Letters to the Clergy on the Lord's Prayer and the Church Part 7

It is of extreme difficulty to _understand_ the clause, says Mr. Ruskin.

Replies some slow-witted preacher: "Where is the difficulty? I both understand it and explain it with perfect ease!" What! understand the precious conditions on which forgiveness will be extended to us! The question of G.o.d's forgiveness is not a _simple_ question. It is complicated by its relation to men's mutual forgiveness of each other, and that again by the practical difficulty of knowing when we can, and when, from the very nature of the case, we cannot, forgive. Here are surely elements of difficulty quite sufficient to justify the remark that "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 we may, at any rate, guard our people against _misunderstanding_ it; and they are guilty, and full of guilt, who live in sin,--sins of avarice, of ill temper, of calumny, of hatred, of sensuality, and of unforgivingness, and yet daily ask to be forgiven, because, forsooth, they are innocent of any bad intention!

No man or woman who sins with the knowledge that it _is_ sin can have G.o.d's forgiveness. It is no use to plead the frailty of the flesh. It is wilful, knowing, deliberate sin; and it will not be forgiven without a very living, earnest, and working faith indeed.

I question much whether we preachers of the Gospel say enough upon this point,--not at all that we underrate its importance, nor that we overrate the importance of that which we are apt to call Gospel preaching [Greek: kat' exochen], namely, the doctrine of the atonement by the Blood of Christ, which is the brightness and glory of the Gospel message, but is no more all of it than that the sum of the Lord's Prayer is contained in one of its clauses.

"As we forgive them that trespa.s.s against us." Shall I be pardoned for venturing here upon a remark which seems needful to make in the presence of so much that appears to be erroneous on the subject of human forgiveness? And it is more especially necessary to be understood in the case of the clergy, because such large demands are made upon their forgiveness as it is impossible to satisfy. I do not at all say that there are trespa.s.ses which men cannot forgive,--sins, I mean, of the ordinary type, and not crimes. But I do say that there are times and circ.u.mstances under which forgiveness is a moral impossibility. And yet the world expects a clergyman to be ever walking up and down in society with forgiveness on his lips and forgiveness in both his hands. Our Lord said, "If thy brother trespa.s.s against thee, rebuke him; and _if he repent_, forgive him" (Luke xvii. 3); and forgiveness is to follow each successive profession of repentance. And in Matt. xviii. 22, though repentance is not named, it is manifestly implied. In 2 Cor. ii. 7, again, sorrow for the sin is a condition of forgiveness. This, then, is the rule and condition of forgiveness, that our brother _repent_; and manifestly it must be so; for the act of forgiveness requires a correlative disposition to seek and receive forgiveness, just as a gift implies not only a giver but a receiver, or it cannot be a gift, do what we will. I think this is extremely apt to be overlooked even by the larger, that is, the more emotional and impulsive part of the world, though not, of course, by the more thoughtful; and clergymen especially are asked to speak fair, and sue for peace, and all but ask for forgiveness of those who are habitually and obstinately bent upon doing them all the wrong and injury in their power, and using them with the most intolerable harshness.

What, then, does true religion require of us if such circ.u.mstances make forgiveness impossible? To be ever ready, ever prepared to forgive; to seek every opening, every avenue to peace without sacrifice of self-respect and manly independence; to watch for opportunities to do kindnesses to the most inveterate enemy,--even where a change of heart appears hopeless. This is possible to a Christian, and this is what Christ demands. But He does not demand impossibilities. He does not ask us to do more than our Heavenly Father Himself, who forgives the returning sinner even "a great way off," if his face be but homeward; but says nothing of forgiveness to him whose back is towards his home, and whose heart dwells far away.

I am sure Mr. Ruskin does not mean that no clergyman is sensible of the guilt of sins of omission. But he is speaking as a layman, who has heard in his time a great many preachers, and it is very probable indeed that he has not heard many dwell long and forcibly on the fact, which is indeed a fact, that the guilt of sins of omission is the burden of Christ's teaching, and that more parables and more preaching are directed against the sin of doing nothing at all than against the positive and active wickedness of bad men. If we will be candid, we must agree with him that in our general teaching we do lay much less emphasis on such sins than our Lord does in _His_ teaching.

But in the paragraph which follows, I confess that, following up a charge which is sadly too true, that there is a grotesque inconsistency "in the willingness of human nature 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," there comes a sentence in which the Christian philosopher loses himself in the caustic satirist, and that this vein continues to the end of the letter. In satire, such is its very essence, truth is ever travestied. It is truth still, but the truth in unfamiliar, and, for the most part, unacceptable guise. There is just an undercurrent of truth, and no more, in the statement, not very seriously made, one would suppose, that the English Liturgy was "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."

If the whole naked truth were spoken with the deepest gravity that the awful pressure of our sins demands, the English Liturgy would be a continuous wail of grief and repentance. For if anything is great, and loud, and urgent, it is the cry of our sins. But co-extensive with our sins is the love of our Father; and, therefore, our mourning is changed into rejoicing and thankfulness, and this picture of the sinner "dexterously concealing the manner of his sin from man, and triumphantly confessing the quant.i.ty of it to G.o.d," is merely a satire.

The next paragraph is more bitter still; but happily for the cause of sober truth, it is satire again; and nothing can be more obvious than the fact that prayer, to be Common Prayer, cannot at the same time suit every condition of mind, the calm and the agitated, the strained and the relaxed, the rejoicing and the sorrowful. But we are not dependent upon public worship for the satisfaction of our spiritual wants, as long as we can resort to private prayer and family prayer. And, indeed, it requires no wonderful stretch of our powers of adaptation to use the most strenuous private prayer in the midst of the congregation; and the "remorseful publican" and the "timid sinner" are not bound to the words before them, or if they do follow these words, I am sure there is enough depth in them to satisfy the views of the most conscience-stricken.

Common Prayer is calm to the calm, and pa.s.sionate to the pa.s.sionate. It is all things to all men, just according to their frame of mind at the time.

But alas for my good kind friend! as we get nearer to the end of the letter, the satire waxes fiercer, and the adherence to the truth of nature grows fainter. Does Mr. Ruskin seriously, or only sarcastically, tell us that the a.s.saults upon the divine power of prayer gain any force from the circ.u.mstance that we are constrained to pray daily for forgiveness, never getting so far as to need it no longer? From the first day that we lisped at our mother's knee, "Forgive us our trespa.s.ses," until, bowed with age, we _still_ say, "Forgive us our trespa.s.ses," we have never stood, and never will stand, one day less in need of forgiveness than another day--or our Lord would have provided a thanksgiving and a prayer for the perfected.

I believe everywhere else I recognize, even in the most startling pa.s.sages, an element of truth. But in the latter half of this letter, not even the large amount of acrimony and severity allowed to the mode of address called satire can quite reconcile us to its marvellous asperity.

ON LETTER XI

I cannot but feel astonished and grieved at the perversity of those who[19] persist in looking upon Mr. Ruskin as altogether a noxious kind of a scribbler, and likely to do much injury by the unflagging constancy with which he perseveres in pointing his finger at all our weak and sore places. And yet it cannot be said that even if he does "lade men with burdens grievous to be borne," he himself "touches not the burdens with one of his fingers."

[19] It was but yesterday that a voice reached me from one of the remotest of our Ultima Thules amongst these mountains, affirming, with something like self-gratulation, that he "cared less than nothing for anything Mr. Ruskin might write outside the subject of Art!" Yet one of the best of our Bishops--and we have many good ones--wrote by the same post: "Mr. Ruskin's letters are full of suggestive thoughts, and must do anyone good, if only in getting one out of the ruts." But, alas! against this I must needs set the dictum of another dignitary of the Church, an intensely practical man: "I have a great reverence for Mr. Ruskin's genius, and for what he has written in time past, and on this account I would rather not say a single word in comment upon these letters;" and again--"I really could not discuss them seriously."

