riends left him, among them Frederick Denison Maurice, who, when
himself under the ban of heresy, had been defended by Colenso. Nor was
Maurice the only heretic who turned against him; Matthew Arnold attacked
him, and set up, as a true ideal of the work needed to improve the
English Church and people, of all books in the world, Spinoza's
Tractatus. A large part of the English populace was led to regard him
as an "infidel," a "traitor," an "apostate," and even as "an unclean
being"; servants left his house in horror; "Tray, Blanche, and
Sweetheart were let loose upon him"; and one of the favourite amusements
of the period among men of petty wit and no convictions was the devising
of light ribaldry against him.(484)

(484) One of the nonsense verses in vogue at the time summed up the
controversy as follows:

"A bishop there was of Natal,
Who had a Zulu for his pal;
Said the Zulu, 'My dear,
Don't you think Genesis queer?'
Which coverted my lord of Natal."

But verses quite as good appeared on the other side, one of them being
as follows:

"Is this, then, the great Colenso,
Who all the bishops offends so?
Said Sam of the Soap,
Bring fagots and rope,
For oh! he's got no friends, oh!"

For Matthew Arnold's attack on Colenso, see Macmillan's Magazine,
January, 1863. For Maurice, see the references already given.

In the midst of all this controversy stood three men, each of whom has
connected his name with it permanently.

First of these was Samuel Wilberforce, at that time Bishop of Oxford.
The gifted son of William Wilberforce, who had been honoured throughout
the world for his efforts in the suppression of the slave trade, he
had been rapidly advanced in the English Church, and was at this time
a prelate of wide influence. He was eloquent and diplomatic, witty and
amiable, always sure to be with his fellow-churchmen and polite society
against uncomfortable changes. Whether the struggle was against the
slave power in the United States, or the squirearchy in Great Britain,
or the evolution theory of Darwin, or the new views promulgated by the
Essayists and Reviewers, he was always the suave spokesman of those
who opposed every innovator and "besought him to depart out of their
coasts." Mingling in curious proportions a truly religious feeling with
care for his own advancement, his remarkable power in the pulpit gave
him great strength to carry out