NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

Norwood, S.E.
June 5th.

Dear Mr. Ruskin,

Will you allow me to inform you that the utterance which you attribute to me, on the 12th page of this month’s Fors Clavigera, is quite wrongly assigned.

It is impossible that you should at any time have heard me say from my pulpit what you ascribe to me. Simply because I never said it, and could not—not at all believing it.

I can only account for your misrepresentation by supposing that during my absence from home, from February until the end of June, in the year 1870, or again in July and August of last year, you may have mistaken for me—some other person—doing duty in my stead.

Of course it is of no consequence to the readers of Fors Clavigera what “the Rev. Mr. Tipple” says or does not say; but you will understand that to “the Rev. Mr. Tipple” himself, it is of consequence—to be exhibited in its pages—with words on his lips which are wholly at variance with what he believes, and is engaged in trying to teach.

Will you be kind enough, therefore, to correct the error into which you have fallen in your next number?

I am yours truly,

S. A. Tipple.

If Mr. Tipple had been as unselfish as he is modest, and had considered in anywise what was of consequence to the readers of Fors Clavigera, as well as of consequence to himself, he would not have left them without some explanation of his eagerness to disclaim the doctrine attributed to him, however erroneously, in the passage he refers to. No words, I beg him to observe, are attributed to him. In quoting actual expression I always use inverted commas. The passage in question is the best abstract I could write of a piece of sermon which occupied some five minutes in delivery, and which I myself heard delivered in Mr. Tipple’s chapel, and not, certainly, by Mr. Tipple’s substitute in 1870, for my father and I had long talk over the passage when we came out; and my father died in 1864. But I have ever since kept note of this, now so hastily abjured, utterance, as the most perfect and clear statement of the great Evangelical doctrine of salvation by faith only which I ever heard from any English divine. My abstract of it is more logical than eloquent, but I answer absolutely for its accuracy, and for the specification of “thieves” and “devourers of widows’ houses” by the preacher: and I am sure that some at least of the readers of Fors Clavigera will think it of consequence to know how Mr. Tipple, disclaiming the statement even in this undecorated form, can reconcile it with his conscience to remain the instructor of a Protestant congregation.

For my own part, I can only say that I publish his letter with extreme pleasure; and, recommending him, for the future, to examine more accurately into the tenets of his substitutes, congratulate him on his vigorous repudiation of a doctrine which the Church of England most wisely describes as being “very full of comfort,” but which, she ought farther to have observed, is much more comfortable to rogues than to honest people.

1 “And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.”—Rev. vi. 13; compare Jerem. xxiv. 8, and Amos viii. 1 and 2. ↑

2 More accurately a rod cloven into three at the top, and so holding the wool. The fruit is a branch of apples; she has golden sandals, and a wreath of myrtle round her hair. ↑

FORS CLAVIGERA.