454 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The orthodox decried it as timid and the liberals denounced it as 

 irregular. The same influences were exerted in the sister island, 

 and the Protestant archbishops in Ireland issued a joint letter 

 warning the faithful against the " disingenuousness " of the 

 book. Everything seemed to increase the ferment. A meeting of 

 clergy and laity having been held at Oxford in the matter of 

 electing a Professor of Sanskrit, the older orthodox party having 

 made every effort to defeat the eminent scholar Max Miiller, and 

 all in vain, found relief after their defeat in new denunciations of 

 Essays and Reviews. 



Of the two prelates who might have been expected to breast 

 the storm, Tait, Bishop of London, afterward Archbishop of Can- 

 terbury, bent to it for a period, though he soon recovered himself 

 and did good service ; the other, Thirl wall, Bishop of St. David's, 

 bided his time, and, when the proper moment came, struck most 

 effective blows for truth and justice. 



Tait, large-minded and shrewd, one of the most statesmanlike 

 of prelates, at first endeavored to detach Temple and Jowett from 

 their associates, but though Temple was broken down with a load 

 of care, and especially by the fact that he had upon his shoulders 

 the school at Rugby, whose patrons had become alarmed at his 

 connection with the book, he showed a most refreshing courage 

 and manliness. A passage from his letters to the Bishop of Lon- 

 don runs as follows : " With regard to my own conduct I can only 

 say that nothing on earth will induce me to do what you propose. 

 I do not judge for others, but in me it would be base and untrue." 

 On another occasion Dr. Temple, when pressed in the interest of 

 the great institution of learning under his care to detach himself 

 from his associates in writing the book, declared to a meeting of 

 the masters of the school that if any statements were made to the 

 effect that he disapproved of the other writers in the volume, he 

 should probably find it his duty to contradict them. Another of 

 these letters to the Bishop of London contains sundry passages of 

 great force. One is as follows : " Many years ago you urged us 

 from the university pulpit to undertake the critical study of the 

 Bible. You said that it was a dangerous study, but indispensable. 

 You described its difficulties, and those who listened must have 

 felt a confidence (as I assuredly did, for I was there) that if they 

 took your advice and entered on the task, you, at any rate, would 

 never join in treating them unjustly if their study had brought 

 with it the difficulties you described. Such a study, so full of diffi- 

 culties, imperatively demands freedom for its condition. To tell 

 a man to study, and yet bid him under heavy penalties to come to 

 the same conclusions with those who have not studied, is to mock 

 him. If the conclusions are prescribed, the study is precluded." 

 And again, what, as coming from a man who has since held two 



