[5] See my reason stated, Letter LIX., p. 322. [↑]
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER LXIII.
I find it wholly impossible to crush into one Fors what I have been gathering of Bible lesson, natural history lesson, and writing lesson, and to leave room enough for what I have to give of immediate explanation to the Companions, now daily increasing in number. My readers must bear with me—I cannot do more than I am doing, though every day I wonder more at there being so many things apparently my duty to do, while I have only two feeble hands for all of them.
But this much of general statement of the meaning of our Companionship is now absolutely necessary.
Of course, the first natural idea taken up by persons who merely hear talk, or read newspapers, about the Company, is that their domain is intended for a refuge for the persons who join it—that within its walls the poor are at once to be made rich, and the sorrowful happy.
Alas, this is not by any means the notion of the St. George’s Company. It is to be a band of delivering [[80]]knights—not of churls needing deliverance; of eager givers and servants—not of eager beggars,[1] and persons needing service. It is only the Rich, and the Strong, whom I receive for Companions,—those who come not to be ministered unto, but to minister. Rich, yet some of them in other kind of riches than the world’s; strong, yet some in other than the world’s strength. But this much at least of literal wealth and strength they must have,—the power, and formed habit, of self-support. I accept no Companion by whom I am not convinced that the Society will be aided rather than burdened; and although I value intelligence, resolution, and personal strength, more than any other riches, I hope to find, in a little while, that there are people in the world who can hold money without being blinded, by their possession of it, to justice or duty.
The Companions whom I accept will be divided, according to their means and circumstances, into three classes.
The first and highest class will be called “Comites Ministrantes,” “Companions Servant.” It will be composed of the few who devote their main energy to the work of the Company; and who, as I do myself, and as the Master must always, pursue their private avocations only in subjection to its interests, being at the same time in positions absolutely independent, and openly shown to be so. [[81]]
The second, or middle class, will be called “Comites Militantes,” “Companions Militant.”