But ever since I have, so to speak, taken the shilling and entered the Church’s service and put myself under orders, I have loyally stood up for my cloth, and I am quite willing to bear the reproaches of that service where there are any to bear. We clergy get a good deal of stupid and very vulgar ridicule hurled at us, and we cannot very well retaliate. It is a case of _Athanasius contra mundum_. The “world” is very big and rather unassailable, and we of the minority are apt to assume that we can afford to hold our peace, that we gain by turning the right cheek to him who smites us on the left, and that we should lose by giving a foul-mouthed liar and coward a drubbing and tossing him into the horse-pond. We stand upon the defensive. We have hardly any other choice. But it is rather trying to have to answer for all the sins, negligences, and ignorances, the follies and the bad taste of all who wear the wide-awake. As far as the instances of downright wickedness and immorality go, I think nobody will pretend that any class in the community can show such a clean bill of health as the clergy. As I look round me upon my clerical brethren of all ages and all opinions, I can honestly say I do not know one of them whose daily life is not free from reproach or suspicion. During all my life I have never myself known more than one beneficed clergyman who was a real black sheep. That there are such men of course I cannot doubt, but their aggregate number constitutes, I am sure, a very small percentage of the class which they disgrace by being included in it. Surely it is very trying and very irritating to have such instances brought up against you, not as rare exceptions, but as examples of the general rule.