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THE LIFE
OF
JOHN WILLIAM COLENSO, D.D.
YrKim. a Photo{,raph by M'' B.Kiach. Durtiui.
THE LIFE
OF
JOHN WILLIAM COLENSO, d.d.
Bisbop of IRatal.
BY THE REV.
SIR GEORGE W. COX, BART., M.A.
RECTOR OF SCRAYINGHAM.
LV TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II.
Eontion : W. RIDGWAY. 1888
All Rights Resei-ved.
Richard Clay and Sons, london and bungay.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
I'AGK
RETURN TO NATAL. 1 865-66 I
CHAPTER II. TEACHING IN NATAL. — " NATAL SERMONS." 1 865-66 69
CHAPTER III. THE ROMILLY JUDGEMENT.— WORK IN NATAL. 1 867 II 6
CHAPTER IV.
DIOCESAN AND OTHER WORK. 1868-73 194
CHAPTER V.
"the speaker's COMMENTARY." 187I-74 266
CHAPTER VI.
THE GOVERNMENT OF NATAL AND THE HLUBI TRIBE. 1873 . . 313
CHAPTER VII.
TRIAL AND DEFENCE OF LANGALIBALELE. 1 874 340
CHAPTER VIII. LAST VISIT TO ENGLAND. — THE MATSHANA INQUIRY. 1 874-75 • S^^
CHAPTER IX.
CETSHWAYO AND ISANDHLWANA. 1 875-79 449
959019
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER X.
PAGE
CORRESPONDENCE AND WORK. 1 879-80 505
CHAPTER XI.
CORRESPONDENCE AND WORK. 1880-83 55°
CHAPTER XII.
THE EVENING OF HIS LIFE AND WORK. 1 882-83 59°
', '
Appendix K.— Letters Patent 643
Appendix B. — Despatch from the Secretary of State for the
Colonies, January 30, 1868 648
Appendix C. — Letter to Joh7i Miller, Esq., M.L.A., Mayor of Port
Elizabeth 649
Appendix D.— The Temptation of Eve 683
Appendix E. — Missionaries tn Ziiliiland 685
Appendix F. — Employment of Poisoji ifi War 690
Appendix G. — Disingenuous Criticism. The " Guardian" . . . . 692
Appendix H. — The Colony of Natal and the Zulu War 693
Appendix I. — Goi'crnmcnt Administration in Natal 695
INDEX 697
Portrait by Mr. Kisch of Durban in 1882 Frontispiece.
Portrait of Bishop Colenso and his Grandson . . To face p. 585
THE LIFE
OF
JOHN WILLIAM COLENSO, D.D.
THE LIFE
OF
JOHN WILLIAM COLENSO, D.D.,
LORD BISHOP OF NATAL.
CHAPTER I.
RETURN TO NATAL, 1 865-66.
Shortly before he left England the Bishop published the Fifth Part of his Examination of the Pentateuch. It was in his belief the most important part of his task so far as he had up to that time been enabled to carry it. Whether his countrymen might acknowledge it or not, he felt that he had demonstrated the worthlessness of an old superstition, which cramped and withered the religious life of the land. He left his fifth volume, therefore, as a token of farewell at once to his friends and to his adversaries. To the former he had to make acknowledgements for help and support in the struggle.
" Most heartily and sincerely do I thank those many friends in England, of the clergy and laity, who have aided me in these trying times, publicly and privately, with counsel and comfort, who have stood by me in the hour of conflict, and who have sustained me with kind words, and defended me VOL. IL E
8:j
2 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
by generous deeds, the remembrance of which will never depart from me. " I now return to the duties which have been so long inter- rupted,— of late by circumstances not under my own control. In the midst of those duties I shall find frequent opportunity for acting on the principles which I have enunciated, and shall rejoice in breathing myself, and helping others to breathe, the fresh free air, which the recent decisions have made it now possible to breathe within the bounds of the National Church. I shall also, as I hope and fully purpose, find time to pursue these inquiries, and perhaps, hereafter, return to publish them. But all these things are in the hands of God. Should I never return, I bid my friends in England farewell, to meet them again, I trust, on another shore. But, if I should return, a few years hence, it is my firm belief that, as we are now all thoroughly ashamed of those trials and executions for witch-craft and sorcery . . . which disgraced the Christianity of our forefathers in the Middle Ages, nay, even down to much later days, ... so I shall find in that day my fellow-countrymen and fellow- Church- men ashamed of that religious fear and frenzy which has raged so furiously in these our times — ashamed of the violence with which they have maintained, in opposition to the plainest evidence of reason, the time-honoured traditions of former ages — ashamed of the attempt to break down and crush, under the weight of opprobrious names, and silence by arbitrary measures, fitted only for the dark ages of ecclesiastical despotism, honest and earnest endeavours, on the part of myself and others among the clergy, to relieve the religious teaching of the National Church from the reproach of being contradictory to the plain conclusions of science, and far behind the progress of the age. Nay, I am not without hope that some, even of those who have been most severe upon me, may learn meanwhile to entertain a kinder feeling, and come to see that, however unworthily, I have yet according to my light been labouring, as earnestly as they, to sow the seed of Life Eternal, and do the work to which my God has called me ; and so may give to me
i86s-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 3
again the right hand of fellowship, which they have now withheld, as a fellow-labourer with them for the kingdom of God."
More than twenty years have passed since these words were written ; and it may perhaps be safely said, that the conditions of the struggle have been materially modified. Whether the antagonism between the traditionalist party and the real thinkers in the country is really lessened, we have but inadequate means for determining. Startling books are written and startling things are said by the clergy as well as by the laity in the English Church ; but on the self-styled orthodox side something like an agreement seems to have been made, by tacit consent, to offer no reply, and to treat so-called heretical arguments and conclusions with silence. Such a condition of things is not perhaps the most favourable for the progress of thought ; but the longer the silence, the less will be the chance of anything like a return to the old dictatorial dogmatism.
In returning to Natal, the Bishop was returning only to active warfare under different forms. He might hope, indeed, to have the sincere adhesion of a laity resolved to obey the law of the Church of England, even if they could make no pro- fession of adopting all or any of the conclusions to which the work of recent years had brought him. This he had no wish that they should do except from honest conviction. Had he wished anything else, he would have been committed to the same fallacy which led Archbishop Longley to declare that the members of the Church of England in Natal could not accept him as their Bishop without " identifying " them- selves " with his errors." How long or severe might be the conflict betokened by these words, he could not tell. In England, although he met with neither sympathy nor help in some quarters from which he expected both, he had received tenfold elsewhere. From the friends who had thus rallied
B 2
4 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
round him he was now separated by eight thousand miles of sea, or between two and three months of time, while he had to face alone all the opposition which the whole sacerdotal party in the Church of England could bring to bear upon him. Even after he became assured of the support of the laity in Natal, he had none to whom he could look for advice, or with whom he could take counsel in his work of Biblical criticism. He knew, in short, that there was a hard fight before him ; but he faced it without misgiving, and the inci- dents of his landing at Durban were in a high degree cheer- ing. Of the welcome prepared for him his daughter says : —
*' The iirst sign of friendliness [was] the dressing of the harbour with flags, as our ship came in sight round the blufif, our Captain being at first much puzzled to read the 'signals' thus being run up, until it dawned upon him, ' Why, they must know that we have the Bishop on board.' Next the pilot-boat came tumbling out, bringing two or three friends shouting, ' Well, my lord, we've come through the water to you, as you've come through fire and water to us ; ' and then we landed, he, as usual, standing back to allow the women and children among his fellow-passengers to go first ; and so it happened that we stepped a little puzzled into a close- packed silent crowd, which broke into a hearty cheer a few minutes after, as he set foot on shore."
To W. H. DoMviLLE, Esq.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, A^^7w;/(5,?;- 17, 1865. [After mentioning the hearty greeting which he received from the laity at Maritzburg, together with an address signed by 171 persons.]
" Then we proceeded to Bishopstowe, where we found all things right — the natives dancing and weeping in ecstasies
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 5
of delight, and the place looking very beautiful and calm,
after the toil and battle of London life F'rom other
parts of the colony I have received most satisfactory letters. In fact, everything would go as well as possible, but for the action of the S.P.G., whose funds support the clergy in their rebellion, and may be withdrawn from them if they should recognize their lawful Bishop. It is scandalous
conduct on the part of the Society and its instigators
I am hard at work on Part VI., having done a good deal of preparatory labour on the voyage. How can I thank you sufficiently for all your kind help in so many ways .^ .... On Friday last the two churchwardens of the Cathe- dral came out by appointment to Bishopstowe .... On my entering my study, one of them arose and read a protest against my ministering in the Cathedral, evidently, written for them by the Dean, and then presented me with another from the Dean, and a third from certain members of the laity. But I may as well say at once that the address of welcome at Durban was signed by 14S, that at Addington by the two churchwardens and 30 others, and the address at Pietermaritzburg by 171 ; so that more than 300 have signed for me, and only 150 against me. .... Then, looking at his (Dean Green's) list, we find a great number of names of people who are far away from Maritz- burg, others who belong to St. Andrew's Church, others who are Dissenters, others who go nowhere to church, and
others who are mere lads — minors Only a few of
them are regular attendants at the Cathedral of a respectable standing ; and though, of course, my Maritzburg list con- tains a mixture of all classes, yet my 171 names were all obtained hastily in Maritzburg itself in two days, whereas the Dean's list had been a month in preparation, he and Mr. Robinson having gone personally to everyone whom they hoped to influence, and charged them solemnly not to profess themselves ' heretics ' and ' disbelievers in the Bible.' I have dwelt too long on this ; but it is the Dean's only card to play in England, and I am certain that you will find in the Guardian some attempt to represent his address as a
6 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
bona fide protest from the Church people of Pietermaritz- burg — which is simply ridiculous, or, rather, untrue. " Well, having received the three documents, I put them quietly aside, and asked the churchwardens what now they expected. 'They hoped that I should not now preach on Sunday.^ ' Do you really hope that, Mr. Dickinson t Can you say honestly, as a Christian man, that you have any hope or expectation of the kind .'' Do you think that I should have come from England with a fixed purpose, announced before- hand— to discharge my duties as Bishop of this diocese — and be turned aside by such papers as these } ' Well, they wished that I would not. ' Ah ! that is very different.' However, I assured them that, for their sakes and their children's, I felt bound not to comply with their wish."
On the next day, the churchwardens took upon themselves to close the Cathedral to both parties on the Sunday, and forwarded a message to that effect to the Bishop, who sent a note conveying this information to his registrar, the younger Mr. Shepstone. The Bishop himself
" determined to preach to the white people in St. Mary's Kafir chapel. Accordingly, I rode in the next morning. . . . But just as I reached town, a friend met me, and informed me of what had passed, as follows : — Mr. Shepstone, on getting my note, rode out immediately to the Chief Justice, and applied for, and obtained, an interdict against the church
being closed. At lo r.M. the Churchwarden W was
supping at the club, and announcing that the church would be certainly shut ; only the law could interfere, and it was too late for that to do anything (hence, no doubt, their reason for sending out the message to me, instead of in- forming my registrar) ; but while he was speaking, to the great amusement of the company, in walked the sheriff and served him with the interdict. But where was the Dean .-' No one could tell. At last it was made out that he and the other churchwarden, and a policeman, were shut up in the church, where the Dean spent the whole night.
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 7
expecting some violent opening of the doors. On Sunday- morning, it appears, there were great searchings of heart between the Dean and his officers as to what was to be done. I heard . . . that for some time they had resolved to set at naught the judge's order, and go to prison. But then it turned out that the Dean expected the church- wardens to go to prison, and the churchwardens expected the Dean ; and when this difference of opinion was betrayed, the churchwardens determined to obey the law, and open the doors. They kept them shut, however, to the last moment, up to 11 A.M., by which time an immense number of white people had gathered round them, and behind them numbers also of black people, who were intensely interested in watching the proceedings — the controversy being known throughout the whole land. . . . The effect upon the natives through the ingenious arrangement of the Dean and church- wardens was this, as William ^ tells me. They looked on, and saw the whole body of white people barred out of the Cathedral, till Sobantu arrived, when instantly a change took place : first the inner door is opened, and the church- warden comes out and reads a paper (their protest) ; then the outer gate is opened, and the whole church is filled in a moment ; and then Sobantu, having had the doors opened, walks quietly in himself As usual, their blunders have helped my cause immensely. The natives were at once perfectly satisfied that I had the power, and that the Dean had been misleading them all along in saying that I should never be allowed to enter the church. As I walked up the aisle, the churchwardens met me, and for the third time read their protest ; then the Dean ordered the Bishop's sentence of deprivation to be read ; then he himself, in a theatrical manner, warned me that what [the Church] ' shall bind on earth is bound in heaven. That sentence stands ratified in the presence of Almighty God. Depart ! Go away from the House of God ! ' All which I listened to quietly, only saying, ' I have come to discharge in this
^ The "intelligent Zulu." See Vol. I. pp. 50, 87, 105, 156.
LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
church and diocese the duties committed to me by the Queen.' Then the churchwardens read the judge's order, during which I robed in the chancel (the Dean refused to open the door of the vestry), and then I told the people I was going to read prayers. The crowded congregation, which thronged the aisle as well as all the seats, was stilled in a moment. They had tied up the bell-ropes, locked the harmonium, and taken away the Prayer Book and Bible ; but the latter were brought back in time, and I read all the prayers, pitched the chant and hymn tunes, and had the whole congregation with me ; the Dean and Mr. Robinson kneeling before the altar with their backs to the congrega- tion. ... In the evening, Mr. W^ — — promised all should be properly ordered : he would attend at a quarter past six, and see the church lighted, &c. At the time of service, however, I went up and found crowds of people outside, the rain falling, and the doors closed. The Dean, they say, stood by enjoying the dilemma. At six he had sent some away, saying that there would be no service to-night, because of the ' rabble ' in the morning, and the desecration to the chancel by the people sitting in it. I had called up some of those who stood crowded in the aisle — as the chancel was almost empty — and some forty sat there ; my principle being that the chancel was made for the people, not the people for the chancel. I waited some five or ten minutes, and at last, seeing that all were getting wet, and there were many ladies among them, I dismissed the congregation, and promised to preach next Sunday morning. Half an
hour later, Mr. W came up, opened the church, and
lighted it ; but there was no service. He has written to me, and published a full and humble apology, saying that, fatigued with the exertions and anxiety of the previous night and morning, he had fallen asleep after dinner, and had not waked in time. Of course I accept his explana- tion, though the Dean's conduct is the more inexplicable. However, the result is that many of his own friends are disgusted, and nothing could have happened better for my cause."
1 865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 9
"To THE Rev. G. W. Cox.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, November 30, 1865. " I send you Natal papers by which you will see how matters are going over here ; and in one word I may sum it up by saying the laity here are all right, and the Dean can do nothing with them. But the Archbishop of Canterbury has just written to him (in reply to the request for advice which he forwarded some months ago from the clergy and laity ! !) to say that they have a perfect right to elect a Bishop for themselves, and he says, ' I cannot see how you can accept Dr. Colenso as your Bishop without identifying yourselves with his errors.' This is certainly scandalous, though no doubt the Archbishop has been imposed upon by the reports which have been sent him by the Dean. . . . The Archbishop says the Convocation is to advise my clergy what they are to do, and they are expected, of course, to confirm the action of the Archbishop. If the liberal members of the Lower House would come up to the scratch, the whole plan might be defeated ; and I rather think that Stanley will be able to make some capital of my letter. I wish I could get my native, William, to put upon paper all he said to me a few days ago, when we talked about the present movement. I found him, and I believe all the [Mission] natives, perfectly prepared for all that I have to tell them. Indeed, Bishop Gray has made the way easy for me by saying what he did to them." ^
To Sir Charles Lyell.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, November 3c, 1865.
" Your very kind letter of October 8th duly reached me, and now I must send a very few words of reply. I say very few, because my time has been greatly taken up (when I should have been writing for the English mail), by the necessity of replying at length to a letter of the Archbishop
1 See Vol. I. pp. 86-88.
lo LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. I.
of Canterbury addressed to my Dean.^ ... It is a monstrous act, as it seems to m_e, for one in the Archbishop's position- . . . Of course the Archbishop has been thoroughly de- ceived by the Bishop of Oxford, &c., as to the state of things in Natal, and probably the Bishop of Oxford himself has been deceived by the sanguine reports of Bishop Gray and Dean Green. I send to you, and to the two Deans (Milman and Stanley), and many of our friends, the Natal papers containing accounts of our proceedings, so that I need not enter into details about them. I will only say that all is going as well as I could desire. The great bulk
of the laity are entirely with me I have not yet
seen my special friend Mr. Shepstone, who has been upon the frontier for some months past, watching the slow work of the Basuto war. But I had a letter from him yesterday in which he says, ' I happened to see a private letter from Mr. Henderson (one of the most influential citizens, and formerly a close friend of the Dean's), in which he says, " If the Bishop will only conduct the services of the Cathe- dral himself for a time, he will carry everything before him." ' This I do in the morning, leaving the coast clear for the Dean to annihilate my teaching, if he can, in the evening ; but he has tied up the church bell, locked the harmonium, &c., so that I have to pitch the chants and tunes myself ; but the congregation take them up very heartily, and yesterday I had an offer from some of them to put in another harmonium, and form a choir. I mean to require the use of the bell, &c., next Sunday. You will be amused to find that I have had to spend an hour or two to-day in refuting a certain great geologist who has been solemnly quoted against me at the head of a long letter in the Times of Natal, as follows : — -^ Sir Charles Lyell says : " On grounds which may be termed strictly geological maj^ be inferred the recent date of the creation of man. All geological induction, indeed, demonstrates that man is not more than 6,000 years old." ' I have asked for the reference,.
^ See the preceding letter.
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. ir
and at any rate I have confuted the said authority out of his own mouth in his last pubHshed works, which, thanks tO' his kindness, 1 have by my side."
To THE Rev. C. Voysey.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, December i, 1865. I must write you a few Hnes to tell you and your good people that we have arrived safely, thank God ; and one of the first things I did, on entering my study, was to open your letter, which lay there awaiting me. We had on the whole a very pleasant and favourable voyage, though very stormy from the Cape. It seemed as if a violent gust from those regions drove me away, with a sort of fury of despair, towards my own ' wretched colony ' (as the Bishop of Oxford says), when, as soon as we got sight of the lovely coast, the storm lulled, the sky cleared, and everything became bright around us, with just a fresh wind at times to remind us that we had not yet reached a land-locked^ peaceful haven of rest. We entered the outer bay on Monday morning, November 6, and the day before the mail had left for the Cape and England — greatly to our disappointment, as we hoped to have sent home by it news of our safe arrival. But it had this good result, that no tidings went to Capetown ; so that up to this moment, though I have been nearly a month in the colony,^ we have yet no anathemas from the Metropolitan of all South Africa. You will see, by the papers wdiich I have ordered to be sent to you, how I have been received, and how entirely mistaken were those good people in England who prophesied for me all kinds of insult and of opposition. The Bishop of Oxford's words, I suspect, had a deeper meaning than people in England would imagine, when he spoke so bitterly of that ' wretched colony.' He probably knew from the reports which had reached him that all was not so smooth and serene as they had hoped to find it by
^ There was at this time only one mail each month.
