THE LATE ARCHDEACON FANCOURT

" Since last we met in '. sewion of Synod," said Bishop Sprott during his address at the Anglican Diocesan Congress yesterday afternoon, " our staff of clergy has suffered serious losses. On Ist' February, Thomas Fancourt—name truly venerable—Archdeacon of Wellington, passed to his rest, after full fiftythree years of varied and strenaous service in this diocese. It is not necessary that to this Synod I should give airy^ detailed account of his life and work. To the members of this Synod, and to the members of the Church generally, he was known with an. intimacy with which hardly any other of our clergy has been known. Arriving in Wellington in 1865, when the diocese was yet in its infancy, and this Synod had a membership of only IS clergy and 14 laity, he saw it | grow to its present mature condition. I But he waa hot a mere spectators he was I himself a large part of that growth, and j more- than most contributed to it. If I were to single out the characteristics which enabled him .to be so successful a worker, I should name two. Firs€, his entire singleness of purpose No one ever suspected him of serving any selfish .end,* or of having any other aim than the peace, the purity, and the growth of the Church of Jesns Christ. And, next, his wonderful balance of judgment. He ! possessed in a wonderful degree 'the power and the will to see things truly, plainly, and steadily, to see them with a large view of their attendant circumstances and manifold relations, to see them with an equal eye for light and shade.' This faculty of judgment was closely allied with his singleness of purpose, if, indeed, it were not rather to be identified with it. Of him,, in his human degTee, it might be said, as of his Master Christ—his judgment was just because he sought not his own glory. He saw things truly, and estimated them rightly,' because his mind was not deflected or confused by any selfish aims: It was a priceless gift. With the death of Archdeacon Fancourt there has, I think, been severed the last link between this diocese and its first bishop, from whom he received bis Orders. It makes us realise that we have indeed entered upon a new age."