FOREGOING LETTERS
BY THE EDITOR
ESSAYS AND COMMENTS
Feeling deeply, and anxiously, the greatness of the responsibility laid upon me to act, as it were, the part of an envoy between so eminent a teacher as Mr. Ruskin and my brethren in the Ministry, I have thought that it might not be taken amiss if I prefaced my account of the origin of the series of letters placed in my hands for publication (see [Letter 8th July, 1879])[9] with just a mere allusion to one written to me four years ago.
One or two imperfect conversations, leading up to the subject of the Resurrection, which had been broken off by accidental circumstances, together with the letter alluded to, had stimulated in me a feeling of something more than curiosity—rather one of anxious interest—to learn more of Mr. Ruskin's views upon matters which are at the present day giving rise to a good deal of agitated discussion among intellectual men.
I am thankful to be able to avow that, for my own part, I am a firm and conscientious, not a thoughtless and passive, believer in the doctrines of the Church of Christ as held by the majority of serious-minded religious men in the Established Church. Mr. Ruskin was mistaken in his much too ready assumption that I (simply because I am a clergyman) am a believer on compulsion; that for the peace of my soul I have only to thank religious anæsthetics, and that I ever preach against the wickedness of involuntary doubt. God forbid that I should ever take on myself to denounce as wilful sin any scruples of conscience which owe their origin to honest inquiries after truth. I trust that he knows me better now.
Feeling thus decided and certain as to the ground I stand upon, and earnestly desirous on every account to investigate the nature of Mr. Ruskin's doubts, whatever they might be, in a most fraternal spirit, as a kindly-favoured friend and neighbour (for, in our lake and mountain district, an interval of a dozen miles does not destroy neighbourhood between spirits with any degree of kinship), I sought for a more lengthened conversation, and obtained the opportunity without difficulty. The occasion was found in a very delightful summer afternoon on the lake, and up the sides of the Old Man of Coniston, to view a group of remarkable rocks by the desolate, storm-beaten crags of Goat's Water,[10] that saddest and loneliest of mountain tarns, which lies in the deep hollow between the mountain and its opposing buttress, the Dow Crags. This most interesting ramble in the undivided company of one so highly and so deservedly valued in the world of letters and of art and higher matters yet, served to my mind for more purposes than one, while we wandered amidst impressive scenes, passing from the sweet and gentle peaceful loveliness of the bright green vale of Coniston and its charming lake to the bleak desolation, the terrible sublimity of the mountain tarn barriered in by its stupendous crags, amongst which lay those singular-looking, weather-beaten, and lightning-riven rocks which were the more immediate object of our visit.
But to myself the chief and happiest result of our conversation was the firm conviction that neither the censorious and unthinking world, nor perhaps even Mr. Ruskin himself, knows how deeply and truly a Christian man, in the widest sense of the word, Mr. Ruskin is. It is neither the time nor the place, nor indeed would it be consistent with propriety, to analyze before others the convictions formed on that memorable summer afternoon. It must suffice for the present to say that the opinions then formed laid the foundation of a friendship on a happier basis than that which had heretofore been permitted me, and prepared my way to enter with confidence upon the plan of which the present volume is the fruit.
Last June, in the course of a short visit to Brantwood, I proposed to Mr. Ruskin to come to address the members of a Northern Clerical Society, a body of some seventy or eighty clergy, who have done me the honour to appoint me their honorary secretary, now for about nine years, since its foundation. On the ground of impaired health, the legacy left behind it by the serious illness which had, two years before, threatened even his life, Mr. Ruskin excused himself from appearing in person before our Society; but proposed instead to write letters to me which might serve as a basis for discussion amongst us.
[Letter I.] will explain the origin of the series that come after.
On Letter II
The question laid down in this letter, cleared of all metaphorical ornament, is, as is perfectly natural and instinctive with Mr. Ruskin, one which goes down to the foundation of things—here, the character and mission of the Christian ministry. Are we (Mr. Ruskin implies, Are we not?) bound to believe and to teach after certain formulæ, which, being many of them peculiar to ourselves, separate us from the national Churches of France and Italy? Are we free, or are we bound? Or do we enjoy a reasonable amount of liberty and no more? On the platform we occupy do we allow none but English Churchmen to stand? Must we keep all other Christians at arm's length? Do the conditions attached to the emoluments we receive prohibit us from holding or teaching any other opinions than those we have subscribed to?
It is a question not to be approached without a tremor. But no abstract answer can well be given. Human nature replies for itself in the spectacle of the clergy of the Church of England divided and subdivided; here deeply sundered, there of different complexions amicably blending together, holding every variety of opinion which the Church allows or disallows within her borders. Human nature absolutely refuses to be shackled in its positive beliefs. Authority may try, or even appear to perform, the feat of fettering thought and making men march in step to one common end in orderly ranks; but she has invariably at last to confess her impotence.[11]
The ministers of the Church cannot safely be set free by Act of Parliament to teach whatever seems good to each. Some respect must be shown to congregations too. If the clergy claim on their side the right of independent thought, which they are quite justified in doing, the congregations on their side have a much greater right to a consistent teaching, which shall not distract their minds with strange and unwonted forms of Christianity.
Mr. Ruskin, as he often does, is going too deep. He asks for that which we shall never see in this world,—the simple, pure religion of the Bible to be taught in all singleness and simplicity of mind by men whose only commission is held from God, by or without the channel of human authority, to show men, women, and children the way "to the summit of the celestial mountains," and to set an awful warning by conspicuous beacons against the "crevasses which go down quickest to the pit." But who shall say that he is wrong? Nay, rather, it is we that are wrong in resting satisfied with our low views of things, while Ruskin soars above our heads.
On Letter III
I would preface the few remarks I wish to make upon this letter by an extract from a letter just received from a dear good friend:
"I have already read these deeply interesting letters five times. They are like 'the foam-globes of leaven.' I must say they have exercised my mind very much. Things in them which at first seem rather startling, prove on closer examination to be full of deep truth. The suggestions in them lead to 'great searchings of heart.' There is much with which I entirely agree; much over which to ponder. What an insight into human nature is shown in the remark that though we are so ready to call ourselves 'miserable sinners' we resent being accused of any special fault!
"S. B."
By the side of this, it will be instructive, though strange, if I place an extract from another note from one whom I have long known and highly esteemed; and it will be seen what a singular "discerner of hearts" and "divider of spirits" is this series of letters:—
"If they are really meant au sérieux, I could not express any opinion of them without implying a reflection upon you also, as you seem to endorse them so fully. I prefer, therefore, to say merely that, as a whole, they offer one of the most remarkable instances I ever met with of the old adage, 'Ne sutor ultra crepidam.'"[12]
In spite of this I retain all my old high opinion of the writer of these lines, and feel convinced that he will soon think very differently.
Yes, it is as my first correspondent has said, "Things which at first seem startling, on examination prove to be full of deep truth." In the short compass of this [Letter III.] lies enfolded a vast question, which, in the midst of the friction and conflict of ages of strife, has been shuffled away into odd corners, to be brought out into life only now and then, when a man is born into the world who sees what few will even glance at, and who will say out that which ought to be spoken, though but few may listen. What is the question which is put here so tersely and so pointedly? It is this, which I am only putting a little differently, not with the most distant idea of improving upon Mr. Ruskin's felicitous touches; but, because expressed in twofold fashion, what has escaped one may strike another in a different form.
Is a clergyman of the Church of England a teacher of the doctrine and practice and discipline of the Church of England within her limits only, narrow as they are, when compared with Christendom? or is there not rather a wider, more comprehensive Church yet—that of Christ upon earth—which he must serve, which he must preach, in forgetfulness of the limited boundaries within which by his education and his ordination vows he is apparently bound to remain? Is there not enough of Christianity common to all the Christian nations upon earth, and which ought to be made the subject of teaching to the ignorant and the castaway? Is it quite a right thing that the natives of Madagascar, for instance, should see parties of missionaries arriving amongst them: one, in all the gorgeous trappings and with all the elaborate ritual of Rome; another in rusty black coats and hats and dirty white neckties, repudiating all but the very barest necessary ceremonial; a third, possibly disunited in itself, coming as High Churchmen or Low Churchmen, with differing peculiarities? Is this an edifying spectacle for the Malagasy? And can the Gospel be preached as effectually in this highly diversified fashion as it would be with the simplicity of a reasonable and just sufficiently elastic uniformity?
Coming before many people of infinite diversity of mind, it cannot be doubted that Christianity must necessarily take a variety of forms, to suit different intelligences, and adapt itself to differing situations. But in all this large variety of forms of religion, ranging from mere paganism at one end, just a little unavoidably altered by the contact of Christianity, and at the other extremity a pure religion, but refined and intellectual, I do not see exactly what is the form of Christianity which the Church of England is to preach to the masses at home and abroad. As long as England takes the Gospel to the ignorant in such infinitely diversified forms, it is as if an incapable general were to divide his forces preparatory to an assault upon a compact and well-defended stronghold.
It is enough to make one weep with vexation and humiliation to see what sort of religion would be presented to the world if some who claim to have all truth on their side could have their own way. I say to have the truth on their side,—which is a very different thing from being on the side of truth. There is even a new religion—for it is certainly not the old—growing popular with "thinkers," who write and read in the three great half-crown monthlies, which is evolved in the most curious variety out of their inner consciousness by religion-makers, whose fertile brains are the only soil that can bring forth such productions. What is the vast uneducated world to do with these extraordinary forms of religion which are as many-sided and many-faced as their inventors?
Now Mr. Ruskin and many others see this state of things with pity and compassion, and ask, "Cannot this Gospel of Christ be put into such plain words and short terms as that a plain man may understand it?" Why is there no such easy summary provided by authority to teach the poor and simple? The Apostles' Creed is good for its own end and purpose, but it requires great expansion to be made to include Gospel teaching, and it contains nothing practical. The Thirty-nine Articles are not even intended (as Mr. Ruskin by some oversight seems to think they are) to be a summary of the Gospel. We have no concise and plain, clear and intelligible form of sound words to answer this most important end. The Church Catechism, from old associations, belongs to childhood.
Every reasonable person must agree with Mr. Ruskin, that there could be no harm, but much good, in Christians making a little less of their Churchmanship, and a little more of their broad Christianity.
On Letter IV
Mr. Ruskin pleads in this letter with touching eloquence for the guidance of the law of love, that irresistible law, one effect of which is to give to the highest probability the force of a sufficient certainty, and establishes in the man the mental habit best described as certitude.
In Cardinal Newman's "History of My Religious Opinions," p. 18, he quotes some beautiful passages from Keble's conversations with himself (disagreeing with him all the time), in which he had quoted, "I will guide thee with mine eye" (Psalm xxxii. 8), as the expression of the gentle suasive power that directs the steps of the child and friend of God, as distinguished from "the bit and bridle" laid upon horse and mule, who represent unwilling slaves recognising no law but that of force or coercion. It is an Eye whose gaze is ever fixed on us, the "Eye of God's Word," "like that of a portrait uniformly fixed on us, turn where we will."[13] And Keble is right so far as concerns the true children and friends of God, subject, as their highest control, to the law of love. Pure and exalted minds ever strain for, and yearn after, a general and outward manifestation of the witness that man is "the image and glory of God" (1 Cor. xi. 7).
Unhappily, we are not so constituted by nature. The inroads and ravages of sin are but too evident, as well in those upon whom episcopal hands have been laid, as in the ranks of the laity. Are not wilfulness and pride of intellect and glorification of self ever exercising such a power in the earth, that checks and restraints are found absolutely necessary to curb and control the determination of many of the ministers of the Church not only to think as seems good to them (which they have a perfect right to do), but openly to teach and to preach whatever doctrines they may have conceived in their own minds, or have learnt from others, contrary to the received doctrines of the Church of England; which they have no right to do as long as they remain ministers of the Church whose doctrines they impugn?
Mr. Ruskin correctly assumes that the terms of the Lord's Prayer, being in the very words of Christ, do contain a body of Divine doctrine; and they would be the fittest to adopt as a standard of Christian teaching, if only all men were as candid, sincere, and straightforward as himself. But because there is no certainty that any large and preponderating body of men will exhibit these graces of Christianity in themselves, and combine with them gentleness, tolerance, and forbearance, therefore they must be held in "with bit and bridle,"—that is, with Articles and Creeds and declarations,—"lest they fall upon thee," and fill the Church more full of sedition, disaffection, and disquiet than it already is.
Cardinal Newman himself is an example of the necessity of the restraints of creeds, as well, indeed, as of their general inefficiency to maintain unity. His "History of my Religious Opinions," at least in its beginning, is but the story of a long succession of phases of belief and disbelief, originating in—what? In study of the Word of God? in Divine contemplation, or in devout and thoughtful meditation? No, indeed; but in walks and conversations, now with one friend, now with another, now round the Quadrangle of Oriel, then in Christ Church meadows; in fanciful, and apparently causeless, changes in his own mind, of which sometimes he can give the exact date, sometimes he has forgotten it, but which lead him out of one set of opinions into another in a helpless kind of way, as if he knew of no motive power but the influence of other men's minds or the momentary and fitful fluctuations of a spirit ever too much given to introspection to maintain a steady and uniform course.
What a contrast between the downright, manly straightforwardness of a Ruskin and the fluttering, uncertain flights of a Newman, ending in the cold, dead fixity of the Roman faith, whereof to doubt is to be damned!
On Letter V
The next paragraph to the last in this letter, contains a statement which at first might seem to be rashly expressed. But I was not long in apprehending that when Mr. Ruskin alludes to a scheme of pardon "for which we are supposed to be thankful, not to the Father, but to the Son," he was far from impugning that doctrine of the Atonement in which, as it is generally understood among Christian people, the whole plan of salvation centres.
But there seems to have been a fatality about this sentence. Numbers have read it and commented upon it, myself amongst the number, as if Mr. Ruskin were here expressing his own view; instead of which, he is here quoting other men's opinions, to condemn them with severity. The Record called it some of Mr. Ruskin's dross; but it is other people's dross, for which he would offer us pure gold.
I happened, a very short time previous to receiving this letter, to have had my attention attracted by the following passage of Mr. Ruskin's own:—"When, in the desert, He was girding Himself for the work of life, angels of life came and ministered to Him; now, in the fair world, when He is girding Himself for the work of death [at the Transfiguration], the ministrants came to Him from the grave. But from the grave conquered. One from that tomb under Abarim, which His own hand had sealed long ago; the other from the rest which He had entered without seeing corruption."
Pleased with the truthful eloquence of this passage, I placed it at the head of the chapter on the Transfiguration in my book on the Life and Work of Christ (still in the press). Having done so, it struck me that Mr. Ruskin, whether intentionally or undesignedly, had made the pronoun "His" to apply either to God the Father, or to God the Son. It may grammatically refer to either. From this I drew the conclusion which I expressed in a short letter to my friend, that, discarding the strictly human uses of language, which, from its unavoidable poverty, lacks the power of marking the true nature of the difference between the Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity, he had spoken of the Father and of the Son indiscriminately or indifferently, i.e., without a difference.
And so it really is. How shall a man, though at the highest he be "but a little lower than the angels," know and comprehend the Godhead in its true and exact nature? The names father and son express an earthly relation perfectly well understood when belonging to ourselves, but when applied to the Supreme Divine Being, they must of necessity fall far short of expressing their true connexion with one another. They are, when applied to Heavenly beings, merely anthropomorphic terms used in compassion to our infirmities, and conveying to us only an approximation to the ideas intended. We say the Father sent the Son; the Son suffered for our sins. But since Father and Son are One, we are plainly expressing something short of the exact state of the case when we speak of our thankfulness to the Son as if we had no reason to be equally thankful to the Father.
The Athanasian Creed makes no great demand upon our mental powers when it requires of us, in speaking of the Trinity, neither to confound the Persons nor to divide the Substance; for, in truth, I suppose we are equally incapable of doing either.
These are Divine matters, of which, while the simplest may know enough, the wisest can never fathom the whole depth. For the Divine power and love, knowledge and compassion, will never be fully comprehended until we know even as we are known.
But, as I am abstaining from questioning Mr. Ruskin as to his meaning in any passage, if it happens to be slightly obscure, awaiting his reply at the close of the book, I may here say that I believe that this sentence refers to a wild and unscriptural kind of preaching, happily becoming less common, in which undue stress is laid upon the wrathfulness of God, as contrasted with the mercy of the Saviour, as if we had only the Son to thank, and not our loving Father in Heaven, for the blessed hope of eternal life. Some there are, and always will be, who habitually err in not rightly dividing the Word of God, and giving undue prominence to a dark portion of doctrine, which is true enough in itself, but would be relieved of much of its gloom, if due prominence were given to other parts of the truth of God.
I do not mean to praise caution at the expense of courage. I have a constitutional aversion to that caution allied to timidity and cowardice which prompts a man to look to his safety, comfort, and worldly repute as the first social law that concerns him. I admire rather the brave man who is ready to sacrifice all that, if he can, by so doing, gain the desired right end.
