the book, it was a remarkable coincidence that he should go over the same ground in the same way, applying the same methods, and arriving at similar results. Any reader of this chapter will see the bishop had ample means of becoming acquainted with the intellectual difficulties of heretics. Being himself an accomplished arithmetician, the investigation by which he became distinguished was natural to him, and it was quite out of the line of any Zulu to suggest it. The Zulus were strongest concerning the difficulties of Theism; but the bishop was never in any degree moved by their arguments, except so far as their intelligence and earnestness may have inspired him with tolerance and respect for extreme difference of belief. The Zulus had a quick sense of moral preception, of the discrepancies between profession and practice, but these were points upon which the bishop did not deal in his Pentateuchal criticisms. He dwelt mainly with intellectual and scientific objections. When his first volume on the Pentateuch came out it was said of him "To Natal, where savage men so But, behold the issue awful! Says polygamy is lawful, And the Bible isn't true! " The bishop had not said this, but it was quite as near to the truth as clerical criticism usually gets on its first effort. Dr. Cumming was one of his adversaries. He was an ingenious prophet who predicted the end of the world in a certain year, and at the same time negotiated a lease of his house for a much longer period, whereby he obtained a reduction of rent to which he was not morally entitled. He issued some frenzied pamphlets entitled "Moses right, Colenso wrong," which I answered by another series entitled "Cumming wrong, Colenso Right; by a London Zulu." Bishop Colenso certainly showed that an educated Christian gentleman, who had sympathy for the people and a genial toleration of the pagan conscience, could do much for their elevation in the arts of life. The bishop took his beautiful electrical apparatus and delivered lectures with experiments in Natal to the great delight of the Zulus, who in their grateful and appreciative way called him Sokululeka, Sobantu, "Father of raising up" -"Father of the People." No Zulu heart would apply such honouring words towards Dr. Cumming, whose divinity was a snarl and his orthodoxy a sneer. One day I sent the bishop a set of the pamphlets I had written in reply to his adversary. Here in his answer dated from Pendyffryn, Conway, July 25, 1863 "DEAR SIR, I am much obliged by your note. I enclose a letter from Professor Kuenen, of Leyden, which you may like to see. He ranks not merely among the first-but, I believe, as the first-of living Biblical critics, and treats my book rather differently from Dr. Cumming and Co.-Faithfully yours, J W. NATAL." The bishop also sent me the third part of his "Examination of the Pentateuch " on its publication. Next to Huc and Gabet's Travels in Tartary, Bishop Colenso's "Ten Weeks in Natal" is the most alluring missionary book I ever read. Had ecclesiastical appointments gone by merit in Colenso's time, he would have been made Archbishop of Canterbury, as he had more learning and more Christianity, in the best sense of the term, than any contemporary prelate. With noble self-sacrifice he ended his days among the Zulu people. He was the friend of their kings-he was ceaseless in pleading for justice to Cetewayo. He was the only bishop for centuries who won the love of a barbarian nation. Mr. Ruskin, whose regard is praise, presented his large diamond to the Natural History Museum on the condition that the following words should always appear on the label descriptive of the specimen :-"The Colenso diamond, presented in 1887 by John Ruskin in honour of his friend, the loyal and patiently adamantine first Bishop of Natal." CHAPTER LXXIV. LORD COLERIDGE AND THOMAS HENRY BUCKLE. (1859.) MR. JUSTICE ERSKINE, in his address to me, said in 1841, that "the arm of the law was not stretched out to protect the character of the Almighty. The law did not assume to be a protector of God." But he used it so all the same. His words, however, admitted that blasphemy, as respects Deity, is not a crime which the law takes cognizance of. Blasphemy is only a secular concern, a crime that affects the peace and taste of society. Blasphemy is an erminic creation. In the eyes of a Theistical moralist, orthodox Christianity is blasphemy of a bad kind. Yet a judge seldom considers that the conscience of an atheist is outraged by ordinary Christian language. Usually the judge protects Christians alone, and, according as he is bigoted or tolerant himself, his definition of blasphemy is malignant or generous. In cases or opinion judges make the law, and when a Lord Chief Justice is tolerant it is fortunate, since his judgment becomes a precedent which minor judges respect. Lord Coleridge, in giving judgment on certain publications two or more years ago alleged to be blasphemous, said to the jury: "If the law as I laid it down to you is correct—and I believe it has always been so ;1 if the decencies of controversy are observed, even the fundamentals of religion may be attacked, without a person being guilty of blasphemous libel. There are many great and grave writers who have attacked the If so, it has been disregarded by most judges. ( foundations of Christianity. Mr. Mill undoubtedly did so; some great writers now alive have done so too; but no one can read their writings without seeing a difference between them and the incriminated publications, which I am obliged to say is a difference not of degree, but of kind. There is a grave, an earnest, a reverent, I am almost tempted to say a religious tone in the very attacks on Christianity itself, which shows that what is aimed at is not insult to the opinions of the majority of Christians, but a real, quiet, honest pursuit of truth. If the truth at which these writers have arrived is not the truth we have been taught, and which, if we had not been taught it, we might have discovered, yet, because these conclusions differ from ours, they are not to be exposed to a criminal indictment. With regard to these persons, therefore, I should say, they are within the protection of the law as I understand it." This judgment gives protection against Christian penalties to such writers as Buckle, Carlyle, Harriet Martineau, Huxley, Tyndall, Morley, and Spencer. It is the amplest Charter of Free Discussion yet promulgated on high authority in any nation or in any country. One day Mr. William Coningham, then M.P. for Brighton, took me to call on Thomas Henry Buckle, who was residing with his mother in Sussex Square in that town. Mr. Coningham had often spoken to me of Mr. Buckle as one who had long been engaged on a great work which would make an impression upon the age. It proved to be the "History of Civilization," which was afterwards published. It was Sunday morning when our visit was made. Mr. Buckle wore a light dress; he had a fresh complexion, a welcoming manner, and appeared to me as a country squire with unusual ease and readiness in conversation. He did not give me the impression that he was a philosopher, a man of ideas, of studious and immense research; but I knew all this when I subsequently read his review in Fraser's Magazine for May, 1859, of John Stuart Mill's famous treatise on "Liberty." After thirty years I have read the review again with equal wonder and admiration. We have no such reviews in these days. We have writers whose sentences of light and music linger in the ear of the mind, but we have none who have Buckle's passionate eloquence and generous eagerness in defence of unfriended heretics. It was in that review that he animadverted on the trial of Thomas Pooley before Mr. Justice Coleridge, at Bodmin, in 1857, and on the part taken by Mr. John Duke Coleridge (now Lord Chief Justice Coleridge), who was the prosecuting counsel pleading before his father. I had written a narrative of the career and trial of Pooley, having been down to Cornwall, at the instance of the Secularists of that day, to report upon Pooley's case. Mr. J. D. Coleridge replied to Mr. Buckle in defence of his father, Sir John Coleridge, and himself, and stated, in his remarks in Fraser's Magazine, for June, 1859, "that every fact mentioned by Mr. Buckle is to be found in the aforesaid report, and often nearly in the language of Mr. Holyoake." It was so. Mr. Mill had mentioned my name in "Liberty," and that of Pooley, which led Mr. Buckle to inquire of me what the facts of the case were. I sent him my published narrative. Though I had been long before, and was at the time, exposed to a storm of clerical persecution, no resentment colours that story. There is no publication of mine which I would more willingly see reprinted, and by which I would consent to be judged as a controversialist narrator, than by that. But in any such reprint I should withdraw the phrases in which I represent that Mr. J. D. Coleridge" concealed facts from the jury," or was otherwise consciously unfair; nor should I use the same accusatory words I did in speaking of Sir John Coleridge, the judge. Afterwards, when the remission of Pooley's sentence was sought, and the Judge consulted upon it, he wrote to say that "he saw no reason why Pooley should not receive a free pardon under the circumstances stated." At the same time he remarked that he did not suspect Pooley's insanity, that "there was not the slightest suggestion made to him" thereunto, nor had he been led to inquire into it, and "he should have been very glad" to arrive at the conclusion he was insane and have "directed his acquittal on that ground." Mr. J. D. Coleridge on his own part said in his reply to Mr. Buckle :-"I took pains to open the case in a tone of studied moderation. I carefully explained to the jury that the prosecution was not a prosecution of opinion in any sense. I mentioned, and I beg their pardon for here repeating, the names of Mr. Newman, Mr. Carlyle, |