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.