12 LIFE OF BISHOP COLE N SO. chap. i.
this time, after three years' assiduous efforts to blacken and defame my character. The fact is that they have roused here, as in England, the good old English feeling for fair play, and my position is really much stronger here at present than even I had been led to expect."
To THE Rev. G. W. Cox.
" BiSHOPSTOWE,/^c;/;/^rr_y 3, 1866.
" The plot begins to thicken. On Christmas Day arrived a private letter ^ from Bishop Gray, telling me that he had sent an ' official ' letter through the Dean on the subject of my excommunication. I have replied '^ to the first, and ignored the second. ... I expect that I shall be excom- municated next Sunday ; but I do not imagine that it will have the slightest effect in disturbing my position here. My congregation is large and attentive, and very respect- able ; the Dean's, I hear, is very small. You will see by the sermons which I send you what sort of teaching my people get from me.
" I see more and more clearly the importance of the step which I have taken in coming out here. It is quite clear that the whole of the proceeding against me is an attempt on the part of the Bishop of Oxford and Archbishop of Canterbury to undo the evil of the judgement in Wilson and Williams's case. If they could establish in my case that, but for the statute law of England, the ' Church of England ' would ' cast out ' such opinions as mine (which they would do if Bishop Gray succeeded in making my position untenable, while still holding the Queen's letters patent), then they will turn round upon the English clergy and say, ' You are in honour bound to renounce such opinions as inconsistent with the teaching of the Church.' I am happy to say my position is strong enough as regards myself personally. My only difficulty is with the S.P.G.-, which exercises a terrible thraldom over the clergy. At any rate, here I must stay at my post until the battle is
1 See Vol. I. p. 375. - lb. p. 378.
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 13
fought out effectually ; and that, I expect, will take some time longer. I have hardly been able to do anything to Part VI. since I landed, and I now see that I shall have very little time for such work with the present claims upon me. If my enemies had but known what service they were doing to me and to the cause by keeping me so long in England with nothing to do but to wait for the decision of the law ! But every step of theirs hitherto has been a blunder; and so, I expect, will the 'excommunication' prove."
To W. H. DoMviLLE, Esq.
"BiSHOPSTOWE, /<a:«Z/arj/ 2, 1866.
" We are still surviving, thank God, and in very good spirits ; though noiv, I expect, comes the tug of war. On Christmas Day the mail brought me a pi'ivate letter from Bishop Gray, very characteristic, and telling me that I should re- ceive through the Dean an ' official letter,' containing, it would seem, a warning of ' excommunication,' conditional upon my consenting or not to one of four propositions which he makes to me of submitting my books to certain bodies or persons, whom he named — all, of course, eccle- siastics pledged to the uttermost to condemn me. This letter reached me three or four days after I got the private letter, to which last I replied at once, saying that I could take no cognisance of any ' official ' letter from him on such a subject. So when the ' official ' letter came, I replied to the Dean that I could not take any notice of it, but had replied to the ' private.' I then sent the former to my registrar, and allowed him to look at it, and I know the contents so far as to be aware that, whereas the private letter gives me ' only two courses,' by which I may avoid the terrible catastrophe threatened, the ' official ' mentions four^ I think, and orders the Dean to read the sentence of excommunication if I do not accept one of the propositions within seven daj-s. Accordingly, next Sunday I expect the grand blow will be struck, which, I need hardly say, will not in any way advance their cause in Natal. . . .
.14 LIFE OF BISHOP CO LENS 0. chap. I.
Bishop Gray has blundered here as usual. The Dean cannot know what reply I have made to the private letter, nor whether I have not accepted one of the propositions made ; and, in fact, I have offered to submit my books to the judgement of the Archbishop of Canterbury (one of the parties named) — not in his personal capacity, which, after all his extra-judicial doings, would be absurd — but in his ecclesiastical court ; reserving, however, the right, which I cannot agree to alienate, of appealing to the Queen ;. and I have asked him what right he has to assume beforehand that the Queen would nominate a mere civil Commission to decide on questions of doctrine, as these would be."
To THE SAME.
"BiSHOPSTOWEj/a/zzmry 23, 1866. " As I expected in my last, on Sunday, the 14th, I was de- nounced from the altar of the Cathedral church by order of Bishop Gray through the Dean, with the ' greater excom- munication,'— and the people were enjoined to treat me henceforth as ' a heathen man and a publican.' This was at the early morning service, which the Dean holds at 9 A.M., since I take the regular service at 1 1 A.M. I heard of this when I reached town, and, of course, took no notice of it, except that I gave notice that in future I should preach in the evening of every Sunday as well as the morning. This, I knew, the people had been desiring ; but out of consideration for the Dean, I had hitherto forborne punish- ing him so severely. The effect of the excommunication on the people is just what you might have expected. It has only strengthened my hands considerably, driven away from Bishop Gray many who at first sided with him, and attached my own people more closely to myself. . . . By this mail I shall send certified copies of the excommunica- tion to Mr. Shaen. My lawyers might consider at once . . . whether any steps should be taken to bring the matter under the notice of the Queen. I am told by our Attorney- General that I could brine either a civil or a criminal
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 15
action against Bishop Gray ; and perhaps if he comes up here in person to fulminate, I may have to do something in this way. But I should most of all prefer, if they advise it, to represent the matter by petition to the Crown."
To THE SAME.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, February i, 1866.
^' The judges have refused to compel the Dean to n-^ister the baptism of a child by me, on the application of the father, regarding the register as a sort of private note-book of the clergyman. There, of course, they are mistaken, not having had the canon brought before them. But I fancy the deci- sion was right on another ground. The father should have complained to me, and I should have compelled the Dean to carry out the laws of our ' Benefit Society,' the Church of England. But in March, when the court sits again, I expect that I shall apply to have the church and its belong- ings made over to me as trustee. I have not been in any hurry about this, since I have had my services as I pleased, without interference."
To THE SAME.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, February 22, 1866. " You will be rather amused to find that you are appointed Proctor- for-Convocation-of-the-Church-Defence-Association of Natal. There is a German title of honour for you, and I assure you there is a good lot of Evangelicals among your constituents. . . . Our cause is gaining strength daily with the laity ; and even some change is going on with the clergy. First, of the latter, I have heartily with me Tonnesen, of course, on all grounds ; old Mr. Nisbett, the military chap- lain, on constitutional grounds ; and I am now certain that two or three others would declare themselves on my side but for the rein of the S.P.G Besides these, how- ever, a very able Independent minister,-^ .... who at
^ The Rev. J. Reynolds, now Senior Presbyter of the Diocese of Natal.
1 6 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. l.
first attacked me in his pulpit (I mean two or three years ago) has now come quite round to me, and has announced his intention to give up his office with his body, and will throw himself on his own resources for a time as a school- master. Before long I hope to have him in my body of clergy. . . . Then the brother of my Mr. Robinson, who is the minister of Smithfield, that town in the Free State which threw off Bishop Twells's supremacy a year or so ago, .... has told me .... that he has written very strongly to one of the great supporters of the Colonial Church and School Society in England, to urge them to give me help for clergy, — Evangelicals, of course, who, however, shall mind their own business, and obey in all lawful things their diocesan. He feels that the battle now is not for or against Colenso, but for or against the very existence of the Church of England in South Africa. , . . The same feeling, however, is now shared by a great num- ber of those who at first were opposed to me on religious grounds, poisoned as they had been by the talk of Gray and Green ; and the result is that both at Durban and Maritzburg a strong body has been formed under the name of Church Defence Association, the first act of which will be to send home an address to Convocation. . . I advised that they should send it to you as one known to them from my Defence Fund as a zealous co-operator, and give you carte blanche to act as their Proctor in the affair — to get it modified, if necessary, so as to adapt it properly for pre- sentation Since the Dean has struck Tonnesen's
name off" the list of S.P.G. clergy for reading prayers for me, I have reported him (the Dean) to the Governor for reading the sentence of excommunication, and represented that, as he sets at defiance the Queen's authority, he is not fit to hold the office of Colonial Chaplain, for which he gets ;:^ioo a year. Of course. Bishop Gray or S.P.G. will soon make up the i^ioo ; but it is important now that he should no longer hold office under Government. On the ist of March I shall apply for the Cathedral to be made over altogether to mc. The time is now ripe for this."
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 17
To THE Rev. G. W. Cox.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, February 16, 1866.
"We are going on very well. In fact, our cause would be triumphant but for the S.P.G. . , . There is nothing that prevents the main body of the clergy in this diocese settling down quietly under me, but that they are afraid of losing their incomes, as they inevitably would if they said a word in my favour. You will see how the Dean has come down instantly on poor Tonnesen for only reading prayers in the Cathedral church at my request. Now Tonnesen is really a first-rate missionary, thoroughly practical, can turn his hand to any common work, besides being an excellent carpenter, and he has a thorough knowledge of Zulu,— better indeed than any one of us. I have no hesitation in saying that he is really the best missionary the Society has here ; . . . yet at one stroke the Dean undertakes to dismiss him, without even consulting the Committee which the Society had named, and which I always told you was only a cloak, the whole power of the Society being really wielded in this diocese by the Dean, who utterly ignores the Queen's supremacy, and defies and excommunicates his lawful Bishop. This is, of course, ^ potir enco7irager les mitres'^ and it will have that effect. I know that several of the clergy would withdraw from the South African Church if they dared. ... As old Mr. Nisbett said to me yesterday, ' The Dean has got a rein round their necks, and at the slightest indication of a movement he throttles them.'
" So with old Nisbett himself For some years past he has been chaplain to the troops at Maritzburg, and is so at this time, besides being Government school-master there. Bishop Gray and the Dean both took good care to keep his name always in the back-ground, not choosing to regard him as a clergyman of the ' diocese,' because he is under Mr. Gleig, the Chaplain-General. On the Sunday on which I was ' excommunicated,' Mr. Nisbett at my request read prayers for me in the evening. . . . Yesterday to my great surprise I found that he too had received from the Dean a VOL. II. C
i8 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
letter couched in language quite as strong as that addressed to Tonnesen, and telling him that he should report his conduct to the Chaplain- General and to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who would have to countersign his testimonials, if he ever returned to England. This last of course is ' fudge,' as any Bishop in England might receive him. Old Nisbett took no notice of it till after Tdnnesen published Ids correspondence ; and then he went down to the Dean, and after some warmish words, which ended with the Dean in a white rage bowing him out of his house, the old man turned round and said, ' As to that " excommunication," I think it is a scandalous libel. . . .'
" While the Society's funds are employed not only to support but to maintain my clergy in rebellion, to prevent them from obeying their Sovereign, and keeping their oaths of canonical obedience, it is clear that there will always be an appearance of unanimity among them, which is not real. As for the laity, the whole body of the more intelligent of them are with me. A very large majority of them are determined to receive me as Bishop, and reject the inter- ference of the Bishop of Capetown. I preach twice on Sundays to large congregations, and last Sunday adminis- tered the Communion to more than thirty communicants, a large number under the circumstances, for of course the Dean has carried off Jiis regular communicants, though in former days I have often been present with him when there were only nine or ten. But it is a monstrous thing that the Society should be allowed to force their South African clergy upon the diocese. They ought by their own princi- ples to require them to acknowledge in all lawful things their lawful Bishop. But if they will not do this, they ought either to send a circular to their clergy in this diocese, and leave them at liberty to follow their own sense of duty in the matter ; or else they ought to withdraw their clergy altogether from this diocese to the diocese of Capetown or Grahamstown.
" It is absolutely necessary to do everything that can be done to bring the S.P.G., and its manager the BishoiD of Oxford^,
T 865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 19
to account in this matter. If every true English Church- man would refuse to contribute a penny while the Society is acting- thus, it would soon be brought to its senses.
" You will see that I am still going on with my course of sermons, and yet my congregation is not frightened nor diminished ; nor would they be in England, I believe, if such sermons were judiciously preached. But the com- position of them in tJiis climate, where head work as well as bodily work is very exhausting, — in addition to other duties of many kinds, correspondence here and at home, and the necessity of spending one day a week in town, — eats up my whole week. I cannot stir from home, nor put a single line to my Exodus, nor can I go on under this tension for ever. Still, I hope that, with the sermons of next Sunday and the Sunday after, there may be enough to make a little book for England, to remind the Bishop of Oxford of my being still in the land of the living. It is possible that by this mail an address to Convocation against the Bishop of Capetown and S.P.G. may go home from the Church Defence Association.
" Perhaps the plain facts will be sufficient for Mr. Gleig, as he must know that all Bishop Gray's proceedings have been cancelled by the Queen, and that I have been excommu- nicated merely because I will not recognize what it is unlawful for me to recognize. For you know I am not excommunicated for my ' heresies,' but for my contumacy in not submitting to Bishop Gray's sentence of deprivation, I hope that Gleig will write Nisbett a few words of comfort, for the old man is exceedingly cautious not to interfere in diocesan matters. But really it was too much of a good thing to be ordered by the vicar-general of the Bishop of Cape- town to regard the lawful Bishop of the diocese, holding Her Majesty's authority, ' as a heathen man and a publican.' "
To W. H. DoMViLLE, Esq.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, March i, 1866.
"By this mail I send my first series of Natal sermons
I have now the Cathedral full of my friends, who come
C 2
LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
expecting me to speak the truth to them, and who sit out the sermon so attentively that you might hear a pin drop.
" You will see that these sermons are outspoken on the points touched upon. I could not hold my office on any other condition. . . . On the Sabbath question I take new ground, the only ground, as it seems to me, on which the battle can really be fought — namely, that the Fourth Com- mandment never was binding on anybody, for it is neither Divine nor even Mosaic.^ It is curious that the Scottish discussion should have reached us just when I am in the middle of the subject
" My real difficulty here is the S.P.G., which is not only sup- porting clergy in direct rebellion, but instantly suppressing the least loyal movement in the hearts of its missionaries. At least. Dean Green does so in the name of the Society."
To Sir Charles Lyell.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, March \, 1866. " I came home from the evening service last Sunday with the English mail in my pocket, and very refreshing it was to find and read your kind letter among the rest. You will be aware before this, I hope, that circumstances have compelled me, whether I wished it or not, to follow identic- ally the course which Dean Stanley desired. On my way out I worked at the Book of Exodus, mastered it thoroughly for my purpose (and I may say that its phenomena are entirely in accordance with my previous conclusions) ; and during the first three days after reaching this place, where I had two sermons ready to be preached, which I had already preached at Durban, I did begin to put my notes in order, and filled a few pages of the analysis of Exodus. But from that time to this not a line have
I written or been able to write You will, I hope,
have received intelligence of all that has been going on here ; and, of course, we shall be anxious to know in
1 See Vol. I. pp. 655, 656.
1 865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 21
what light things are looked at in England. But the necessity of writing a number of important letters without any counsellor but my wife at my elbow (for even my dear friend Mr. Shepstone has been 150 miles away, watching the Basutos, till very lately), as well as sermons regularly for the Cathedral, has absorbed all my time, and left me very little for my friends in England, ... I have borne patiently all along the innumerable insults which the Dean has offered to me, so long as they affected only myself. But when he proceeded to attack the clergy who merely obeyed the law, and recognized their lawful Bishop, .... I felt it to be my duty to report his conduct to the Governor^ and to say that I did not consider him fit to retain any longer his office as Colonial Chaplain. ... I believe that the Governor has sent the whole correspondence home to the Secretary of State. I wrote to Mr. Shaen by the same mail, sending copies of all letters, and begging that all might be done which could properly be done to secure the right decision in the case. For I cannot help feeling that if the Government will not support me under the circumstances my place is not here. " I do not wish, however, to commit myself beforehand to any definite course, more especially as the laity here are very strong indeed on my side — many of them heartily on religious grounds, others, quite as heartily, on the supre- macy question. ... I send home by this mail my first series of Natal sermons, corrected, to Mr. Domville, for publication in England, if my friends think it desirable. In fact, they have no doubt been sent home by the enemy, and therefore cannot be kept from the public, and I am not without hope that they may be useful in England. I do not know whether Dean Stanley will approve of my speak- ing out so plainly. But I cannot help it. I cannot hold my present office under any other conditions ; and so far from the people being disturbed or frightened by my preaching, the Cathedral is regularly filled with attentive worshippers. . . . You will see that I shall await with great interest — I don't say anxiety- — the reply of the Colonial
22 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
Office to these communications. If they take my side, as I think they must, then I think the South African schism will receive a severe blow and discouragement, though it may still be pushed on by the frantic obstinacy of Bishop Gray and Dean Green, who are bent on having a Church independent of State control. And if he [Bishop Gray] will resign his patent, he may do what he likes.
" I saw the article in the AthencBum about Dozy, and wonder by whom it was written. I replied to it some weeks ago, and do not surrender an inch of my ground. While so exceedingly cautious and judicious a critic as Professor Kuenen believes that Dozy, with all his extravagances, has really made a great and valuable discovery on the main point, I am not disposed to give way before a mere blast of ridicule without a particle of real argument.^ However, my criticism of the Pentateuch is not at all affected by his view of the Simeonite migration to Mecca, whether that be true or false. But as I (at present) believe it to be true — and as it might be used as an argument against me— I thought it my duty to face that possibility, and to show that, if it is true, it tends to support my view rather than the contrary.
" The notion that the Hebrews retrograded from a higher state from the time of the Exodus to that of David seems to me just as baseless as that which had a little while ago almost universally prevailed, viz. that the human race dropped by the Fall into a lower state, from which we have painfully struggled back. . . . The Pentateuch, no doubt, implies that the Hebrews were far advanced in civilisation when they entered Canaan. But where is there a particle of solid proof of this .'* The account about the ark and tabernacle, as I imagine most scholars would admit, is not earlier than Solomon ; and I fancy it will be found that all the signs of (so-called) Egyptian civili- sation . . . appear in passages written in or after the age of Solomon, who married an Egyptian princes?."
1 See Vol. I. p. 223.
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL.
23
To THE Rev. G. W. Cox.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, March i, 1S66.
" I see the S.P.G. are advertising for clergy for this diocese. Their funds are raised on the express understanding that the missionaries they send out ' shall conduct themselves as genuine missionaries of the Church of England,' and yet they not only are being used in this diocese to support clergy who are in downright rebellion against the funda- mental principles of the Church of England, but are also employed to check and suppress the least sign of a tendency towards a recognition of the Queen's supremacy, and of their duty to observe their oath of canonical obedience on the part of the more loyal clergy.
*' I send you now some extracts from letters written to me by the Bishop of Grahamstown in former days.i I see that my feeble-minded brother has been subservient to Dr. Gray's behests, and writing about Natal affairs in England in direct contradiction to all he has written here. I do not feel at liberty to publish these extracts without his permission. I have repeatedly challenged him to allow me to print them, as for instance in my last ' Letter to the Members of the Church of England in Natal.' He deserves to be made ashamed of his present pitiful conduct after all he has written to me."
To W. H. DoMviLLE, Esq.
"BiSHOPSTOWE, April 2, 1866.
" My second series of sermons is being finished, and I am glad to say that I have got through the Easter work satis- factorily. My congregations are as large as ever, notwith- standing the sermons which they have heard ; and yesterday, Easter Day, they were excellent, although .... a violent attack had just been made upon me with reference to my new Hymn Book. . . .
" I had from twenty-five to thirty communicants yesterday, a
^ See Vol. I. p. 337, et seq.
