OF INEVITABLE DISTINCTION OF RANK, AND NECESSARY SUBMISSION TO
AUTHORITY. THE MEANING OF PURE-HEARTEDNESS. CONCLUSION.
169. I was interrupted yesterday, just as I was going to set my
soldiers to work; and to-day, here comes the pamphlet you promised me,
containing the Debates about Church-going, in which I find so
interesting a text for my concluding letter that I must still let my
soldiers stand at ease for a little while. Look at its twenty-fifth
page, and you will find, in the speech of Mr. Thomas, (carpenter,)
this beautiful explanation of the admitted change in the general
public mind, of which Mr. Thomas, for his part, highly approves, (the
getting out of the unreasonable habit of paying respect to anybody.)
There were many reasons to Mr. Thomas's mind why the working classes
did not attend places of worship: one was, that "the parson was
regarded as an object of reverence. In the little town he came from,
if a poor man did not make a bow to the parson he was a marked man.
This was no doubt wearing away to a great extent" (the base habit of
making bows), "because, the poor man was beginning to get education,
and to think for himself. It was only while the priest kept the press
from him that he was kept ignorant, and was compelled to bow, as it
were, to the parson.... It was the case all over England. The
clergyman seemed to think himself something superior. Now he (Mr.
Thomas) did not admit there was any inferiority" (laughter, audience
throughout course of meeting mainly in the right), "except, perhaps,
on the score of his having received a classical education, which the
poor man could not get."
Now, my dear friend, here is the element which is the veriest devil of
all that have got into modern flesh; this infidelity of the nineteenth
century St. Thomas in there being anything better than himself
alive;[A] coupled, as it always is, with the farther resolution--if
unwillingly convinced of the fact,--to seal the Better living thing
down again out of his way, under the first stone handy. I had not
intended, till we entered on the second section of our inquiry,
namely, into the influence of gentleness (having hitherto, you see,
been wholly concerned with that of justice), to give you the clue out
of our dilemma about equalities produced by education; but by the
speech of our superior carpenter, I am driven into it at once, and it
is perhaps as well.
[A] Compare 'Crown of Wild Olive,' Sec. 136.
170. The speech is not, observe, without its own root of truth at the
bottom of it, nor at all, as I think, ill intended by the speaker; but
you have in it a clear instance of what I was saying in the sixteenth
of these letters,--that education _was desired by the lower orders
because they thought it would make them upper orders_, and be a
leveler and effacer of distinctions. They will be mightily astonished,
when they really get it, to find that it is, on the contrary, the
fatalest of all discerners and enforcers of distinctions; piercing,
even to the division of the joints and marrow, to find out wherein
your body and soul are less, or greater, than other bodies and souls,
and to sign deed of separation with unequivocal seal.
171. Education is, indeed, of all differences not divinely appointed,
an instant effacer and reconciler. Whatever is undivinely poor, it
will make rich; whatever is undivinely maimed, and halt, and blind, it
will make whole, and equal, and seeing. The blind and the lame are to
it as to David at the siege of the Tower of the Kings, "hated of
David's soul." But there are other divinely-appointed differences,
eternal as the ranks of the everlasting hills, and as the strength of
their ceaseless waters. And these, education does _not_ do away with;
but measures, manifests, and employs.
In the handful of shingle which you gather from the sea-beach, which
the indiscriminate sea, with equality of fraternal foam, has only
educated to be, every one, round, you will see little difference
between the noble and mean stones. But the jeweler's trenchant
education of them will tell you another story. Even the meanest will
be better for it, but the noblest so much better that you can class
the two together no more. The fair veins and colors are all clear now,
and so stern is nature's intent regarding this, that not only will the
polish show which is best, but the best will take most polish. You
shall not merely see they have more virtue than the others, but see
that more of virtue more clearly; and the less virtue there is, the
more dimly you shall see what there is of it.
172. And the law about education, which is sorrowfulest to vulgar
pride, is this--that all its gains are at compound interest; so that,
as our work proceeds, every hour throws us farther behind the greater
men with whom we began on equal terms. Two children go to school hand
in hand, and spell for half an hour over the same page. Through all
their lives, never shall they spell from the same page more. One is
presently a page ahead,--two pages, ten pages,--and evermore, though
each toils equally, the interval enlarges--at birth nothing, at death,
infinite.
173. And by this you may recognize true education from false. False
education is a delightful thing, and warms you, and makes you every
day think more of yourself. And true education is a deadly cold thing
with a Gorgon's head on her shield, and makes you every day think
worse of yourself.
