OCR Text |
Show COLORADO'S PIONEER BISHOP. 125 of Bishops, held in Grace Church, New York, Oct. 24, 1873, Bishop Clarkson, in his address to the bishops, said: " When he took possession of his missionary jurisdiction, it was an entirely new, and except to adventurous gold-hunters and a few others, an almost unknown country; but no gold-hunters ever went to Colorado with more faith and with more enthusiasm to gather precious ores, than did the first great-hearted Bishop on his sublime mission, to scatter and deliver there the still more precious treasures of the Gospel and the Church. These men, dreadfully in earnest in behalf of earthly riches, all on fire with the passion of sudden wealth, saw in him a man who was just as much in earnest after the better riches of the world to come-a man all aflame with celestial fire, and they yielded to him what Christian earnestness always compels from men-respect, admiration, confidence, and a following. And so the Church in the East saw in him a man who was thoroughly and intensely in earnest, and therefore means without stint poured itself out to him, and Churches and institutions and parishes and clergymen, grew up around him and gathered about him as if by the operation of the fabled lamp of Oriental story. "We read and talk about the martyrs of the Church in early days, and in Reformation times, and in heathen lands of our own age, and give them credit and glory, even canonize them; but here was a Bishop who was truly a martyr to work and to duty, for Christ's sake and the Church's, as any holy man of the post ever was from truth and for faith. " Not Ignatius among the lions, nor Polycarp in the fires, not Patteson amid the savages, yielded up their lives with |