really live by its true religion. Dr. Colenso, however, in his first
volume did all he could to strengthen the confusion,[50] and to make it
dangerous. He did this with the best intentions, I freely admit, and
with the most candid ignorance that this was the natural effect of what
he was doing; but, says Joubert, "Ignorance, which in matters of morals
extenuates the crime, is itself, in intellectual matters, a crime of the
first order."[51] I criticized Bishop Colenso's speculative confusion.
Immediately there was a cry raised: "What is this? here is a liberal
attacking a liberal. Do not you belong to the movement? are not you a
friend of truth? Is not Bishop Colenso in pursuit of truth? then speak
with proper respect of his book. Dr. Stanley[52] is another friend of
truth, and you speak with proper respect of his book; why make these
invidious differences? both books are excellent, admirable, liberal;
Bishop Colenso's perhaps the most so, because it is the boldest, and
will have the best practical consequences for the liberal cause. Do you
want to encourage to the attack of a brother liberal his, and your, and
our implacable enemies, the _Church and State Review_ or the _Record_,--
the High Church rhinoceros and the Evangelical hyena? Be silent,
therefore; or rather speak, speak as loud as ever you can! and go into
ecstasies over the eighty and odd pigeons."

But criticism cannot follow this coarse and indiscriminate method. It is
unfortunately possible for a man in pursuit of truth to write a book
which reposes upon a false conception. Even the practical consequences
of a book are to genuine criticism no recommendation of it, if the book
is, in the highest sense, blundering. I see that a lady[53] who herself,
too, is in pursuit of truth, and who writes with great ability, but a
little too much, perhaps, under the influence of the practical spirit of
the English liberal movement, classes Bishop Colenso's book and M.
Renan's[54] together, in her survey of the religious state of Europe, as