Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

movements in the Church. That the arguments used by the reformers to support their position, are altogether complete and satisfactory, it is not for the writer to decide. In the views of many, the great interests of the venerable body, of which they are the intellectual chiefs, will have paramount importance. In the views of others, the most direct and obvious method of delivering their own souls from the net of a most difficult and complicated position, would appear the first matter to be considered. One thing is certain, no one who has been honored with any degree of personal acquaintance with these men has ever retained the very smallest hesitation as to the supreme honesty and self-forgetful simplicity of their characters; and of the sincerity of their conviction, that the course they have chosen is not only the most wise, but the sole one absolutely right. It remains for us now, having a little prepared the way to understand his work, to recount the story of the boldest of these Reformers, the Bishop of Natal.

John William Colenso was born in the year of the battle of Waterloo. He is not (as many have supposed from the peculiarity of his name) of foreign extraction, but is descended from one of those Cornish families whose patronymics differ from those of other English provinces, as the Breton names differ from French, and the Basque from Portuguese. Bishop Colenso's father held the office of agent for Government, manager of part of the royal domains in Cornwall, called the Duchy of Cornwall, forming portion of the appanage of the Princes of Wales. Unfortunate speculations in mines ruined Mr. Colenso while his son was still a youth; and from that time, for twenty years, the son supported the father. A very small aid from a grandparent permitted him to go up to Cambridge as a sizar, and there he worked his way till he became a Fellow of St. John's College, and tutor. At this period he was chiefly distinguished for his mathematical acquirements. His books on Arithmetic, then first published, have since become standard works, and are said to bring in to their publishers (to whom, unfortunately, the bishop sold the copyright) a large amount annually. The great public school at Harrow

being then without a mathematical tutor, the Head Master, Dr. Longley (now Archbishop of Canterbury), applied to Cambridge for one; and Dr. Colenso was induced to accept the office for a time. The task does not seem to have been congenial, and he returned ere long to St. John's, where he held his Fellowship. Not long afterwards he married Miss Frances Bunyon, a lady of much ability and of entirely sympathetic views and feelings, who has been in every way a fitting companion and helpmeet, both to the missionary and the reformer. A sister of Mrs. Colenso's is the wife of Dr. MacDougall, the Bishop of Labuan, one of the most distinguished of the English colonial bishops.

Upon his marriage, Dr. Colenso, of course, resigned his Fellowship, and accepted one of the College livings, Forncett St. Peters, situated about ten miles from Norwich. There he continued to reside, doing very heartily the work of a parish clergyman, and winning great regard from all his neighbors, till, on the creation of the new bishoprics in South Africa, he was requested to fill the see of Natal. As all the world knows, such bishoprics are honorable banishments, where men of distinguished abilities, who have a right to aspire to high offices at home, are little disposed to bury their light under a bushel. One of the best of them, the bishopric of Calcutta, has just been going begging for several months, before a man of sufficient capacity could be found to accept it. The task, in such a new colony as Natal, is of course entirely that of a missionary; and Dr. Colenso, with a large family growing around him, happy and respected in his comfortable English parsonage, and with plenty of objects of lawful ambition open to him in England, had certainly nothing to tempt him if of worldly sort to go out to the wilds of South Africa. Nevertheless, he yielded to the request that he should do so; and the curious circumstance is, that it was precisely the representations and entreaties of Bishop Grey, the Bishop of Capetown, by whom he has been prosecuted, which determined him to accept the undertaking. The great need existing for a man of courage and devotion to accept the office, and the peculiar fitness of Dr. Colenso, were insisted on by Dr. Grey, till his

friend agreed to be consecrated Bishop of Natal when he was made metropolitan, and to undertake with him the supervision of the Church in South Africa. By a singular chance, the royal patent for Bishop Grey not being ready on the proper day, his appointment as metropolitan was necessarily deferred. a few days later than the consecration of Bishop Colenso; a point which, in the subsequent disputes as to the metropolitan rights of Bishop Grey, has been of considerable importance. Dr. Colenso could of course only be held bound by the engagements he himself had made, and the degree of subordination to his metropolitan specified in the patent which he had accepted. The larger powers given to Bishop Grey in his subsequently delivered patent could not be made to avail against Dr. Colenso. The whole matter of these patents, however; their illegality as regarded the powers of the crown; and their separate contradictions and irregularities, though of little interest to the readers of the "Christian Examiner," would require long explanation to any one desirous of understanding the trials which have taken place, both at Capetown and in England.

The first work of the new Bishop of Natal, on his arrival with his family in his diocese, was to make himself thoroughly master of the language of the native population, We believe we may fearlessly state, that no other bishop or clergyman in South Africa has any knowledge of the native tongues comparable with his acquirement of the Zulu dialect. His labors among these people, the most intelligent, apparently, of African races, — and the books he has translated and caused to be printed for them under his own supervision, would occupy too large a space to be here described. Even his worst enemies have not denied, that as a missionary bishop his work has been unsurpassed. The cordial aid of his wife, and her kindness to the Zulu converts, were no doubt greatly in favor of his success. Her feeling towards them was well shown, as the writer remembers, on one occasion, when we asked her, in reference to American negro slavery, what her experience had led her to think of the capacity of the African races for freedom and civilization: "You must not ask me

such a question," she replied, laughing: "I cannot think of them in that way at all. Why, some of them are my friends: I love them." This is certainly a tone in which conversion is a good deal more likely to progress than the usual one among teachers of Caucasian race.

After he had been some years in Natal, Bishop Colenso addressed a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, which first brought his name into popular notice in England otherwise than as a distinguished arithmetician. He maintained, in this letter, the very sensible proposition, that when savages having two or more wives should be converted to Christianity by our clergy, they should not be required to put away the supernumerary wives; though, of course, they should be forbidden to add to their number, or marry a second if they should only have one at the time of conversion. Dr. Colenso urged the obvious arguments, that the necessity of turning away an affectionate companion to the wretched lot of a divorced savage woman, was an obstacle to conversion likely to weigh the most with the most generous of the men otherwise convertible. He might, no doubt, have added the grim, familiar tale of the chief who was desired by the missionary to make sure to part with his second wife before the missionary should return to baptize him next year. The chief presented himself accordingly, smilingly, for the holy rite; and, on being interrogated as to what he had done about his wife, silenced all further inquiry by the assurance, "Me eat her."

Among Bishop Colenso's most advanced native converts is one named William, an intelligent-looking Zulu, whose letters and photograph speak of fair ability, and great simplicity and affectionateness of disposition. The questions of this Zulu, as all the world knows, first suggested to his teacher to make a few calculations respecting some of the figures used in the Books of Genesis and Exodus. The beginning of such an inquiry, with a man so absolutely candid and truth-loving as Dr. Colenso, could but lead to one conclusion, that there was unmistakable error somewhere. Further researches and fresh and ingenious calculations, to which came in aid both his arithmetical genius and his experience of the practical matters of

the camping and moving of numbers in an uncivilized country, tended all the same way; till at last he had to face the terrible result, that the Pentateuch could not have been written either by Moses or by any veracious witness of the events he described. What his duty was as regarded such a discovery, he was for some time in doubt. His wife, who learned at first with dismay of the results of his inquiries, followed them up ere long, and sympathized deeply in his feelings. But what were they to do? A bishop to publish a heresy, striking at the very stem of that Bible-tree which overshadows all English thought, or an honest man to go on teaching what he knew to be untrue?

It was while he yet waited to. see clearly his duty in this awful crisis of his life, that an incident occurred which we have heard him relate, and which has often seemed to us inexpressibly touching. Every one who has read that heartharrowing book, "The Life of Blanco White," will remember where he speaks of himself as one leading a forlorn hope, who had fallen in the trenches, leaving it for others to pass on to victory over his body. The prophecy was not false. It chanced that Dr. Colenso, spoke to a friend, who had lately come from England, of some matters, which made the friend suggest to him to read a book he happened to have brought out to Natal, this same "Life of Blanco White." The bishop read it; and the result was the resolution — on which so much, so very much, for himself and for the world, has depended to return to England, and there frankly publish all that he had discovered. Blanco White had not, then, lived in vain.

[ocr errors]

Five years after his first departure, Dr. Colenso, with his wife and family, came home to England; and, as soon as possible, put through the press the first volume of his "Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically examined." The stir which the publication caused was quite unparalleled, even by the previous case of "Essays and Reviews." The newspapers rang with the controversy; the libraries were beset with buyers and borrowers; and even little shops in country towns, where hitherto only penny newspapers were sold, put

« ElőzőTovább »