BISHOPS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—In your very interesting article in the current number of the Spectator, which I for one most heartily enjoyed, and with a very great deal of which I thoroughly agreed,—" Bishops for Show, and Bishops for Use,"—you are, I think, needlessly severe, and, may I add? unjustly severe, when you say, "It is now more than a century since a man of any real eminence as a theologian has been on the Bench of English Bishops. Archbishop Whately, clever as he was, is no exception." Surely your very mention of Whately as a theologian calls up a name to many of our minds very dear,—Whately's successor, Archbishop Trench. Has he no right at all to the title of an eminent theologian ? As much, at least, as Whately. He has done something at all events in the exegesis of Scripture, and it would be rash to say of him, "No one will read his theological treatises twenty years hence, nor will they deserve to be read." I think it would be the opinion of many by no means contemptible men that his Notes on the Parables and Miracles have gained a permanent position in English theological literature. Towards such a man I am sure you would be most unwilling to be guilty of the least harshness or unfairness, and I thought his name must have slipped the memory or mind of the writer, its he penned that somewhat merciless sentence. As the Bishop of St. David's has been brought forward, may I suggest also that there is at Ely a Bishop named Harold Browne, and at Gloucester there is Ellicott, who, though generally supposed to be reactionary in his views, has done no mean work in a critical interpretation of some of St. Paul's Epistles ?—Yours, &c.,
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