“The Parsonage, Werrington, Peterborough, April 7, 1875.
“My dear Sir,—Your lady correspondent brings out in her own experience
that sound Christian truth, of which the condemnable doctrines of
‘substitution’ and ‘vicarious righteousness’ are but the perversions.
Her experience shows how true it is that one man may so live and suffer
that others shall be morally the better for his life and suffering.
“Such a man’s righteousness is ‘imputed’ because really imparted [38]
to those who have faith in him.
“Of Felix Neff I know less than I ought, but if his ministry tended to
bring more sweetness and light into your correspondent’s life, surely
his influence in her mind is moral and healthful.
“I am very faithfully yours,
“Edward Z. Lyttel.
“John Ruskin, Esq.”
I transgress the laws of courtesy, in printing, without asking the
writer’s permission, part of a letter which follows: but my
correspondent is not, as far as I know him, a man who shrinks from
publicity, or who would write in a private letter anything on general
subjects which he would be unwilling openly to maintain; while the
letter itself is so monumental as a type of the condition to which the
modern average literary mind has been reduced, in its reading of
authoritative classical authors, and touches so precisely on points
which it happens to be my immediate business to set at rest in the
minds of many of my readers, that I cannot but attribute to the Third
Fors the direct inspiration of the epistle—and must leave on her hands
what blame may be attached to its publication. I had been expressing
some surprise to my correspondent (an acquaintance of long standing) at
his usually bright and complacent temper; and making some enquiry about
his views respecting modern usury, knowing him to have read, at least
for literary purposes, large portions of the Old Testament. He
replies,—
“I am sure I would not be wiser if I were ‘more uncomfortable’ in my
mind; I am perfectly sure, if I can ever do good to any mortal, it will
be by calm working, patient thinking, not by running, or raging, or
weeping, or wailing. But for this humour, which I fancy I caught from
Shakespeare and Goethe, the sorrow of the world would drive me mad.
“You ask what I think ‘the Psalmist’ means by ‘usury.’ I find from
Cruden that usury is mentioned only in the fifteenth Psalm. That is a
notable and most beautiful lyric, quite sufficient to demonstrate the
superiority, in spirituality and morality, of the Hebrew religion to
anything Greek. But the bit about usury is pure nonsense—the only bit
of nonsense in the piece. Nonsense, because the singer has no notion
whatever of the employment of money for the common benefit of lender
and borrower. As the Hebrew monarchy was politically a total and
disastrous failure, I should not expect any opinion worth listening to
from a psalmist, touching directly or indirectly on the organisation of
industry. Jesus Christ and Matthew the publican lived in a time of
extended intercourse and some commerce; accordingly, in Matthew xxv.,
verse 27, you have a perfect statement of the truth about usury: ‘Thou
oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers, and at my coming I
should have received mine own with usury.’ Ricardo, with all Lombard
Street to help him, could not improve upon that. A legitimate, useful,
profitable use of money is to accommodate strangers who come with money
that will not circulate in the country. The exchanger gives them
current money; they pay a consideration for the convenience; and out of
this comes the legitimate profit to be divided between lender and
borrower. The rule which applies to one fruitful use of money will
apply to a thousand, and, between wise lending and honest borrowing,
swamp and forest become field and garden, and mountains wave with corn.
Some professor or other had written what seemed outrageous rubbish; you
confuted or thrust aside, in an early Fors, that rubbish; but against
legitimate interest, usury, call it what you like, I have never heard
any argument. Mr. Sillar’s tracts I have never seen,—he does not
advertise, and I have not the second sight.
“My view of the grievous abuses in the publishing and bookselling
trades has not altered. But, since writing you first on the subject, I
have had careful conversations with publishers, and have constantly
pondered the matter; and though I do not see my way to any complete
reform, I cannot entertain hope from your methods.
“I am tired, being still very weak. It would only bother you if I went
on. Nothing you have ever written has, I think, enabled me to get so
near comprehending you as your picture of yourself learning to read and
write in last Fors. You can see an individual concrete fact better than
any man of the generation; but an invisible fact, an abstraction, an
average, you have, I fancy, been as incapable of seeing as of seeing
through a stone wall. Political Economy is the science of social
averages.