But let us consider this last letter. Is not every word of it true--severely and austerely true,--but still true? But yet here still the fault remains (though I say it with the utmost deference, remembering that, after all, I have infinitely more to learn than I have to teach), the fault remains that the truth is put too keenly, too incisively, to be cla.s.sed with practical truths.

Yes, the pet.i.tions of the Lord's Prayer are for a perfect state in this life. We do pray for a Paradise upon earth, where either temptation shall no longer exist, or where sin shall have lost its power to injure by losing its power to allure. But will the most incessant prayer, individual, combined, or congregational, ever bring us to perfection?

Alas! my friend, you would gladly persuade us so; you would lead the way yourself, but that the first half-dozen steps you take would have, or have long ago, proved to you that sin is ever present, even in the best and purest of men.

I trust they are very few indeed who are so easily persuaded by the conceited self-sufficiency of the "scientific people" to cease from prayer under the belief that all things move on under the control of inflexible laws, which neither prayer nor the will of G.o.d, if G.o.d has a will, can change or modify. Magee[20] has a valuable note on the subject of the "Consistency of Prayer with the Divine Immutability," in which he puts this truth in a mathematical form. He says, "The relation of G.o.d to man + prayer is different from the relation of G.o.d to man - prayer. Yet G.o.d remains constant. It is man who is the better or the worse for prayer or no prayer."

[20] On the Atonement.

It is pleasant to reflect that with the simple-minded Christian the belief in Christ, because he knows that Christ loved him and died for him, is exceedingly little moved by these so-called scientific doubts.

The propounders of these entangling questions move in a region where he would feel cold and his life would be crushed out of him, and he declines to follow science at so great a cost, believing besides that science might often be better termed nescience, for he has no faith in such science. Instead of being presented with clear deductions, drawn from observation and experience, he sees but too plainly that, as each philosopher frames his own belief out of his inner consciousness, there cannot fail to come out a very large variety of beliefs, and that, if the religion of the Bible were exploded and became an obsolete thing, its place would be usurped by a motley crowd of infinitely varied creeds of every shape and hue, each claiming for itself, with more or less modesty and reserve, but with just equal rights, the supremacy over men's consciences. And in the meanwhile, women and children and the poor, and in fact all who are not altogether highly, transcendentally intellectual, must, for want of the requisite faculties and opportunities, do without any religion at all. I suppose most people can see this, and therefore will pay a very limited attention to the claims and pretensions of science-worship.

I come to a sentence where once more the proclivity for satire breaks out for a minute: "But in modern days the first aim of all Christians 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." I was reading this from the MS. to a mother, accomplished and amiable, who of course thought in a moment of her own little flock of sons and daughters, all the objects of the tenderest care and solicitude; and she felt that she at least had not deserved this stroke. But the truth is that we must read this sentence as we read our Lord's, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword" (Matt. x. 34). The sword was not the object of our Lord's coming, but the unhappy result through sin. He came to bring peace on earth, yet was He "set for the fall of many in Israel." The wisest and best of parents place their sons in the profession or position in life where temptations abound, not because they desire to see them bow before Satan, and become the possessors of "all these things" which he promises "I will give thee," but because there is no position in the active life of the world that is free from temptations; and those temptations are the strongest and most numerous often just where the real and undoubted advantages are the greatest and most numerous. Mr. Ruskin, with a strong and legitimate figure of speech, is simply putting an inevitable result as the work of apparent design.

