He was
eloquent and diplomatic, witty and amiable, always sure to be with
his fellow-churchmen and polite society against uncomfortable
changes. Whether the struggle was against the slave power in the
United States, or the squirearchy in Great Britain, or the
evolution theory of Darwin, or the new views promulgated by the
_Essayists and Reviewers_, he was always the suave spokesman of those
who opposed every innovator and "besought him to depart out of
their coasts." Mingling in curious proportions a truly religious
feeling with care for his own advancement, his remarkable power in
the pulpit gave him great strength to carry out his purposes, and
his charming facility in being all things to all men, as well as
his skill in evading the consequences of his many mistakes, gained
him the sobriquet of "Soapy Sam." If such brethren of his in the
episcopate as Thirlwall and Selwyn and Tait might claim to be in
the apostolic succession, Wilberforce was no less surely in the
succession from the most gifted and eminently respectable Sadducees
who held high preferment under Pontius Pilate.
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