It is just because you undertook the task so _happily_, that I should have thought you unfit to write the life of a Man of Sorrows, even had he been a Man only. But your last letter, remember, claims inspiration for your guide, and recognizes a personal call at sixty, as if the Call to the ministry had been none, and the receiving the Holy Ghost by imposition of hands an empty ceremony. In writing the life of a parishioner and in remitting or retaining their sins you would in my conception have been fulfilling your appointed work. But I cannot conceive the claim to be a fit Evangelist without more proof of miraculous appointment than you are conscious of. I know you to be conscientious, yes--but I think the judicial doom of this country is to have conscience alike of its Priests and Prophets _hardened_. Why should any letter of mine make you anxious if you had indeed conscience of inspiration? Ever affectionately yours, J. R. 9. _August 7th._ I hope to be able soon now to resume the series of letters; but it seems to me there is no need whatever of more than three or four more respecting the last clauses of the Lord's Prayer. Those in your hands contain questions enough, if seriously entertained, to occupy twenty meetings; and I could only hope that some one of them might be carefully taken up by your friends. I think, however, in case of the clerical feeling being too strong, that I must ask you, if you print letters at all, to print them without omission. And if you do not print them, to return them to me for my own expansion and arrangement. Ever affectionately yours, J. R. 10. _August 9th._ I have got to work on the letters again; it would make me nervous to think of all these plans of yours. Suppose you leave all that till you see what the first debate comes to?[25] And in the meantime I'll finish as best I can. [25] My clerical friends and brethren must not be displeased with me if I here mention the fact that at the meeting of twenty-three clergy where I _proposed_ to read Mr. Ruskin's letters to them, I was only authorized to do so by a majority of two. I can scarcely describe the dismay and consternation with which the letters themselves were received,--though of course not universally, in another meeting of the same number. 11. _September 2nd._