Fors Clavigera (Volume 1 of 8) / Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain

by John Ruskin

You tell me not to be wise above that which is written; why, therefore, should you be desirous, above that which is given? You cannot see the glory of God as bright as the lime-light at midnight; but you may see it as bright as the sun, at eight in the morning, if you choose. You might, at least, forty Christmases since: but not now.

You know I must antedate my letters for special days. I am actually writing this sentence on the second December, at ten in the morning, with the feeblest possible gleam of sun on my paper; and for the last three weeks the days have been one long drift of ragged gloom, with only sometimes five minutes’ gleam of the glory of God, between the gusts, which no one regarded.

I am taking the name of God in vain, you think? No, my religious friends, not I. For completed forty years, I have been striving to consider the blue heavens, the work of His fingers, and the moon and the stars which He hath ordained: but you have left me nothing now to consider here at Denmark Hill, but these black heavens, the work of your fingers, and the blotting of moon and stars which you have ordained; you,—taking the name of God in vain every Sunday, and His work and His mercy in vain all the week through.

“You have nothing to do with it—you are very sorry for it—and Baron Liebig says that the power of England is coal?”

You have everything to do with it. Were you not told to come out and be separate from all evil? You take whatever advantage you can of the evil work and gain of this world, and yet expect the people you share with, to be damned, out of your way, in the next. If you would begin by putting them out of your way here, you would perhaps carry some of them with you there. But return to your night vision, and explain to me, if not what the angel was like, at least what you understand him to have said,—he, and those with him. With his own lips he told the shepherds there was born a Saviour for them; but more was to be told: “And suddenly there was with him a multitude of the heavenly host.”

People generally think that this verse means only that after one angel had spoken, there came more to sing, in the manner of a chorus; but it means far another thing than that. If you look back to Genesis you find creation summed thus:—“So the heavens and earth were finished, and all the host of them.” Whatever living powers of any order, great or small, were to inhabit either, are included in the word. The host of earth includes the ants and the worms of it; the host of heaven includes,—we know not what;—how should we?—the creatures that are in the stars which we cannot count,—in the space which we cannot imagine; some of them so little and so low that they can become flying poursuivants to this grain of sand we live on; others having missions, doubtless, to larger grains of sand, and wiser creatures on them.

But the vision of their multitude means at least this; that all the powers of the outer world which have any concern with ours became in some way visible now: having interest—they, in the praise,—as all the hosts of earth in the life, of this Child, born in David’s town. And their hymn was of peace to the lowest of the two hosts—peace on earth;—and praise in the highest of the two hosts; and, better than peace, and sweeter than praise, Love, among men.

The men in question, ambitious of praising God after the manner of the hosts of heaven, have written something which they suppose this Song of Peace to have been like; and sing it themselves, in state, after successful battles. But you hear it, those of you who go to church in orthodox quarters, every Sunday; and will understand the terms of it better by recollecting that the Lordship, which you begin the Te Deum by ascribing to God, is this, over all creatures, or over the two Hosts. In the Apocalypse it is “Lord, All governing”—Pantocrator—which we weakly translate “Almighty”; but the Americans still understand the original sense, and apply it so to their god, the dollar, praying that the will may be done of their Father which is in Earth. Farther on in the hymn, the word “Sabaoth” again means all “hosts” or creatures; and it is an important word for workmen to recollect, because the saying of St. James is coming true, and that fast, that the cries of the reapers whose wages have been kept back by fraud, have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth; that is to say, Lord of all creatures, as much of the men at St. Catherine’s Docks as of Saint Catherine herself, though they live only under Tower-Hill, and she lived close under Sinai.

You see, farther, I have written above, not “good will towards men,” but “love among men.” It is nearer right so; but the word is not easy to translate at all. What it means precisely, you may conjecture best from its use at Christ’s baptism—“This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” For, in precisely the same words, the angels say, there is to be “well-pleasing in men.”

Now, my religious friends, I continually hear you talk of acting for God’s glory, and giving God praise. Might you not, for the present, think less of praising, and more of pleasing Him? He can, perhaps, dispense with your praise; your opinions of His character, even when they come to be held by a large body of the religious press, are not of material importance to Him. He has the hosts of heaven to praise Him, who see more of His ways, it is likely, than you; but you hear that you may be pleasing to Him, if you try:—that He expected, then, to have some satisfaction in you; and might have even great satisfaction—well-pleasing, as in His own Son, if you tried. The sparrows and the robins, if you give them leave to nest as they choose about your garden, will have their own opinions about your garden; some of them will think it well laid out,—others ill. You are not solicitous about their opinions; but you like them to love each other; to build their nests without stealing each other’s sticks, and to trust you to take care of them.