most instant in all good works; the one whose words were
most sure to find attentive listeners. This was because he spoke, I
will not say as a layman, but simply as a Christian, never claiming
for himself any special authority in respect either of his sacerdotal
character or his official position. No English prelate before him had
been so welcome to all classes and sections; none was so much lamented
by the masses of the people. But it is a significant fact that he was
from first to last more popular with the laity than with the clergy.
Not that there was ever any slur on his orthodoxy. He began life as a
moderate High Churchman, and gradually verged, half unconsciously,
toward what would be called a Broad-Church position; maintaining the
claim of the Anglican Church to undertake, and her duty to hold
herself responsible for, the education of the people, and upholding
her status as an establishment, but dwelling little on minor points of
doctrinal difference, and seeming to care still less for external
observances or points of ritual. This displeased the Anglo-Catholic
party, and even among other sections of the clergy there was a kind of
feeling that the Bishop was not sufficiently clerical, did not set
full store by the sacerdotal side of his office, and did not think
enough about ecclesiastical questions.

He was, I think, the first bishop who greeted men of science as
fellow-workers for truth, and declared that Christianity had not, and
could not have, anything to fear from scientific inquiry. This has
often been said since, but in 1870 it was so novel that it drew from
Huxley a singularly warm and impressive recognition. He was one of the
first bishops to condemn the system of theological tests in the
English universities. He even declared that "it was an evil hour when
the Church thought herself obliged to add to or develop the simple
articles of the Apostles' Creed." These deliverances, which any one
can praise now, alarmed a large section of the Church of England then;
nor was the bishop's friendliness to Dissenters favourably regarded by
those who deny to Dissenting pastors the title of Christian
ministers.[33]

The gravest trouble of his life arose in connection with legal
proceedings which he felt bound to take in the case of a Ritualist
clergyman who had persisted in practices apparently illegal. Fraser,
though personally the most tolerant of men to those who differed from
his own theological views, felt