The letters which I have received up to the present time (October 31st)
in reply to Mr. Ruskin's have not failed to bring me not a little of
disappointment. On the one hand, I see a man noble and elevated in his
aims, and with highest aspirations, desiring nothing so fervently as to
see the world and its pastors and teachers rising to the highest
attainable level of religious and moral excellence; fearlessly rebuking
the evils he sees so clearly; clothing thoughts that consume him in
words that stir our inmost hearts; and yet I see him unavoidably missing
his aim as all men are liable to do, through the defect of possessing
human language alone as the channel to convey divine meanings; and,
moreover, who cannot at every turn stay the course of their reasoning to
explain that that which they speak apparently, and from the necessities
of language, to _all_, is, as the most ordinary apprehension would
perceive, really addressed to _some_.
On the other side, while I hear many expressing their thankfulness that
things are now being said that "wanted saying," and are being spoken out
with uncompromising boldness, others receive them with impatience, with
irritation, with exasperation. I have been gravely advised to recommend
Mr. Ruskin to withdraw these letters, to wash my hands of them, etc.
Sometimes this arises from unfamiliarity with Mr. Ruskin's most famous
works; sometimes from entire unacquaintance with their number and their
nature; as when a friend wrote to me before he saw or heard a word of
the letters:--
"If Mr. Ruskin thinks we have generally read his _publication_ (_sic_)
I think he is mistaken; all I know of _it_ is that I have occasionally
seen _it_ quoted in newspapers, from which I gather that he holds
peculiar opinions."
A lady, who looked well to the ways of her household, but knew very
little of books, once asked me if Mr. Ruskin had not written a book
called the "Old Red Sandstone." I hinted that probably she meant the
"Stones of Venice," which was indeed the case. She knew it was something
about stones! But she was an excellent creature nevertheless!
These two traits may fairly be paired together.
It should be observed, by clergymen especially who read these letters
attentively, that they contain just what we clergy ought to be told
sometimes by laymen, to whom we preach with perfect impunity, but who as
a rule rarely make reply. I have just read Lord Carnarvon's excellent
address on Preaching, delivered at the Winchester Diocesan Conference,
and thank him as I thank, and for the same reason that I thank, Mr.
Ruskin. We need to be told wholesome though unpalatable truths
sometimes, when we have descended from our castle-pulpits to meet, it
may be, the eyes, and hear the voices, of impatient, irritated, and
prejudiced critics.
I do not remember that so bold an attack, and yet so friendly, has ever
before been made upon our weak points in modern times; and I may justly
claim for Mr. Ruskin's letters a calm, self-searching, and, if need be,
a self-condemning and self-sacrificing, examination. We are all too apt
to cry "Peace, peace, where there is no peace." Why should the shepherds
of Britain claim for themselves a more indulgent regard than the
shepherds of Israel, whom Ezekiel, by the word of the Lord, addressed in
the 33rd and 34th chapters of his prophecy?
Concerning the letter before us on the forgiveness of sins--each other's
sins or debts, and our sins before God--it is not a question of
theology, but of simple moral right and wrong; and I defy Mr. Ruskin's
bitterest censors to deny, that, in this wicked world, men are more in
earnest in deceiving, injuring, and swindling their friends than they
are in seeking the love of their enemies. Has not our Lord told us long
ago that "the children of this world are wiser" (that is, more earnest,
consistent, and thorough-going) "in their generation than the children
of light"?
It is of extreme difficulty to _understand_ the clause, says Mr. Ruskin.
Replies some slow-witted preacher: "Where is the difficulty? I both
understand it and explain it with perfect ease!" What! understand the
precious conditions on which forgiveness will be extended to us! The
question of God's forgiveness is not a _simple_ question. It is
complicated by its relation to men's mutual forgiveness of each other,
and that again by the practical difficulty of knowing when we can, and
when, from the very nature of the case, we cannot, forgive. Here are
surely elements of difficulty quite sufficient to justify the remark
that "the clause is one of such difficulty that, to understand it, means
almost to know the love of God which passeth knowledge."
But we may, at any rate, guard our people against _misunderstanding_ it;
and they are guilty, and full of guilt, who live in sin,--sins of
avarice, of ill temper, of calumny, of hatred, of sensuality, and of
unforgivingness, and yet daily ask to be forgiven, because, forsooth,
they are innocent of any bad intention!
No man or woman who sins with the knowledge that it _is_ sin can have
God's forgiveness. It is no use to plead the frailty of the flesh. It is
wilful, knowing, deliberate sin; and it will not be forgiven without a
very living, earnest, and working faith indeed.
I question much whether we preachers of the Gospel say enough upon this
point,--not at all that we underrate its importance, nor that we
overrate the importance of that which we are apt to call Gospel
preaching [Greek: kat' exochen], namely, the doctrine of the atonement
by the Blood of Christ, which is the brightness and glory of the Gospel
message, but is no more all of it than that the sum of the Lord's Prayer
is contained in one of its clauses.
