Letters to the Clergy on the Lord's Prayer and the Church Part 4

The ministers of the Church cannot safely be set free by Act of Parliament to teach whatever seems good to each. Some respect must be shown to congregations too. If the clergy claim on their side the right of independent thought, which they are quite justified in doing, the congregations on their side have a much greater right to a consistent teaching, which shall not distract their minds with strange and unwonted forms of Christianity.

Mr. Ruskin, as he often does, is going _too deep_. He asks for that which we shall never see in this world,--the simple, pure religion of the Bible to be taught in all singleness and simplicity of mind by men whose only commission is held from G.o.d, by or without the channel of human authority, to show men, women, and children the way "to the summit of the celestial mountains," and to set an awful warning by conspicuous beacons against the "creva.s.ses which go down quickest to the pit." But who shall say that he is wrong? Nay, rather, it is we that are wrong in resting satisfied with our low views of things, while Ruskin soars above our heads.

ON LETTER III

I would preface the few remarks I wish to make upon this letter by an extract from a letter just received from a dear good friend:

"I have already read these deeply interesting letters five times.

They are like 'the foam-globes of leaven.' I must say they have exercised my mind very much. Things in them which at first seem rather startling, prove on closer examination to be full of deep truth. The suggestions in them lead to 'great searchings of heart.'

There is much with which I entirely agree; much over which to ponder. What an insight into human nature is shown in the remark that though we are so ready to call ourselves 'miserable sinners'

we resent being accused of any special fault!

"S. B."

By the side of this, it will be instructive, though strange, if I place an extract from another note from one whom I have long known and highly esteemed; and it will be seen what a singular "discerner of hearts" and "divider of spirits" is this series of letters:--

"If they are really meant _au serieux_, I could not express any opinion of them without implying a reflection upon you also, as you seem to endorse them so fully. I prefer, therefore, to say merely that, as a whole, they offer one of the most remarkable instances I ever met with of the old adage, 'Ne sutor ultra crepidam.'"[12]

[12] Let me say here, once for all, that I have already three times had this proverb quoted against Mr. Ruskin; and no proverb could be more remote from the purpose. For while it is the shoemaker's business, _as a livelihood_, to make shoes, a painter's to paint pictures, the merchant's to sell goods, and perhaps Mr. Ruskin's to write books which every one reads, _religion is everybody's business_. Christian men and women, of all cla.s.ses and professions, make the Bible their study, because of its inestimable importance; and who shall say that they are not absolutely right? For my part I should be very glad to hear that my bootmaker was a religious man: his boots would be none the worse for it. I hope the _sutor_ will be brought in no more, unless he can appear with a better grace.

In spite of this I retain all my old high opinion of the writer of these lines, and feel convinced that he will soon think very differently.

Yes, it is as my first correspondent has said, "Things which at first seem startling, on examination prove to be full of deep truth." In the short compa.s.s of this Letter III. lies enfolded a vast question, which, in the midst of the friction and conflict of ages of strife, has been shuffled away into odd corners, to be brought out into life only now and then, when a man is born into the world who sees what few will even glance at, and who will say out that which ought to be spoken, though but few may listen. What is the question which is put here so tersely and so pointedly? It is this, which I am only putting a little differently, not with the most distant idea of improving upon Mr.

Ruskin's felicitous touches; but, because expressed in twofold fashion, what has escaped one may strike another in a different form.

Is a clergyman of the Church of England a teacher of the doctrine and practice and discipline of the Church of England within her limits only, narrow as they are, when compared with Christendom? or is there not rather a wider, more comprehensive Church yet--that of Christ upon earth--which he must serve, which he must preach, in forgetfulness of the limited boundaries within which by his education and his ordination vows he is _apparently_ bound to remain? Is there not enough of Christianity common to all the Christian nations upon earth, and which ought to be made the subject of teaching to the ignorant and the castaway? Is it quite a right thing that the natives of Madagascar, for instance, should see parties of missionaries arriving amongst them: one, in all the gorgeous trappings and with all the elaborate ritual of Rome; another in rusty black coats and hats and dirty white neckties, repudiating all but the very barest necessary ceremonial; a third, possibly disunited in itself, coming as High Churchmen or Low Churchmen, with differing peculiarities? Is this an edifying spectacle for the Malagasy? And can the Gospel be preached as effectually in this highly diversified fashion as it would be with the simplicity of a reasonable and just sufficiently elastic uniformity?

Coming before many people of infinite diversity of mind, it cannot be doubted that Christianity must necessarily take a variety of forms, to suit different intelligences, and adapt itself to differing situations.

But in all this large variety of forms of religion, ranging from mere paganism at one end, just a little unavoidably altered by the contact of Christianity, and at the other extremity a pure religion, but refined and intellectual, I do not see exactly what is the form of Christianity which the Church of England is to preach to the ma.s.ses at home and abroad. As long as England takes the Gospel to the ignorant in such infinitely diversified forms, it is as if an incapable general were to divide his forces preparatory to an a.s.sault upon a compact and well-defended stronghold.

