[Transcriber's Note:
The first part of this volume (September 1879) was produced as Project
Gutenberg Ebook #30048. The relevant part of the table of contents has
been extracted from that document.
The rest of the Transcriber Notes are at the end of the Book.]
* * * * *
_The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, Issue 4_
Published December 1879.
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
DECEMBER, 1879.
PAGE
The Lord's Prayer and the Church: Letters Addressed to the Clergy.
By John Ruskin, D.C.L. 539
India under Lord Lytton. By Lieut.-Colonel R. D. Osborn 553
On the Utility to Flowers of their Beauty. By the Hon. Justice 574
Where are we in Art? By Lady Verney 588
Life in Constantinople Fifty Years Ago. By an Eastern Statesman 601
Miracles, Prayer, and Law. By J. Boyd Kinnear 617
What is Rent? By Professor Bonamy Price 630
Buddhism and Jainism. By Professor Monier Williams 644
Lord Beaconsfield:-- 665
I. Why we Follow Him. By a Tory.
II. Why we Disbelieve in Him. By a Whig.
Contemporary Life and Thought in France. By Gabriel Monod 697
* * * * *
THE LORD'S PRAYER AND THE CHURCH.
LETTERS ADDRESSED BY JOHN RUSKIN, D.C.L.,
TO THE CLERGY.
The following letters, which are still receiving the careful
consideration of many of my brother clergy, are, at the suggestion of
the Editor, now printed in the CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, with the object
of eliciting a further and wider expression of opinion. In addition
to the subjoined brief Introductory Address, I desire here to say that
every reader of these remarkable letters should remember that they
have proceeded from the pen of a very eminent layman, who has not had
the advantage, or disadvantage, of any special theological training;
but yet whose extensive studies in Art have not prevented him from
fully recognizing, and boldly avowing, his belief that religion is
everybody's business, and _his_ not less than another's. The draught
may be a bitter one for some of us; but it is a salutary medicine, and
we ought not to shrink from swallowing it.
I shall be glad to receive such expressions of opinion as I may be
favoured with from the thoughtful readers of the CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
Those comments or replies, along with the original letters, and
an essay or commentary from myself as editor, will be published by
Messrs. Strahan & Co., and appear early in the spring; the volume
being closed by a reply, or Epilogue, from Mr. Ruskin himself.
F. A. MALLESON, M.A.
The Vicarage, Broughton-in-Furness.
INTRODUCTION.
The first reading of the Letters to the Furness Clerical Society was
prefaced with the following remarks:--
A few words by way of introduction will be absolutely necessary before
I proceed to read Mr. Ruskin's letters. They originated simply in a
proposal of mine, which met with so ready and willing a response,
that it almost seemed like a simultaneous thought. They are addressed
nominally to myself, as representing the body of clergy whose
secretary I have the honour to be; they are, in fact, therefore
addressed to this Society primarily. But in the course of the
next month or two they will also be read to two other Clerical
Societies,--the Ormskirk and the Brighton (junior),--who have acceded
to my proposals with much kindness, and in the first case have invited
me of their own accord. I have undertaken, to the best of my ability,
to arrange and set down the various expressions of opinion, which will
be freely uttered. In so limited a time, many who may have much to say
that would be really valuable will find no time to-day to deliver it.
Of these brethren, I beg that they will do me the favour to express
their views at their leisure, in writing. The original letters, the
discussions, the letters which may be suggested, and a few comments
of the Editor's, will be published in a volume which will appear, I
trust, in the beginning of the next year.
I will now, if you please, undertake the somewhat dangerous
responsibility of avowing my own impressions of the letters I am
about to read to you. I own that I believe I see in these papers
the development of a principle of the deepest interest and
importance,--namely, the application of the highest and loftiest
standard in the interpretation of the Gospel message _to_ ourselves as
clergymen, and _from_ ourselves to our congregations. We have plenty
elsewhere of doctrine and dogma, and undefinable shades of theological
opinion. Let us turn at last to practical questions presented for our
consideration by an eminent layman whose field of work lies quite as
much in religion and ethics, as it does, reaching to so splendid an
eminence, in Art. A man is wanted to show to both clergy and laity
something of the full force and meaning of Gospel teaching. Many there
are, and I am of this number, whose cry is "_Exoriare aliquis_."
I ask you, if possible, to do in an hour what I have been for the last
two months trying to do, to divest myself of old forms of thought, to
cast off self-indulgent views of our duty as ministers of religion,
to lift ourselves out of those grooves in which we are apt to run so
smoothly and so complacently, persuading ourselves that all is well
just as it is, and to endeavour to strike into a sterner, harder path,
beset with difficulties, but still the path of duty. These papers will
demand a close, a patient, and in some places, a few will think, an
indulgent consideration; but as a whole, the standard taken is, as I
firmly believe, speaking only for myself, lofty and Christian, to the
extent of an almost ideal perfection. If we do go forward straight
in the direction which Mr. Ruskin points out, I know we shall come,
sooner or later, to a chasm right across our path. Some of us, I hope,
will undauntedly cross it. Let each judge for himself, [Greek: tô
telei pistin pherôn].
LETTERS.
I.
BRANTWOOD, CONISTON,
LANCASHIRE, _20th June, 1879_.
DEAR MR. MALLESON,--I could not at once answer your important letter:
for, though I felt at once the impossibility of my venturing to
address such an audience as you proposed, I am unwilling to fail in
answering to any call relating to matters respecting which my feelings
have been long in earnest, if in any wise it may be possible for me to
be of service therein. My health--or want of it--now utterly forbids
my engagement in any duty involving excitement or acute intellectual
effort; but I think, before the first Tuesday in August, I might be
able to write one or two letters to yourself, referring to, and
more or less completing, some passages already printed in _Fors_
and elsewhere, which might, on your reading any portions you thought
available, become matter of discussion during the meeting at some
leisure time, after its own main purposes had been answered.
At all events, I will think over what I should like, and be able,
to represent to such a meeting, and only beg you not to think me
insensible of the honour done me by your wish, and of the gravity of
the trust reposed in me.
Ever most faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.
THE REV. F. A. MALLESON.
II.
BRANTWOOD, CONISTON,
_23rd June, 1879_.
DEAR MR. MALLESON,--Walking, and talking, are now alike impossible to
me;[1] my strength is gone for both; nor do I believe talking on such
matters to be of the least use except to promote, between sensible
people, kindly feeling and knowledge of each other's personal
characters. I have every trust in _your_ kindness and truth; nor do I
fear being myself misunderstood by you; what I may be able to put
into written form, so as to admit of being laid before your friends in
council, must be set down without any question of personal feeling--as
simply as a mathematical question or demonstration.
The first exact question which it seems to me such an assembly may
he earnestly called upon by laymen to solve, is surely axiomatic: the
definition of themselves as a body, and of their business as such.
Namely: as clergymen of the Church of England, do they consider
themselves to be so called merely as the attached servants of a
particular state? Do they, in their quality of guides, hold a position
similar to that of the guides of Chamouni or Grindelwald, who, being
a numbered body of examined and trustworthy persons belonging to those
several villages, have nevertheless no Chamounist or Grindelwaldist
opinions on the subject of Alpine geography or glacier walking: but
are prepared to put into practice a common and universal science
of Locality and Athletics, founded on sure survey and successful
practice? Are the clergymen of the Ecclesia of England thus simply the
attached and salaried guides of England and the English, in the way,
known of all good men, that leadeth unto life?--or are they, on the
contrary, a body of men holding, or in any legal manner required, or
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, the Church of
Italy, and other Christian countries?
Is not this the first of all questions which a Clerical Council has to
answer in open terms?
Ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.
[Footnote 1: In answer to the proposal of discussing the
subject during a mountain walk.]
III.
BRANTWOOD, _6th July_.
My first letter contained a Layman's plea for a clear answer to the
question, "What is a clergyman of the Church of England?" Supposing
the answer to this first to be, that the clergy of the Church of
England are teachers, not of the Gospel to England, but of the Gospel
to all nations; and not of the Gospel of Luther, nor of the Gospel
of Augustine, but of the Gospel of Christ,--then the Layman's second
question would be:
Can this Gospel of Christ be put into such plain words and short terms
as that a plain man may understand it?--and, if so, would it not be,
in a quite primal sense, desirable that it should be so, rather than
left to be gathered out of Thirty-nine Articles, written by no means
in clear English, and referring, for further explanation of exactly
the most important point in the whole tenour of their teaching,[1]
to a "Homily of Justification,"[2] which is not generally in the
possession, or even probably within the comprehension, of simple
persons?
Ever faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.
[Footnote 1: Art xi.]
[Footnote 2: Homily xi. of the Second Table.]
IV.
BRANTWOOD, _8th July_.
I am so very glad that you approve of the letter plan, as it enables
me to build up what I would fain try to say, of little stones, without
lifting too much for my strength at once; and the sense of addressing
a friend who understands me and sympathizes with me prevents my being
brought to a stand by continual need for apology, or fear of giving
offence.
But yet I do not quite see why you should feel my asking for a simple
and comprehensible statement of the Christian Gospel at starting.
Are you not bid to go into _all_ the world and preach it to every
creature? (I should myself think the clergyman, most likely to do good
who accepted the [Greek: pasê tê ktisei] so literally as at least to
sympathize with St. Francis' sermon to the birds, and to feel that
feeding either sheep or fowls, or unmuzzling the ox, or keeping the
wrens alive in the snow, would be received by their Heavenly Feeder as
the _perfect_ fulfilment of His "Feed my sheep" in the higher sense.)
That's all a parenthesis; for although I should think that your
good company would all agree that kindness to animals was a kind of
preaching to them, and that hunting and vivisection were a kind of
blasphemy to them, I want only to put the sterner question before
your council, _how_ this Gospel is to be preached either "[Greek:
pantachou]" or to "[Greek: panta ta ethnê]," if first its preachers
have not determined quite clearly what it _is_? And might not such
definition, acceptable to the entire body of the Church of Christ, be
arrived at by merely explaining, in their completeness and life, the
terms of the Lord's Prayer--the first words taught to children all
over the Christian world?
I will try to explain what I mean of its several articles, in
following letters; and in answer to the question with which you close
your last, I can only say that you are at perfect liberty to use any,
or all, or any parts of them, as you think good. Usually, when I am
asked if letters of mine may be printed, I say; "Assuredly, provided
only that you print them entire." But in your hands, I withdraw even
this condition, and trust gladly to your judgment, remaining always
Faithfully and affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.
THE REV. F. A. MALLESON.
V.
BRANTWOOD, _10th July_.
My meaning, in saying that the Lord's Prayer might be made a
foundation of Gospel-teaching, was not that it contained all that
Christian ministers have to teach; but that it contains what all
Christians are agreed upon as first to be taught; and that no good
parish-working pastor in any district of the world but would be glad
to take his part in making it clear and living to his congregation.
And the first clause of it, of course rightly explained, gives us the
ground of what is surely a mighty part of the Gospel--its "first and
great commandment," namely, that we have a Father whom we _can_ love,
and are required to love, and to desire to be with Him in Heaven,
wherever that may be.
And to declare that we have such a loving Father, whose mercy is over
_all_ His works, and whose will and law is so lovely and lovable that
it is sweeter than honey, and more precious than gold, to those who
can "taste" and "see" that the Lord is Good--this, surely, is a most
pleasant and glorious good message and _spell_ to bring to men--as
distinguished from the evil message and accursed spell that Satan has
brought to the nations of the world instead of it, that they have no
Father, but only "a consuming fire" ready to devour them, unless they
are delivered from its raging flame by some scheme of pardon for all,
for which they are to be thankful, not to the Father, but to the Son.
Supposing this first article of the true Gospel agreed to, how
would the blessing that closes the epistles of that Gospel become
intelligible and living, instead of dark and dead: "The grace
of Christ, and the _love_ of God, and the fellowship of the Holy
Ghost,"--the most _tender_ word being that used of the Father?
VI.
BRANTWOOD, _12th July, 1879_.
I wonder how many, even of those who honestly and attentively join in
our Church services, attach any distinct idea to the second clause of
the Lord's Prayer, the _first petition_ of it, the first thing that
they are ordered by Christ to seek of their Father?
Am I unjust in thinking that most of them have little more notion on
the matter than that God has forbidden "bad language," and wishes them
to pray that everybody may be respectful to Him?
Is it any otherwise with the Third Commandment? Do not most look on
it merely in the light of the Statute of Swearing? and read the words
"will not hold him guiltless" merely as a passionless intimation that
however carelessly a man may let out a round oath, there really is
something wrong in it?
On the other hand, can anything be more tremendous than the words
themselves--double-negatived:
"[Greek: ou gar mê katharisêi ... kyrios]"?
For _other_ sins there is washing;--for this, none! the seventh verse,
Ex. xx., in the Septuagint, marking the real power rather than the
English, which (I suppose) is literal to the Hebrew.
To my layman's mind, of practical needs in the present state of
the Church, nothing is so immediate as that of explaining to the
congregation the meaning of being gathered in His name, and having
Him in the midst of them; as, on the other hand, of being gathered
in blasphemy of His name, and having the devil in the midst of
them--presiding over the prayers which have become an abomination.
For the entire body of the texts in the Gospel against hypocrisy are
one and all nothing but the expansion of the threatening that closes
the Third Commandment. For as "the name whereby He shall be called is
the Lord our Righteousness,"--so the taking that name in vain is the
sum of "the deceivableness of _un_righteousness in them that perish."
Without dwelling on the possibility--which I do not myself, however,
for a moment doubt--of an honest clergyman's being able actually to
prevent the entrance among his congregation of persons leading openly
wicked lives, could any subject be more vital to the purposes of your
meetings than the difference between the present and the probable
state of the Christian Church which would result, were it more the
effort of zealous parish priests, instead of getting wicked _poor_
people to _come_ to church, to get wicked rich ones to stay out of it?
Lest, in any discussion of such question, it might be, as it too often
is, alleged that "the Lord looketh upon the heart," &c., let me be
permitted to say--with as much positiveness as may express my deepest
conviction--that, while indeed it is the Lord's business to look upon
the heart, it is the pastor's to look upon the hands and the lips; and
that the foulest oaths of the thief and the street-walker are, in the
ears of God, sinless as the hawk's cry, or the gnat's murmur, compared
to the responses, in the Church service, on the lips of the usurer and
the adulterer, who have destroyed, not their own souls only, but those
of the outcast ones whom they have made their victims.
It is for the meeting of clergymen themselves--not for a layman
addressing them--to ask further, how much the name of God may be taken
in vain, and profaned instead of hallowed--_in_ the pulpit, as well as
under it.
Ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.
VII.
BRANTWOOD, _14th July, 1879_.
DEAR MR. MALLESON,--Sincere thanks for both your letters and the
proofs sent. Your comment and conducting link, when needed, will be
of the greatest help and value, I am well assured, suggesting what you
know will be the probable feeling of your hearers, and the point that
will come into question.
Yes, certainly, that "His" in the fourth line[1] was meant to imply
that eternal presence of Christ; as in another passage,[2] referring
to the Creation, "when His right hand strewed the snow on Lebanon,
and smoothed the slopes of Calvary," but in so far as we dwell on that
truth, "Hast thou seen _Me_, Philip, and not the Father?" we are not
teaching the people what is specially the Gospel of _Christ_ as
having a distinct function--namely, to _serve_ the Father, and do the
Father's will. And in all His human relations to us, and commands to
us, it is as the Son of Man, not as the "power of God and wisdom of
God," that He acts and speaks. Not as the Power; for _He_ must pray,
like one of us. Not as the Wisdom; for He must not know "if it be
possible" His prayer should be heard.
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 petition, 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 Christians
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 God 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 none." But the kingdom of God 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 God is NOT meat and
drink," had even got so far as to the understanding that it was 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 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!
[Footnote 1: "Modern Painters."]
[Footnote 2: 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 come 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 to be _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 pronoun "His," in
the above passage 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 recognize
the fact of the redemption of the world by the loving
self-sacrifice of the Son in entire concurrence with the
equally loving will of the Father. This, as well as I
can recollect, is the origin of the passage in the second
paragraph in the seventh letter.--_Editor of Letters._]
VIII.
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 title; but, whenever there is any good,
hot scolding or unpleasant advice given them by the prophets, in that
self-assumed 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 God of judgment?"
How many, again and again I wonder, of the lively young ecclesiastics
supplied to the increasing demand of our west-ends of flourishing
Cities of the Plain, ever consider what sort of sin it is for which
God (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, instead of explaining to them that
the first and intensest article of their Father's will was their own
sanctification, and following comfort and wealth; 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 idolator hath
_any_ inheritance in the kingdom of Christ, or of God;" 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 God, I have received no answer from any
one of them.[1]
_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 assumption
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
God,--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
Janus-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.
[Footnote 1: Fors Clavigera, Letter lxxxii., p. 323.]
IX.
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
God 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 mass 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 God 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, irreconcileable, 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.
BRANTWOOD, _3rd September_.
DEAR MR. MALLESON,--I have been very long before trying to say so much
as a word about the sixth clause of the Pater; for whenever I began
thinking of it, I was stopped by the sorrowful sense of the hopeless
task you poor clergymen had, nowadays, in recommending and teaching
people to love their enemies, when their whole energies were already
devoted to swindling their friends.
But, in any days, past or now, the clause is one of such difficulty,
that, to understand it, means almost to know the love of God which
passeth knowledge.
But, at all events, it is surely the pastor's duty to prevent his
flock from _mis_understanding it; and above all things to keep them
from supposing that God's forgiveness is to be had simply for the
asking, by those who "wilfully sin after they have received the
knowledge of the truth."
There is one very simple lesson also, needed especially by people in
circumstances of happy life, which I have never heard fully enforced
from the pulpit, and which is usually the more lost sight of, because
the fine and inaccurate word "trespasses" is so often used instead of
the simple and accurate one "debts." Among people well educated and
happily circumstanced it may easily chance that long periods of their
lives pass without any such conscious sin as could, on any discovery
or memory of it, make them cry out, in truth and in pain,--"I have
sinned against the Lord." But scarcely an hour of their happy days can
pass over them without leaving--were their hearts open--some evidence
written there that they have "left undone the things that they ought
to have done," and giving them bitterer and heavier cause to cry,
and cry again--for ever, in the pure words of their Master's prayer,
"Dimitte nobis _debita_ nostra."
In connection with the more accurate translation of "debts" rather
than "trespasses," it would surely be well to keep constantly in the
mind of complacent and inoffensive congregations that in Christ's
own prophecy of the manner of the last judgment, the condemnation is
pronounced only on the sins of omission: "I was hungry, and ye gave me
no meat."
But, whatever the manner of sin, by offence or defect, which the
preacher fears in his people, surely he has of late been wholly remiss
in compelling their definite recognition of it, in its several and
personal particulars. Nothing in the various inconsistency of human
nature is more grotesque than its willingness to be taxed with any
quantity of sins in the gross, and its resentment at the insinuation
of having committed the smallest parcel of them in detail. And the
English Liturgy, evidently drawn up with the amiable intention of
making religion as pleasant as possible, to a people desirous of
saving their souls with no great degree of personal inconvenience, is
perhaps in no point more unwholesomely lenient than in its concession
to the popular conviction that we may obtain the present advantage,
and escape the future punishment, of any sort of iniquity, by
dexterously concealing the manner of it from man, and triumphantly
confessing the quantity of it to God.
Finally, whatever the advantages and decencies of a form of prayer,
and how wide soever the scope given to its collected passages, it
cannot be at one and the same time fitted for the use of a body
of well-taught and experienced Christians, such as should join the
services of a Church nineteen centuries old,--and adapted to the needs
of the timid sinner who has that day first entered its porch, or of
the remorseful publican who has only recently become sensible of his
call to a pew.
And surely our clergy need not be surprised at the daily increasing
distrust in the public mind of the efficacy of Prayer, after having so
long insisted on their offering supplication, _at least_ every Sunday
morning at eleven o'clock, that the rest of their lives hereafter
might be pure and holy, leaving them conscious all the while that they
would be similarly required to inform the Lord next week, at the same
hour, that "there was no health in them!"
Among the much rebuked follies and abuses of so-called "Ritualism,"
none that I have heard of are indeed so dangerously and darkly
"Ritual" as this piece of authorized mockery of the most solemn act of
human life, and only entrance of eternal life--Repentance.
Believe me, dear Mr. Malleson,
Ever faithfully and respectfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.
XI.
BRANTWOOD, _14th September, 1879_.
DEAR MR. MALLESON,--The gentle words in your last letter referring
to the difference between yourself and me in the degree of hope with
which you could regard what could not but appear to the general mind
Utopian in designs for the action of the Christian Church, surely
might best be answered by appeal to the consistent tone of the prayer
we have been examining.
Is not every one of its petitions for a perfect state? and is not
this last clause of it, of which we are to think to-day--if fully
understood--a petition not only for the restoration of Paradise, but
of Paradise in which there shall be no deadly fruit, or, at least, no
tempter to praise it? And may we not admit that it is probably only
for want of the earnest use of this last petition that not only the
preceding ones have become formal with us, but that the private and
simply restricted prayer for the little things we each severally
desire, has become by some Christians dreaded and unused, and by
others used faithlessly, and therefore with disappointment?
And is it not for want of this special directness and simplicity of
petition, and of the sense of its acceptance, that the whole nature of
prayer has been doubted in our hearts, and disgraced by our lips; that
we are afraid to ask God's blessing on the earth, when the scientific
people tell us He has made previous arrangements to curse it; and
that, instead of obeying, without fear or debate, the plain order,
"Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full," we sorrowfully
sink back into the apology for prayer, that "it is a wholesome
exercise, even when fruitless," and that we ought piously always to
suppose that the text really means no more than "Ask, and ye shall
_not_ receive, that your joy may be _empty_?"
Supposing we were first all of us quite sure that we _had_ prayed,
honestly, the prayer against temptation, and that we would thankfully
be refused anything we had set our hearts upon, if indeed God saw that
it would lead us into evil, might we not have confidence afterwards
that He in whose hand the King's heart is, as the rivers of water,
would turn our tiny little hearts also in the way that they should go,
and that _then_ the special prayer for the joys He taught them to seek
would be answered to the last syllable, and to overflowing?
It is surely scarcely necessary to say, farther, what the holy
teachers of all nations have invariably concurred in showing,--that
faithful prayer implies always correlative exertion; and that no man
can ask honestly or hopefully to be delivered from temptation, unless
he has himself honestly and firmly determined to do the best he can
to keep out of it. But, in modern days, the first aim of all Christian
parents is to place their children in circumstances where the
temptations (which they are apt to call "opportunities") may be as
great and as many as possible; where the sight and promise of "all
these things" in Satan's gift may be brilliantly near; and where the
act of "falling down to worship me" may be partly concealed by the
shelter, and partly excused, as involuntary, by the pressure, of the
concurrent crowd.
In what respect the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of _them_,
differ from the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, which are God's for
ever, is seldom, as far as I have heard, intelligibly explained from
the pulpit; and still less the irreconcileable hostility between the
two royalties and realms asserted in its sternness of decision.
Whether it be, indeed, Utopian to believe that the kingdom we are
taught to pray for _may_ come--verily come--for the asking, it is
surely not for man to judge; but it is at least at his choice to
resolve that he will no longer render obedience, nor ascribe glory and
power, to the Devil. If he cannot find strength in himself to advance
towards Heaven, he may at least say to the power of Hell, "Get thee
behind me;" and staying himself on the testimony of Him who saith,
"Surely I come quickly," ratify his happy prayer with the faithful
"Amen, even so, come, Lord Jesus."
Ever, my dear friend,
Believe me affectionately and gratefully yours,
J. RUSKIN.
INDIA UNDER LORD LYTTON.
Lord Lytton is fond of public speaking, and his more solemn speeches
are remarkable for the stream of abundant piety which runs through
them. Not unfrequently they have taken the form of addresses to some
unknown power, rather than discourses delivered to a mundane audience.
He signalized his accession to office by one of these semi-theological
orations to the members of Council assembled to meet him at Government
House, Calcutta. He said:--
"Gentlemen, it is my fervent prayer, that a Power higher
than that of any earthly Government may inspire and bless
the progress of our counsels; granting me, with your valued
assistance, to direct them to such issues as may prove
conducive to the honour of our country, to the authority
and prestige of its august Sovereign, to the progressive
well-being of the millions committed to our fostering care,
and to the security of the chiefs and princes of India, as
well as of our allies beyond the frontier, in the undisturbed
enjoyment of their just rights and hereditary possessions."
The sequel renders it probable that by a "power higher than any
earthly Government," Lord Lytton understood nothing more remote from
human ken than the will of Lord Beaconsfield. At any rate, the prayer
was rejected; and under the influence of a perverse destiny, the
Viceroy has been singled out to accomplish precisely those acts from
which he entreated to be delivered. The "valued assistance" of
his colleagues in council he has systematically set at nought and
rejected; the "millions committed to his fostering care" he has (as
I shall show) permitted to perish of hunger under circumstances of
peculiar cruelty; and I need not say that he has entirely failed in
his endeavours to preserve "our allies beyond the frontier in
the undisturbed enjoyment of their just rights and hereditary
possessions."
It is the story of these inconsistencies which I propose to tell in
the following pages. In the reading they can hardly fail to awaken
a smile; but in the acting they have brought suffering, poverty, and
death upon thousands of innocent people. Throughout India they have
shaken the confidence of the people in the humanity, justice, and
truthfulness of the British character; and have, as I believe, brought
our Indian Empire to the verge of a catastrophe, from which nothing
but a complete and immediate reversal of policy will avail to save it.
The rule that we have set up in India is so hard and mechanical in its
character--it has so entirely failed to strike root in the affections
of the natives--that a very brief period of misgovernment suffices to
provoke an insurrection. This is occasioned mainly by two causes--the
exclusive system on which India is administered, and the absence of
all intercommunion (in any true sense of the word) between the ruling
and the subject races. It is not too much to say that under the
present system every native of ambition, ability, or education, is of
necessity a centre of disaffection towards British rule. For within
the area of British rule the ascendency of strangers makes him an
alien in his native land without scope for his power or hopes for his
ambition; and beyond that area the possession of ability awakens the
distrust and unconcealed dislike of English officialism. On the other
hand, to the great mass of the people, the English official is simply
an enigma. Their relations with him are almost exclusively official.
The magistrate of a district is little more to them than a piece of
machinery possessing powers to kill and tax and imprison. Such pieces
of machinery they behold, as Carlyle would say, in endless succession
"emerging from the inane," killing and taxing for a time, and then
"vanishing again into the inane." But the people know not whence they
come, or whither they go; their voices go for nothing in the selection
of this human machinery which hold their fortunes in its power. The
great administrative mill goes grinding on, impelled by forces of
which they have no knowledge; and the people are merely the passive,
unresisting grist which is ground up year after year. A truly
frightful and unnatural state of things!
It is impossible that a dominion thus constituted should be otherwise
than transitory. But even for a brief space its peaceful continuance
is possible only under certain conditions. The absence of either
loyalty or thorough understanding in those who are ruled, must be
made good by the plainest rectitude of purpose on the part of the
Government, and thoroughly genuine and successful administration. If
such a Government as we have set up in India does not adhere strictly
to the letter and the spirit of its engagements--if it cannot insure
the physical well-being of its subjects--it is simply good for
nothing; because, from its very nature, it cannot achieve anything
more than this. It was the first of these conditions that Lord
Dalhousie thought he might safely set at nought; and in five years
he brought down upon us the terrible retribution of 1857. But Lord
Dalhousie was, at least, sincerely anxious to secure the "physical
well-being" of the people. He struck at the chiefs and princes
of India because he believed that they stood in the way of that
well-being. He was entirely mistaken; but nevertheless he threw down
only one of the pillars on which our rule is sustained, and when
the Mutiny came upon us, the bulk of the people remained loyal. Lord
Lytton has undermined the foundations of both pillars, and a very
brief continuance of his policy will bring them down with a crash.
How this has been accomplished I have now to relate. I begin with his
policy on the Frontier, because all the other transactions of which
I shall have to speak are connected with that policy, as effects with
their cause.
The Negotiations with Shere Ali.
Despite of all that has been written and said on the subject, to most
people the origin of the war in Afghanistan appears involved in as
great obscurity as ever. Leading Liberal politicians are in this
benighted condition not less than the rank and file of the Tories.
More people than formerly are willing to admit that the Government was
rash and mistaken in its calculations--that the Treaty of Gundamuck
has not fulfilled the expectations it awakened; but a war of some
kind, they believe, was forced upon the Government by the attitude
of Russia and the disposition of the Ameer. This belief is entirely
erroneous. The war was a war of deliberately planned aggression,
entirely unjustified either by the attitude of Russia or the
disposition of the Ameer. Unless we perceive this we are not in a
position to form a sound estimate of the effect wrought in the minds
of the princes and people of India. The wanton character of the war
is, therefore, the first thing I must demonstrate.
When Lord Lytton reached India, the situation in Afghanistan was as
follows:--The late Ameer Shere Ali had succeeded in establishing a
degree of order throughout Afghanistan, to which the country had
been a stranger for many years. His officers were loyal and devoted;
intrigue and rebellion had everywhere failed to make headway; and
he was on terms of sincere friendship with the Governor-General
at Calcutta. There was, at this time, no fear that the Russians
in Central Asia desired to exercise any unwarrantable influence in
Afghanistan; on the contrary, in the despatch to Lord Northbrook's
Government, in which Lord Salisbury propounded his new policy of
establishing a permanent Embassy at Kabul, he said--
"I do not desire, by the observations which I have made, to
convey to your Excellency the impression that, in the opinion
of her Majesty's Government, the Russian Government have any
intention of violating the frontier of Afghanistan.... It is
undoubtedly true that the recent advances in Central Asia have
been rather forced upon the Government of St. Petersburg than
originated by them, and that _their efforts, at present, are
sincerely directed to the prevention of any movement which may
give just umbrage to the British Government_."
The political horizon was, therefore, cloudless at the moment selected
by Lord Salisbury for a radical change of policy in Afghanistan. This
very fact would have sufficed to arouse the suspicions of the Ameer.
Lord Salisbury has since expressed his conviction that if Lord
Northbrook had made the proposal, the Ameer would have accepted the
permanent Embassy, and both he and we should have been spared the
calamities which resulted from delay. But at the time Lord Salisbury
sent his instructions to the Government of India he thought otherwise.
He had then no doubt that if the Ameer was asked in so many words to
receive a permanent Mission in Afghanistan, the Ameer would refuse.
But he thought it was possible to fasten a Mission on him by means of
a deception.