[Greek: hagiastheto to onoma sou.]
_Sanctificetur nomen tuum._
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 on 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 me katharise ... kurios]"?
For _other_ sins there is washing;--for this--none! the seventh verse
(Exod. 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," etc, 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.