24 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. CHAP. I.
very goodly number for this place. In former days, I have often, with the Dean, administered to only eight or nine ; and remember that I am an excommunicated ' heathen and publican.' Among them are some interesting cases^ — one, a gentleman of education and intelligence, Dutch by birth, a grandfather, who had never communicated in his life, and when I landed came to me and told me that he was floating on a sea of doubt, and did not believe in the being of God. He has been a regular attendant at the Cathedral ever since I began to preach, and, I trust, has been greatly comforted and strengthened, and, I need not say, is a very hearty and, I believe, not uninfluential supporter."
To THE Rev. G. W. Cox.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, April 3, 1 866. '' Their course [that of Mr. Green and Bishop Gray] is con- temptible. They made a grand profession of going out to worship in caves and dens, &c. ; and the Bishop of Cape- town said to his own Synod at its last meeting, January 1865, ' The Church here would, as the Archdeacon [Badnall] had clearly stated, bow to the decision of that court [the Privy Council], so far as any temporal rights were con- cerned. It would not dream of contesting any rights which the law might resign to him, so far as things temporal were concerned. Titles and lands and houses and churches the civil power could give him [Bishop of Natal].' And yet they have been all along contesting in the most frivolous way every right which I have claimed to exercise, and com- pelled me to support by separate legal interferences, at con- siderable expense, the right to use the Church ; to use the bells, the harmonium, the Prayer Book ; to use the registers ; and, lastly, to use the church on Good Friday. Late on Thursday they notified to me that I should not be allowed to preach on Good Friday, though I courteously desired m}- registrar on the Sunday previous to inform the Dean, that there might be no collision, and he might make his own arrangements for a service at another time, if he pleased.
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 25
And but for the activity of my registrar (Mr. Shepstone's son), they would have stolen a march upon me, as it was almost too late to get the judge's order that evening. As it was, Mr. Shepstone had to ride out to me in pelting rain to get my order. . . ."
To W. H. DoMviLLE, Esq.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, April 23, 1866. "On the 1st of May the Dean will be presented to the Supreme Court for refusing to obey their order to allow me the use of the Baptismal Register of St. Peter's Church. He zvisJies to be made a martyr and sent to prison. We wish to avoid this if possible. However, the absurd course which he is taking as to these registers may bring him into one. It is not my affair, but that of the judges, and it obviously concerns the welfare of the whole colony that the law should be obeyed."
To THE SAME.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, Mixy 3, 1S66. " On Tuesday last, May i, the Dean was 'outlawed' by the Supreme Court, unless and until he produces the Baptismal Register for me to enter certain names in it of children baptized by me — in obedience to a previous order of the court. I do not think that he will submit himself, though the position he takes up is most ridiculous. He makes himself out to be suffering for conscience' sake. In reality, ... he cannot bear the thought of a permanent register of the fact that I have actually officiated in the Cathedral church. If he stands out (as I fully expect he will), my path will be greatly cleared for future action, as he will have no place before the court at all."
To Sir C. Lyell.
"BiSHOPSTOWE, May 14, 1866. [After mentioning the civil outlawry of the Dean, and the meeting for the election of a schismatical Bishop.]
26 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
" There is no honest above-board fighting [in the party of Bishop Gray]. Witness the following letter which the Secretary of the S.P.G. has addressed to Mr. Tonnesen about a fortnight after the meeting in February about releasing my clergy from their duty to me, which turned out abortive : —
"'JAzrc-// 8, 1866.
" ' Rev. and Dear Sir, —
" * It is due to you to inform you that reports have reached the Society which have induced them to write to our Natal Committee with reference to you. The Committee are desired to report to the Society whether there has been on your part any and what overt act of adherence to Bishop Colenso ; and further, whether there be any and if any what proofs of your holding or teaching anything at variance with the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England.'
*' This seems to me to be an attempt on the part of the Bishop of Oxford to get by stealth and an underhand action what was not obtained at the public meeting in February. I have written at full length on this and other points to Dean Stanley One of the two laymen, originally nomin- ated by the Dean as a friend of his-own, has openly joined my supporters, and communicated with me on Easter Day. He is thus a heretic in the eyes of these ' saints ' ; and the Natal Committee will never meet again, until at least the obnoxious element has been expelled, and the small party brought into a state of complete unanimity and subservience to the Dean. This, in fact, has been their plan all along. They declare those who don't act with them not to be Churchmen, which indeed in their sense they probably are not, though bona fide members of the Church of England."
To Miss Cobbe.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, Natal, May 4, 1866. '■'■ I need not say how refreshing it was to see your handwriting and to read your hearty lines of good-will and sympathy. .... As to our affairs here, let me first say we are going
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 27
on very pleasantly, and as prosperously as is good for us, though some odd things will go home by this mail. Im- primis, what do you think of the Dean being ' outlawed ' .'' Last Tuesday he was subjected to ' civil excommunication,' which (as one of the judges told him) ' if it did him no more harm than the ecclesiastical excommunication seems to have hurt the other party, would not trouble him very much.' That was the unkindest cut of all. To treat the Exconi- inunicatio Major as a nullity ! as a crowded congregation does every Sunday evening at the Cathedral by coming to hear my sermons.
^* If any cry is raised in England about ' conscience ' and ' per- secution,' you may have an opportunity of saying or writing a few words about it. It is ridiculous to speak of conscien- tious scruples in the matter. The register does not make
any baptisms valid, if they are not so in themselves
The fact is, of course, that the Dean does not like to see my abhorred signature in juxtaposition with his own, and his remedy is easy — to get a new book. If the old book is of any consequence to him and his followers, it is quite as important that I should maintain their right for the far greater number of professed members of the Church of England who attend my services.
'' On the day after this affair in court, but not at all in con- nexion with it, for the ' outlawry ' took us all by surprise, the streets of Maritzburg were floating with clergy and black gowns (my wife says my metaphors will deceive you as to their numbers ; there are only eight bona fide clergy of the diocese and four intruded by Bishop Gray), and the good citizens were equally taken by surprise by this pheno- menon, as they had kept their counsel so very secret that no one in town but themselves seems to have had the least expectation of such a gathering, though a bird in the air prepared me the day before for it. They have not published any account of their doings. But it is pretty well known that they met (no doubt by directions from Capetown) to elect a Bishop, and that they could not agree about it, and separated only with a matter-of-course repetition of the old
28 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
dirge, Delendus est Coknso. I have written a long letter for the Times or some other paper, . . . which will throw light on some of the tactics employed against me. Still, thank God, we are making head satisfactorily against them all, including the poor dear old Archbishop of Canterbury, who does not really know what wrong he is doing ; and the laity are, as a body, strongly with me. About 200 bona fide Churchmen, many of them acting, elect, or ex-church- wardens, have sent by the mail an address to Bishop Gray,, calling upon Jiim to resign his office as Metropolitan by Royal authority. " Mrs. Crawshay wrote that she had sent a copy of Ecce Hovia to me by a previous mail, but it has not reached me. So I have only as yet seen reviews of it. My opinion of the book, formed from these reviews, is precisely the same as your own^that it is very able, contains many beautiful passages, but is not the work of a truth- seeking and truth- loving man, of one who desires to face the actual facts."
To THE Dean of Westminster (Dr. Stanley).
« 1866.
" I thank you most sincerely for your kind exertions on my behalf, or rather in support of the principle of fairness and justice in the proceedings of the Church of England, in the rooms of S.P.G. and elsewhere, since I left England. There is much which you and others ought to know, and which, 1 am afraid, the newspapers will only imperfectly communi- cate. Indeed, the reports in the Guardian and Chiirck Times, which are now beginning to find their way back to the colony, are so grossly perverted, so false, and so dis- honest, that I am really amazed at the impudence of those who write them — probably two clergymen intruded by the Bishop of Capetown into the diocese. Of course, here such statements receive the indignant ridicule which they deserve, but we are not a match for the adversary in this kind of warfare. So reports, I suppose, will still go home of the * Missionary Bishop ' shutting up the native chapel in
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 29
Maritzburg up to this time (the key was given up to me on Saturday, November 18 : I found the church in a filthy state, and had all my arrangements to make ; and the writer dates his letter November 23) ; of my congregations consisting of ' riff-raff,' falling off, &c. ; of Mr. Tonnesen being only fit for a carpenter, &c. ; and we must be content to let the facts speak by degrees for themselves. But I must give you some information which may be a guide to your own judgement, in case an opportunity should arise for your taking any further active steps in Natal matters. Let me copy a letter which Mr. Tonnesen has just received from Mr. Bullock. S.P.G. missionaries in this diocese are receiving their stipends oji false pretences, if they do not recognize their lawful Bishop, as they are sent out bound voluntarily to do so under the Society's by-law, until that is relaxed or rescinded by the Society itself. . . . What then are we to think of the following letter .'' '
" As to the laity I may say now, after six months since my return to Natal, the great majority of them are with me. .... At Easter, in every instance except one, the people elected churchwardens not only directly opposed to Bishop Gray but heartily supporting me. I need not trouble you with details, but such is the fact in every instance but one that has come to my knowledge ; though there are one or two places from which I have had no reports as yet. How- ever, the main result is certain ; and it should be remembered that this has been brought about by the people themselves, without my presence or interference, and in most cases in direct opposition to their clergy, whom they allowed to nominate their own churchwardens. . . . The most import- ant election was at the Cathedral : I have heard it described by persons present on whom I can thoroughly rely, as for instance Mr. Shepstone, and this is what took place : —
" The body of the church was thronged at the hour appointed, and the Dean nominated his man, one of the two old ones ; and then some two of that party proposed and seconded another, Mr. Scott, upon which one of my friends named,
^ Here follows the letter already given, p. 26.
30 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
and another seconded, Mr. Brooks.^ Immediately, the Dean said, ' Mr. Brooks being disqualified, and no one being pro- posed but Mr. Scott, I declare Mr. Scott elected.' The people were indignant, and demanded to know why Mr. Brooks was disqualified ; but the Dean would not utter a word. Now the fact is that there could not have been a more suitable person in every way, .... filling the office at this moment of Government Superintendent of Schools ; . . . but . . he had communicated with me the previous Sunday. This was the real and only reason for the Dean's consider- ing him disqualified ; but the Dean was too cowardly to say so, when applied to by the Acting Attorney-General to say why he rejected him. You will be told, no doubt, in England, by my unscrupulous adversaries, that the oppo- nents of the Dean at this meeting were ' rabble,' not Church- men, &c. The facts are these. There were 167 present, of whom 29 supported the Dean. Among the rest were, no doubt, some Dissenters, and others who came merely from curiosity ; but there were 70 who answered to their names when called from a church roll in which they had declared themselves ' members of the Church of England and Ireland.' They included some of the first men of the
city While the people were indignantly demanding
why Mr. Brooks was disqualified, and the Dean refused to give an answer, amidst the confusion it appears somebody proposed an auditor of the parish accounts, and the Dean, without putting it to the vote, declared him elected, and broke up the meeting, retiring with his friends to the other end of the church. Upon this the great body elected Mr. Henderson as chairman, elected Mr. Brooks as church- warden unanimously, and elected also, as usual, two auditors,
1 Mr. Brooks "became and remained one of the stanchest friends of the Bishop, whom, as Sir Th. Shepstone said to Mr. Domville, he "worshipped." A Cambridge man, he had come to Natal while the Bishop was in England, and on the Bishop's return he was absent on the frontier. When he came back he threw himself heart and soul into the Bishop's cause, without wavering in his devotion even in the second great battle, the fight for Langalibalele, although he was then holding office under the Government of Natal.
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 31
including the one named by the Dean's party, and then asked for the books, which the old churchwardens, now reappointed by the Dean, refused to give up. Whereupon . . . they adjourned to the next day (Wednesday) at 3 P.M. At that hour a large number met, and found the church doors closed against them b}' the Dean's orders, and they adjourned to Friday at 3 P.M., in order to get an inter- dict from the Chief Justice in the interim, which they did. 1 appointed Friday for admitting the new churchwardens ; but only Mr. Brooks came and was admitted, and was served as such with the order of the Chief Justice to have the doors opened for the adjourned meeting. This order he was bound by law as a loyal citizen to obey ; and he determined to do so. Finding that the key had been pocketed and carried off (it is generally understood) by Mr. Robinson, Bishop Gray's nominee, Mr. Brooks had the lock taken off the door (acting under legal advice), and a new one put on ; and the meeting was held, very full and very orderly. But, the accounts not being produced, they adjourned again till May, when the Supreme Court sits again. The next day the door was unfortunately not opened in time for the Dean's morning prayer, and he had it broken open and carried away half of it, and so it has ever since remained. I detail this matter at length, that you may know exactly how things have really happened, and be able to judge of such reports as may reach you in
England
" I sometimes almost wish that you or some London friend could see my congregation on Sundays. It contrasts singularly in one respect with those usually met with in England ; and that is, by the large proportion of men which it contains. Of late, indeed, this proportion has been con- siderably diminished, and probably in this way may be explained the crowding of the church, which has sensibly increased within the last few Sundays. The women come more freely now than they did at first, the fact being that the Dean and Mr. Robinson had been most diligently going about from house to house, warning the people against my
32 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. I.
teaching, and using such language as thoroughly scared a great many of the females, and no doubt still keeps many away. For some time perhaps four-fifths of the congrega- tion were males, who came, however, regularly, with all the appearance of thoughtful and earnest believers. Now, I suppose, two-thirds are males, instead of the reverse, which I suppose is generally the case in England."
From whatever point of view it be regarded, the eccle- siastical system upheld by Bishop Gray comes out as an irresponsible despotism. It is true, indeed, that the same, and even a worse, tyranny had, during the last three centuries, kept clergy and laity alike in bondage in England ; but the restrictions, pains, and penalties which had produced the miserable harvest of Nonconformity, had been one after another got rid of until the laity were left virtually inde- pendent, and the clergy comparatively free. But whatever checks might still remain, every member of the Church of England had his appeal from the ecclesiastical tribunals to the Crown ; and many, both of clergy and laity, who had left this country for the colonies, had gone in the perfect faith that the law which had protected them in England, would continue to protect them there. But the revolt of Bishop Gray against the Royal supremacy exposed all those with whom he might be brought into collision to risks of gross injustice and wrong, for which they would have no remedy, if he should be suffered to have his own way. In things ecclesiastical, as in things civil, it is intolerable for Englishmen generally to find that change of abode subjects them to a different law ; and the final decisions of ecclesiastical tribunals have been found in England to involve legal principles which have been deliberately set aside by the Sovereign in Council. Among those who in England lent themselves to the theories and schemes of Bishop Gray, not the least considerable was the Chaplain - General of the Forces. The presentment of Mr, Nisbett by
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 33
Dean Green, for reading prayers at the bidding of the Bishop of the diocese, offered an opportunity for saying that allegations of errors in doctrine not condemned by a proper legal tribunal furnished no excuse for disobeying a lawful authority, and that therefore Mr. Xisbett had only done his duty in obeying the Bishop's order. Instead of taking this straightforward course, and declaring, if he thought good so to do, his own total dis- approval of all views held by Dr. Colenso, he addressed to Mr. Nisbett the following tortuous communication, dated at the War Office, 19th May, 1S66.
" I do not read your letter of the 26th of March as appealing to me for any judgement in the course which you have considered it your duty to follow. Neither indeed, looking to the relations in which you stand towards me, as officiating chaplain to the troops, should I consider that I had a right, under existing circumstances, either to approve or censure your proceeding ; but, as a brother clergyman, I have no hesitation in saying that, had I been in your place, and not constrained by any official connexion with the Cathedral church in Maritzburg, I should have declined to read prayers for Dr. Colenso, after he had been subjected to Church censures of the severest kind.
" The decisions to which you refer appear to me to have placed the Church of Southern Africa in the position of a voluntary association. And it is probable that the Bill now before Parliament will sever all legal connexion between it and the Crown, as the head of the Church of England. The Church of Southern Africa will in this case fall into the same status with the Church in Scotland and the United States, being one with the Church of England in doctrine and form of worship, but apart from her as regards the Crown's supremacy. And when this comes to pass, then it will become your duty to separate }'ourself from a Bishop whom the Church has cast out from her, just as in primitive times the faithful held aloof from those convicted of heresy, whether they were prelates or la}'men. VOL. II. D
34 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. I.
" Observe that these are my private opinions. Till the point of law now under discussion is settled, I neither censure nor approve what you have done. But if it be settled, as seems probable, by declaring colonial churches independent of the law courts at home, you will be obliged to obtain a licence from the Bishop whom the Church may appoint. Otherwise I would not myself sanction, nor advise the Government to sanction, your continuing to officiate to the troops."
Here then was Mr. Gleig, holding office from the Crown, and possessed of the right of appeal to the Crown, speaking as though some pretended censure of the Bishop of Natal were valid in spite of the dissent of the Crown, and insisting with sardonic cynicism that men who had left England as members of the Church of England, and in perfect faith that they retained all their rights and privileges as such, must be com- pelled against their will to join a voluntary society styled the Church of South Africa, and that they must be constrained to do this by an Act of the British Legislature, which would become ipso facto guilty of a gross breach of faith to British subjects. He could write thus, although he knew that the Bishop of Natal, had he held an English see, would without question have exercised this right of appeal, and also that the Bishop had expressed,^ not merely his readiness, but his desire, to plead before any lawfully constituted ecclesiastical tribunal from whose decision he could appeal to the Sovereign in Council.
To W. H. DoMviLLE, Esq.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, May 24, 1866.
..." I now despair of making anything of the present clergy.
Through the help of the S.P.G. the Dean has got his nooses
wound around their neck so many times that they cannot.
if they would, get loose, unless S.P.G. will do what they
1 See Vol. I. p. 349.
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 35
will not — require them to acknowledge my authority. The laity here, as I have said, are heartily with me ; and the subscription list for a clergyman to help me is now made up to iJ^2o6, at a time when the colony is suffering from serious depression,^ — though I am glad to say things are beginning to look much brighter, now that the Basuto war is over, and wool is coming down again. Also many additional names have come in for the address to Bishop Gray (calling on him to resign), and almost all the church- wardens in the colony are down in it. The Cathedral is still well filled ; crowded in the evening when I preach. . . . Yet how can I leave Maritzburg .'' There is my great difficulty — the being tied to my work for want of a single English clergyman whom I can put in the Cathedral pulpit. It will be impossible for me to go on in this way long, for of course I must break down if I can never visit the out- lying towns or villages, to show my face, converse, confirm, &c. It would not matter what Bishop Gray or S.P.G. did, if I had only such help for even a couple of years. . . . To-day (Queen's birthday) I dine at Government House, where we shall be a strange party. The President (Pretorius) of the Free State, and Adam Kok, the Griqua chief, are both here and will be present ; and the Governor (temporary,
Colonel B -) has shown his sense of duty to the Royal
authority by asking the Dean to meet me. . . . The Dean never was asked before at any Queen's birthday : the rule has been only to ask heads of departme?tts. . . . How the Dean will eat his dinner after my ' giving thanks ' remains to be seen, and perhaps he won't attend at all ; but he has been asked — that I know — and that is the insult offered, not only to me, but to the majesty of English and colonial law, since he is Acre declared an outlaw, and still remains so."
To THE SAME.
"BiSHOPSTOWE, /«;?<? 2, 1 866. "' I have this moment heard that the Dean has ordered a pair of horses to go down to Durban, and take ^the mail to
D 2
36 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO, chap. I.
Capetown. For what purpose this is, no one knows at present ; but it is evidently connected with some news which has reached them by the Mauritius mail this day from England. By the same I have received your very welcome letter, and one from Mr. Shaen and other friends, which have quite cheered us. Perhaps the Dean may have gone only to consult Bishop Gray, perhaps to be present at the consecration of the new Bishop, perhaps to be con- secrated himself Time will show. He expects to be absent for three weeks. It may be in connexion with the action which I have now brought, to get regular possession of the Cathedral, and which will probably come off on July 3rd. Meanwhile I have now ordered the church- wardens of St. Peter's Cathedral not to allow any clergyman not licensed by me to minister in the Dean's absence ; and as this order is distinctly covered by the order lately obtained from the Supreme Court (since I formerly exer- cised this very right on a particular occasion) I expect that it will be obeyed. " By this mail also, it seems, the S.P.G. has declined the services of a catechist, really a deserving and useful man, whom I had trained for years, and who had been got hold of by the Dean, and almost captured ; and he has now formally offered himself to me. The grant by S.P.G. of one year's income as a free gift to Tonnesen is also capital. I think this is all of importance that I have to add, except to thank you heartily for your most kind exertions. Nothing can be better than what you have done about the address to Convocation."
To THE SAME.
" BlSHOPSTOWE,//^';/^ 30, 1866.
" Your last letter, with the inclosure of Miss Burdett-Coutts's letter, was most welcome, and they came in the very nick of time, to strengthen the hands and confirm the resolu- tion of our laity, who have given a very decided reply to Bishop Gray's reply to their memorial calling upon him to resign Copies, I believe, will be sent from here to
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 37
Mr. Cox in Tasmania, who is spoken of, or has been, very positively, as the new Bishop of Maritzburg.
* By this mail I have written to Mr. Shaen to say that Mr. Shepstone considers the time is now arrived for my bringing the Bishop of Oxford, Bishop Ellicott, and the Bishop of Sodor and Man, to task for setting on foot the resolutions printed in the Guardian, in which they say repeatedly that I have been excommunicated. The only question with me is whether it is worth while to do so, seeing that the laity out here stand so well by me. But I submit the whole to the judgement of my advisers in England. On some grounds certainly it does seem desirable to put a check on these lawless words and doings
" Since the Dean returned from his visit to the Cape, nothing has yet oozed out as to the express object of it. But two of the clergy have since said that they must give up the buildings, and one has said that they are quite prepared for separation from the Church of England, and that there is a large body of the clergy in England who intend to do so, and establish a Free Church independent of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
" A Bill is about to be brought into our Legislature for defining members of the Church of England, churchwardens, &c., by laz<.<. It is not desired or urged forward by me, but by the
strong anti-Gray party at Durban And I only
mention it to prevent your supposing that it is in any way my Bill. Very probably the enemy may try to represent it as such, for the reports they send to England of our doings are thoroughly dishonest. In that case you will be able, if necessary, flatly to contradict it. I do not need, nor even desire, the Bill ; but, if the laity like to have it, I see no reason for objecting to it as a whole, though some of its provisions would require amendment, and no doubt would receive it."
To THE Rev. G. W. Cox.
" BlSHOPSTOWE,///;?^ 30, 1866.
" Your letters are always most refreshing, except that the last was less hopeful than they usually are. ... I am not
38 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
without hope that we from this side of the world may help to cheer you in England a little. At any rate, we shall not die very easily, and are not at all frightened by the epis- copal roars which come across the Atlantic to us. I send you by this mail some documents which will show you what our last deed has been- — or rather it is the deed of the laity of the diocese, and not of the Bishop, except that he had to write the greater part of it for them, especially the parts against himself. Miss Coutts's letters were ad- mirable, and arrived here just in the very nick of time to strengthen their hands for the work. The laity here are most grateful to her for the stand which she has made on their behalf."
To Miss Cobbe.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, Natal, //^/k 27, 1866. " Your kind present has only just reached me. ... I thank you heartily for your kind remembrance of me, and I can assure you that your gift will be of great service to me. I have not had a penknife that could mend a pen for months, and the iirst use I made of it was to nib a pen {ov Joshua, upon which I am hard at work as well as my other labours will allow. The criticism of this book comes out exceed- ingly clear, and I am strongly inclined to complete it, and send it home for publication by itself, as an instalment of Part VI., in order to give a little help to our friends with the Speaker s Commentary. But who knows .'' Perhaps I shall be coming home myself to publish it. At this moment I am utterly in the dark as to the future, waiting patiently for the decision of Lord Romilly in the first instance, and then of the Government, to see if they intend to support the Queen's authority in respect of her letters patent, and then to hear how the matter of my ' new heresy ' settles down in England. I do hope that I have effectually stirred that question. I am certain of this, that Dean Stanley has very little idea of the enormous force brought to bear against the progress of liberal views by the employ- ment of such books as Hymns Ancient and Modern. It
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 39
would be impossible for me to preach such sermons as I am now preaching every Sunday, and have the people singing those hymns in my face. As to the laity here, I have a very strong hold upon them, and in fact have the great body of them with me, as I hope you will have been able to gather from the newspaper reports which have reached England, though those sent home from Maritz- burg to the Guardian and Church Times (sent, it is believed by one of Bishop Gray's intruded clergy here) are speci- mens of the most deliberate theological lying that I have ever met with. They are masses of falsehood, of course based upon some foundations of fact, but utterly dishonest and misleading. The cause must be in a very bad way which needs such support. " It is really a most touching sight to see the crowded con- gregation in the Cathedral on Sunday evenings. ... If only the clergy in England could speak out as freely as I am able to do here, I am sure their churches would be equally filled. Numbers come regularly now to the service, both morning and evening, who used to go nowhere ; and I humbly trust that some good work is being done among them."
To W. H. DoMviLLE, Esq.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, August 3, 1866. . . . " The \^estry Bill, as you will see, was thrown out by our Legislative Council — which, to say the truth, I am not sorry for. ... I believe they are now going to frame a deed of registration, by which they may avail themselves legally, as a ' Voluntary Association,' of persons who agree to be bound by the laws of the Church of England, &c. And that, I think, will answer all practical purposes. Upon the whole, the lay feeling is, I think, as decided as ever ; and it remains to be seen if Mr. Cox will think it necessary to come here when he gets the reply of the laity to Bishop Gray, which was duly forwarded to him a mail or two ago. One of the new S.P.G. clergy, as I hear from good authority, has preached Robertson's sermons to his people, and is very
40 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
much liked. . . . He has been strictly forbidden by S.P.G. to take my licence, and at present I do not think it de- sirable to interfere. . . . Bishop Gray has just put in an appearance to my summons to show cause why the lands, &c., held by him in trust should not be made over to me. But the case cannot be heard till next month. . . . There is no doubt, I think, that I can maintain my position here, so as to have the Cathedral to myself and my curate (sup- ported by the people) on Sundays, and so as to make good my entrance once a year into the different churches of the diocese, with the hearty good will of some of the people, the secret satisfaction of many others, and the determined opposition of most of the S.P.G. clergy and their more bigoted supporters. Gradually, too, by the circulation of my sermons .... prejudices may be removed, and a warmer feeling generated in the minds of many who still stand aloof, having never yet heard a word from me, or perhaps even seen my face, but who have been duly indoctrinated by the clergy. ... I cannot do more, my whole time being taken up with such work as the above, except a few driblets which I can now and then snatch for pursuing my criticism of the Pentateuch. My friends in England may be of opinion that when I have fought out the battle with Bishop Gray, and stood my ground to see if Bishop Cox arrives, and what can be done against him, ... I might retire from the contest, having done my part sufficiently in this posi- tion. And they may know (what I cannot) that English feeling is tending to the same conclusion — viz. that for peace and quiet I had better withdraw from the contest, of course assuming that the English Government will not play directly into the hands of Bishop Gray, and appoint my successor at the nod of the Bishop of Oxford. If they appeal to the House of Lords, perhaps in any case I ought to abide at my post till that decision reaches me, and then, if it is thought desirable, retire. But I do not see anything here at present which compels me to do so ; and, in fact, my people in Maritzburg would be exceedingly grieved, many of them, if I did. . . . The sort of feeling which must exist
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 41
even with my warmest friends as to the uncertainty of my continuing permanently here makes many, more lukewarm, hesitate to commit themselves, lest I should suddenly with- draw from the struggle, and leave them in the hands of the enemy. Hence the strong desire of such to get the legal barrier erected without delay now, as the prime mover in it (Mr. Saunders) said, before Lord Romilly's decision reaches us."
To THE SAME,
'■• BiSHOPSTOWE, August 30, 1866.
..." Matters are still looking bright here, so far as circum- stances and the want of clergy allow. I have no doubt that with one or two more clergy of the right stamp, I should have all the diocese fairly in hand. Lord Romilly's decision will hardly reach us, I expect, by the mail due to- morrow ; but a short paragraph overland from Capetown tells me that the great meeting of Convocation has come off, and the Bishops have declared in favour of Bishop Gray's proceedings by five to four. If this is true, it will strengthen my position here greatly, and will be regarded by my friends as a complete victory ; since, if only nine attended, there were eleven absent, and not one of them can have desired to support Bishop Gray. I should think he ought to resign, and would do so, if there were any consist- ency in him. An Australian paper brings the news that Mr. Cox has accepted the bishopric of Maritzburg offered to him ; — offered by whom .'* not till the clergy have elected him ; and I feel pretty certain now that several would refuse to elect him. . . .
'" To-morrow I have some distinguished natives coming to luncheon ; one of Moshesh's sons, and his chief warrior, who have been sent here ' with a formal letter from Moshesh himself (which I read yesterday), saying that, after five days' full deliberation with his chiefs, they had desired to surrender themselves and their land, &c., into the hands
^ To Natal, not to the Bishop.
42 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. \.
of this Government, and imploring that the Queen would receive them as subjects. It is a very important proposal, and perhaps must not be talked about publicly till it gets into the papers, as my information is private. They seemed to know all about my affairs, and spoke very cordially, — speaking English well."
To THE SAME.
"BiSHOPSTOWE, September 5, 1866.
..." As to the sermons, I think you did quite right under
the circumstances to defer the publication After
the advice of my counsel, and the suspension of Lord Romilly's decision, there seemed no doubt about the matter. By the time this reaches you, however, I suppose the judge- ment will be given, and my own feeling is that the book should then be published without delay. I am not so anxious to retain my post here as to wish to hold it if I cannot be allowed by law to say what I have said in those sermons ; and, as for the odhivi tJieologiciun, I am not at all sure that it might not be diminished, instead of increased, by the publication.
" Now, I see, the most unscrupulous falsehoods are sent to England, and circulated in the Church papers about my teaching, as e.g. in the English CJnirchnian, which reached me yesterday, and in which I see stated that I have said in one of my sermons that ' it is blasphemy to say that we have any need of a Mediator.' . . . The sermons themselves would show what my real teaching is.
" As far, therefore, as I am personally concerned, I should wish to face all the consequences of publishing the book as. soon as the judgement is given. But I must leave you still a latitude of action, for there may, and probably would, be an appeal lodged regarding the judgement, if in my favour ; and if my counsel still strongly advised the delay of pub- lication, it might be right to do so until the conclusion of the case in the House of Lords. Again, there may be plain signs that certain parties in England will apply for a Com-
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 43.
mission to sit upon me ; and, if so, it would be wise not to publish till this matter is settled. One thing also I should like to say. If a Commission is issued nozv, because all other measures have failed, I should not in any way feel bound to adhere to the promise which I made when, before the excommunication, I challenged Bishop Gray and others to apply for a Commission, viz. not to interpose any technical objections. ..."
There is far too great a disposition in this country to regard what is called the Colenso controversy in Natal as a struggle on the part of the Bishop to secure freedom of thought and speech for himself to the slighting, or even to the injury, of others. His own utterances, both in letters and in other forms^ have already given proof that his whole mind was set on obtaining for all the liberty w^hich he claimed for himself. We have now to see that his motives and object were fully appreciated by the lay members of the Church of England in Natal, and that they looked upon him as fighting their battle not a whit less than his own. That the conflict should have arisen from expressions which are supposed to err in the direction of too liberal a theology, was a mere accident ; and until the question is dissociated from any personal interests of the Bishop of Natal, its full bearings cannot be rightly understood. If the Bishop had never written anything to create alarm. Bishop Gray would have striven none the less to create a South African Church independent of the judicial interference of the Crown.^ For this the decisions given in the Williams-Wilson case on the one side, and in that of
1 Indeed, not only had Bishop Gray begun to strive for these ends long iDcfore the Bishop of Natal had published anything likely to alarm him : but the people of Durban had themselves taken alarm eX the policy and designs of the Metropohtan at a time when Bishop Colenso seemed scarcely to be awake to them, and when in fact they had convinced them- selves that their Bishop was a willing instrument in the furtherance of Bishop Gray's plans.
44 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. l.
Mr. Gorham on the other, would in his eyes have furnished ample justification ; and there can be no doubt that a bold and perspicuous enunciation of convictions such as those of Mr. Gorham, carried to their full length, would have roused on the part of the Metropolitan of Capetown feelings of dis- approbation scarcely less vehement than those which were awakened by the criticisms of the Bishop of Natal. Nay, it was (as it is) quite possible that the Church of South Africa might come to be governed by prelates and clergy whose spirit might be in the closest harmony with that of men like Deans Close and M'Neile ; and in either case both clergy and laity would have to submit to the regimen provided for them, without any appeal, in cases of deprivation or excom- munication, beyond the Archbishop of Canterbury in his personal capacity.
But in the foremost place, in the eyes of the laymen of Natal, was the determined resolution with which Bishop Colenso resisted and protested against the creation of a Church of South Africa, as a breach of faith both with him- self and with them. He and they alike had left their old homes as members of the Church of England ; and members of that Church, and of no other, they were determined to remain. In accepting the office of Bishop of Natal, Dr, Colenso had no idea that he was giving up, or that he might at any date, however distant, be called upon to give up, any right which he had possessed as Rector of Forncett. In accepting the Royal letters patent which assigned him his jurisdiction, he was perfectly well aware that he acknowledged obedience to the Crown, and thereby claimed the protection of the Sovereign ; but he never for a moment dreamed that Royal letters patent would, or could, be used by any one else for the exercise of a jurisdiction which openly professed itself independent of the Royal supremacy, and as a bar to the • exercise of a right to which every clergyman of the English
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 45
Church in England had an inalienable title. The laity or Natal felt that his cause, without the least reference to the particular matters in dispute, was their cause also, although not a few, and perhaps the large majority, among them expressed also their hearty satisfaction and thankfulness for the firmness with which he withstood and disclaimed the narrowness, exclusiveness, and intolerance of those who pro- fessed to adhere to an unchanging, and therefore to a dead, traditional theology.
No layman in Natal was, and is, more competent to express the feelings of his fellow-laymen than the friend whose kind- ness and zeal the Bishop always felt and acknowledged. It would be disingenuous to withhold here all reference to the antagonism of later years. But it is unnecessary to do more than refer to it, while w^e are dealing wdth a time when their friendship was as warm and active as it had always been since their first intercourse during the Bishop's happy " ten weeks in Natal." The following extracts from letters addressed by Mr. Shepstone to Mr. W. H. Domville show how deeply the laity of Natal were interested in the struggle between the Bishops of Capetown and Natal. The letters are written strictly from a layman's point of view. In the first, which is dated September 9, 1866, Mr, Shepstone speaks of the then recent debates in Convocation as having very much strengthened the Bishop's position and advanced the cause of liberty in the Church of England, and adds that
" great indignation is felt here at the remark made b)- the Bishop of Oxford, that those who attend the Bishop's services are nearly all professed infidels, and do not go to worship, judging from their demeanour. As he declares this statement to be made on the authority of a clergyman here, it is our intention to require a direct answer from every clergyman in the diocese on the subject ; and I have no doubt we shall find out our friend. We shall then take
46 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
such measures as may be deemed most effectual for correct- ing in the minds of the Church at home the effect of such a mahcious slander, and fixing at their true value any state- ments our friend may make for the future."
The trial before the Master of the Rolls, Lord Romilly, was then proceeding ; and on one point debated, Mr. Shepstone expresses himself without hesitation.
" I do not," he says, " understand how the Privy Council could decide that Natal had an independent Legislature when its Bishop was appointed. It can only be called so in the sense that it was independent of that of the Cape, for it was made so in letters patent in 1847 \ but its Council consisted of three Government officers besides the Governor, the Colonial Secretary, the Crown Prosecutor, and the Sur- veyor-General. Surely there is no power of independent legislation in such a nominee body, while the fact of its small numbers, and all being Government officers dependent on the Crown, seems of itself to imply a reservation, on the part of the Crown, of concurrent legislation. It seems to be admitted on all hands that a Crown colony ceases to be such only when representation is introduced into its legis- lative body. As far as Natal is concerned, this took place for the first time in November, 1856, and in the Cape Colony in 1850. Hence the enormous difiference in the values of the patents issued in 1853 to the Cape and Natal Bishops."
Mr. Shcpstone's remarks on the Bishop's personal work are •even more important.
" The Bishop goes on steadily increasing his influence among the people. Some of them almost worship him. Persons from the neighbouring colony, while visiting here, of course go to hear him preach, and all express themselves astonished at what they find. They seem to have received some extra- ordinary ideas of his conduct and sermons, and are little prepared to witness the quiet, earnest, reverent eloquence
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 47
of the preacher, and the breathless attention of the congregation."
All ideas of separation from the English Church Mr. Shep- stone indignantly disclaims, and he protests with special earnestness against any action of the British Parliament which may tend to bring about such separation.
*' Surely we should not be cut off by Act of Parliament : we want all to belong to our National Church, and we hope that our Church will before long open her arms wide enough to include a much wider range of thought and belief than she seems inclined to do just now."
Writing again, October 10, i865, Mr. Shepstone mentions the report
" that on the 24th of this month the election of the Bishop of Maritzburg is to take place here, and that the laity are wished to take part in it. By the laity is meant, of course, all those who do not attend the Bishop of Natal's services or recognize him as their lawful Bishop. I am amazed at the folly which prompts to such a proceeding. . . . This reminds me of the great uneasiness felt here as to the direc- tion which Imperial legislation seems likely to take. No clergyman likes the idea of being made a Congregationalist by law, simply because he can be one any day he likes, without ; and, whatever may be thought in England, we in the colonies strongly dislike the idea of being cut off from what we consider to be our Mother Church."
To W. H. DoMviLLE, Esq.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, September 19, 1866. " I have been waiting month after month for the decision in the Rolls, in order to begin a visitation of my diocese, having hitherto confined myself to the Cathedral, and not wishing to go to other places, if possible, without the prestige of a favourable decision. However, as we cannot
48 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
expect now to hear of the decision before Christmas, I have arranged to leave home for three or four Sundays. . . . I have settled to start to-morrow with Major Erskine, Colonial Secretary, and my two boys as travelling com- panions. ... I think from all I hear that I shall find Mr.
