Then [Letter IV.] suggests that the Lord's Prayer may be taken as containing the cardinal points of that teaching, containing not all that is to be learnt, but what all have to learn. And so we come to [Letter V.]; and I tried, in reading the Letters for myself, to do for them what [Letter III.] asks clergymen to do for the Gospel.
[Letter V.]—A clergyman's first duty is to make the Lord's Prayer clear and living to his people. This is what Ruskin has elsewhere insisted on in other matters—"clear," know your duty and your belief; "living," realize it in your life—realize it "as a Captain's order, to be obeyed" ("Crown of Wild Olive," Introduction, p. 13. The whole of this Introduction reads well with these Letters). Then the first clause of the Prayer is set forth as putting before us God as a loving Father.
[Letter VI.]—"Hallowed be Thy name." How do we fulfil the hope in our lives? How do we betray it? Not in swearing only, as we are apt to think, but in the blasphemy of false and hypocritical prayer to, and praise of, preaching about God (last paragraph of the Letter). Clergymen, it is added, can prevent openly wicked men from being in their congregations (they are supposed to do so: Rubrics 2 and 3 before the Holy Communion Service); they can not only compel the wicked poor into, but expel the wicked rich out of, churches. God sees the heart: the clergy should look to the hands and lips.
[Letter VII.]—"Thy kingdom come:"—not an allusion to the second coming of the Son, which we cannot hasten, but to the coming of the kingdom of God the Father, which we can. This is again illustrated by the "Crown of Wild Olive" (I daresay it is by others of Ruskin's books, but it is convenient to refer chiefly to one, and that the one which contains what he calls his most biblical lecture), p. 56: "Observe it is a kingdom that is to come to us; we are not to go to it. Also it is not to be a kingdom of the dead, but of the living. Also it is not to come all at once, but quietly ... without observation. Also it is not to come outside of us, but in our hearts: 'the kingdom of God is within you.'" This is the sense in which we can hasten it.
[Letter VIII.] begins with a hit at the pleasure priests take in their priesthood's dignity, and at their avoidance of its unpleasant duties, and at their sometimes wearisome preaching.
Have they ever taught "Thy will be done," as it should be—1. In our own sanctification; 2. In understanding that will, and doing it, and striving to get it done (knowing their duty and doing it, and it alone)?
The remarks about the mediatorial (absolving-from-punishment) and the pastoral (purging-from-sin) functions of a "pastor," seem to me quite admirable.
The end of the Letter is subsequently amplified, [Letter X.]
[Letter IX.]—"Give us this day our daily bread." Yes, but we must work for it. "The man that will not work, neither shall he eat." A cardinal point with Ruskin: "But if you do" (i.e., wish for God's kingdom), "you must do more than pray for it, you must work for it" ("Crown of Wild Olive," p. 56).
And the clergyman has to teach ([Letter IX.] goes on) what that work is and how it is to be done; and the life, to which their teaching should lead, is one "moderate in its self-indulgence, wide in its offices of temporal ministry to the poor," in the absence of which, prayer for harvest is mere blasphemy. For the spiritual bread is the first thing, and a clergyman's first message, "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve."