582 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



"berf orce then said to Colenso : " You need boldness to risk all for 

 God; to stand by the truth and its supporters against men's 

 threatenings and the devil's wrath ; . . . you need a patient meek- 

 ness to bear the galling calumnies and false surmises with which, 

 if you are faithful, that same Satanic working which, if it could, 

 would burn your body, will assuredly assail you daily through 

 the pens and tongues of deceivers and deceived, who, under a sem- 

 blance of a zeal for Christ, will evermore distort your words, mis- 

 represent your motives, rejoice in your failings, exaggerate your 

 errors, and seek by every poisoned breath of slander to destroy 

 your powers of service." * 



Unfortunately, when Colenso followed this advice, his ad- 

 viser became the most untiring of his persecutors. While leav- 

 ing to men like the Metropolitan of Cape Town and Arch- 

 deacon Denison the noisy part of the onslaught, Wilberforce was 

 among those who were most zealous in devising more effective 

 measures. 



But time, and even short time, has redressed the balance be- 

 tween the two prelates. Colenso is seen more and more of all 

 men as a righteous leader in a noble effort to cut the Church loose 

 from fatal entanglements with an outworn system of interpreta- 

 tion ; Wilberforce, as the remembrance of his eloquence and of 

 his personal charms dies away, and as the revelations of his indis- 

 creet biographers lay bare his modes of procedure, is seen to have 

 left, on the whole, the most disppointing record made by any 

 Anglican prelate during the nineteenth century. 



But there was a far brighter page in the history of the Church 

 of England ; for the second of the three who linked their names 

 with that of Colenso in the struggle was Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, 

 Dean of Westminster. His action during this whole persecution 

 was an honor not only to the Anglican Church but to humanity. 

 For his own manhood and the exercise of his own intellectual 

 freedom he had cheerfully given up the high preferment in the 

 Church which had been easily within his grasp. To him truth 

 and justice were more than the decrees of a Convocation of Can- 

 terbury or of a Pan- Anglican Synod ; in this as in other matters 

 he braved the storm, never yielded to theological prejudice, from 

 first to last held out a brotherly hand to the persecuted bishop, 



* For the social ostracism of Colenso, see works already cited ; also Cox's Life of 

 Colenso. For the passage from Wilberforce's sermon at the consecration of Colenso, see 

 Rev. Sir G. W. Cox, The Church of England and the Teaching of Bishop Colenso. For 

 Wilberforce's relations to the Colenso case in general, see his Life, by his son, vol. iii, espe- 

 cially pp. 113-126 and 229-231. For Keble's avowal that no Englishman believes in excom- 

 munication, ibid., p. 128. For a guarded statement of Dean Stanley's opinion regarding 

 Wilberforce and Newman, see a letter from Dean Church to the Warden of Keble, in Life 

 and Letters of Dean Church, p. 293. 



