THE RIVAL BISHOPS IN SOUTH AFRICA.

WHATEVER may be the decision of the Crown as to the legality of the deposition of the Bishop of Natal by his Metropolitan, and whatever may be the differences of opinion as to the questions of criticism and theology raised in the course of the dispute, there can be no question in the minds of unprejudiced and educated men as to which of the two bishops has conducted the struggle between them in the calmer and more Christian spirit. Dr. Colenso's just published remarks on the recent proceedings of the Bishop of Cape Town in the diocese of Natal is a model of firm and courteous rejoinder to a ferocious and somewhat unscrupulous attack made upon him in his absence, in his own diocese, and before his own clergy and catechumens, by his ecclesiastical superior. We do not suppose that the Bishop of Cape Town in anything exceeded his own conscientious conviction ; but then he has the conscience of a bigoted ecclesiastic, which is never scrupulous. It is certain that in the discharge of what he thought a duty, and what he doubtless said honestly was a painful one, the Bishop of Cape Town yet in- dulged himself in the application of scurrilous and indecent epithets to Dr. Colenso's writings which were wholly beside his purpose, and also in a free process of misquotation in support of his attack. which, though doubtless unconscious, only shows the more by its- unconsciousness how little sensitive is his Lordship's orthodoxy to the effect and importance of the qualifying words and sentences• so carelessly omitted from his quotations. On the other hand, the reply of the Bishop of Natal, though he had a right to feel keanly this somewhat coarse attack made on him amongst his own peo- ple and in his absence, is polished, dignified, and even respectful. A bishop who, if not endowed, as we do not think he is, with the powers for delicate historical or literary criticism, is at least in scholarship and Biblical learning very far the superior of his Metropolitan, and whose only crime has been that of going some- what farther than the great majority of competent critics in the separation of the different elements in the Pentateuch, might be excused if he replied warmly to the charge of using "awful and profane words," of " being led captive by the Evil One," of " instilling the poison of unbelief," of " teaching the very opposite to what he undertook to teach," of "enjoying the emoluments of his abused office and violated trust," of " reckless arrogance like that which marked the infidels of the last century," of using the language of the boaster and the scorner," and so forth. But the Bishop of Natal does not reply warmly. He is conscious of believing the Gospel he undertook to preach as pro- foundly as the Bishop of Cape Town himself—in some respects more so, for, as often happens, the high dogmatic dread of heresy and desire to magnify the divine side of Christian doctrine above the human has led Bishop Gray himself into a more palpable and serious heresy than any attributed to his suffragan. And to this cause partly perhaps, still more no doubt to genuine Christian principle, it may be due that Dr. Colenso's reply is so calm and gentle, and, at least to the ethical if not to the legal part of his superior's accusation, so successful.

But whatever be the verdict passed on the issues of the personal controversy,—and we do not think educated men not already pledged to either side of the party question can differ much about that,—the Bishop of Natal's criticism on his Metropolitan's pro- ceedings is well worth study, if only for the curious contrast it presents in the whole methods and genius of the two missionary bishops,—and this not only in consequence of their differences, but from the first. The Bishop of Cape Town has always identified himself with the principle of sacerdotal authority, and devoted his chief labour to multiplying the number of dogmatic agencies by which he may control the minds of the natives ; the Bishop of Natal has always identified himself with the principle of penetrating to the centre of native thought and feeling, and teaching them for"

themselves "to feel after Christ, if haply they might find Him," and therefore has devoted his chief labour to mastering fully the lan-

guage, modes of thought, and sympathies of the simple people amongst whom he went to live and teach. He tells us that the Bishop of Cape Town speaks somewhat lightly and depreciatingly of these preliminary human labours, and has not thought them a part

of his own duty in his own diocese—as though they were utterly subordinate to the main work. And no doubt to the Bishop of

Cape Town, who separates so sharply the infallible Christian doc- trine from the human wants which it satisfies, it must be so. But to Dr. Colenso it seemed part and parcel of the Christian mission itself, to sound carefully all the avenues of speech, all the elementary nodes of thinking and feeling by which the native character to which he had to appeal naturally expresses itself. He says with considerable force and even pathos, in answer to Bishop Gray's unfeeling and evidently unjust charge, that he had neglected his true work and left his diocese in a languishing and declining state,

