NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 583 



and at the most critical moment opened to him the pulpit of 

 Westminster Abbey.* 



The third of the high ecclesiastics of the Church of England 

 whose names were linked in this contest was Thirlwall. 



He was undoubtedly the foremost man in the Church of his 

 time the greatest ecclesiastical statesman, the profoundest his- 

 torical scholar, the theologian of clearest vision in regard to the 

 relations between the Church and his epoch. Alone among his 

 brother bishops at this period, he stood "four square to all the 

 winds that blew," as during all his life he stood against all storms 

 of clerical or popular unreason. He had his reward. He was 

 never advanced beyond a poor Welsh bishopric ; but, though he 

 saw men wretchedly inferior constantly promoted beyond him, he 

 never flinched, never lost heart or hope, but bore steadily on, re- 

 fusing to hold a brief for lucrative injustice, and resisting to the 

 last all reaction and fanaticism, thus preserving not only his own 

 self-respect but the future respect of the English nation for the 

 Church. 



A few other leading churchmen were discreetly kind to Co- 

 lenso, among them Tait, who had now been made Archbishop of 

 Canterbury ; but, manly as he was, he was somewhat more cau- 

 tious in this matter than those who most revere his memory could 

 now wish. 



In spite of these friends the clerical onslaught was for a time 

 effective ; Colenso, so far as England was concerned, was discred- 

 ited and virtually driven from his functions. But this enforced 

 leisure simply gave him more time to struggle for the protection 

 of his native flock against colonial rapacity, and to continue his 

 great work on the Bible. 



His work produced its effect. The impulse which it gave had 

 much to do with arousing a new generation of English, Scotch, 

 and American scholars. That a new epoch had come was now 

 more and more evident, and out of the many proofs of this we 

 may note two of the most striking. 



For many years the Bampton Lectures at Oxford had been 

 considered as adding steadily and strongly to the bulwarks of the 

 old orthodoxy. If now and then orthodoxy had appeared in 



* For interesting testimony to Stanley's character, from a quarter whence it would have 

 been least expected, see a reminiscence of Lord Shaftesbury in the Life of Frances Power 

 Cobbe, London and New York, 1894. The late Bishop of Massachusetts, Phillips Brooks, 

 whose death was a bereavement to his country and to the Church universal, once gave the 

 present writer a vivid description of a scene witnessed by him in the Convocation of Canter- 

 bury, when Stanley virtually withstood alone the obstinate traditionalism of the whole body 

 in the matter of the Athanasian Creed. It is to be hoped that this account may be brought 

 to light among the letters written by Brooks at that time. See also Dean Church's Life and 

 Letters, p. 294, for a very important testimony. 



