F. A. Malleson.
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 assume anything of amediatorial 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 bythe 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 reassuring. 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 isto 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 God'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. Ruskinto 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 illustration 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 OldTestament is still as valid as ever under social circumstances 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.
Another difficulty arises out of the mannerin which Mr. Ruskin speaks of the relation of his Chamouni guides to dogmatic teaching. They ought not, he says, to be compelled to hold opinions on the subject, say, of the height of the Celestial Mountains, the crevasses which go down quickest to the pit, and other cognate points of science, differing from, or even contrary to, the tenets of the guides of the Church of France.
It is difficult in the extreme to know exactly what is here meant. No doubt it is needless for a guide to drop a plumb-line down every crevasse that he has to cross. It would be great waste of time to lecture his travellers on the laws that regulate the motion of glaciers or the dip of the mountain strata. But what are the doctrines that stand in this relation, or this no-relation, to the spiritual life? Is it meant that all theology should be swept away like a dusty old cobweb?
I would go myself as far as this, that the fewer and simpler the doctrines that a clergyman preaches, the better; that all doctrines should be required to pass the test of reason and conscience, which are also in their degrees Divine revelations, so far, at least, as this, thatno doctrine can be admitted which is demonstrably repugnant to either one or the other. And in the third place, the greatest care should be taken to discriminate matters of faith, real axioms of religion, from pious opinions or venerable practices which have no vital connection with the Christian faith; which, to use Burke's phrase, all understandings do not ratify, and all hearts do not approve. A grave responsibility rests upon those who neglect this discrimination. It is also a point of the highest importance that when most doctrinal a clergyman should be least dogmatic; that he should remember that all doctrine, by the necessity of the case, is cast into an antithetical, more or less paradoxical shape; that he should never lose sight of the harmony and balance between intersecting truths, or of that unfortunate tendency of the human mind to seize upon and appropriate points of difference in their crudest and most antagonistic form, to the exclusion of points of agreement; that he should always do his best to show the reasonableness of the Christian teaching, its analogy and harmony with all the works of God; that where his knowledge fails, he should franklyconfess that it does fail, and not try to eke it out by guesses, or to disguise its insufficiency by rhetoric.
But after all these allowances it remains a fact that the clergyman is not a guide only, but a teacher, an ambassador. He is to teach his people all that he knows about God and His relation to the soul of man. He is to study and meditate himself, and to set forth the conclusion he has reached fully and fearlessly. And if he discharges this duty reasonably and zealously, he need not be afraid of finding that there is a gulf fixed between doctrine and practice. These two must go together. There can be no conduct deserving the name without a philosophy of conduct, and that philosophy is a sound divinity. Even the loftiest and most abstruse doctrines must have an influence upon life. It is a common remark that scientific truth should be pursued for its own sake, and that the most valuable practical results have often followed from investigations carried out with a single eye to the truth. It is an equally common remark that those teach the simplest things best whose range of knowledge and belief is widest.We might point to Mr. Ruskin himself as a striking illustration of this. What is simpler than beauty? what more universally apprehended? what at first sight more incapable of analysis? Yet as we listen to the great critic, what wonderful laws does he point out—what a wealth of knowledge does he bring to bear—how clear he makes it to us that the power of feeling (still more the power of creating) beauty is the hard-won fruit of labour, study, and devotion. So it is with life: those who would create a beautiful life must know the laws of spiritual beauty,—and those laws are theology.
But criticism is a thankless task. It is a more gracious and, towards a great man, a more respectful office to note those points on which our debt to Mr. Ruskin is acknowledged, and our sympathy with him unalloyed. These letters are, in spirit at any rate, not unworthy of the man who has exercised a deeper and wider influence upon the morality of our time than any other, except perhaps Thomas Carlyle. And the great lesson of each of these eloquent teachers is the duty of Reality. There are many points in which we do not agreewith them: let us be all the readier to acknowledge the debt that we owe. Both laymen,—like Amos, neither prophets nor sons of prophets,—they have done a work which, perhaps, under the altered circumstances of society, no professional preacher could have achieved. Any one who considers the earnestness and reverence of modern intellectual literature; the anxious desire even of the Agnostic to lay the foundations of his moral life as deep as possible; the manifold efforts, while denying all religion, yet to maintain the union of imagination and reason, without which there can be no loftiness of character, no nobility of aspiration, yet which nothing but religion can consecrate and fructify,—and compares all this with the sneering, self-satisfied flippancy of Gibbon and Voltaire, will feel how vast is the change for the better; and these two writers have been the chief instruments in bringing that change about.
