IV. The following is, I hope, the true translation of Job xxii. 24, 25. I greatly thank my correspondent for it.
“Cast the brass to the dust, and the gold of Ophir to the rocks of the brooks.
“So, will the Almighty be thy gold and thy shining silver.[8]
“Yes, then wilt thou rejoice in the Almighty and raise thy countenance to God.”
V. The following letter from a Companion may fitly close the correspondence for this year. I print it without suppression of any part, believing it may encourage many of my helpers, as it does myself:—
“My dear Master,—I have learnt a few facts about Humber keels. You know you were interested in my little keel scholars, because their vessels were so fine, and because they themselves were once simple bodies, almost guiltless of reading and writing. [[395]]And it seems as if even the mud gives testimony to your words. So if you don’t mind the bother of one of my tiresome letters, I’ll tell you all I know about them.
“The Humber keels are, in nearly all cases, the property of the men who go in them. They are house and home to the keel family, who never live on shore like other sailors. It is very easy work navigating the rivers. There’s only the worry of loading and unloading,—and then their voyages are full of leisure.
“Keelmen are rural sailors, passing for days and days between cornfields and poppy banks, meadows and orchards, through low moist lands, where skies are grand at sunrise and sunset.
“Now all this evidently makes a happy joyous life, and the smart colours and decoration of the boats are signs of it. Shouldn’t you say so? Well, then, independence, home, leisure and nature are right conditions of life—and that’s a bit of St. George’s doctrine I’ve verified nearly all by myself; and there are things I know about keel folks besides, which quite warrant my conclusions. But to see these very lowly craft stranded low on the mud at low tide, or squeezed in among other ships—big and grimy things—in the docks, you would think they were too low in the scale of shipping to have any pride or pleasure in life; yet I really think they are little arks, dressed in rainbows. Remember, please, Humber keels are quite different things to barges of any kind. And now keels are off my mind—except that if I can ever get anybody to paint me a gorgeous one, I shall send it to you.
“My dear Master, I have thought so often of the things you said about yourself, in relation to St. George’s work; and I feel sure that you are disheartened, and too anxious about it—that you have some sort of feeling about not being sufficient for all of it. Forgive me, but it is so painful to think that the Master is anxious about things which do not need consideration. You said, I think, the good of you was, that you collected teaching and laws for us. But is that just right? Think of your first impulse and [[396]]purpose. Was not that your commission? Be true to it. To me it seems that the good of you (as you say it) is that you have a heart to feel the sorrows of the world—that you have courage and power to speak against injustice and falsehood, and more than all, that you act out what you say. Everybody else seems asleep or dead—wrapped up in their own comfort or satisfaction,—and utterly deaf to any appeal. Do not think your work is less than it is, and let all unworthy anxieties go. The work is God’s, if ever any work was, and He will look after its success. Fitness or unfitness is no question, for you are chosen. Mistakes do not matter. Much work does not matter. It only really matters that the Master stays with us, true to first appointment; that his hand guides all first beginnings of things, sets the patterns for us,—and that we are loyal.
“Your affectionate servant.”
[1] My original sketch is now in the Schools of Oxford. [↑]
[2] See terminal Article of Correspondence. [↑]
[3] Conf. ‘Inferno,’ XXIII. 123. [↑]
[4] Mr. Darwin’s last discoveries of the gestures of honour and courtesy among baboons are a singular completion of the types of this truth in the natural world. [↑]
[5] In old English illuminated Psalters, of which I hope soon to send a perfect example to Sheffield to companion our Bible, the vignette of the Fool saying in his heart, ‘There is no God,’ nearly always represents him in this action. Vanni Fucci makes the Italian sign of the Fig,—‘A fig for you!’ [↑]