Letters to the Clergy on the Lord's Prayer and the Church Part 3

BRANTWOOD, _3rd September_.

DEAR MR. MALLESON,--I have been very long before trying to say so much as a word about the sixth clause of the Pater; for whenever I began thinking of it, I was stopped by the sorrowful sense of the hopeless task you poor clergymen had, nowadays, in recommending and teaching people to love their enemies, when their whole energies were already devoted to swindling their friends.

But, in any days, past or now, the clause is one of such difficulty, that, to understand it, means almost to know the love of G.o.d which pa.s.seth knowledge.

But, at all events, it is surely the pastor's duty to prevent his flock from _mis_-understanding it; and above all things to keep them from supposing that G.o.d's forgiveness is to be had simply for the asking, by those who "wilfully sin after they have received the knowledge of the truth."

There is one very simple lesson, also, needed especially by people in circ.u.mstances of happy life, which I have never heard fully enforced from the pulpit, and which is usually the more lost sight of, because the fine and inaccurate word "trespa.s.ses" is so often used instead of the simple and accurate one, "debts." Among people well educated and happily circ.u.mstanced, it may easily chance that long periods of their lives pa.s.s without any such conscious sin as could, on any discovery or memory of it, make them cry out, in truth and in pain, "I have sinned against the Lord." But scarcely an hour of their happy days can pa.s.s over them without leaving--were their hearts open--some evidence written there that they have "left undone the things that they ought to have done," and giving them bitterer and heavier cause to cry and cry again--for ever, in the pure words of their Master's prayer, "Dimitte n.o.bis _debita_ nostra."

In connection with the more accurate translation of "debts," rather than "trespa.s.ses," it would surely be well to keep constantly in the mind of complacent and inoffensive congregations, that in Christ's own prophecy of the manner of the last judgment, the condemnation is p.r.o.nounced only on the sins of omission: "I was hungry, and ye gave Me no meat."

But, whatever the manner of sin, by offence or defect, which the preacher fears in his people, surely he has of late been wholly remiss in compelling their definite recognition of it, in its several and personal particulars. Nothing in the various inconsistency of human nature is more grotesque than its willingness to be taxed with any quant.i.ty of sins in the gross, and its resentment at the insinuation of having committed the smallest parcel of them in detail. And the English Liturgy, evidently drawn up with the amiable intention of making religion as pleasant as possible to a people desirous of saving their souls with no great degree of personal inconvenience, is perhaps in no point more unwholesomely lenient than in its concession to the popular conviction that we may obtain the present advantage, and escape the future punishment, of any sort of iniquity, by dexterously concealing the manner of it from man, and triumphantly confessing the quant.i.ty of it to G.o.d.

Finally, whatever the advantages and decencies of a form of prayer, and how wide soever the scope given to its collected pa.s.sages, it cannot be at one and the same time fitted for the use of a body of well-taught and experienced Christians, such as should join the services of a Church nineteen centuries old,--and adapted to the needs of the timid sinner who has that day first entered its porch, or of the remorseful publican who has only recently become sensible of his call to a pew.

And surely our clergy need not be surprised at the daily increasing distrust in the public mind of the efficacy of Prayer, after having so long insisted on their offering supplication, _at least_ every Sunday morning at eleven o'clock, that the rest of their lives hereafter might be pure and holy, leaving them conscious all the while that they would be similarly required to inform the Lord next week, at the same hour, that "there was no health in them"!

Among the much rebuked follies and abuses of so-called "Ritualism," none that I have heard of are indeed so dangerously and darkly "Ritual" as this piece of authorized mockery of the most solemn act of human life, and only entrance of eternal life--Repentance.

Believe me, dear Mr. Malleson, Ever faithfully and respectfully yours, J. RUSKIN.

XI

[Greek: kai me eisenegkes hemas eis peirasmon, alla rhusai hemas apo tou ponerou; hoti sou estin he basileia kai he dunamis kai he doxa eis tous aionas; amen.]

_Et ne nos inducas in tentationem; sed libera nos a malo; Quia tuum est regmum, potentia, et gloria in saecula saeculorum. Amen._

BRANTWOOD, _14th September, 1879_.

