Address of the Bishop

THE 128^th ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE DIOCESE OF GEORGIA
St. Paul’s Church, Augusta
April 19, 1950

FOREWORD
We are at this time celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of St. Paul’s Parish, Augusta. As we look about us and see the beauty of its location, the perfection of its plant and equip­ment, the enthusiasm and loyalty of its people, and the quality of its leadership, it is very easy to realize that it is two hundred years young. We are glad to be here to share this glad time with you, and it is our prayer, and our hope, and our firm belief that God will con­tinue to prosper you in the days to come as He has in the days gone by, and that increasing in knowledge and love of Him, you will go from strength to strength in a life of perfect service. May God’s peace which passeth all human understanding abide in this place for­ever. Amen.

Another year has passed, and we can do one of two things. We can pat ourselves on our collective back and say that we have done wonderfully well, or we can confess our failings and ask God to help us to do better tomorrow. We shall be farther along next year if we do the latter. I have often said, and I think I have said it in most of the churches of the diocese, that the measure of our sin is the gulf that yawns between what we are and what we could have been. If we measure ourselves by this standard, we have very little to con­gratulate ourselves about. We have made some advances, and for this we should be thankful, but we could have made a lot more, and for this we should be penitent. And being penitent, we should do something about it. St. Paul had the right attitude. When he had fought a good fight and kept the faith, and in keeping it had spread it all over the known earth, he said, “Brethren, I count not myself to have appre­hended; but this one thing I do: forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I PRESS TOWARD THE MARK for the prize of my high calling in Christ Jesus.” In practicing the Christian religion, we can never reach a point where we are satisfied. When we are satisfied, we are no longer Christian: that is, satisfied with what we have done, and the goals we have reached. There is a satisfaction which this life can give, and that is the satisfaction of pursuing a vision which in this life is unattainable, and which finds its complete realization when we lay this life down, and stand dissatisfied to the very end, at last in the presence of an understanding God. There only in His forgiving Love is peace.

And so we imperfect people work here on earth with our imper­fect tools and our imperfect understanding of the people we wish to reach and of the goals to be achieved. And often we work from wrong motives. Even in the Church this is true. We may desire a high place in the councils of the Church. We may work not because we love God, but because we want to be elected president of the woman’s guild, or a member of the vestry, or presiding bishop perhaps. If we work for these lesser objectives, we shall never be happy, for selfishness al­ways outreaches itself, because nothing ever satisfies it.

It works out then, that you are going to be dissatisfied one way or another, unless you are a sloth in a tree or a pig in the mud. You are going to remain dissatisfied if you work for yourself, or if you work for God, but the latter sort of dissatisfaction is a divine sort of thing and ends at long last in peace. I would not have you therefore, look back on this past year with satisfaction. I would have you look back upon it with thankfulness that through our unworthiness God has accomplished so much, but with hope that through our LESS unworthi­ness, God may accomplish more tomorrow. This is the sort of out­look on life that Christians ought to have. With these general con­siderations in mind, let us try to see where we stand. Since they are of the least importance, we will consider materialities first.

We have built some new parish houses in Albany, Americus, and Jesup. We have drawn plans and raised money for great improve­ments to the one in Waycross. Extensive repairs and improvements have been made at St. Paul’s and Good Shepherd, Augusta, The Atone­ment, Augusta, and St. Paul’s, Savannah, and in many other places property has been repaired and restored. On the whole, our Church property is in very good condition. We have greatly increased our giving for Church extension, sometimes (unpopularly) called Missions. Our pledge to the National Church for its work throughout the world this year is $16,750, which is about $2,500 more than we had for every­thing fifteen years ago. Over and above this we still keep about $30,­000 a year for our own work, which is about three times what we had then. There is nothing surprising about this. It only goes to show what we have said again and again, that God blesses us as we give ourselves to His plan of building His kingdom throughout the world. This is true of any diocese, and it is true of parishes as well. If you will look over the record of missionary giving within the diocese for the last fifteen years, or for any period for that matter, you will find that the parishes which are the most prosperous within are those which have done the most for those who are without. A missionary-minded parish is always a living and growing entity. A self-minded parish is one on the decline. This is true of the diocese and of the parish and of the individual as well. It is true of the whole Church. When we doubled our missionary objective for the whole Church at San Francisco last Fall, some faint-hearted men thought the goal was impossible of attainment. We have attained it, and with the result that the Church’ at home is immeasurably strengthened.

