56 1860-1865 : PERSONAL 



greater countenance than your memorial professes to do ; 

 but I cannot help thinking that the Essayists are placed in 

 an extremely critical position as public professors of the 

 Faith of the Church of England and holders of its benefits : 

 and as I should wish to do more than give my name if called 

 upon to do so, I feel extremely anxious as to the turn matters 

 may take any day. What I should suggest would be to give 

 them privately our names in the terms of your memorial, 

 and offer to rally round them publicly when the time comes 

 for their acting, if they care to have us. 



My opinion of the whole thing is that the Essayists cannot 

 stop where they are ; the public who are now excited by 

 them, whether to admiration or to determination, have a right 

 to expect that they will proceed ; they have thrown down 

 the gauntlet and it is taken up ; they must either retreat, 

 or leave the Church, or justify their position in the Church 

 by expediency or by honest intentions, and for my part 

 I am inclined on various grounds to uphold them in the 

 latter course if they adopt it . Can you not communicate with 

 them, through A. P. Stanley or otherwise ? If so, and you 

 can ascertain that such a memorial as you propose, without 

 names such as Owen, Bell, Herschel, Rosse and a host of 

 others which I fancy you won't get, would be acceptable to 

 them, I will still sign with pleasure. 



Whatever you do, do not suppose I am lukewarm or 

 snub your memorial. 



When a similar attack was made on Bishop Colenso, 1 

 he wrote, ' I shall subscribe to the Colenso defence fund on 



1 John William Colenso (1814-83), well known for his school-books on arith- 

 metic and algebra, had become Bishop of the new see of Natal in 1853. His 

 critical faculties, already awakened on some theological points, were further 

 stirred in the course of his translation of the Bible into Zulu, by the plain ques- 

 tions of his converts. His views on the historical authenticity of parts of the 

 Pentateuch (the first three vols. appeared in 1862-3) led to sentence of deposi- 

 tion (Dec. 23) and excommunication by Dr. Gray, Bishop of Capetown, proceed- 

 ings quashed on appeal by the judicial committee of the Privy Council. In 1866 

 he was again upheld by the Rolls Court when the trustees of the Colonial 

 Bishoprics Fund refused to pay him his episcopal income. His original work 

 on the Pentateuch was concluded in 1879, having been interrupted by his reply 

 to the Speaker's Commentary, designed to answer him. His New Bible Com- 

 mentary Literally Examined appeared in six parts, 1871-4. ' The result,' 

 says the D.N.B., ' was not a triumph for the " bishops and other clergy " who 

 had undertaken to cross lances with him.' His latter years were taken up with 

 efforts to obtain justice for certain Zulu chiefs who had been summarily treated. 

 In one case he was successful ; in the others the alarm of a Zulu invasion, which 

 ended in the war of 1879, stood in his way. 