Worse in two ways, also, more's the pity. It is perpetually increasing
the personal sense of ignorance and the personal sense of fault. And
this last is the truth which is at the bottom of the common
evangelical notion about conversion, and which the Devil has got hold
of, and hidden, until, instead of seeing and confessing personal
ignorance and fault, as compared with the sense and virtue of others,
people see nothing but corruption in human nature, and shelter their
own sins under accusation of their race (the worst of all assertions
of equality and fraternity). And so they avoid the blessed and
strengthening pain of finding out wherein they are fools, as compared
with other men, by calling everybody else a fool too; and avoid the
pain of discerning their own faults, by vociferously claiming their
share in the great capital of original sin.
I must also, therefore, tell you here what properly ought to have
begun the next following section of our subject--the point usually
unnoticed in the parable of the Prodigal Son.
174. First, have you ever observed that all Christ's main teachings,
by direct order, by earnest parable, and by His own permanent emotion,
regard the use and misuse of _money_? We might have thought, if we had
been asked what a divine teacher was most likely to teach, that he
would have left inferior persons to give directions about money; and
himself spoken only concerning faith and love, and the discipline of
the passions, and the guilt of the crimes of soul against soul. But
not so. He speaks in general terms of these. But He does not speak
parables about them for all men's memory, nor permit Himself fierce
indignation against them, in all men's sight. The Pharisees bring Him
an adulteress. He writes her forgiveness on the dust of which He had
formed her. Another, despised of all for known sin, He recognized as a
giver of unknown love. But He acknowledges no love in buyers and
sellers in His house. One should have thought there were people in
that house twenty times worse than they;--Caiaphas and his like--false
priests, false prayer-makers, false leaders of the people--who needed
putting to silence, or to flight, with darkest wrath. But the scourge
is only against the _traffickers and thieves_. The two most intense of
all the parables: the two which lead the rest in love and terror (this
of the Prodigal, and of Dives), relate, both of them, to management of
riches. The practical order given to the only seeker of advice, of
whom it is recorded that Christ "loved him," is briefly about his
property. "Sell that thou hast."
And the arbitrament of the day of the Last Judgment is made to rest
wholly, neither on belief in God, nor in any spiritual virtue in man,
nor on freedom from stress of stormy crime, but on this only, "I was
an hungered and ye gave me drink; naked, and ye clothed me; sick, and
ye came unto me."
175. Well, then, the first thing I want you to notice in the parable
of the Prodigal Son (and the last thing which people usually _do_
notice in it), is--that it is about a Prodigal! He begins by asking
for his share of his father's goods; he gets it, carries it off, and
wastes it. It is true that he wastes it in riotous living, but you are
not asked to notice in what kind of riot; he spends it with
harlots--but it is not the harlotry which his elder brother accuses
him of mainly, but of having devoured his father's living. Nay, it is
not the sensual life which he accuses himself of--or which the manner
of his punishment accuses him of. But the _wasteful_ life. It is not
said that he had become debauched in soul, or diseased in body, by his
vice; but that at last he would fain have filled his belly with husks,
and could not. It is not said that he was struck with remorse for the
consequences of his evil passions, but only that he remembered there
was bread enough and to spare, even for the servants, at home.
Now, my friend, do not think I want to extenuate sins of passion
(though, in very truth, the sin of Magdalene is a light one compared
to that of Judas); but observe, sins of passion, if of _real_ passion,
are often the errors and backfalls of noble souls; but prodigality is
mere and pure selfishness, and essentially the sin of an ignoble or
undeveloped creature; and I would rather, ten times rather, hear of a
youth that (certain degrees of temptation and conditions of resistance
being understood) he had fallen into any sin you chose to name, of all
the mortal ones, than that he was in the habit of running bills which
he could not pay.
Farther, though I hold that the two crowning and most accursed sins of
the society of this present day are the carelessness with which it
regards the betrayal of women, and the brutality with which it suffers
the neglect of children, both these head and chief crimes, and all
others, are rooted first in abuse of the laws, and neglect of the
duties concerning wealth. And thus the love of money, with the
parallel (and, observe, _mathematically commensurate_ looseness in
management of it), the "mal tener," followed necessarily by the "mal
dare," is, indeed, the root of all evil.
176. Then, secondly, I want you to note that when the prodigal comes
to his senses, he complains of nobody but himself, and speaks of no
unworthiness but his own. He says nothing against any of the women
who tempted him--nothing against the citizen who left him to feed on
husks--nothing of the false friends of whom "no man gave unto
him"--above all, nothing of the "corruption of human nature," or the
corruption of things in general. He says that _he himself_ is
unworthy, as distinguished from honorable persons, and that _he
himself_ has sinned, as distinguished from righteous persons. And
_that_ is the hard lesson to learn, and the beginning of faithful
lessons. All right and fruitful humility, and purging of heart, and
seeing of God, is in that. It is easy to call yourself the chief of
sinners, expecting every sinner round you to decline--or return--the
compliment; but learn to measure the real degrees of your own relative
baseness, and to be ashamed, not in heaven's sight, but in man's
sight; and redemption is indeed begun. Observe the phrase, I have
sinned "_against_ heaven," against the great law of that, and _before_
thee, visibly degraded before my human sire and guide, unworthy any
more of being esteemed of his blood, and desirous only of taking the
place I deserve among his servants.