I have served this diocese to the best of my poor ability for the last fifteen years, and have but a few more years to go, but I want to say this, and will keep on saying it until I quit, as I have been saying it for the forty-two years wherever I have served in the ministry. Jesus Christ was right when He said, “It is more blessed to give than to re­ceive;” that “a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth;” that “if you would save your life you must lose it.” If you reluctant, doubting business men will apply these Christ-given principles to your own program of parish finance, you will find that they work out. I know it is true, for I have built a lifetime of successful parochial and diocesan finance upon it. And so have much better men before me. I learned it from them, and they learned it from Christ. I do not say that it is true in the realm of trading and bank­ing and business in which most of your lives are necessarily spent. In these fields you work for profit, and although it is a growing habit in certain quarters to sneer at the profit motive, with this habit I am not in sympathy. Any true and honest business creates wealth, and when wealth is created all share, and life moves on to a higher level. This is why the standards of living are higher in profit-making countries, and is also why the people give more liberally to religion and charity. It is from the profits of business that our schools, churches and hos­pitals have come. For honest profits, from honest business, honestly conducted, I have nothing but praise, and I marvel that men can make any profit in these highly competitive days, and in such times of gov­ernment persecution of individual enterprise.

But the point I am trying to make is that in the realm of religion the laws of strength and growth and profit are not the same as they are in the business world. If a Christian went into business and tried to apply the laws, of selflessness, he would probably go broke, financially, and when a business man goes into the fields of religion as a vestryman, or in any other capacity, and tries to apply the laws of successful worldly business, he is going to go broke spiritually. The rules and laws of success are different in these two fields, for literally in them we are working in two different worlds. We have this on the authority of Jesus. “My Kingdom is not of this world—if it were, then would my servants fight.” Here we have a, perfectly clear recognition by Jesus of the different ways in which His servants should, act in THIS world and in HIS KINGDOM, and following this teaching I would say unto you that the practices which are successful in one world are not so in the other. Jesus does not disapprove of your suc­cess in the business world. I think He rather applauds it, for it stands for thrift and honesty and industry, which are all things commendable, but He does tell you that in the FIELD OF RELIGION, the laws of success are different. If you try to run a grocery store like you should ran a church, you are going to have a poor grocery store. And if you try to run a church like you should run a grocery store, you are go­ing to have a poor church. In the world of trade, the more you heap up, the more you have to spend on worth-while things. In the King­dom of God, the more you take care of yourself, the less you have in the long run, for in this kingdom “a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesses.” Take a simple thing like driving a car. If you were in England and tried to drive accord­ing to the laws of the United States, you would kill or be killed be­fore you had gone three blocks. I know this, because once in a mo­ment of absent-mindedness I almost was.

I am a human being like the rest of you, and I often look longingly, and I confess covetously, on the one thousand four hundred dollars we sent as a diocese each month to the General Church for work through­out the world. But in this I am a sinner, and covet something which it is not well for us to have, for through the years I have seen that our own work has prospered as we have given more liberally to work else­where. This law of growing rich by giving money away is a crazy-looking law according to the standards of the world. All that I can say for it is that in the Kingdom of Christ it works. For His Kingdom is not of this world.

