do for American people than in
the city of Lowell, where cotton spinning had its first large
development. It was a virgin soil: the Episcopal Church, as rarely
happens, was earliest on the ground: and not only so, but it enjoyed
for some years the friendly protection of the proprietors of the
new settlement, almost a religious monopoly--was, in fact, an
ecclesiastical preserve. Moreover, this beginning antedated the
Irish occupation by many years, at least so far as skilled labor
was concerned, for during a considerable period the operatives in
the mills were of native New England stock, the best possible
material to be made over into churchmen and churchwomen. And yet
notwithstanding all this, and notwithstanding the patient and
unintermitted toil through more than fifty years of perhaps the
most laborious parish priest on the American clergy list, the
Episcopal Church has to-day but a comparatively slender hold upon
the affections and loyalty of the people of this largest of the
manufacturing cities of New England.

A similar failure to "reach the masses" betrays itself in Worcester
and Fall River, the two cities of like character that come next in
order of population, for in the former of these last named places
only about two per cent, of the inhabitants have affiliations of
any sort with the Episcopal Church.

It was considerations of this sort, backed perhaps by memories of
the ringing appeal sounded three years before at Boston by the
Bishop of Connecticut, that moved the Convention to interpret as
something better than a bit of sentimentalism the invitation to
look the times in the face, and give the new century its infant
baptism.

But besides all this there pressed upon the mind of bishops and
deputies a cumulative argument of a wholly different sort. The
demand for revision seemed to be closing in upon the Church on
converging lines. It was plain that, before long, hands of change
must necessarily be laid upon certain semi-detached portions of
the Prayer Book. There was the New Lectionary, for example, that
would presently be knocking for hospitable reception within the
covers, and the old Easter Tables, as they now stand, could not, it
was observed, last very much longer. A new book, in the publisher's
sense of that term, would soon have to be made. The sanctity of
stereotype plates must be disturbed. Moreover, here was an admirable
opportunity to settle the wrangle, now of nine years' standing, over
t