Great pains were taken
to root out his reputation: it was declared that he had merely
stolen the ideas of rationalists on the Continent by wholesale, and
peddled them out in England at retail; the fact being that, while
he used all the sources of information at his command, and was
large-minded enough to put himself into relations with the best
biblical scholarship of the Continent, he was singularly
independent in his judgment, and that his investigations were of
lasting value in modifying Continental thought. Kuenen, the most
distinguished of all his contemporaries in this field, modified, as
he himself declared, one of his own leading theories after reading
Colenso's argument; and other Continental scholars scarcely less
eminent acknowledged their great indebtedness to the English
scholar for original suggestions.[[352]]
But the zeal of the bishop's enemies did not end with calumny. He
was socially ostracized--more completely even than Lyell had been
after the publication of his _Principles of Geology_ thirty years
before.
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