I have thankfully received this month, from the first donor of land to
the St. George’s Company, Mrs. Talbot, £11 0s. 4d., rent of cottages on
said land, at Barmouth, North Wales; and I have become responsible, as
the Master of the Company, for rent or purchase of a room at Sheffield,
in which I propose to place some books and minerals, as the germ of a
museum arranged first for workers in iron, and extended into
illustration of the natural history of the neighbourhood of Sheffield,
and more especially of the geology and flora of Derbyshire. The
following letter respecting the neighbouring town of Leeds will be
found interesting in connection with this first opening of St George’s
work:—
“Leeds, June 21st, 1875.
“Dear Sir,—Being more or less intimately mixed up with the young of the
working classes, in night schools and similar works, I am anxious to
know what I can do to counteract two or three growths, which seem
likely to be productive of very disastrous results, in the young men
from seventeen to twenty-five, who are many of them earning from 20s.
to 35s. per week,—the almost morbid craving for drink, and the
excitement which is to be found in modern French dramas of very
questionable morality, concert halls and singing rooms, where appeal is
principally made to their animal passions and lusts—whose chief notion
of enjoyment seems to be in getting drunk. Then the young men of
similar ages, and earning from 14s. to 20s., who are in a chronic state
of unrest, ever eager for novelty and sensationalism, though not quite
so much given to drink as the men, yet treading a similar course. They
have no pleasure in going to the country, to see flowers, birds, and
fish, or to the seaside to see the sea; if there be no fireworks, no
prize band, no dancing on the green, or something of the sort, they
will not attempt to go. Now, where is all this to end? Nature has no
charms for them; music little attraction, except in the form of dance;
pictures nothing: what remains? And yet something should, and must be
done, and that speedily,—otherwise what will become of the poor things?
“Then, in your ‘Elements of Drawing,’ you lay down certain books to be
studied, etc.
“Now, suppose a woman or man has been brought up to have a kind of
contempt for ‘Grimm’s Goblins,’ ‘Arabian Nights,’ etc., as childish and
frivolous,—and on account of the Calvinistic tendency of relatives, has
been precluded from reading books,—how should a healthy tendency be
brought about? For the mind is not a blank, to receive impressions like
a child, but has all sorts of preconceived notions and prejudices in
the way,—Shakspeare looked upon as immoral, or childish, and the rest
treated in an equally cavalier manner by people who probably never
looked inside the books.”
I should like to answer the above letter at some length; but have,
to-day, no time. The sum of answer is—Nothing can be done, but what I
am trying to form this St. George’s Company to do.
For the sake of my female, and theological, readers, I print the next
following letter:—
“The Parsonage, Werrington, Peterborough, July 7, 1875.
“My dear Sir,—In your comment on a former letter of mine you
acknowledged (a) that the Gospel which I endeavour to preach—Be
persuaded by the Lord Jesus Christ; let His life rule your lives—is
eternally true and salutary, but, because I have joined with you in
condemning a doctrine opposed to this, you have rather hastily assumed
(b) that I have ‘eagerly repudiated the doctrine of the Eleventh
Article of the Church of England,’ to which Article I have given, and
not withdrawn, my public assent.
“You have of course taken for granted (c) that the Eleventh Article
teaches the ‘pleasant and supremely false gospel’—Let His life be
instead of your lives; you may be saved by faith without righteousness.
But does it?
“The Article says:
“‘We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ, by Faith, and not for our own works or
deservings: Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only is a most
wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is
expressed in the Homily of Justification.’
“This teaches, in simple English enough, that there is but one
righteousness in God’s sight—the righteousness of Christ and that this
righteousness becomes ours by faith: so that faith alone sets us right
with God.
“Before the court of public opinion (d) men may be accounted righteous
for ‘works and deservings’ of their own, like those which were so
eminently satisfactory to the Pharisee who went up to the Temple to
pray; but before God, whose judgments are true, the only merit for
which any man is accounted righteous is the merit of Jesus Christ. The
Publican ‘went down to his house justified’ because of that faith in
God which led him to hunger and thirst after a righteousness higher
than his own, and in due time to be filled with it.
“A man is ‘justified by faith only’ because by faith only he accepts
the righteousness of Christ, not instead of, but for, (e) his own. He
is therefore accounted righteous before God because, in His sight, who
sees the end from the beginning, he is righteous.
“But, while the righteousness is verily his own, he confesses that, in
the deepest sense, it is not his own, for the source and efficient
cause of it is Christ—the merit is His.