“Ever affectionately and faithfully yours.
“P.S. (Sunday morning). Some fancy has been haunting me in the night of
its being presumptuous, or your thinking it presumptuous, in me to say
that David, or whoever wrote the fifteenth Psalm, spoke, on the subject
of interest, pure nonsense. After carefully going over the matter
again, I believe that I am accurately correct. Not knowing what lending
and borrowing, as a normal industrial transaction, or trading
transaction, was, the Psalmist spoke in vague ethical terms, meaning
‘you should be friendly to your neighbour’; just as a lady economist of
to-day might shriek against the pawn-shop, which, with all its defects,
had, in capacity of Poor Man’s Bank, saved many a child, or woman, or
man, from sheer starvation. Not understanding the matter, the Psalmist
could not distinguish between use and abuse, and so talked nonsense. It
is exquisitely interesting to me to observe that Christ hits the
Psalmist exactly on the point where he goes wrong. Τὸ ἀργύριον ἀυτοῦ
οὐκ ἔδωκεν ἐπὶ τόκῳ, says the Psalmist; Πονηρὲ δοῦλε .... ἔδει σε οὖν
βαλεῖν τὸ ἀργύριόν μου τοῖς τραπαζίταις, καὶ ἐλθὼν ἐγὼ ἐκομισάμην ἂν τὸ
ἐμὸν συν τόκῳ, says Christ. The use of the same word in the Septuagint
(the only Old Testament circulating in Palestine in Christ’s time) and
in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, to denote in the one case what no
good man would take, in the other, what it was a flagrant dereliction
of duty not to secure, is most precious as illustrating the simple
common sense with which Christ used the old Scriptures, and the
infinite falsity of the modern doctrine of infallibility, whether of
church, book, or man. One of those transcendencies of rightness which I
find in Fors (amid things about Marmontel and Drury Lane, and Darwin
and Huxley, worthy only of a Psalmist or pretty economist of fifteen)
was your idea of policemen-bishops. I always agree also with what you
say about the entirely obsolete and useless bishops at £5000 a-year....
But what I was going to say is, that you ought to ask your bishop, or
the whole bench of them, to find a place, in their cart-loads of
sermons, for one on ‘usury,’ [39] as condemned by the Psalmist and
enjoined by Christ. Compare Luke xix., ver. 23. The only sound basis of
banking is the fruitful, industrial use of money. I by no means
maintain that the present banking system of Europe is safe and sound.”
I submitted the proof of this Fors to my correspondent, and think it
due to him and to my readers to print, with the above letter, also the
following portions of that which he sent in gentle reply. So far as I
have misconceived or misrepresented him, he knows me to be sorry. For
the rest, our misconceptions of each other are of no moment: the
misconception, by either, of the nature of profit by the loan of money,
or tools, is of moment to every one over whom we have influence; we
neither of us have any business to be wrong in that matter; and there
are few on which it is more immediately every man’s business to be
right.
“Remonstrance were absurd, where misconception is so total as yours. My
infidelity is simply that I worship Christ, thanking every one who
gives me any glimpse that enables me to get nearer Christ’s meaning. In
this light, what you say of a hidden sense or drift in the parables
interests me profoundly; but the more I think of the question of
interest, the more I feel persuaded that Christ distinguished the use
from the abuse. Tradition, almost certainly authentic, imputes to Him
the saying γίνεσθε τραπεζιται δόκιμοι (see M. Arnold’s article in March
Contemporary), and I don’t see how there can be honourable
bankers,—men, living honourably by banking,—if all taking of interest
is wrong. You speak of my ‘supreme confidence’ in my own opinions. I
absolutely have confidence only in the resolution to keep my eyes open
for light and, if I can help it, not to be to-day exactly where I was
yesterday. I have not only read, but lived in, (as a very atmosphere)
the works of men whom you say I went to because somebody said it was
fine to do so. They have taught me some comprehensiveness, some
tolerance, some moderation in judging even the mob. They have taught me
to consume my own smoke, and it is this consumption of my own smoke
which you seem to have mistaken for confidence in my opinions. Which
prophet, from Moses to Carlyle, would not you confess to have been
sometimes in the wrong? I said that I worship Christ. In Him I realize,
so far as I can realize, God. Therefore I speak not of Him. But the
very key-stone of any arch of notions in my mind is that inspiration is
one of the mightiest and most blessed of forces, one of the most real
of facts, but that infallibility is the error of errors. From no
prophet, from no book, do I take what I please and leave what I please;
but, applying all the lights I have, I learn from each as wisely as,
with my powers and my lights, is possible for me.