Commending then your success in the business world of trade and profit, when honestly conducted and made, but leaving this world and crossing over into the Kingdom of Christ in which as vestrymen, and women of position in the Church you are working; coming over into this world in which we are gathered today as a Council of the Church of Christ, I want to say first something which you will all recognize as true, and that is this: personally, you do not grow in grace by think­ing of yourself and by building up a private fortune; not as a citizen of the Kingdom of Christ. But in this same Kingdom you are not only a person, but you are we will say, a Vestryman, determining the poli­cies of your parish. Well, the same law holds true. You cannot build up your parish by living for your parochial self, and saying as some vestrymen have said in this diocese when asked to give for missions, “The Lord helps those who help themselves.” And gathered here as a diocese, and considering the call of the National Church through which alone we can touch the Christless world, we are working in the same Kingdom of Christ and under His eternal laws. We cannot build our diocese unless we see it as a channel through which we pour love and our life out into the world for which Christ died. In the world of religion this is the way to live and grow, and there is no other, and this goes for the person and the parish and the diocese and the Church as a whole. Missionary giving is LIFE. Withholding is DEATH. If we merely limp along the way to God, it is because we are living too much for ourselves.

Now all of this is pretty general, but if it is true, and I believe that it is, it should boil down to personal decisions and action. As a diocese, we have acted, and year after year we have responded one hundred per cent to the ever-increasing calls of the National Church for the ever-increasing need of the world for Christ. I would he ashamed to be the bishop of a diocese which did not do this, and practically every parish and mission of the diocese has pledged its full quota for this diocesan obligation, and I am proud to be the bishop of a small diocese which continues to meet its responsibilities in this respect. In proportion to our strength, we are doing much better than some of our greater dioceses are. This is for the National Church. We are not doing so well, so uniformly, when our own diocesan needs are concern­ed, and this is where parish concern for itself enters in, I think we have developed a loyalty to the world through the Diocese of Georgia, because in the last few years world events have made us all world conscious, but we still have far to go in developing a loyalty to the diocese as a lesser end in itself, and unless your diocese itself is made strong, in the long run it cannot continue to meet its world responsi­bility. Therefore, in your thinking and planning, the diocese should take precedence over your own parish plans, or its needs should at least be included in your own parish program. Unless this is done you are weakening the link which ties your own parish into the plan which God has for His Church in the world. And if you do this, you are delaying God’s purpose slightly, but to a large extent and more im­mediately, you are hurting yourself. Here again you come up against God’s immutable law, that to “save your life you must be content to lose it.” Again I say that this does not make sense in the ordinary world of business, but it is the only thing that does make sense in the world of the life of God. It is through your diocese alone that you can contact the inexorable need of this world for Christ, and if your diocese should fail, this vital link is broken. A parish which closes its ears to a call for diocesan advance is a parish which is growing inward upon itself; and ultimately, if this process is continued, for the parish itself it means stagnation and ultimately, death. You, do not have to take my word for this. All that you have to do is to look back over the records of the parishes of the diocese for the last twenty or thirty years. If you do this you will find that the parishes which have met every outside call have prospered, and that they have proposed in pro­portion as these calls have been met. You can find it in figures, in cold dollars and cents, if you will look back and read your old diocesan convention journals. We spend around five hundred dollars a year printing these things, and most of you pay no attention to them, but in the parish reports appended you will find that the parishes which are most loyal to diocesan programs are the ones which show the greatest increase in incomes for themselves. You may think that they give more because they are rich, but if the law of God which I have outlined above is true, they are rich in their own parish life because they freely give to others.

Such thoughts as these occur to me as I look over the returns (now practically complete) of the campaign we made last year to strengthen the missionary work of the diocese. This campaign was well organized and ably directed by men highly skilled in such things.

We asked for seventy-five thousand dollars and received $43,450.05. More than half of this came from two parishes in Savannah. Quotas were assigned on the basis of what parishes and missions spent on themselves. The most remarkable discrepancies appear. Here is a mission with quota of about a thousand dollars, which pays forty dol­lars; and here is another mission not far away with fewer communi­cants with a quota of five hundred dollars which pays $515.00. It ask­ed for nothing and received nothing from the fund. Here is a parish with a quota of nearly four thousand dollars, which gave less than two hundred and twenty-five dollars; and here is a mission with fifteen people giving one hundred dollars. As a matter of fact, the missions of the diocese did much better than the parishes, with the exception of two parishes in Savannah referred to above. Leaving these parishes out, the total quotas of the remaining parishes amounted to $49,065 and their total giving was $12,355, or a parish average of about twenty-five percent. Nineteen missions with quotas of $8,125 gave $6,333, or about seventy-eight per cent. Due to local conditions, two missions and three parishes gave practically nothing. With quotas amounting to $10,250, they gave a total of $375, or about three and a half per cent. Five of our twelve parishes gave less than St. Paul’s mission in Jesup. Three parishes gave less and one gave four dollars more than the little mission we have in Dublin.

Now I know perfectly well the reasons behind these blank spots, and I am not writing in any spirit of criticism, but I do wish to say that progress in a diocese is apt to be slow when, a unified program having been adopted, so many parishes and some missions go off on their own. It is my hope that all points which have not made their own quotas will still regard this matter as an obligation to the diocese which has not yet been met, and that when local circumstances per­mit, the amounts asked for will be forthcoming. With some encourage­ment from the diocese to stimulate people in localities in need of im­provements, where our little groups stand discouraged because they know they cannot do it all alone, we could duplicate the splendid re­sults achieved in places like Valdosta, Jesup, and St. Matthew’s in Sa­vannah, where spending a little, we have received a great deal. The fifty per cent campaign we had has been a great help. We have paid or arranged to pay most of our debts; we have helped with needed im­provements at Atonement, Augusta, and Waynesboro, and Fitzgerald, and St. Mary’s; we have helped to equip rectories with some of the necessities of living for our young clergy at Jesup and Bainbridge and Dublin and Cordele; but we have not touched the pressing problems of parish houses at Christ Church, Augusta, and St. John’s, Moultrie, nor in several other places where the need is great. I think that a word of praise is merited by those places which have paid all—or nearly all—of their quotas. They are the Colored mission of the Good Shepherd, Thomasville, and the white missions at Pooler; Atonement and Christ, Augusta; St. John’s, Bainbridge; Holy Trinity, Blakely; the little group at Cochran where we have no church at all; Christ Church, Dub­lin, which has overpaid what is for it quite a large quota; St. Mat­thew’s, Fitzgerald; St. Anne’s, Tifton; St. Michael’s, Waynesboro ($500 quota for 29 communicants); and St. Mark’s, Woodbine; and the parishes of Christ Church and St. John’s, Savannah. Of the remain­ing parishes the highest point is reached by St. Matthew’s, Savannah. Here is a parish of Colored people finishing an $84,000 building program, to which this drive has contributed only $7,000. They have a $2,500 debt remaining. Of this total cost, these good people have put up about $30,000 themselves. They have also paid 57% of their cam­paign quota. Their senior warden is a letter carrier. Their treasurer, a tailor in a department store. They are all people of very moderate circumstances.

From this 57% the score is as follows: 44%—35%—33% (another Colored parish with a building program finished and repairs now be­ing made on the church) —32%—32%—30%—25%—17%—6%—6% and two parishes nothing.

I have gone into the details of this late campaign, not to criticize any parish or mission, but because I think the figures are revealing. If we study the figures in connection with the map of the diocese we find indications that in large measure (I carefully note and emphasize exceptions—such as Bainbridge with 100% and Blakely also; but these are small points and do not very much affect the general pic­ture) our loyalties are sectional and parochial, and that we have only begun to grow into a strong sense of diocesan unity and loyalty and life, and that we still have a long way to go. I do not think that we are any worse than a lot of other dioceses in this respect, but that does not satisfy me. I want us to be better than a lot of other dioceses. This Church is an Episcopal Church, and that means that the diocese with its bishop is the very essence of its life. Insofar as we depart from that ideal, we depart from the essentials of our life. We have a perfect set-up if our people will but accept it: individuals united in the fellowship of the parish; parishes united in the fellowship of the diocese; dioceses united in the fellowship of the National Church, and some day I hope, the different Churches united in the fellowship of Christians throughout the world. You can see as well as I, that if there is a broken link in this chain, so far as we are concerned, the entire fellowship is destroyed. In our individual thinking, our parish should come first, BUT ON THE PARISH LEVEL OF THINKING, THE DIOCESE SHOULD COME FIRST, and this is where we fall down. We are doing very well on the last lap, thanks to the persistent pushing of your bishops for the last few generations, but if there is a broken link between the first link of this chain and the last—the whole unity is broken. This is what you parishes and missions have to consider. To say that I need this in Savannah or Augusta or any other place is not enough. We must come to the point where we say WE need this in Dublin and Moultrie and Douglas and Jesup and many other places. Only then will we have welded the weak link in the chain of the Church’s life. Until you come to this point, as an Episcopalian you are a failure.