D all right. It so happens that a gentleman, whose
house is almost next to his, and with whom he has formed a very warm friendship apparently, has also contracted a warm friendship for me, from some little kind attentions which I was able to show him when he lay very sick in Maritzburg a few months ago. It is a curious story, and shows what little things influence often very great move- ments. When I was in Durban last February, lunching at
the Club, this gentleman, Mr. G , came in, and took his
seat next to me. We soon got into talk, in which he told me frankly that he was a strong opponent of mine. I asked if he had read my book. ' No.' ' Would he allow me to send him the PentateiicJi, 8zc. ? ' ' Yes ; he would be obliged, and would promise to look at it thoughtfully.' I sent it, and heard no more of him till after a few months I got a note from him to say that he had come to Maritz- burg for change of air in consequence of illness. This led to my seeing him again, to his visiting my house, &c., and ultimately to my reading and praying with him in town, when he lay at a hotel apparently in a very dangerous state. These little acts of mine, the hearing some of my sermons, the reading my Romans, have made him a warm supporter of mine, although he told me, when I first saw him, he had then in his pocket a letter from a very dear relative, warning him not to come into any connexion with me."
It is quite unnecessary to enter at any length into the discussions which took place at the meeting convened at the wish of Bishop Gray for the election of a Bishop who should take the place of Bishop Colenso. The chief facts con- nected with it are brought out with sufficient clearness in the Bishop's letters. But the whole debate seemed only to exhibit
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 49
the fatal blunder committed by Bishop Gray from the very outset of all his action in reference to the Bishop of Natal. We will suppose that, on the publication of Dr. Colenso's Coniuientary on tJic Epistle to the Romans, he was shocked, startled, and grieved, and that this panic and alarm were indefinitely heightened on the appearance of his criticisms on the Pentateuch. He may, we will suppose, have felt the case to be as serious, and the danger to be as pressing, as Dr. Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter, felt it to be when he arraigned Mr. Gorham for heresy. But every such case in England must come before the Crown, and must be determined, on appeal, by the Sovereign in Council. It should have been the first and last care of Bishop Gray that the question of Dr. Colenso's teaching should also be brought before that tribunal, and that any proceedings which he himself might take should be so arranged as to place no hindrance in the way of that issue. It is quite impossible to say that this course a quarter of a century ago might not have had for its result the condemnation of the Bishop on some points, although, in any event, it must have ended in his acquittal on some, or the greater number. The idea that the Crown in Council could condemn a man for batches of offences, in the jaunty fashion of the Metropolitan and his assessors at the so-called Capetown trial, is ludicrous. The effect of the trial might have been to widen the liberty secured to the clergy in England, or it might in some one or more directions have circumscribed it. In any case the judgement would have stood on the same level as the judgement in the Gorham, the Bennet, the Williams-Wilson, and the X'oysey cases ; it would have become part of the law of the Church of England, and would have been acquiesed in, as all those judgements have been, even by those Churchmen who professed themselves at first most aggrieved by them. The complete condemnation of Dr. Colenso by the Judicial Committee would have removed VOL. II. E
50 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
all difficulties from the path of Bishop Gray. His partial condemnation, or his acquittal, would have removed all re- sponsibility from those persons in Natal who spoke of the paramount need of maintaining the Catholic faith. These persons would have seen at once what was or was not per- missible within the limits of the Church of England, and would have submitted themselves to the laws of that Church, unless they chose to form themselves into an entirely distinct society. Otherwise it is not easy to see how any greater hardship would have been imposed on Bishop Gray, Dean Green, and their adherents, than was imposed in England on the Bishop of Exeter by the acquittal of Mr. Gorham, or on the Bishop of Salisbury by that of Dr. Rowland Williams. But from the first Bishop Gray was resolved that he would under no circumstances face the possibility of any such con- tingency. The carrying of this case before the Judicial Com- mittee was for him equivalent to an unconditional surrender of what he called the faith of the Church. He declared, and seemed to glory in declaring, that he rejected the decisions of that tribunal ; and he had no greater hesitation in saying that he could not concur in some of the rulings of the judge in the Arches Court of the Archbishop of Canterbury — in other words, with the rulings of the Primate himself He held before himself and before his supporters the idea of some society which maintained, and would maintain indefectibly, what he spoke of as the Catholic faith ; and to this society he professed to believe that he and they belonged. The idea was a dream, which could not fail to be dissolved by the rude test of experience ; and its only effect would be to perpetuate the divisions which it was designed to heal. If some apparent realisation of it might be found in orthodox or Latin Chris- tendom, it was useless to look for it in the body known to English law as the Church of England.
33ishop Gray thus threw away the only hope of making
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 51
peace. It was not true that because either clergy or laity admitted the authority of a Bishop they were in any way whatever bound by his opinions, and could be supposed to have the least complicity with or responsibility for them. The egregious absurdity of Bishop Gray's position lay in this, that he chose to fasten on those who might take part in the worship of God with Bishop Colenso the guilt involved in holding that the Book of Deuteronomy may have been, and probably was, written in the time of Manasseh or Josiah. Among the clergy and laity who were called together for the purpose of electing a Bishop for what was called the v^acant see, there were some who were ready to acknowledge Bishop Colenso's jurisdiction, while they professed to have the ex- tremest horror of his teaching. If they could so speak after the intemperate language used and the extravagant judge- ment pronounced in the Metropolitical Court of Capetown^ how much greater would have been the likelihood of peace if the whole question had been submitted to the sober and care- ful handling of the Sovereign in Council .'' The fault of Bishop Gray, and (except from his own narrow ecclesiastical view) his fatal blunder, was the determination that, come what might, into the hands of the Crown the decision should never pass ; and the result is that his adherents are committed to a modified Hildebrandine theory which in practice can be fruitful only of dissension, estrangement, and ill-will.
To W. H. DoMviLLE, Esq.
" Durban, October 20, 1866.
" I am here at the port for a few days, detained by our spring rains (which have now begun in earnest), and so prevented from running down the coast, as I had designed, to visit a place where, however, there is no Church population of any consequence, but chiefly scattered residents among whom I have some warm friends, and whom I must now reserve
E 2
52 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
for another trip. I have gone over the most important ground, however, .... with very satisfactory results. I have been everywhere most heartily received ; and any attempt at opposition has only served to intensify the feeling of sympathy on my side ; . . . . and whether from real feeling in favour of my views or determined opposition to those of Bishop Gray and the Dean, I may now, I think, fairly say that the whole mass of the com- munity are with me. " At this moment two important steps are being taken on my side, in order to obviate, if possible, the systematic decep- tion which has been practised on the English public by reports sent home. In Maritzburg an address is being largely signed to the Bishop of Oxford, demanding the name of his clerical informant, out here, who has so grossly
libelled my congregations At Durban, again, there
is, I believe, a very decided memorial in preparation, which will probably be signed very numerously and respectably throughout the whole colony, protesting against the attempt to elect a new Bishop, which, it is believed, is to be made on the 24th instant at Maritzburg.^ It seems the Dean's visit to the coast was expressly on this account — to try to get beforehand the assent of the coast clergy to this measure. But in this, if report speaks truly, he has signally failed.
Mr. A , whom you may remember as having made a
warm speech in favour of Bishop Gray when he was here, and written a strong letter against me, ... is now very friendly with me, and though still, as he said, differing wholly from my religious views, yet is determined to sup- port my lawful authority. He is, in fact, one of the chief leaders of the Evangelical party here, and has a very whole- some dread of Bishop Gray's proceedings iiozv, though at one moment, when the Bishop was here, beguiled into the
1 This was the title finally selected for Dr. Macrorie. It must be remembered that Maritzburg is strictly the name of no place in Southern Africa. Legally, Maritzburg is non-existent. The town of Pieter- maritzburg was constituted a city by the letters patent which nominated Bishop Coienso to the See of Natal.
1 865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 53
notion that he meant nothing — no Church of South Africa, no ecclesiastical despotism, which he dreads more than my teaching. In a long friendl}^ talk which I had with him yesterday, he told me that most of the clergy are altogether opposed to the notion of electing a Bishop, and he men- tioned by name , — - If these really stick to
their decision, it will be ridiculous for the Dean .... to do anything, though I am told he has said if he can only get two others to act with him ... he will proceed to the election. If so, it will strengthen my hands materially ; and I think the actual arrival of another Bishop w^ould only intensify the general feeling in my favour. In fact, the Bishop of Lincoln was shrewd enough to see that the Bishop of Capetown's course has been the most suicidal possible. It has helped me splendidly through the only difficult part of my work. . . . The time is gone by now for a wiser course. I have met the members of my flock every- where, in public and private, and the great body of them by personal contact seem to have lost all dread of my teaching in the pulpit. ^\iQ policy would have been to put no obstacle in the way of my return, but to have urged the clergy everywhere to work upon the minds of their flocks ; and such is the power of clerical influence .... that they might have raised at first a very formidable barrier to my gaining the ears of the people. But, in the desire of main- taining their pet ecclesiastical system of discipline they have done everything to smooth the way for me with a Protestant public possessed with an English love of fair play. " To-day, for the first time, we learn that Cox is not to be the man, at the very moment when the Guardian has just brought us the account of Mr. Cox's having accepted ' the appointment to the vacant see of Natal,' and notified to his parishioners in Hobarton his reasons for so doing. The information contained in to-day's JMercury that the new Bishop is to be Mr. Butler (I presume of Wantage) has no doubt emanated from the Dean. This change of persons after such definite notices about Mr. Cox will create, I
54 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
expect, fresh difficulties for the clergy, and deepen the resolve of the laity to have nothing to do with the matter. . , ,
*' Mr. D has distinctly told me that, when he and T
left England, they were instructed by the S.P.G. Secretary, Mr. Bullock (who said that the direction was authorised by the President, the Archbishop of Canterbury), not to take a licence either from me or Bishop Gray. Bishop Gray, of course, had no right to give any to a clergyman of my diocese. But here we find the Archbishop secretly sanction- ing this direction, some months before the general meeting of the S.P.G. was held, at which the standing order was suspended with reference to Natal, and when that order, the voice of the Society, required their missionaries to receive my licence. And then the Archbishop has the assurance to rise in his place in Convocation, and say that all the clergy, with one exception, have refused to recognise my authority. This is really scandalous."
To THE SAME.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, October 2^, 1866.
..." I completed my four Sundays of visitation, which I deferred as long as possible, waiting month after month for Lord Romilly's decision. At last, as it was plain it would not be given till after the vacation, I determined to go out at once ; and circumstances have shown that I went out at the very nick of time, without the slightest idea of the importance of this visitation in the present juncture of affairs. The effect .... was, partly through personal intercourse, partly through preaching, which disabused a number of prejudices, to rally round me more strongly than ever, the important population of the coast, having already sufficiently secured those of the interior. The crisis, how- ever, has now arrived, when the value of this has been felt in the circumstances which have attended the recent election of a Bishop. . . . Nothing was heard definitely upon this subject . , . until an advertisement appeared in the Times
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 55
of Natal of October 20, summoning a meeting of clergy and lay communicants for October 25 (with a proviso that the invitation was not addressed to any w^io recognised the authority of Bishop Colenso). But previous to this some private communications had been passing, which have now been made public by Mr. Lloyd. . . . The following occurs in a letter from Bishop Gray to Dean Green : — ' I do not believe the Bishops will consecrate without an election. . . . I am strongly in favour of electing. Some urge waiting for the reply of Convocation, but I do not. The Archbishop forgot to lay our petition before that body in February, and very likely will not do so in May, for he evidently by recommending Mr. Cox thinks he has done all he has to do, and the Bishop of Oxford says, consecrate zuitJumt alluding to Convocation. Procrastination is not good.' From Bishop Gray to Dean Green, May 13, 1866 : — 'The Archbishop, as requested by the Dean and Chapter, has done all in his power. The Bishops of the Province have done all they can do : the responsibility no longer rests with us. I hope there will be no hesitation or drawing back on the ground that I can do all that is needed for the present. Having secured another valuable man [Cox], who is recommended by the Primate of All England, I feel that henceforth I should be released from all personal responsibility as to the future, even if the address ^ which by this mail has been forwarded to me had not made my taking an active part in the administration of the diocese a matter of greater difficulty than before. Should he [Mr. Cox] be rejected, I think it will not be easy to find another qualified man willing to undertake so arduous and thankless an office. The Bishop of Grahamstown has been on the look-out for a whole year, while travelling through England and Ireland, and has not met with one who does not shrink from a position of so much difficulty and so full of discourage- ment. I confess that, if there is any holding back now, I shall myself tremble greatly for the future of your -Church.'
^ From the Natal laity, calling upon him to resign. See p. 28.
56 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
"To come now to the 'election' itself. . , , On October 12 Mr, Green wrote to Mr. Lloyd a letter which lies before me, and which was read out publicly at the Durban meeting. This letter is as follows (the italics are mine) : — ' The Metropolitan has written to me that he considers it to be my duty to summon all the cler-gy to consider the reply of Convocation ; that all male communicants, certified by the clergy as such, should be invited to attend ; that lue should in their presence elect a Bishop, and then seek their concur- rence; and lastly that the consent of himself and the Bishops of the Province be formally asked. I have also a letter from the Bishop of Grahamstown expressing his concurrence in the advice of the Metropolitan ; and having, as you know, already had much consultation with others on the subject, I have determined on having Thursday, the 25th of October, for our meeting at Maritzburg to take into consideration and act upon the advice of Convocation. . . . Under the name of communicants please let it be distinctly understood that such as communicate ivitJi Dr. Colenso are not included, . . . and in order to make it perfectly clear to our fellow-colonists that the meeting is the private gathering of a voluntary association, and puts forth no claims to be anything differ- ent, I have, as I have already said, resolved on having a private room to meet in. . . .'
" It would seem that Mr. Lloyd must have written to Mr. Green to complain that other clergy of the diocese had long ago been informed of what is going on, while he had been kept in ignorance, and only became aware of what is intended by communications reaching him from tJiem. . . . To this Mr. Green replies as follows, October 15th: — 'I wrote to you on the 12th, so you ought to have received mine at the time you wrote to me on the 13th. I hope ere this it has reached you. To those clergy who acknowledge the Metropolitan, I wrote some time back. I have not placed you, but you have placed yourself, in a position very different from them. Therefore, of course, I observe a different line towards you. Were I not to do so it would be making light both of your act and ours, and I do not wish to do that.
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 57
. . . Now how }-ou can vote in the election of a man to be a suffragan Bishop to a MetropoHtan whom you do not acknowledge, I cannot see. ... I wish much during the next few days )'ou would see your way to act as the other clergy have done, recognise the Metropolitan, and so unite yourself, not only to us, but, I must think, to the Church, for the old canon is true, " iihi episcopus ibi ecclesia." So, unless you acknowledge a Bishop, I do not see how you can be in the Church.' . . . " It is plain to me that, at the time Mr. Green promised to lend Mr. Lloyd a tract [connected with Mr. Cox's suspected views], he had fully reckoned on Mr. Lloyd's vote for the election of a new Bishop, or at least had hoped to secure it ; and also he had no idea that his vote would be of so much consequence as it will be found to be in the sequel. At that time, though Mr. Lloyd has all along refused to recognise Bishop Gray's Metropolitan jurisdiction, any more than my own, regarding him only as a ' titular Metropolitan,' as he regards me as a ' titular Bishop,' yet Mr. Green had in- cluded him always among the ' faithful ' clergy, inasmuch as he had signed all the documents of denunciation against myself. Now, however, Mr. Green has got a glimpse of the fact that Mr. Lloyd's single vote, if allowed, may seriously interfere with his plans, and he begins for the first time to intimate to him that he is not 'within the Church,' just ten days before the election, and forgets to send him the ' tract.' Mr. Lloyd requests an answer to his letter, and Mr. Green writes again as follows : — ' As you particularly ask for a reply to your letter of yesterday, I sit down to write to you, notwithstanding that I wrote to you yesterday also on the same subject. (i) When I wrote to all the clergy who acknowledge the Metropolitan on the 24th of August last, informing them of the contents of a letter I had received from his lordship, and asking them for their suggestions .... [sic: the sentence is incomplete] ; but, as you have separated from, by not submitting yourself to, the Bishop of Capetown, I did not feel at liberty to consult you. Except as acting as his lordship's representative, there is no reason
58 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
why I should be the one to commence a correspondence or to undertake to arrange the meeting. If, as you write, you expect these things from me, I must ask you to be con- sistent, and require you to recognise the authority which empowers and requires me to do such things. (2) With regard to the laity, I cannot agree with you that they were taken by surprise. It has been known for several weeks that such a meeting was about to be held [it was not known to his own churchwarden till October 20], and certain points connected with it were discussed with several laymen [mem- bers of the Natal branch of the Church Union, and therefore
reserved and cautious] The body that was once one
is now divided into three parts : (i) that follows Dr. Colenso ; (2) another, not admitting that it agrees with him, but acknowledging him as its Bishop, and protesting against and opposing the Bishop of Capetown ; (3) that acts with the Metropolitan. Now, I am no lover of strife. I am con- scious of this division ; and to ignore it would, in my judgement, at this hour, only lead to renewed altercation. Vestry meetings would only bring those parties into conflict without doing any good. If men like to call the meeting which I desire to hold, packed or hole-and-corner, or by any such name, I have no manner of objection. On the con- trary, I wish to mark and characterize the meeting as one of members of a voluntary association who at the present moment gather round the Bishop of Capetown as their head^ and are assembled to arrange some points touching their internal organization. If our proceedings interfere, or seem to interfere, with others, they can hold their meetings, and take such steps as to them shall seem desirable. But Ave have been told ad nauseam that we have forsaken the Church of England, and that we are a new association, and so forth. I have no wish to argue, but only ask not to be interrupted. .... (3) You inquire how the cost of the clergy going to Maritzburg is to be met. The Bishop of Capetown {i.e. S.P.G.) will bear the charges of those who acknowledge him. With regard to the laity, his lordship in his letter to me remarks, and I agree with him, those laymen who feel the
J 865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 59
deep inipoi'tance to tJicir souls and to the ChiDxh of the question we meet about will make a sacrifice, if needful a great sacri- fice, to come. If, however, they absolutely cannot, they
will bow to the will of God If, hozvever, men zvill
make no great effort, they must be held not to feel deeply on the sjibject. If they had to come here on their temporal affairs, they would find the means of doing so.' •*' The first remark I would make (and it is obvious) is, that no one could object to Mr. Green and his party, as a sect, separating from the Church of England, and electing for themselves a Bishop, and getting, if they can. Archbishop Longley or Bishop Gray to consecrate him. What we complain of is, that they still hold possession of buildings and other property dedicated to the Church of England, that they keep back our registers of baptisms, and receive incomes from S.P.G. as missionaries of that Church. But for the meeting itself, the attendance at which, by the Dean's own admission, will show how many in the colony * feel deeply on the subject,' let it be remembered that every possible exertion that prudence and priestcraft could suggest has been made since August 24 to make it up The meeting, as I have said, was sum- moned by advertisement on October 20 for October 25. The weather was splendid, all that could have been de- sired ; for travelling, you know, in this country is very unpleasant in wet weather. . . . There was nothing, in fact, to prevent a full attendance at the meeting, except a want of sufficiently deep feeling on the subject. . . . The number of laity from all parts of the colony, of those who voted for or against election, but who all, I suppose, may be reckoned as 'South Africans,' rejecting me and acknowledging Bishop Gray's proceedings, was thirty-one, after all these prepara- tions. These thirty-one included communicants of all ages and of all ranks. Ten of them came from distant places. . . . There remain twenty-one from the two congregations of Maritzburg. As these were all on the spot, and the room in fact was crowded by our friends, as spectators, in the gallery (for they were not allowed to sit with the faithful).