Let me notice briefly two points on which Mr. Ruskin insists in these letters with great force and beauty. The first is the love of the Father. No text is more familiar than that which tells us that "God is love." It isnot indeed inconsistent with that other text which tells us that He is "a consuming fire." But if its meaning is fully imbibed and allowed to bear its natural fruit, it must result in the abandonment of those forensic views of our blessed Lord's atonement, which all the subtlety of Canon Mozley cannot bring into harmony with the dictates of our consciences. If the Father is love, there can be no division, no antithesis between the Father and the Son. If He is love, then the idea of sacrifice, which is of the essence of love, must enter into our conception of the Father also. I say no more about this, because any one who chooses to do so may find the Fatherhood of God, and all that it implies, treated of with great fulness and a marvellous depth of spiritual insight in the letters of Erskine of Linlathen.
It can hardly be doubted that the kind of language which Protestants of a certain class have been, and still are, in the habit of using, about the "Scheme of Redemption," constitutes a most serious stumbling-block in the way of many an earnest spirit. There are few preachers probably, and few congregations now,—in the Establishment at any rate,—whowould not revolt against the hideous calmness with which Jonathan Edwards contemplates the "little spiders" dropping off into the flames. But a great deal of mischief remains to be undone. Those who are acquainted with the biographies of Shelley, of James and of John Stuart Mill, know well what effect the fierce doctrines of Calvinism have produced upon minds which for the issues of morality and, surely, even of religion, were "finely touched." And who can tell what horror and indignation have been wrought in some minds, what agonies of despair in others, who, when at last the blessed work of repentance began to stir within them, and they turned their eyes for comfort to the cross, were met by the terrible warning that none but the select few can call God their Father, and that in all probability their own eternal tortures were decreed before ever they entered the world?
The other point to which I must briefly advert is Mr. Ruskin's protest against the use of words which imply—which leave the least possibility of hoping for—a mechanical absolution, a pardon of sins that have not been abandoned. I do not indeed think that thereproach of using such language falls upon those who are fond of the title of priests alone, for the doctrines of Calvinism are far more liable to abuse. Nor do I think that any preaching of our clergy on this subject can be said to have "turned our cities into loathsome centres of fornication and covetousness." But here, if anywhere, we ought never to forget the danger of even seeming to set Theology against Reason and Conscience, of allowing the least pretext for thinking that a mere intellectual assent to abstract truths on the one hand, a mere acceptance of ecclesiastical ordinances on the other, can wipe away sins; or that a heart unpurified by charity and obedience, could be at rest even in the kingdom of heaven.
Thank God, all good men are broader and better than their creed,—better and broader, I mean, than those parts of their creed which they insist upon most, because theydistinguish them from other people. (These distinguishing points are always of the least importance, in my opinion.) And with my experience of sermons for nearly forty years (for I was very early "called upon to hear sermons"), I am not conscious of such universal omissions on the part of the "priests" of the Church of England as Mr. Ruskin affirms. The universality of theloveof God theFather, embracing even the "wicked rich" as well as the "wicked poor," is largely dwelt upon by all "schools."
The kingdom of Godin this present sinful worldis preached and is laboured for. In the present, however, it is more correctly described as thekingdom of Christ. When "the end comes," "He shall deliver up the kingdom to God,even the Father" (1 Cor. xv. 24, andseqq.) As for denouncing the sins of the rich, this is largely done, and especially by "lively young ecclesiastics" in great towns. And as to preaching forgiveness without amendment, no man of common sense can do that; but Mr. Ruskin may say that common sense is rare among the clergy; and some may be afraid to preach morality, because ofan old-fashioned superstition thatmoralityis opposed to theGospel. However, I do not hear much of such preaching. As for the duty of every man to do something of the work of the world for his daily bread, that is largely taught; and I believe that the kingdom of God is coming in that respect. A great deal of the drudgery of the world is done by big men now. Also I think that the sinfulness ofomissionis much insisted on by the clergy, as it is abundantly noticed in the Prayer Book, in accordance with the clear teaching of Christ. And the same may be said upon thepersonal guiltof sin. A good clergyman never allows his people to shelter themselvesin a crowd.
I do not feel the force of the taunt about our saying every week, "There is no health in us," because the most "healthy" Christian finds out always fresh failings as his conscience grows more healthy (not morbidly sensitive), and he is always ready to join in the general confession to his dying day.
There is some value in the remark about Christian parents putting their children into situations where they will be tempted toworship the devil in order to win the kingdom of the world; but here, as elsewhere, the exaggeration, for the sake of being forcible, is too marked.
"Yes," I should say, "it is possible to put the Gospel of Christ into such plain words and short terms as that a plain man may understand it, and plain men do understand it. And it is not left to be gathered out of (any of) the Thirty-nine Articles, which are meant not for simple but for clerkly people."
