388 PRÆTERITA-II

question any part of Bible teaching.¹ Henry Melvill, being of the same Episcopal school, and dutifully forbidding himself any dangerous fields of inquiry, explained with accuracy all that was explicable in his text, and argued the inexplicable into the plausible with great zeal and feeling;-always thoroughly convincing himself before he attempted to convince his congregation.

(It may be noted in passing that Dean Stanley, on the other hand, used his plausibility to convince his congregation without convincing himself, or committing himself to anything in particular; while Frederic Maurice² secured his audiences’ religious comfort, by turning their too thorny convictions the other side up, like railroad cushions.)

For the rest, Mr. Melvill was entirely amiable in the Church visitant, though not formidable in the Church militant. There were not many poor in the district to be visited; but he became at once a kindly and esteemed friend to us, as, for the present, serenely feeding lambs of his flock; and I shall always remember gratefully the unoffended smile with which one day, when he had called late, and I became restless during his conversation because my dinner was ready, he broke off his talk, and said, “Go to your dinner.”

I was greatly ashamed of myself for having been so rude; but went to my dinner,-attended better to Mr. Melvill’s preaching ever afterwards,-and owe to him all sorts of good help in close analysis, but especially, my habit of always looking, in every quotation from the Bible, what goes before it and after.*

* I have never forgotten his noble sermon, one day, on the folly of reading “Eye hath not seen the things God has prepared for them that love Him,” without going on to the end of the verse, “but He hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.”³

¹ [The reference is to Bishop Samuel Wilberforce’s inhibition of Bishop Colenso on account of “a great and notorious scandal”; to wit, Colenso’s The Pentateuch Critically Examined. See the Life of Samuel Wilberforce, vol. iii. pp. 112 seq. Ruskin in this controversy strongly took the side of Colenso: see Vol. XVIII. p. 417.]

² [For whom, see iii. §§ 13 seq. (below, pp. 486, 487).]

³ [1 Corinthians ii. 9.]

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