ve the history of the
past with accuracy; it does not give the history of the future at all;
prophecy means spiritual teaching, not secular prognostication. A reader
of our day may naturally feel that Wilson, with his paper on the
'National Church,' made the greatest contribution. He built indeed upon
Coleridge, but he had a larger horizon. He knew the arguments of the
great Frenchmen of his day and of their English imitators who, in Benn's
phrase, narrowed and perverted the ideal of a world-wide humanity into
that of a Church founded on dogmas and administered by clericals. Wilson
argued that in Jesus' teaching the basis of the religious community is
ethical. The Church is but the instrument for carrying out the will of
God as manifest in the moral law. The realisation of the will of God
must extend beyond the limits of the Church's activity, however widely
these are drawn. There arose a violent agitation. Williams and Wilson
were prosecuted. The case was tried in the Court of Arches. Williams was
defended by no less a person than Fitzjames Stephen. The two divines
were sentenced to a year's suspension. This decision was reversed by the
Lord Chancellor. Fitzjames Stephen had argued that if the men most
interested in the church, namely, its clergy, are the only men who
may be punished for serious discussion of the facts and truths of
religion, then respect on the part of the world for the Church is at an
end. By this discussion the English clergy, even if Anglo-Catholic, are
in a very different position from the Roman priests, over whom
encyclicals, even if not executed, are always suspended.

Similar was the issue in the case of Colenso, Bishop of Natal. Equipped
mainly with Cambridge mathematics added to purest self-devotion, he had
been sent out as a missionary bishop. In the process of the translation
of the Pentateuch for his Zulus, he had come to reflect upon the problem
which the Old Testament presents. In a manner which is altogether
marvellous he worked out critical conclusions parallel to those of Old
Testament scholars on the Continent. He was never really an expert, but
in his main contention he was right. He adhered to his opinion despite
severe pressure and was not removed from the episcopate. With such
guarantees it would be strange indeed if we could not say that biblical
studies entered in Great Britain, as also in America, on a development
in which scholars of these nations are not behind the best schol