You seem to have felt it startling that Mr. Ruskin should ask for a simple and comprehensible statement of the Christian Gospel—at least Mr. Ruskin represents the case so. What Christ's ministers are bidden to go into all the world and preach is—the good news that God has reconciled the world unto Himself in Jesus Christ His Son; and that whosoever will accept this Jesus as His Lord and Saviour shall have eternal life through Him. You could not, I think, arrive at a definitionof what the Gospel of Christ is by explaining the terms of the Lord's Prayer.
You must tell first aboutJesus, our Lord, and what He has done, before child or man can have any proper notion of "the Gospel." The Gospel is a message from "Our Father which is in Heaven," of His love, and of what His love—the love of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—has devised and executed for the redemption and glorification (through sanctification) of His rebellious children.
There can be small objection taken to Mr. Ruskin's proposal to make the Lord's Prayer "a foundation of Gospel teaching, as containing what all Christians are agreed upon as first to be taught," if the "Gospel teaching" is understood to be "teaching the truth toChristians." But "the Gospel teaching or preaching," which is spoken of by Mr. Ruskin, is "Gospel preaching" to the world not yet Christian, either Jewish or heathen; and the Lord's Prayer cannot properly be taken as a foundation of Gospel teaching to it. It must be told first of Jesus and His work, and must have owned Him "Lord," before it can rightly be taught fromHisprayer. This prayer canhave noauthoritybut to those who have become His disciples. Those who are already His disciples learn naturally from Him their relation and their duty to His Father and their Father. St. Paul, in preaching to the Athenians, dwells not on the Fatherhoodof God, but on the need of repentance as a preparation for the judgment which awaits all. "Jesus and the Resurrection" was what they heard of first from this model preacher.
My Dear Sir,—Permit me to say one thing with regard to the correspondence which has passed between Mr. Ruskin and yourself.
Profitable as it is to listen to Mr. Ruskin, the student of Mr. Maurice's writings will merely find in these remarkable letters an additional plea on behalf of those truths for which Mr. Maurice so bravely and so passionately contended. It is most refreshing to find two such teachers in accord; and probably there will be many who will learn from Mr. Ruskin what they never would havelearnt, or even sought for, from Mr. Maurice. It is, of course, for the truth, and not for his individual statement of it, that Mr. Ruskin, even as Mr. Maurice did, contends. It will, I am sure, be a matter of small moment to him so long as the truth be sought for, whether it be arrived at by means of these letters, or by means of Mr. Maurice's books on "The Lord's Prayer," "The Prayer Book," and "The Commandments."
Believe me, my dear Sir, to be yours faithfully.
Bardsea Vicarage, Ulverston.
"Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me, it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head."
It is in the spirit which is expressed in these words that I desire to offer the following notes on Mr. Ruskin's Letters. Among thecharges which he brings against the clergy are the following:—
That we have no clear idea of our calling, or of the Gospel of Christ (LettersIII.andIV.)
That we profane the name of God in the pulpit (Letter VI.)
That we teach that every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delighteth in them (Letter VIII.)
That we hold our office to be that, not of showing men how to do their Father's will on earth, but how to get to heaven without doing any of it either here or there (Letter VIII.)
That we neither profess to understand what the will of the Lord is, nor to teach anybody else to do it (Letter VIII.)
That we pretend to absolve the sinner from his punishment, instead of purging him from his sin (Letter VIII.)
That we patronize and encourage all the iniquity of the world by steadily preaching away the penalties of it (Letter VIII.)
That we gather, each into himself, the curious dual power and Janus-faced majesty in mischief of the prophet that prophesiesfalsely, and the priest that bears rule by his means (Letter VIII.)
That we do not exercise discipline by keeping wicked people out of church (Letter VI.)
That we do not require each member of our flocks to tell us what they do to earn their dinners (Letter IX.)
That we encourage people in hypocrisy, by inviting them to the authorized mockery of a confession of sin (Letter X.)
I cannot examine the evidence which Mr. Ruskin possesses in support of these charges, as he has not produced it in these Letters. Neither can I attempt to refute the accusations. To prove a negative is always difficult; it becomes an impossible task when the indictment is laid not against any individuals mentioned by name, but against a whole order. I will only observe, that even if all these charges be true, the people of England are not in such evil case as Mr. Ruskin fancies. The laity of England possess the inestimable advantage of not being dependent on the sermons of their clergy for either doctrine, or correction, or instruction in righteousness. Even though a clergyman should never uttercertain doctrines of Christ from the pulpit, or reprove certain sins, he is obliged to do so at the font, at the lectern, and at the altar. Although from the pulpits of the fifty hundreds of clergy whom Mr. Ruskin heard, he never heard so much asoneclergyman heartily proclaiming that no covetous person, which is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of God, he must have often heard this proclamation from the altar, in the epistle for the third Sunday in Lent, and from the lectern whenever the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians is read for the lesson.
Again, if any clergyman teaches from the pulpit that for the redemption of the world people ought to be thankful, not to the Father, but to the Son (Letter V.), he is obliged to publicly contradict his own teaching as often as he says the General Thanksgiving, and the collects in the Book of Common Prayer.
Again, if any clergyman teaches from the pulpit that any one who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, or that there is any other salvation except a salvation from sin, he is obliged to publicly contradict that teachingby everything which he says in the church out of the pulpit.
Again, if any clergyman preaches away the penalties of sin (Letter VIII.), he is obliged to publicly contradict his preaching every Ash Wednesday, when he reads the general sentences of God's cursing against impenitent sinners.
Mr. Ruskin asks (Letter III.), "Can this Gospel of Christ be put into such plain words and short terms as that a plain man may understand it?" I answer that the English Church has tried to do this in the Catechism, in which every baptized child is taught in very simple and plain words the gospel, or good news, that God the Father has, in His Son Jesus Christ, adopted him or her into His family, and therein offers him or her the continual help of the Holy Ghost.
Mr. Ruskin complains that the clergy do not teach the people the meaning of the Lord's Prayer (Letter VI.) He must assume that the clergy neglect to teach children the Church Catechism, in which is an answer to the question, "What desirest thou of God in this prayer?" It is an answer which wouldprobably satisfy Mr. Ruskin. He would see that "Hallowed be Thy name" does not merely mean that people ought to abstain from bad language. And in the explanation of the third commandment, he would see that something more is forbidden than letting out a round oath (Letter VI.)
Mr. Ruskin complains that the clergy do not prevent the entrance among their congregations of persons leading openly wicked lives (Letter VI.) Before this can be charged on the clergy as a sin, he should show that they have power and authority to do this. In the service for Ash Wednesday he will find that the clergy express their desire for a restoration of the godly discipline of the primitive Church, which Mr. Ruskin also desires. But he ought to know that such restoration must be the work not of the clergy only, but of the whole body of the faithful.
Mr. Ruskin insinuates that the clergy have no clear idea of their calling (Letter III.) If this be so, it is certainly not the fault of the Church, seeing that the nature of the calling of a clergyman is plainly set forth in theOffices for the Ordering of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. But if one may form an opinion from many published sermons by English clergymen of various schools of thought, and from their speeches in Church Congresses and elsewhere, and from their pastoral work as parish priests, I should be inclined to think that they are not quite so ignorant of the nature of their calling and of the Gospel of Christ as Mr. Ruskin supposes them to be, and that of some of the sins, negligences, and ignorances which, in these Letters, he lays to their charge, they may plead not guilty, or at least not proven by Mr. Ruskin.
Bardsea, Ulverston,November 3rd, 1879.
Dear Mr. Malleson,—I thank you for your letter, which I received this morning. Second thoughts are not always the best. Your own first thought about the motto which I prefixed to my notes was right; your second thought was wrong. It never occurred to me that anyone could possibly suppose that that motto was by me intended to be applied tomyself, inasmuch as in these notes there is no "wound" inflicted on Mr. Ruskin, or even any "rebuke." On the contrary, I assume that he has evidence in support of his charges, although he has not produced it. The "rebuke" to which I alluded wasMr. Ruskin'srebuke.Heis the "friend" whose wounds are faithful, and whose smitings are a kindness. For I have not the least doubt of his good-will towards the clergy, or of his earnest desire to see them all performing their sacred duties with zeal and knowledge. And it was as my acknowledgment of this that I prefixed the motto. With you I firmly believe that the standard which he takes is "lofty and Christian," and that it is one towards which we ought all of us to aim. The object of my notes was to show that the laity of England have, in the authorized teaching of the Church, a sufficient safeguard against any erroneous teaching which they may possibly hear from the pulpit or in the private ministrations of the clergy, and also a supplement to any defective teaching.
Very truly yours,Edward Geoghegan.
Christmas Day, 1879.
The words "Thy will be done" are generally coupled with resignation, and very often with patience under chastisement. It is always to us a sad-coloured sentence, and a sentimental illuminator of the Lord's Prayer would in all probability make it so. Now, if we think for a moment what the state of things would be if the will of the Lord were done, we shall see it should be the brightest sentence we could conceive. God's will is our weal. Aspiration, not resignation, is the characteristic of its doing. There would certainly be no death,—that is decidedly contrary to His will; and by-and-by, when His will is done, there will be none. For the present, while His will is not yet done, we have the sure and certain hope that death will be—nay, is—conquered by anticipation.
If His will were done, all beautiful things would flourish, and all minds would answeringly rejoice in them.
Our men of the piercing eye—Turners,Hunts, Ruskins, etc.—show us, till we almost worship the state of things in cloud and mountain, river and sea, in hedgerow and wayside, even in cathedral and campanile, where God's will is done, and we are enchanted with their beauty. It is God's will that stones should be laid truly and carven well, and aptly described. And our men of the probe and the lens, the scientific openers of nature's secrets, are daily demonstrating new beauties in which the will of the Lord is done in the formation of bodies and working of forces. It is mere truism to add to this that the will of the Lord being done, none of the ills that are all of them indirectly or directly the result of not doing it could occur, and resignation would have no scope for exercise. There was One who always did it, and He for three years made sundry parts of Palestine a heaven,—with what results a many quondam poor folk testified. This leads me to say that I like to look upon the word heaven as a participle instead of a noun, as the state of being heaved or raised, rather than a place: and for this reason. The experience of every one of us suffices to prove that we are never soheaven, or raisedin true happiness, moral dignity, and worth, as when we are in the company of one greater, wiser, or better than ourselves. Those who lead a humdrum life among mean persons, can testify what a heaven it is to be transplanted for ever so short a time to the company of a great and good man. Now the culminating, indeed all-absorbing, attraction of the heaven we all look to, is the presence and the companionship of the greatest and best; and the experience of ourselves tallies with the promise of St. John that it will have the effect of making us "like Him," when "we shall see Him as He is." Surely beingheaven, or raised like that, is superior to any Mahomet's paradise that we can invent or distil out of the poetical parts of the Scriptures.
Mr. Ruskin's view as to the duty of basing all upon the Father's love is essentially sound and orthodox; and he is also right in bidding all men lead self-denying lives,—in this sense,that they should give up time and labour to the endeavour to help their brethren; but he fails utterly, hopelessly, to realize the Incarnation and its glorious consequences, how all human life and love,—how art, science, knowledge, enjoyment, are sanctified by God's becoming man; sharing this human life of ours,—not to trample upon it as an unholy thing, but to consecrate it to God's service. Such is our call. We must enjoy the beautiful to vindicate enjoyment. We do not please God by casting all His choicest gifts away. To give all we have to feed the poor is the way to make men poor, and is false charity. Use rather the mammon of this world to God's honour and glory, and when ye fail, the good works that you have done shall plead for your entrance into everlasting habitations; for the way to clothe the naked and feed the hungry, permanently, is to teach men and women to help themselves, and to find employment and reward for the exercise of their powers and energies.
To Mr. Ruskin, then, asking us to define ourselves as a body, I reply, We are presbyters and deacons, deriving our authority from the episcopate, who themselves form links in that spiritual chain which binds both ourselves and them, by perpetual succession, in one communion and fellowship, with the Apostles, and to whom has been committed the office of consecrating and sending forth labourers to work in the Lord's vineyard.
But Mr. Ruskin proceeds, "And our business as such." Our business as such! Well, if we have in any satisfactory manner proved our first point—thatis, the authority with which we act—we may fairly say to Mr. Ruskin, "Do you put this question, 'What is your business?' to your lawyer or doctor?" Does he ask the same question of the clergy of any other portion of the Catholic Church? We shall not wish to insult Mr. Ruskin by attempting to explain to him the duties of the priesthood, with which, doubtless, he is well acquainted.
But he asks, "Do we look upon ourselvesas attached to any particular State, and bound to the promulgation of any particular tenets?" We are undoubtedly attached to the particular sphere to the which we are sent by those whose office is to provide the various parts of God's vineyard with labourers. The Anglican Church is the legitimate representative of the Catholic Church of Christ in England; and we, as clergy of this Church, minister for the most part to our countrymen at home, and only in other countries as the necessities of our colonists and others may require. And, as subscribers to the Prayer Book and priests of the Church of England, we are certainly bound to teach faithfully and honestly her doctrines, neither adding to them nor taking away from them according to our own individual idiosyncrasies.
Wolsingham,October 13th, 1879.
My dear Penrhyn,—Will you please to thank Mr. Malleson on my behalf for the Letters on the Lord's Prayer? I have everadmired Ruskin, and learn much even when I most differ from him. But if I had the good fortune to be with you to-morrow, I fear that I should constantly be demurring to his teaching,—e.g.(Letter III.) his supposition that the Thirty-nine Articles were meant to include a summary of the Gospel; (Letter V.) his belief that there is need now to warn men against being thankful not to the Father but only to the Son,—a remnant of the teaching of his youth; (p. 20) his hard way of speaking as to the Son of Man, Whose human soul, as that of perfect man, received its knowledge in steps according to His own will as perfect God; (Letter VII.) his confused distinction between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Christ (see Eph. v. 5 in the Greek, and remember "tradendo tenet" on 1 Cor. xv. 24); his belief that because no one knoweth the hour of Christ's coming, it cannot be hastened by prayer; (Letter VIII.) his seeming identification of claiming interest from a poor man who is in need and necessity, and from a railway company who borrow money to make more,—speaking, as far as I can see, of money as if it had no market value like other things;(Letter X.) the belief that we clergy are not awake to the guilt of sins of omission; (Letter X.) the inability to see that the nearer and nearer by God's grace we come, in answer to prayer, to purity and holiness, the more werealizeour distance from them; and that his objection to our Liturgy might be adapted into one against the Lord's Prayer, in which we pray daily for forgiveness of sins, and deliverance from evil, showing that we never shall be so delivered as no longer to need forgiveness; (Letter XI.) the supposition that any one state of life is necessarily more full of temptations than another, as though the fruit of a tree were not to Eve what the glory of the world was to the Son of Man, at least in the eye of the Tempter.
