The parable of the tares is the proof pàssage for religious liberty. Sinite utraque crescere (Matthew 13, 30) is the counterpart of compelle intrare (Luke 14, 23). The apostles of liberty repeat the text with monotonous iteration, although there is an occasional variety in the emphasis. Some stress the rationalistic argument: we do not know enough to separate the tares from the wheat. Others emphasize the eschatological approach: we can afford to be patient because God will burn the tares at the harvest. Others again make a legalistic appeal: Christ has commanded us to leave the tares alone. More interesting are the expedients employed by the persecutors to evade the liberal implications of the parable. The simplest device is to identify the tares not with the heretics, but with the moral offenders within the church. Another subterfuge is to identify the overly zealous servants with the ministers, not with the magistrates, who are not to be hampered by the parable.

No ecclesiastical body in this country suffered as much from the Revolution as did the Anglican Church. The process of recovery was so slow that it was scarcely consummated a century after. In the light of the peculiar importance, attaching to the epoch 1775–1785, the Diary of one of the most eminent Anglican clergy of Colonial days may not be without interest It is a small, thick volume bound in contemporary leather, in the author's own clear and tidy hand, with the fly-leaves covered with financial items —a kind of book-keeping appendix to the Diary proper.1 The Diary is entitled “Memorandums of T. B. Chandler.”

The Managing Editor of Church History has sent me a peremptory summons demanding at once an account in one thousand words—no more, no less—of the work of the Church History Deputation to the Orient. In view of the probability that a full report will in due time appear as a separate publication, the present statement may quite appropriately be confined within the limits set by the Editor.