
the control of the denomination. The controversy between the two parties
rose to its height of exacerbation during the prevalence of that strange
epidemic of controversy which ran simultaneously through so many of the
great religious organizations of the country at once. No denomination
had it in a more malignant form than the Episcopalians. The war of
pamphlets and newspapers was fiercely waged, and the election of bishops
sometimes became a bitter party contest, with the unpleasant incidents
of such competitions. In the midst of the controversy at home the
publication of the Oxford Tracts added new asperity to it. A distressing
episode of the controversy was the arraignment of no less than four of
the twenty bishops on charges affecting their personal character. In the
morbid condition of the body ecclesiastic every such hurt festered. The
highest febrile temperature was reached when, at an ordination in 1843,
two of the leading presbyters in the diocese of New York rose in their
places, and, reading each one his solemn protest against the ordaining
of one of the candidates on the ground of his Romanizing opinions, left
the church.

The result of the long conflict was not immediately apparent. It was not
only that "high" opinions, even the highest of the Tractarian school,
were to be tolerated within the church, but that the High-church party
was to be the dominant party. The Episcopal Church was to stand before
the public as representing, not that which it held in common with the
other churches of the country, but that which was most distinctive. From
this time forth the "Evangelical" party continued relatively to decline,
down to the time, thirty years later, when it was represented in the
inconsiderable secession of the "Reformed Episcopal Church." The
combination of circumstances and influences by which this party
supremacy was brought about is an interesting study, for which, however,
there is no room in this brief compendium of history.

A mo