I am ashamed to jot down thus obscurely the points on which I should have liked to speak, and I know that our brethren can fully deal with them. On the other hand (Letter VIII.) there is much to move us, and lead to searchings of heart. As to the timidity and coldness with which the Church is attacking the crying sins of our day, one often feels how we need some among us to speak as theprophets did to the men of their generation, and we may be thankful to have our shortcomings brought home to us by words like Ruskin's.
I wish I were not writing so hurriedly.
Remember me most affectionately to all my old and true friends who are with you to-morrow.
[Note.—March 12th1880:—
Mr. Malleson has kindly brought this letter of mine again before me. Hasty and concise as it was, I have no wish to expand it, as Mr. Ruskin's Letters are nowpublici juris, and in the hands of many a critic, who will rejoice to deal with them according to his wisdom. I should be thankful, however, for leave to add a few words on one point. I cannot help having misgivings as to whether I was right in demurring without hesitation to "the supposition that one state of life is necessarily more free from temptations than another," for I well know that in favour of such a supposition there is a strongconsensusof just men. I am, however, one of those who believe that the shorter Beatitude, "Blessed be ye poor,"(Luke vi. 20) is explained by the longer, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." I see, also, that the difficulty with which "they that have riches" enter the kingdom of God is reasserted with a qualification in the very next verse, which speaks of those "who trust in riches" (St. Mark x. 23, 24). "Who then can be saved?" asked the disciples, who, poor men indeed themselves, first heard of this difficulty, instinctively perceiving, it may be, that it has its root in temptations from which in one shape or other no one is free. I read that "the cares of this world," as well as "the deceitfulness of riches," choke the Word; and I am sure that into the number of those "who will be rich," or "who are wishing to be rich," and so "fall into temptation," a poor man may but too easily find his way. I like to remember that when "the beggar died," he was carried into the bosom of one who had been "very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold;" and I think that very deep and far-stretching may be the meaning of the words of the wise man, "The rich and poor meet together, and the Lord is the Maker of them all."]
Mr. Ruskin's Letters have already been closely scrutinized. What have seemed to be blemishes in them have been commented on. They have been spoken of as somewhat random utterances—as utterances such as are pardonable in a layman, but would be inexcusable in a clergyman who should endeavour to instruct his brethren. It has been said of them that they manifest a want of knowledge of teaching constantly being given from Church of England pulpits. It would be quite possible for the present paper to be devoted to a continuation of the like free criticism of the Letters. I might ask, for instance, whether Mr. Ruskin, after (inLetter V.) speaking with condemnation of a plan of salvation which sets forth the Divine Son as appeasing the wrath of the Father in heaven, does not himself give expression to words, as to the love of the Father, which almost imply that in his estimation the Divine mind is not in unity in itself? I might further ask for Mr. Ruskin to put more definiteness into his remarks onusury, and to particularize the special forms of that condemnable practice which the clergy should boldly denounce. The few hints which he throws out on this subject show that to his own thoughts there is present an exalted socialism. He himself in previous writings, while shadowing forth a social system based on unselfishness, has carefully deprecated any revolutionary attempt to hasten the establishment of such a system, and would prefer that it should be waited for while it quietly and with orderliness evolves itself out of the present imperfect order of things. Is it not so evolving itself? Does not the co-operative movement, now steadily advancing, spring out of the recognition of the fact that mutual welfare is a far more excellent thing to be attained than the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many? And if, with regard to the land question, any readjustment of relations is made, will it not be made in the light of the same beneficent principle? If, however, the clergy were to give heed to Mr. Ruskin's words, and at once proceed to the indiscriminate excommunication of usurers, would they not be initiating a social revolution, altogetherdifferent from that orderly upgrowth of a better state of things which has commended itself aforetime to Mr. Ruskin himself? My own impression is that I shall be giving voice to a wish that will spring up wherever Mr. Ruskin's Letters may be read, if I say that a clearer, more definite utterance on the usury question would be welcomed. The clergy everywhere would receive with thankfulness any hints as to how they might hasten the coming of the day when the Church of Christ will no longer embrace within her borders the few, with a useless excess of wealth, and around them the unhappy many, hopelessly, squalidly destitute; along, too, with a vast number of toiling teachers, clergy, artists, and literary workers, living mostly on the verge of pennilessness—men of whose existence Mr. Ruskin has, in earlier writings, expressed himself as keenly and sympathetically conscious.
