ent, the condemnation is
pronounced only on the sins of omission: "I was hungry, and ye gave Me
no meat."

242. But, whatever the manner of sin, by offense or defect, which the
preacher fears in his people, surely he has of late been wholly remiss
in compelling their definite recognition of it, in its several and
personal particulars. Nothing in the various inconsistency of human
nature is more grotesque than its willingness to be taxed with any
quantity of sins in the gross, and its resentment at the insinuation of
having committed the smallest parcel of them in detail. And the English
Liturgy, evidently drawn up with the amiable intention of making
religion as pleasant as possible, to a people desirous of saving their
souls with no great degree of personal inconvenience, is perhaps in no
point more unwholesomely lenient than in its concession to the popular
conviction that we may obtain the present advantage, and escape the
future punishment, of any sort of iniquity, by dexterously concealing
the manner of it from man, and triumphantly confessing the quantity of
it to God.

243. Finally, whatever the advantages and decencies of a form of prayer,
and how wide soever the scope given to its collected passages, it cannot
be at one and the same time fitted for the use of a body of well-taught
and experienced Christians, such as should join the services of a Church
nineteen centuries old,--and adapted to the needs of the timid sinner
who has that day first entered its porch, or of the remorseful publican
who has only recently become sensible of his call to a pew.

And surely our clergy need not be surprised at the daily increasing
distrust in the public mind of the efficacy of Prayer, after having so
long insisted on their offering supplication, _at least_ every Sunday
morning at eleven o'clock, that the rest of their lives hereafter might
be pure and holy, leaving them conscious all the while that they would
be similarly required to inform the Lord next week, at the same hour,
that "there was no health in them!"

Among, the much-rebuked follies and abuses of so-called "Ritualism,"
none that I have heard of are indeed so dangerously and darkly "Ritual"
as this piece of authorized mockery of the most solemn act of human
life, and only entrance of eternal life--Repentance.

Believe me, dear Mr. Malleson,

Ever faithfully and respectfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.

XI.

[Greek: kai me eisenenkes hemas eis peirasmon, a