6o LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
you may judge how deep the feehng must have been on the occasion. . . . You will now, I think, be able to form some idea of the real value of this demonstration as far as the laity are concerned, of whom twenty-eight voted for an election and three against. . . . And now as to the clergy. . . . After passing a new article of faith, that ' Our Lord is to be ever adored in heaven and on earth,' they had two days' speeches upon the main question, whether a Bishop should be elected or not. The result w^as a drawn game, the clergy present voting seven to seven. Of the seven for the election, three do not really belong to the diocese, and a fourth has retired from all active work in it, and I doubt if four out of the seven would have been ordained by any English Bishop for want of theological and general education, though here we are obliged to be content with such candidates. Of those against the election, all were men of education and character, some of them really superior. And now comes in Mr. Green's forethought. When the votes had been taken, he informed Mr. Lloyd that his vote would not be allowed, as he did not acknow- ledge the Metropolitan. Some altercation took place, and it ended in his name being retained but reported to the Metropolitan as that of an outsider, so that virtually it will be, I suppose, erased, and the numbers of the clergy be reduced to fiv^e priests and two deacons for, five priests and one deacon against, the election, and it will be said to be carried by the clergy as well as the laity. But, besides these fourteen clergy w^ho voted, another, Mr. Baugh, wrote decidedly to oppose the election ; but, being in delicate health, did not attend the meeting. Another, Mr. Nisbett^ is also opposed, but . . . thinks it best to consult his own quiet by staying away from such occasions ; and two others (Tonneson and E. Robinson) were refused admission except as spectators. " But now as to the laity. The people ot Durban, Adding- ton, and Berea, on hearing of the intended election, and of the close way in which it was being managed, called a meeting on October 22, and passed, unanimously, except
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 6i
for one sole dissentient, a series of resolutions .... pro- testing against the whole business. I need not say that in each of these three congregations alone there are com- municants enough to overpower utterly the twenty-eight laymen at the Dean's meeting. And even if (as is very possible) great exertions should be made to swell the number that attended the meeting (thirty-one) by getting as many signatures as possible in different parts of the country, .... yet I am confident that on the other side would be found, if similar exertions were made to procure them, an overwhelming majority.
" As far as I am able to judge, the step now taken about the new Bishop is the very best thing that could possibly have been done to secure my position. It seems to me hardly conceivable that Mr. Butler of Wantage will accept the pro- posed bishopric, when he hears the facts about the election, and that he would only be the Bishop of a small sect, and would be refused admission into any of the churches belonging to the Church of England, not by me, but by the people and their elected churchwardens. But surely no English Bishop would take part in such a consecration — at least, not the Archbishop of Canterbury, after saying that he should be very sorry to suppose that his recent vote in Convocation would encourage them to elect a Bishop. Bishop Gray would, no doubt, go through with the business. . . .
" But now, after this open rupture with the Church of Eng- land (which, strangely enough, has happened in the very last week of a complete ecclesiastical year since my land- ing, .... so that they have had a whole year to consider what they would do), it is impossible that I should remain inactive .any longer, except that I shall await Lord Romilly's decision before interfering with the Dean personally. Before this mail leaves I expect we shall have some decision in our Supreme Court about the Cathedral ; and the recent pro- ceedings have gone far, I fancy, to clear up the mind of the judges on the point whether the Dean has any claim to officiate in a church which was given especially for the use
62 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap, i,
of the Church of England, not of a Church in union and communion with it."
To THE SAME.
"BiSHOPSTOWE, Novejuber z, 1886. "Before the mail goes, I expect to be able to notify the decision of our Supreme Court upon the 'exceptions ' made by Bishop Gray to our declaration about the Cathedral, which were argued last term. The judgement is to be given next Thursday, November 8th, about the very time, I suppose, when Lord Romilly w^ill be giving his in England. If both these are favourable, I foresee no difficulty nozv in maintaining my position here as long as it seems desirable. ... It will even be very desirable to collect the first year's payments for clergy ,1 and to increase the Defence Fund, if possible, as I shall now have to act in earnest with my recalcitrant clergy. It would be weakness, and felt here to be so, if, after giving them so long a time — a whole year — to consider what course they will take, I were not now to assert my authority among them, — tliough I must, of course, consult prudence in what I shall do. My programme of proceedings at present is as follows. Assuming that the decision of our Supreme Court will be in my favour, suffi- ciently at all events for practical purposes, I shall first begin with the Rev. F. Robinson, — no clergyman of this diocese, but one intruded by Bishop Gray, and the ringleader in all these schismatic proceedings, who keeps the Dean up to the mark, and drives him on further, I imagine, than his own timidity would have carried him. It happens very fortunately that the clergy have divided themselves as they have done, so that I need not at present take any account of the seven who have not elected a new Bishop, and some of whom it would not be desirable to disturb, until I have
1 This was a small fund, raised by friends in England, for the support of clergy in Natal working under the Bishop. The proceeds of the Defence Fund were all swallowed up in law expenses, and this, in spite of the generosity of some of his counsel in England, who refused all payment for their services.
1865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 63
some men ready to put in their places. But the seven seceders are the most easily dealt with of all. ... I think it will be prudent to await Lord Romilly's decision before taking the Dean in hand seriously. But if that is favourable — whether appealed against or not — I must then act, and forbid him to minister any more in the Cathedral church, and also give him notice to quit the Deanery. People — even his own friends, I imagine — will expect this ; and I do not see how I can do otherwise, if I am really trustee for the Church of England with respect to these buildings. . . . However, things may happen otherwise than we expect. But, as you will have heard what Lord Romilly's judgement is by the time this reaches you, you will see that, if it is favourable, I shall greatly need increased help for clergy for three years. . . . You will see what the Maritzburg people in their address to the Archbishop and Bishops say about the S.P.G. I do hope that the Society will be called to account at the next general meeting. Surely they cannot go on supporting clergy here (merely to oppose me), who have no laity either to pay or to back them with their influence." . . .
So persistent at this time were the calumnies which repre- sented the people of Natal as wishing to be rid of the Bishop that we are not only justified in adducing all the evidence showing the real facts, but in duty bound to do so. Of this evidence there is no lack : and among the many expressions of lay feeling in the colony the following is not the least significant. Of this paper Mr. Shepstone speaks in a letter addressed to the Bishop, November Sth, 1866 : —
" I send you," he says, " a copy I made of an address which has had its origin entirely with the people. It is written by Mr. Winter [Director of the Natal Bank] and is a touching document. It is to be published at once in all the papers as being in course of signature. Tell Mrs. Colenso I think this address, proceeding as it does spontaneously from the Cathedral congregation, and describing as it does so well
64 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. I.
and so feelingly the effects and tendencies of your teaching, is a full compensation for anything that all the Newnhams and all the Callaways may have said or ever can say. I am pleased with it beyond measure, and I am sure you cannot but be deeply gratified.
'"to our beloved pastor, the right reverend the Lord Bishop of Natal.
" With a view to acquit ourselves of a duty, and in some small measure to strengthen your Lordship's hands in the battle in which you have so nobly engaged, and so worthily borne yourself, the undersigned members of your own Cathedral congregation are desirous of expressing to you, on this the first anniversary of your return among them, their deep sense of the services you have rendered to themselves, and to the great cause of religious freedom.
" ' Before entering into this contest, we have no doubt, you counted the cost, and foresaw, to some extent, the amount of odium, insult, and scorn which would be attempted to be cast upon you, in common with almost every early champion of the Cross, the truth, or the sacred rights of humanity. This clamour has been chiefly raised and sustained by men who profess to be the heralds of a peaceful faith. By them you have been stigmatized as a heretic, slandered as an infidel, denounced from the pulpit, debarred from your own churches by personal violence, and made the subject of a somewhat ridiculous and impotent excommunication. The dignity and Christian forbearance with which you have met these calumnies, and this violence, challenge the admiration of many of those opposed to you, and have bound your friends to you by closer ties.
" ' We may now, however, congratulate you upon the triumph- ant progress of the cause which we have all at heart, — on the increasing congregations, the earnest devotion and reverent attention of your listeners, and the calm resolve to stand by you in the struggle at whatever cost.
" ' Without alluding to your published works, which are yet before the world unanswered, master-pieces of industrious
1 865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 65
research and truth-seeking criticism, we thank you for your weekly addresses, so rich and luminous with reasoning, so logical, touching, and instructive, whose chief aim, setting aside creeds, formularies, and dogmas, is to proclaim good- will among all mankind, and to teach a faithful reliance upon our Great Father. '"To all of us these sermons have come fraught with glad tidings ; but to some among us they have been the source of deepest comfort and consolation. Tried by adversity and borne down in our worldly affairs, as many of us have lately been, wc have from them gathered new hope and fresh strength to sustain and guide us in our troubles and difficulties. We thank you for representing to us and to the world, so faithfully and so ably, the Protestant prin- ciple of our Church and nation. We thank you for your advocacy of our disenthralment from priestly domination, of the right and duty of private judgement, of the freedom of thought and worship, of the obligation of boldly search- ing for the truth, and boldly proclaiming it, of the voice of the laity on Church governance, of the grand testimonies of science to God's truth and love, of the hopeful progres- sion of the human race, and of the cheerful tolerance of other phases of faith and forms of worship. W^e thank you that you have destroyed in this fair land so many idols of man's creation, which had been set up for the blind adora- tion of the credulous and unreasoning, and have proclaimed in their room a deeper and wider faith in the Divine teach- ing of our Blessed Lord and Master, a recognition of the brotherhood of man, without reference to creed, or caste, or colour, and over all and above all the merciful loving Fatherhood of the Living God.' "
In the Bishop's forbearance under abuse and calumny the people of Natal had marked nothing more than all who were not virulent traditionalists had noticed in England. Even among those who most thought him mistaken, not a few had wondered at the self-restraint which received without retort or remonstrance the gibes, jeers, and insults poured upon him VOL. II. F
66 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. CHAP. i.
in floods by Bishops, and others both clerical and lay. That which was done in England was done also in South Africa ; and it is well to have the emphatic assertion of his people in Natal, that in the momentous and memorable struggle brought about by the mere assertion of facts he " nothing common did or mean."
To W. H. DoMviLLE, Esq.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, Novan'^er 19, 1866.
" The effect of the late ' election ' is felt to be more and more damaging to the Gray and Green cause in the colony. Nothing could have happend better for our purposes. Last Sunday (yesterday, November 18), after the blessing had been pronounced by me at the morning Cathedral service, the whole congregation, which was very large, waited till I came down from the pulpit, and then the Colonial Secretary, in the name of those present, read to me the address of which I sent you a copy in my last .... and I replied. It was a very interesting, and I may say affecting, scene. There were to my astonishment 323 signatures, . . . and all from Maritzburg alone ; and, as you will see, not to a mere negative protest against Gray domination, but to a positive identification of themselves with my teaching. The number of signatures far exceeded my expectations. . . . I think it not at all improbable that when Lord Romilly's decision arrives, should it be in my favour, there will be a more distinct recognition of me as Bishop throughout the colony than has yet taken place. I mean positively, by some formal declaration, as well as by merely attending when I preach, which they have done all along. . . .
" One of mine went to Bishop Gray's registrar to ask to be allowed to copy the names of the ' faithful ' thirty-one who voted on the occasion of the election. He was told that if he would ask the next day he should have a reply. The reply was that he might, on condition that he furnished the list of the 160 odd who signed the address of welcome to me when I landed. As if the two sets would have any
1 865-66. RETURN TO NATAL. 67
comparison — the one a deliberate solemn proceeding, medi- tated by those who took part in it weeks beforehand ; the other a list of signatures, many, no doubt, set down hastily in the excitement of the time. But they shrink from publicity. At first they intended to keep the business of the election private — I mean not to admit the reporters, but one of the laity set his face resolutely against this. ^' Mr. Cox writes that the Rev. J. D. La Touche, of Stokesay, had written to say that he had almost made up his mind to resign his preferment and come out to me. I have written to him to say that if, instead of resigning, he could get leave of absence for two years and come out to me at once, he might render the greatest service to the cause. I know him ; he would be very useful. And he would be doing exactly what the other side have done. For Mr. Tozer, sent out last year by S.P.G., is an incumbent in Lincoln- shire, and only came out upon two years' leave of absence, and is very shortly about to return to England."
To THE SAME.
" BiSHOPSTOWE, Dccetnber 3, 1866. '' Matters are still progressing. Messrs. Newnham and Cal- laway, having been completely foiled at Durban in their attempt to get up a third party, to protest against Bishop Gray and the ' election,' and to petition the Queen to have me called to account for my grievous errors, have now been trying to form a union with vty friends in Maritzburg, where Mr. Newnham has been for the last ten days in close dis- cussion with Mr. Shepstone and others. The result is that he has been distinctly told that for the sake of peace my friends are willing to meet their wishes, so far as to join in a general address of some kind to the Queen, representing the disturbed state of things in the diocese, protesting against the election, &c., and praying Her Majesty to interfere, in such way as may seem best, to restore order ; but that not a finger will be moved to forward any action which had even the appearance of hostility to me, as they
F 2
68 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. i.
were only too thankful to have me among them, and had not the slightest wish to have me called to account ; and finally, that nothing whatever could be done towards even considering such a petition until the clergy had distinctly and openly acknowledged my lawful authority, such as any Bishop would exercise by law in England. Mr. Newnham for the clergy, and Mr. Wathen for the laity, have agreed to this as far as they are concerned, and believe that the other clergy and laity of their party will almost all agree to it. And nothing more is to be done until the other clergy have been consulted. . . . Should the petition to the Queen be carried out, its terms, I doubt not, will be general enough, expressing no hostility towards me. But I do not doubt that Callaway and Newnham will write privately to the Archbishop, Bishops of Ely, Lincoln, and others, urging them by every possible argument to get the Government to appoint a Commission to try me. Of course, it would be somewhat hard upon me to do this at this late hour, when they have compelled me to spend my own and my friends' money in coming out here with my family, and living through a whole year of colonial life, besides undertaking various responsibilities and expenses for clergymen and churches. They might have done this a year or two ago, and then I should have readily co-operated to bring matters to an issue in that way. Now I do not feel that there is any reason why I should give any facility to their movement. Rather, I am bound now to remember that I do not stand alone, as I did almost in this colony before my return, but numbers have committed themselves in support of me in various ways, and, as Mr. Tonnesen says, our liberties are as dear to us as their traditions to them. If, therefore, I am called to account, my own feeling is not to give them a single inch ; but of course I shall be guided by the advice of my counsel."
CHAPTER 11.
TEACHING IN NATAL. — "NATAL SERMONS," 1 865-66.
Our review of the Bishop's work in the examination of the Pentateuch has shown the nature of the struggle with tradi- tionaHsm, to which in the disinterested search for truth he committed himself. The four volumes of Natal Sermons exhibit some of the results of that conflict which in his notices of the Speaker s Coninientary he declares to be internecine. On the way in which that Commentary w^.'S, received depended, as he urged, the future course of English religious thought and life, and the mode in which missions should be carried on among the heathen. With this latter work he was more especially charged, and long before any portion of the Speaker's Commentary appeared he had begun to put before his people the whole counsel of God, as the conception of this counsel rose in his own mind after the long and unremitting toil which he had cheerfully undergone since the publication of his volume on the Epistle to the Romans. The Natal Sermons exhibit him in the character not only of a critic and judge (it was impossible for him to lay this aside altogether), but of a teacher, a guide, and a friend — one for whom the end of work w'as that he might " strengthen his brethren." In these sermons he spoke throughout as a fellow-worker and fellow- learner. Nowhere is there the least assumption of superiority
70 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. ii.
on the score of learning, or in any other way ; not the faintest insinuation that he must be right and others wrong — that fatal insinuation which infests almost every utterance of those who belong to any traditional schools. He had never been slow to recognize the duty of tolerance ; but since he listened patiently to the questions of the " intelligent Zulu," he had learnt the lesson more thoroughly, and he had come to see that, with all her faults, it was better taught by the Church of England than by any other religious body in Christendom. Against any pretences to infallibility on the part of any society of men he protested most vehemently ; and he indignantly denied that any such pretences were put forth by the Church of England for herself, although some of her children might seek to fasten them upon her.
These pretences have assumed monstrous forms. It might have been thought that in the prayer " for all sorts and con- ditions of men " the Church of England recognised all who professed and called themselves Christians as members of the Holy Catholic Church, for whose good estate she is praying, — that here she was rejecting all arbitrary and artificial re- strictions, and refusing to limit the terms of communion to those who had a reputation for orthodoxy. But there are some, it seems, for whom this prayer carries a meaning the very reverse of that which it bears to others. These will have it that in speaking of the Catholic Church, the Church of England goes on to speak not of those who belong to it, but of those who do not, so that the prayer resolves itself into the wish that all who profess and call themselves Christians, but who are really not such, may be led into the way of truth, which they have either rejected or denied, and hold the faith which they have opposed or doubted in unity of the spirit, which they have violated, in the bond of peace, to which they have done despite, and in righteousness of life, which they lack. Such an interpretation would for the Bishop have con-
1 865-66. TEA CHING IN NA TAL.— " NA TAL SERMONS." 7 1
verted the prayer into a mockery, which he would rather die than sanction. For him, the prayer was evidence that the real spirit of the Church of England was one which sought to include within her communion not merely those who are considered sound in the faith, but all who profess and call themselves Christians, and that by so praying she sanctioned all efforts for the removal of restrictions which never could do any good, and had always done vast harm.
It was impossible that the Bishop should, in these sermons, keep out of sight the incidents of recent years, or suppress all reference to matters of scientific controversy ; but from first to last his contention was that the Christian's duty did not call on him to enter into these debates, and that he would be judged and estimated as he was in his true self, and not with reference to opinions expressed in a series of dogmatic pro- positions. The Divine work in the world was the living work of a living God. It was in no way bound up with any written record ; and to suppose that it was so bound up was practi- cally to lose all knowledge of its real nature. The Christian life had no necessary connexion with dialectics, and most assuredly it did not depend upon them. It sprang out of the Divine Love, and the quickening of this love in the heart was the direct work of the Spirit of truth and righteousness.
" All tokens of our Father's favour are summed up and sealed in that message of love, which the Christ Himself has spoken to us ; in all the life of Jesus, His life of toil and suffering, sympathy with man's sorrow, endurance of man's sins — as, well as in His death — of patient submission to His Father's will, . . . the Eternal Son was manifesting the Father to us, was revealing the Father's gracious character, was working out the Father's will — the will of Him whom He proclaimed to us as His Father and our Father, as His God and our God."^
^ Natal Sermons, First Series, p. 21.
72 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. ii.
For the Bishop the Christ of God was the
" true Son of man, the perfect Type of Humanity, in whom the Divine idea of what a true Hving man should be is reahsed before the eye and in the mind of God."
No sign of a broad and all-embracing charity ever escaped his notice.
" It seemed meet to our Heavenly Father, with respect to whose blessed will, by whose unerring wisdom and love, all things in heaven and earth are ordered, in bringing many sons unto glory (observe, it is not said, ' in saving a few wretched sinners from the pit of woe '), to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." ^
In the language of the Pauline Epistles, he discerned the expression of profound moral conviction ; but he had no hesitation in saying that as to the time and the manner of an outward manifestation, "when the Lord Jesus should be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels," the Apostle was certainly mistaken. Nevertheless,
" The loving faithful soul was not deceived or betrayed. Their Lord and Master had come to them again, — not in the way in which their fond hearts looked for Him — not to ' restore the kingdom to Israel ' with earthly pomp and observation — not visible to mortal eyes, ' on clouds of glory seated,' encompassed by myriads of the angelic host,— not thus had He come ; but by the quiet spread of His Divine teaching, by the setting up of His kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost
" The clouds of glory on which the Son of man came, were the pure and simple lives of the early Christians : the angels, which heralded the entrance of His kingdom, were those bright spirits which surround the throne of God, 'love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
^ Natal Sc7-inons, I. p. 34.
1 865-66. TEA CHING IN NA TA Z. -" NA TAL SERMONS." 73
temperance.' He did come to restore the kingdom to Israel in a higher sense than they had ever dreamt of." ^
For the Bishop, then, spiritual truth was a truth by which and in which we live. It was no matter for debate, no subject for a nice scrutiny of terms, no battle-ground for subtle and exclusive definitions. Referring to the words of Jerome, that the body of Christ is His Gospel, or to those of Ignatius, that His blood is His love, he says : —
" You are now at this moment eating the flesh of Christ and drinking His blood, as many of you as have welcomed with joyful obedient faith the precious message of our Father's love, which Jesus delivered to us, — as many of you as believe, that — in His work on earth, in His labours and sufferings, in His life of unwearied love and tender pity for the souls of men, in His constancy even unto death whereby He sealed the Gospel of His life — He was showing us con- tinually of the Father in whose name He came, whose words He spoke, whose Spirit was given to Him without measure, — -that He was manifesting to us our Father's tender- ness, our Father's merciful pity for the fallen and outcast, our Father's compassion for the sorrowful and suffering, our Father's sympathizing love for His own dear children, the faithful and true in heart, the meek and pure and loving, those who are hungering and thirsting after righteousness, those who are striving by God's help to be perfect, even as their Father in heaven is perfect." '^
But if we wish to have a technical theological teaching drawn out on the lines of passive dogmatical propositions, for such teaching we shall search his pages in vain. We shall fail to find the propositions, and we shall encounter only a condem- nation of the spirit of exclusiveness and intolerance which intrenches itself behind this petrified phraseology. On what- ever subject he might be speaking, his great object was to
^ Natal Sermons^ I. p. 81. ^ lb. p. 201,
74 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. ii.
show to his hearers with all possible clearness the nature of the deadening changes which almost from the close of the Apostolic age overlaid the good news of Christ with a network of iron formulas put forth as living principles.
" Ah ! how fearfully," he said, " did the Church contrive during the first thousand years of her history, — ay, during the first five hundred, — to blot out that central truth (of the Fatherly love) from her system, interposing a mortal priesthood between the conscience and its God. . . . Do we believe, then, in the mercies of God, declared to us and ministered in the life and death of Jesus our Lord .'' Do we believe that in Him — in His hatred of sin, in His grief for the sinner, in His pity for the weak, the fallen, and outcast, in His love for the faithful and true of heart — the Living Word was taking of the Father, and showing to us His blessed character } And have we a ' thankful remembrance of His death,' — that He sealed in that hour the labours of His life, — that he failed not, He fainted not, the dear Son of God, and Son of man, until the work was finished which His Father gave Him to do, leaving us a bright example that we should follow His steps ? Do we thank God in our hearts that we fear not now to die, since that loving and Holy One has died at God's command, has breathed forth that gentle prayer, to be laid to heart by all mankind, ' Father, into Thy hands I com- mend my spirit t ' And do we bear in mind that He, — who by His pure life and patient death. His constant mind of love, displayed to the end in that other intercession which He made upon the cross with dying lips for His murderers, * Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,' offered that one offering which alone is acceptable to infinite love, the offering of a holy will consummated in act, — has. taught us also each in our measure to do the same, .... to offer up to our Heavenly Father that living sacrifice of faith and love and obedience, from all humanity, redeemed from death by the in-dwelling of the Living Word, inspired and quickened with the Spirit of Christ, with which the.
1865-66. TEACHING IN NATAL.— " NATAL SERMONS." 75;
Father will be ' well pleased/ which will be ' holy, acceptable in His sight, our reasonable service. ' "'
But neither here, nor anywhere, could he put up with any approach to unreal or insincere or even ill-considered language.
" We often say," he remarked, " that our Lord's example is to be the guide to us in all our duties of life. And so, indeed, it should be, — yet not in the way that many seem to sup- pose, by His having actually shared in the performance of those duties and resisted the temptations more especially connected with them .... Of His childhood and boyhood we know scarcely anything : of His youth we know nothing- We have very little to show us how He acted as a son or a brother ; we have no example in His life of a husband or a parent ; no exact pattern for students or men of business, for artisans, domestic servants, village labourers, for profes- sional men, soldiers, or statesmen. The duties of later middle life and of old age were not discharged by Him ; the lot of the noble, wealthy, and powerful was not experienced by Him, nor that of the pauper in the poor-house, of the prisoner immersed for years in the dungeon of the oppressor, of the patient racked with pain, or worn with lingering disease in the wards of the hospital. The example which He has actually given us in the Bible is chiefly that of an active ministry of almost three years in the prime of life^ under circumstances which can never happen again in the
history of the world How is it, then, that we are
able at once to appeal to Christ's example, as the perfect model of what human beings ought to be, or ought to do, under all circumstances ? It is because we appeal to the spirit of His life, — to the principle which ruled it, — to that conformity to the perfect will of God, that desire to please His heavenly Father, that surrender of His own will ta God's will, which He manifested on all occasions. And
^ Natal Sermons, I, p. 287.
76 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. h.
taught as we are ourselves by the Divine Word — enhght- ened by the Light which is the hfe of men^ — we are able in our own minds to fill up that which is wanting for our actual guidance amidst the duties of life, — to say to our- selves, in different situations, ' In this way Christ would act or would have acted.' We are able to set before us an ideal Christ, a perfect image of the Divine Man. That image of perfect beauty and holiness — of the perfect Man — which we thus by Divine grace behold each in our own mind — is not set before us at full length in the Gospels, nor could it possibly be ; no record of His life could have supplied minutely all the details needed for this purpose — for setting a mere copy which we are closely to follow in all our different relations of life — even if our Lord had actually entered into human relationship more fully than He has done. It is, I repeat, to the spirit of His life — to the principle which ruled it — that we must be appealing continually day by day and hour by hour, if we would ' put on Christ,' put on the Christian spirit. . . . The example, then, of Christ is not less valuable to us, because the details of His life are few, and leave many and most important points of our lives without models of conduct. Our following of any model, to be true, to be of any worth, must not be an imitation of certain acts, of certain demeanour, appropriate to this or that situation or relation, in which as human beings we may be placed. . . . Christ is our great Example, because He came not to do His own will, but the will of the Father who sent Him — because He sought not His own glory, but in all that concerned Him was simply obedient, leaving His cause in God's hands — because He bore witness for the Truth on all occasions, regardless of consequences." ^
But this example can act upon us and influence us only through love. It was thus that it acted on St. Paul, one " among the most extreme High Churchmen of the Jewish Church," but whose chains were broken so soon as
^ Natal Sermons, I. pp. 315-17.
1865-66. TEACHING IN NATAL.— '' NATAL sermons:' 77
" the truth of Christ's blessed Gospel flashed upon his mind, and he saw that it was a message of love to all mankind, a message of love from the Father of spirits, to tell us, one and all, Jew and Greek, bond and free, male and female, that we are 'all the children of God by faith,' no more servants, but sons, and if sons, then heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ."^
That which Christ is we are to be.
" ' As in Him,' St. Paul says, dwelt ' all the fulness of the God- head bodily,' so zue, he tells us, are ' the fulness of Him that filleth all in all' The glory that was revealed in Christ, is revealed also in our measure in us ; the Father that dwelt in Him dwells also by the Living Word in us. These words express a great mystery, which we cannot altogether fathom. But they remind us of the greatness of our high calling to be the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty. . . . They remind us of our glorious dut}' and privilege to be ' followers of God, as dear cJiildren' -
Nor was he afraid that any rude hands could shake the basis of his child-like confidence and faith.
" Theologians may dispute — as perhaps they must — on the history of the Resurrection ; critics may do their work for the God of Truth in sifting its details. But nothing can touch the spiritual fact that He, who died upon the cross, now liveth — that He, who died unto sin once, now liveth eternally to God. For us. Chris- tians, the name of Christ is exalted, as a living power, over all the earth ; for us His cross is the emblem of the victory of love, of patience, of faithfulness, through suffering. Has persecution stamped out the truth which He taught us .•* Will it be ever able to do so ? Has neglect or the lapse of time rendered His Divine teaching worn out and obsolete ? Do His words cease to quicken, to strengthen, to comfort, to stir to the very depths our inner being? Will His example ever fail to instruct, and cheer, and stimulate us .-* ^ Natal Sermons, II. p. 38. - lb. II. p. 115.
78 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. ll.
No ! in that Truth — in the assurance of our Father's love, of the Sonship of Christ, and our sonship as one with Him, of the grace of the Spirit breathing on the souls of men — in that Eternal Truth, which Christ proclaimed, is the ark of refuge, and ever Avill be, for the children of men." ^
It may be said that in these sentences we do not see with sufficient clearness what may be meant by the cross and the death of Christ-- On this subject the Bishop had not been led, perhaps, to analyse his thoughts with a specially careful scrutiny, and there may be to a certain extent a commingling or even a confusion of two senses. But whatever the defect may be, it is as nothing to the exaggeration of this defect which may be said to characterize nearly the whole theological literature of this country. We can scarcely read the words of any preacher without encountering expressions which see in the cross of Christ only the wooden post on Calvary, and in His death only the breathing forth of His bodily life on that instrument of torture. Of the Bishop's real meaning some- thing has been said already, in our examination of his Covi- inoitary on the Epistk to the Romans ; ^ but it is enough to say that nowhere in his writings can we find any phrases which lay stress on mere outward incidents, or make the spiritual truth dependent on historical facts, or rather on records of them which may be more or less uncertain. For him beyond all doubt the death of Christ was His death to sin, the eternal death to sin, which is itself His resurrection to the eternal life of righteousness and truth. In His death to sin, in His victory is our victory. It is He, the pure and Holy One, speaking the words, doing the works of God, in whom the Father was dwelling, who came to manifest the Father to us ; it is He who has taught us all to say,
" Our Father — all the sons of men, the sinful and sin-oppressed
^ Natal Sermons, II. p. 120.
^ See Vol. I. pp. 299j 300. ^ lb. p. 142 et seq.
1 865-66. TEACHING IN NATAL.— '' NATAL sermons:' ic)
as well as the faithful and true-hearted, those who have ' trespasses ' to be forgiven, ' temptations ' by which they are harassed, ' evil ' from which they long to be ' delivered : ' it is He who said to that guilty woman, ' Go and sin no more : ' it is He who said to the penitent thief, ' This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise ! ' " ^
The present age had, the Bishop knew, its special difficulties and its special controversies ; and for guidance through all these he could intreat his people to have recourse to that book which he was supposed to have done his best to vilify and disparage.
"If perplexed with many thoughts, and harassed with the controversies to which the present age has given rise, and in which you feel }'ou must take a part, from which you cannot escape — rather, from which, as a true servant of God, as a faithful Christian, you cannot consent to withdraw yourself (for you cannot consent, with a weak cowardice or a guilty indolence, to let the whole burden of them fall upon your children in the next generation), you may always fall back on those words in which the writer of Ecclesiastes sums up ' the conclusion of the whole matter,' ' Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty — rather, this is the whole^of man.' .... But you can do more than this : you can turn to the Bible, as a treasury of Divine instruction, and teach them out of it. The Lord's Prayer is there, with its simple petitions, which the child can understand, while the hoary-headed saint can never exhaust their meaning. The Psalms are there, which tell how men lived and laboured and longed after God, and were suffered to find Him, in the ages long ago as now. The lives of good men and true are there, with all their patient faith, their noble self-sacrifice, their joyous confidence, their sure belief in the final triumph of God and His Truth — though checkered, it is true, with signs of human infirmit}'. Above all, the history of Christ Himself is there, with its calm serene trust in the ever-present help of His heavenly Father ^ Natal Sermons, II. pp. 169, 170.
8o LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. ii.
with its purity and goodness, its holy hatred of sin, its pitiful compassion for the sinner, its boundless love to God and man, exhibited in life, and sealed in death. And you will find enough in all these, if you are faithful, to help you to do God's work and speak God's Word to your families, to ' bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.' " ^
The raising of all men, therefore, from the death of sin to the life of righteousness was for the Bishop the end and aim of the Divine work in the world.
" The faith of Christ, the faith which cares for the weak, which reclaims the fallen, which makes us see in every human creature our Father's child, which teaches us that we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren, which sets before us the Cross, the sacred emblem of love and suffering, as the glory of humanity — how can the Author of that faith, of this pure doctrine, be any other than the Lord and Saviour of men, the dear Son of man and Son of God, in whom ' the Father was dwelling ' by the Eternal Word, to whom He ' gave not the Spirit by measure ' .-' Yes ! Christianity is a fact, — a fact of the present as well as of the past. No criticism of documents, no discovery of glosses, no sifting of history, can ever disprove it or rob it of any of its essential glories, as the Light, — -the Great Light, — which has ' come down from above, from the Father of Lights,' to lighten our race. . . . Nothing is more plain in the New Testament than that the sum and substance of it, as of the Old, is not a system of religious worship, not a summary of many and various things to be believed or done, so that 'whosoever shall not believe or do them, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly,' but a revela- tion of God, and of our relation to Him, as that of children to a loving Father." -
He believed that true Christianity was the highest truth yet ' made known to man.
1 Natal Salmons, II. p. 275. ^ lb. p. 323.
1 865-66. TEACHING IN NATAL.— '' NATAL SERMONS." 8i
" The ' peace of Christ ' is the settled conviction of God's Fatherly love to Him and to His brethren, — this is that peace which passes all understanding, which He has left as our portion. It is this fact, of His asserting a claim of sonship to God, for Himself and for each one of us His brethren, which differences His work from that of other religious teachers. On the practical realisation by us of this intimate relation, this union between God and man, He laid the chief stress, as the very sign of His Divine mission, when he prayed in His last prayer, 'that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us.' . . . On this was founded that universal fellowship, which we call the Catholic and Apostolic Church." ^
With all narrowness and exclusiveness such a faith as this must be in absolute antagonism.
" In the life of Christ, slight as is the sketch which we have of it in the Gospels, the leading idea is of one who lived wholly for others, to comfort and to heal, above all to bring home to God the lost sheep of the flock, to waken penitence in the sinner, and to assure the penitent of pardon and peace. And if the history in the Gospels of the life of our Head is but a sketch, it is in a measure filled up by the lives of the members of the body of Christ, of all His true followers in every age. Whom do we and all men recognise as true Christians, even though with many weaknesses, perhaps, and imperfections .■' Are not labours of love, sufferings for love's sake, the essential part of the characters of such t A Christian may be ignorant, feeble, perhaps imprudent ; he may know nothing of the Athanasian Creed, or, knowing it, he may dislike some parts of it, and doubt or dispute others ; and yet he may receive that blessing which the Master pronounced upon the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peace-maker. But a cruel Christian ! a selfish Christian ! an avaricious Christian ! a vindictive
^ Natal Senno/is, II. p. 325. VOL. II. G
82 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. it.
Christian ! an impure Christian ! even a self-indulgent Christian ! is a contradiction in terms." ^
But while he thus put before them the foundation of our life in God, he was unwearied in his onslaughts on supersti- tious beliefs which overlay that foundation with falsehoods,, and put it out of sight. Many of these superstitions are mere delusions, products of ignorance and defective know- ledge, to be dealt with gently and forbearingly ; and assuredly no one could submit them to gentler and more forbearing treatment than that of the Bishop of Natal. At the time when he wrote he had especially to counteract a form of teaching which in later years has greatly altered its tone, if it has not dwindled away almost into nothing, — a teaching which seemed to take a positive delight in picturing the Fountain of Holiness, Truth, and Love as a vindictive and arbitrary demon. Thus in a sermon on the Devouring Fire (" who among us shall dwell with the Devouring Fire i* Who among us shall dwell with the Everlasting Burnings 1 "), he points out (i) that the traditional method seizes on these words by themselves, and, hearing the question asked without waiting for the answer, refers them to the pit of woe, to the everlasting burnings of hell-fire ; and (2) that the answer given in the context shows that the Devouring Fire is no other than the Living God, with whom dwells the man who walks righteously and speaks uprightly and shuts his eyes from seeing evil.^ Having cast the traditional method to the winds, he was not only not afraid of speaking the truth, but he saw instinctively the way in which it would be best to set the truth before men. He would not allow them to remain in bondage to the letter of any book or the decrees of any Church ; but he would have them see " that the foundations of their faith stand fixed and sure in the Eternal Rock of
1 Natal Sermofis, II. pp. 327, 328. ^ /^_ i_ p^ jg_
1865-66. TEACHING IN NATAL.— ''NATAL SERMONS." 83
God's unchangeable wisdom and love ; that that love is higher and deeper than men's thoughts about it " ; that all great truths, which have ever gained a mighty mastery over the minds of men, whether in the Church of Christ or out of it, have come from the Living God, the Fountain of Truth ; that the creeds of the Catholic Church— the products, no doubt, of ages when Jewish and Christian forms of thought had been intimately blended with the philosophical systems of Greece and the East, and of which the expressions, there- fore, may but imperfectly correspond to the more advanced knowledge and modes of thought of our own times— do yet shadow forth to us eternal realities of the world unseen.^ He had no hesitation in exposing the folly which speaks of every part of the Bible as so interwoven with the other parts that to invalidate one portion was to throw discredit on the rest, so that if the historical accuracy of the Pentateuch be questioned there will be little or nothing left on which the mind can lay hold for peace and content.^ The very phrase " the comfort of the Scriptures " which suggested these ex- pressions, exhibits the absurdity of these notions, it being impossible to refer the term " Scriptures " to any but those of the Old Testament, those of the New not being yet in exist- ence.^ He could quote to his hearers in Natal passages from Dr. Irons's work on the Bible and its Interpreters — and he had a right to do so — which the most vehement of his High Church antagonists could not challenge, Dr. Irons being one of the foremost champions of the " authority of the Church." This straightforward writer had said plainly that the records on which the so-called historical books of the Old Testament were based had perished without exception, and that the outlines which survive have been drawn by other hands, with a design of their own, so that they who seek mere history
^ Natal Sermons, I. p. 39. ^ lb. p. 39.
^ //'. p. 40.