It is enough to make one weep with vexation and humiliation to see what sort of religion would be presented to the world if some who claim to have all truth on their side could have their own way. I say to have the truth on their side,--which is a very different thing from being on the side of truth. There is even a new religion--for it is certainly not the old--growing popular with "thinkers," who write and read in the three great half-crown monthlies, which is evolved in the most curious variety out of their inner consciousness by religion-makers, whose fertile brains are the only soil that can bring forth such productions.

What is the vast uneducated world to do with these extraordinary forms of religion which are as many-sided and many-faced as their inventors?

Now Mr. Ruskin and many others see this state of things with pity and compa.s.sion, and ask, "Cannot this Gospel of Christ be put into such plain words and short terms as that a plain man may understand it?" Why is there no such easy summary provided by authority to teach the poor and simple? The Apostles' Creed is good for its own end and purpose, but it requires great expansion to be made to include Gospel teaching, and it contains nothing practical. The Thirty-nine Articles are not even intended (as Mr. Ruskin by some oversight seems to think they are) to be a summary of the Gospel. We have no concise and plain, clear and intelligible form of sound words to answer this most important end. The Church Catechism, from old a.s.sociations, belongs to childhood.

Every reasonable person must agree with Mr. Ruskin, that there could be no harm, but much good, in Christians making a little less of their Churchmanship, and a little more of their broad Christianity.

ON LETTER IV

Mr. Ruskin pleads in this letter with touching eloquence for the guidance of the law of love, that irresistible law, one effect of which is to give to the highest probability the force of a sufficient certainty, and establishes in the man the mental habit best described as _cert.i.tude_.

In Cardinal Newman's "History of My Religious Opinions," p. 18, he quotes some beautiful pa.s.sages from Keble's conversations with himself (disagreeing with him all the time), in which he had quoted, "I will guide thee _with mine eye_" (Psalm x.x.xii. 8), as the expression of the gentle suasive power that directs the steps of the child and friend of G.o.d, as distinguished from "the bit and bridle" laid upon horse and mule, who represent unwilling slaves recognising no law but that of force or coercion. It is an Eye whose gaze is ever fixed on us, the "Eye of G.o.d's Word," "like that of a portrait uniformly fixed on us, turn where we will."[13] And Keble is right so far as concerns the true children and friends of G.o.d, subject, as their highest control, to the law of love. Pure and exalted minds ever strain for, and yearn after, a general and outward manifestation of the witness that man is "the image and glory of G.o.d" (1 Cor. xi. 7).

[13] "Christian Year," St. Bartholomew's Day, with quotations from Miller's Bampton Lectures.

Unhappily, we are not so const.i.tuted by nature. The inroads and ravages of sin are but too evident, as well in those upon whom episcopal hands have been laid, as in the ranks of the laity. Are not wilfulness and pride of intellect and glorification of self ever exercising such a power in the earth, that checks and restraints are found absolutely necessary to curb and control the determination of many of the ministers of the Church not only to _think_ as seems good to them (which they have a perfect right to do), but openly to _teach and to preach_ whatever doctrines they may have conceived in their own minds, or have learnt from others, contrary to the received doctrines of the Church of England; which they have no right to do as long as they remain ministers of the Church whose doctrines they impugn?

Mr. Ruskin correctly a.s.sumes that the terms of the Lord's Prayer, being in the very words of Christ, do contain a body of Divine doctrine; and they would be the fittest to adopt as a standard of Christian teaching, _if_ only all men were as candid, sincere, and straightforward as himself. But because there is no certainty that any large and preponderating body of men will exhibit these graces of Christianity in themselves, and combine with them gentleness, tolerance, and forbearance, therefore they _must_ be held in "with bit and bridle,"--that is, with Articles and Creeds and declarations,--"lest they fall upon thee," and fill the Church more full of sedition, disaffection, and disquiet than it already is.

Cardinal Newman himself is an example of the necessity of the restraints of creeds, as well, indeed, as of their general inefficiency to maintain unity. His "History of my Religious Opinions," at least in its beginning, is but the story of a long succession of phases of belief and disbelief, originating in--what? In study of the Word of G.o.d? in Divine contemplation, or in devout and thoughtful meditation? No, indeed; but in walks and conversations, now with one friend, now with another, now round the Quadrangle of Oriel, then in Christ Church meadows; in fanciful, and apparently causeless, changes in his own mind, of which sometimes he can give the exact date, sometimes he has forgotten it, but which lead him out of one set of opinions into another in a helpless kind of way, as if he knew of no motive power but the influence of other men's minds or the momentary and fitful fluctuations of a spirit ever too much given to introspection to maintain a steady and uniform course.

What a contrast between the downright, manly straightforwardness of a Ruskin and the fluttering, uncertain flights of a Newman, ending in the cold, dead fixity of the Roman faith, whereof to doubt is to be d.a.m.ned!