But in the case before us, it is not so. Men talk as if all we had to do to convert a sinner from the error of his way was to give him a good talking, forgetting that we have not a plastic material to work upon, but a most stubborn and intractable one, wherever interest is concerned; and that a bold bad man is generally proof against talk, and yields to no power but the grace of God exercised directly, and seconded by His heavy judgments. Have we not all seen, with shame and astonishment, the "wicked rich" regularly in their places at church, much oftener than the "wicked poor," who have less interest in playing the hypocrite? And have we not felt our utter powerlessness, whether by public preaching or by private monition, to find a way to those case-hardened hearts? What are we to do with such a man as Tennyson describes in "Sea Dreams," who
"began to bloat himself, and ooze
All over with the fat affectionate smile
That makes the widow lean;"
when his victim—
"Pursued him down the street, and far away,
Among the honest shoulders of the crowd,
Read rascal in the motions of his back,
And scoundrel in the supple-sliding knee."
Here is all that we can do—told us in the last sweet lines:—
"'She sleeps: let us too, let all evil, sleep.
He also sleeps—another sleep than ours.
He can do no more wrong: forgive him, dear,
And I shall sleep the sounder!'
Then the man,
'His deeds yet live, worst is yet to come;
Yet let your sleep for this one night be sound:
I do forgive him.'
'Thanks, my love,' she said,
'Your own will be the sweeter;' and they slept."
On Letter VI
As is the manner of our friend, he concludes a letter which was begun with thoughtful wisdom, with a proposal which, if gravely made, will seem to most of us both unpractical and impracticable.
Very forcible and very true is the emphatic declaration here made of the deep, perhaps unpardonable sinfulness of taking in vain the holy name of God.
But, to my mind, the irremediable fault in the latter proposition in this letter is the assumption that every honest clergyman of average capacity, and of ordinary experience of life, is, of course, wise enough to discern men's characters and to judge them with that unerring sagacity that will enable him to pronounce without favour or distinction of persons the severe sentence: "You shall not enter this house of God. I interdict your presence here. The comforts and privileges of religion are for other than thou. I deny thee the prayers, the preaching, and the sacraments of the Church." More briefly—"I excommunicate thee."
Even in the case of a very bad man this would be found impossible to accomplish without the direst danger to the clergyman's usefulness and influence, to say nothing of his peace. For our experience abundantly shows that let a bad man but be audacious, and even ruffianly enough, helped by his position, he will always find plenty of support among the powerful and influential. The poor and honest clergyman, if he has attempted to enforce Church discipline, will be gravely rebuked for his want of charity, for his sad lack of discretion or tact, for his utter want of worldly wisdom; he will very soon find, to use the familiar phrase, the place too hot for him, and he may be thankful if he escapes with some small remainder of respect or compassion from the nobler-minded of his flock, who are always in a very small minority.
I know not how it really was in the time when the rubrics of the Communion Services were framed. One would think, judging from these, that the clergyman possessed unlimited power to judge and punish with spiritual deprivation, and that he was alone to unite in himself all the various offices of accuser and police, counsel, jury, and judge. We are required to say every Ash Wednesday that we regret the loss of the godly discipline of the Primitive Church—under which, "at the beginning of Lent, all such persons as stood convicted of notorious sin were put to open penance; and that it is much to be wished that the said discipline may be restored again." But few can seriously view a realization of that wish without fear for the certain consequences.
The truth is, the world moves on. Human nature may remain the same; but the laws and usages of society are subject to changes which it is useless to withstand. At the present day, great, rather too great, perhaps, are the claims of charity. We are told to hope for the best in the worst of cases; we are to forgive all, even the still hardened and unrepenting; we are to smile upon heresy and schism; we are to treat the rude, the churlish, the hard of heart, amidst our flocks, as if we had the greatest regard for them! I am not prepared to say that this is in every way to be regretted; for these are errors that lean perhaps to virtue's side. But I certainly do think that often a little more fearlessness in rebuking vice would not come amiss.
But, on the other hand, suppose for a moment the clergy to have the undisputed power to bar out both the wicked rich and the wicked poor from their churches, this power would be of very little use; nay, it would be full of mischief and danger, without a sound judgment, a fearless spirit, and a heart little used to the melting mood. The clergy, as a class, may perhaps be a trifle superior to the laity in moral character, in spiritual knowledge, and in judgment in dealing with people, because their profession has early trained (or at any rate, ought to have trained) them in the constant and imperative exercise of self-examination and self-control, and the careful discernment of character in their intercourse with men. But that superiority, if it exists at all, is so trifling as to make very little impression on the laity, who would naturally be ready at any step to dispute the wisdom or expediency of the judicial acts of the clergy.
Further, again: given both the wisdom to judge and the power to doom, would it be desirable to establish a rule that the open and notorious sinner (though there would always be differences of opinion upon what he really is, even among the clergy themselves) should be prevented from coming where he might, above all other places, be most likely to hear words that would touch his heart and bring him to a better mind? From the pulpit, words of counsel, of holy doctrine, and of heart-stirring precepts of the Gospel, fall with a power and weight which are rarely to be found in private conversations. Many an open and notorious sinner has first yielded up his heart to God under the powerful influence of preaching. When Jesus sat in the Pharisee's house, all the publicans and sinners drew near to hear Him; and the orthodox sinners, the Pharisees, made bitter complaints that He received and ate with the scorned and rejected sinners. God forbid that the day should ever come when spiritual pride and exclusiveness shall shut out even the hardest of sinners from the house of God; for who can tell where or when the word may be spoken which shall break the stony heart, and replace it with the tender heart of flesh, soon to be filled with love and devotion to God the Saviour and Redeemer?
But, as this is a subject of great importance, may I also say a word in support of Mr. Ruskin's own view that the wicked should be discouraged, or even forbidden, to enter the house of God? We have 2 Cor. vi. 14-18, which seems to point out that, in the primitive Church, the wicked were not allowed in the assemblies of the faithful. And we remember David's "I have hated the congregation of evil doers, and will not sit with the wicked" (Psalm xxvi. 5). Is not Mr. Ruskin, perhaps, after all, only advocating a return to primitive usage?
Mr. Ruskin says in the Preface to his selected works: "What I wrote on religion was painstaking, and I think forcible, as compared with most religious writing; especially in its frankness and fearlessness." Unfortunately he adds, "But it was wholly mistaken."[14] He is still equally outspoken, frank, and fearless; but what he wrote upon religion, as far as I know it, in the days which he now condemns, will live and do good, as long as the noble English language, of which he is one of the greatest masters, lives to convey to distant generations the great thoughts of the sons that are her proudest boast.
Additional Remarks on the Censures of the Church.
By the Editor.
Since writing my notes on [Letter VI.], in which Mr. Ruskin gives such vehement expression to his desire to see the ancient discipline of the Church restored, I have in conversation with himself learned this to be one of the objects he has most at heart in writing these letters; and I have also read in the Life of Bishop Selwyn, by the Rev. H. W. Tucker (vol. i., p. 241) that admirable prelate's view of this disregarded question. I believe Selwyn to have been the greatest uninspired missionary since the days of St. Paul (if indeed we can with truth consider so great a man wholly uninspired). But the great Bishop of the South Seas, in the charge from which copious extracts are there given, distinctly recommends the revival of spiritual discipline and the censures of the Church upon unrepenting offenders. He refers for authority to apostolic example and precept, and to the discipline rubrics of the Communion Service, and adds the undeniable fact that our Anglican communion is the only branch of the Christian Church where such discipline is wanting.
I must ask leave to refer my readers to Mr. Tucker's book for the grounds in detail of the Bishop's wishes. I am not aware that any English prelate has ventured upon so hazardous an experiment; one, I should rather say, so certain to fail disastrously. The infancy of the Christian Church, and the Divine guidance directly exercised, rendered such discipline in the first centuries both practicable and effective.[15] But I do not remember that any parish priest of the Reformed Church has ever attempted to enforce the Communion rubrics, except, as we have learned from the public papers, in recent times, with disastrous consequences to the promoters. And what kind of wickedness is to be so visited? To prove drunkenness, or impurity, or fraudulent practices, or false doctrine (Canon 109), a judicial inquiry must be resorted to. Rebukes for lesser offences would certainly lead to disputes, if not even to recrimination! The irresistible circumstances of the age would entirely defeat any such endeavours. In towns, parochial limits are practically unknown or ignored, and families, or individuals, attend whatever church or chapel they please, no one preventing them, thus making all exercise of sacerdotal authority impracticable. In the country, even where only the parish church is within reach, it is highly probable that an offender would meet priestly excommunication by the easy expedient of cutting himself off from communication with his clergyman and his church; and even if he did not, it would be a very new state of things if the sentence were received with submission on the part of the offender, and acquiescence on that of the congregation.
In short, the thing is simply impossible; and I do not find that even Bishop Selwyn himself visited immorality with ecclesiastical censures, or supported his clergy in doing so; and I am using the word "immorality" in its full and proper sense, and not with that restricted meaning which confines it to a particular sin. It is true, as he says, that our Church stands alone in refraining from the exercise of such power. But in other religious bodies, the discretionary power to use such dangerous weapons is not left to individuals however gifted. It rests in a constituted body, on whom the whole responsibility would lie. But the isolation of the English clergyman in his church and parish forbids him thus to risk his whole usefulness and his social existence. Who would confirm him in his judgment? Who would stand by him in the troubles which he would assuredly entail upon himself? Would his churchwardens, his rural dean, his archdeacon, or his bishop? I think there would be little comfort to be found in any of these quarters.
On Letter VII
Excellent as is [Canon Gray's letter] (p. [169]), I do not at all concur in his somewhat severe censure on the second paragraph in this letter, in which Mr. Ruskin, as I conceive, with complete theological accuracy, points out how in His human nature our Lord accepted and received some, perhaps many, of the deficiencies of our nature, human frailty and weakness, even human liability to sin, without, however, once yielding to its temptations. I have everywhere in my "Life of Christ" endeavoured to give reasons for my faith in this view, which, even if held, I know is not often professed.
If Christ had been perfectly insensible to the allurements of sin, where would be His fellow-feeling with us? It would be a mere outward semblance; nor would there then be any significance in the statement that "He was in all points tempted like as we are," if He had been able to view with calm indifference the inducements presented to Him from time to time to abandon His self-sacrificing work and consult His safety. The captain is not to go securely armour-plated into the fight while the private soldier marches in his usual unprotected apparel. Nor will the Captain of our salvation protect Himself against the dangers which He invites us to encounter. If He knew nothing of sin from experience of its power, how could He be an example to us? Therefore I believe Mr. Ruskin to be perfectly right in affirming that in the words of Jesus we listen not to one speaking entirely in the Power and Wisdom of God, but to the Son of Man, bowed down, but not conquered, by afflictions, firm and unbending in His great purpose to bear in His own body the sin of the world—Son of Man, yet God Incarnate.
Nor does it seem to me "a hard way of speaking" when Mr. Ruskin rightly and plainly affirms the perfect humanity of Christ, which, however, Canon Gray correctly points out to be assumed and borne in accordance with His own will as perfect God. I am afraid that, good and kind as he is, it is Canon Gray himself who is a little hard in unconsciously imputing thoughts which had no existence in the writer's mind!
I cannot help being amused at the gravity with which certain critics shake their heads ominously over the last paragraph in this letter, and seriously ask, What can Mr. Ruskin mean by the "peace and joy in the Holy Ghost" enjoyed by the birds? The Poet Laureate would hardly care to be brought to book for each poetical flight with which he charms his many appreciative readers, and to be asked to explain exactly what he means by each of those noble thoughts which are only revealed from soul to soul, and dissolve into fluid, like the beautiful brittle-star of our coasts, under the touch of a too curious hand.
How do we know but that the animal existence of these charming companions of our quiet hours is not accompanied by a spiritual existence too, as much inferior to our own spiritual state as their corporeal to ours? And therefore shall we boldly dare to say that they perish altogether and for ever? We may neither believe nor disbelieve in matters kept so completely secret from us. But we must be pardoned for leaning to a belief that the feathered creatures which spend most of their brief life in singing loud praises to the loving Creator and Giver of all good, do not live quite for nothing beyond the dissolution of their little frames. There are no means of ascertaining this by scientific experiments, or even by the most ingenious processes of induction carefully recorded and duly referred to as occasion may arise. But certainly it is a harmless fancy which many have indulged in before Mr. Ruskin, without being charged with such unsoundness in doctrine as denying the Personality of the Holy Ghost! By-and-by it may be found that what men have believed in half in sport will be realized wholly in earnest. Just outside the churchyard wall of Ecclesfield may be seen (at least I saw it a few years ago) a little monumental stone to a favourite dog, with the text, "Thou, Lord, preservest man and beast." And in Kingsley's "Prose Idylls" I have just met most àpropos with the following beautiful passage, which many will read with pleasure, perhaps some with profit:—
"If anyone shall hint to us that we and the birds may have sprung originally from the same type; that the difference between our intellect and theirs is one of degree, and not of kind, we may believe or doubt: but in either case we shall not be greatly moved. 'So much the better for the birds,' we will say, 'and none the worse for us. You raise the birds towards us: but you do not lower us towards them.' What we are, we are by the grace of God. Our own powers and the burden of them we know full well. It does not lessen their dignity or their beauty in our eyes to hear that the birds of the air partake, even a little, of the same gifts of God as we. Of old said St. Guthlac in Crowland, as the swallows sat upon his knee, 'He who leads his life according to the will of God, to him the wild deer and the wild birds draw more near;' and this new theory of yours may prove St. Guthlac right. St. Francis, too—he called the birds his brothers. Whether he was correct, either theologically or zoologically, he was plainly free from that fear of being mistaken for an ape, which haunts so many in these modern times. Perfectly sure that he himself was a spiritual being, he thought it at least possible that birds might be spiritual beings likewise, incarnate like himself in mortal flesh; and saw no degradation to the dignity of human nature in claiming kindred lovingly with creatures so beautiful, so wonderful, who (as he fancied in his old-fashioned way) praised God in the forest, even as angels did in heaven. In a word, the saint, though he was an ascetic, and certainly no man of science, was yet a poet, and somewhat of a philosopher; and would possibly—so do extremes meet—have hailed as orthodox, while we hail as truly scientific, Wordsworth's great saying—
'Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In Nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.'"
Charm of Birds.
On Letter VIII
What generous and enlightened spirit will not be stirred to its innermost depths by these words, burning as they are with a well-grounded indignation?
I dare say some of the clergy will have a word to say on their claim to the priesthood as implying a sacrificial and mediatorial character. On this point I will say nothing at present.
But it is an awfully solemn consideration put before us here, whether instead of the pure blessings and the bright countenances intended to be ours, our accursed blessings and defiled faces are not the natural consequences of our wilful misunderstanding of what the will of the Lord is.
"Thy will be done" is a petition which can be offered up in two quite distinct senses. In the one, it is an expression of resignation to the Father's afflictive dispensations; in the other, the heartfelt desire to work out the revealed will of God in all the many-sided aspects of life. In the first sense, when sorrow or death has entered our door, our first impulse, if we are Christians, is to give evidence of, and expression to, our resignation by recognizing the will of God. Hence Mr. Ruskin interposes: "Are you so sure that it was the will of God that your child should die, or that you should have got into that trouble?" I look in my local paper in the column of deaths, and see in a neighbouring large town how extraordinary a proportion of deaths are those of children. I have taken occasional cemetery duty in one of the busiest centres of industry in Yorkshire, and was shocked at the large numbers of funerals in white. Am I to believe it was the will of God that so many young children should perish, especially as I look to my own beautiful parish, with its sweet sea and mountain breezes mingled, where the deaths of children are comparatively rare? and am I not forced to believe that, even without the assistance of destitution—neglect and overcrowding, and "quieting mixtures" and ardent spirits, and kicks and blows have filled most of those little graves? I fear that the will of Satan is here being accomplished vastly to his satisfaction. And seldom does the Government do more than touch the fringe of these monstrous evils. Of course they say "We cannot interfere," or "Legislation in these matters is impracticable." But can we not all remember when it was just as certain that free trade in food was impracticable? but who does not see that it is saving us from famine this dark year 1879?—that compulsory education was revolutionary and full of unimaginable perils to the country, and yet who are so glad as the poor themselves, now that it has been carried into effect? It used to be thought that if people chose to kill themselves with unwholesome open drains before their doors, there was no power able to prevent them. But we are wiser now. Legislators have generally been, or chosen to appear, like cowards till the time for action came, very late, and then they were decided enough. Now let us hope that a way may be found to save infant life from premature extinction by wholesale.
Let me use this opportunity of saying that in the letters we are now considering there is a feature which ought not to escape those who are desirous of deriving good from them; and that is that in their very condensed form no time is taken for explanation or expansion. Mr. Ruskin speaks as unto wise men, and asks us to judge for ourselves what he says. But my own experience, after frequent perusal of them, shows me that there is a vast fund of truth in them which becomes apparent only after patient consideration and reflection. Without desiring at all to bestow extravagant praise on my kind friend, or any other distinguished man, it is only fair and just to own that the truth that is in these letters shines out more and more the more closely they are examined. It is a gift that God has given him, which has cost him far more pain, worry, and vexation, through all kinds of wilful and envious, as well as innocent and unconscious misrepresentation, than ever it has gained him of credit or renown.
This principle leads me to view now with approbation what I could not read at first without an unpleasant feeling. The sentence: "Nearly the whole Missionary body (with the hottest Evangelical section of the English Church) is at this moment composed of men who think the Gospel they are to carry to mend the world with, forsooth, is this, 'If any man sin, he hath an Advocate with the Father.'" And when I first read it to my reverend brethren, hard words were spoken of this passage, because in its terseness, in its elliptic form, it easily allows itself to be misunderstood. Yet the paragraph contains the essence of the Gospel expressed with a faithful boldness not often met with in pulpit addresses.
"If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father." We have here a solemn and momentous truth, expressed in few words, as clearly and as briefly as any geometrical definition. But is this all the Gospel? Will this alone "mend the world, forsooth"? Now the extreme men of one particular school in the English Church do really preach little else beside this. When they are entreated to preach upon good works, too, and unfold a little of their value and beauty,—if they have any at all,—the answer is always to the effect, "Oh, of course; faith in Christ must of necessity beget the love of good works. These are the signs of that. Preach Christ crucified, and all the rest will be sure to follow." And this is what is exclusively called "preaching the Gospel." The preacher who teaches us to love our enemies, to live pure lives, to be honourable to all men and women, to bring up our families in the truth, is frowned upon as a "legal preacher." As a clergyman myself, I am not afraid of saying that I look upon this so-called Gospel-preaching as fraught with not a little of danger. God knows, wicked sinners are found in every congregation and class of men, kneeling to pray, and singing praises, exactly like good men. Now I can hardly conceive a style and matter of preaching more calculated to excuse and palliate, and almost encourage sin, than this narrow and exclusive so-called Gospel-preaching. Neither Christ nor His apostles taught thus at all. The whole Sermon on the Mount is moral in the highest and purest sense. Every epistle has its moral or legal side. "Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel!" and I cannot be preaching the Gospel unless, along with the great proclamation, "If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father," I also do my utmost to teach "what the will of the Lord is" concerning a pure, holy, and blameless life, full of active, good works, done in deep humility and self-abasement; because Christ loved me and died for me, and asks me, in love to Him, to walk in His steps.
On Letter IX
I fancy I can still hear the murmur of angry dissent pass round as I read to my reverend brethren this indignant plea for a higher interpretation of the petition for daily bread than that which passes current with the unthinking, self-indulgent world. Nevertheless, this manifestation of feeling was not general, and I thoroughly agree with Mr. Ruskin that the world has, from the first, used this prayer thoughtlessly and blasphemously; and probably will continue to do so to the end, when the thoughts and imaginations of all men's hearts shall be revealed, and no more disguises shall be possible; when the masked hypocrite's smile shall be torn from him and reveal the covetousness that breeds in his heart to its core; when the honourable man shall no longer be confounded with thieves, nor the usurer and extortioner be courted and bowed to like an honest man.
The veil that hid the true Christ, as Mr. Ruskin has well remarked, was removed in the breaking of bread with the disciples at Emmaus. As the Master, so the true disciples. They too may be known both by the spiritual breaking of the Bread of Life in the Holy Communion (though the canting hypocrite too may be found polluting that holy rite); but more especially in the union of the sacred ordinance with obedience to the scarcely less sacred command of Christian love and charity to the poor. There may be the empty profession, but there will be none of the reality of the religion of the Gospel, unless we are partakers of the bread broken at the Lord's Table, or unless we eat the bread earned by the honest labour of our hands or of our brains, or share some of our bread with those, the Lord's brethren, whom He has left for us to care for in His name. The absence of either of these three essential conditions just lays us open to the charge of flaunting before the world a false and spurious Christianity. In the plain words of our friend, our bread not being fairly got or fairly used, is stolen bread.
But I would willingly believe that it is only by a strong figure of speech that we clergy are here again emphatically called upon to act the part of inquisitors by pointedly demanding of every member of our flock a precise account of the manner in which he earns his livelihood. Still, if the answer was not a surprised and indignant stare, I believe the great mass of men would probably be able to give an answer which should abundantly satisfy themselves and us, until Mr. Ruskin threw his own light upon the answer and demonstrated that the notions of modern civilized society are not in accordance with the highest teaching. According to our ideas, the artisan, the tradesman, the merchant, the members of the learned and the military and naval professions, all those engaged in the various departments of government work, from the cabinet minister down to the last office clerk,—all these use the labour of body or of mind, and in return receive the necessaries or the luxuries of life for themselves and their households. Men who are, if they please, exempt altogether from such labour, as large landed proprietors, are certainly under a temptation to lead a life of ease and leisure. But it is very seldom that we are offended with the sight of a landlord so unmindful of social duties as to take no personal active interest in the welfare and conduct of his tenants, or forgetful of the responsibilities to his country imposed upon him by his rank and position.
It is to be hoped that Mr. Ruskin does not in all solemn seriousness really expect that after a fair examination of the modes of life of all these people, "an entirely new view of life and its sacraments will open upon us and them." Is it indeed a fact that "the great mass of men calling themselves Christians do actually live by robbing the poor of their bread, and by no other trade whatsoever"? Mr. Ruskin is always terribly in earnest in whatever he says, and we must look for an explanation of this sentence in the very decided views he holds upon interest of money, which he calls usury.
Mr. Ruskin classes Usury and Interest together. Here are some of his strong words upon this subject: "There is absolutely no debate possible as to what usury is, any more than what adultery is. The Church has only been polluted by indulgence in it since the 16th century. Usury is any kind whatever of interest on loan, and it is the essential modern force of Satan." This was written September 9th of this year. In "Fors Clavigera," Letter lxxxii., p. 323, he challenged the Bishop of Manchester to answer him the question, whether he considered "usury to be a work of the Lord"?[16] In the same letter, to place his heavy denunciation against the wickedness of usury in the best possible company, he pleads: "Plato's scheme was impossible even in his own day,—as Bacon's New Atlantis in his day,—as Calvin's reform in his day,—as Goethe's Academe in his; but of the good there was in all these men, the world gathered what it could find of evil."
Let us look a little closer into this matter. It is not because a man with fearless frankness breasts the full torrent of popular persuasion and universal practice that he is to be thrust aside as a fanatic, with hard words and unfeeling sneers concerning his sanity. Here, again, I avow my persuasion that Mr. Ruskin is, in one sense, too far in advance, and, in another, too far in the rear of the time; and while I attempt an explanatory justification of the modern practice, I admit that it is only "for the hardness of our hearts" and because the golden age is still far off.
The Mosaic law was severe against usury and increase, forbidding it under heavy threatenings among the faithful Israelites, but allowing it in lending to strangers. "If thy brother be waxen poor, then thou shalt relieve him ... take thou no usury of him, or increase" (Lev. xxv. 35, 36). "Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent upon usury. Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury" (Deut. xxiii. 19, 20). "Lord, who shall abide in Thy tabernacle? ... He that putteth not out his money to usury" (Psalm xv. 1, 5. See Ezek. xviii. 7, etc.) And to come to the Christian law, we have the mild general principle: "If ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.... Lend, hoping for nothing again, and your reward shall be great" (Luke vi. 34, 35).
So far the Law of Moses and the Gospel.
But our Lord, in the Parable of the Talents, appears to actually sanction the practice of loans upon interest: "Thou oughtest, therefore, to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury" (Matt. xxv. 27). The preceding verse, the 26th, may well be understood to be a question—Didst thou indeed think so? It does not even indirectly attribute hardness and oppression to our Lord.[17] I am quite aware that it may be replied that this is an instance of those strong audacious metaphors, where the fact used by way of illustration is instinctively overleaped by the mind of the hearer to arrive at the lesson which it marks and emphasizes; as when the Lord is represented as an unjust judge, or Paul speaks of grafting the wild olive branch upon the good, or James refers to the rust and canker upon gold and silver, or Milton speaks of certain bishops as "blind mouths."[18] But in all these cases, the hyperbole is manifest; it is an untruth or a disguise, which not only does not deceive, but teaches a great truth. Our Lord's reference to money-lenders or exchangers appears to lend an indirect sanction to a familiar practice.
The Law of Moses, therefore, rebuking the practice of lending for increase among brethren and encouraging it in dealing with strangers, combined with the well-known avarice of the Jews to make them money-lenders on a large scale, and at high rates of interest, to the prodigals and spendthrifts, the bankrupt barons and needy sovereigns of the middle ages. Money was rarely lent for commercial purposes, and to advance the real prosperity of the borrower. It was generally to stave off want for the time; and principal and interest, when pay-day came, had generally to be found in the pastures or strongholds of the enemy. High interest was charged, on account of the extraordinary precariousness of what was called the security. Grinding and grasping undoubtedly the money-lenders would be, from the hardship of their case. Reckless extravagance and lavish profusion were, in those non-commercial ages, highly applauded. The spendthrift and the prodigal was the favourite of the multitude; the rich money-lender was hated and abused, while his money-bags were sought after with all the eagerness of hard-driving poverty. They reviled the careful and economical Israelite; they looked with horror upon his vast accumulations of capital, and never remembered to thank him for the safety they owed to him from the violent hands of their own soldiers and retainers.
All this went on until the sixteenth or seventeenth century. I have before me a very curious old book, lent to me by Mr. Ruskin, entitled, "The English Usurer: or, Usury Condemned by the most learned and famous Divines of the Church of England. Collected by John Blaxton, Preacher of God's Word at Osmington, in Dorsetshire, 1634."
The language throughout the book is of extreme violence against all manner of usury. The compiler gives a collection of the most emphatic testimonies of the greatest preachers of the day against this "detestable vice." Bishop Jewell calls it "a most filthy trade, a trade which God detesteth, a trade which is the very overthrow of all Christian love." There is, it must be admitted, no sort of argument attempted in the long extract from Bishop Jewell's sermon to demonstrate the wickedness of the practice against which he launches his fierce invectives, but he certainly brings his sermon to a conclusion with a threat of extreme measures "if they continue therein. I will open their shame and denounce excommunication against them, and publish their names in this place before you all, that you may know them, and abhor them as the plagues and monsters of this world; that if they be past all fear of God, they may yet repent and amend for worldly shame."
This was Bishop Jewell preaching in the middle of the 16th century; and such were the strong terms very generally employed by good and thoughtful men at that day. Bacon (Essay 41) says that one of the objections against usury is that "it is against nature for money to beget money!" Antonio, in "The Merchant of Venice," asks:
"When did friendship take
A breed of barren metal of his friend?"
And his practice was "neither to lend nor borrow by taking nor giving of excess," which brought upon him the malice and vindictiveness of the Jew—
"that in low simplicity
He lends out money gratis, and brings down
The rate of usance here with us in Venice."
Philip, in Tennyson's "Brook "—a simple man in later times—
"Could not understand how money breeds,
Thought it a dead thing."
But there were men, too, who saw that the taking of moderate interest was a blameless act. Calvin was a contemporary of Bishop Jewell, and his mind exhibits a curious mixture of feelings upon the subject. Blaxton triumphantly places a sentence from Calvin's "Epistola de Usura" as a battle-flag in his title-page:—
"In republica bene constituta nemo fænerator tolerabilis est; sed omnino debet e consortio hominum rejici." "An usurer is not tolerable in a well-established Commonwealth, but utterly to be rejected out of the company of men." So again, in his Commentary on Deuteronomy. But again, in a passage quoted from the same author, without reference, in Dugald Stewart's Preliminary Dissertation (Encyd. Brit.) we come across a different view.
"'Money begets not money!'—What does the sea beget? What the house for which I receive rent? Is silver brought forth from the walls and the roof? But that is produced from land, and that is drawn forth from the sea, which shall produce money; and the convenience of a house is paid for with a stipulated sum. Now if better profit can be derived from the letting out of money than by the letting of an estate, shall a profit be made by letting perhaps some barren land to a farmer, and shall it not be allowed to him who lends a sum of money? He who gets an estate by purchase, shall he not from that money derive an annual profit? Whence then is the merchant's profit? You will say, from his diligence and industry. Does anyone suppose that money ought to lie idle and unprofitable? He who borrows of me is not going to let the loan lie idle. He is not going to draw profit from the money itself, but from the goods bought with it. Those reasonings, therefore, against usury are subtle, and have a certain plausibility; but they fall as soon as they are examined more narrowly. I therefore conclude that we are to judge of usury, not from any particular passage of Scripture, but by the ordinary rules of justice and equity."
To come at once to modern days and practical views. Let us suppose lending on interest forbidden by the Church and the law. Then sums of money required for good and legitimate business purposes must be begged as a great favour. No honourable man would do this. The instinctive repugnance felt by an independent man to place himself under pecuniary obligations which he could not reciprocate would stop many a promising young man of slender means from going to college, many a good man of business from using the most favourable opportunities. I am not speaking of borrowing money to gain temporary relief from pecuniary embarrassment, but of money honourably desired to realize advantages of apparent life-value. So the necessitous would be doomed to remain in hopeless necessity until some benevolently-minded person with a mass of loose unemployed capital came to his rescue, and such men are not to be met with every day.
So far for the man who would like to borrow, but that the law will not allow it except as a free loan or gift. Then for the willing lender, if he dared. He has, say, a few thousands in hand, which he does not wish to spend. He looks round, if he is anxious to use it for good, for an object of his charity who seems least likely to disappoint him. Does our experience of human nature teach that a sense of gratitude for benefits received is a good security for honourable conduct? Alas! in a multitude of cases—I fear the majority—the lender would only be met with cold and alienated looks when he expected to receive his own again, if indeed he found anywhere at all the object of his kindness. The memory of past ingratitude, the fear of worse to come, would dry the sources of benevolence, and make the upright and honest to suffer equally with the swindler and the hypocrite.
But there is no such fear now. The recognized system of lending upon approved security for a fair and moderate rate of interest removes the irksome, galling sense of obligation, and enables any man to borrow with a feeling that if he receives an obligation he is also conferring one; that if he makes ten per cent, by trading, or a good stipend by his degree, he will divide his profits fairly with the man who served him, and that he is helping him in his turn to keep his money together for the sake of his children after him. Take away these benefits, and what good is done by free lending? Not any that we can see with ordinary eyes, but a good deal of suspicion, disappointment, ingratitude, and loss.
An honourable man would a hundred times rather accept a loan as a matter of profit to the lender than as a charity to himself. The right result of an honourable system of borrowing and lending with equal advantage to both, is the will of God, and not contrary to sanctification. The result of a compulsory system of charitable loans would lead only to the destruction of credit and mutual confidence, and the sacrifice of a multitude of Christian graces and virtues.
We cannot help observing with what vehemence Mr. Ruskin constantly thrusts the thief, the adulterer, and the usurer all into the same boat to be tossed against the breakers of his wrath. Now I would ask some one of those numerous disciples of his, whose affection almost prompts them to say to him, "I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest," "Pray, my good friend, what is your own practice? Providence has blessed you with ease and affluence far more than you need for daily bread. What do you do with your money? Of course you would never think of investing in consols, in railway shares, or dock-bonds, would you? you would not lend money upon mortgage, or exact rent for your household and landed property? I see that you hesitate a little; you have something to confess. Come! what is it?" And my amiable friend replies, "Oh, but you see all the world is gone after interest of money; all our mutual relations are so intimately bound up with that accursed, abominable practice, that I have no alternative. I have large sums lodged in various safe investments, and employ an agent to collect my rents and settle with my tenants." And so I am forced to exclaim, "What! you who are persuaded that usury, and theft, and adultery, are all of equal blackness, if you find that one sin is unavoidable, what about the other two? Would you then invite the robber and the licentious to sin with impunity, as you practise your own convenient iniquity, with the applause of the world and your own acquiescence?"
Positively I see no escape from this argument. It is the argumentum ad hominem,—generally an uncivil mode of address; but here, at any rate, it is impersonally used.
These are my views frankly stated. If I am wrong, even by the highest standard of Christian ethics, I shall be thankful for Mr. Ruskin's corrections.
On Letter X
The letters which I have received up to the present time (October 31st) in reply to Mr. Ruskin's have not failed to bring me not a little of disappointment. On the one hand, I see a man noble and elevated in his aims, and with highest aspirations, desiring nothing so fervently as to see the world and its pastors and teachers rising to the highest attainable level of religious and moral excellence; fearlessly rebuking the evils he sees so clearly; clothing thoughts that consume him in words that stir our inmost hearts; and yet I see him unavoidably missing his aim as all men are liable to do, through the defect of possessing human language alone as the channel to convey divine meanings; and, moreover, who cannot at every turn stay the course of their reasoning to explain that that which they speak apparently, and from the necessities of language, to all, is, as the most ordinary apprehension would perceive, really addressed to some.
