ious of the legendary features
of the Old Testament, and with his clear practical mind he realized the
danger which threatened the English Church and Christianity--the danger
of tying its religion and morality to interpretations and conceptions of
Scripture more and more widely seen and felt to be contrary to facts. He
saw the especial peril of sham explanations, of covering up facts which
must soon be known, and which, when revealed, must inevitably bring
the plain people of England to regard their teachers, even the most
deserving, as "solemnly constituted impostors"--ecclesiastics whose
tenure depends on assertions which they know to be untrue. Therefore it
was that, when his catechumens questioned him regarding some of the Old
Testament legends, the bishop determined to tell the truth. He says: "My
heart answered in the words of the prophet, 'Shall a man speak lies in
the name of the Lord?' I determined not to do so."

But none of these considerations availed in his behalf at first.

The outcry against the work was deafening: churchmen and dissenters
rushed forward to attack it. Archdeacon Denison, chairman of the
committee of Convocation appointed to examine it, uttered a noisy
anathema. Convocation solemnly condemned it; and a zealous colonial
bishop, relying upon a nominal supremacy, deposed and excommunicated
its author, declaring him "given over to Satan." On both sides of
the Atlantic the press groaned with "answers," some of these being
especially injurious to the cause they were intended to serve, and none
more so than sundry efforts by the bishops themselves. One of the points
upon which they attacked him was his assertion that the reference in
Leviticus to the hare chewing its cud contains an error. Upon this
Prof. Hitzig, of Leipsic, one of the best Hebrew scholars of his time,
remarked: "Your bishops are making themselves the laughing-stock of
Europe. Every Hebraist knows that the animal mentioned in Leviticus
is really the hare;... every zoologist knows that it does not chew the
cud."(482)

(482) For the citation referred to, see Pfleiderer, as above, book iv,
chap. ii. For the passages referred to as provoking especial wrath, see
Colenso, Lectures on the Pentateuch and the Moabite Stone, 1876, p. 217.
For the episode regarding the hare chewing the cud, see Cox, Life of
Colenso, vol. i, p. 240. The following epigram went the rounds:

"The bishops all have sworn to shed their blood To prove 'ti