The next paragraph is more bitter still; but happily for the cause of sober truth, it is satire again; and nothing can be more obvious than the fact that prayer, to be Common Prayer, cannot at the same time suit every condition of mind, the calm and the agitated, the strained and the relaxed, the rejoicing and the sorrowful. But we are not dependent upon public worship for the satisfaction of our spiritual wants, as long as we can resort to private prayer and family prayer. And, indeed, it requires no wonderful stretch of our powers of adaptation to use the most strenuous private prayer in the midst of the congregation; and the "remorseful publican" and the "timid sinner" are not bound to the words before them, or if they do follow these words, I am sure there is enough depth in them to satisfy the views of the most conscience-stricken. Common Prayer is calm to the calm, and passionate to the passionate. It is all things to all men, just according to their frame of mind at the time.
But alas for my good kind friend! as we get nearer to the end of the letter, the satire waxes fiercer, and the adherence to the truth of nature grows fainter. Does Mr. Ruskin seriously, or only sarcastically, tell us that the assaults upon the divine power of prayer gain any force from the circumstance that we are constrained to pray daily for forgiveness, never getting so far as to need it no longer? From the first day that we lisped at our mother's knee, "Forgive us our trespasses," until, bowed with age, we still say, "Forgive us our trespasses," we have never stood, and never will stand, one day less in need of forgiveness than another day—or our Lord would have provided a thanksgiving and a prayer for the perfected.
I believe everywhere else I recognize, even in the most startling passages, an element of truth. But in the latter half of this letter, not even the large amount of acrimony and severity allowed to the mode of address called satire can quite reconcile us to its marvellous asperity.
On Letter XI
I cannot but feel astonished and grieved at the perversity of those who[19] persist in looking upon Mr. Ruskin as altogether a noxious kind of a scribbler, and likely to do much injury by the unflagging constancy with which he perseveres in pointing his finger at all our weak and sore places. And yet it cannot be said that even if he does "lade men with burdens grievous to be borne," he himself "touches not the burdens with one of his fingers."
But let us consider this last letter. Is not every word of it true—severely and austerely true,—but still true? But yet here still the fault remains (though I say it with the utmost deference, remembering that, after all, I have infinitely more to learn than I have to teach), the fault remains that the truth is put too keenly, too incisively, to be classed with practical truths.
Yes, the petitions of the Lord's Prayer are for a perfect state in this life. We do pray for a Paradise upon earth, where either temptation shall no longer exist, or where sin shall have lost its power to injure by losing its power to allure. But will the most incessant prayer, individual, combined, or congregational, ever bring us to perfection? Alas! my friend, you would gladly persuade us so; you would lead the way yourself, but that the first half-dozen steps you take would have, or have long ago, proved to you that sin is ever present, even in the best and purest of men.
I trust they are very few indeed who are so easily persuaded by the conceited self-sufficiency of the "scientific people" to cease from prayer under the belief that all things move on under the control of inflexible laws, which neither prayer nor the will of God, if God has a will, can change or modify. Magee[20] has a valuable note on the subject of the "Consistency of Prayer with the Divine Immutability," in which he puts this truth in a mathematical form. He says, "The relation of God to man + prayer is different from the relation of God to man – prayer. Yet God remains constant. It is man who is the better or the worse for prayer or no prayer."
It is pleasant to reflect that with the simple-minded Christian the belief in Christ, because he knows that Christ loved him and died for him, is exceedingly little moved by these so-called scientific doubts. The propounders of these entangling questions move in a region where he would feel cold and his life would be crushed out of him, and he declines to follow science at so great a cost, believing besides that science might often be better termed nescience, for he has no faith in such science. Instead of being presented with clear deductions, drawn from observation and experience, he sees but too plainly that, as each philosopher frames his own belief out of his inner consciousness, there cannot fail to come out a very large variety of beliefs, and that, if the religion of the Bible were exploded and became an obsolete thing, its place would be usurped by a motley crowd of infinitely varied creeds of every shape and hue, each claiming for itself, with more or less modesty and reserve, but with just equal rights, the supremacy over men's consciences. And in the meanwhile, women and children and the poor, and in fact all who are not altogether highly, transcendentally intellectual, must, for want of the requisite faculties and opportunities, do without any religion at all. I suppose most people can see this, and therefore will pay a very limited attention to the claims and pretensions of science-worship.