"As we forgive them that trespass against us." Shall I be pardoned for
venturing here upon a remark which seems needful to make in the presence
of so much that appears to be erroneous on the subject of human
forgiveness? And it is more especially necessary to be understood in
the case of the clergy, because such large demands are made upon their
forgiveness as it is impossible to satisfy. I do not at all say that
there are trespasses which men cannot forgive,--sins, I mean, of the
ordinary type, and not crimes. But I do say that there are times and
circumstances under which forgiveness is a moral impossibility. And yet
the world expects a clergyman to be ever walking up and down in society
with forgiveness on his lips and forgiveness in both his hands. Our Lord
said, "If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and _if he
repent_, forgive him" (Luke xvii. 3); and forgiveness is to follow each
successive profession of repentance. And in Matt. xviii. 22, though
repentance is not named, it is manifestly implied. In 2 Cor. ii. 7,
again, sorrow for the sin is a condition of forgiveness. This, then, is
the rule and condition of forgiveness, that our brother _repent_; and
manifestly it must be so; for the act of forgiveness requires a
correlative disposition to seek and receive forgiveness, just as a gift
implies not only a giver but a receiver, or it cannot be a gift, do what
we will. I think this is extremely apt to be overlooked even by the
larger, that is, the more emotional and impulsive part of the world,
though not, of course, by the more thoughtful; and clergymen especially
are asked to speak fair, and sue for peace, and all but ask for
forgiveness of those who are habitually and obstinately bent upon doing
them all the wrong and injury in their power, and using them with the
most intolerable harshness.
What, then, does true religion require of us if such circumstances make
forgiveness impossible? To be ever ready, ever prepared to forgive; to
seek every opening, every avenue to peace without sacrifice of
self-respect and manly independence; to watch for opportunities to do
kindnesses to the most inveterate enemy,--even where a change of heart
appears hopeless. This is possible to a Christian, and this is what
Christ demands. But He does not demand impossibilities. He does not ask
us to do more than our Heavenly Father Himself, who forgives the
returning sinner even "a great way off," if his face be but homeward;
but says nothing of forgiveness to him whose back is towards his home,
and whose heart dwells far away.
I am sure Mr. Ruskin does not mean that no clergyman is sensible of the
guilt of sins of omission. But he is speaking as a layman, who has heard
in his time a great many preachers, and it is very probable indeed that
he has not heard many dwell long and forcibly on the fact, which is
indeed a fact, that the guilt of sins of omission is the burden of
Christ's teaching, and that more parables and more preaching are
directed against the sin of doing nothing at all than against the
positive and active wickedness of bad men. If we will be candid, we must
agree with him that in our general teaching we do lay much less emphasis
on such sins than our Lord does in _His_ teaching.
But in the paragraph which follows, I confess that, following up a
charge which is sadly too true, that there is a grotesque inconsistency
"in the willingness of human nature to be taxed with any quantity of
sins in the gross, and its resentment at the insinuation of having
committed the smallest parcel of them in detail," there comes a
sentence in which the Christian philosopher loses himself in the caustic
satirist, and that this vein continues to the end of the letter. In
satire, such is its very essence, truth is ever travestied. It is truth
still, but the truth in unfamiliar, and, for the most part, unacceptable
guise. There is just an undercurrent of truth, and no more, in the
statement, not very seriously made, one would suppose, that the English
Liturgy was "drawn up with the amiable intention of making religion as
pleasant as possible, to a people desirous of saving their souls with no
great degree of personal inconvenience."
If the whole naked truth were spoken with the deepest gravity that the
awful pressure of our sins demands, the English Liturgy would be a
continuous wail of grief and repentance. For if anything is great, and
loud, and urgent, it is the cry of our sins. But co-extensive with our
sins is the love of our Father; and, therefore, our mourning is changed
into rejoicing and thankfulness, and this picture of the sinner
"dexterously concealing the manner of his sin from man, and
triumphantly confessing the quantity of it to God," is merely a satire.
The next paragraph is more bitter still; but happily for the cause of
sober truth, it is satire again; and nothing can be more obvious than
the fact that prayer, to be Common Prayer, cannot at the same time suit
every condition of mind, the calm and the agitated, the strained and the
relaxed, the rejoicing and the sorrowful. But we are not dependent upon
public worship for the satisfaction of our spiritual wants, as long as
we can resort to private prayer and family prayer. And, indeed, it
requires no wonderful stretch of our powers of adaptation to use the
most strenuous private prayer in the midst of the congregation; and the
"remorseful publican" and the "timid sinner" are not bound to the words
before them, or if they do follow these words, I am sure there is enough
depth in them to satisfy the views of the most conscience-stricken.
Common Prayer is calm to the calm, and passionate to the passionate. It
is all things to all men, just according to their frame of mind at the
time.
But alas for my good kind friend! as we get nearer to the end of the
letter, the satire waxes fiercer, and the adherence to the truth of
nature grows fainter. Does Mr. Ruskin seriously, or only sarcastically,
tell us that the assaults upon the divine power of prayer gain any force
from the circumstance that we are constrained to pray daily for
forgiveness, never getting so far as to need it no longer? From the
first day that we lisped at our mother's knee, "Forgive us our
trespasses," until, bowed with age, we _still_ say, "Forgive us our
trespasses," we have never stood, and never will stand, one day less in
need of forgiveness than another day--or our Lord would have provided a
thanksgiving and a prayer for the perfected.
I believe everywhere else I recognize, even in the most startling
passages, an element of truth. But in the latter half of this letter,
not even the large amount of acrimony and severity allowed to the mode
of address called satire can quite reconcile us to its marvellous
asperity.