I think that the—I will not say disunity; but rather—the lack of a sense of unity is not your fault as Churchmen. I think it is rather the result of the way in which the State of Georgia has developed through the past two centuries. The colonists on the coast did not push westward. They stayed where they were and developed the coastal areas and farther west streams of pioneers pushed down through the mountains from the North and developed the western area of the state; and we had two different streams of culture and two different tradi­tions of life and religion established. Then roads were built and rail­roads were built and highways were built, all running north and south, and the western part of our diocese was not tied into the coastal areas where its original strength lay, but into Macon and Atlanta which are now large cities in a different diocese. In the western part of our diocese our people’s thoughts and interests flow northward. In the southern part they flow toward Jacksonville. When I came here fif­teen years ago, there were no paved east and west highways, and these facts have molded the thinking of our people for generations. The thinking of our western people runs north and south, and this diocese must be worked from east to west, and Savannah (where the greatest strength of the Church is) and Augusta (which comes next) are cut off by tradition and the habit of the people’s thinking from the west­ern and southwestern area of the diocese which are its most rapidly developing sections. The town of Cairo in which we are at this con­vention establishing a diocesan mission, has, I am sure, never had a woman who went to Savannah to shop; but two years ago when I was in London, I heard some soft Southern voices behind me as I passed Westminster Abbey. I turned and asked what part of Georgia they came from and one little girl said, “I am from Cairo.” They reach London, but they do not reach Savannah. And whether you like it or not, Savannah is the center of our diocese strength and life.

Here is a situation which we have got to correct, because it is striking at our diocesan unity and life. How to do it I do not know. A suggestion has been made by some of the clergy of the West that we have a coadjutor bishop living in Albany for a few years before my own retirement, which may come in two years and must come in four, who would move to Savannah to succeed me, carrying the Western por­tion of the diocese with him. I think there is something to be said for this, but I do not see how we could finance it at this time. But it is something for you to think over this year, or to discuss at this present meeting if you care to. I am perfectly willing to ask for such a co­adjutor if you desire it.

