Letters to the Clergy on the Lord's Prayer and the Church Part 12

This Letter, after endorsing the expressions of the preceding one, deals apparently with Capital and Labour. The clergy, if not required to divide the inheritance among their brethren, or to actually serve tables, are, taking "Property is theft" as their text, to resolutely and daily inquire how the dinners of their flock are earned. The gist of the Letter seems to be that the worker earns and the capitalist steals his dinner. It is really possible that the clergy do constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth's sake, even though they may not subscribe to all the articles of some peculiar schemes of social science, nor hold some singular doctrines as to political economy. Doubtless were they to a.s.similate their conduct to that of an injudicious district-visitor, they would have to take a new view of "life and its sacraments," whatever this expression may mean.

It would seem as if the writer had yet to learn that a Christian Church may exist teaching the most dogmatic definitions of doctrine, binding, even in this respect, burdens on men's shoulders grievous to be borne, while its members may be patterns of self-denial in "offices of temporal ministry to the poor." He does not appear to regard with favour the "Evangelistic sect of the English Church;" if this is intended for the "Evangelical" sect, Charles Kingsley could say, in a certain place, of its founders, "They were inspired by a strange new instinct that G.o.d had bidden them 'to clothe the hungry and feed the naked.'" Yet these men thought that "justification by faith only" was the Gospel they were "to carry to mend the world with, forsooth."

LETTER XI

This concluding Letter calls but for slight remark,--of many portions we feel _O si sic omnia_! That there is much sorrowful truth underlying the unmeasured denunciations which have gone before few will care to deny.

Few there are who will not pray to be kept from the evils which the writer discerns, and against which he inveighs. Such will be the first to regret that the Letters, as they read them, seem to fall short of the fulness of the Catholic Faith. "The holy teachers of all nations:" was our blessed Lord but one of them? There is nothing in the Letters to show that "the full force and meaning" of Gospel teaching is concerned with anything beyond wealth, and comfort, and national prosperity, and domestic peace. Preaching the acceptable year of the Lord is something more surely than an invective against usury.

We read that in old times Bezaleel was filled for his own work with the Spirit of G.o.d, but we do not read that he aspired to become a religious teacher; and when we are told by one eminent in Art that a Church nineteen centuries old has yet to learn that the "will of the Lord" is a sanctification which brings comfort and wealth in its train, we think of a Moses who esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt, and then of a Paul who counted all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord.

G. W. WALL.

_From_ OXONIENSIS.

DEAR MR. MALLESON,--Many thanks for the pamphlet. You ask me to send you any remarks I may have to make on the Letters, and I gather from your note at the beginning of the Letters as they now stand, that you intend making use of any remarks sent you that may commend themselves to your judgment. I am not vain enough to think mine of any special value. I will, however, write you my feelings about them, encouraged to do so by your statement in the note to the pamphlet, that the use made of remarks sent you will be anonymous, if it is so desired.

First, as regards the general tone of the Letters. You tell me that the majority of the comments you have received have been hostile--people not taking their medicine without making wry faces. I am only surprised at the gentleness of the Letters, and I believe that if anyone will take the trouble to put down for himself on paper the sum of their contents, he will find it as difficult to gainsay as for careless readers it is easy to cavil at. On the other hand, the "hostile spirit" is readily provoked by the way in which some of the teaching of the Letters is put.

Pa.s.sages like the sixth paragraph in Letter X. appear an objectionable joke to some--perhaps to most--people; they do not see that it is really a serious jest, so put for brevity's sake, and that Ruskin might have put the same note to it as he has put to a pa.s.sage in the "Crown of Wild Olive," p. 85, 8vo ed.: "Quite serious all this, though it reads like jest." I remember once asking Ruskin if his apparent joking in some Oxford lectures was not likely to lessen his influence, and he at once said to me, "Remember that most of my apparent jokes are serious, _ghastly_ jests." I think he would be less often misunderstood, if this were more often understood.

Your own preface marks the two main points in the spirit of the Letters.

They are sternly practical, and at the same time their standard is one of an ideal perfection. People don't see that because the goal cannot be reached, the road towards it can still be trodden, and therefore they apply to the road an epithet which applies only to the goal. In this respect Ruskin's teaching might be mottoed with George Herbert's--

"Who aimeth at the sky Shoots higher much than he that means a tree."