On the other side, while I hear many expressing their thankfulness that things are now being said that "wanted saying," and are being spoken out with uncompromising boldness, others receive them with impatience, with irritation, with exasperation. I have been gravely advised to recommend Mr. Ruskin to withdraw these letters, to wash my hands of them, etc. Sometimes this arises from unfamiliarity with Mr. Ruskin's most famous works; sometimes from entire unacquaintance with their number and their nature; as when a friend wrote to me before he saw or heard a word of the letters:—
"If Mr. Ruskin thinks we have generally read his publication (sic) I think he is mistaken; all I know of it is that I have occasionally seen it quoted in newspapers, from which I gather that he holds peculiar opinions."
A lady, who looked well to the ways of her household, but knew very little of books, once asked me if Mr. Ruskin had not written a book called the "Old Red Sandstone." I hinted that probably she meant the "Stones of Venice," which was indeed the case. She knew it was something about stones! But she was an excellent creature nevertheless!
These two traits may fairly be paired together.
It should be observed, by clergymen especially who read these letters attentively, that they contain just what we clergy ought to be told sometimes by laymen, to whom we preach with perfect impunity, but who as a rule rarely make reply. I have just read Lord Carnarvon's excellent address on Preaching, delivered at the Winchester Diocesan Conference, and thank him as I thank, and for the same reason that I thank, Mr. Ruskin. We need to be told wholesome though unpalatable truths sometimes, when we have descended from our castle-pulpits to meet, it may be, the eyes, and hear the voices, of impatient, irritated, and prejudiced critics.
I do not remember that so bold an attack, and yet so friendly, has ever before been made upon our weak points in modern times; and I may justly claim for Mr. Ruskin's letters a calm, self-searching, and, if need be, a self-condemning and self-sacrificing, examination. We are all too apt to cry "Peace, peace, where there is no peace." Why should the shepherds of Britain claim for themselves a more indulgent regard than the shepherds of Israel, whom Ezekiel, by the word of the Lord, addressed in the 33rd and 34th chapters of his prophecy?
Concerning the letter before us on the forgiveness of sins—each other's sins or debts, and our sins before God—it is not a question of theology, but of simple moral right and wrong; and I defy Mr. Ruskin's bitterest censors to deny, that, in this wicked world, men are more in earnest in deceiving, injuring, and swindling their friends than they are in seeking the love of their enemies. Has not our Lord told us long ago that "the children of this world are wiser" (that is, more earnest, consistent, and thorough-going) "in their generation than the children of light"?
It is of extreme difficulty to understand the clause, says Mr. Ruskin. Replies some slow-witted preacher: "Where is the difficulty? I both understand it and explain it with perfect ease!" What! understand the precious conditions on which forgiveness will be extended to us! The question of God's forgiveness is not a simple question. It is complicated by its relation to men's mutual forgiveness of each other, and that again by the practical difficulty of knowing when we can, and when, from the very nature of the case, we cannot, forgive. Here are surely elements of difficulty quite sufficient to justify the remark that "the clause is one of such difficulty that, to understand it, means almost to know the love of God which passeth knowledge."
But we may, at any rate, guard our people against misunderstanding it; and they are guilty, and full of guilt, who live in sin,—sins of avarice, of ill temper, of calumny, of hatred, of sensuality, and of unforgivingness, and yet daily ask to be forgiven, because, forsooth, they are innocent of any bad intention!
No man or woman who sins with the knowledge that it is sin can have God's forgiveness. It is no use to plead the frailty of the flesh. It is wilful, knowing, deliberate sin; and it will not be forgiven without a very living, earnest, and working faith indeed.
I question much whether we preachers of the Gospel say enough upon this point,—not at all that we underrate its importance, nor that we overrate the importance of that which we are apt to call Gospel preaching κατ' ἐξοχήν, namely, the doctrine of the atonement by the Blood of Christ, which is the brightness and glory of the Gospel message, but is no more all of it than that the sum of the Lord's Prayer is contained in one of its clauses.
"As we forgive them that trespass against us." Shall I be pardoned for venturing here upon a remark which seems needful to make in the presence of so much that appears to be erroneous on the subject of human forgiveness? And it is more especially necessary to be understood in the case of the clergy, because such large demands are made upon their forgiveness as it is impossible to satisfy. I do not at all say that there are trespasses which men cannot forgive,—sins, I mean, of the ordinary type, and not crimes. But I do say that there are times and circumstances under which forgiveness is a moral impossibility. And yet the world expects a clergyman to be ever walking up and down in society with forgiveness on his lips and forgiveness in both his hands. Our Lord said, "If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him" (Luke xvii. 3); and forgiveness is to follow each successive profession of repentance. And in Matt. xviii. 22, though repentance is not named, it is manifestly implied. In 2 Cor. ii. 7, again, sorrow for the sin is a condition of forgiveness. This, then, is the rule and condition of forgiveness, that our brother repent; and manifestly it must be so; for the act of forgiveness requires a correlative disposition to seek and receive forgiveness, just as a gift implies not only a giver but a receiver, or it cannot be a gift, do what we will. I think this is extremely apt to be overlooked even by the larger, that is, the more emotional and impulsive part of the world, though not, of course, by the more thoughtful; and clergymen especially are asked to speak fair, and sue for peace, and all but ask for forgiveness of those who are habitually and obstinately bent upon doing them all the wrong and injury in their power, and using them with the most intolerable harshness.
What, then, does true religion require of us if such circumstances make forgiveness impossible? To be ever ready, ever prepared to forgive; to seek every opening, every avenue to peace without sacrifice of self-respect and manly independence; to watch for opportunities to do kindnesses to the most inveterate enemy,—even where a change of heart appears hopeless. This is possible to a Christian, and this is what Christ demands. But He does not demand impossibilities. He does not ask us to do more than our Heavenly Father Himself, who forgives the returning sinner even "a great way off," if his face be but homeward; but says nothing of forgiveness to him whose back is towards his home, and whose heart dwells far away.
I am sure Mr. Ruskin does not mean that no clergyman is sensible of the guilt of sins of omission. But he is speaking as a layman, who has heard in his time a great many preachers, and it is very probable indeed that he has not heard many dwell long and forcibly on the fact, which is indeed a fact, that the guilt of sins of omission is the burden of Christ's teaching, and that more parables and more preaching are directed against the sin of doing nothing at all than against the positive and active wickedness of bad men. If we will be candid, we must agree with him that in our general teaching we do lay much less emphasis on such sins than our Lord does in His teaching.
But in the paragraph which follows, I confess that, following up a charge which is sadly too true, that there is a grotesque inconsistency "in the willingness of human nature 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," there comes a sentence in which the Christian philosopher loses himself in the caustic satirist, and that this vein continues to the end of the letter. In satire, such is its very essence, truth is ever travestied. It is truth still, but the truth in unfamiliar, and, for the most part, unacceptable guise. There is just an undercurrent of truth, and no more, in the statement, not very seriously made, one would suppose, that the English Liturgy was "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."
If the whole naked truth were spoken with the deepest gravity that the awful pressure of our sins demands, the English Liturgy would be a continuous wail of grief and repentance. For if anything is great, and loud, and urgent, it is the cry of our sins. But co-extensive with our sins is the love of our Father; and, therefore, our mourning is changed into rejoicing and thankfulness, and this picture of the sinner "dexterously concealing the manner of his sin from man, and triumphantly confessing the quantity of it to God," is merely a satire.
The next paragraph is more bitter still; but happily for the cause of sober truth, it is satire again; and nothing can be more obvious than the fact that prayer, to be Common Prayer, cannot at the same time suit every condition of mind, the calm and the agitated, the strained and the relaxed, the rejoicing and the sorrowful. But we are not dependent upon public worship for the satisfaction of our spiritual wants, as long as we can resort to private prayer and family prayer. And, indeed, it requires no wonderful stretch of our powers of adaptation to use the most strenuous private prayer in the midst of the congregation; and the "remorseful publican" and the "timid sinner" are not bound to the words before them, or if they do follow these words, I am sure there is enough depth in them to satisfy the views of the most conscience-stricken. Common Prayer is calm to the calm, and passionate to the passionate. It is all things to all men, just according to their frame of mind at the time.
But alas for my good kind friend! as we get nearer to the end of the letter, the satire waxes fiercer, and the adherence to the truth of nature grows fainter. Does Mr. Ruskin seriously, or only sarcastically, tell us that the assaults upon the divine power of prayer gain any force from the circumstance that we are constrained to pray daily for forgiveness, never getting so far as to need it no longer? From the first day that we lisped at our mother's knee, "Forgive us our trespasses," until, bowed with age, we still say, "Forgive us our trespasses," we have never stood, and never will stand, one day less in need of forgiveness than another day—or our Lord would have provided a thanksgiving and a prayer for the perfected.
I believe everywhere else I recognize, even in the most startling passages, an element of truth. But in the latter half of this letter, not even the large amount of acrimony and severity allowed to the mode of address called satire can quite reconcile us to its marvellous asperity.
On Letter XI
I cannot but feel astonished and grieved at the perversity of those who[19] persist in looking upon Mr. Ruskin as altogether a noxious kind of a scribbler, and likely to do much injury by the unflagging constancy with which he perseveres in pointing his finger at all our weak and sore places. And yet it cannot be said that even if he does "lade men with burdens grievous to be borne," he himself "touches not the burdens with one of his fingers."
But let us consider this last letter. Is not every word of it true—severely and austerely true,—but still true? But yet here still the fault remains (though I say it with the utmost deference, remembering that, after all, I have infinitely more to learn than I have to teach), the fault remains that the truth is put too keenly, too incisively, to be classed with practical truths.
Yes, the petitions of the Lord's Prayer are for a perfect state in this life. We do pray for a Paradise upon earth, where either temptation shall no longer exist, or where sin shall have lost its power to injure by losing its power to allure. But will the most incessant prayer, individual, combined, or congregational, ever bring us to perfection? Alas! my friend, you would gladly persuade us so; you would lead the way yourself, but that the first half-dozen steps you take would have, or have long ago, proved to you that sin is ever present, even in the best and purest of men.
I trust they are very few indeed who are so easily persuaded by the conceited self-sufficiency of the "scientific people" to cease from prayer under the belief that all things move on under the control of inflexible laws, which neither prayer nor the will of God, if God has a will, can change or modify. Magee[20] has a valuable note on the subject of the "Consistency of Prayer with the Divine Immutability," in which he puts this truth in a mathematical form. He says, "The relation of God to man + prayer is different from the relation of God to man – prayer. Yet God remains constant. It is man who is the better or the worse for prayer or no prayer."
It is pleasant to reflect that with the simple-minded Christian the belief in Christ, because he knows that Christ loved him and died for him, is exceedingly little moved by these so-called scientific doubts. The propounders of these entangling questions move in a region where he would feel cold and his life would be crushed out of him, and he declines to follow science at so great a cost, believing besides that science might often be better termed nescience, for he has no faith in such science. Instead of being presented with clear deductions, drawn from observation and experience, he sees but too plainly that, as each philosopher frames his own belief out of his inner consciousness, there cannot fail to come out a very large variety of beliefs, and that, if the religion of the Bible were exploded and became an obsolete thing, its place would be usurped by a motley crowd of infinitely varied creeds of every shape and hue, each claiming for itself, with more or less modesty and reserve, but with just equal rights, the supremacy over men's consciences. And in the meanwhile, women and children and the poor, and in fact all who are not altogether highly, transcendentally intellectual, must, for want of the requisite faculties and opportunities, do without any religion at all. I suppose most people can see this, and therefore will pay a very limited attention to the claims and pretensions of science-worship.
I come to a sentence where once more the proclivity for satire breaks out for a minute: "But in modern days the first aim of all Christians is to place their children in circumstances where the temptations (which they are apt to call opportunities) may be as great and as many as possible; where the sight and promise of 'all these things' in Satan's gift may be brilliantly near." I was reading this from the MS. to a mother, accomplished and amiable, who of course thought in a moment of her own little flock of sons and daughters, all the objects of the tenderest care and solicitude; and she felt that she at least had not deserved this stroke. But the truth is that we must read this sentence as we read our Lord's, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword" (Matt. x. 34). The sword was not the object of our Lord's coming, but the unhappy result through sin. He came to bring peace on earth, yet was He "set for the fall of many in Israel." The wisest and best of parents place their sons in the profession or position in life where temptations abound, not because they desire to see them bow before Satan, and become the possessors of "all these things" which he promises "I will give thee," but because there is no position in the active life of the world that is free from temptations; and those temptations are the strongest and most numerous often just where the real and undoubted advantages are the greatest and most numerous. Mr. Ruskin, with a strong and legitimate figure of speech, is simply putting an inevitable result as the work of apparent design.
If the distinction between the glory and the power of the kingdom of God and the false lustre of earthly power and worldly allurements is not sufficiently dwelt upon in our pulpits, none will regret it more than the earnest preachers in whom the modern Church of England abounds. If it be granted, as I think it must be granted, that the highest wisdom is not always exercised in the choice and preparation of our subjects of preaching, every true-hearted and loyal Churchman must be grateful for the fearless candour of the writer of the letters we have been considering, in pointing out to us our prevailing deficiencies, even if he does not, which is not his province, point out how to attain perfection.
F. A. Malleson.
[9] No. IV.
[10] "Deucalion," p. 222.
[11] The clergyman who subscribes still whispers to himself, or soon will, "Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri."
[12] Let me say here, once for all, that I have already three times had this proverb quoted against Mr. Ruskin; and no proverb could be more remote from the purpose. For while it is the shoemaker's business, as a livelihood, to make shoes, a painter's to paint pictures, the merchant's to sell goods, and perhaps Mr. Ruskin's to write books which every one reads, religion is everybody's business. Christian men and women, of all classes and professions, make the Bible their study, because of its inestimable importance; and who shall say that they are not absolutely right? For my part I should be very glad to hear that my bootmaker was a religious man: his boots would be none the worse for it. I hope the sutor will be brought in no more, unless he can appear with a better grace.
[13] "Christian Year," St. Bartholomew's Day, with quotations from Miller's Bampton Lectures.
[14] "Sesame and Lilies," p. iii., 1876.
[15] As these sheets are passing through the press, I happen to meet with these words of Bishop Wilberforce:—"The more I have thought over the matter, the more it seems to me that it was providentially intended that discipline, in the strictest sense of that word, should be the restraint of the early Church, and that it should gradually die out as the Church approached maturity, or rather turn from a formal and external rule to an inner work in the spirit—should run into the opening of God's Word and its application to the individual soul and life."—Life, vol. i., p. 230.
[16] See Contemporary Review, February 1880.
[17] The owners of five talents and of two talents are commended for making cent. per cent. of their money; but the man who hid away his one talent, as French peasants do, and brought it to his Lord untouched and undiminished, received a severe rebuke.
[18] Lycidas. See "Sesame and Lilies," p. 27.
[19] It was but yesterday that a voice reached me from one of the remotest of our Ultima Thules amongst these mountains, affirming, with something like self-gratulation, that he "cared less than nothing for anything Mr. Ruskin might write outside the subject of Art!" Yet one of the best of our Bishops—and we have many good ones—wrote by the same post: "Mr. Ruskin's letters are full of suggestive thoughts, and must do anyone good, if only in getting one out of the ruts." But, alas! against this I must needs set the dictum of another dignitary of the Church, an intensely practical man: "I have a great reverence for Mr. Ruskin's genius, and for what he has written in time past, and on this account I would rather not say a single word in comment upon these letters;" and again—"I really could not discuss them seriously."
[20] On the Atonement.
LETTERS FROM CLERGY AND LAITY
(FROM THE FIRST EDITION)
The following letters have been entrusted to me for publication in this work. The writers of twenty-two of them are clergymen, of whom sixteen are members of three Clerical Societies, all of whom have read their letters before the Societies to which they belong, except in the case of one Society, where it was impracticable. The remaining six have been kind enough to write in acceptance of the invitation in the Contemporary Review for December, 1879. The remaining letters are from members of the laity, attracted by the same proposal. Many others have been received; but it would not have been possible to include them all in a volume of moderate size, some of them besides being of great length; and I was therefore, with regret, obliged to decline them.
It was not originally intended that the invitation to discuss these questions should be extended to laymen. But several so understood it from the preface in the Contemporary, and when I came to examine the letters sent on this understanding, I felt a conviction that a true and safe light would be thrown upon the subject by their assistance; and, using the discretionary power allowed me by Mr. Ruskin, I thought it, on the whole, best to give admission to a certain number of communications from laymen.
Besides, as they themselves are, in great measure, the subjects of the discussion, and, therefore, must feel a lively interest in it, it seems but fair that they too should have a voice in the matter. Another reason yet had considerable weight with me, that their letters evince a larger and more liberal sympathy with Mr. Ruskin himself than those of some of my clerical brethren, in whose letters there is but too perceptible a degree of irascibility, not unnatural to us, perhaps, in finding ourselves rather sharply lectured by a layman—the shepherds by the sheep. And I hoped that a more fraternal spirit would be promoted by my free acceptance of their ready offer.
