During the closing and most fruitful period of his career, Ruskin's supreme thought had to do with the manufacture of souls of good quality. Quite beyond the influence of some hero or statesman was the influence, hidden, constant, but immeasurable, of the spirit of the invisible God. "If you ask me for the sum of my life-work, the answer is this,—whatever Jesus saith unto you, do that." Daniel Webster himself never made a more powerful plea for the Christian Church and preacher than Ruskin's statement on the importance of the hour on Sunday, after the people have been exposed for six days to the full weight of the world's temptation. That hour when men and women come in, breathless and weary with the week's labour and "a man sent with a message, which is a matter of life or death, has but thirty minutes to get at the separate hearts of a thousand men, to convince them of all their weaknesses, to shame them for all their sins, to warn them of all their dangers, to try by this way and that to stir the hard fastenings of those doors, where the Master Himself has stood and knocked, yet none opened, and to call at the openings of those dark streets, where Wisdom herself has stretched forth her hands and no man hath regarded,—thirty minutes to raise the dead in!—let us but once understand and feel this, and the pulpit shall become a throne like unto a marble rock in the desert, about which the people gather to slake their thirst."

And in the very fullness of his power, when his bow was in full strength, and every sentence and arrow tipped with fire, Ruskin gathered his strength for a final study of the obligations of wealth to poverty, of wisdom to ignorance,—the opportunity of rich men to serve their generation, and make the world once more an Eden garden of happiness and delight. Just as men sweep together an acre of red roses, and condense the blossoms into a little vial filled with the precious attar, we may condense several volumes of Ruskin into a single parable. Why has one man ten-talent power? Why have ninety-nine men only one-talent power? Why is one boy ten years of age and strong, while in the same orphan asylum are ninety-nine little boys one year old? And what if some kind hand hath spread the table with orange, date, and plum, with every sweet fruit and nutritious grain? Has the ten-year-old boy, answering to the ten-talent man, a right to dash up to the table, and with one hand sweep together all the fruits, and with the other hand, all the cereals, milk and cream, while he shouts to the ninety-nine little one-year-old children, "Every fellow for himself! Get all you can! Keep all you can! The devil take the hindmost!" This, says Ruskin, is the fashion of certain rust-kings, and moth-kings. Why is that one boy ten years of age? Is his strength not for the sole purpose of carrying these foods to the little one-year-old children, scarcely able to provide for themselves? It is said of the Master and Lord of us all, that "being rich, for our sakes He made Himself poor." And the kings in the realm of art, or song, of industry or finance, have been ordained by God, not to loot the world of its blossoms, not to squeeze men, like so many purple clusters, into their own cups. In the vegetable world the expert pinches off ninety-nine roses, and forces the rich and vital currents into one great rose at the end of the stock. But what if a ten-talent man should pinch out ninety-nine lesser men as competitors, and force the vital elements of all their separate factories and stores, that were intended to be distributed among many men, of lesser gifts, into his one treasure house?

Ruskin not only pointed the moral but fashioned his own life after it. He was one of the few men who have lived what they taught. He fell heir to what his generation thought was a very large fortune. He made another fortune by sheer force of genius. But he held his treasure as a trust fund in the interest of God's poor. And so-called practical men turned upon him, with the bitterness and hate of wolves that try to pull down some noble stag. His articles were shut out of the Cornhill Magazine. Through the influence of selfish men who feared the influence of his teachings upon the people, he was for a time bitterly assaulted. Scoffed at and maligned, he overworked and passed from one attack of brain fever to another. When it was too late, the angry voices died out of the air, and his sun cleared itself of clouds. When at last a wreath of honour was offered Ruskin, it was as if an old man had taken the blossoms and the laurel leaf, and carried them out to God's acre, to be placed in the snow upon his mother's grave. But ours is a world that first slays the prophet and then builds his sepulchre. It is indeed, as the wise man said, a world that crucifies the Saviour.

And we can say of Ruskin what James Martineau said of the world's injustice, that "in almost every age which has stoned the prophets, and loaded its philosophers with chains, the ringleaders of the anarchy have been, not the lawless and infamous of their day, but the archons and chief priests, who could protect their false idols with a grand and stiff air, and do their wrongs in the halls of justice, and commit their murders as a savoury sacrifice; so that it has been by no rude violence, but by clean and holy hands that the guides, the saints, the redeemers of men have been poisoned in Athens, tortured in Rome, burned in Florence, crucified in Jerusalem." And we ought not to be surprised that a world that threatened Milton, starved Swammerdam, imprisoned Bunyan, and assassinated Lincoln, should break the health and the heart of John Ruskin, who poured out his very life-blood to redeem the people from ignorance, and sloth, and wrong.

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