NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 581 



amusements of the period among men of petty wit and no con- 

 victions was the devising of light ribaldry against him.* 



In the midst of all this controversy stood three men, each of 

 whom has connected his name with it permanently. 



First of these was Samuel Wilberforce, at that time Bishop of 

 Oxford. The gifted son of William Wilberforce, who had been 

 honored throughout the world for his efforts in the suppression 

 of the slave trade, he had been rapidly advanced in the English 

 Church, and was at this time a prelate of wide influence. He was 

 eloquent and diplomatic, witty and amiable, always sure to be with 

 his fellow-churchmen and polite society against uncomfortable 

 changes. Whether the struggle was against the slave power in 

 the United States, or the squirearchy in Great Britain, or the 

 evolution theory of Darwin, or the new views promulgated by the 

 Essayists and Reviewers, he was always the suave spokesman of 

 those who opposed every innovator and " besought him to depart 

 out of their coasts." Mingling in curious proportions a truly re- 

 ligious feeling with care for his own advancement, his remark- 

 able power in the pulpit gave him great strength to carry out 

 his purposes, and his charming facility in being all things to 

 all men, as well as his skill in evading the consequences of his 

 many mistakes, gained him the sobriquet of "Soapy Sam." If 

 such brethren of his in the episcopate as Thirlwall and Selwyn 

 and Tait might claim to be in the apostolic succession, Wilber- 

 force was no less surely in the succession from the most gifted 

 and eminently respectable Sadducees who held high preferment 

 under Pontius Pilate. 



By a curious coincidence he had only a few years before 

 preached the sermon when Colenso was consecrated in West- 

 minster Abbey, and one passage in it may be cited as showing the 

 preacher's gift of prophecy both hortatory and predictive. Wil- 



* One of the nonsense verses in vogue at the time summed up the controversy as fol- 

 lows : 



" A bishop there was of Natal, 



Who had a Zulu for his pal ; 



Said the Zulu, ' My dear, 



Don't you think Genesis queer? ' 

 Which converted my lord of Natal." 



But verses quite as good appeared on the other side, one of them being as follows : 



" Is this, then, the great Colenso, 

 Who all the bishops offends so ? 



Said Sam of the Soap, 



' Bring fagots and rope, 

 For oh ! he's got no friends, oh ! ' " 



For Matthew Arnold's attack on Colenso, see Macmillan's Magazine, January, 1863. For 

 Maurice, see the references already given. 



