My dear Sir: I am always much interested in any effort such as you are making on the part of the laity.
If you care to give your class a word directly from me, say to them that they will find it well, throughout life, never to trouble themselves about what they ought not to do, but about what they ought to do. The condemnation given from the judgment throne—most solemnly described—is all for the undones and not for the dones.[137] People are perpetually afraid of doing wrong; but unless they are doing its reverse energetically, they do it all day long, and the degree does not matter. The Commandments are necessarily negative, because a new set of positive ones would be needed for every person: while the negatives are constant.
But Christ sums them all into two rigorous positions, and the first position for young people is active and attentive kindness to animals, supposing themselves set by God to feed His real sheep and ravens before the time comes for doing either figuratively. There is scarcely any conception left of the character which animals and birds might have if kindly treated in a wild state.
Make your young hearers resolve to be honest in their work in this life.—Heaven will take care of them for the other.
Truly yours,
John Ruskin.
FOOTNOTES:
[136] This and the two following letters were originally printed in different annual numbers of the above-named publication, to whose editor (Mr. John Leith, 75 Crown Street, Aberdeen) they were addressed. Amongst the "messages" contained in them are some from Mr. Gladstone and others.
[137] See the tenth of Mr. Ruskin's letters on the Lord's Prayer, Contemporary Review, December, 1879, p. 550.