To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."
SIE,—The feeling which probably induced "A. Curate " to write the letter which, in your fairness, you published last week is inci- dental to the state of transition in which he and so many others are. The false delicacy which he seems to exhibit is due to a linger- ing reverence for what others have long since renounced as not only false, but to their minds blasphemous. We have heard old ladies talking under their breath about the "devil," lest that personage, believed in as ubiquitous and nearly almighty, should hear them. It is a sure sign of total abandonment of any theory when we can not only denounce it solemnly at solemn times and in solemn places, but also can treat it with scorn and, as it were, mock at it, like a frightful dream from which we have awaked. And the timid learn to thank us at last for inspiring them with courage by what at first seemed to them a dangerous levity.
Many of my clerical brethren, quite as earnest and reverential as "A Curate" would wish them to be on all really reverend sub- jects, are yet agreed in marking the awful difference between truth and falsehood,—between what honours and what dishonours God, by the freest use, at proper times and in proper places, of the weapons of scorn and ridicule.
So long as these weapons are drawn only against theories and practices, and never against persons, we are on safe ground. Your correspondent," A. Curate" will, I hope, live to enjoy a perfect free- dom from the fetters he has only begun to shake off.—I am, Sir,
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