177. Now, I do not doubt but that I shall set many a reader's teeth on
edge by what he will think my carnal and material rendering of this
"beautiful" parable. But I am just as ready to spiritualize it as he
is, provided I am sure first that we understand it. If we want to
understand the parable of the sower, we must first think of it as of
literal husbandry; if we want to understand the parable of the
prodigal, we must first understand it as of literal prodigality. And
the story has also for us a precious lesson in this literal sense of
it, namely this, which I have been urging upon you throughout these
letters, that all redemption must begin in subjection and in the
recovery of the sense of Fatherhood and authority, as all ruin and
desolation begin in the loss of that sense. The lost son began by
claiming his rights. He is found when he resigns them. He is lost by
flying from his father, when his father's authority was only paternal.
He is found by returning to his father, and desiring that his
authority may be absolute, as over a hired stranger.
And this is the practical lesson I want to leave with you, and all
other working men.
178. You are on the eve of a great political crisis; and every rascal
with a tongue in his head will try to make his own stock out of you.
Now this is the test you must try them with. Those that say to you,
"Stand up for your rights--get your division of living--be sure that
you are as well off as others, and have what they have!--don't let any
man dictate to you--have not you all a right to your opinion?--are you
not all as good as everybody else?--let us have no governors, or
fathers--let us all be free and alike." Those, I say, who speak thus
to you, take Nelson's rough order for--and hate them as you do the
Devil, for they _are_ his ambassadors. But those, the few, who have
the courage to say to you, "My friends, you and I, and all of us, have
somehow got very wrong; we've been hardly treated, certainly; but here
we are in a piggery, mainly by our own fault, hungry enough, and for
ourselves, anything but respectable: we _must_ get out of this; there
are certainly laws we may learn to live by, and there are wiser people
than we are in the world, and kindly ones, if we can find our way to
them; and an infinitely wise and kind Father, above all of them and
us, if we can but find our way to _Him_, and ask Him to take us for
servants, and put us to any work He will, so that we may never leave
Him more." The people who will say that to you, and (for by _no_
saying, but by their fruits, only, you shall finally know them) who
are themselves orderly and kindly, and do their own business
well,--take _those_ for your guides, and trust them; on ice and rock
alike, tie yourselves well together with them, and with much scrutiny,
and cautious walking (perhaps nearly as much back as forward, at
first), you will verily get off the glacier, and into meadow land, in
God's time.
179. I meant to have written much to you respecting the meaning of
that word "hired servants," and to have gone on to the duties of
soldiers, for you know "Soldier" means a person who is paid to fight
with regular pay--literally with "soldi" or "sous"--the "penny a day"
of the vineyard laborers; but I can't now: only just this much, that
our whole system of work must be based on the nobleness of
soldiership--so that we shall all be soldiers of either plowshare or
sword; and literally all our actual and professed soldiers, whether
professed for a time only, or for life, must be kept to hard work of
hand, when not in actual war; their honor consisting in being set to
service of more pain and danger than others; to life-boat service; to
redeeming of ground from furious rivers or sea--or mountain ruin; to
subduing wild and unhealthy land, and extending the confines of
colonies in the front of miasm and famine, and savage races.
And much of our harder home work must be done in a kind of
soldiership, by bands of trained workers sent from place to place and
town to town; doing, with strong and sudden hand, what is needed for
help, and setting all things in more prosperous courses for the
future.
Of all which I hope to speak in its proper place after we know what
offices the higher arts of gentleness have among the lower ones of
force, and how their prevalence may gradually change spear to
pruning-hook, over the face of all the earth.
180. And now--but one word more--either for you, or any other readers
who may be startled at what I have been saying, as to the peculiar
stress laid by the Founder of our religion on right dealing with
wealth. Let them be assured that it is with no fortuitous choice among
the attributes or powers of evil, that "Mammon" is assigned for the
direct adversary of the Master whom they are bound to serve. You
cannot, by any artifice of reconciliation, be God's soldier, and his.
Nor while the desire of gain is within your heart, can any true
knowledge of the Kingdom of God come there. No one shall enter its
stronghold,--no one receive its blessing, except, "he that hath clean
hands and a pure heart;" clean hands that have done no cruel
deed,--pure heart, that knows no base desire. And, therefore, in the
highest spiritual sense that can be given to words, be assured, not
respecting the literal temple of stone and gold, but of the living
temple of your body and soul, that no redemption, nor teaching, nor
hallowing, will be anywise possible for it, until these two verses
have been, for it also, fulfilled:--
"And He went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold
therein, and them that bought. And He taught daily in the temple."