Our small society, in its upward struggle, received a distinctly great
impetus for good by the accession in 1848 of the first Lord Bishop of
the colony, Dr. Charles Perry. He exhibited a rare energy in the cause
of his Divine Master, and he frankly and genially sought and recognized
that Master's Church far beyond the pale of the Bishop's own section of
it, so far at least as the rules of that section would permit. But the
good Bishop, liberal as he was in one direction, yet failed to reach the
full width of colonial sentiment in that respect, when he refused to
reciprocate the courtesy visit of his Roman Catholic brother. He is
credited with having given his reason, namely, that, in his view, the
Roman Church belonged to "the synagogue of Satan"--surely a very
venturesome assertion of so vast a part of Christianity and of the power
and civilization of the world. We might say at times of bishops, as is
so often said of judges, that when they have to make any unusual or
unexpected decision they had best not give the reasons. I witnessed a
very different sense of duty, and one to which I must confess a
preference when we were at Lugano, an inland town of Teneriffe, situated
a few miles from Santa Cruz, where our good "Coptic" halted for six
hours to replenish her coal, thus permitting her passengers a shore
excursion. A polite elderly gentleman, apparently the sole occupant of
the Lugano hotel, whose decidedly clerical aspect, together with that
simple white neckband which Catholics claim as solely their own, made us
at once set him down as Roman, invited us to look through the inevitable
cathedral, the only sight of the place. But we found our mistake when he
took occasion to allude to "our dear Roman Catholic brethren." We then
adjudged him to be a broad-minded Anglican, which was correct, for, as
he afterwards told us, he was an ex-navy chaplain.