29 JULY 1865, Page 3

A meeting was held at the Freemasons' Tavern on Wednesday,

to present the Bishop of Natal with the subscription raised to enable him to return to his diocese by those who are indignant with the trustees of the Colonial Bishops' Fund, for still keeping back his salary from the date of the Bishop of Cape Town's illegal depriVation without assigning any legal reason, —relying in fact on the Fabian policy of delay to postpone his return till something should occur to prevent it. The sum already raised by 600 sub- scribers to different amounts was 3,3501., and Mr. Crawfurd, F.R.S., who presented it, stated that the list would not be finally closed for some months to come, and that Messrs. Lubbock and Co. had consented to receive subscriptions. The Bishop, in expressing his gratitude, read a very manly and able address, in which he com- mented without rancour on the policy of his opponents,and expressed his belief that he should meet with lees determined opposition from his people on his return to Natal than was commonly supposed. It was his duty, he said, in any case to face that opposition, not only for the sake of his people, but for the cause of liberty in the Church of England. The Rev. H. Bristow Wilson afterwards expressed some views as to Christian morality being the only essence of Christianity, which, if true, would render the Bishop's protest in behalf of full intellectual freedom of much less value than it is. Christian truth is wider than Christian ethics, and in great part at the root of ethics, or why battle so strongly for intellectual freedom? Mr. Wilson is an exceedingly able and, we believe, good man, but his special essay on interpretation in the Essays and Reviews seems to us the solvent of all distinctive truth, the eutha- nasia of that liberalism which almost ceases to distinguish between truth and falsehood.