At the last convention in Savannah, you passed certain resolu­tions which were entirely new to me and unexpected, but which I did not comment upon because I had had no time to think of them. They had to do with rotation in membership of various diocesan committees. I think they referred to the Standing Committee and the Executive Committee, (formerly the Executive Council), and the Board of Offi­cers, otherwise known as the Corporation. This rotation so far as it affects the Board of Officers was deferred until 1950 which is now. I hope you will repeal this action so far as it affects the Board of Offi­cers. We have men on the Board of Officers whom we cannot do with­out. They are not representatives of sections of the diocese, or parishes, as some have seemed to think, but they are Executors of wills, custodians of trust funds, and administrators of parcels of real estate located entirely in Savannah, but held in trust for uses through­out the diocese. In positions such as these we need men carefully selected for their skills in certain positions, and such men cannot be properly chosen by popular elections in which various sections of the diocese seek representation. These men are responsible for the proper handling of funds totaling about seven hundred thousand dollars, one half of which are in securities and one half in Savannah real estate; and you just cannot choose the best men for those purposes to be selected by a nominating committee and voted upon casually by a convention such as this, Mr. Anderson, who has been Treasurer of the Corporation, is incapacitated through illness and the Board has elected Mr. Spencer Connerat in his place. Mr. Connerat is a young man, and in a few months has demonstrated his ability to succeed Mr. Anderson. As President of this Board, I wish to say that we want—or need—Mr. Connerat from now on. We could not get along without Mr. Setze. He is on the Board of Directors and Chairman of the Trust Com­mittee of a large Augusta bank. Mr. Robert Groves is past presi­dent and Chairman of the Board of the Savannah Bank and Trust Company, and past president of the South Atlantic Steamship Company. Mr. Dewey Cooke, as Chairman of our Real Estate Committee, has con­verted $30,0000 [sic] worth of foreclosed mortgages into $50,000 cash. You just must not do away with the services of men like these by some arbitrary scheme of succession. If we are to handle your funds well, we cannot do without them. And then we have Mr. Potter Gould, Comptroller of the large Sea Island enterprise, and Mr. A. K. Dearing, a newcomer in our group but one of the most successful men in busi­ness in the State of Georgia. He is on the Board of the Citizens and Southern National Bank and will develop into one of our most useful men. These are all busy and successful men, who serve the Diocese of Georgia without one cent of remuneration (except the Treasurer who receives a nominal salary), and who give of their time and brains to make our work successful. I think it is very wrong to put such men on a time schedule and say, “Your time is up and now you are through.”

I will therefore recommend that we ask the Chancellor, Judge Douglas, to prepare and to present to this Convention a resolution which will empower the Board of Officers to fill vacancies as they oc­cur, or to nominate to this Convention men suited to serve on the Board of Officers as vacancies occur. I know the men of this diocese, and I also know our needs. It is my opinion that we cannot improve on what we now have. Mr. Hoyes has resigned, and at the last Con­vention the Nominating Committee exceeded its authority in rec­ommending a man for the first vacancy, but we think its recommenda­tion was a good one. The Board of Officers will, I am sure, be happy to nominate Mr. James Robertson of St. Paul’s, Augusta, to take the place of Mr. Hoynes [sic].

But the constitution of this Board must not be left to the casual decisions of an Annual Convention. Its work is specialized and im­portant. Nor should it be handicapped by the annual loss of men who probably will be its most valuable members. The men on the Board are all good men, some with more experience and knowledge than others. But the younger men will grow with experience and experi­ence is what will be increasingly needed in the years to come. Nothing that I have said to you is more vital than this for your future wel­fare, for this Board handles three-quarters of a million dollars, the income of which is essential to the happiness and welfare of us all. If it should so happen in years to come that this Board is all concen­trated in Savannah, that is all right. It ought to be resident where its —and your—investments are centered, for looking after those investments is its whole business. It is Savannah now; in the future it may be elsewhere. No one knows. But the Board will know as the con­ditions change, and if it is allowed to do so, it will choose its own membership with residence and abilities to meet changing conditions. The outstanding weakness of the rotating plan is that after it once is established, we shall lose our most valuable member each year, and it may well be the very year when we shall most need his experience and knowledge of our problems. And we shall be introducing a new man each year who may live far from the center of our invested in­terests, and whose local business interests may be such that he can­not afford to be away from home three days to attend an hour’s meet­ing of the Board. These are problems which we have already met many times in scattering the Board membership all over the diocese. Here there is no place for local pride of place or representation. We need efficiency, and this means having men of specialized knowledge and ability, who can meet whenever a meeting is called. And such meetings may be called even upon a few hours notice, as constantly changing conditions require.

The Episcopal Home for Girls is a diocesan institution. It re­ceives most of its support from endowments of long standing, and from the annual Thanksgiving offering from the churches of the diocese. It has been receiving some help since the great depression from the Widows and Orphans Fund of the diocese which is a fund provided for the widows and orphans of clergy of the Diocese of Georgia. There has never been an orphan of a Georgia clergyman in the Home, and probably never will be, and this grant from the diocesan Widows and Orphans Fund was made as a temporary expedient, when we had a large surplus in this fund, and never was intended to be permanent. For a time the Dodge Home on St. Simon’s Island was being helped from this Fund, which it had no right to be, for it is not a diocesan, but a strictly parochial institution. During this period the Fund ran into the red. Now it is barely balancing its income against its outgo, but the legitimate and legal needs are constantly increasing. I therefore rec­ommend that after this year no further subsidies be paid from the Widows and Orphans Fund of the Diocese to the Girls’ Home, but that such help as it needs, beyond its income from endowments and Thanksgiving offering and private and personal gifts, be included in the budget of the diocese, and be under the control of, and at the discretion of, the Executive Committee, as are all other Diocesan institutions. I hope that a motion will be made to this effect from the floor.

Since the present buildings are obsolete, and severely damaged by last year’s hurricane, I urge all persons who can to contribute toward the building of a new Home, a campaign for which is under way. This Home has done a magnificent work in character building, and as a matter of fact is now headed by a young woman who was in the Home as a child. I know of nothing finer in the Church anywhere, and nothing more deserving of your support.

Our diocesan camp has reached a crisis, and the time has come when as a diocese we have got to do something about it. And I mean it! And this applies primarily to you who are here, and represent the leadership on the part of the clergy and the STRENGTH of the diocese on the part of you laity. For twenty-five years we have been relying on Mrs. Griffeth to fill this camp with young people, and she has done it because of her love for youth, and because of her wide acquaintance throughout the diocese. And now she has retired. I know of no per­son who can take her place, but there is something which can, if we can get it, and that is a quickened sense of responsibility for the camp on the part of every clergyman in the diocese, and also of our leading laymen and laywomen. I say to you clergymen and laymen and lay­women, that Camp Reese is going to fail and go out of business, UN­LESS you furnish the leadership and the spirit and the constant en­deavor, which the passage of time has compelled Mrs. Griffeth to lay down. No one person is available to take her place, and you must take up the burden.

In the past she has toured the diocese, and sometimes I have tour­ed it with her, seeking camp members, but we cannot do it any longer. But you clergymen live in your own parishes, and know your own peo­ple and especially your own young people better than we or any other outsiders could possibly do. If not you should! And I want you to go back to your home towns tomorrow and canvass your congregations, hunting for young people and for adults whom these camps would benefit. We cannot maintain these wide-spread diocesan programs from Savannah. Not any longer. We have got to count on local interest and leadership. If we can’t do this, we have not got a diocese, and un­less we get it, in a very few years there will be no Camp Reese. I beg of you, I urge you, insofar as I have authority, I charge you to go back home and make Camp Reese your chief interest from now until it opens, and so make up what we have lost through Mrs. Griffeth’s retirement. She has given her life to this work for the last twenty-five years. I have worked with her for the last fifteen, but she has quit and I am getting too old for summer camps. It is up to you younger men and women. I say it again, “it is up to you younger men and women”. The young people are not automatically interested; you must interest them, and it will be your fault if the camps are not filled this summer.

You know what the Camps have done. They have produced Charles Carpenter, Bishop of Alabama; Clyde Jardine, Irwin Hulbert, Harcourt Waller, and other clergymen of the Church. And Carl Schuessler, who died on the deck of his ship in the South Pacific, and many other men who have brought credit to the Church. These Camps must not fail, and their continued success depends on YOU. So go back home and go to work on memberships in the camp this summer. If you do not, you are not meeting your Church obligations.

It may be that I have left out some things I should have said, and it may be that I have said some things you wish I had not said. But I am reaching down toward the close of my administration of this dio­cese, and saying the things I know are true. This coming Fall I MAY retire, and in two years I probably shall. Four years more and I MUST retire, and my criticism of this diocese is that you all, clergy and laity alike, have left too much of the work and responsibility of the diocese to the man who for the time, happens to be your bishop. In the last analysis it is not his responsibility, but YOURS, for he passes on, and you remain. It has always been so, and will ever be.

I ask that you recognize this fact, and take hold of the things which pertain to your diocesan life. For bishops die, but the diocese lives on, and the Diocese is YOU.