“I am, yours faithfully, “Stewart D. Headlam, “Curate of St. Matthew’s, Bethnal Green. “To John Ruskin, Esq., LL.D.” I at first intended to make no comments on this letter, but, as I re-read, find it so modestly fast in its temper, and so perilously loose in its divinity, as to make it my duty, while I congratulate the well-meaning—and, I doubt not, well-doing—writer, on his agreement with Mr. Lyttel that the preaching of “Christ’s life, instead of our lives,” is false and damnatory; also to observe to him that the sacrifice of our own bodies, instead of Christ’s body, is an equally heretical, and I can assure him, no less dangerous, reformation of the Doctrine of the Mass. I beg him also to believe that I meant no disrespect to his friends and neighbours in comparing them to candle-grease. He is unaccustomed to my simple English, and would surely not have been offended if I had said, instead, “oil for the light”? If our chandlers, now-a-days, never give us any so honest tallow as might fittingly be made the symbol of a Christian congregation, is that my fault? I feel, however, that I do indeed owe some apology to Mr. Hansard himself, to his many good and well-won friends, and especially to my correspondent, Mr. Lyttel, for reprinting the following article from a Birmingham paper—very imperfectly, I am sure, exemplifying the lustre produced by ecclesiastical labour in polishing what, perhaps, I shall again be held disrespectful, in likening to the Pewter, instead of the Grease, and Candlestick instead of Candle, of sacredly inflammable Religious Society. PROFESSOR RUSKIN ON THE CLERGY.