The same consenting spirit is all but universal in the notices of the press upon Mr. Ruskin's letters. But I do not wish to anticipate the judgment of "the Church and the world" upon the whole series of letters here presented. Notwithstanding the peculiar and sometimes rather bewildering effect of a variety of "cross lights," they appear to myself to be invested with singular interest as a faithful reflection of the opinions of the clergy and the laity upon some of the most stirring religious questions of the day.
Moreover, it will, I am sure, please readers who have endeavoured in vain to extract some meaning out of many of the sometimes tedious and unintelligible essayists of the day, to observe that the discussion in this volume at least is carried on in language perfectly clear and within the reach of ordinary understandings. At any rate, I hope it will not be said of any of the writers who have together made up this little volume: "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?"
Before the sheets are sent to press they will be perused by Mr. Ruskin, who will then use his privilege of replying, thus bringing the volume to a conclusion.
I could not undertake to classify these letters; and have, therefore, as the simplest mode, arranged them in the alphabetical order of the writers' names.
F. A. Malleson.
From the Rev. Charles Bigg, D.D., Rector of Fenny Compton.
Mr. Ruskin compares the clergyman with an Alpine guide, whose business it is simply to carry the traveller in safety over rocks and glaciers to the mountain top. He is not to trouble himself or his charge with needless refinements of doctrine. He is not to exaggerate the dignity of his office, or to give himself out as anything but a guide. In particular, he is not to assume anything of a mediatorial character. He is to preach the Gospel—not of Luther nor of Augustine, but of Christ; in plain words and short terms. He is to proclaim aloud, boldly and constantly, "This is the will of the Lord,"—to apply, that is, the morality of the Gospel, stringently and authoritatively, to the lives of his people. To effect this application with more power, he is to exercise a rigid discipline, and exclude from his congregation all who are not acting up to what he conceives to be the Gospel ideal. He is not to hamper himself with any set and formal Liturgy, which can never be copious or flexible enough to meet the varied needs of a number of men differing widely in knowledge and attainment.
Every one will feel what a crowd of perplexities start up here at every sentence. In what sense is a clergyman like a Chamouni guide? There is a resemblance, no doubt, but not of a kind on which it would be possible to build any argument. It is not the business of the Alpine guide to exercise any supervision over the morals of his employers, or to ask how they earned the money with which he is paid. Again, what is meant by the Gospel of Christ not according to anybody? It is easy to reject the authority of St. Paul or St. John, or of Luther or Augustine, but there is one commentator whose influence cannot be shaken off, and that is ourselves. And our experience of those who have professed to preach the Gospel pure and simple is not reassuring. Does Mr. Ruskin mean that we are to burn all our theology,—even apparently the Epistles of St. Paul,—and to forget all Church history since the day of the Crucifixion? Does he mean that we are each to set up a theology—a Church of his own? It would be but a poor gain to most of us to exchange the great lamps of famous doctors for the uncertain rushlights of our own imaginations.
Then again, what is this new and more than Genevan discipline that the clergyman is to enforce? He is to take more pains to get wicked rich men to stay out of the church than to persuade wicked poor ones to enter it. After putting his own interpretation upon the Gospel, he is to lay under an interdict all whom his own fire-new formula—for a formula he must still have—excludes. He is to force, by the method of Procrustes, the visible Church into co-extension with the invisible. No community of Christians has ever attempted such a task. Any zealous (surely over-zealous) parish priest who should so narrow the limits of his fold, who should exclude the "usurer" from the ordinary means of grace, for fear lest he should take God's name in vain by joining in the public prayers, would expose himself, may we not think? to the reproach of being less merciful than He who sends rain on the just and the unjust. Nor, as he looked round upon his carefully-selected congregation, could he easily flatter himself that he was preaching the Gospel "to every creature."
Again, what is the will of the Lord, and what does Mr. Ruskin mean by proclaiming it? That He loves righteousness and hates iniquity we know. The difficulty is in applying this general rule in detail. What is its bearing upon the policy of the Government, upon any particular trade strike, upon the tangled web of good and evil motives which makes up the moral consciousness of an average shopkeeper? I conceive Mr. Ruskin to be thinking of preachers like Bernard, Savonarola, or Latimer, of denunciations like those of Isaiah, or of our Lord. He seems to mean that the clergyman should stand on a clear mountain summit, looking down over the whole field of life, discerning with the eye of a prophet every movement of evil on a small scale or on a large. There have been such teachers in whose hands science, economy, politics, seemed all to become branches of theology, members of one great body of Divine truth. But not every man's lips are thus touched with the coal from the altar. Many an excellent and most useful preacher would make but wild work if he took to denouncing social movements or the spirit of the age. A singular illustration of the danger that besets these sweeping moral judgments is to be found in Mr. Ruskin's own denunciation of usury, that is, of taking interest for money. Few people will agree either with the particular opinion that every old lady who lives harmlessly on her railway dividends ought to be excommunicated, or with the general principle implied in this opinion, that every prohibition in the Old Testament is still as valid as ever under social circumstances altogether different.
People who need denouncing do not, as a rule, come to church to be denounced. And it would be a great error to conclude, from our Lord's language to the Pharisees and Sadducees, that the tone in which He addressed the individual sinner was harsh or scathing. The preacher must remember that he is a physician of souls, and the physician's touch is gentle. Think for a moment what worldliness is—how easy it is to say bitter things about it!—and then picture to yourselves a little tradesman with a wife and seven or eight children to keep on his scanty profits. What wonder if he sets too high a value on money? How difficult for him to understand the words which bid him take no thought for the morrow!
There is a time, no doubt, for fierce language, but it does not often come. The preacher is no more exempt than other people from the golden rule to put himself in his neighbour's place, and try to see things with his neighbour's eyes.
Another difficulty arises out of the manner in which Mr. Ruskin speaks of the relation of his Chamouni guides to dogmatic teaching. They ought not, he says, to be compelled to hold opinions on the subject, say, of the height of the Celestial Mountains, the crevasses which go down quickest to the pit, and other cognate points of science, differing from, or even contrary to, the tenets of the guides of the Church of France.
It is difficult in the extreme to know exactly what is here meant. No doubt it is needless for a guide to drop a plumb-line down every crevasse that he has to cross. It would be great waste of time to lecture his travellers on the laws that regulate the motion of glaciers or the dip of the mountain strata. But what are the doctrines that stand in this relation, or this no-relation, to the spiritual life? Is it meant that all theology should be swept away like a dusty old cobweb?
I would go myself as far as this, that the fewer and simpler the doctrines that a clergyman preaches, the better; that all doctrines should be required to pass the test of reason and conscience, which are also in their degrees Divine revelations, so far, at least, as this, that no doctrine can be admitted which is demonstrably repugnant to either one or the other. And in the third place, the greatest care should be taken to discriminate matters of faith, real axioms of religion, from pious opinions or venerable practices which have no vital connection with the Christian faith; which, to use Burke's phrase, all understandings do not ratify, and all hearts do not approve. A grave responsibility rests upon those who neglect this discrimination. It is also a point of the highest importance that when most doctrinal a clergyman should be least dogmatic; that he should remember that all doctrine, by the necessity of the case, is cast into an antithetical, more or less paradoxical shape; that he should never lose sight of the harmony and balance between intersecting truths, or of that unfortunate tendency of the human mind to seize upon and appropriate points of difference in their crudest and most antagonistic form, to the exclusion of points of agreement; that he should always do his best to show the reasonableness of the Christian teaching, its analogy and harmony with all the works of God; that where his knowledge fails, he should frankly confess that it does fail, and not try to eke it out by guesses, or to disguise its insufficiency by rhetoric.
But after all these allowances it remains a fact that the clergyman is not a guide only, but a teacher, an ambassador. He is to teach his people all that he knows about God and His relation to the soul of man. He is to study and meditate himself, and to set forth the conclusion he has reached fully and fearlessly. And if he discharges this duty reasonably and zealously, he need not be afraid of finding that there is a gulf fixed between doctrine and practice. These two must go together. There can be no conduct deserving the name without a philosophy of conduct, and that philosophy is a sound divinity. Even the loftiest and most abstruse doctrines must have an influence upon life. It is a common remark that scientific truth should be pursued for its own sake, and that the most valuable practical results have often followed from investigations carried out with a single eye to the truth. It is an equally common remark that those teach the simplest things best whose range of knowledge and belief is widest. We might point to Mr. Ruskin himself as a striking illustration of this. What is simpler than beauty? what more universally apprehended? what at first sight more incapable of analysis? Yet as we listen to the great critic, what wonderful laws does he point out—what a wealth of knowledge does he bring to bear—how clear he makes it to us that the power of feeling (still more the power of creating) beauty is the hard-won fruit of labour, study, and devotion. So it is with life: those who would create a beautiful life must know the laws of spiritual beauty,—and those laws are theology.
But criticism is a thankless task. It is a more gracious and, towards a great man, a more respectful office to note those points on which our debt to Mr. Ruskin is acknowledged, and our sympathy with him unalloyed. These letters are, in spirit at any rate, not unworthy of the man who has exercised a deeper and wider influence upon the morality of our time than any other, except perhaps Thomas Carlyle. And the great lesson of each of these eloquent teachers is the duty of Reality. There are many points in which we do not agree with them: let us be all the readier to acknowledge the debt that we owe. Both laymen,—like Amos, neither prophets nor sons of prophets,—they have done a work which, perhaps, under the altered circumstances of society, no professional preacher could have achieved. Any one who considers the earnestness and reverence of modern intellectual literature; the anxious desire even of the Agnostic to lay the foundations of his moral life as deep as possible; the manifold efforts, while denying all religion, yet to maintain the union of imagination and reason, without which there can be no loftiness of character, no nobility of aspiration, yet which nothing but religion can consecrate and fructify,—and compares all this with the sneering, self-satisfied flippancy of Gibbon and Voltaire, will feel how vast is the change for the better; and these two writers have been the chief instruments in bringing that change about.
Let me notice briefly two points on which Mr. Ruskin insists in these letters with great force and beauty. The first is the love of the Father. No text is more familiar than that which tells us that "God is love." It is not indeed inconsistent with that other text which tells us that He is "a consuming fire." But if its meaning is fully imbibed and allowed to bear its natural fruit, it must result in the abandonment of those forensic views of our blessed Lord's atonement, which all the subtlety of Canon Mozley cannot bring into harmony with the dictates of our consciences. If the Father is love, there can be no division, no antithesis between the Father and the Son. If He is love, then the idea of sacrifice, which is of the essence of love, must enter into our conception of the Father also. I say no more about this, because any one who chooses to do so may find the Fatherhood of God, and all that it implies, treated of with great fulness and a marvellous depth of spiritual insight in the letters of Erskine of Linlathen.
It can hardly be doubted that the kind of language which Protestants of a certain class have been, and still are, in the habit of using, about the "Scheme of Redemption," constitutes a most serious stumbling-block in the way of many an earnest spirit. There are few preachers probably, and few congregations now,—in the Establishment at any rate,—who would not revolt against the hideous calmness with which Jonathan Edwards contemplates the "little spiders" dropping off into the flames. But a great deal of mischief remains to be undone. Those who are acquainted with the biographies of Shelley, of James and of John Stuart Mill, know well what effect the fierce doctrines of Calvinism have produced upon minds which for the issues of morality and, surely, even of religion, were "finely touched." And who can tell what horror and indignation have been wrought in some minds, what agonies of despair in others, who, when at last the blessed work of repentance began to stir within them, and they turned their eyes for comfort to the cross, were met by the terrible warning that none but the select few can call God their Father, and that in all probability their own eternal tortures were decreed before ever they entered the world?
The other point to which I must briefly advert is Mr. Ruskin's protest against the use of words which imply—which leave the least possibility of hoping for—a mechanical absolution, a pardon of sins that have not been abandoned. I do not indeed think that the reproach of using such language falls upon those who are fond of the title of priests alone, for the doctrines of Calvinism are far more liable to abuse. Nor do I think that any preaching of our clergy on this subject can be said to have "turned our cities into loathsome centres of fornication and covetousness." But here, if anywhere, we ought never to forget the danger of even seeming to set Theology against Reason and Conscience, of allowing the least pretext for thinking that a mere intellectual assent to abstract truths on the one hand, a mere acceptance of ecclesiastical ordinances on the other, can wipe away sins; or that a heart unpurified by charity and obedience, could be at rest even in the kingdom of heaven.
From the Rev. Canon Cooper, Vicar of Grange-over-Sands.
Thank God, all good men are broader and better than their creed,—better and broader, I mean, than those parts of their creed which they insist upon most, because they distinguish them from other people. (These distinguishing points are always of the least importance, in my opinion.) And with my experience of sermons for nearly forty years (for I was very early "called upon to hear sermons"), I am not conscious of such universal omissions on the part of the "priests" of the Church of England as Mr. Ruskin affirms. The universality of the love of God the Father, embracing even the "wicked rich" as well as the "wicked poor," is largely dwelt upon by all "schools."
The kingdom of God in this present sinful world is preached and is laboured for. In the present, however, it is more correctly described as the kingdom of Christ. When "the end comes," "He shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father" (1 Cor. xv. 24, and seqq.) As for denouncing the sins of the rich, this is largely done, and especially by "lively young ecclesiastics" in great towns. And as to preaching forgiveness without amendment, no man of common sense can do that; but Mr. Ruskin may say that common sense is rare among the clergy; and some may be afraid to preach morality, because of an old-fashioned superstition that morality is opposed to the Gospel. However, I do not hear much of such preaching. As for the duty of every man to do something of the work of the world for his daily bread, that is largely taught; and I believe that the kingdom of God is coming in that respect. A great deal of the drudgery of the world is done by big men now. Also I think that the sinfulness of omission is much insisted on by the clergy, as it is abundantly noticed in the Prayer Book, in accordance with the clear teaching of Christ. And the same may be said upon the personal guilt of sin. A good clergyman never allows his people to shelter themselves in a crowd.
I do not feel the force of the taunt about our saying every week, "There is no health in us," because the most "healthy" Christian finds out always fresh failings as his conscience grows more healthy (not morbidly sensitive), and he is always ready to join in the general confession to his dying day.
There is some value in the remark about Christian parents putting their children into situations where they will be tempted to worship the devil in order to win the kingdom of the world; but here, as elsewhere, the exaggeration, for the sake of being forcible, is too marked.
From the Rev. Henry M. Fletcher.
"Yes," I should say, "it is possible to put the Gospel of Christ into such plain words and short terms as that a plain man may understand it, and plain men do understand it. And it is not left to be gathered out of (any of) the Thirty-nine Articles, which are meant not for simple but for clerkly people."
You seem to have felt it startling that Mr. Ruskin should ask for a simple and comprehensible statement of the Christian Gospel—at least Mr. Ruskin represents the case so. What Christ's ministers are bidden to go into all the world and preach is—the good news that God has reconciled the world unto Himself in Jesus Christ His Son; and that whosoever will accept this Jesus as His Lord and Saviour shall have eternal life through Him. You could not, I think, arrive at a definition of what the Gospel of Christ is by explaining the terms of the Lord's Prayer.
You must tell first about Jesus, our Lord, and what He has done, before child or man can have any proper notion of "the Gospel." The Gospel is a message from "Our Father which is in Heaven," of His love, and of what His love—the love of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—has devised and executed for the redemption and glorification (through sanctification) of His rebellious children.
There can be small objection taken to Mr. Ruskin's proposal to make the Lord's Prayer "a foundation of Gospel teaching, as containing what all Christians are agreed upon as first to be taught," if the "Gospel teaching" is understood to be "teaching the truth to Christians." But "the Gospel teaching or preaching," which is spoken of by Mr. Ruskin, is "Gospel preaching" to the world not yet Christian, either Jewish or heathen; and the Lord's Prayer cannot properly be taken as a foundation of Gospel teaching to it. It must be told first of Jesus and His work, and must have owned Him "Lord," before it can rightly be taught from His prayer. This prayer can have no authority but to those who have become His disciples. Those who are already His disciples learn naturally from Him their relation and their duty to His Father and their Father. St. Paul, in preaching to the Athenians, dwells not on the Fatherhood of God, but on the need of repentance as a preparation for the judgment which awaits all. "Jesus and the Resurrection" was what they heard of first from this model preacher.
From the Rev. A. T. Davidson.
My Dear Sir,—Permit me to say one thing with regard to the correspondence which has passed between Mr. Ruskin and yourself.
Profitable as it is to listen to Mr. Ruskin, the student of Mr. Maurice's writings will merely find in these remarkable letters an additional plea on behalf of those truths for which Mr. Maurice so bravely and so passionately contended. It is most refreshing to find two such teachers in accord; and probably there will be many who will learn from Mr. Ruskin what they never would have learnt, or even sought for, from Mr. Maurice. It is, of course, for the truth, and not for his individual statement of it, that Mr. Ruskin, even as Mr. Maurice did, contends. It will, I am sure, be a matter of small moment to him so long as the truth be sought for, whether it be arrived at by means of these letters, or by means of Mr. Maurice's books on "The Lord's Prayer," "The Prayer Book," and "The Commandments."
Believe me, my dear Sir, to be yours faithfully.
From the Rev. Edward Geoghegan.
Bardsea Vicarage, Ulverston.
"Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me, it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head."
It is in the spirit which is expressed in these words that I desire to offer the following notes on Mr. Ruskin's Letters. Among the charges which he brings against the clergy are the following:—
That we have no clear idea of our calling, or of the Gospel of Christ (Letters [III.] and [IV.])
That we profane the name of God in the pulpit ([Letter VI.])
That we teach that every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delighteth in them ([Letter VIII.])
That we hold our office to be that, not of showing men how to do their Father's will on earth, but how to get to heaven without doing any of it either here or there ([Letter VIII.])
That we neither profess to understand what the will of the Lord is, nor to teach anybody else to do it ([Letter VIII.])
That we pretend to absolve the sinner from his punishment, instead of purging him from his sin ([Letter VIII.])
That we patronize and encourage all the iniquity of the world by steadily preaching away the penalties of it ([Letter VIII.])
That we gather, each into himself, the curious dual power and Janus-faced majesty in mischief of the prophet that prophesies falsely, and the priest that bears rule by his means ([Letter VIII.])
That we do not exercise discipline by keeping wicked people out of church ([Letter VI.])
That we do not require each member of our flocks to tell us what they do to earn their dinners ([Letter IX.])
That we encourage people in hypocrisy, by inviting them to the authorized mockery of a confession of sin ([Letter X.])
I cannot examine the evidence which Mr. Ruskin possesses in support of these charges, as he has not produced it in these Letters. Neither can I attempt to refute the accusations. To prove a negative is always difficult; it becomes an impossible task when the indictment is laid not against any individuals mentioned by name, but against a whole order. I will only observe, that even if all these charges be true, the people of England are not in such evil case as Mr. Ruskin fancies. The laity of England possess the inestimable advantage of not being dependent on the sermons of their clergy for either doctrine, or correction, or instruction in righteousness. Even though a clergyman should never utter certain doctrines of Christ from the pulpit, or reprove certain sins, he is obliged to do so at the font, at the lectern, and at the altar. Although from the pulpits of the fifty hundreds of clergy whom Mr. Ruskin heard, he never heard so much as one clergyman heartily proclaiming that no covetous person, which is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of God, he must have often heard this proclamation from the altar, in the epistle for the third Sunday in Lent, and from the lectern whenever the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians is read for the lesson.
Again, if any clergyman teaches from the pulpit that for the redemption of the world people ought to be thankful, not to the Father, but to the Son ([Letter V.]), he is obliged to publicly contradict his own teaching as often as he says the General Thanksgiving, and the collects in the Book of Common Prayer.
Again, if any clergyman teaches from the pulpit that any one who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, or that there is any other salvation except a salvation from sin, he is obliged to publicly contradict that teaching by everything which he says in the church out of the pulpit.
Again, if any clergyman preaches away the penalties of sin ([Letter VIII.]), he is obliged to publicly contradict his preaching every Ash Wednesday, when he reads the general sentences of God's cursing against impenitent sinners.
Mr. Ruskin asks ([Letter III.]), "Can this Gospel of Christ be put into such plain words and short terms as that a plain man may understand it?" I answer that the English Church has tried to do this in the Catechism, in which every baptized child is taught in very simple and plain words the gospel, or good news, that God the Father has, in His Son Jesus Christ, adopted him or her into His family, and therein offers him or her the continual help of the Holy Ghost.
Mr. Ruskin complains that the clergy do not teach the people the meaning of the Lord's Prayer ([Letter VI.]) He must assume that the clergy neglect to teach children the Church Catechism, in which is an answer to the question, "What desirest thou of God in this prayer?" It is an answer which would probably satisfy Mr. Ruskin. He would see that "Hallowed be Thy name" does not merely mean that people ought to abstain from bad language. And in the explanation of the third commandment, he would see that something more is forbidden than letting out a round oath ([Letter VI.])
Mr. Ruskin complains that the clergy do not prevent the entrance among their congregations of persons leading openly wicked lives ([Letter VI.]) Before this can be charged on the clergy as a sin, he should show that they have power and authority to do this. In the service for Ash Wednesday he will find that the clergy express their desire for a restoration of the godly discipline of the primitive Church, which Mr. Ruskin also desires. But he ought to know that such restoration must be the work not of the clergy only, but of the whole body of the faithful.
Mr. Ruskin insinuates that the clergy have no clear idea of their calling ([Letter III.]) If this be so, it is certainly not the fault of the Church, seeing that the nature of the calling of a clergyman is plainly set forth in the Offices for the Ordering of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. But if one may form an opinion from many published sermons by English clergymen of various schools of thought, and from their speeches in Church Congresses and elsewhere, and from their pastoral work as parish priests, I should be inclined to think that they are not quite so ignorant of the nature of their calling and of the Gospel of Christ as Mr. Ruskin supposes them to be, and that of some of the sins, negligences, and ignorances which, in these Letters, he lays to their charge, they may plead not guilty, or at least not proven by Mr. Ruskin.
Bardsea, Ulverston,
November 3rd, 1879.
Dear Mr. Malleson,—I thank you for your letter, which I received this morning. Second thoughts are not always the best. Your own first thought about the motto which I prefixed to my notes was right; your second thought was wrong. It never occurred to me that anyone could possibly suppose that that motto was by me intended to be applied to myself, inasmuch as in these notes there is no "wound" inflicted on Mr. Ruskin, or even any "rebuke." On the contrary, I assume that he has evidence in support of his charges, although he has not produced it. The "rebuke" to which I alluded was Mr. Ruskin's rebuke. He is the "friend" whose wounds are faithful, and whose smitings are a kindness. For I have not the least doubt of his good-will towards the clergy, or of his earnest desire to see them all performing their sacred duties with zeal and knowledge. And it was as my acknowledgment of this that I prefixed the motto. With you I firmly believe that the standard which he takes is "lofty and Christian," and that it is one towards which we ought all of us to aim. The object of my notes was to show that the laity of England have, in the authorized teaching of the Church, a sufficient safeguard against any erroneous teaching which they may possibly hear from the pulpit or in the private ministrations of the clergy, and also a supplement to any defective teaching.
Very truly yours,
Edward Geoghegan.
From Joseph Gilburt, Esq.
Christmas Day, 1879.
The words "Thy will be done" are generally coupled with resignation, and very often with patience under chastisement. It is always to us a sad-coloured sentence, and a sentimental illuminator of the Lord's Prayer would in all probability make it so. Now, if we think for a moment what the state of things would be if the will of the Lord were done, we shall see it should be the brightest sentence we could conceive. God's will is our weal. Aspiration, not resignation, is the characteristic of its doing. There would certainly be no death,—that is decidedly contrary to His will; and by-and-by, when His will is done, there will be none. For the present, while His will is not yet done, we have the sure and certain hope that death will be—nay, is—conquered by anticipation.
If His will were done, all beautiful things would flourish, and all minds would answeringly rejoice in them.
Our men of the piercing eye—Turners, Hunts, Ruskins, etc.—show us, till we almost worship the state of things in cloud and mountain, river and sea, in hedgerow and wayside, even in cathedral and campanile, where God's will is done, and we are enchanted with their beauty. It is God's will that stones should be laid truly and carven well, and aptly described. And our men of the probe and the lens, the scientific openers of nature's secrets, are daily demonstrating new beauties in which the will of the Lord is done in the formation of bodies and working of forces. It is mere truism to add to this that the will of the Lord being done, none of the ills that are all of them indirectly or directly the result of not doing it could occur, and resignation would have no scope for exercise. There was One who always did it, and He for three years made sundry parts of Palestine a heaven,—with what results a many quondam poor folk testified. This leads me to say that I like to look upon the word heaven as a participle instead of a noun, as the state of being heaved or raised, rather than a place: and for this reason. The experience of every one of us suffices to prove that we are never so heaven, or raised in true happiness, moral dignity, and worth, as when we are in the company of one greater, wiser, or better than ourselves. Those who lead a humdrum life among mean persons, can testify what a heaven it is to be transplanted for ever so short a time to the company of a great and good man. Now the culminating, indeed all-absorbing, attraction of the heaven we all look to, is the presence and the companionship of the greatest and best; and the experience of ourselves tallies with the promise of St. John that it will have the effect of making us "like Him," when "we shall see Him as He is." Surely being heaven, or raised like that, is superior to any Mahomet's paradise that we can invent or distil out of the poetical parts of the Scriptures.
From the Rev. Archer Gurney.
Mr. Ruskin's view as to the duty of basing all upon the Father's love is essentially sound and orthodox; and he is also right in bidding all men lead self-denying lives,—in this sense, that they should give up time and labour to the endeavour to help their brethren; but he fails utterly, hopelessly, to realize the Incarnation and its glorious consequences, how all human life and love,—how art, science, knowledge, enjoyment, are sanctified by God's becoming man; sharing this human life of ours,—not to trample upon it as an unholy thing, but to consecrate it to God's service. Such is our call. We must enjoy the beautiful to vindicate enjoyment. We do not please God by casting all His choicest gifts away. To give all we have to feed the poor is the way to make men poor, and is false charity. Use rather the mammon of this world to God's honour and glory, and when ye fail, the good works that you have done shall plead for your entrance into everlasting habitations; for the way to clothe the naked and feed the hungry, permanently, is to teach men and women to help themselves, and to find employment and reward for the exercise of their powers and energies.
From the Rev. J. H. A. Gibson, Brighton.
To Mr. Ruskin, then, asking us to define ourselves as a body, I reply, We are presbyters and deacons, deriving our authority from the episcopate, who themselves form links in that spiritual chain which binds both ourselves and them, by perpetual succession, in one communion and fellowship, with the Apostles, and to whom has been committed the office of consecrating and sending forth labourers to work in the Lord's vineyard.
But Mr. Ruskin proceeds, "And our business as such." Our business as such! Well, if we have in any satisfactory manner proved our first point—that is, the authority with which we act—we may fairly say to Mr. Ruskin, "Do you put this question, 'What is your business?' to your lawyer or doctor?" Does he ask the same question of the clergy of any other portion of the Catholic Church? We shall not wish to insult Mr. Ruskin by attempting to explain to him the duties of the priesthood, with which, doubtless, he is well acquainted.
But he asks, "Do we look upon ourselves as attached to any particular State, and bound to the promulgation of any particular tenets?" We are undoubtedly attached to the particular sphere to the which we are sent by those whose office is to provide the various parts of God's vineyard with labourers. The Anglican Church is the legitimate representative of the Catholic Church of Christ in England; and we, as clergy of this Church, minister for the most part to our countrymen at home, and only in other countries as the necessities of our colonists and others may require. And, as subscribers to the Prayer Book and priests of the Church of England, we are certainly bound to teach faithfully and honestly her doctrines, neither adding to them nor taking away from them according to our own individual idiosyncrasies.
From the Rev. Canon Gray.
Wolsingham, October 13th, 1879.
My dear Penrhyn,—Will you please to thank Mr. Malleson on my behalf for the Letters on the Lord's Prayer? I have ever admired Ruskin, and learn much even when I most differ from him. But if I had the good fortune to be with you to-morrow, I fear that I should constantly be demurring to his teaching,—e.g. ([Letter III.]) his supposition that the Thirty-nine Articles were meant to include a summary of the Gospel; ([Letter V.]) his belief that there is need now to warn men against being thankful not to the Father but only to the Son,—a remnant of the teaching of his youth; ([p. 20]) his hard way of speaking as to the Son of Man, Whose human soul, as that of perfect man, received its knowledge in steps according to His own will as perfect God; ([Letter VII.]) his confused distinction between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Christ (see Eph. v. 5 in the Greek, and remember "tradendo tenet" on 1 Cor. xv. 24); his belief that because no one knoweth the hour of Christ's coming, it cannot be hastened by prayer; ([Letter VIII.]) his seeming identification of claiming interest from a poor man who is in need and necessity, and from a railway company who borrow money to make more,—speaking, as far as I can see, of money as if it had no market value like other things; ([Letter X.]) the belief that we clergy are not awake to the guilt of sins of omission; ([Letter X.]) the inability to see that the nearer and nearer by God's grace we come, in answer to prayer, to purity and holiness, the more we realize our distance from them; and that his objection to our Liturgy might be adapted into one against the Lord's Prayer, in which we pray daily for forgiveness of sins, and deliverance from evil, showing that we never shall be so delivered as no longer to need forgiveness; ([Letter XI.]) the supposition that any one state of life is necessarily more full of temptations than another, as though the fruit of a tree were not to Eve what the glory of the world was to the Son of Man, at least in the eye of the Tempter.
I am ashamed to jot down thus obscurely the points on which I should have liked to speak, and I know that our brethren can fully deal with them. On the other hand ([Letter VIII.]) there is much to move us, and lead to searchings of heart. As to the timidity and coldness with which the Church is attacking the crying sins of our day, one often feels how we need some among us to speak as the prophets did to the men of their generation, and we may be thankful to have our shortcomings brought home to us by words like Ruskin's.
I wish I were not writing so hurriedly.
Remember me most affectionately to all my old and true friends who are with you to-morrow.
[Note.—March 12th 1880:—
Mr. Malleson has kindly brought this letter of mine again before me. Hasty and concise as it was, I have no wish to expand it, as Mr. Ruskin's Letters are now publici juris, and in the hands of many a critic, who will rejoice to deal with them according to his wisdom. I should be thankful, however, for leave to add a few words on one point. I cannot help having misgivings as to whether I was right in demurring without hesitation to "the supposition that one state of life is necessarily more free from temptations than another," for I well know that in favour of such a supposition there is a strong consensus of just men. I am, however, one of those who believe that the shorter Beatitude, "Blessed be ye poor," (Luke vi. 20) is explained by the longer, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." I see, also, that the difficulty with which "they that have riches" enter the kingdom of God is reasserted with a qualification in the very next verse, which speaks of those "who trust in riches" (St. Mark x. 23, 24). "Who then can be saved?" asked the disciples, who, poor men indeed themselves, first heard of this difficulty, instinctively perceiving, it may be, that it has its root in temptations from which in one shape or other no one is free. I read that "the cares of this world," as well as "the deceitfulness of riches," choke the Word; and I am sure that into the number of those "who will be rich," or "who are wishing to be rich," and so "fall into temptation," a poor man may but too easily find his way. I like to remember that when "the beggar died," he was carried into the bosom of one who had been "very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold;" and I think that very deep and far-stretching may be the meaning of the words of the wise man, "The rich and poor meet together, and the Lord is the Maker of them all.">[
From the Rev. H. N. Grimley, Norton Rectory,
Bury St. Edmunds.
Mr. Ruskin's Letters have already been closely scrutinized. What have seemed to be blemishes in them have been commented on. They have been spoken of as somewhat random utterances—as utterances such as are pardonable in a layman, but would be inexcusable in a clergyman who should endeavour to instruct his brethren. It has been said of them that they manifest a want of knowledge of teaching constantly being given from Church of England pulpits. It would be quite possible for the present paper to be devoted to a continuation of the like free criticism of the Letters. I might ask, for instance, whether Mr. Ruskin, after (in [Letter V.]) speaking with condemnation of a plan of salvation which sets forth the Divine Son as appeasing the wrath of the Father in heaven, does not himself give expression to words, as to the love of the Father, which almost imply that in his estimation the Divine mind is not in unity in itself? I might further ask for Mr. Ruskin to put more definiteness into his remarks on usury, and to particularize the special forms of that condemnable practice which the clergy should boldly denounce. The few hints which he throws out on this subject show that to his own thoughts there is present an exalted socialism. He himself in previous writings, while shadowing forth a social system based on unselfishness, has carefully deprecated any revolutionary attempt to hasten the establishment of such a system, and would prefer that it should be waited for while it quietly and with orderliness evolves itself out of the present imperfect order of things. Is it not so evolving itself? Does not the co-operative movement, now steadily advancing, spring out of the recognition of the fact that mutual welfare is a far more excellent thing to be attained than the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many? And if, with regard to the land question, any readjustment of relations is made, will it not be made in the light of the same beneficent principle? If, however, the clergy were to give heed to Mr. Ruskin's words, and at once proceed to the indiscriminate excommunication of usurers, would they not be initiating a social revolution, altogether different from that orderly upgrowth of a better state of things which has commended itself aforetime to Mr. Ruskin himself? My own impression is that I shall be giving voice to a wish that will spring up wherever Mr. Ruskin's Letters may be read, if I say that a clearer, more definite utterance on the usury question would be welcomed. The clergy everywhere would receive with thankfulness any hints as to how they might hasten the coming of the day when the Church of Christ will no longer embrace within her borders the few, with a useless excess of wealth, and around them the unhappy many, hopelessly, squalidly destitute; along, too, with a vast number of toiling teachers, clergy, artists, and literary workers, living mostly on the verge of pennilessness—men of whose existence Mr. Ruskin has, in earlier writings, expressed himself as keenly and sympathetically conscious.
