GRANGE-OVER-SANDS,
_October 1st, 1879_.
DEAR MR. MALLESON,--I protested strongly yesterday against our remarks,
made on the spur of the moment, being printed and submitted to Mr.
Ruskin's criticism, and what I said then I feel as strongly still.
But I have no objection to send, as a comment on his Letters, a volume
of sermons which I published last year, because I think that, in that
upon the hallowing of God's name, I have not taken the restricted view
which Mr. Ruskin accused the clergy of taking, and I think also that
(except in the sermon upon the doctrine of the Trinity, which was
written before the others, and is tinged with the prejudices of early
training), I have set forth God the Father as a Being of infinite,
tender, fatherly love.
So far as snails may follow in the footsteps of greyhounds, and bats
look in the same direction as eagles, I think some of us clergymen are
getting our feet and our eyes into the same track as Mr. Ruskin's.
It seems to me that all of us who think upon religious matters, laity or
clergy, whether men of genius or commonplace people, are feeling our way
at present to something better and truer. Men like Mr. Ruskin, like
steamships, dart on to their destination; and feebler minds, like
sailing vessels, are a good deal at the mercy of the _popularis aura_
and the winds of doctrine, but both are on their way to the same point.