“From all this it will appear that what I repudiate is not the Eleventh
Article, but the eternally false and damnatory doctrine which has
seemed to you to be set forth therein.
“I cannot think that the Article was intended to teach that a man can
be accounted righteous before God without righteousness—that faith will
serve as a substitute for it, since I read in the Homily in which the
doctrine of the Article is ‘more largely expressed’ such words as the
following:
“‘This true Christian faith neither any devil hath, nor yet any man
who, in the outward profession of his mouth, and his outward receiving
of the Sacraments, in coming to the Church, and in all other outward
appearances, seemeth to be a Christian man, and yet in his living and
deeds sheweth the contrary.’
“I am, my dear Sir,
“Very faithfully yours,
“John Ruskin, Esq. “Edward Z. Lyttel.”
(a): My correspondent cannot quit himself of the idea that I am his
antagonist. If he preaches what is true, I say so—if what is false, I
say so. I congratulate him in the one case, and am sorry for him in the
other; but have nothing to ‘acknowledge’ in either case.
(b) and (c): “You have rather hastily assumed.” “You have of course
taken for granted.” Compare Mr. Headlam’s “I fancy that, on
consideration, you would like to withdraw,” p. 176. These clerical
gentlemen, who habitually and necessarily write without consideration,
and as habitually and necessarily ‘take for granted’ the entire grounds
of their profession, are quaintly unable to enter into the mind of a
man who for twenty years has not written a word without testing it
syllable by syllable; nor taken for granted one principle or fact, in
art, science, or history,—having somewhat wide work in all three.
In the present case, I am very sorry to have to tell my correspondent
that the last thing I should ‘take for granted’ would be the
completeness and accuracy of his own account of himself. What his words
actually mean, my twenty years’ study of English enables me to tell him
with authority;—but what he means by them he only knows!
(d): Who is talking of public opinion? Does my correspondent suppose
that in any—even among the rudest or most ignorant—debates on this
subject, ‘righteousness’ was ever supposed to mean worldly credit? The
question is, was, and will be—simply how men escape being damned—if
they do.
(e): It is no part of my duty in Fors to occupy myself in exposing the
verbal, or probing the mental, sophistries by which the aerial
ingenuity of divines may guide itself in gossamer over the
inconveniently furrowed ground of religious dogma. There are briefly
two, and two only, forms of possible Christian, Pagan, or any other
gospel, or ‘good message’: one, that men are saved by themselves doing
what is right; and the other that they are saved by believing that
somebody else did right instead of them. The first of these Gospels is
eternally true, and holy; the other eternally false, damnable, and
damning. Which of them Mr. Lyttel preaches, matters much to himself and
his parishioners; but, to the world, considerably less than he seems to
suppose. That the Eleventh Article of the Church of England teaches the
second, “in very simple English,” is as certain as Johnson’s dictionary
can make it: and that it (the said sweet message) is currently preached
with unction, and received with gladness, over the whole of England,
and of Protestant France, Switzerland, and Italy, by the most active
and influential members of the Protestant church, I take upon me to
assert, on the grounds of an experience gained, (while Mr. Lyttel was,
by his own account, “occupied from day to day in stuffy rooms among
ignorant and immoral people”) by the carefullest study of the best
Protestant divines, and the hearing of sermons by the most eloquent
pastors, in every important city of evangelical Europe. Finally, I must
beg Mr. Lyttel to observe that I only printed his first letter because
it expressed some degree of doubt, and discomfort, which I hoped to
relieve. His succeeding letters show him, on the contrary, to be
supremely confident and comfortable;—in which enviable state I must
here take leave of him. For my challenge (as yet unanswered) was to his
Bishop, and not to the clergy of the diocese; nor, if it had been, has
Mr. Lyttel offered any evidence that he is their accredited champion.
I think I do Mr. Lyttel more justice by printing his kind and graceful
last words on my impatient comments, than I should by disarranging my
types and altering my letter; which, indeed, I have no time to do.
“My dear Sir,—It is both my fault and misfortune that you have taken
parts of my letters ‘clean from the purpose of the words themselves;’
and I write at once in hope that you may be able to erase two
unserviceable paragraphs, which my want of simple English, or some
other misdirection, has produced.
1. If you will allow me to substitute the word ‘said’ for
‘acknowledged’ in my letter, it will save paragraph (a).
2. Then I should like to assure you that the feeling which called forth
my first letter also produced the rest, and no one who knows me well
would think of attributing to me ‘supreme confidence and comfort.’
Moreover, I have throughout spoken for myself alone, and have not for
one moment pretended to be the ‘accredited champion’ of any one. So
that if you can spare the latter part of paragraph (e), beginning with
‘Finally,’ I think neither you nor I would lose anything by the
omission.
Other parts of your comment I am sorry for, but I have not the same
reason to object to them as I have to those I have specified.
“I am most faithfully yours,
“Edward Z. Lyttel.”
Some slips of newspaper have been forwarded to me, containing an
abstract of a sermon by the Bishop of Manchester, in which some
reference was made to ‘Fors’: but of course I cannot take any notice of
expressions thus accidentally conveyed to me, and probably reported
with inaccuracy. The postscript to the following interesting letter of
Mr. Sillar’s may perhaps receive from the Bishop of Manchester more
honourable attention:—
“Kingswood Lodge, Lee Green, S.E., 13th January, 1875.
“My dear Mr. Ruskin,—I have great sympathy with your lady
correspondent, and, for the life of me, I cannot tell what you would
have me to do. I am not a landed proprietor, nor a country gentleman,
though I am the son of one, a retired physician, and brought up in the
blessed green fields, and among streams that were as clear as crystal,
and full of trout; but coal-pits appeared on the horizon, and gradually
drove us out. I well remember the first vile red shaft that appeared
within about a mile of our windows, and how the beastly smoke
reconciled my mother to leave one of the loveliest country seats in
Lancashire, which she had adorned with roses and laurels, I was going
to say with her own hands, and I am not sure that it would be wrong to
say so, for she saw every one (and the grounds were seven or eight
acres in extent) planted with her own eyes, and superintended the doing
of it.
“Living there in the country, and under a tutor, my education has not
been that of an ordinary country gentleman; I early learned to work
with my hands as well as with my head, and though I must confess that
personally I never had much taste for gardening, I had plenty of work
to do in the open air. You tell me our education has to begin—yours as
well as mine; and expect me to say that I cannot make a brick or a
tile, or build a rude dwelling. Singularly enough, I helped to do so
when a boy, and it will be long before any of us forget the miniature
cottage we built, and thatched, complete, with window, door, and
fireplace, and with a cellar moreover, with wine of our own making, and
beer of our own brewing made from treacle; for we did everything
ourselves, even to grooming our own ponies.
“In later life, my lot was cast in Liverpool, and after six or seven
years spent in China, where I have seen the horrors of war, and where a
cannon shot came through our roof, as we sat at tiffin, I found myself
in London.
“My old business of a merchant I cannot carry on; though I have capital
sufficient for fair trade, I cannot carry it on in the face of the
fierce competition by unprincipled men on borrowed money:
‘Where man competes with man like foe with foe,
Till death that thins them scarce seem public woe’—
my business as a banker and bullion broker is sealed to me as
iniquitous.
“At present, therefore, I am free to act; I fret because I am in a
state of inactivity. I feel that I have health and strength, and that
in a thousand ways I could be useful, but wherever I turn I am stopped.
I am a good rough joiner; I can do small work in iron and brass; and I
am a good practical chemist: my laboratory was recommended as an
example of how a laboratory should be kept, by the editor of the
‘Chemical News’ and an F.R.S.
“Now allow me to ask you seriously, would you have me to go out alone
into the wilderness, and live like a Robinson Crusoe till I see an
opening? The point is, the opening might come directly, or it might not
come for years, and meantime I am standing in the market-place, such as
it is (why is there not a real one?). It is this uncertainty that
distresses me, for I must work for my living, and my substance is
gradually melting away.
“Believe me, my dear Mr. Ruskin, ever yours affectionately,
“Rob. G. Sillar.
“P.S.—I am glad to see you have challenged Dr. Fraser. I had a
correspondence with him some years ago. I saw in one of Carlyle’s
works, that I might do some good, if I had two fingers and a pen; so,
after getting no answer from my own clergyman, and the secretary of the
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, relative to the leaving out
of a verse in the fifteenth Psalm in our collection, I appealed to the
bishop. He was very polite, and corresponded with me till he felt it
dangerous to go on, and then informed me that he really had no time to
examine into the lawfulness of interest.
“I confess I don’t like an officer who has no time to read and examine
his standing orders, but who yet retains the command of the regiment;
so as you told me in ‘Sheepfolds’ [54] that in our army the King was
beside every one of us to appeal to in case of doubt, I ended by
telling his lordship, as he had no time to hear me, I must leave it in
other hands, videat Altissimus, and our correspondence closed.”