HISTORIAN AND BISHOP.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1122, 9 May 1911, Page 6

HISTORIAN AND BISHOP.

HEATH OP DK. W. E. COLLINS. The Bishop of Gibraltar, Dr. W. E. Collins, died at sea. near aa March St. Dr. Collins, who was born in .1867, was formerly Professor of Ecclesiastical nistofy at Jung's College, London, and had been lecturer at Selwyn nml St. John's Colleges.. Cambridge. The death of the Bishop of Gibraltar (says the "Guardian") has inflicted upon the Church a loss of peculiar and uncommon severity. His learning would have been amazing in a cloister, yet he had little tirno for quiet study, and most of his days were- spent thousands of miles from his books, which reposed permanently in the London house which ho visited but rarely. He had an official residence in Malta, but he was more often heard of from Venice or Bucharest, from Constantinople or Athens. A visit to tho seat of his titular See would be followed by a hasty descent upon London, and in a fewdays a letter would coriie from somewhere in'the Mediterranean or the. Adriatic. His life was passed in trains and steamers and in diligences in out-of-the-way corners of Southern Europe; yet. wherever ho might be, he was constantly writing in the steady, beautifully-formed, individual and characteristic- yet scholarly hand which seemed never to waver beneath the jolt of a railway carriago or tho plungo of a steamer.

Both, as historian and as Bishop, Dr. Collins did work that was always solidly useful and sometimes brilliant. To him we owe in considerable measure that bet-ter-knowledge of Church history which was so sorely needed by English Churchmen. As a_ Bishop he exercised a strongly unifying influence upon the scattered congregations and chaplaincies of which he was the chief pastor. Church life was quickened wherever lie went, and his acquaintance with the langunges of Southern EuroDO was an important help both to himself and to his people. The eager, undaunted snirit, housed in a frail tabernacle, of William Edward Collins will indeed be difficult to replace.