But I will not linger on such parts of Mr. Ruskin's Letters as may seem to display inconsistency, or to need more precision of language before they can be practically useful. I will proceed to speak of those for which, as it seems to me, the clergy may unhesitatingly be very grateful to Mr. Ruskin for laying them before them.
And first, I think we cannot be other than thankful to Mr. Ruskin for sounding at the outset a note of catholicity. He asks the clergy of the English Church (let me say he asks us,—he asks you and me), whether we look upon ourselves as the clergy of a mere insular Church, or as the clergy of the Church Universal. Is the teaching we are continually giving utterance to as to the conduct of life in harmony with, or different from, the teaching of the Christian Churches on the Continent of Europe? Mr. Ruskin's tone, in asking these questions, is such as implies that it would be no satisfaction to him to hear from us that we rejoice in considering ourselves as severed from the clergy of the Christian Church abroad. Indeed, he goes on to assume that we, with one consenting voice, admit our fellowship with the rest of Christendom—that we recognize as our brothers the clergy of the Church of France, and of the Church of Italy, and of the Church everywhere.
Mr. Ruskin thus does not lend the support of his name to any useless Protestantism. There are senses in which the whole Christian Church must ever be a Protestant Church, and in which even individual members may from time to time raise protesting voices. The Church must ever lift up her protest against all influences that work in the world for evil—against whatsoever tends to overthrow the Christian ideals of individual, family, social, national, and international life. She must protest against all hindrances, even though they may spring up within her own borders, which tend to prevent her from putting any beneficent impress upon human handiwork and upon manifestations of human genius. She must protest against the very Protestantism in her midst which has served to paganize art and to demoralize the drama, by banishing both to an outer region of darkness which Gospel rays cannot be expected to illumine. She must protest vigorously against the mischievous Protestantism which impoverishes the intellect and chills the affections, by causing men to devote the whole energies of their lives to protesting against systems of thought with which they are very imperfectly acquainted, and to maintaining an attitude of perpetual suspicion as to others' aims and motives. Under the influence of such Protestantism as this, many have been possessed with the assurance that a vast number of the clergy of Christendom live for no other end than to conspire against freedom, to disseminate falsities, and to work ruin amongst human souls. This Protestantism is fast ceasing to have any power amongst us; still, as it is not quite extinct, it is comforting to find that Mr. Ruskin does not attribute it to the main body of those whom he addresses.
To me it seems that an habitual protesting attitude on the part of those who are called upon to be the teachers of the Church implies that they have not themselves properly entered the temple of Christian truth. He to whom Christian doctrine has revealed itself in all its wondrous harmony cannot do other than devote himself to unfolding to others what is ever present to his own mind, so that he may aid in building up their thoughts consistently and symmetrically, and thus help to establish them firmly in the Christian faith.
We may, then, it seems to me, express our thankfulness that Mr. Ruskin has spoken, though ever so briefly, a word of encouragement to the clergy of the English Church amongst whom the thought of a future of reunion for Christendom has been welcomed. Mr. Ruskin is familiar with the practical working of the Christian Church in Italy and elsewhere on the Continent, and seeing, as he has seen, that her influence is exerted towards securing an orderly and healthy state of social life, he does not give circulation to the indiscriminate calumnies which were once wont to be uttered, and which were alike at variance with the truth and provocative of a mischievous severance of Christians from one another.
But we must, I think, be more especially grateful to Mr. Ruskin for his calling widespread attention to the great Christian doctrine of the Fatherhood of God. There is especial need for this being uplifted before the thoughts of men at the present day, and it is being so uplifted. The more it is upheld, the more fully will it be discerned. It cannot be said that the doctrine is not accepted within the English Church. Still, it has not yet been received in all its fulness. Amongst the separatists outside the borders of our Church, the doctrine that God is the Father of all humanity, and the loving Father too, is rejected in two extreme ways. The set of "believers" who adopt the one extreme view consider that the Lord's Prayer—so luminous, as Mr. Ruskin reminds us, with the thought of God's fatherly love—should be used only by the elect, such as themselves, and that all others have no right to address God as their Father. The other set of so-called "believers" considers with a deplorable Pharisaism that they have arrived at such a stage of perfection as to be beyond the need for using words which require them to ask every day for forgiveness of their trespasses. Why should they ask for such, they say, when their trespasses are non-existent? If they are children of the Father they are not so in the same sense as those who conscientiously use the prayer addressed to the Father in heaven. I regret that Mr. Ruskin's facile pen has betrayed him into writing some words with reference to our Liturgy which bring him momentarily into sympathy with these self-righteous ones who have no need to confess that they want more health of soul.
But the doctrine of the loving Fatherhood of God, as revealed to us in Christ, is one that is unfolding itself more and more clearly to the Christian world. If it has unfolded itself to us we may aid in its increased discernment. It is one that involves the acceptance of the thought that all human life and every sphere of human endeavour are under Divine patronage. God is in every way our Father. All human excellences whatsoever exist in their fulness and perfection in Him. As they are manifested in us and in our brothers and sisters around us, they are Divine excellences becoming incarnate on the realm of humanity.
Childhood, for instance, as it manifests its sweetness and winsomeness in Christian homes, is an outcome of the eternal childhood which dwells in God, and which was manifested supremely to the world in the life of the Divine Child at Bethlehem and Nazareth.
So that the doctrine of the loving Fatherhood of God has sheltering beneath it the thought of the divineness of childhood. Clustering with it are many kindred thoughts. There is the divineness of youth, the frankness of Christian boyhood, the tender grace of Christian girlhood,—these are manifestations of the eternal youth abiding in the Divine Lord of humanity.
I might speak to you in like manner of the divineness of manhood and of womanhood, and of the divineness of old age. All womanly excellences, as well as all manly virtues, reside in the Divine One. I might speak to you of the divineness of wedded life, the divineness of Christian fatherliness and motherliness. The divineness of the student's life and of the teacher's life might also be dwelt upon. The divineness of the ministry of reconciliation, in which ministry all may take part who help others to separate themselves from sin and selfishness and to enter into union with God and His life of love,—this I present to you as a fruitful thought. The divineness of all efforts tending towards the solace and comforting of suffering human souls,—that too is one of the beneficent thoughts involved in the great Christian truth that God is the Father of humanity.
But the same great truth leads us to the discernment of other useful thoughts. I might speak of them as connected with the divineness of all toil which has for its object the increase of human knowledge, the gathering together of the stored-up lessons of the past, the beautifying of the daily life, the refining and spiritualizing of the daily thoughts of the great brotherhood and sisterhood. It would thus be quite justifiable to speak of the divineness of scientific toil, inasmuch as that has for its aim the unfolding of the thoughts of God, of which all appearances of the material world are the outcome and manifestation. Thus too I might speak of the divineness of the work of those who enable us to see the results of the Divine guidance bestowed on the world in the ages past. I might speak of the divineness of the work of the artist who devotes himself to acquiring skill in subtly entangling in the colours he puts on canvas the sentiment underlying the landscape he reverently looks at, which to him is a manifestation of a heaven of beauty unseen by heedless eyes. I might also speak of the divineness of the labours of the Christian poet, who presents to the world truth in its feminine and most winning aspects.
When I should have spoken of all these things they could all be summed up into one phrase—the divineness of Humanity. And this is what I have faintly attempted to show necessarily springs up for recognition as the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God presents itself to us in all its impressiveness.
I must hasten to a close. I have said that Mr. Ruskin in what he asks us with reference to our relation to the Church in other countries sounds a note of catholicity. In what I have myself said as to Protestantism I have urged nothing inconsistent with a thorough loyalty to the principle of Christian individualism. But individualism in utter revolt against authority leads only to confusion and to a multiplicity of tyrannies. Individualism thrives best under the protection of a generous all-embracing authority. Individualism before taking up the attitude of revolt should consider that it, by brave patience and a reverent submissiveness to all higher influences around it, may contribute beneficently to the authority of the future, and increase the generousness and catholicity of its sway.
I will further remark that Mr. Ruskin's words as to the Fatherhood of God are also a catholic utterance. For the Fatherhood of God when pondered upon helps us to see that no sphere of human effort is beyond His control; that His house is one of many mansions of thought and affection and loving toil; that His heavenly kingdom is one including all domains on which human energies can be directed, over which human thoughts can roam, on which human love can lavish itself.
From the Rev. Canon E. H. M'Neile, Liverpool.
What is the exact question asked in [Letter II.]?
Is it whether the clergy are or are not teachers of universal science?
If so, we answer, Yes, we are teachers of the science most universal of all, namely, the knowledge of God, which is eternal life: and of the way to attain it, which is holiness; and the principles of this science, which are universal, are not, as in other sciences, discovered by human research, but are revealed by God.
Does the question imply that there are points of science on which it is of no consequence what opinions a teacher holds? And if so, does it further mean that all matters of doctrine, such as are defined in the Thirty-nine Articles, are of this nature?
If so, I answer that it is only the theories or speculations of scientific investigators about which variety of opinion is immaterial, not the essential principles of the science; and that we cannot exclude all questions of doctrine from among those principles. I do not know what is meant by holding different opinions on points of science. About the facts of science there can be no difference of opinion; but there may be about the bearings, and the inferences to be drawn from them.
Here is a definite question. My answer is, Yes, but we do not refer to the Thirty-nine Articles for a statement of the Gospel, but rather to the Apostles' Creed, which contains the simplest summary of the facts on which the Gospel rests. (See 1 Cor. xv. 1, etc.)
Here I answer, No. The Lord's Prayer was not intended to be a statement of the Gospel, but the language of those who have accepted it. No doubt the terms of the prayer may be so explained as to bring in a definition of the Gospel, working backwards; but a complete explanation would be longer than the Thirty-nine Articles. There seems to be a serious confusion of thought here between the offer of salvation to sinners estranged from God, and the utterance towards God of His reconciled children.
The Lord's Prayer is elementary teaching for Christians, but it is not the first thing to be taught to those outside the family of God. The truth that we have a Father in heaven is a fundamental part of the Gospel. It is assumed in the Lord's Prayer; and so is the further truth that our Father of His tender love towards us has given His Son to die for us, that we may be delivered from the "consuming fire" which sin, not God, has kindled; and thus we have indeed a blessed scheme of pardon for which we are to be thankful to both the Father and the Son. This makes all the clauses of the apostolic blessing intelligible and living.
[Page 14]: "For other sins," etc. I think this is an incorrect comment. The force of the threat is positive, not comparative. The language of the law is similar towards every sin.
In what is said about the abomination of hypocrisy in prayer we cordially agree. God give us grace to avoid it ourselves, and to warn our brethren faithfully against it! But in what follows there is an assumption of a power of discipline which the clergy do not possess, and which I fear the laity would be most unwilling to concede to them. Mr. Ruskin seems also to slip into the old error of the servants in the parable of the tares.
On [page 21] St. John xiv. 9 is incorrectly cited, and it is difficult to know the exact drift of the writer.
I object to the statement that "in all His relations to us and commands to us," etc. (See, e.g., St. Matt. xxviii. 18-20.)
As to His not knowing whether His prayer could be heard, see St. John xi. 41, 42.
I think it is incorrect to say that our Lord Himself used the prayer He gave us, at least in its entirety as it stands.
Pages [20], [21]: Mr. Ruskin seems to me to draw most strongly the very comparison to which he objects. Surely the kingdom of Christ is the kingdom of His Father. (Rev. xi. 15, xii. 10; Eph. v. 5.) Does not an unwillingness to accept the true divinity of our Lord underlie this passage?
[Page 25]: There is surely a mistake here. Personal sanctification and national prosperity are very different things. A nation has no existence except in this world; therefore its prosperity is the chief end to be aimed at; and this is no doubt promoted by the holiness of its people. But a man has another life hereafter; and comfort and wealth are not the end of his being. If granted, they are means to his sanctification, not vice versâ.
It seems to me that Mr. Ruskin in this Letter writes somewhat recklessly, and that he must have been singularly unfortunate in his experience of preachers if he has never heard a faithful sermon against covetousness, which is the idolatry of our age. On [page 26] he seems to fall into a great error in supposing that the proclamation of a free pardon for sin tends to encourage it. If a man is to be delivered from the power of his sins, he must first be delivered from the guilt of them.
No doubt the grace of God has been abused by some; and St. Paul himself felt that his doctrine was open to such abuse (Rom. vi. 1, 15). It is not, I think, just to attribute the corruption of our great cities to the teaching of the clergy. It is rather to be ascribed to the absence of that teaching.
Whatever justice there may be (and no doubt there is much) in Mr. Ruskin's accusations against us clergy, he is surely under an entire misapprehension in the charge which he here makes against our Liturgy.
Our Prayer Book is doubtless constructed for the use of believing Christians, and is not fitted for the impenitent; but its adaptation to the needs of the repentant publican and of the advanced Christian is most wonderful. And that a form of prayer may be so adapted is surely proved by the Lord's Prayer itself, which Mr. Ruskin says is the first thing to be taught to all, and which, with all his practice in thinking, he feels that he cannot adequately expound.
Surely the repetition of a confession of unholiness casts no slur upon the efficacy of our prayers for holiness when we recognize that holiness is progressive, and that spiritual growth may express itself not merely in new words, but in a heartier utterance of the old ones. As to the particular expression, "there is no health in us," it needs either the explanation of St. Paul—"I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing,"—or else to be understood according to the old meaning of "health," viz., "saving health," salvation, deliverance (Psalm cxix. 123, Prayer Book; Isa. lviii. 8; Jer. viii. 15).
It needs further to be remarked that repentance is not only a single definite act, but a state of mind.
I think that underlying all these comments of Mr. Ruskin on the Lord's Prayer is a failure to recognize the truth of man's fall.
Human nature is a ruin, not to be restored by a rearrangement of its fragments. God has provided a remedy, by sending His Son to be the foundation of a new spiritual building; and every man who is to be built upon that foundation must himself become a new creature by the operation of the Holy Ghost. All efforts to improve humanity in the mass, without the renewal of each separate soul, must fail; and no doubt the clergy often fall into this mistake.
The Lord's Prayer is not the prayer of all mankind as they are by nature. It is a prayer to the possession of which they are brought by regeneration, and to the enjoyment by conversion.
E. H. M'Neile.
From the Rev. P. T. Ouvry.
On the meaning of usury, I would add a few words. I start with this proposition. There is nothing contrary to the will of God for one free man to buy from another free man anything he wants. I have two houses,—one I live in, one I let. My tenant pays the market rent of houses to me, and so both parties are benefited. I have two thousand pounds. I have no capacity, or opportunity, or desire to use more than one thousand pounds in trade on my own account. My neighbour has energy and activity to use more money than he has in trade. He gladly offers me five per cent. for my spare thousand pounds. I willingly lend it on those terms. He makes ten per cent. by using it. He gives me five pounds and has five pounds for himself. If this be usury, it is lawful and right.
A number of small cultivators of land have no capital. A money-lender supplies what they require on condition that they sell their crops to him at a price which he is able to fix. From the circumstances of the case the money-lender makes an enormous profit. The cultivator has barely the necessaries of life. This is usury, in the bad sense of the term, but is more correctly called oppression or extortion.
Again, a man lends money to ignorant inexperienced youths, on promise of repayment when they come of age. This, too, is oppression or extortion.
Similar oppression is witnessed when bad houses are let to poor people at high rents.
It is not, then, that usury, in the sense of oppression or extortion, is inherent in money-lending; but it belongs equally to every transaction between man and man, where any unrighteous dealing is practised.
P. T. Ouvry.
Grange-over-Sands,
October 1st, 1879.
Dear Mr. Malleson,—I protested strongly yesterday against our remarks, made on the spur of the moment, being printed and submitted to Mr. Ruskin's criticism, and what I said then I feel as strongly still.
But I have no objection to send, as a comment on his Letters, a volume of sermons which I published last year, because I think that, in that upon the hallowing of God's name, I have not taken the restricted view which Mr. Ruskin accused the clergy of taking, and I think also that (except in the sermon upon the doctrine of the Trinity, which was written before the others, and is tinged with the prejudices of early training), I have set forth God the Father as a Being of infinite, tender, fatherly love.
So far as snails may follow in the footsteps of greyhounds, and bats look in the same direction as eagles, I think some of us clergymen are getting our feet and our eyes into the same track as Mr. Ruskin's.
It seems to me that all of us who think upon religious matters, laity or clergy, whether men of genius or commonplace people, are feeling our way at present to something better and truer. Men like Mr. Ruskin, like steamships, dart on to their destination; and feebler minds, like sailing vessels, are a good deal at the mercy of the popularis aura and the winds of doctrine, but both are on their way to the same point.
I send the volume by the same post as this letter.
