_From_ OXONIENSIS.
DEAR MR. MALLESON,--Many thanks for the pamphlet. You ask me to send you
any remarks I may have to make on the Letters, and I gather from your
note at the beginning of the Letters as they now stand, that you intend
making use of any remarks sent you that may commend themselves to your
judgment. I am not vain enough to think mine of any special value. I
will, however, write you my feelings about them, encouraged to do so by
your statement in the note to the pamphlet, that the use made of
remarks sent you will be anonymous, if it is so desired.
First, as regards the general tone of the Letters. You tell me that the
majority of the comments you have received have been hostile--people not
taking their medicine without making wry faces. I am only surprised at
the gentleness of the Letters, and I believe that if anyone will take
the trouble to put down for himself on paper the sum of their contents,
he will find it as difficult to gainsay as for careless readers it is
easy to cavil at. On the other hand, the "hostile spirit" is readily
provoked by the way in which some of the teaching of the Letters is put.
Passages like the sixth paragraph in Letter X. appear an objectionable
joke to some--perhaps to most--people; they do not see that it is really
a serious jest, so put for brevity's sake, and that Ruskin might have
put the same note to it as he has put to a passage in the "Crown of Wild
Olive," p. 85, 8vo ed.: "Quite serious all this, though it reads like
jest." I remember once asking Ruskin if his apparent joking in some
Oxford lectures was not likely to lessen his influence, and he at once
said to me, "Remember that most of my apparent jokes are serious,
_ghastly_ jests." I think he would be less often misunderstood, if this
were more often understood.
Your own preface marks the two main points in the spirit of the Letters.
They are sternly practical, and at the same time their standard is one
of an ideal perfection. People don't see that because the goal cannot be
reached, the road towards it can still be trodden, and therefore they
apply to the road an epithet which applies only to the goal. In this
respect Ruskin's teaching might be mottoed with George Herbert's--
"Who aimeth at the sky
Shoots higher much than he that means a tree."
In fact, Ruskin's teaching, like that of the Bible, is not unpractical,
but _unpractised_.
I will now take the Letters in detail. The first four of them are merely
introductory to the main matter of the eleven. In these first five two
questions are asked--
1. What is a clergyman of the Church of England? And to this the
suggested answer is (whom does it offend?), "A teacher of the Gospel of
Christ to all nations."
2. What is the teaching of the Gospel he is to teach? What is that
teaching, clearly and simply put?
Then Letter IV. suggests that the Lord's Prayer may be taken as
containing the cardinal points of that teaching, containing not all that
is to be learnt, but what all have to learn. And so we come to Letter
V.; and I tried, in reading the Letters for myself, to do for them what
Letter III. asks clergymen to do for the Gospel.
Letter V.--A clergyman's first duty is to make the Lord's Prayer clear
and living to his people. This is what Ruskin has elsewhere insisted on
in other matters--"clear," know your duty and your belief; "living,"
realize it in your life--realize it "as a Captain's order, to be obeyed"
("Crown of Wild Olive," Introduction, p. 13. The whole of this
Introduction reads well with these Letters). Then the first clause of
the Prayer is set forth as putting before us God as a loving Father.
Letter VI.--"Hallowed be Thy name." How do we fulfil the hope in our
lives? How do we betray it? Not in swearing only, as we are apt to
think, but in the blasphemy of false and hypocritical prayer to, and
praise of, _preaching about_ God (last paragraph of the Letter).
Clergymen, it is added, can prevent openly wicked men from being in
their congregations (they are supposed to do so: Rubrics 2 and 3 before
the Holy Communion Service); they can not only compel the wicked poor
into, but expel the wicked rich out of, churches. God sees the heart:
the clergy should look to the hands and lips.
Letter VII.--"Thy kingdom come:"--not an allusion to the second coming
of the Son, which we cannot hasten, but to the coming of the kingdom of
God the Father, which we can. This is again illustrated by the "Crown of
Wild Olive" (I daresay it is by others of Ruskin's books, but it is
convenient to refer chiefly to one, and that the one which contains what
he calls his most biblical lecture), p. 56: "Observe it is a kingdom
that is to come to us; we are not to go to it. Also it is not to be a
kingdom of the dead, but of the living. Also it is not to come all at
once, but quietly ... without observation. _Also it is not to come
outside of us, but in our hearts: 'the kingdom of God is within you.'_"
This is the sense in which we can hasten _it_.
Letter VIII. begins with a hit at the pleasure priests take in their
priesthood's dignity, and at their avoidance of its unpleasant duties,
and at their sometimes wearisome preaching.
Have they ever taught "Thy will be done," as it should be--1. In our own
sanctification; 2. In understanding that will, and doing it, and
striving to get it done (knowing their duty and doing it, and it alone)?
The remarks about the mediatorial (absolving-from-punishment) and the
pastoral (purging-from-sin) functions of a "pastor," seem to me quite
admirable.
The end of the Letter is subsequently amplified, Letter X.
Letter IX.--"Give us this day our daily bread." Yes, but we must work
for it. "The man that will not work, neither shall he eat." A cardinal
point with Ruskin: "But if you do" (_i.e._, wish for God's kingdom),
"you must do more than pray for it, you must work for it" ("Crown of
Wild Olive," p. 56).
And the clergyman has to teach (Letter IX. goes on) what that work is
and how it is to be done; and the life, to which their teaching should
lead, is one "moderate in its self-indulgence, wide in its offices of
temporal ministry to the poor," in the absence of which, prayer for
harvest is mere blasphemy. For the spiritual bread is the first thing,
and a clergyman's first message, "Choose ye this day whom ye will
serve."
Letter X.--"Forgive us our trespasses." The explanation of trespasses,
and substitution of _debts_ for it, is admirable ("Dimitte nobis
_debita_ nostra"), and admirably illustrated by the sins of omission
being condemned in Christ's judgment,--"I was hungry, and ye gave Me no
meat."
The remarks on the "pleasantness" of the English liturgy recall those on
the avoidance of unpleasantness by the English clergy in Letter VIII.
I pass over the notes on the advantage of "forms of prayer," and come to
the end of Letter X. and Letter XI., which go together, and say
practically, Pray honestly or not at all. "Faithful prayer implies
always correlative exertions;" "dishonest prayer is blasphemy of the
worst kind."
"Crown of Wild Olive," p. 55, again: "Everybody in this room has been
taught to pray daily, 'Thy kingdom come.' Now, if we hear a man swear in
the streets, we think it very wrong, and say he 'takes God's name in
vain.' But there is a twenty times worse way of taking His name in vain
than that. It is to _ask God for what we don't want_. He doesn't like
that sort of prayer. If you don't want a thing, don't ask for it; such
asking is the worst mockery of your King you can insult Him with; the
soldiers striking Him on the head was nothing to that. If you do not
wish for His kingdom, don't pray for it."
In fact, prayer is worse than useless if not sincere, and it is
insincere if not carried out in the life of the "pray-er." Thus, "One
hour in the execution of justice is worth seventy years of (insincere)
prayer" (Mahometan maxim, "Crown of Wild Olive," p. 49).
I must stop. Only the fifth paragraph in Letter XI., about parents
looking for "opportunities" for their children, is exactly parallel
with "Sesame and Lilies," 8vo edition, p. 2 (Sub. 1, Sec. 2), which might
be added in an illustrative note. I must apologize for my long and
rambling letter, but if it is of the least service to you I shall be
content. I feel how inadequate it is to what I meant it to be, only I
have no time just now to do more than write, as this letter is
written--at the point of the pen.