But I will not linger on such parts of Mr. Ruskin's Letters as may seem to display inconsistency, or to need more precision of language before they can be practically useful. I will proceed to speak of those for which, asit seems to me, the clergy may unhesitatingly be very grateful to Mr. Ruskin for laying them before them.
And first, I think we cannot be other than thankful to Mr. Ruskin for sounding at the outset a note of catholicity. He asks the clergy of the English Church (let me say he asks us,—he asks you and me), whether we look upon ourselves as the clergy of a mere insular Church, or as the clergy of the Church Universal. Is the teaching we are continually giving utterance to as to the conduct of life in harmony with, or different from, the teaching of the Christian Churches on the Continent of Europe? Mr. Ruskin's tone, in asking these questions, is such as implies that it would be no satisfaction to him to hear from us that we rejoice in considering ourselves as severed from the clergy of the Christian Church abroad. Indeed, he goes on to assume that we, with one consenting voice, admit our fellowship with the rest of Christendom—that we recognize as our brothers the clergy of the Church of France, and of the Church of Italy, and of the Church everywhere.
Mr. Ruskin thus does not lend the supportof his name to any useless Protestantism. There are senses in which the whole Christian Church must ever be a Protestant Church, and in which even individual members may from time to time raise protesting voices. The Church must ever lift up her protest against all influences that work in the world for evil—against whatsoever tends to overthrow the Christian ideals of individual, family, social, national, and international life. She must protest against all hindrances, even though they may spring up within her own borders, which tend to prevent her from putting any beneficent impress upon human handiwork and upon manifestations of human genius. She must protest against the very Protestantism in her midst which has served to paganize art and to demoralize the drama, by banishing both to an outer region of darkness which Gospel rays cannot be expected to illumine. She must protest vigorously against the mischievous Protestantism which impoverishes the intellect and chills the affections, by causing men to devote the whole energies of their lives to protesting against systems of thought with which they are veryimperfectly acquainted, and to maintaining an attitude of perpetual suspicion as to others' aims and motives. Under the influence of such Protestantism as this, many have been possessed with the assurance that a vast number of the clergy of Christendom live for no other end than to conspire against freedom, to disseminate falsities, and to work ruin amongst human souls. This Protestantism is fast ceasing to have any power amongst us; still, as it is not quite extinct, it is comforting to find that Mr. Ruskin does not attribute it to the main body of those whom he addresses.
To me it seems that an habitual protesting attitude on the part of those who are called upon to be the teachers of the Church implies that they have not themselves properly entered the temple of Christian truth. He to whom Christian doctrine has revealed itself in all its wondrous harmony cannot do other than devote himself to unfolding to others what is ever present to his own mind, so that he may aid in building up their thoughts consistently and symmetrically, and thus help to establish them firmly in the Christian faith.
We may, then, it seems to me, express ourthankfulness that Mr. Ruskin has spoken, though ever so briefly, a word of encouragement to the clergy of the English Church amongst whom the thought of a future of reunion for Christendom has been welcomed. Mr. Ruskin is familiar with the practical working of the Christian Church in Italy and elsewhere on the Continent, and seeing, as he has seen, that her influence is exerted towards securing an orderly and healthy state of social life, he does not give circulation to the indiscriminate calumnies which were once wont to be uttered, and which were alike at variance with the truth and provocative of a mischievous severance of Christians from one another.
But we must, I think, be more especially grateful to Mr. Ruskin for his calling widespread attention to the great Christian doctrine of the Fatherhood of God. There is especial need for this being uplifted before the thoughts of men at the present day, and it is being so uplifted. The more it is upheld, the more fully will it be discerned. It cannot be said that the doctrine is not accepted within the English Church. Still, it has not yet been received in all its fulness. Amongst theseparatists outside the borders of our Church, the doctrine that God is the Father of all humanity, and the loving Father too, is rejected in two extreme ways. The set of "believers" who adopt the one extreme view consider that the Lord's Prayer—so luminous, as Mr. Ruskin reminds us, with the thought of God's fatherly love—should be used only by the elect, such as themselves, and that all others have no right to address God as their Father. The other set of so-called "believers" considers with a deplorable Pharisaism that they have arrived at such a stage of perfection as to be beyond the need for using words which require them to ask every day for forgiveness of their trespasses. Why should they ask for such, they say, when their trespasses are non-existent? If they are children of the Father they are not so in the same sense as those who conscientiously use the prayer addressed to the Father in heaven. I regret that Mr. Ruskin's facile pen has betrayed him into writing some words with reference to our Liturgy which bring him momentarily into sympathy with these self-righteous ones whohave no need to confess that they want more health of soul.