Yours very faithfully,
H. R. S.
From the Rev. A. G. K. Simpson, Brighton.
We are convinced that the love of God is the originating cause of all His dealings with mankind, and are glad to meet him on the broad platform of "Our Father which art in heaven;" only premising that it is a platform not new to us, but on which we have long taken our stand.
But beyond these somewhat general statements of our faith, I doubt whether it would be possible to put Divine truth into such plain words as would meet with general acceptance. In proportion to the minuteness would be the disagreement. To take one great truth (perhaps the greatest of all), would it be possible to put forth a plain and simple statement, such as all, or the majority, would receive, of the Atonement? Such a mind as Mr. Ruskin's would not be content with the forensic view more popular some years ago than now. Wiser, it seems to me, it is to accept some such teaching as that of Coleridge in "Aids to Reflection." "The mysterious act, the operative cause," he says, "is transcendent." "Factum est," and beyond the information contained in the enunciation of the fact, it can be characterized only by its consequences. It is these consequences which (according to Coleridge) are illustrated by the four metaphors:—
1. Sin-offering or expiation.
2. Reconciliation.
3. Redemption.
4. Payment of a debt.
Now, would not a plain, a simple statement, be apt to press the metaphor too far, and attempt to put into words one aspect of the truth as though it were the whole? Such a reverent mind as Bishop Butler's reproved the curiosity which sought to find out the manner of the atonement. "I do not find," he said, "that it is declared in the Scriptures." And yet the atonement is only one, though perhaps the chief, of the many points of which a true and simple statement must take cognizance. It would be comparatively easy for the private clergyman to put into words his thoughts on this subject or that, but then he would be continually liable to have it urged against him that he had not sufficiently considered some given point—had not walked round it, and seen it in all its bearings; that his view was inadequate and incomplete; and, being fallible and human, some of the objections would doubtless be true, and the simple and plain statement be, in that respect at least, misguiding.
From the Rev. G. W. Wall, Bickerstaffe.
This Letter professes to contain an "exact question," which is somewhat singularly inexactly put. In its strict grammatical form it asks for a definition of the members of a Clerical Council, and their business as such. This "exact question" is in fact an illustration of the fallacy of asking two questions in one, though a question demanding to be answered with "mathematical" precision should have been set with mathematical accuracy. But here at the outset a protest must be entered against being called upon to answer a question set in ambiguous words and misleading phrases, and based upon assumptions which those questioned would reject. It is impossible to deal with a so-called "axiomatic" question which instantly passes into a cloudy rhetorical illustration.
"The attached servants of a particular State." Does that expression mean, "England, with all thy faults, I love thee still"? or, is it used in the same sense as "attached to the staff"? But are there many of the clergy who would say, "I am an attached and salaried servant of the State, and nothing more?" Are there many who would allow that they were "salaried" by the State at all? Are there many who would grant that they had been "examined" and "numbered" and admitted into a "body of trustworthy persons" either by the State or by its agents? And yet all these previous questions must be answered before we can consider at all the "axiomatic" question which the clergy are "earnestly called upon" to solve. The question set down for solution implies some such inquiries as these: Is not the Church of England merely a Department of the State of England? Does not a clergyman belong to the Ecclesiastical Service just as an employé of the Treasury, or the Home Office, or the Post Office, belongs to the Civil Service? For example, the authorities at Chamouni examine and approve of certain men as guides for mountaineering: does not the English State similarly examine and approve of certain men as guides for England and the English "in the way known of all good men that leadeth unto life"? A most fallacious employment of a "universal" for a "particular," for either the clergy must be excluded from the number of "all good men," or the assertion that all good men agree in their knowledge falls to the ground, seeing that in the [fourth Letter] the clergy are charged with not having "determined quite clearly" what the way that leadeth unto life may be.
But taking this Alpine illustration for what it may be worth, we may ask, "What does it mean?" Is it not intended to exalt practical questions, and to depreciate all doctrine and dogma and theological opinion, either from its liability on the one hand to be narrow or insular, "Chamounist or Grindelwaldist," or on the other from its tendency to be vague and transcendental, dealing with "celestial mountains" and unfathomable "crevasses"? Will it not admit of some such paraphrase as this, "Your teachings as to Episcopacy or Congregationalism, seven sacraments or two, and the like, are mere local opinions, and so away with them; your doctrines as to the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, and the like, are mere transcendentalism, and so away with them also,—
'For modes of faith let zealous bigots fight,
He can't be wrong whose life is in the right.'"
Still it may be allowable to hint that the qualifications of a "guide" as laid down in this Letter are somewhat peculiar. It might have been supposed by a plain man that a Chamounist guide was expected to know at least something as to the localities of the Mer de Glace, the Jardin, or the Grand Mulets, but he is seemingly to rise superior to any "Chamounist opinions on geography," and to be prepared to rely only upon a universal science of locality and athletics, a reliance which has been the fruitful cause of mountaineering fatalities.
The reply which most Clerical Councils would return respecting the "axiomatic" question of this Letter would probably be, "We cannot answer a fallacy; we are not careful to answer thee in this matter."
A second question is now propounded respecting the Christian Gospel. "The Gospel of Christ" is spoken of in a connection which seems to indicate that Luther and Augustine were equally, in the writer's opinion, the setters forth of a "gospel." Is this an unintentional disclosure of his estimate of our blessed Lord,—"Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God," and no more than that? For [the eighth Letter] contains a sneer at the Gospel that He is our Advocate with the Father, as one to mend the world with. A confused question follows, which may mean either, that it is in the first place desirable that the Gospel should be put into plain words, or, that the first principles of the Gospel should be put into plain words. Its probable meaning is, "Is it not desirable that religious teaching should be divested of any mysteries?" The extraordinary supposition that the Gospel is intended to be set forth in the Thirty-nine Articles can only be equalled by a supposition that a treatise on military tactics is embodied in the Articles of War. Perhaps even some of the axiomatic principles of mathematics, such as that "a point is that which hath no parts," though laid down in "plain words and short terms," might sorely perplex "simple persons."
But several fallacies underlie this second question. The fallacy that the moral principles of our nature are necessarily connected with the extent of our intellectual capacities; the fallacy that Divine Truths can be adequately expressed through the inaccurate instrument of human language; the fallacy that deep things are necessarily made plain by the use of plain words; the fallacy that everything upon which we act is necessarily understood. A plain man does not refuse to use the telegraph because he may know nothing about the Correlation of Force, or a simple person to travel because "space" is beyond his comprehension. If the Gospel is, as St. Paul says it is, a revelation of the power of God unto salvation, an amount of mystery must necessarily surround it. Since it is impossible that the Divine Nature should be to us other than a mystery, a revelation of Divine purposes such as is the Gospel as understood by the Church, must remain mysterious also. Only upon the supposition that our Lord was the teacher of a high but still human morality can we remove all mystery from the Christian Gospel, if it still deserve the name. Such teaching might be conveyed in plain words and short terms, but it would cease to be a Gospel which angels desire to look into, and could hardly be described as the "manifold wisdom of God," or be the story of the "love of Christ, which passeth knowledge."
The Gospel, as the Church understands it, rests upon the revealed fact of the Incarnation, or the union of the Infinite with the Finite, that He who is very God of very God became man in order to introduce the Divine possibility of manhood being made to partake of the Divine nature; and so long as the triumphal chant ascends that "the Catholic Faith is this," so long will the Church's Faith be veiled indeed with mystery, and so long will she continue to gather within her bounds the humble and holy men of heart, who are content to say, "I cannot understand: I love." That "God sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him" are short and plain words enough, and Gospel enough, surely, but the depth of their meaning is unfathomable by even the most cultivated understanding, to which the power of God and the wisdom of God may appear to be but foolishness.
This Letter, after endorsing the expressions of the preceding one, deals apparently with Capital and Labour. The clergy, if not required to divide the inheritance among their brethren, or to actually serve tables, are, taking "Property is theft" as their text, to resolutely and daily inquire how the dinners of their flock are earned. The gist of the Letter seems to be that the worker earns and the capitalist steals his dinner. It is really possible that the clergy do constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth's sake, even though they may not subscribe to all the articles of some peculiar schemes of social science, nor hold some singular doctrines as to political economy. Doubtless were they to assimilate their conduct to that of an injudicious district-visitor, they would have to take a new view of "life and its sacraments," whatever this expression may mean.
It would seem as if the writer had yet to learn that a Christian Church may exist teaching the most dogmatic definitions of doctrine, binding, even in this respect, burdens on men's shoulders grievous to be borne, while its members may be patterns of self-denial in "offices of temporal ministry to the poor." He does not appear to regard with favour the "Evangelistic sect of the English Church;" if this is intended for the "Evangelical" sect, Charles Kingsley could say, in a certain place, of its founders, "They were inspired by a strange new instinct that God had bidden them 'to clothe the hungry and feed the naked.'" Yet these men thought that "justification by faith only" was the Gospel they were "to carry to mend the world with, forsooth."
This concluding Letter calls but for slight remark,—of many portions we feel O si sic omnia! That there is much sorrowful truth underlying the unmeasured denunciations which have gone before few will care to deny. Few there are who will not pray to be kept from the evils which the writer discerns, and against which he inveighs. Such will be the first to regret that the Letters, as they read them, seem to fall short of the fulness of the Catholic Faith. "The holy teachers of all nations:" was our blessed Lord but one of them? There is nothing in the Letters to show that "the full force and meaning" of Gospel teaching is concerned with anything beyond wealth, and comfort, and national prosperity, and domestic peace. Preaching the acceptable year of the Lord is something more surely than an invective against usury.
We read that in old times Bezaleel was filled for his own work with the Spirit of God, but we do not read that he aspired to become a religious teacher; and when we are told by one eminent in Art that a Church nineteen centuries old has yet to learn that the "will of the Lord" is a sanctification which brings comfort and wealth in its train, we think of a Moses who esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt, and then of a Paul who counted all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord.
G. W. Wall.
From Oxoniensis.
Dear Mr. Malleson,—Many thanks for the pamphlet. You ask me to send you any remarks I may have to make on the Letters, and I gather from your note at the beginning of the Letters as they now stand, that you intend making use of any remarks sent you that may commend themselves to your judgment. I am not vain enough to think mine of any special value. I will, however, write you my feelings about them, encouraged to do so by your statement in the note to the pamphlet, that the use made of remarks sent you will be anonymous, if it is so desired.
First, as regards the general tone of the Letters. You tell me that the majority of the comments you have received have been hostile—people not taking their medicine without making wry faces. I am only surprised at the gentleness of the Letters, and I believe that if anyone will take the trouble to put down for himself on paper the sum of their contents, he will find it as difficult to gainsay as for careless readers it is easy to cavil at. On the other hand, the "hostile spirit" is readily provoked by the way in which some of the teaching of the Letters is put. Passages like the sixth paragraph in [Letter X.] appear an objectionable joke to some—perhaps to most—people; they do not see that it is really a serious jest, so put for brevity's sake, and that Ruskin might have put the same note to it as he has put to a passage in the "Crown of Wild Olive," p. 85, 8vo ed.: "Quite serious all this, though it reads like jest." I remember once asking Ruskin if his apparent joking in some Oxford lectures was not likely to lessen his influence, and he at once said to me, "Remember that most of my apparent jokes are serious, ghastly jests." I think he would be less often misunderstood, if this were more often understood.
Your own preface marks the two main points in the spirit of the Letters. They are sternly practical, and at the same time their standard is one of an ideal perfection. People don't see that because the goal cannot be reached, the road towards it can still be trodden, and therefore they apply to the road an epithet which applies only to the goal. In this respect Ruskin's teaching might be mottoed with George Herbert's—
"Who aimeth at the sky
Shoots higher much than he that means a tree."
In fact, Ruskin's teaching, like that of the Bible, is not unpractical, but unpractised.
I will now take the Letters in detail. The first four of them are merely introductory to the main matter of the eleven. In these first five two questions are asked—
1. What is a clergyman of the Church of England? And to this the suggested answer is (whom does it offend?), "A teacher of the Gospel of Christ to all nations."
2. What is the teaching of the Gospel he is to teach? What is that teaching, clearly and simply put?
Then [Letter IV.] suggests that the Lord's Prayer may be taken as containing the cardinal points of that teaching, containing not all that is to be learnt, but what all have to learn. And so we come to [Letter V.]; and I tried, in reading the Letters for myself, to do for them what [Letter III.] asks clergymen to do for the Gospel.
[Letter V.]—A clergyman's first duty is to make the Lord's Prayer clear and living to his people. This is what Ruskin has elsewhere insisted on in other matters—"clear," know your duty and your belief; "living," realize it in your life—realize it "as a Captain's order, to be obeyed" ("Crown of Wild Olive," Introduction, p. 13. The whole of this Introduction reads well with these Letters). Then the first clause of the Prayer is set forth as putting before us God as a loving Father.
[Letter VI.]—"Hallowed be Thy name." How do we fulfil the hope in our lives? How do we betray it? Not in swearing only, as we are apt to think, but in the blasphemy of false and hypocritical prayer to, and praise of, preaching about God (last paragraph of the Letter). Clergymen, it is added, can prevent openly wicked men from being in their congregations (they are supposed to do so: Rubrics 2 and 3 before the Holy Communion Service); they can not only compel the wicked poor into, but expel the wicked rich out of, churches. God sees the heart: the clergy should look to the hands and lips.
[Letter VII.]—"Thy kingdom come:"—not an allusion to the second coming of the Son, which we cannot hasten, but to the coming of the kingdom of God the Father, which we can. This is again illustrated by the "Crown of Wild Olive" (I daresay it is by others of Ruskin's books, but it is convenient to refer chiefly to one, and that the one which contains what he calls his most biblical lecture), p. 56: "Observe it is a kingdom that is to come to us; we are not to go to it. Also it is not to be a kingdom of the dead, but of the living. Also it is not to come all at once, but quietly ... without observation. Also it is not to come outside of us, but in our hearts: 'the kingdom of God is within you.'" This is the sense in which we can hasten it.
[Letter VIII.] begins with a hit at the pleasure priests take in their priesthood's dignity, and at their avoidance of its unpleasant duties, and at their sometimes wearisome preaching.
Have they ever taught "Thy will be done," as it should be—1. In our own sanctification; 2. In understanding that will, and doing it, and striving to get it done (knowing their duty and doing it, and it alone)?
The remarks about the mediatorial (absolving-from-punishment) and the pastoral (purging-from-sin) functions of a "pastor," seem to me quite admirable.
The end of the Letter is subsequently amplified, [Letter X.]
[Letter IX.]—"Give us this day our daily bread." Yes, but we must work for it. "The man that will not work, neither shall he eat." A cardinal point with Ruskin: "But if you do" (i.e., wish for God's kingdom), "you must do more than pray for it, you must work for it" ("Crown of Wild Olive," p. 56).
And the clergyman has to teach ([Letter IX.] goes on) what that work is and how it is to be done; and the life, to which their teaching should lead, is one "moderate in its self-indulgence, wide in its offices of temporal ministry to the poor," in the absence of which, prayer for harvest is mere blasphemy. For the spiritual bread is the first thing, and a clergyman's first message, "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve."
[Letter X.]—"Forgive us our trespasses." The explanation of trespasses, and substitution of debts for it, is admirable ("Dimitte nobis debita nostra"), and admirably illustrated by the sins of omission being condemned in Christ's judgment,—"I was hungry, and ye gave Me no meat."
The remarks on the "pleasantness" of the English liturgy recall those on the avoidance of unpleasantness by the English clergy in [Letter VIII.]
I pass over the notes on the advantage of "forms of prayer," and come to the end of Letter [X.] and Letter [XI.], which go together, and say practically, Pray honestly or not at all. "Faithful prayer implies always correlative exertions;" "dishonest prayer is blasphemy of the worst kind."
"Crown of Wild Olive," p. 55, again: "Everybody in this room has been taught to pray daily, 'Thy kingdom come.' Now, if we hear a man swear in the streets, we think it very wrong, and say he 'takes God's name in vain.' But there is a twenty times worse way of taking His name in vain than that. It is to ask God for what we don't want. He doesn't like that sort of prayer. If you don't want a thing, don't ask for it; such asking is the worst mockery of your King you can insult Him with; the soldiers striking Him on the head was nothing to that. If you do not wish for His kingdom, don't pray for it."
In fact, prayer is worse than useless if not sincere, and it is insincere if not carried out in the life of the "pray-er." Thus, "One hour in the execution of justice is worth seventy years of (insincere) prayer" (Mahometan maxim, "Crown of Wild Olive," p. 49).
I must stop. Only the fifth paragraph in [Letter XI.], about parents looking for "opportunities" for their children, is exactly parallel with "Sesame and Lilies," 8vo edition, p. 2 (Sub. 1, § 2), which might be added in an illustrative note. I must apologize for my long and rambling letter, but if it is of the least service to you I shall be content. I feel how inadequate it is to what I meant it to be, only I have no time just now to do more than write, as this letter is written—at the point of the pen.
Oxoniensis.