In which character, to what work of their own, frank and faithful, can they appeal in the last fifty years of especial danger to the Church from false teaching? On this matter, my challenge will be most fittingly made to my own Bishop, of the University of Oxford. He inhibited, on the second Sunday of Advent of last year, another Bishop of the English Church from preaching at Carfax. By what right? Which of the two Bishops am I, their innocent lamb, to listen to? It is true that the insulted Bishop was only a colonial one;—am I to understand, therefore, that the Church sends her heretical Bishops out as Apostles, while she keeps her orthodox ones at home? and that, accordingly, a stay-at-home Bishop may always silence a returned Apostle? And, touching the questions which are at issue, is there a single statement of the Bishop of Natal’s, respecting the Bible text, which the Bishop of Oxford dares to contradict before Professor Max Müller, or any other leading scholar of Europe? Does the Bishop of Oxford himself believe every statement in the Bible? If not,—which does he disbelieve, and why? He suffers the whole collection [[13]]of books to be spoken of—certainly by many clergymen in his diocese—as the Word of God. If he disbelieves any portion of it, that portion he is bound at once to inhibit them from so calling, till inquiry has been made concerning it; but if he and the other orthodox home-Bishops,—who would very joyfully, I perceive, burn the Bishop of Natal at Paul’s, and make Ludgate Hill safer for the omnibuses with the cinders of him,—if they verily believe all, or even, with a living faith, any, vital part of the Bible, how is it that we, the incredulous sheep, see no signs following them that believe;—that though they can communicate the Holy Spirit, they cannot excommunicate the unholy one, and apologetically leave the healing of sick to the physician, the taking up of serpents to the juggler, and the moving of mountains to the railway-navvy?
“It was never meant that any one should do such things literally, after St. Paul’s time.”
Then what was meant, and what is, doctors mine?
Challenge enough, for this time, it seems to me; the rather that just as I finish writing it, I receive a challenge myself, requiring attentive answer. Fors could not have brought it me at better time. The reader will find it the first in the Notes and Correspondence of this year; and my answer may both meet the doubts of many readers who would not so frankly have expressed them; and contain some definitions of principle which are necessary for our future work. [[14]]
My correspondent, referring to my complaint that no matron nor maid of England had yet joined the St. George’s Company, answers, for her own part, first that her husband and family prevent her from doing it; secondly, that she has done it already; thirdly, that she will do it when I do it myself. It is only to the third of these pleas that I at present reply.
She tells me, first, that I have not joined the St. George’s Company because I have no home. It is too true. But that is because my father, and mother, and nurse, are dead; because the woman I hoped would have been my wife is dying; and because the place where I would fain have stayed to remember all of them, was rendered physically uninhabitable to me by the violence of my neighbours;—that is to say, by their destroying the fields I needed to think in, and the light I needed to work by. Nevertheless, I have, under these conditions, done the best thing possible to me—bought a piece of land on which I could live in peace; and on that land, wild when I bought it, have already made, not only one garden, but two, to match against my correspondent’s; nor that without help from children who, though not mine, have been cared for as if they were.
Secondly; my correspondent tells me that my duty is to stay at home, instead of dating from places which are a dream of delight to her, and which, therefore, she concludes, must be a reality of delight to me.
She will know better after reading this extract from [[15]]my last year’s diary; (worth copying, at any rate, for other persons interested in republican Italy). “Florence, 20th September, 1874.—Tour virtually ended for this year. I leave Florence to-day, thankfully, it being now a place of torment day and night for all loving, decent, or industrious people; for every face one meets is full of hatred and cruelty; and the corner of every house is foul; and no thoughts can be thought in it, peacefully, in street, or cloister, or house, any more. And the last verses I read, of my morning’s readings, are [Esdras II., xv. 16, 17]: ‘For there shall be sedition among men, and invading one another; they shall not regard their kings nor princes, and the course of their actions shall stand in their power. A man shall desire to go into the city, and shall not be able.’ ”
What is said here of Florence is now equally true of every great city of France or Italy; and my correspondent will be perhaps contented with me when she knows that only last Sunday I was debating with a very dear friend whether I might now be justified in indulging my indolence and cowardice by staying at home among my plants and minerals, and forsaking the study of Italian art for ever. My friend would fain have it so; and my correspondent shall tell me her opinion, after she knows—and I will see that she has an opportunity of knowing—what work I have done in Florence, and propose to do, if I can be brave enough.
Thirdly; my correspondent doubts the sincerity of my [[16]]abuse of railroads because she suspects I use them. I do so constantly, my dear lady; few men more. I use everything that comes within reach of me. If the devil were standing at my side at this moment, I should endeavour to make some use of him as a local black. The wisdom of life is in preventing all the evil we can; and using what is inevitable, to the best purpose. I use my sicknesses, for the work I despise in health; my enemies, for study of the philosophy of benediction and malediction; and railroads, for whatever I find of help in them—looking always hopefully forward to the day when their embankments will be ploughed down again, like the camps of Rome, into our English fields. But I am perfectly ready even to construct a railroad, when I think one necessary; and in the opening chapter of ‘Munera Pulveris’ my correspondent will find many proper uses for steam machinery specified. What is required of the members of St. George’s Company is, not that they should never travel by railroads, nor that they should abjure machinery; but that they should never travel unnecessarily, or in wanton haste; and that they should never do with a machine what can be done with hands and arms, while hands and arms are idle.