The next paragraph to the last in this letter, contains a statement
which at first might seem to be rashly expressed. But I was not long in
apprehending that when Mr. Ruskin alludes to a scheme of pardon "for
which we are supposed to be thankful, not to the Father, but to the
Son," he was far from impugning that doctrine of the Atonement in which,
as it is generally understood among Christian people, the whole plan of
salvation centres.
But there seems to have been a fatality about this sentence. Numbers
have read it and commented upon it, myself amongst the number, as if Mr.
Ruskin were here expressing _his own view_; instead of which, he is here
quoting other men's opinions, to condemn them with severity. The
_Record_ called it some of Mr. Ruskin's dross; but it is other people's
dross, for which he would offer us pure gold.
I happened, a very short time previous to receiving this letter, to have
had my attention attracted by the following passage of Mr. Ruskin's
own:--"When, in the desert, He was girding Himself for the work of life,
angels of life came and ministered to Him; now, in the fair world, when
He is girding Himself for the work of death [at the Transfiguration],
the ministrants came to Him from the grave. But from the grave
conquered. One from that tomb under Abarim, which His own hand had
sealed long ago; the other from the rest which He had entered without
seeing corruption."
Pleased with the truthful eloquence of this passage, I placed it at the
head of the chapter on the Transfiguration in my book on the Life and
Work of Christ (still in the press). Having done so, it struck me that
Mr. Ruskin, whether intentionally or undesignedly, had made the pronoun
"His" to apply either to God the Father, or to God the Son. It may
grammatically refer to either. From this I drew the conclusion which I
expressed in a short letter to my friend, that, discarding the strictly
human uses of language, which, from its unavoidable poverty, lacks the
power of marking the true nature of the difference between the Divine
Persons of the Holy Trinity, he had spoken of the Father and of the Son
indiscriminately or indifferently, _i.e._, without a difference.
And so it really is. How shall a man, though at the highest he be "but a
little lower than the angels," know and comprehend the Godhead in its
true and exact nature? The names father and son express an earthly
relation perfectly well understood when belonging to ourselves, but when
applied to the Supreme Divine Being, they must of necessity fall far
short of expressing their true connexion with one another. They are,
when applied to Heavenly beings, merely anthropomorphic terms used in
compassion to our infirmities, and conveying to us only an approximation
to the ideas intended. We say the Father sent the Son; the Son suffered
for our sins. But since Father and Son are One, we are plainly
expressing something short of the exact state of the case when we speak
of our thankfulness to the Son as if we had no reason to be equally
thankful to the Father.
The Athanasian Creed makes no great demand upon our mental powers when
it requires of us, in speaking of the Trinity, neither to confound the
Persons nor to divide the Substance; for, in truth, I suppose we are
equally incapable of doing either.
These are Divine matters, of which, while the simplest may know enough,
the wisest can never fathom the whole depth. For the Divine power and
love, knowledge and compassion, will never be fully comprehended until
we know even as we are known.
But, as I am abstaining from questioning Mr. Ruskin as to his meaning in
any passage, if it happens to be slightly obscure, awaiting his reply at
the close of the book, I may here say that I believe that this sentence
refers to a wild and unscriptural kind of preaching, happily becoming
less common, in which undue stress is laid upon the wrathfulness of God,
as contrasted with the mercy of the Saviour, as if we had only the Son
to thank, and not our loving Father in Heaven, for the blessed hope of
eternal life. Some there are, and always will be, who habitually err in
not rightly dividing the Word of God, and giving undue prominence to a
dark portion of doctrine, which is true enough in itself, but would be
relieved of much of its gloom, if due prominence were given to other
parts of the truth of God.
I do not mean to praise caution at the expense of courage. I have a
constitutional aversion to that caution allied to timidity and cowardice
which prompts a man to look to his safety, comfort, and worldly repute
as the first social law that concerns _him_. I admire rather the brave
man who is ready to sacrifice all that, if he can, by so doing, gain the
desired right end.
But in the case before us, it is not so. Men talk as if all we had to do
to convert a sinner from the error of his way was to give him a good
talking, forgetting that we have not a plastic material to work upon,
but a most stubborn and intractable one, wherever interest is concerned;
and that a bold bad man is generally proof against talk, and yields to
no power but the grace of God exercised directly, and seconded by His
heavy judgments. Have we not all seen, with shame and astonishment, the
"wicked rich" regularly in their places at church, much oftener than the
"wicked poor," who have less interest in playing the hypocrite? And
have we not felt our utter powerlessness, whether by public preaching or
by private monition, to find a way to those case-hardened hearts? What
are we to do with such a man as Tennyson describes in "Sea Dreams," who
"began to bloat himself, and ooze
All over with the fat affectionate smile
That makes the widow lean;"
when his victim--
"Pursued him down the street, and far away,
Among the honest shoulders of the crowd,
Read rascal in the motions of his back,
And scoundrel in the supple-sliding knee."