ON LETTER V

The next paragraph to the last in this letter, contains a statement which at first might seem to be rashly expressed. But I was not long in apprehending that when Mr. Ruskin alludes to a scheme of pardon "for which we are supposed to be thankful, not to the Father, but to the Son," he was far from impugning that doctrine of the Atonement in which, as it is generally understood among Christian people, the whole plan of salvation centres.

But there seems to have been a fatality about this sentence. Numbers have read it and commented upon it, myself amongst the number, as if Mr.

Ruskin were here expressing _his own view_; instead of which, he is here quoting other men's opinions, to condemn them with severity. The _Record_ called it some of Mr. Ruskin's dross; but it is other people's dross, for which he would offer us pure gold.

I happened, a very short time previous to receiving this letter, to have had my attention attracted by the following pa.s.sage of Mr. Ruskin's own:--"When, in the desert, He was girding Himself for the work of life, angels of life came and ministered to Him; now, in the fair world, when He is girding Himself for the work of death [at the Transfiguration], the ministrants came to Him from the grave. But from the grave conquered. One from that tomb under Abarim, which His own hand had sealed long ago; the other from the rest which He had entered without seeing corruption."

Pleased with the truthful eloquence of this pa.s.sage, I placed it at the head of the chapter on the Transfiguration in my book on the Life and Work of Christ (still in the press). Having done so, it struck me that Mr. Ruskin, whether intentionally or undesignedly, had made the p.r.o.noun "His" to apply either to G.o.d the Father, or to G.o.d the Son. It may grammatically refer to either. From this I drew the conclusion which I expressed in a short letter to my friend, that, discarding the strictly human uses of language, which, from its unavoidable poverty, lacks the power of marking the true nature of the difference between the Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity, he had spoken of the Father and of the Son indiscriminately or indifferently, _i.e._, without a difference.

And so it really is. How shall a man, though at the highest he be "but a little lower than the angels," know and comprehend the G.o.dhead in its true and exact nature? The names father and son express an earthly relation perfectly well understood when belonging to ourselves, but when applied to the Supreme Divine Being, they must of necessity fall far short of expressing their true connexion with one another. They are, when applied to Heavenly beings, merely anthropomorphic terms used in compa.s.sion to our infirmities, and conveying to us only an approximation to the ideas intended. We say the Father sent the Son; the Son suffered for our sins. But since Father and Son are One, we are plainly expressing something short of the exact state of the case when we speak of our thankfulness to the Son as if we had no reason to be equally thankful to the Father.

The Athanasian Creed makes no great demand upon our mental powers when it requires of us, in speaking of the Trinity, neither to confound the Persons nor to divide the Substance; for, in truth, I suppose we are equally incapable of doing either.

These are Divine matters, of which, while the simplest may know enough, the wisest can never fathom the whole depth. For the Divine power and love, knowledge and compa.s.sion, will never be fully comprehended until we know even as we are known.

But, as I am abstaining from questioning Mr. Ruskin as to his meaning in any pa.s.sage, if it happens to be slightly obscure, awaiting his reply at the close of the book, I may here say that I believe that this sentence refers to a wild and unscriptural kind of preaching, happily becoming less common, in which undue stress is laid upon the wrathfulness of G.o.d, as contrasted with the mercy of the Saviour, as if we had only the Son to thank, and not our loving Father in Heaven, for the blessed hope of eternal life. Some there are, and always will be, who habitually err in not rightly dividing the Word of G.o.d, and giving undue prominence to a dark portion of doctrine, which is true enough in itself, but would be relieved of much of its gloom, if due prominence were given to other parts of the truth of G.o.d.

I do not mean to praise caution at the expense of courage. I have a const.i.tutional aversion to that caution allied to timidity and cowardice which prompts a man to look to his safety, comfort, and worldly repute as the first social law that concerns _him_. I admire rather the brave man who is ready to sacrifice all that, if he can, by so doing, gain the desired right end.

But in the case before us, it is not so. Men talk as if all we had to do to convert a sinner from the error of his way was to give him a good talking, forgetting that we have not a plastic material to work upon, but a most stubborn and intractable one, wherever interest is concerned; and that a bold bad man is generally proof against talk, and yields to no power but the grace of G.o.d exercised directly, and seconded by His heavy judgments. Have we not all seen, with shame and astonishment, the "wicked rich" regularly in their places at church, much oftener than the "wicked poor," who have less interest in playing the hypocrite? And have we not felt our utter powerlessness, whether by public preaching or by private monition, to find a way to those case-hardened hearts? What are we to do with such a man as Tennyson describes in "Sea Dreams," who

"began to bloat himself, and ooze All over with the fat affectionate smile That makes the widow lean;"

when his victim--

"Pursued him down the street, and far away, Among the honest shoulders of the crowd, Read rascal in the motions of his back, And scoundrel in the supple-sliding knee."

Here is all that we can do--told us in the last sweet lines:--

"'She sleeps: let us too, let all evil, sleep.