Letters to the Clergy on the Lord's Prayer and the Church Part 2

[4] In a proof sheet of a book of the Editor's at that time in the press.

[5] Referring to the closing sentence of the third paragraph of the fifth letter, which _seemed_ to express what I felt could not be Mr. Ruskin's full meaning, I pointed out to him the following sentence in "Modern Painters:"--

"When, in the desert, Jesus was girding Himself for the work of life, angels of life came and ministered unto Him; now, in the fair world, when He is girding Himself for the work of death, the ministrants came to Him from the grave; but from the grave conquered. One from the tomb under Abarim, which _His_ own hand had sealed long ago; the other from the rest which He had entered without seeing corruption."

On this I made a remark somewhat to the following effect: that I felt sure Mr. Ruskin regarded the loving work of the Father and of the Son as _equal_ in the forgiveness of sins and redemption of mankind; that what is done by the Father is in reality done also by the Son; and that it is by a mere accommodation to human infirmity of understanding that the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed to us in language, inadequate indeed to convey divine truths, but still the only language possible; and I asked whether some such feeling was not present in his mind when he used the p.r.o.noun "His" in the above pa.s.sage from "Modern Painters" of the Son, where it would be usually understood of the Father; and as a corollary, whether, in the letter, he does not himself fully recognise the fact of the redemption of the world by the loving self-sacrifice of the Son being in entire concurrence with the equally loving will of the Father. This, as well as I can recollect, is the origin of the pa.s.sage in the second paragraph in this seventh letter.--EDITOR OF LETTERS.

[6] "Yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father" (John xiv. 9).--EDITOR.

And in what I want to say of the third clause of His prayer (_His_, not merely as His ordering, but His using), it is especially this comparison between _His_ kingdom, and His Father's, that I want to see the disciples guarded against. I believe very few, even of the most earnest, using that pet.i.tion, realize that it is the Father's--not the Son's--kingdom, that they pray may come,--although the whole prayer is foundational on that fact: "_For_ Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory." And I fancy that the mind of the most faithful Christian is quite led away from its proper hope, by dwelling on the reign--or the coming again--of Christ; which, indeed, they are to look for, and _watch_ for, but not to pray for. Their prayer is to be for the greater kingdom to which He, risen and having all His enemies under His feet, is to surrender _His_, "that G.o.d may be All in All."

And, though the greatest, it is that everlasting kingdom which the poorest of us can advance. We cannot hasten Christ's coming. "Of the day and the hour, knoweth no man." But the kingdom of G.o.d is as a grain of mustard-seed:--we can sow of it; it is as a foam-globe of leaven:--we can mingle it; and its glory and its joy are that even the birds of the air can lodge in the branches thereof.

Forgive me for getting back to my sparrows; but truly in the present state of England, the fowls of the air are the only creatures, tormented and murdered as they are, that yet have here and there nests, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. And it would be well if many of us, in reading that text, "The kingdom of G.o.d is NOT meat and drink," had even got so far as to the understanding that it is at least _as much_, and that until we had fed the hungry, there was no power in us to inspire the unhappy.

Ever affectionately yours, J. RUSKIN.

I will write my feeling about the pieces of the Life of Christ[7] you have sent me in a private letter. I may say at once that I am sure it will do much good, and will be upright and intelligible, which how few religious writings are?

[7] The Life and Work of Jesus Christ. Ward and Lock.

VIII

[Greek: genetheto to thelema sou, hos en ourano, kai epi ges.]

_Fiat voluntas tua sicut in coelo et in terra._

BRANTWOOD, _9th August, 1879_.

I was reading the second chapter of Malachi this morning by chance, and wondering how many clergymen ever read it, and took to heart the "commandment for _them_."

For they are always ready enough to call themselves priests (though they know themselves to be nothing of the sort), whenever there is any dignity to be got out of the t.i.tle; but, whenever there is any good, hot scolding or unpleasant advice given them by the prophets, in that self-a.s.sumed character of theirs, they are as ready to quit it as ever Dionysus his lion-skin, when he finds the character of Herakles inconvenient.

"Ye have wearied the Lord with your words;" (yes, and some of His people too, in your time), "yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied Him? When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delighteth in them; or, Where is the G.o.d of judgment?"

How many, again and again I wonder, of the lively young ecclesiastics supplied to the increasing demand of our west ends of flouris.h.i.+ng Cities of the Plain, ever consider what sort of sin it is for which G.o.d (unless they lay it to heart) will "curse their blessings, and spread dung upon their faces;" or have understood, even in the dimmest manner, what part _they_ had taken, and were taking, in "corrupting the covenant of the Lord with Levi, and causing many to stumble at the Law."

Perhaps the most subtle and unconscious way in which the religious teachers upon whom the ends of the world are come, have done this, is in never telling their people the meaning of the clause in the Lord's Prayer, which, of all others, their most earnest hearers have oftenest on their lips: "Thy will be done." They allow their people to use it as if their Father's will were always to kill their babies, or do something unpleasant to them; and following comfort and wealth, instead of explaining to them that the first and intensest article of their Father's will was their own sanctification; and that the one only path to national prosperity and to domestic peace, was to understand what the will of the Lord was, and to do all they could to get it done. Whereas one would think, by the tone of the eagerest preachers nowadays, that they held their blessed 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!

I say, especially, the most eager preachers; for nearly the whole Missionary body (with the hottest Evangelistic sect of the English Church) is at this moment composed of men who think the Gospel they are to carry to mend the world with, forsooth, is that, "If any man sin, he hath an Advocate with the Father;" while I have never yet, in my own experience, met either with a Missionary or a Town Bishop who so much as professed himself "to understand what the will of the Lord" was, far less to teach anybody else to do it; and for fifty preachers, yes, and fifty hundreds whom I have heard proclaiming the Mediator of the New Testament, that "they which were called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance," I have never yet heard so much as _one_ heartily proclaiming against all those "deceivers with vain words" (Eph. v. 6), that "no covetous person which is an idolater, hath _any_ inheritance in the kingdom of Christ, or of G.o.d;" and on myself personally and publicly challenging the Bishops of England generally, and by name the Bishop of Manchester, to say whether usury was, or was not, according to the will of G.o.d, I have received no answer from any one of them.[8]

[8] Fors Clavigera, Letter lx.x.xii., p. 323.

_13th August._

I have allowed myself, in the beginning of this letter, to dwell on the equivocal use of the word "Priest" in the English Church (see "Christopher Harvey," Grosart's edition, p. 38), because the a.s.sumption of the mediatorial, in defect of the pastoral, office by the clergy fulfils itself, naturally and always, in their pretending to absolve the sinner from his punishment, instead of purging him from his sin; and practically, in their general patronage and encouragement of all the iniquity of the world, by steadily preaching away the penalties of it.

So that the great cities of the earth, which ought to be the places set on its hills, with the Temple of the Lord in the midst of them, to which the tribes should go up,--centres to the Kingdoms and Provinces of Honour, Virtue, and the Knowledge of the law of G.o.d,--have become, instead, loathsome centres of fornication and covetousness--the smoke of their sin going up into the face of heaven like the furnace of Sodom, and the pollution of it rotting and raging through the bones and the souls of the peasant people round them, as if they were each a volcano whose ashes broke out in blains upon man and upon beast.

And in the midst of them, their freshly-set-up steeples ring the crowd to a weekly prayer that the rest of their lives may be pure and holy, while they have not the slightest intention of purifying, sanctifying, or changing their lives in any the smallest particular; and their clergy gather, each into himself, the curious dual power, and Ja.n.u.s-faced majesty in mischief, of the prophet that prophesies falsely, and the priest that bears rule by his means.

And the people love to have it so.

BRANTWOOD, _12th August_.

I am very glad of your little note from Brighton. I thought it needless to send the two letters there, which you will find at home; and they pretty nearly end all _I_ want to say; for the remaining clauses of the prayer touch on things too high for me. But I will send you one concluding letter about them.

IX

[Greek: ton arton hemon ton epiousion dos hemin semeron.]

_Panem nostrum quotidianum da n.o.bis hodie._

BRANTWOOD, _19th August_.

I retained the foregoing letter by me till now, lest you should think it written in any haste or petulance: but it is every word of it deliberate, though expressing the bitterness of twenty years of vain sorrow and pleading concerning these things. Nor am I able to write, otherwise, anything of the next following clause of the prayer;--for no words could be burning enough to tell the evils which have come on the world from men's using it thoughtlessly and blasphemously, praying G.o.d to give them what they are deliberately resolved to steal. For all true Christianity is known--as its Master was--in breaking of bread, and all false Christianity in stealing it.

Let the clergyman only apply--with impartial and level sweep--to his congregation the great pastoral order: "The man that will not work, neither should he eat;" and be resolute in requiring each member of his flock to tell him _what_--day by day--they do to earn their dinners;--and he will find an entirely new view of life and its sacraments open upon him and them.

For the man who is not--day by day--doing work which will earn his dinner, must be stealing his dinner; and the actual fact is, that the great ma.s.s of men calling themselves Christians do actually live by robbing the poor of their bread, and by no other trade whatsoever; and the simple examination of the mode of the produce and consumption of European food--who digs for it, and who eats it--will prove that to any honest human soul.

Nor is it possible for any Christian Church to exist but in pollutions and hypocrisies beyond all words, until the virtues of a life moderate in its self-indulgence, and wide in its offices of temporal ministry to the poor, are insisted on as the normal conditions in which, only, the prayer to G.o.d for the harvest of the earth is other than blasphemy.

In the second place. Since in the parable in Luke, the bread asked for is shown to be also, and chiefly, the Holy Spirit (Luke xi. 13), and the prayer, "Give us each day our daily bread" is, in its fulness, the disciples' "Lord, evermore give us _this_ bread,"--the clergyman's question to his whole flock, primarily literal, "Children, have ye here any meat?" must ultimately be always the greater spiritual one: "Children, have ye here any Holy Spirit?" or, "Have ye not heard yet whether there _be_ any? and, instead of a Holy Ghost the Lord and Giver of Life, do you only believe in an unholy mammon, Lord and Giver of Death?"

The opposition between the two Lords has been, and will be as long as the world lasts, absolute, irreconcilable, mortal; and the clergyman's first message to his people of this day is--if he be faithful--"Choose ye this day, whom ye will serve."

Ever faithfully yours, J. RUSKIN.

X

[Greek: kai aphes hemin ta opheilemata hemon, hos kai hemeis aphiemen tois opheiletais hemon.]

_Et dimitte n.o.bis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris._