Evening Post. SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 1930. A FORGOTTEN CONTROVERSY

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 47, 23 August 1930, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 1930. A FORGOTTEN CONTROVERSY

The seventh decade of the 19th century was a period of exceptionally fierce controversy affecting the relations of religion and science and of Church and State, and three important storm-centres in the controversy were marked by the publication of three books. In 1859 the appearance of Darwin's "Origin of Species," a book described by Lord Shaftesbury as "vomited from the jaws of hell," was considered to strike a blow at the foundations of religion and even morality. In 1860 the authors of a volume of "Essays and Reviews" — of whom,six were clergymen of the Church of England, and one afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury—were pleasantly branded by the orthodox as "the Septem contra Christum," and two of them were in due course condemned by an Ecclesiastical Court. But in 1864 this decision was reversed by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in a judgment which, by reason of its treatment of the gravest heresy involved, was said to have "dismissed hell with costs." Meanwhile, another equally furious controversy had been.set ablaze by Dr. Colenso, Bishop of Natal. A series of criticisms of the Pentateuch, of which the first appeared in 1862, led to his denunciation by one of his fellow bishops as "doing the Devil's work," to the ascription to him by another of qualities becoming "a successful fiend rather than the minister of a Christian congregation," and to his excommunication by a third. At this time of day it seems equally strange that the placid existence of the Lambeth Conference should date from the period of strife, and that so fierce and so prolonged a warfare should have raged round the issues raised by the Bishop of Natal. Dr. Colenso, whose manual of arithmetic made his name as familiar as that of Euclid to the schoolboys of two generations ago, had done a great work among the Zulus by the compilation of a grammar and a dictionary of their language, by his preparation of Zulu text-books in history, geography, and the like, and by his translations from the Bible. As Dean Stanley told the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel after their disapproval of the Bishop's views had induced them to transfer their grants in aid of missions to another diocese, | this work of his among the Zulus "would keep alive his fame as a missionary long after his persecutors Were all dead and buried." But, as in the case of the much milder ( Kikuyu controversy of our own day, it was the difficulties of the mission field that opened the floodgates of controversy. Dr. Colenso has himself explained how the questions putj to him by his converts compelled him to question himself with disturbing results. While translating the story of the iFlood (he wrote to Dr. Harold Browne -in a letter which was not sent) I.have had_ a simple-minded but intelligent native —one with the docility of a child but the reasoning powers of mature age—look up and ask: "Is all that true? Do you really believe that all this happened thus—that all the beasts and birds and creeping things upon the earth, large and small, from hot countries and cold, came thus by pairs and entered into the ark with Noah? And did Noah gather food for them all, for the beasts and birds of prey, as well as for the rest?" My heart answered in the words of the prophet: "Shall a man, speak lies in the name of the Lord?" I dared not do so. In "The Bible in the Nineteenth Century," Dr. J. Estlin Carpenter gives a good idea of the impression made by what was widely regarded by his contemporaries as Dr. Colenso's abominable heresy. The fact that critical views resembling those reached by Dr. Colenso have long been taught with undisputed authority in the universitieo and theological cojleges of Great Britain, makes it difficult for this generation to realise the terror and wrath excited by the episcopal application of arithmetical tests to the narratives of the books of Exodus and Numbers. Ridicule was poured upon the simple Zulu. The Bishop's objections, it was alleged, contained nothing new (which was substantially true): they ha-J been confuted again and again (wit_ft was not true). Matthew Arnold, not yet the apostle of culture or the inventor of the parable of the three Lord Shaftesburys, rebuked him for not having written in Latin, like Spinoza. In spite of the simplicity and earnestness of his declarations of Christian faith, extravagant charges of infidelity wero flung against him.

Nothing in this outburst of hostile ycriticiam is calculated to excite more.

surprise to-day than Matthew Arnold's participation in it. He was afterwards, as Dr. Carpenter indicates, to shock the orthodox by heresies which, in expression at any rate, were justly open to severe censure, but which he did not deem it necessary to veil in the decent semi-ob-scurity of a dead language. But at this stage of his development Arnold was prepared to palter with the truth and to condemn Colenso, not because his criticisms were untrue, but because he had made them intelligible. This was strange doctrine to come from the man who was afterwards to become a very superior critic of the insincerity of the clergy. Whether or not there were three Lord Shaftesburys—this was merely Arnold's pleasant way of gibing at the three ] persons of the Trinity—there were, at any rate, two Matthew Arnolds. Amid a tremendous fire of controversy and litigation Dr. Colenso proceeded to speak the truth that was in him to both Zulus and whites in i the plainest possible terms. He was officially called to account by Bishop Gray, who as Metropolitan of Cape Town claimed a coercive jurisdiction over him. Despite Colenso's protest against this claim, Bishop Gray on the 16th December, 1863, pronounced sentence of deposition against him, and, as Colenso disregarded it, followed it up with what he termed "the greater excommunication." On appeal to the Privy Council —"that masterpiece of Satan for the overthrow of the faith," as Bishop Gray described it—the whole of these proceedings were on the 20th March, 1865, pronounced to be null and void. Colenso's native converts were warned against him; subscriptions were withdrawn, and, "the clergyman who called himself VicarGeneral of the Bishop of Cape Town bade him depart from the House of God as one who had been handed over to the power of the Evil One." Perhaps the unkindest cut of all for Colenso was the refusal of the trustees of the Colonial Bishoprics Fund to pay him his salary, but in 1866 another striking victory in the Courts drew from Lord Romilly a declaration that he was still Bishop of Natal and a second condemnation of Bishop Gray's proceedings. Outside the Courts Colenso seems to have been as severely treated in England as in South Africa, but his adversaries there did not make the mistake of instituting legal proceedings. In the following verses "Punch" properly represents the Archbishop of Canter-1 bury's'intervention as an appeal not to the law but to the heretic's finer feelings: — THE NATAL CORRESPONDENCE. I. My Dear Colenso, — With rogret We hierarehs, in conclave met, Beg you, you most disturbing writer, To take off your colonial mitre. This course we press upon you strongly: Believe me, Yours most truly, . , " LONGLEY. Lambeth. 11. My Dear Archbishop,— To resign That Zulu diocese of mine, And own myself a heathen dark Because I've doubts of Noah's Ark, And feel it right to tell all men so, Is not the course for Yours, COLENSO. It is astonishing indeed that the Lambeth Conference should have been born-in such an atmosphere of strife, but, as we explained on Tuesday, so it was. In September, 1865, the Provincial Synod of the Canadian Church was moved by the Colenso controversy to ask the Archbishop of Canterbury to convene a general Anglican Conference, and in February, 1867, he issued the invitations. The principal work of this first Lambeth Conference was to resolve that the whole Anglican communion is deeply injured by the present condition of the Church in Natal. Who, if anybody, was to blame, or what, if anything, was the remedy, is not suggested. This delightful resolution is as safe, as John Byrom's epigram: God bless the King,—l mean the faith's defender I God bless—no harm in blessing—the Pretender! But who Pretender is, or who is King,— God bless us all!—that's quite another thing. "Safety first" was a good slogan for the Church in-1867.