The minds of many of the friends of Mr. Septimus Hansard appear to have
been greatly exercised by my insertion of, and comments on, the
newspaper paragraph respecting that gentleman’s ministrations to the
poor of London.
I thought it unnecessary to take notice of the first communication
which I received on the subject, from a fashionable lady, informing me,
with much indignation, that Mr. Hansard had caught his fever in the
West-End, not in the East; and had been sick in the best society. The
following letter is of more importance, and its writer having accepted
what he calls “my kind offer” to print it, I have no alternative,
though he mistook, or rather misplaced, the real kindness of my private
note, which lay in its recommendation to him, [41] not to accept the
offer it made.
“135, Waterlow Buildings, Wilmott Street,
“Bethnal Green, E., May 14, 1875.
“Sir,—In your 49th Letter you say that we clergy are not priests, and
cannot sacrifice. You also say that we are wholly responsible for, and
the efficient causes of, horrible outrages on women. In your 51st
Letter you speak of my friend and chief, Mr. Hansard, as being
courageous, impulsive, and generous, but complacent, and living a life
“all aglow in vain”; and you compare him, in Bethnal Green, to a moth
in candle-grease.
“I know that I, as a priest, am responsible for much wrongdoing; but I
must claim you, and all who have failed to be perfect stewards of their
material and spiritual property, as responsible with me and the rest of
the clergy for the ignorance and crime of our fellow-countrymen.
“But I would ask you whether Mr. Hansard’s life, even as you know it,
(and you don’t know half the St. George-like work he has done and is
doing,) is not a proof that we priests can and do sacrifice;—that we
can offer ourselves, our souls and bodies?
“Of course I agree with you and Mr. Lyttel that the preaching of
‘Christ’s life instead of our lives’ is false and damnatory; but I am
sorry that, instead of backing those who teach the true and salutary
Gospel, you condemn us all alike, wholesale. I think you will find that
you will want even our help to get the true Gospel taught.
“Allow me also to protest pretty strongly against my friends and
neighbours here being compared to candle-grease. I fancy that on
consideration, you would like to withdraw that parable; perhaps, even,
you would like to make some kind of reparation, by helping us,
candle-grease-like Bethnal-greeners, to be better and happier.
“I am one of those clergymen spoken of in Letter 49, and ‘honestly
believe myself impelled to say and do’ many things by the Holy Ghost;
and for that very reason I am bound to remember that you and other men
are inspired also by the same Holy Ghost; and therefore to look out for
and take any help which you and others choose to give me.
“It is because I have already received so much help from you that I
write this letter.
“I am, yours faithfully,
“Stewart D. Headlam,
“Curate of St. Matthew’s, Bethnal Green.
“To John Ruskin, Esq., LL.D.”
I at first intended to make no comments on this letter, but, as I
re-read, find it so modestly fast in its temper, and so perilously
loose in its divinity, as to make it my duty, while I congratulate the
well-meaning—and, I doubt not, well-doing—writer, on his agreement with
Mr. Lyttel that the preaching of “Christ’s life, instead of our lives,”
is false and damnatory; also to observe to him that the sacrifice of
our own bodies, instead of Christ’s body, is an equally heretical, and
I can assure him, no less dangerous, reformation of the Doctrine of the
Mass. I beg him also to believe that I meant no disrespect to his
friends and neighbours in comparing them to candle-grease. He is
unaccustomed to my simple English, and would surely not have been
offended if I had said, instead, “oil for the light”? If our chandlers,
now-a-days, never give us any so honest tallow as might fittingly be
made the symbol of a Christian congregation, is that my fault?
I feel, however, that I do indeed owe some apology to Mr. Hansard
himself, to his many good and well-won friends, and especially to my
correspondent, Mr. Lyttel, for reprinting the following article from a
Birmingham paper—very imperfectly, I am sure, exemplifying the lustre
produced by ecclesiastical labour in polishing what, perhaps, I shall
again be held disrespectful, in likening to the Pewter, instead of the
Grease, and Candlestick instead of Candle, of sacredly inflammable
Religious Society.