The Sun.
London, England, 1862-10-15 00:00:00

NEOLOGY 1N 711 E CHURCH.

(From the .Record.)
It is no longer a secret that the Bishop of Natal is the
prelate pointed at in our daily and weekly journals as a
candidate for the martyr's crown in the cause of heterodoxy.
The public is beginning to grow accustomed to startling
feats accomplished by some of the multitudinous bishops
sent forth to foreign parts, even beyond the limits of the
empire. But probably few were prepared for a deliberate
attempt on the part of a colonial bishop to prove "that the
story of the Pentateuch is fictitious from beginning to end."
Such, however, is the avowed object of Dr. Colenso, whose
appointment to the See of Natal appeared to us so danger-
ous to the interests of Christian missions, that we felt it
right to publish, at the time it happened, our earnest but
ineffectual protest. His views of Christianity appeared to
us not only cloudy and speculative, but radically unsound.
We were, moreover, prepared for an escapade, however
eccentric, on the part of a bishop designate who felt him-
self at liberty to publish a volume with a dedication to the
Rev. F. D. Maurice, eulogising the teaching of that gentle-
man; at the very time when it was censured by the late
Bishop of London and the authorities of King's College.
Our protest against Dr. Colenso's appointment could not
be acceptable either to himself or his friends. But time has
shown that the appointment was a great mistake, and one
which is likely to prove fatal to his own comfort, as well as
the cause it was intended to promote. Dr. Colenso is a fine
mathematician, and his elementary books are still famous
in our schools and universities; but he has made it evident
that he is not himself taught of the Spirit of God, and
was, therefore, very unfit to superintend the mission
to the heathen. His book is already in print and freely
handed about for criticism. In his introductory chapter
he tells us, that he was startled by the inquiry of a Zulu,
who with reference to the story of the flood, "looked up
and asked, 'ls all that true f Do you really believe that
all this happened thus, that all the beasts, birds, and creeping
things upon the earth large and small, from hot countries and
cold, came thus by pairs, and entered into the ark with Noah.
And did Noah gather food for them all, for the beasts and
birds of prey as well as the rest ?' " We need not stop to
remark on the comPrehensive and scientific scepticism of
this " simple• minded but intelligent native," or on the con-
fusion between the " two of each sort" of Scripture, and
the "all the beasts and birds and creeping things" of the
objector; or on the gratuitous assumption that the fauna
of the antidiluvian ages was co-extensive in its distribution
with that of modern times. But we may add that Dr.
Colons() was even then in fact an unbeliever in the Bible.
"I felt," he says, "that I dared not, as a servant of the
God of truth, urge my brother man to believe that which I
did not myself believe, which I knew to be untrue as a
matter-of-fact historical narrative." This, however, was
the starting point of the inquiries which have issued in the
volume already printed and in circulation, and about to be
given to the public. The fact is sufficiently melancholy,
and were it not melancholy it would be ludicrous; but it
must be stated on Bishop's Colenso's own showing as stated
above. He was sent to Africa to convert the Zulus to the
faith of the Bible, and he was himself so ill-grounded in the
great truths of the Bible, that he has been himself con-
verted by the Zulus to an utter rejection of Moses and the
Pentateuch. "Our examination," he says, "has forced on
us the conviction, by reason of the utter impossibilities and
absurdities contained in it, that the whole story of the
Exodus is a fiction; and that, consequently, no such groups
of laws were ever laid down in the wilderness as the story
describes. And if the last four books of the Pentateuch
must be pronounced to be fictitious, it will hardly be con-
tended that the Book of Genesis can be any other than in
the main fictitious also."

We have said enough to give our readers an impression of
the nature of the episcopal attack on the Pentateuch, which
is about to be more fully given to the public. It contains
nothing new, and nothing really formidable. Most of its
objections were contained in the writings of the Voltairian
school. It assumes " impossibilities" which faith in God
discards. It fancies the existence of " inconsistencies" of
narration, which are sometimes ideal, and sometimes to be
attributed to errors which have crept into the transcript of
ancient manuscripts, and especially in the numerals, during
a period of more than 3,000 years. It is, In a word, occu-
pied in enlarging what even Coleridge termed "the rat-
holes of the Temple," but it makes no impression whatever
on the sacred edifice. It was to Moses and the Prophets
that our Lord so often appealed, "If ye believe not Moses,
how can ye believe my sayings ?" After His resurrection,
in Hie discourse with the disciples on their way to Em-
maus, He opened their understanding, and, " beginning at
Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded unto them in
all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." With
Moses and the Prophets Christianity therefore stands or
falls; and we believe that Bishop Colenso is himself of this
opinion, for he tells us that in our Church system it is
not reform, but leform amounting almost to revolution,
which is needed. 't