Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

356 FROM THE DIVINE ORACLES TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM.
been easily within his grasp. To him truth and justice were
more than the decrees of a Convocation of Canterbury or of
in this as in other matters he braved
a Pan- Anglican Synod ;
the storm, never yielded to theological prejudice, from first
to last held out a brotherly hand to the persecuted bishop,
and at the most critical moment opened to him the pulpit of
Westminster Abbey.*
The third of the high ecclesiastics of the Church of England
whose names were linked in this contest was Thirlwall.
He was undoubtedly the foremost man in the Church of
his time the greatest ecclesiastical statesman, the profoundest
historical scholar, the theologian of clearest vision in re-
gard to the relations between the Church and his epoch.
Alone among his brother bishops at this period, he stood
"
four square to all the winds that blew," as during all his life
he stood against all storms of clerical or popular unreason.
He had his reward. He was never advanced beyond a poor
Welsh bishopric ; but, though he saw men wretchedly infe-
rior constantly promoted beyond him, he never flinched,
never lost heart or hope, but bore steadily on, refusing to
hold a brief for lucrative injustice, and resisting to the last
all reaction and fanaticism, thus preserving not only his own
self-respect but the future respect of the English nation for
the Church.
A few other leading churchmen were discreetly kind to
Colenso, among them Tait, who had now been made Archbishop
of Canterbury ; but, manly as he was, he was somewhat
more cautious in this matter than those who most
revere his memory could now wish.
In spite of these friends the clerical onslaught was for a
time effective ; Colenso, so far as England was concerned,
* For interesting testimony to Stanley's character, from a quarter whence it
would have been least expected, see a reminiscence of Lord Shaftesbury in the
Life of Frances Power Cobbe, London and New York, 1894. The late Bishop ofj
Massachusetts, Phillips Brooks, whose death was a bereavement to his country and
to the Church universal, once gave the present writer a vivid description of a scene
witnessed by him in the Convocation of Canterbury, when Stanley virtually with-
stood alone the obstinate traditionalism of the whole body in the matter of the
Athanasian Creed. It is to be hoped that this account may be brought to light
among the letters written by Brooks at that time. See also Dean Church's Lift
and Letters, p. 294, for a very important testimony.
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