“Affectionately yours.”
I have received, “with the respects of the author,” a pamphlet on the
Crystal Palace; which tells me, in its first sentence, that the Crystal
Palace is a subject which every cultivated Englishman has at heart; in
its second, that the Crystal Palace is a household word, and is the
loftiest moral triumph of the world; and in its third, that the Palace
is declining, it is said,—verging towards decay. I have not heard
anything for a long time which has more pleased me; and beg to assure
the author of the pamphlet in question that I never get up at Herne
Hill after a windy night without looking anxiously towards Norwood in
the hope that ‘the loftiest moral triumph of the world’ may have been
blown away.
I find the following lovely little scene translated into French from
the Dutch, (M. J. Rigeveld, Amsterdam, C. L. Brinkman, 1875,) in a
valuable little periodical for ladies, ‘l’Espérance,’ of Geneva, in
which the entirely good purpose of the editor will, I doubt not, do
wide service, in spite of her adoption of the popular error of the
desirability of feminine independence.
“A PROPOS D’UNE PAIRE DE GANTS.
“‘Qu’y a-t-il, Elise?’ dit Madame, en se tournant du côté d’une fenêtre
ouverte, où elle entend quelque bruit. ‘Oh! moins que rien, maman!’
répond sa fille aînée, en train de faire la toilette des cadets, pour
la promenade et le concert. ‘Ce que c’est, maman?’ crie un des petits
garçons, ‘c’est que Lolotte ne veut pas mettre des gants.’ ‘Elle dit
qu’elle a assez chaud sans cela,’ reprend un autre, ‘et qu’elle ne
trouve pas même joli d’avoir des gants.’ Et chacun de rire. Un des
rapporteurs continue: ‘Elise veut qu’elle le fasse par convenance; mais
Lolotte prétend que la peau humaine est plus convenable qu’une peau de
rat.’ Cette boutade excite de nouveau l’hilarité de la compagnie.
‘Quelle idée, Lolotte,’ dit son père d’un ton enjoué: ‘montre-toi
donc!’
“Apparemment Lolotte n’est pas d’humeur à obéir; mais les garçons ne
lui laissent pas le choix et la poussent en avant. La voilà donc, notre
héroïne. C’est une fillette d’environ quatorze ans, dont les yeux
pétillent d’esprit et de vie; on voit qu’elle aime à user largement de
la liberté que lui laisse encore son âge, pour dire son opinion sur
tout ce qui lui passe par la tête sans conséquence aucune. Mais bien
qu’elle soit forte dans son opinion anti-gantière, l’enfant est tant
soit peu confuse, et ne paraît pas portée à défendre sa cause en
présence d’un étranger. ‘Quoi donc,’ lui dit son père, en la prenant
par la taille, ‘tu ne veux pas porter des gants, parce qu’ils sont
faits de peaux de rats! Je ne te croyais pas si folle. Le rat est morte
et oublié depuis longtemps, et sa peau est glacée.’—‘Non, papa, ce
n’est pas ça.’—‘Qu’est-ce donc, mon enfant? Tu est trop grande fille
pour ces manières sans façon. Ne veux-tu pas être une demoiselle comme
il faut?’ ‘Et ces petites mains qui touchent si bien du piano,’ reprend
le visiteur, désireux de faire oublier la gêne que cause sa présence,
par un mot gracieux. ‘Ne veux-tu pas plutôt renoncer à la musique, et
devenir sarcleuse?’ lui demande son père.—‘Non, papa, point du tout. Je
ne puis pas dire au juste ma pensée....’ Et elle se dégagea doucement
de ses bras; et en se sauvant, grommela: ‘Mort aux gants, et vive la
civilisation!’ On rit encore un peu de l’enfant bizarre; puis on parle
d’autres choses, et l’on se prépare pour la promenade. Lolotte a mis
les gants en question, ‘pour plaire à maman,’ et personne ne s’en
occupe plus.
“Mais l’étranger avait saisi au passage sa dernière phrase, qui sans
cesse, lui revenait à l’esprit. Se reprochait-il devant cette enfant
naïve sa complicité à l’interprétation futile que son hôte avait donné
de la civilisation? Tant est, que pendant le cours de la soirée, se
trouvant un moment en tête-à-tête avec Lolotte, il revint à l’histoire
des gants. Il tâcha de réparer sa gaucherie et fit si bien, qu’il gagna
la confiance de la petite. ‘Sans doute j’en conviens,’ dit-il, ‘il faut
plus pour être civilisé que de porter des gants, mais il faut se
soumettre à certaines convenances que les gens comme il faut....’
‘C’est ça, Monsieur,’ dit-elle, en lui coupant la parole, ‘quelle est
donc la chance des gens qui voudraient se civiliser, mais qui n’ont pas
d’argent pour acheter des gants?’ C’était-là sa peine. ‘Chère enfant!’
dit-il tout bas. Et l’homme, si éloquent d’ordinaire, pressa la petite
main sous le gant obligatoire, parce que pour le moment les paroles lui
manquaient pour répondre.... Est-ce étonnant que, malgré lui, plus tard
en s’occupant de la question sociale, il pensa souvent à cette jeune
fille?
“Et vous, lecteurs, que pensez-vous d’elle et de sa question gantière?
Vous paraît-elle un enfantillage, ou bien la considerez-vous tout
bonnement comme une exagération? Vous attachez-vous à la surface, ou
bien y cherchez-vous un sens plus profond, comme l’ami visiteur? Ne
croyez-vous pas aussi que dans ce temps de ‘besoins multipliés,’ un des
plus grands services que les classes supérieures puissent rendre au
peuple, serait de faire distinction entre tous ces besoins et de
prêcher d’exemple?”
This bit of letter must find room—bearing as it does on last Fors’
subject:—
“I was asking a girl this morning if she still took her long walks; and
she said she was as fond of them as ever, but that they could only walk
in the town now—the field or country walks were not safe for ladies
alone. Indeed, I fancy the girls lose all care for, or knowledge of the
spring or summer—except as they bring new fashions into the shop
windows, not fresh flowers any more here into the fields. It is
pitiable to live in a place like this—even worse than in ——. For here
the process of spoiling country is going on under one’s eyes;—in —— it
was done long ago. And just now, when the feeling of spring is upon
one, it is hard to have the sky darkened, and the air poisoned. But I
am wasting time in useless grumbling. Only listen to this:—after all
our sacrifices, and with all our money and civilization——I can’t tell
you now; it must wait.”—[Very well; but don’t keep it waiting longer
than you need.]
I have had some good help about bees’ tongues from a young
correspondent at Merrow Grange, Guildford, and a very clear drawing, to
which the subjoined piece of his last letter refers; but I must not
lose myself in microscopic questions just now:—
“The author of ‘The Microscope’ keeps to the old idea of bees sucking
honey and not ‘licking it up,’ for he says, ‘The proboscis, being
cylindrical, extracts the juice of the flower in a somewhat similar way
to that of the butterfly.’ And of the tongue he says, ‘If a bee is
attentively observed as it settles upon a flower, the activity and
promptitude with which it uses the apparatus is truly surprising; it
lengthens the tongue, applies it to the bottom of the petals, then
shortens it, bending and turning it in all directions, for the purpose
of exploring the interior and removing the pollen, which it packs in
the pockets in its hind legs, (by, he supposes, the two shorter
feelers,) and forms the chief food for the working-bees.’ He says that
when the waxen walls of the cells are completed, they are strengthened
by a varnish collected from the buds of the poplar and other trees,
which they smear over the cells by the aid of the wonderful apparatus.
That part of the proboscis that looks something like a human head, he
says, ‘can be considerably enlarged ... and thus made to contain a
larger quantity of the collected juice of the flowers; at the same time
it is in this cavity that the nectar is transformed into pure honey by
some peculiar chemical process.’”
