If I do not say that you have written me a most ridiculous
letter, it will be more from respect to its motive than its matter,—or
purport. I know people can work themselves up to any exaggerated view
of things, yet I can hardly believe that, if you have half the sense
people say you have, you can on sober reconsideration really believe
that there was the smallest ground for your tirade in my objection to
hear a Church—a house of God at least, spoken of and criticised as if
it were a right thing to visit it as you would a theatre, and remain a
looker-on while others were worshipping. ‘Seeking occasion against’
men was not the characteristic of the followers of the Jesus whose
name you reiterate so often. I believe this was the whole feeling with
which I spoke, exactly as I should have done if it had been a Baptist
Meeting-house you were commenting on,—as I believe you would _not_
have commented on a Baptist Meeting-house.
You may, if you please, take my word for it that I am _not_ going over
to Rome, among whose partisans, however, I must say that I have never—
no, nor I think from any other denomination under the sun—heard the
same virulent abuse of those who have at least ‘one Lord,’ if not ‘one
faith and one baptism,’—that I have from the Puritan portion of our
own Church: and I am sure no God and no Church was ever served by the
one or the other....
What I have written is probably ill conceived and worse expressed.
Excuse all such deficiencies. If I have myself fallen into the error I
protest against, I need more than excuse—forgiveness. I have not meant
to be violent or uncourteous, but where I have felt strongly, I doubt
not I have so spoken.
For your cousinly care and affection I thank you heartily, as I am
ever
Your affectionate cousin,
S. L. J.-B.”
And not only in matters of thought and principle was she developing; she
was beginning, too, to take her full share of responsibility as regards
her fellow-creatures, entering into the meaning of brotherhood and
citizenship. In addition to her work at Queen’s College, she undertook
to teach bookkeeping gratuitously in connection with the Society for the
Employment of Women, and had a class of children at Great Ormond Street.
“I don’t know how I should like _her_,” said a candid critic, “but it is
a pleasure to see anyone do anything so well as she does teach.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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