A FIGHTING BISHOP.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 6709, 30 May 1900, Page 4

A FIGHTING BISHOP.

No ecclesiastic is better known at the front just now than tbe Bishop of Natal. From the beginning of the campaign he has kept pace with the movements ot General Buller's Army in order to minister to the living and perforna the last offices for the dead. Asked by an officer high in rank it he had ever heard before of an English bishop on a battlefield his retort was, " Did you ever hear of an English bishop whose diocese was invaded by an enemy ?"

Years aeo he was well known at Home as a popular preacher and as senior chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury. At Oxford, where he took a good degree, he was contemporary with Sir Alfred Milner, whose friendship and confidence he still retains. Tall and prepossessing in appearance, he is a man of many accomplishments : musician, artist in water colors and oils, raconteur, above all an able controversalist. Debarred by the effects of seriou3 illness from riding. Dr Baxpes greatly affects the bicycle, fciiever Campus for horsemanship, his Bm of skill in riding gained him a wife. ■g?Hng along in the neighborhood of |^Bpwn, he suddonly fell over his h^^re's head, sustaining a number of A and abrasiens. He was taken to a neighbouring house, where the young and s chatarfing. daughter of the house suppl^|Aim with strips of diachylon plasterap'l other necessaries. But in relievini^nis wounds she inflicted others whichynatrimony alone could cure. A brotUp-in-law is an officer in the Natal CaiJvneets, and was subaltern of the deitchment whijh represented the Garden Colony at the Queen's Jubilee. \The other day as he passed through the streets of Durban, arrayed in th 9 usual episcopal attire, a small boy asked hir mother, " Does that man in the black kilc and putties belong to the Black Watch '?" The inquiry hits him oft admirably, Circumstances have made a fighting bishop of him sver since be went to Natal in 1893. He found the diocese split into factions with the result that his task as peacemaker has been an unenviable one. He has been sued in Law Courts, abused in public, served with protests at solemn church functions by the indomitable Miss Colenso, heckled at vestry meetings, and even hustled out of schoolrooms by disorderly Christian Kaffirs. And no sooner does a more peaceful and happier state of affairs arise, than his clergy is scattered and his diocese distnrbed by all the horrors of a Boer invasion.