lusion, such
facts and such questions have made what we call theology. But to the
Bishop's practical mind they were without interest, and he could not
see how they could touch and influence living religion. And did not
care to know about them; he was impatient, and even scornful, when
stress was laid on them; he was intolerant when he thought they
competed with the immediate realities of religion. And this want of
knowledge and of respect for knowledge was a serious deficiency. It
gave sometimes a tone of thoughtless flippancy to his otherwise earnest
language. And as he was not averse to controversy, or, at any rate,
found himself often involved in it, he was betrayed sometimes into
assertions and contradictions of the most astounding inaccuracy, which
seriously weakened his authority when he was called upon to accept the
responsibility of exerting it.

Partly for this reason, partly from a certain vivacity of temper, he
certainly showed himself, in spite of his popular qualities, less equal
than many others of his brethren to the task of appeasing and assuaging
religious strife. The difficulties in Manchester were not greater than
in other dioceses; there was not anything peculiar in them; there was
nothing but what a patient and generous arbiter, with due knowledge of
the subject, might have kept from breaking out into perilous scandals.
Unhappily he failed; and though he believed that he had only done his
duty, his failure was a source of deep distress to himself and to
others. But now that he has passed away, it is but bare justice to say
that no one worked up more conscientiously to his own standard. He gave
himself, when he was consecrated, ten or twelve years of work, and then
he hoped for retirement. He has had fifteen, and has fallen at his
post. And to the last, the qualities which gave his character such a
charm in his earlier time had not disappeared. There seemed to be
always something of the boy about him, in his simplicity, his confiding
candour and frankness with his friends, his warm-hearted and kindly
welcome, his mixture of humility with a sense of power. Those who can
remember him in his younger days still see, in spite of all the storms
and troubles of his later ones, the image of the undergraduate and the
young bachelor, who years ago made a start of such brilliant promise,
and who has fulfilled so much of it, if not all. These things at any
rate lasted to the end--his high and exacting sense of p