—" I have no special gift for languages but what is shared by most educated men of fair ability. What I have done I have done by hard work—by sitting with my natives day after day, from early morn to sunset, till they as well as myself were fairly'

exhausted,—conversing with them as well as I could, and listening to them conversing,—writing down what I could of their talk from their own lips, and, when they were gone, still turning round again to my desk to copy out the results of the day. In this way, and by degrees, I was able to force my way into the secrets of their tongue, and to overcome those difficulties which had to be en- countered before any missions could be set forward to any con-1 siderable effect among the natives." And again elsewhere Dr. Coleus() speaks with great force and genuine conviction of the sort of sympathy with elementary difficulties which is required to inspire even in the childish natives the true sort of faith :—" And for 'work among the heathen, too, such [highly educated] men are needed—men of large hearts, and abilities strengthened and refined

by academical training, with the power of mastering a native lan- guage, and when they have mastered it of sitting down to talk out religious questions with the native, entering within his heart, as it

were, penetrating into its secret chambers of thought, and drawing out into the light of day the fears and hopes which are common to man, —the religious ideas which lie undeveloped in the conscious- ness of the veriest savage, ready to be quickened into life by Chris- tian teaching,—the eternal laws which are written by the finger of God on his heart as well as on ours. This work, I need hardly say, is something very different from the tame repetition, with babbling defective utterance, of the cumbrous and often unintelligible and absurd circumlocutions which stand so commonly as representatives, in a barbaroustongue, of the grand expressive language of our formu- laries." And the Bishop of Natal tells us elsewhere that it was this anxious study of the elements of the native language and mode of thought, this linguistic anxiety and minuteness, which first turned his thoughts into the line of criticism adopted in his commentary on the Pentateuch, so that the very care and thoroughness of his missionary labours really led him naturally into the critical analysis of the earliest records of the Hebrew people. And this ja obviously the truth, though we think there were other gifts re- quired for the work,—historical gifts,—which the Bishop obviously does not in the same degree possess.

Now all this is utterly alien to the whole temper and principles of the superior Bishop, who has sufficiently shown not only with poor simple natives, but with an educated man his equal in intelligence and superior in learning, that his method would be to crush all doubts at once "with a severe reproof and warning of the guilt of unbelief." It seems that even amongst Dr. Colenso's personal pupils his influence was, if possible, to be summarily extinguished in the same way, for this is the account given in a native cate- chumen's letter to Dr. Colenso of the very unscrupulous statements made under Dr. Gray's immediate influence, if not by his personal authority, of the nature of the former's sceptical crimes :- "Afterwards we went out together with them in the afternoon ; and we talked with Mr. Robertson, and asked, Where is the

Bishop [of Cape Town] going to ?' Said he, ! that Bishop has come to put all things properly. For. Sobantu [the native name for the Bishop of Natal] has gone astray greatly ; I don't suppose that he will ever come back here.' Again he said, The

Bishop has come to tell the people to abandon the teaching of

Sobantu ; for Sobantu has gone astray exceedingly ; he has re- belled ; he does not believe in God our Father and in Jesus Christ our Lord.' William and I, however, contradicted, saying, As to Sobantu, we know that he, for his part, is a man who believes ,,exceedingly. When has that [which you speak of] come upon- him ?' Said he, ' When he was in England he rebelled ; his book,

too, speaks badly.' I wish, now, to hear plainly whether, in- deed, they have spoken truth or not, Mr. Robertson and others, to wit, that you no longer believe."

Thus Dr. Gray is for imposing a dogmatic Christianity by the mere force of ecclesiastical assumption on the minds of the ignorant ; Dr. Colenso for feeling the way gradually to their wants and hopes, opening their minds to the light where they can see it, and not forcing upon them more than suits their weak undeveloped vision. Hence, too, of course the oppo- site ecclesiastical leanings of the two Bishops,—the one to an independent Church founded on a ritual and a creed which are to be left to the priests to interpret and enforce,—the other to a Church protected from itself,—guarded from its own inherent tendencies to bigotry,—by the broad justice of a civil judiciary, which rather cares to adapt the legal dogmatic conditions of the Church to the actual intellect of the day,—just as it modifies common law by the changing conditions of the time—than to give them a precise and invariable meani g Dr. Gray prefers the former Church, because it depresses and even oppresses the free development of human thought and learning with an affectation at least of infallibility ;—Dr. Colenso the latter Church, because it provides so large a scope for the elastic movements of human opinion and feeling and protects the man as carefully as the Christian. For our own parts, while objecting to many of Dr. Colenso's critical extravagances, we believe that much more than is at all' easy for us now to estimate, is involved in preferring his method in our missionary churches to that of his Metropolitan. It is because missionaries have made so little effort to enter into complete sympathy with their pupils,—or rather because the inelastic dog- matism of those who pay their wages and dictate their modes of thought has admitted of so little freedom in their attempts to start from the intellectual and moral plane of their pupils,—that Chris- tianity has made so little way with races in a different stage of civilization from our own. There is evidence even in this corres- pondence that the Zulus are not capable of being disturbed by doubts as to the authenticity of the individual books of the Pentateuch,—that such a matter would simply be utterly oat of relation to their conception of the Gospel,—but that they might very easily be disturbed and altogether thrown out by any attempt to silence all their little difficulties with the same leaden repulse that' doubt is guilt,' and the teaching that they must surrender to an authority of which they do not understand the source, without terms, if they are to believe at all.