If the distinction between the glory and the power of the kingdom of G.o.d and the false l.u.s.tre of earthly power and worldly allurements is not sufficiently dwelt upon in our pulpits, none will regret it more than the earnest preachers in whom the modern Church of England abounds. If it be granted, as I think it must be granted, that the highest wisdom is not always exercised in the choice and preparation of our subjects of preaching, every true-hearted and loyal Churchman must be grateful for the fearless candour of the writer of the letters we have been considering, in pointing out to us our prevailing deficiencies, even if he does not, which is not his province, point out how to attain perfection.

F. A. MALLESON.

LETTERS FROM CLERGY AND LAITY

(FROM THE FIRST EDITION)

The following letters have been entrusted to me for publication in this work. The writers of twenty-two of them are clergymen, of whom sixteen are members of three Clerical Societies, all of whom have read their letters before the Societies to which they belong, except in the case of one Society, where it was impracticable. The remaining six have been kind enough to write in acceptance of the invitation in the _Contemporary Review_ for December, 1879. The remaining letters are from members of the laity, attracted by the same proposal. Many others have been received; but it would not have been possible to include them all in a volume of moderate size, some of them besides being of great length; and I was therefore, with regret, obliged to decline them.

It was not originally intended that the invitation to discuss these questions should be extended to laymen. But several so understood it from the preface in the _Contemporary_, and when I came to examine the letters sent on this understanding, I felt a conviction that a true and safe light would be thrown upon the subject by their a.s.sistance; and, using the discretionary power allowed me by Mr. Ruskin, I thought it, on the whole, best to give admission to a certain number of communications from laymen.

Besides, as they themselves are, in great measure, the subjects of the discussion, and, therefore, must feel a lively interest in it, it seems but fair that they too should have a voice in the matter. Another reason yet had considerable weight with me, that their letters evince a larger and more liberal sympathy with Mr. Ruskin himself than those of some of my clerical brethren, in whose letters there is but too perceptible a degree of irascibility, not unnatural to us, perhaps, in finding ourselves rather sharply lectured by a layman--the shepherds by the sheep. And I hoped that a more fraternal spirit would be promoted by my free acceptance of their ready offer.

The same consenting spirit is all but universal in the notices of the press upon Mr. Ruskin's letters. But I do not wish to antic.i.p.ate the judgment of "the Church and the world" upon the whole series of letters here presented. Notwithstanding the peculiar and sometimes rather bewildering effect of a variety of "cross lights," they appear to myself to be invested with singular interest as a faithful reflection of the opinions of the clergy and the laity upon some of the most stirring religious questions of the day.

Moreover, it will, I am sure, please readers who have endeavoured in vain to extract some meaning out of many of the sometimes tedious and unintelligible essayists of the day, to observe that the discussion in this volume at least is carried on in language perfectly clear and within the reach of ordinary understandings. At any rate, I hope it will not be said of any of the writers who have together made up this little volume: "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?"

Before the sheets are sent to press they will be perused by Mr. Ruskin, who will then use his privilege of replying, thus bringing the volume to a conclusion.

I could not undertake to cla.s.sify these letters; and have, therefore, as the simplest mode, arranged them in the alphabetical order of the writers' names.

F. A. MALLESON.

_From the Rev._ CHARLES BIGG, D.D., _Rector of Fenny Compton_.

Mr. Ruskin compares the clergyman with an Alpine guide, whose business it is simply to carry the traveller in safety over rocks and glaciers to the mountain top. He is not to trouble himself or his charge with needless refinements of doctrine. He is not to exaggerate the dignity of his office, or to give himself out as anything but a guide. In particular, he is not to a.s.sume anything of a mediatorial character. He is to preach the Gospel--not of Luther nor of Augustine, but of Christ; in plain words and short terms. He is to proclaim aloud, boldly and constantly, "This is the will of the Lord,"--to apply, that is, the morality of the Gospel, stringently and authoritatively, to the lives of his people. To effect this application with more power, he is to exercise a rigid discipline, and exclude from his congregation all who are not acting up to what he conceives to be the Gospel ideal. He is not to hamper himself with any set and formal Liturgy, which can never be copious or flexible enough to meet the varied needs of a number of men differing widely in knowledge and attainment.

Every one will feel what a crowd of perplexities start up here at every sentence. In what sense is a clergyman like a Chamouni guide? There is a resemblance, no doubt, but not of a kind on which it would be possible to build any argument. It is not the business of the Alpine guide to exercise any supervision over the morals of his employers, or to ask how they earned the money with which he is paid. Again, what is meant by the Gospel of Christ not according to anybody? It is easy to reject the authority of St. Paul or St. John, or of Luther or Augustine, but there is one commentator whose influence cannot be shaken off, and that is ourselves. And our experience of those who have professed to preach the Gospel pure and simple is not rea.s.suring. Does Mr. Ruskin mean that we are to burn all our theology,--even apparently the Epistles of St.

Paul,--and to forget all Church history since the day of the Crucifixion? Does he mean that we are each to set up a theology--a Church of his own? It would be but a poor gain to most of us to exchange the great lamps of famous doctors for the uncertain rushlights of our own imaginations.

Then again, what is this new and more than Genevan discipline that the clergyman is to enforce? He is to take more pains to get wicked rich men to stay out of the church than to persuade wicked poor ones to enter it.

After putting his own interpretation upon the Gospel, he is to lay under an interdict all whom his own fire-new formula--for a formula he must still have--excludes. He is to force, by the method of Procrustes, the visible Church into co-extension with the invisible. No community of Christians has ever attempted such a task. Any zealous (surely over-zealous) parish priest who should so narrow the limits of his fold, who should exclude the "usurer" from the ordinary means of grace, for fear lest he should take G.o.d's name in vain by joining in the public prayers, would expose himself, may we not think? to the reproach of being less merciful than He who sends rain on the just and the unjust.

Nor, as he looked round upon his carefully-selected congregation, could he easily flatter himself that he was preaching the Gospel "to every creature."

Again, what is the will of the Lord, and what does Mr. Ruskin mean by proclaiming it? That He loves righteousness and hates iniquity we know.

The difficulty is in applying this general rule in detail. What is its bearing upon the policy of the Government, upon any particular trade strike, upon the tangled web of good and evil motives which makes up the moral consciousness of an average shopkeeper? I conceive Mr. Ruskin to be thinking of preachers like Bernard, Savonarola, or Latimer, of denunciations like those of Isaiah, or of our Lord. He seems to mean that the clergyman should stand on a clear mountain summit, looking down over the whole field of life, discerning with the eye of a prophet every movement of evil on a small scale or on a large. There have been such teachers in whose hands science, economy, politics, seemed all to become branches of theology, members of one great body of Divine truth. But not every man's lips are thus touched with the coal from the altar. Many an excellent and most useful preacher would make but wild work if he took to denouncing social movements or the spirit of the age. A singular ill.u.s.tration of the danger that besets these sweeping moral judgments is to be found in Mr. Ruskin's own denunciation of usury, that is, of taking interest for money. Few people will agree either with the particular opinion that every old lady who lives harmlessly on her railway dividends ought to be excommunicated, or with the general principle implied in this opinion, that every prohibition in the Old Testament is still as valid as ever under social circ.u.mstances altogether different.

People who need denouncing do not, as a rule, come to church to be denounced. And it would be a great error to conclude, from our Lord's language to the Pharisees and Sadducees, that the tone in which He addressed the individual sinner was harsh or scathing. The preacher must remember that he is a physician of souls, and the physician's touch is gentle. Think for a moment what worldliness is--how easy it is to say bitter things about it!--and then picture to yourselves a little tradesman with a wife and seven or eight children to keep on his scanty profits. What wonder if he sets too high a value on money? How difficult for him to understand the words which bid him take no thought for the morrow!

There is a time, no doubt, for fierce language, but it does not often come. The preacher is no more exempt than other people from the golden rule to put himself in his neighbour's place, and try to see things with his neighbour's eyes.