Excerpt from History of the Diocese of California: From 1849 to 1914

It is seldom that the work and the man are so happily fitted to gether as are this History of the Diocese of California and the Historiographer who has written it. For more than two-thirds of the period covered by the History the Reverend Douglas Ottinger Kelley has been an active clergyman of the Diocese. He has been part of it continuously for upwards of two score years of its growth. He has personally had large opportunity to know of its annals at first hand. Moreover he himself has been identified with some of its most important missionary and institutional origins. He has indeed under God made no unimportant part of the History he writes.

The book itself may be safely left to show the advantage of hav ing a writer whose sharing in the history has not qualified extent and closeness of observation with bias. And as the pioneer Diocese of the Pacific Coast, the Diocese of California has some unique and notable points of interest for Churchmen in general. Within its borders occurred the first use of the Prayer Book and the first re corded Missionary Prayer in the territory of the United States. It had the first Bishop on the Pacific Coast; the first formal fixing a Cathedral Seat in our American Church was in this Diocese; the first Conference of a Missionary Department was held here and the first House of Churchwomen was organized here. The Diocese has been divided three times and is now about as strong as it was at any time when undivided, notwithstanding its unprecedented disaster as an American Diocese in 1906. Properly included in this History is that of the Church in the Dioceses of Los Angeles and Sacra mento and of the District of San Joaquin in its beginnings in the undivided field together with some sketches of their later separate development. The first General Convention of the Twentieth Cen tury was held here in 1901, and while these and other items of gen eral interest are part of the Diocesan History this recital of what the Diocese has passed through in the more than sixty years cannot but mingle deep humility with gratitude to God. Problems have been and are still thick; in human insufficiency and frailty there has often been the need to learn the lesson of trust and each worker in. His generation has realized how far short of his vision he has fallen. But withal the record of blessing which runs through these pages truly justifies for the retrospect that which was happily taken as a prophetic sign at Bishop Kip's consecration in New York City, on the Festival of St. Simon and St. Jude, October 28, 1853, when the Church in California with its first noble pioneers was only four years old. One who wrote of the Service at the time said: The weather was exceedingly unpleasant during the early part of the morning, but after the consecration of the Bishoflp and while the Communion Office was proceeding, the clouds broke away and a gleam of tinted sunshine fell upon the Altar and lighted up the Sanctuary. This was beautifully illustrative of the History of the Diocese of California. William F. Nichols.

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