On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2)

Only a heretic!—F. A. M.

171

I may perhaps be pardoned for vindicating-at least my arithmetic, which, with Bishop Colenso, I rather pride myself upon. One of your correspondents greatly doubts my having heard five thousand asserters of evangelical principles (Catholic-absolvent or Protestant-detergent are virtually the same). I am now sixty years old, and for forty-five of them was in church at least once on the Sunday,—say once a month also in afternoons,—and you have above three thousand church services. When I am abroad I am often in half-a-dozen churches in the course of a single day, and never lose a chance of listening to anything that is going on. Add the conversations pursued, not unearnestly, with every sort of reverend person I can get to talk to me—from the Bishop of Strasburg (as good a specimen of a town bishop as I have known), with whom I was studying ecstatic paintings in the year 1850—down to the simplest traveling tinker inclined Gospelwards, whom I perceive to be sincere, and your correspondent will perceive that my rapid numerical expression must be far beneath the truth. He subjoins his more rational doubt of my acquaintance with many town missionaries; to which I can only answer, that as I do not live in town, nor set up for a missionary myself, my spiritual advantages have certainly not been great in that direction. I simply assert that of the few I have known,—beginning with Mr. Spurgeon, under whom I sat with much edification for a year or two,—I have not known any such teaching as I speak of.

172

The only explanation ever offered for this exuberant wordiness is that if worshipers did not understand one term they would the other, and in some cases, in the Exhortation and elsewhere, one word is of Latin and the other of Saxon derivation.[1] But this is surely a very feeble excuse for bad composition. Of a very different kind is that beautiful climax which is reached in the three admirably chosen pairs of words in the Prayer for the Parliament, "peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety."—F. A. M.

(Note 1: The repetition of synonymous terms is of very frequent occurrence in sixteenth century writing, as "for ever and aye," "Time and the hour run through the roughest day" (Macbeth, i. 3).)

173

In some of the country districts of Scotland the right of the Church to interfere with the lives of private individuals is still exercised. Only two years ago, a wealthy gentleman farmer was rebuked by the "Kirk Session" of the Dissenting Church to which he belonged, for infidelity to his wife.

At the Scottish half-yearly Communion the ceremony of "fencing the tables" used to be observed; that is, turning away all those whose lives were supposed to have made them unfit to receive the Sacrament.

174

Contemporary Review, March, 1873.

175

Read at the November meeting of the Metaphysical Society.

176

I quote from memory but am sure of the purport of the sentence, though not of its expression.

177

"And be it death proclaimëd through our host to boast of this."—Henry V.

178

Left, at the Editor's request, with only some absolutely needful clearing of unintelligible sentences, as it was written for free delivery. It was the last of a course of twelve given this autumn;—refers partly to things already said, partly to drawings on the walls; and needs the reader's pardon throughout, for faults and abruptness incurable but by re-writing the whole as an essay instead of a lecture.—(Nineteenth Century, January, 1878.)

179

Of course, this statement is merely a generalization of many made in the preceding lectures, the tenor of which any readers acquainted with my recent writings may easily conceive.

180

The references were to the series of drawings lately made, in Venice, for the Oxford and Sheffield schools, from the works of Carpaccio, by Mr. Fairfax Murray.