DEAR MR. MALLESON,--The gentle words in your last letter referring to the difference between yourself and me in the degree of hope with which you could regard what could not but appear to the general mind Utopian in designs for the action of the Christian Church, surely might best be answered by appeal to the consistent tone of the prayer we have been examining.

Is not every one of its pet.i.tions for a perfect state? and is not this last clause of it, of which we are to think to-day--if fully understood--a pet.i.tion not only for the restoration of Paradise, but of Paradise in which there shall be no deadly fruit, or, at least, no tempter to praise it? And may we not admit that it is probably only for want of the earnest use of this last pet.i.tion, that not only the preceding ones have become formal with us, but that the private and simply restricted prayer for the little things we each severally desire, has become by some Christians dreaded and unused, and by others used faithlessly, and therefore with disappointment?

And is it not for want of this special directness and simplicity of pet.i.tion, and of the sense of its acceptance, that the whole nature of prayer has been doubted in our hearts, and disgraced by our lips; that we are afraid to ask G.o.d's blessing on the earth, when the scientific people tell us He has made previous arrangements to curse it; and that, instead of obeying, without fear or debate, the plain order, "Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full," we sorrowfully sink back into the apology for prayer, that "it is a wholesome exercise, even when fruitless," and that we ought piously always to suppose that the text really means no more than "Ask, and ye shall _not_ receive, that your joy may be _empty_"?

Supposing we were first all of us quite sure that we _had_ prayed, honestly, the prayer against temptation, and that we would thankfully be refused anything we had set our hearts upon, if indeed G.o.d saw that it would lead us into evil, might we not have confidence afterwards that He in whose hand the King's heart is, as the rivers of water, would turn our tiny little hearts also in the way that they should go, and that _then_ the special prayer for the joys He taught them to seek, would be answered to the last syllable, and to overflowing?

It is surely scarcely necessary to say, farther, what the holy teachers of all nations have invariably concurred in showing,--that faithful prayer implies always correlative exertion; and that no man can ask honestly or hopefully to be delivered from temptation, unless he has himself honestly and firmly determined to do the best he can to keep out of it. But, in modern days, the first aim of all Christian parents is to place their children in circ.u.mstances where the temptations (which they are apt to call "opportunities") may be as great and as many as possible; where the sight and promise of "all these things" in Satan's gift may be brilliantly near; and where the act of "falling down to worship me" may be partly concealed by the shelter, and partly excused, as involuntary, by the pressure, of the concurrent crowd.

In what respect the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of _them_, differ from the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, which are G.o.d's for ever, is seldom, as far as I have heard, intelligibly explained from the pulpit; and still less the irreconcilable hostility between the two royalties and realms a.s.serted in its sternness of decision.

Whether it be indeed Utopian to believe that the kingdom we are taught to pray for _may_ come--verily come--for the asking, it is surely not for man to judge; but it is at least at his choice to resolve that he will no longer render obedience, nor ascribe glory and power, to the Devil. If he cannot find strength in himself to advance towards Heaven, he may at least say to the power of h.e.l.l, "Get thee behind me;" and staying himself on the testimony of Him who saith, "Surely I come quickly," ratify his happy prayer with the faithful "Amen, even so, come, Lord Jesus."

Ever, my dear friend, Believe me affectionately and gratefully yours, J. RUSKIN.

ESSAYS AND COMMENTS

ON THE

FOREGOING LETTERS

BY THE EDITOR

ESSAYS AND COMMENTS

Feeling deeply, and anxiously, the greatness of the responsibility laid upon me to act, as it were, the part of an envoy between so eminent a teacher as Mr. Ruskin and my brethren in the Ministry, I have thought that it might not be taken amiss if I prefaced my account of the origin of the series of letters placed in my hands for publication (see Letter 8th July, 1879)[9] with just a mere allusion to one written to me four years ago.

[9] No. IV.

One or two imperfect conversations, leading up to the subject of the Resurrection, which had been broken off by accidental circ.u.mstances, together with the letter alluded to, had stimulated in me a feeling of something more than curiosity--rather one of anxious interest--to learn more of Mr. Ruskin's views upon matters which are at the present day giving rise to a good deal of agitated discussion among intellectual men.

I am thankful to be able to avow that, for my own part, I am a firm and conscientious, not a thoughtless and pa.s.sive, believer in the doctrines of the Church of Christ as held by the majority of serious-minded religious men in the Established Church. Mr. Ruskin was mistaken in his much too ready a.s.sumption that I (simply because I am a clergyman) am a believer on compulsion; that for the peace of my soul I have only to thank religious anaesthetics, and that I ever preach against the wickedness of involuntary doubt. G.o.d forbid that I should ever take on myself to denounce as wilful sin any scruples of conscience which owe their origin to honest inquiries after truth. I trust that he knows me better now.

Feeling thus decided and certain as to the ground I stand upon, and earnestly desirous on every account to investigate the nature of Mr.

Ruskin's doubts, whatever they might be, in a most fraternal spirit, as a kindly-favoured friend and neighbour (for, in our lake and mountain district, an interval of a dozen miles does not destroy neighbourhood between spirits with any degree of kinship), I sought for a more lengthened conversation, and obtained the opportunity without difficulty. The occasion was found in a very delightful summer afternoon on the lake, and up the sides of the Old Man of Coniston, to view a group of remarkable rocks by the desolate, storm-beaten crags of Goat's Water,[10] that saddest and loneliest of mountain tarns, which lies in the deep hollow between the mountain and its opposing b.u.t.tress, the Dow Crags. This most interesting ramble in the undivided company of one so highly and so deservedly valued in the world of letters and of art and higher matters yet, served to my mind for more purposes than one, while we wandered amidst impressive scenes, pa.s.sing from the sweet and gentle peaceful loveliness of the bright green vale of Coniston and its charming lake to the bleak desolation, the terrible sublimity of the mountain tarn barriered in by its stupendous crags, amongst which lay those singular-looking, weather-beaten, and lightning-riven rocks which were the more immediate object of our visit.

[10] "Deucalion," p. 222.

But to myself the chief and happiest result of our conversation was the firm conviction that neither the censorious and unthinking world, nor perhaps even Mr. Ruskin himself, knows how deeply and truly a Christian man, in the widest sense of the word, Mr. Ruskin is. It is neither the time nor the place, nor indeed would it be consistent with propriety, to a.n.a.lyze before others the convictions formed on that memorable summer afternoon. It must suffice for the present to say that the opinions then formed laid the foundation of a friendship on a happier basis than that which had heretofore been permitted me, and prepared my way to enter with confidence upon the plan of which the present volume is the fruit.

Last June, in the course of a short visit to Brantwood, I proposed to Mr. Ruskin to come to address the members of a Northern Clerical Society, a body of some seventy or eighty clergy, who have done me the honour to appoint me their honorary secretary, now for about nine years, since its foundation. On the ground of impaired health, the legacy left behind it by the serious illness which had, two years before, threatened even his life, Mr. Ruskin excused himself from appearing in person before our Society; but proposed instead to write letters to me which might serve as a basis for discussion amongst us.

Letter I. will explain the origin of the series that come after.

ON LETTER II

The question laid down in this letter, cleared of all metaphorical ornament, is, as is perfectly natural and instinctive with Mr. Ruskin, one which goes down to the foundation of things--here, the character and mission of the Christian ministry. Are we (Mr. Ruskin implies, Are we _not_?) bound to believe and to teach after certain formulae, which, being many of them peculiar to ourselves, separate us from the national Churches of France and Italy? Are we free, or are we bound? Or do we enjoy a reasonable amount of liberty and no more? On the platform we occupy do we allow none but English Churchmen to stand? Must we keep all other Christians at arm's length? Do the conditions attached to the emoluments we receive prohibit us from holding or teaching any other opinions than those we have subscribed to?

It is a question not to be approached without a tremor. But no abstract answer can well be given. Human nature replies for itself in the spectacle of the clergy of the Church of England divided and subdivided; here deeply sundered, there of different complexions amicably blending together, holding every variety of opinion which the Church allows or disallows within her borders. Human nature absolutely refuses to be shackled in its positive beliefs. Authority may try, or even appear to perform, the feat of fettering thought and making men march in step to one common end in orderly ranks; but she has invariably at last to confess her impotence.[11]

[11] The clergyman who subscribes still whispers to himself, or soon will, "Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri."