The Harvest of Ruskin. Graham John William

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Christ is in the room, will care what sort of picture of Christ he has on its walls and, in the plurality of cases, the delight taken in art of this kind is, in reality, nothing more than a form of graceful indulgence of those sensibilities which the habits of a disciplined life restrain in other directions. Such art is, in a word, the opera and drama of the monk. Sometimes it is worse than this, and the love of it is the mask under which a general thirst for morbid excitement will pass itself off for religion. The young lady who rises in the middle of the day, jaded by her last night’s ball, and utterly incapable of any simple or wholesome religious exercise, can still gaze into the dark eyes of the Madonna di San Sisto, or dream over the whiteness of an ivory crucifix, and returns to the course of her daily life in full persuasion that her morning’s feverishness has atoned for her evening’s folly. And, all the while, the art which possesses these very doubtful advantages is acting for undoubtful detriment, in the various ways above examined (in a previous passage), on the inmost fastnesses of faith; it is throwing subtle endearments round foolish traditions, confusing sweet fancies with sound doctrines, and enforcing false assertions with pleasant circumstantiality, until, to the usual, and assuredly sufficient, difficulties standing in the way of belief, its votaries have added a habit of sentimentally changing what they know to be true, and of dearly loving what they confess to be false.”

      “Has there then (the reader asks emphatically) been no true religious ideal? Has religious art never been of any service to mankind? I fear, on the whole, not.

      “More, I think, has always been done for God by few words than many pictures, and more by few acts than many words.”

      “And for us all there is in this matter even a deeper danger than that of indulgence. There is the danger of Artistical Pharisaism. Of all the forms of pride and vanity, as there are none more subtle, so I believe there are none more sinful, than those which are manifested by the Pharisees of art. To be proud of birth, of place, of wit, of bodily beauty, is comparatively innocent, just because such pride is more natural, and more easily detected. But to be proud of our sanctities; to pour contempt upon our fellows because, forsooth, we like to look at Madonnas in bowers of roses, better than at plain pictures of plain things; and to make this religious art of ours the expression of our own perpetual self-complacency – congratulating ourselves, day by day, on our purities, proprieties, elevations, and inspirations, as above the reach of common mortals, this I believe to be one of the wickedest and foolishest forms of human egotism.”44

      These clear-sounding testimonies form a coherent whole. Is there any religious body in England which holds all, or even most of these positions? Remarkably enough, there is one which holds them all; indeed, whose separate existence depends on holding just these positions, positive and negative alike. This one is the Society of Friends. We find to our surprise that, without knowing it, Ruskin was a real and very completely furnished Quaker.

      The testimony against a paid or professional clergy, against all clerical claims, is the very heart of Quaker practice; and the raison d’être of their separate meetings. The Priesthood of all Believers is at the heart of their official statements, and the implication in their ministry. They say that there should be no laity among them, exactly as Ruskin does. They decline all forms of fixed or routine prayer, and never practise them. Their meeting houses are plain, and their worship is ascetically devoid of sensuous attraction in glowing glass or carven stone or in the odour of incense.

      It is one of their central historical testimonies, dating from the seventeenth century, that the Bible should not be called the Word of God. For this they were called atheists by the clergy of Charles II. The controversies of that time rarely avoided touching on this sore point. For them, as for Ruskin, the seat of authority is The Light Within, and, like Ruskin, they are willing to “give up Moses” if history demands it.

      The attitude of Ruskin to Baptism and the Lord’s Supper is a thoroughly Quaker one. Both hold that they are unnecessary and have no “Validity.” The only “Church” they recognize is the Universal Church composed of all faithful men everywhere; and as Ruskin speaks of sheep on distant mountains who look like stones, so Friends have always held that the heathen were or could be saints of the household of God, and that knowledge of the historical Jesus Christ was not essential to salvation here or hereafter.

      Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

      Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

      Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

      Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

      1

      Chap. xiv. § 19.

      2

      Fors, Letter LXXXVI.

      3

      Rugby Chapel, by M. Arnold.

      4

      The passages were: Exod. xv, xx; 2 Sam. i. 17; 1 Kings viii; Ps. xxiii, xxxii, xc, xci, ciii, cxii, cxix, cxxxix; Prov. ii, iii, viii, xii; Is. lviii; Matt. v, vi, vii; Acts xxvi; 1 Cor. xiii, xv; James iv; Rev. v, vi. See Præterita for all this.

      5

      For his actual experience of prayer, see the incident of 1845 in Præterita, vol. ii. pp. 260, 261.

      6

      Præterita, iii. 28.

1

Chap. xiv. § 19.

2

Fors, Letter LXXXVI.

3

Rugby Chapel, by M. Arnold.

4

The passages were: Exod. xv, xx; 2 Sam. i. 17; 1 Kings viii; Ps. xxiii, xxxii, xc, xci, ciii, cxii, cxix, cxxxix; Prov. ii, iii, viii, xii; Is. lviii; Matt. v, vi, vii; Acts xxvi; 1 Cor. xiii, xv; James iv; Rev. v, vi. See Præterita for all this.

5

For his actual experience of prayer, see the incident of 1845 in Præterita, vol. ii. pp. 260, 261.

6

Præterita, iii. 28.

7

Præterita, III. i. 32-34. Also referred to in Munera Pulveris, App. V.

8

Præterita, vol. iii. p. 39.

9

Id. p. 41.

10

Id. p. 48.

11

Præterita, vol. iii. pp. 44-6. Fors, Letter LXXVI.

12

Fors, СКАЧАТЬ