Note 3 — LETTER LIV.

“Not many years ago one might throw almost any calumny against the Church or her clergy without fear of contradiction or exposure. Happily, for the cause of truth and justice, those days are gone—unhappily, however, for the unfortunate individuals born too late for the safe indulgence of their spleen. Amongst these, we fear, must be reckoned Mr. Ruskin, the Oxford Professor of Fine Art. He issues monthly a pamphlet, entitled ‘Fors Clavigera,’ being ostensibly ‘Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain,’ but the contents of which do not appear likely to edify that class, even if the price (tenpence) were not prohibitory. In the forty-ninth of these letters a furious and wholly unjustifiable attack is made upon the Church. No abuse is deemed too unjust or too coarse to bestow upon the clergy, and they are assailed in a tone of vituperation worthy of the last century. The Professor says that,3 ‘in general, any man’s becoming a clergyman in these days implies that, at best, his sentiment has overpowered his intellect, and that, whatever the feebleness of the latter, the victory of his impertinent piety has been probably owing to its alliance with his conceit, and its promise to him of the gratification of being regarded as an oracle, without the trouble of becoming wise, or the grief of being so.’ Much more there is in the same insolent strain, as if the Professor’s head had been turned by the height of critical infallibility to which he has elevated himself, and from which he looks down with self-complacent scorn and arrogance upon all fallible humanity, clerical or lay. He concludes by appending ‘a specimen of the conduct of the Saints to whom our English clergymen have delivered the Faith.’ This specimen is afforded, according to Mr. Ruskin, in two cases of revolting and almost incredible barbarism, tried recently at Liverpool Assizes, in one of which an unoffending man was kicked to death by a gang of street ruffians, in the presence of an admiring crowd; and in the other case, a drunken female tramp, drenched with the rain, was taken into a field and outraged by half-a-dozen youths, after which they left her, and she was found there next day dead. We need not enter into the details of these cases, which were given fully enough at the time; suffice it to say that in the records of no age or nation will any tales be found surpassing these two in savagery of mind and body, and in foulness of heart and soul. And what is Mr. Ruskin’s reason for resuscitating the memory of these horrors? What is the explanation that he has to give of them? What is the judgment that he has to pass upon them? Let our readers behold it for themselves in his own words:—‘The clergy may vainly exclaim against being made responsible for this state of things. They, and chiefly their Bishops, are wholly responsible for it; nay, are efficiently the causes of it, preaching a false gospel for hire.’ These words have the one merit of being perfectly plain. Mr. Ruskin does not insinuate his vile charge by any indirect hints or roundabout verbiage, but expresses his infamous meaning as unambiguously as possible. The clergy, he says, are ‘wholly responsible’ for the murders and rapes which horrify us, which, indeed, they ‘efficiently cause’; and the chiefs of these incarnate fiends are the Bishops.