In fact, Ruskin's teaching, like that of the Bible, is not unpractical, but _unpractised_.

I will now take the Letters in detail. The first four of them are merely introductory to the main matter of the eleven. In these first five two questions are asked--

1. What is a clergyman of the Church of England? And to this the suggested answer is (whom does it offend?), "A teacher of the Gospel of Christ to all nations."

2. What is the teaching of the Gospel he is to teach? What is that teaching, clearly and simply put?

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 G.o.d 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_ G.o.d (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. G.o.d 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 G.o.d the Father, which we can. This is again ill.u.s.trated 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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."

Letter X.--"Forgive us our trespa.s.ses." The explanation of trespa.s.ses, and subst.i.tution of _debts_ for it, is admirable ("Dimitte n.o.bis _debita_ nostra"), and admirably ill.u.s.trated by the sins of omission being condemned in Christ's judgment,--"I was hungry, and ye gave Me no meat."

The remarks on the "pleasantness" of the English liturgy recall those on the avoidance of unpleasantness by the English clergy in Letter VIII.

I pa.s.s over the notes on the advantage of "forms of prayer," and come to the end of Letter X. and Letter XI., which go together, and say practically, Pray honestly or not at all. "Faithful prayer implies always correlative exertions;" "dishonest prayer is blasphemy of the worst kind."

"Crown of Wild Olive," p. 55, again: "Everybody in this room has been taught to pray daily, 'Thy kingdom come.' Now, if we hear a man swear in the streets, we think it very wrong, and say he 'takes G.o.d's name in vain.' But there is a twenty times worse way of taking His name in vain than that. It is to _ask G.o.d for what we don't want_. He doesn't like that sort of prayer. If you don't want a thing, don't ask for it; such asking is the worst mockery of your King you can insult Him with; the soldiers striking Him on the head was nothing to that. If you do not wish for His kingdom, don't pray for it."

In fact, prayer is worse than useless if not sincere, and it is insincere if not carried out in the life of the "pray-er." Thus, "One hour in the execution of justice is worth seventy years of (insincere) prayer" (Mahometan maxim, "Crown of Wild Olive," p. 49).

I must stop. Only the fifth paragraph in Letter XI., about parents looking for "opportunities" for their children, is exactly parallel with "Sesame and Lilies," 8vo edition, p. 2 (Sub. 1, -- 2), which might be added in an ill.u.s.trative note. I must apologize for my long and rambling letter, but if it is of the least service to you I shall be content. I feel how inadequate it is to what I meant it to be, only I have no time just now to do more than write, as this letter is written--at the point of the pen.

OXONIENSIS.

LETTERS FROM

BRANTWOOD-ON-THE-LAKE

TO THE

VICARAGE OF BROUGHTON-IN-FURNESS

PREFACE

Some apology will naturally be expected for setting the following letters before the searching eye of a critical and possibly censorious public. I can only plead that the suggestion of their publication did not emanate from myself (for the idea of making these letters public property had never once in fifteen years crossed my mind), but was made to me by friends to whom it appeared that much in these letters is strongly characteristic of Mr. Ruskin, and ill.u.s.trates (much too indulgently, alas!) the estimate he is good enough to form of a correspondent who does not to this day clearly understand to what happy circ.u.mstance he is indebted for so fortunate a partiality. At the same time it must be confessed that _Laudari a viro laudato_ is a harmless ambition for the possession of a stimulus which is good for every soul of man.

I will say no more upon that subject, lest my self-depreciation should be set down to vanity. Nevertheless it has always been a source of innocent pleasure to me that I have been enabled to bring my ship without damage through so perilous a voyage to port in a safe and honourable harbourage.

The matters discussed in the following letters range only over a narrow field; but it will be found that they present a truly life-like picture of the writer with his shrewd common-sense and deeper wisdom, enlivened in no small measure by a quick impulsiveness which is sometimes rather startling. Some of his sudden sallies serve the purpose of the condiments, which displeasing if taken alone, give piquancy to our ordinary food.

F. A. MALLESON.