NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 579 



remarked : " Your bishops are making themselves the laughing- 

 stock of Europe. Every Hebraist knows that the animal men- 

 tioned in Leviticus is really the hare ; . . . every zoologist knows 

 that it does not chew the cud." * 



On Colenso's return to Natal, where many of the clergy and 

 laity who felt grateful for his years of devotion to them received 

 him with signs of affection, an attempt was made to ruin these 

 clergymen by depriving them of their little stipends, and to ter- 

 rify the simple-minded laity by threatening them with the same 

 " greater excommunication " which had been inflicted upon their 

 bishop. To make the meaning of this more evident, the vicar- 

 general of the Bishop of Cape Town met Colenso at the door of 

 his own cathedral, and solemnly bade him " depart from the house 

 of God as one who has been handed over to the Evil One/' The 

 sentence of excommunication was read before the assembled faith- 

 ful, and they were enjoined to treat their bishop as "a heathen 

 man and a publican." But these and a long series of other perse- 

 cutions created a reaction in his favor. 



There remained to Colenso one bulwark which his enemies 

 found stronger than they had imagined the British courts of 

 justice. The greatest efforts were now made to gain the day be- 

 fore these courts, to humiliate Colenso, and to reduce to beggary 

 the clergy who remained faithful to him, and it is worthy of note 

 that one of the leaders in preparing the legal plea of the commit- 

 tee against the accused was Mr. Gladstone. 



But this bulwark proved impregnable ; both the Judicial Com- 

 mittee of the Privy Council and the Rolls Court decided in Co- 

 lenso's favor. Not only were his enemies thus forbidden to de- 

 prive him of his salary, but their excommunication of him was 

 made null and void ; it became, indeed, a subject of ridicule, and 

 even a man so enwrapped in religious thought as John Keble 

 confessed and lamented that the English people no longer be- 

 lieved in excommunication. The bitterness of the defeated found 

 vent in the utterances of the colonial metropolitan who had ex- 

 communicated Colenso Bishop Gray, "the Lion of Cape Town" 

 who denounced the judgment as " awful and profane " and the 

 Privy Council as " a masterpiece of Satan " and " the great 

 dragon of the English Church." Even Wilberforce, careful as 



* For the passages referred to as provoking especial wrath, see Colenso, Lectures on the 

 Pentateuch and the Moabite Stone, 18*76, p. 21*7. For the episode regarding the hare chew- 

 ing the cud, see Cox, Life of Colenso, i, p. 2-40. The following epigram went the rounds : 



" The bishops all have sworn to shed their blood 

 To prove 'tis true the hare doth chew the cud. 

 bishops, doctors, and divines, beware 

 Weak is the faith that hangs upon a hair ! " 



