Bardsea, Ulverston,
November 3rd, 1879.
Dear Mr. Malleson,—I thank you for your letter, which I received this morning. Second thoughts are not always the best. Your own first thought about the motto which I prefixed to my notes was right; your second thought was wrong. It never occurred to me that anyone could possibly suppose that that motto was by me intended to be applied to myself, inasmuch as in these notes there is no "wound" inflicted on Mr. Ruskin, or even any "rebuke." On the contrary, I assume that he has evidence in support of his charges, although he has not produced it. The "rebuke" to which I alluded was Mr. Ruskin's rebuke. He is the "friend" whose wounds are faithful, and whose smitings are a kindness. For I have not the least doubt of his good-will towards the clergy, or of his earnest desire to see them all performing their sacred duties with zeal and knowledge. And it was as my acknowledgment of this that I prefixed the motto. With you I firmly believe that the standard which he takes is "lofty and Christian," and that it is one towards which we ought all of us to aim. The object of my notes was to show that the laity of England have, in the authorized teaching of the Church, a sufficient safeguard against any erroneous teaching which they may possibly hear from the pulpit or in the private ministrations of the clergy, and also a supplement to any defective teaching.
Very truly yours,
Edward Geoghegan.
From Joseph Gilburt, Esq.
Christmas Day, 1879.
The words "Thy will be done" are generally coupled with resignation, and very often with patience under chastisement. It is always to us a sad-coloured sentence, and a sentimental illuminator of the Lord's Prayer would in all probability make it so. Now, if we think for a moment what the state of things would be if the will of the Lord were done, we shall see it should be the brightest sentence we could conceive. God's will is our weal. Aspiration, not resignation, is the characteristic of its doing. There would certainly be no death,—that is decidedly contrary to His will; and by-and-by, when His will is done, there will be none. For the present, while His will is not yet done, we have the sure and certain hope that death will be—nay, is—conquered by anticipation.
If His will were done, all beautiful things would flourish, and all minds would answeringly rejoice in them.
Our men of the piercing eye—Turners, Hunts, Ruskins, etc.—show us, till we almost worship the state of things in cloud and mountain, river and sea, in hedgerow and wayside, even in cathedral and campanile, where God's will is done, and we are enchanted with their beauty. It is God's will that stones should be laid truly and carven well, and aptly described. And our men of the probe and the lens, the scientific openers of nature's secrets, are daily demonstrating new beauties in which the will of the Lord is done in the formation of bodies and working of forces. It is mere truism to add to this that the will of the Lord being done, none of the ills that are all of them indirectly or directly the result of not doing it could occur, and resignation would have no scope for exercise. There was One who always did it, and He for three years made sundry parts of Palestine a heaven,—with what results a many quondam poor folk testified. This leads me to say that I like to look upon the word heaven as a participle instead of a noun, as the state of being heaved or raised, rather than a place: and for this reason. The experience of every one of us suffices to prove that we are never so heaven, or raised in true happiness, moral dignity, and worth, as when we are in the company of one greater, wiser, or better than ourselves. Those who lead a humdrum life among mean persons, can testify what a heaven it is to be transplanted for ever so short a time to the company of a great and good man. Now the culminating, indeed all-absorbing, attraction of the heaven we all look to, is the presence and the companionship of the greatest and best; and the experience of ourselves tallies with the promise of St. John that it will have the effect of making us "like Him," when "we shall see Him as He is." Surely being heaven, or raised like that, is superior to any Mahomet's paradise that we can invent or distil out of the poetical parts of the Scriptures.