INTRODUCTION lxxv

The private controversy which was indirectly the most fruitful in Ruskin’s life was that with Frederick Denison Maurice, with Dr. Furnivall as intermediary. This largely turned, as will be seen, on Ruskin’s suggestions about Church Discipline (§§ 23, 24); to these he called particular attention in the Preface of 1875, as according with doctrines he was then preaching in Fors Clavigera.

With these letters the correspondence between Ruskin and Maurice came to an end for the time, but three years later their intercourse was resumed in a different connexion. Ruskin, as he afterwards said, regarded Maurice as “by nature puzzle-headed;”¹ but though he disliked the opinions, he loved the man, and was in hearty sympathy with the practical efforts of Maurice’s Christian Socialism. In 1854 Maurice founded the Working Men’s College, then in Red Lion Square (afterwards removed to Great Ormond Street, and now [1904] about to migrate to Camden Town). For the inaugural meeting of the College (October 31, 1854) a reprint of a chapter in The Stones of Venice was prepared, as containing an expression of the hopes and ideals of the founders of the College (Vol. X. p. lx.). Ruskin’s help did not stop there. He undertook to superintend the art-teaching. An account of his work there is given in the Introduction to Volume V., which in the chronological sequence follows the present volume. Ruskin’s work at the College began in the autumn of 1854, and had grown out of the Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds.

It has been said that at the conclusion of the Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds, Ruskin had left over one difficulty which still required solution before his eirenicon could be fulfilled. This was the Baptismal Question. An Essay on this question has been found among Ruskin’s papers; it is accordingly printed here, in Appendix II. to Part III. (p. 573), in order to complete his contribution to an attempted Re-Union of the Churches.

The Essay had already been written when he published Sheepfolds, and it had obviously been suggested to him by the Gorham controversy, of which a brief résumé may here be given to explain Ruskin’s paper. The Rev. G. C. Gorham, a beneficed clergyman in the Diocese of Exeter, was presented by the Lord Chancellor to another living in the same diocese. Before proceeding to institute him, Bishop Phillpotts (the combative “Henry of Exeter”) put certain questions with regard to the Sacrament of Baptism, for Gorham was suspected of Calvinistic views on baptismal regeneration. His reply did not

¹ Præterita, i. ch. i. §§ 13, 14.

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