iving in sweet patience, ready to die in hope. His day was
done, his night was near, and the weary toiler was willing to go to his
rest. Thus passed some peaceful years. He died in 1755, and was followed
to his grave by the whole Manx nation. His tomb is our most sacred
shrine. We know his faults, but we do not speak of them there. Call a
truce over the place of the old man's rest. There he lies, who was once
the saviour of our people. God bless him! He was our fathers' bishop,
and his saintly face still shines on our fathers' children.

THE ATHOL BISHOPS

Let me in a last clause attempt a sketch of the history of the Manx
Church in the century or more that has followed Bishop Wilson's death.
The last fifty years of it are featureless, save for an attempt to
abolish the Bishopric. This foolish effort first succeeded and then
failed, and was a poor bit of mummery altogether, ending in nothing
but waste of money and time, and breath and temper. The fifty years
immediately succeeding Bishop Wilson were full of activity. But so far
as the Church was concerned, the activity was not always wholesome. If
religion was kept alive in Man in those evil days, and the soul hunger
of the poor Manx people was satisfied, it was not by the masters of the
Manx Church, the Pharisees who gave alms in the streets to the sound
of a trumpet going before them, or by the Levites who passed by on
the other side when a man had fallen among thieves. It was partly by
dissent, which was begun by Wesley in 1775 (after Quakerism had been
suppressed), and partly by a small minority of the Manx clergy, who kept
going the early evangelicalism of Newton and Cowper and Cecil--dear,
sunny, simple-hearted old Manx vicars, who took sweet counsel together
in their old-fashioned homes, where you found grace in all senses of the
word, purity of soul, the life of the mind, and gentle courtliness of
manners.

Bishop Wilson's successor was Doctor Mark Hildlesley, in all respects
a worthy man. He completed the translation of the Scriptures into Manx,
which had been begun by his predecessor, and established Sunday-schools
in Man before they had been commenced in any other country. But after
him came a line of worthless prelates, Dr. Richmond, remembered for his
unbending haughtiness; Dr. Mason, disgraced by his debts; and Claudius
Cregan, a bishop unfit to be a curate. Do you not read between the
broad lines of such facts? The Athol dynasty was now some thirty ye