G 2
84 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. ii.
must, as, in the opinion of Dr. Irons, the chronicler warns them, seek it elsewhere.^
If Dr. Irons - could so speak, the Bishop was not less justified in saying that this judgement of Dr. Irons was undoubtedly true, although he himself drew from it a different conclusion. The design of the chronicler was certainly not to write history ; but it was to pervert history so as to make it appear that the Levitical Law had been fully and exactly acted upon since the days of Moses, and to gloss over, or to suppress, every fact which might militate against this position. Thus the Bishop told his people that " the chronicler never gives a hint of David's great sins of adultery and murder," nor of Solomon's heathen marriages or of his idolatry. The Books of the Kings, no doubt, contradict him flatly ; but the chronicler had not the fear of the Hebrew canon before his eyes, or at all events hoped that his own version of the history would be read to the exclusion of the older books. In the same way he says nothing of the wickedness of Abijah, but makes him address Jeroboam's host of 800,000 men " in most pious language," declaring that in Judah the law was strictly obeyed, that God Himself was with the men of Judah for their Captain, and His priests with sounding trumpets to cry alarm against their enemies. The older writer again says that in Asa's days the idolatrous high places were not taken away out of Judah, whereas the chronicler says that they
1 Natal Sermons, I. p. 41.
2 The honesty and integrity of Dr. Irons are beyond all question." It was, therefore, only to be expected that when he and the Bishop met they should be attracted to each other. The relations between them became very friendly. Dr. Irons gave him a copy of the Bible and its Interpreters, then out of print, or — must it rather be said ? — out of circulation in obe- dience to dictates which the author naturally shrank from disregarding. In the book was a friendly manuscript inscription, which greatly pleased the Bishop, but which unfortunately cannot be given here. The volume was burnt in the fire at Bishopstowe, in 1884. See Vol. I. p. ']'].
1 865-66. TEA CHING IN NA TAL.—'' NA TAL SERMONS:' 85
were. But it is in the glorification of the priests and Levates that the latter is most persistent and most barefaced.
" Thus the Book of Samuel," the Bishop told his people, " gives not the least indication of the tribe of Levi having been distinguished in any way for their numbers, dignity, or influence, in the time of David, and especially is silent as to any great body of priests and Levites having been pre- sent on the occasion of bringing up the Ark of God to Jerusalem. On the contrary, this supposition is distinctly negatived by the facts actually stated. Instead of the priests covering, and the Levites bearing, the Ark, as the Law enjoined, .... we read that the Ark was put upon a new cart .... and Ahio went before the Ark, while Uzzah evidently walked behind or beside it, and so put out his hand, we are told, to stay it when the oxen shook it, and met with his death while so doing. Not a word is said about priests or Levites in the whole narrative." ^
But according to the chronicler, the Bishop went on to say, 4,600 Levites and 3,700 priests attended David at Hebron, and with them Zadok and twenty-two captains of his father's house ; that with these David took counsel for the bringing up of the Ark, charging these priests and Levites to gather together for the purpose of bringing it up to Jerusalem ;
" and yet, even according to the chronicler, after all this con- sultation and gathering, David makes use of mere laymen — not of priests and Levites — to remove the Ark in the first instance, for it is only when warned by the death of Uzzah that David is made by the chronicler to say, ' none ought to carry the Ark of the Lord but the Levites.' "
But the numbers of the priests and Levates who attended on this occasion are carefully registered, altogether 862 Levites and two priests, although more than 8,000 had come to Hebron ten years before for the mere civil purpose of making David King.
^ Natal Sermons^ I. p. 50.
86 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. ii.
" The whole story " of the chronicler, the Bishop added, as he was bound to add, " is obviously a mass of contradictions."
If David forgot the Mosaic ordinances about the Levites, can it, he asked, be believed that
" not one out of so many hundreds or even thousands of the tribe of Levi — not one single priest or Levite — not one prophet, such as Nathan or Gad, who were at that time living, and doubtless were present at his side — came forward to warn the devout King that no man of any other tribe whatever should presume to intrude upon the sacred pre- rogatives of the priests and Levites, ' lest he die ' — nay, rather, lest there should break forth ' a plague among the children of Israel '" .? i
If he spoke of the authority of the Scriptures as writings at all, the Bishop was bound to say at least thus much ; but, having said this, he added : —
" I have said enough to show you how the truth stands in respect of these Books of Chronicles. You will find much more of the same kind for yourselves, if you will only thoughtfully read the narrative, and compare it with what is written in other places."
He was not afraid to trust their judgement, and he had no misgivings about shocking their faith, for he had assured them at the outset : —
" This I say — as the testimony of one who has resolved, by God's grace, not to shut his eyes to facts of any kind which in these our days God's wisdom is pleased to make known to His children, of one who has thoroughly ex- amined one portion at least of the Sacred Volume, and and knows now, perhaps, almost as much as is at present known of its unhistorical character, its variance with scien- tific certainties, its discrepancies and contradictions — this I
1 Natal Sermons, I. p. 52.
1865-66. TEACHING IN NATAL.— '' NATAL SERMONS." 87
say, the more the Bible is studied, the more Divine it seems ; the more august, and grand, and wonderful ; the more full of real support and solid comfort for the soul of man." ^
When criticism has done its work, the Scriptures remain still the oracles of God.
" They teach us about God and His doings ; they speak messages from God to the soul ; they are still profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction in righteous- ness ; they are a gracious gift of God's Providence, that we ' through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.' " 2
Few things are more sad and instructive than the clinging to the letter rather than the spirit, which has characterized man- kind in all ages ; and one of the most signal instances of this disposition is to be found in the strange tradition of the re- storation of the Pentateuch by Ezra, after it had been burnt at the time of the Captivity. This story, like that of the Book of the Law in the time of Josiah, starts on the assumption that there was but one copy ; and it is for the traditionalists to explain how this could be. For them it seems that this story of the fiery draught which preternaturally brought back to his memory every word of the whole Pentateuch becomes the basis of their trust in the correctness of the Hebrew Scriptures as we now have them: but, as Dr. Irons insists with irresistible force, if we grant the truth of the tale,
*' it is on the gigantic gifts and inspiration of the transcribers in Ezra's day that we are really depending — gifts and inspiration which yet are a mere hypothesis, of which the possessors tell us no single word. And before Ezra's day we are thus owning, unmistakeably, that the literary history of the Old Testament is lost. Let all those who would identify this with God's entire Revelation, see to what they have brought us." ^
^ Natal Sermons, I. p. 38. - lb. p. 53. ^ lb. p. 61.
88 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. ii.
" I agree entirely with this author," the Bishop adds, that " ' a more hopeless, carnal, and eventually sceptical position, it is impossible to conceive,' than that ' which identifies the . Written Word with God's Revelation ' of Himself to man. And because I believe it to be so unsound and dangerous, I have done my best, and shall still do my best, God helping me, to set you free from it, by showing you a 'more excellent way' in which you may continue to regard the Scriptures as a gift of God, a precious witness of His love to man."
" We are often," he says, " wishing to be wiser than God. . . . We want to have either an infallible Bible or an infallible Church — something to which we may have recourse in our perplexities — some infallible external guide, some voice from without, such as men often long to substitute for the voice within. But God knows best how to train us for Himself . . . He will not supply us with an infallible external authority, which shall supersede the necessity of our listening to that Living Word which speaks within us, and witnesses with our spirits that we are born of God." ^
No doubt, the task of discrimination to which we are thus called is one which demands real effort of thought as well as singleness of purpose. But
" in using our best mental powers in such inquiries we are," he says, "best pleasing God, and doing the will of Him who has aroused this spirit of investigation in the age in which we live, and in which He calls us to do our part ; " and we may be certain " that when all this work is done, no portion of Eternal Truth can ever be lost ; it is safe in the keeping, not of Churches and Councils, inforcing belief in doctrines and creeds by excommunications and anathemas, but in the keeping of Him who is Himself the Truth, and by His Spirit will maintain a permanent supply of the true Bread of Life for the hearts of His children." ^
1 Natal Sermons^ I. pp. 67, 68. - lb. I. p. 113.
1 865-66. TEACHING IN NATAL.— '' NATAL SERMONS." 89
But having said that God would let us have neither an infallible Book, nor an infallible Church, he would not use language which might leave the impression that the Church of England, while declaring that the Roman and other Churches had erred not only in questions of government and discipline, but also in matters of faith, was herself incapable of making a mistake. She had made many mistakes ; and there were, as he had said in the preface to Part I., many points in her formularies which called for revision and altera- tion. Among these were the questions put to sponsors in baptism. On this subject he told his hearers : —
" You will remember that it has now been ruled .... that the words in the Ordination Service, ' I do juifeignedly believe all the canonical Scriptures,' must be understood to mean simply 'the expression of a bond Jide belief that ' the Holy Scriptures contain everytJiing necessary to salva- tion,' and that ' to that extent they have the direct sanction of the Almighty.' If this is true of the Scriptures them- selves, of course it must be true of the Creeds, . . . the compositions of fallible men in former days, which are only based on Scripture. In other words, we are justified .... in these days of wider knowledge and deeper thought in extending to the answer of the god parents in baptism, who say of what is called the Apostles' Creed, . . . . ' All this I steadfastly believe,' the same latitude of interpretation as that which is extended to the declaration of the deacon at ordination, when he says of the Scriptures themselves, ' All this I unfeignedly believe.' We may understand the answer in question to express no more than the belief that the Creeds contain ' everything necessary to salvation,' and that ' to that extent they have the direct sanction of the Almighty.' Yet w^e believe also — at least I certainly do — that there are great eternal truths underlying most, if not all, the mere literal expressions of the Creeds ; that, for instance, Christ will ' come from heaven ' in a very living sense 'to judge both the quick and the dead,'
-go LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. ll_
though we can no longer believe that heaven is a place above our heads, or that He literally ' sitteth on tJie right hand of God! " ^
Much in Mr. Maurice's spirit, and with some likeness to his language, the Bishop spoke of the baptism of infants as
"' a beautiful symbol of our faith that they are already in fact, — yes, from their very birth-hour, — the children of God. And in this way infant baptism in our Church is a protest, for which we may be thankful, against all exclusiveness, against all appropriation of the love of God by any. The Church declares by it that no merit — not even faith — is needful to make the human soul the object of the love and care of the Father of spirits." ^
The kindling of His love in the heart would be its rescue from bondage to freedom — a freedom which would tell in every direction, in the way of regarding the sacraments, and of dealing with all ordinances and with all things outward, such as signs and wonders. The superstitions connected with the latter he assailed by his remarks on the Book of Jonah. As to the supposition that in speaking of the sign of the prophet Jonah our Lord referred to the story of his dwelling in the whale's belly, he insisted plainly on the impossibility of supposing
^' that our Lord in this very passage, while condemning his questioners for seeking a miraculous sign as a ground of their faith, would actually in the same moment give them such a sign, in direct compliance with their own request."
The sign of Jonah was his preaching to the Ninevites, his warning to them of the consequences of sin, and his announce- ment that God willed not that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.^
The mischief of blind subservience to ordinances, as such,
^ Natal Sermons, 1. p. 143. ^ lb. p. 147. ^ lb. p. 153."
r865-66. TEACHING IN NATAL.— " NATAL SERMONS." Qr
lie brought out powerfully in some very careful sermons on the Sabbath. He had no scruple in saying that the inforce- ment of this ordinance in Scotland had been productive of frightful mischief, and perhaps of nothing but mischief; but in saying this he was supported by the declarations of Scottish ministers whose eyes were at length opened to the folly as well as the wickedness of this wretched Judaism, He cited the words of one minister who referred to the time when
" no street lamps were allowed to be lighted on the darkest Sunday nights, because it was held that nobody had any right to be out of doors at such hours. The Assembly for- bade any person taking a walk on the Sabbath, or looking out of a window, and therefore all the blinds were pulled down ; and there is great reason to fear that the spurious conscience, thus created, indemnified itself, for all the gnats it was forced to strain at, by swallowing a variety of camels." ^
It is unnecessary to dwell on the iniquities, the hypocrisy, the misery, of the Scottish Sabbath under this Pharisaic dis- cipline. It is enough to say that only fifty years ago the -General Assembly dared to speak of zvalking on Sunday as " an impious incroachment on one of the inalienable preroga- tives of the Lord's Day." - Here, too, the Bishop could point to all this horrible oppression and cruelty as being based on documents which were historically untrustworthy. Take away the Fourth Commandment, as given in the Books of Exodus and of Deuteronomy, and this miserable fabric of dead traditionalism topples to the ground. But not only do these two versions of the precept contradict each other, they are both the product of an age many centuries later than that of Moses. These facts the Bishop draws out very clearly and forcibly in his sermons ; ^ but we have had occasion to go into
^ Natal Sermons J I. p. 230. ^ lb. p. 232.
•■' lb. p. 242.
92 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. ii.
the subject already.^ The point on which he chiefly laid stress is that we are under no paramount obhgation to keep either the seventh day or the first.
" There is no ground for supposing that the adoption of the Christian Sunday, in place of the Jewish Sabbath, rests upon apostolical authority. On the contrary, the apostles them- selves, as we see by many instances in the Acts, kept with their countrymen the ordinary Jewish Sabbath."
He remarked further that
" no writer of the first three centuries has attributed the origin of Sunday observances to any apostolic authority," ^
and it needs scarcely to be said that he never felt the least scruple in pointing out the abominations arising out of or suggested by the mere ceremonial observance of one day out of seven. Thus, of the dreadful and at the same time absurd story of the man stoned to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath, he asks,
" Who can believe that such a command as this ever really proceeded from the mouth of the Ever-Blessed God } a- command, too, which would appear to have been powerless to prevent the evil which it proposed to cure, which did not hinder the people at large from defiling the Sabbath with pollutions infinitely worse than that of gathering a few sticks for a fire. ' Your new moons and Sabbaths I cannot away with ; your hands are full of blood.' "
Nor was this all. The proof of the falsehood of the story was lying ready to hand, only people would not see it, because they would not think, they would not look, they would not examine.
" What a noble work then," he says, " is that of moderni criticism,"^.
^ See Vol. I. pp. 677 et seq. ^ Natal Sermons^ I. p. 252.
■-' lb. p. 255.
1 865-66. TEACHING IN NATAL.— '' NATAL SERMONS." 93
which draws out this evidence Hke the Book of the Law from the hole in the wall into which it had been stowed in the days of Manasseh.^
" See how in a moment the finger of criticism points to the proof, lying plain before our eyes, that this story is an insertion of a later day than that of Moses, and most prob- ably was not ever a part of the original narrative of the Exodus. ' While the children of Israel zvere in tJie wilder- ness'^— how could these words have been written by Moses., who never came out of the wilderness, who delivered his last address, as we read, on the other side Jordan in the zuilder- ness ? Here, in short, we have another instance of those numerous insertions which have been made in the original narrative of the Pentateuch by writers of a later age." -
In short, the plain issue of the matter is that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath ; that it was designed for his bodily, mental, moral, and spiritual health ; and that, so far as it fails to promote, or so far as it interferes with, this health, or with any other obligations, the observance of it has for him no force whatever. That it does promote this health, and that the institution is, therefore, one of great value, no one was more ready to maintain than the Bishop.
"We need," he said, "at all events in civilised communities, where there is such continual tension of the brain, and draining of the nervous energy, the recurrence of a day of rest at shorter intervals [than those of the Greek festivals] — rest, not to be inforced upon us from the necessity of a positive law, but rest commended to us by the wise pro- visions of our gracious Creator, and approved by universal experience to be a source of infinite blessing, the right of the poor man as well as the rich, as needful, in fact, for the wants of our physical, social, moral, and religious nature,
^ See Vol. I. pp. 547, 628, 669 et seq. ^ Natal Sennofis, I. pp. 255, 256.
94 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap. ii.
as the rest by night after the toil of the day. But still the glory of the Sunday is common worship. And, whatever may be done, publicly or privately, to enlarge and to elevate the enjoyments of the working classes on the Sunday, God forbid that it should not be done with a due regard to the worship of Almighty God, which especially irradiates and dignifies the day, and casts a bright ray over the week besides." ^
It is not easy to imagine an influence more potent for good, for the dispelling of noxious superstitions, dreams, and fancies, than that of the Bishop's teaching in these sermons — teaching so well weighed, so considerate, so sober in expression, so careful of the mental and moral powers of his hearers. To many the old Satanic mythology may seem now like a thing belonging to past ages ; but over not a few we cannot doubt that it has a very real and a very mischievous influence still. Resolved on doing all that he could to knock these deadly fancies on the head, he attacks the very root of the conception, which has its origin in the attributes of the Vedic Vritra or the Zoroastrian Ahriman.
' A will, or spirit, so malignant as to hate God, as God — as goodness — and possessed of knowledge and power such as is popularly ascribed to the devil, ' next to ' omniscience, ' next to ' omnipotence, — and all these attributes exercised continually for the destruction of God's work and the ruin of His creatures, .... such a being as this is utterly inconceivable amidst the extended knowledge, and the
sounder thought and reasoning, of the present day
The ' devil ' has long been, with most thinking persons, a mere impersonation of evil, of the promptings of the selfish nature, which conflict with the Divine Law of love and purity ; like the vast shadow on the mountain-side, in which the bewildered traveller fails to recognize himself but sees a supernatural and monstrous foe. There is here
1 Natal Sermons, I. p. 27 8.
1865-66. TEACHING IN NATAL.— '' NATAL sermons:' 95
a dark image of the man himself, but there is no centre of darkness and of night, to be the opposite and enemy of the radiant ruler of the day." ^
For Luther's ideas on the subject he had no indulgence. If between ourselves and God
" a spirit of evil interposed, we should become mere helpless victims ; the battle would be over us between God and the devil, — an idea almost blasphemous to a Christian mind, and which would shock us more, if we had not been long inured to it by traditionary teaching." -
Nay, the very feelings which some, holding Satan to be a distinct person, profess to entertain for him are terribly mischievous.
" The thought of a creature of God, set apart for hopeless wickedness and misery, and an object worthy of hatred, is fraught with danger to the soul that entertains it. If a person, a thinking being, may be hated," why not also men,
his agents, or who seem to be so And, indeed,
what a large measure of the notorious curse of all times — the odhini theologiciun — is actually due to the belief that the justly-detested devil has inspired the ' heretic,' the man who denies or doubts what we hold to be sacred truth ! " *
The Bishop is thus carried into a train of thought which is worked out with singular clearness, strength, and beauty. It is the ingrained habit of the so-called religious world to treat the slaughtering of bulls and goats under what is styled the Old Dispensation as the true sacrifice, the sanctification of the man being a sacrifice only by a figure or a metaphor ; and in the same manner it is a common thing with those who
^ Natal Sermons, II. pp. 15, 16. - lb. p. 17.
^ See the teaching of Gregory of Nyssa on the restoration even of the "very inventor of wickedness." Vol. I. p. 169. * Natal Sermons, II. p. 17.
96 LIFE OF BISHOP COLENSO. chap, ii!
profess to build everything on the " sacramental system " to charge those who, with Ignatius, Jerome, and Augustine, speak of the body of Christ as union with Him and of His blood as His love, with not " going far enough." They are ready to allow that what they say is true, if only, as they phrase it, they will go on to make the inward grace insepar- able from and dependent on the outward sign. It would be impossible to show more clearly than their own words show how completely they are blind to the nature of the good news which St. Paul was never weary in proclaiming — how thoroughly they are still in bondage to the letter which kills.
Not less lamentable is the pretence that they who, as it is said, question or deny the personality of the devil, make light of the heinousness of sin. To get at the truth we must reverse the proposition.
" It is one reason," the Bishop said, " for attacking the popular superstition about the devil, that the absurd and grotesque ideas which belong to it are too apt to be associated in the minds of the young and thoughtless with sin, with guilt, with temptation, — things which should never be spoken of lightly."
The danger is not confined to the young alone. It was said of Southey that he could never think of the devil without laughing, and it is perhaps well that the conception which has its roots in the myths of Vritra, Ahriman, Set, or Typhoon, should be exhibited in its true colours. The mythology which has crept into Christianity — or rather has twined round it as a choking parasite — is formidable both in its quantity and its strength ; and this mythology must be put down and cast away. It is generally supposed that the English word " devil "