ESSAYS AND COMMENTS
ON THE
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.