8. And now I am really going to begin my steady explanation of what the St. George's Company have to do. (1.) You are to do good work, whether you live or die. "What is good work?" you ask. Well you may! For your wise pastors and teachers, though they have been very careful to assure you that good works are the fruits of faith, and follow after justification, have been so certain of that fact that they never have been the least solicitous to explain to you, and still less to discover for themselves, what good works were; content if they perceived a general impression on the minds of their congregations that good works meant going to church and admiring the sermon on Sundays, and making as much money as possible in the rest of the week. It is true, one used to hear almsgiving and prayer sometimes recommended by old-fashioned country ministers. But "the poor are now to be raised without gifts," says my very hard-and-well-working friend Miss Octavia Hill; and prayer is entirely inconsistent with the laws of hydro (and other) statics, says the Duke of Argyll.* 3 It may be so, for aught I care, just now. Largesse and supplication may or may not be still necessary in the world's economy. They are not, and never were, part of the world's work. For no man can give till he has been paid his own wages; and still less can he ask his Father for the said wages till he has done his day's duty for them. 1 [Ruskin does not, however, go on to the other injunctions, as set forth in Letter 2, § 22 (Vol. XXVII. p. 44).] [Prayer-book (Article XII.).] 3 [See Letter 10, § 15 (Vol. XXVII. p. 175).] [The reference is to a controversy on the efficacy of Prayer, which had been raging in the Reviews. The Duke of Argyll's contribution was in the Contemporary Review for February 1873, vol. 21, pp. 464 seq. The various articles were reprinted at Boston (U.S.A.) in a volume, edited by J. O. Means, under the title The PrayerGauge Debate. The Duke's paper, however, hardly bears out Ruskin's statement; see also the Duke's remarks on Prayer in The Reign of Law, ch. ii. His position was that the physical and spiritual spheres could not be sharply separated: "Reason, science, and revelation alike point to the folly and ignorance of any attempt to draw an absolute line where we confessedly have not the knowledge to enable us to do so, and confirm the sound philosophy, as well as the piety, of the old Christian practice of in all things making our requests known,' with the over-riding, over-ruling condition, 'nevertheless not our will, but Thine, be done.""] Neither almsgiving nor praying, therefore, nor psalmsinging, nor even-as poor Livingstone thought, to his own death, and our bitter loss-discovering the mountains of the Moon, have anything to do with "good work," or God's work. But it is not so very difficult to discover what that work is. You keep the Sabbath, in imitation of God's rest. Do, by all manner of means, if you like; and keep also the rest of the week in imitation of God's work. 9. It is true that, according to tradition, that work was done a long time ago, "before the chimneys in Zion were hot, and ere the present years were sought out, and or ever the inventions of them that now sin were turned; and before they were sealed that have gathered faith for a treasure."* But the established processes of it continue, as his Grace of Argyll has argutely observed;-and your own work will be good, if it is in harmony with them, and duly sequent of them. Nor are even the first main facts or operations by any means inimitable, on a duly subordinate scale, for if Man be made in God's image,2 much more is Man's work made to be the image of God's work. So therefore look to your model, very simply stated for you in the nursery tale of Genesis. Day First.-The Making, or letting in, of Light. Day Second.-The Discipline and Firmament of Waters. Day Third.-The Separation of earth from water, and planting the secure earth with trees. Day Fourth.-The Establishment of time and seasons, and of the authority of the stars. Day Fifth.-Filling the water and air with fish and birds. Day Sixth.-Filling the land with beasts; and putting divine life into the clay of one of these, that it may have authority over the others, and over the rest of the Creation. * 2 Esdras vi. 4, 5. 1 [He had died in 1873.] |