Mr. Ruskin pleads in this letter with touching eloquence for the
guidance of the law of love, that irresistible law, one effect of which
is to give to the highest probability the force of a sufficient
certainty, and establishes in the man the mental habit best described as
_certitude_.
In Cardinal Newman's "History of My Religious Opinions," p. 18, he
quotes some beautiful passages from Keble's conversations with himself
(disagreeing with him all the time), in which he had quoted, "I will
guide thee _with mine eye_" (Psalm xxxii. 8), as the expression of the
gentle suasive power that directs the steps of the child and friend of
God, as distinguished from "the bit and bridle" laid upon horse and
mule, who represent unwilling slaves recognising no law but that of
force or coercion. It is an Eye whose gaze is ever fixed on us, the "Eye
of God's Word," "like that of a portrait uniformly fixed on us, turn
where we will."[13] And Keble is right so far as concerns the true
children and friends of God, subject, as their highest control, to the
law of love. Pure and exalted minds ever strain for, and yearn after, a
general and outward manifestation of the witness that man is "the image
and glory of God" (1 Cor. xi. 7).
[13] "Christian Year," St. Bartholomew's Day, with quotations from
Miller's Bampton Lectures.
Unhappily, we are not so constituted by nature. The inroads and ravages
of sin are but too evident, as well in those upon whom episcopal hands
have been laid, as in the ranks of the laity. Are not wilfulness and
pride of intellect and glorification of self ever exercising such a
power in the earth, that checks and restraints are found absolutely
necessary to curb and control the determination of many of the ministers
of the Church not only to _think_ as seems good to them (which they have
a perfect right to do), but openly to _teach and to preach_ whatever
doctrines they may have conceived in their own minds, or have learnt
from others, contrary to the received doctrines of the Church of
England; which they have no right to do as long as they remain ministers
of the Church whose doctrines they impugn?
Mr. Ruskin correctly assumes that the terms of the Lord's Prayer, being
in the very words of Christ, do contain a body of Divine doctrine; and
they would be the fittest to adopt as a standard of Christian teaching,
_if_ only all men were as candid, sincere, and straightforward as
himself. But because there is no certainty that any large and
preponderating body of men will exhibit these graces of Christianity in
themselves, and combine with them gentleness, tolerance, and
forbearance, therefore they _must_ be held in "with bit and
bridle,"--that is, with Articles and Creeds and declarations,--"lest
they fall upon thee," and fill the Church more full of sedition,
disaffection, and disquiet than it already is.
Cardinal Newman himself is an example of the necessity of the restraints
of creeds, as well, indeed, as of their general inefficiency to
maintain unity. His "History of my Religious Opinions," at least in its
beginning, is but the story of a long succession of phases of belief and
disbelief, originating in--what? In study of the Word of God? in Divine
contemplation, or in devout and thoughtful meditation? No, indeed; but
in walks and conversations, now with one friend, now with another, now
round the Quadrangle of Oriel, then in Christ Church meadows; in
fanciful, and apparently causeless, changes in his own mind, of which
sometimes he can give the exact date, sometimes he has forgotten it, but
which lead him out of one set of opinions into another in a helpless
kind of way, as if he knew of no motive power but the influence of other
men's minds or the momentary and fitful fluctuations of a spirit ever
too much given to introspection to maintain a steady and uniform course.
What a contrast between the downright, manly straightforwardness of a
Ruskin and the fluttering, uncertain flights of a Newman, ending in the
cold, dead fixity of the Roman faith, whereof to doubt is to be damned!