s true
that the hare doth chew the cud. O bishops, doctors, and divines,
beware--Weak is the faith that hangs upon a HAIR!"

On Colenso's return to Natal, where many of the clergy and laity who
felt grateful for his years of devotion to them received him with signs
of affection, an attempt was made to ruin these clergymen by depriving
them of their little stipends, and to terrify the simple-minded laity by
threatening them with the same "greater excommunication" which had been
inflicted upon their bishop. To make the meaning of this more evident,
the vicar-general of the Bishop of Cape Town met Colenso at the door of
his own cathedral, and solemnly bade him "depart from the house of
God as one who has been handed over to the Evil One." The sentence of
excommunication was read before the assembled faithful, and they were
enjoined to treat their bishop as "a heathen man and a publican." But
these and a long series of other persecutions created a reaction in his
favour.

There remained to Colenso one bulwark which his enemies found stronger
than they had imagined--the British courts of justice. The greatest
efforts were now made to gain the day before these courts, to humiliate
Colenso, and to reduce to beggary the clergy who remained faithful to
him; and it is worthy of note that one of the leaders in preparing the
legal plea of the com mittee against him was Mr. Gladstone.

But this bulwark proved impregnable: both the Judicial Committee of the
Privy Council and the Rolls Court decided in Colenso's favour. Not only
were his enemies thus forbidden to deprive him of his salary, but their
excommunication of him was made null and void; it became, indeed, a
subject of ridicule, and even a man so nurtured in religious sentiment
as John Keble confessed and lamented that the English people no longer
believed in excommunication. The bitterness of the defeated found vent
in the utterances of the colonial metropolitan who had excommunicated
Colenso--Bishop Gray, "the Lion of Cape Town"--who denounced the
judgment as "awful and profane," and the Privy Council as "a
masterpiece of Satan" and "the great dragon of the English Church." Even
Wilberforce, careful as he was to avoid attacking anything established,
alluded with deep regret to "the devotion of the English people to the
law in matters of this sort."

Their failure in the courts only seemed to increase the violence of the
attacking party. The Anglican communion, both in