But the doctrine of the loving Fatherhood of God, as revealed to us in Christ, is one that is unfolding itself more and more clearly to the Christian world. If it has unfolded itself to us we may aid in its increased discernment. It is one that involves the acceptance of the thought that all human life and every sphere of human endeavour are under Divine patronage. God is in every way our Father. All human excellences whatsoever exist in their fulness and perfection in Him. As they are manifested in us and in our brothers and sisters around us, they are Divine excellences becoming incarnate on the realm of humanity.
Childhood, for instance, as it manifests its sweetness and winsomeness in Christian homes, is an outcome of the eternal childhood which dwells in God, and which was manifested supremely to the world in the life of the Divine Child at Bethlehem and Nazareth.
So that the doctrine of the loving Fatherhood of God has sheltering beneath it the thought of the divineness of childhood. Clusteringwith it are many kindred thoughts. There is the divineness of youth, the frankness of Christian boyhood, the tender grace of Christian girlhood,—these are manifestations of the eternal youth abiding in the Divine Lord of humanity.
I might speak to you in like manner of the divineness of manhood and of womanhood, and of the divineness of old age. All womanly excellences, as well as all manly virtues, reside in the Divine One. I might speak to you of the divineness of wedded life, the divineness of Christian fatherliness and motherliness. The divineness of the student's life and of the teacher's life might also be dwelt upon. The divineness of the ministry of reconciliation, in which ministry all may take part who help others to separate themselves from sin and selfishness and to enter into union with God and His life of love,—this I present to you as a fruitful thought. The divineness of all efforts tending towards the solace and comforting of suffering human souls,—that too is one of the beneficent thoughts involved in the great Christian truth that God is the Father of humanity.
But the same great truth leads us to the discernment of other useful thoughts. I might speak of them as connected with the divineness of all toil which has for its object the increase of human knowledge, the gathering together of the stored-up lessons of the past, the beautifying of the daily life, the refining and spiritualizing of the daily thoughts of the great brotherhood and sisterhood. It would thus be quite justifiable to speak of the divineness of scientific toil, inasmuch as that has for its aim the unfolding of the thoughts of God, of which all appearances of the material world are the outcome and manifestation. Thus too I might speak of the divineness of the work of those who enable us to see the results of the Divine guidance bestowed on the world in the ages past. I might speak of the divineness of the work of the artist who devotes himself to acquiring skill in subtly entangling in the colours he puts on canvas the sentiment underlying the landscape he reverently looks at, which to him is a manifestation of a heaven of beauty unseen by heedless eyes. I might also speak of the divineness of the labours of the Christian poet, who presentsto the world truth in its feminine and most winning aspects.
When I should have spoken of all these things they could all be summed up into one phrase—the divineness of Humanity. And this is what I have faintly attempted to show necessarily springs up for recognition as the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God presents itself to us in all its impressiveness.
I must hasten to a close. I have said that Mr. Ruskin in what he asks us with reference to our relation to the Church in other countries sounds a note of catholicity. In what I have myself said as to Protestantism I have urged nothing inconsistent with a thorough loyalty to the principle of Christian individualism. But individualism in utter revolt against authority leads only to confusion and to a multiplicity of tyrannies. Individualism thrives best under the protection of a generous all-embracing authority. Individualism before taking up the attitude of revolt should consider that it, by brave patience and a reverent submissiveness to all higher influences around it, may contribute beneficently to the authority of the future,and increase the generousness and catholicity of its sway.
I will further remark that Mr. Ruskin's words as to the Fatherhood of God are also a catholic utterance. For the Fatherhood of God when pondered upon helps us to see that no sphere of human effort is beyond His control; that His house is one of many mansions of thought and affection and loving toil; that His heavenly kingdom is one including all domains on which human energies can be directed, over which human thoughts can roam, on which human love can lavish itself.
What is the exact question asked inLetter II.?
Is it whether the clergy are or are not teachers of universal science?
If so, we answer, Yes, we are teachers of the science most universal of all, namely, the knowledge of God, which is eternal life: and of the way to attain it, which is holiness; and the principles of this science, which are universal,are not, as in other sciences, discovered by human research, but are revealed by God.
Does the question imply that there are points of science on which it is of no consequence what opinions a teacher holds? And if so, does it further mean that all matters of doctrine, such as are defined in the Thirty-nine Articles, are of this nature?
If so, I answer that it is only the theories or speculations of scientific investigators about which variety of opinion is immaterial, not the essential principles of the science; and that we cannot exclude all questions of doctrine from among those principles. I do not know what is meant by holding different opinions on points of science. About the facts of science there can be no difference of opinion; but there may be about the bearings, and the inferences to be drawn from them.