Note on page 145.—My correspondent need not be at a loss for sermons on
usury. When the Christian Church was living, there was no lack of such.
Here are two specimens of their tenor, furnished me by one of Mr.
Sillar’s pamphlets:—
EXTRACT FROM THE EXPOSITION UPON THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE
THESSALONIANS, CH. IV. VER. 6. BY BISHOP JEWELL.
“Usury is a kind of lending of money, or corn, or oil, or wine, or of
any other thing, wherein, upon covenant and bargain, we receive again
the whole principal which we delivered, and somewhat more for the use
and occupying of the same: as, if I lent one hundred pounds, and for it
covenant to receive one hundred and five pounds, or any other sum
greater than was the sum which I did lend. This is that that we call
usury; such a kind of bargaining as no good man, or godly man, ever
used; such a kind of bargaining as all men that ever feared God’s
judgment have always abhorred and condemned. It is filthy gains, and a
work of darkness: it is a monster in nature; the overthrow of mighty
kingdoms; the destruction of flourishing states; the decay of wealthy
cities; the plagues of the world, and the misery of the people. It is
theft; it is the murdering of our brethren; it is the curse of God, and
the curse of the people. This is usury: by these signs and tokens you
may know it: for wheresoever it reigneth, all those mischiefs ensue.
But how, and how many ways, it may be wrought, I will not declare: it
were horrible to hear; and I come now to reprove usury, and not to
teach it.
“Tell me, thou wretched wight of the world, thou unkind creature, which
art past all sense and feeling of God; which knowest the will of God,
and doest the contrary: how darest thou come into the church? It is the
church of that God which hath said, ‘Thou shalt take no usury’; and
thou knowest He hath so said. How darest thou read or hear the word of
God? It is the word of that God which condemneth usury; and thou
knowest He doth condemn it. How darest thou come into the company of
thy brethren? Usury is the plague, and destruction, and undoing of thy
brethren; and this thou knowest. How darest thou look upon thy
children? thou makest the wrath of God fall down from heaven upon them;
thy iniquity shall be punished in them to the third and fourth
generation: this thou knowest. How darest thou look up into heaven?
thou hast no dwelling there; thou shalt have no place in the tabernacle
of the Highest: this thou knowest. Because thou robbest the poor,
deceivest the simple, and eatest up the widows’ houses: therefore shall
thy children be naked, and beg their bread; therefore shalt thou and
thy riches perish together.”
EXTRACT FROM THE FAREWELL SERMON PREACHED IN THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY
WOOLNOTH, LOMBARD STREET, BY THE REV. DAVID JONES, WHEN THE PRESENT
SYSTEM WAS IN ITS INFANCY.
“And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and
they derided him.”—Luke xvi. 14.
“I do openly declare that every minister and every churchwarden
throughout all England are actually perjured and foresworn by the 109th
canon of our church, if they suffer any usurer to come to the sacrament
till he be reformed, and there is no reformation without restitution.
“And that you may know what usury is forbid by the word of God, turn to
Ezekiel xviii. 8, 13, and you will find that, whoever giveth upon usury
or taketh any increase,—Mark it,—he that taketh any increase above the
principal,—not six in the hundred, but let it be never so little, and
never so moderate,—he that taketh any increase, is a usurer, and such a
one as shall surely die for his usury, and his blood shall be upon his
own head. This is that word of God by which you shall all be saved or
damned at the last day, and all those trifling and shuffling
distinctions that covetous usurers ever invented shall never be able to
excuse your damnation.
“Heretofore all usurious clergymen were degraded from Holy Orders, and
all usurious laymen were excommunicated in their lifetime, and hindered
Christian burial after death, till their heirs had made restitution for
all they had gotten by usury.”
As this sheet is going to press, I receive a very interesting letter
from “a poor mother.” That no wholesome occupation is at present
offered in England to youths of the temper she describes, is precisely
the calamity which urged my endeavour to found the St. George’s
Company. But if she will kindly tell me the boy’s age, and whether the
want of perseverance she regrets in him has ever been tested by giving
him sufficient motive for consistent exertion, I will answer what I
can, in next ‘Fors.’