‘Holy Innocents’ Day.—­I don’t think I have sufficiently considered your feelings in suffering the change of name in the Mission School that took place, and I am rather troubled about it.  I came back from the last voyage to find that as I had selected a site for the buildings on St. Barnabas Day, which was, by a coincidence, the day I spent here on my outward voyage in 1866, the people had all named the place St. Barnabas.  Then came the thought of the meetings on St. Barnabas, and the appropriateness of the Missionary Apostle’s name, and I, without thinking enough about it, acquiesced in the change of name.  I should have consulted you,—­not that you will feel yourself injured, I well know; but for all that, I ought to have done it.  It was the more due to you, because you won’t claim any right to be consulted.  I am really sorry for it, and somewhat troubled in mind.  (Footnote:  ’He need not have been sorry.  I give this to show his kind, scrupulous consideration; but I, like everyone else, could not help feeling that it was more fitting that the germ of a missionary theological college should not bear a name even in allusion to a work of fiction.)

’The occasional notices of Mr. and Mrs. Keble in your letters, and the full account of him and her as their end drew nigh, is very touching.  How much, how very much there is that I should like to ask him now!  How I could sit at his feet and listen to him!  These are great subjects that I have neither time nor brains to deal with, and there is no one here who can give me all the help I want.  I think a good deal about Ritualism, more about Union, most about the Eucharistic question; but I need some one with whom to talk out these matters.  When I have worked out the mind of Hooker, Bull, Waterland, &c., and read Freeman’s “Principles,” and Pusey’s books, and Mr. Keble’s, &c., then I want to think it out with the aid of a really well-read man.  It is clearly better not to view such holy subjects in connection with controversy; but then comes the thought—­“How is Christendom to be united when this diversity exists on so great a point?” And then one must know what the diversity really amounts to, and then the study becomes a very laborious and intricate enquiry into the ecclesiastical literature of centuries.  Curiously enough, I am still waiting for the book I so much want, Mr. Keble’s book on “Eucharistic Adoration.”  I had a copy, of course, but I lent it to some one.  I lose a good many books in that way.

’The extraordinary change in the last thirty years will of course mark this time hereafter as one of the most noticeable periods in the history of the Church, indeed one can’t fail to see it, which is not always the case with persons living in the time of great events.  The bold, outspoken conduct of earnest men, the searching deeply into principles, the comparative rejection of conventionalities, local prejudices, exclusive forms of thought and practice, must strike everyone.  But one misses the guiding, restraining hand...the man in the Church corresponding to “the Duke” at one time in the State, the authority.