The Harvest of Ruskin. Graham John William

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СКАЧАТЬ orderly development of a research, by a man singularly qualified to hold a religious Research Fellowship.

      He may be said to have matriculated in religion at his mother’s knee. There he learnt his Bible. He took a degree with the second volume of Modern Painters and the works allied to it in spirit. He then became a Master of Arts, qualified to teach, a recognized religious authority among many authorities. Had he never gone to Venice and seen Tintoret he might have built, so he says, a Catholic archiepiscopal palace at York instead of a museum at Sheffield; or he might have been such a man as Dean Church or John Henry Newman, on Calvinistic Protestant lines. But Ruskin proceeded to a higher status. He must needs penetrate deeper; and in the crisis of 1858 he took his Fellowship by a thesis on the Irreducible Minimum of the Religious Outfit. Thenceforth he carried on a research, he was a “seeker after God,” often wrote “in much darkness and sorrow of heart”; and in sixteen years the conclusions were ready, the convictions matured, the saint perfected.

      CHAPTER III

      TO WHAT FOLD?

      T O what school of thought or to which among our denominations, if to any, can Ruskin be said to belong? He did not actively, in mature life, belong to any, or attend Church or Chapel. Let us examine his doctrines in this connection.

      The first point which strikes the inquirer is Ruskin’s strong hostility to professionalism in religion, to payment for preaching. Against a separate order of clergy, maintained for that object, and claiming a certain position by reason of their ministration, he was the most poignant voice of his time, from inside Christianity. Letters XXXVIII, XLIX, and LXII of Fors Clavigera are full of the most unrestrained expression of this testimony. We will quote:

      “The particular kinds of folly also which lead youths to become clergymen, uncalled, are specially intractable. That a lad just out of his teens, and not under the influence of any deep religious enthusiasm, should ever contemplate the possibility of his being set up in the middle of a mixed company of men and women of the world, to instruct the aged, encourage the valiant, support the weak, reprove the guilty, and set an example to all; and not feel what a ridiculous and blasphemous business it would be, if he only pretended to do it for hire; and what a ghastly and murderous business it would be if he did it strenuously wrong; and what a marvellous and all but incredible thing the Church and its power must be, if it were possible for him, with all the good meaning in the world, to do it rightly – that any youth, I say, should ever have got himself into the state of recklessness or conceit, required to become a clergyman at all, under existing circumstances, must put him quite out of the pale of those whom one appeals to on any reasonable or moral question, in serious writing… There is certainly no Bishop now in the Church of England who would either dare in a full drawing-room to attribute to himself the gift of prophecy, in so many words; or to write at the head of any of his sermons, ‘On such and such a day, of such and such a month, in such and such a place, the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying’: – Nevertheless he claims to have received the Holy Ghost himself by laying on of hands; and to be able to communicate the Holy Ghost to other men in the same manner. And he knows that the office of the prophet is as simply recognized in the enumeration of the powers of the ancient church, as that of the apostle or evangelist or doctor. And yet he can neither point out in the Church the true prophets, to whose number he dares not say that he himself belongs, nor the false prophets, who are casting out devils in the name of Christ without being known by him… But the word ‘Priest’ is one which he finds it convenient to assume himself, and to give to his fellow clergymen. He knows, just as well as he knows prophecy to be a gift attributed to the Christian minister, that priesthood is a function expressly taken away from the Christian minister (as distinguished, that is to say, from other members of the Church). He dares not say in the open drawing-room that he offers sacrifice for any soul there; and he knows that he cannot give authority for calling himself a priest from any canonical book of the New Testament. So he equivocates on the sound of the word ‘Presybter.’ …”28

      “This preaching of Christ has, nevertheless, become an acknowledged profession and means of livelihood for gentlemen: and the simony of to-day differs only from that of apostolic times, in that, while the elder Simon thought the gift of the Holy Ghost worth a considerable offer in ready money, the modern Simon would on the whole refuse to accept the same gift of the Third Person of the Trinity, without a nice little attached income, a pretty church, with a steeple restored by Mr. Scott, and an eligible neighbourhood.”29

      And, in soberer vein: “No way will ever be found of rightly ordaining men who have taken up the trade of preaching as a means of livelihood, and to whom it is a matter of personal interest whether they preach in one place or another; only those who have left their means of living, that they may preach, and whose peace follows them as they wander, and abides where they enter in, are of God’s ordaining; and practically until the Church insists that every one of her ministers shall either have an independent income, or support himself for his ministry on Sunday by true bodily toil during the week, no word of the living Gospel will ever be spoken from her pulpits. How many of those who now occupy them have verily been invited to such office by the Holy Ghost may be easily judged by observing how many the Holy Ghost has similarly invited of religious persons already in prosperous business or desirable position.”30

      Another passage from another place runs: “Take the desire of teaching – the entirely unselfish and noble instinct for telling to those who are ignorant the truth we know, and guarding them from the errors we see them in danger of – there is no nobler, no more constant instinct in honourable breasts; but let the Devil formalise it, and mix the pride of a profession with it – get foolish people entrusted with the business of instruction, and make their giddy heads giddier by putting them up in pulpits above a submissive crowd – and you have it instantly corrupted into its own reverse; you have an alliance against the light (saying) ‘Light is in us only. Shut your eyes close and fast and we will lead you.’ ”31

      In another place he says the difficult question is not, why workmen don’t go to church, but – why other people do. He asks,32 “What Scripture warrant there is for the offices and authority of the clergy, and defies anyone to find any.” Their functions, he says, must depend on the needs of the time. “Robinson Crusoe, on his island, wants no Bishop, and makes a thunderstorm do for an evangelist. The University of Oxford would do ill without its Bishop, but wants an evangelist besides, and that forthwith.”

      He says that by yielding to the impression that the most sacred calling is that of the clergy, “the sacred character of the layman himself is forgotten, and his own ministerial duty is neglected,” and so laymen wrongly “devote their whole time and energy to the business of this world. No mistake can possibly be greater. Every member of the Church is equally bound to the service of the Head of the Church, and that service is pre-eminently the saving of souls. There is not a moment of a man’s active life in which he may not be indirectly preaching, and throughout a great part of his life he ought to be directly preaching, and teaching both strangers and friends.” This is from the Sheepfolds pamphlet of 1851; at that time he nevertheless contemplates church officers of a sort, as organizers, deacons, or visitors, and thinks they may be maintained for their special work, and includes religious instruction and exhortation among these duties. But this last advice he supersedes in Fors of 1873 and later dates, when he places preaching on a purely amateur basis, in the passages quoted already, and similar ones.

      “All good judging, and all good preaching, must be given gratis. Look back to what I have incidentally said of lawyers and clergy, as professional – that is to say, as living by their judgment, and sermons. You will perhaps now be able to receive my conclusive statement, that all such professional sale of justice and mercy is a deadly sin. A man may sell the work of his hands, but not his equity, nor his piety. Let him СКАЧАТЬ