FORS CLAVIGERA LETTER 49 FROM THE PROPHET EVEN UNTO THE PRIEST1 1. I WONDER if Fors will let me say any small proportion, this year, of what I intend. I wish she would, for my readers have every right to be doubtful of my plan till they see it more defined; and yet to define it severely would be to falsify it, for all that is best in it depends on my adopting whatever good I can find, in men and things, that will work to my purpose; which of course means action in myriads of ways that I neither wish to define, nor attempt to anticipate. Nay, I am wrong, even in speaking of it as a plan or scheme at all. It is only a method of uniting the force of all good plans and wise schemes it is a principle and tendency, like the law of form in a crystal; not a plan. If I live, as I said at first,2 I will endeavour to show some small part of it in action; but it would be a poor design indeed, for the bettering of the world, which any man could see either quite round the outside, or quite into the inside of. But I hope in the letters of this next year to spend less time in argument or attack; what I wish the reader to know, of principle, is already enough proved, if only he take the pains to read the preceding letters thoroughly; and I shall now, as far as Fors will let me, carry out my purpose of choosing and annotating passages of confirmatory 3 1 [See below, § 9. "False Priests and Prophets" was a rejected title for this Letter.] 2 [See Letter 5 (Vol. XXVII. pp. 95–96).] classical literature; and answering, as they occur, the questions of my earnest correspondents, as to what each of them, in their place of life, may immediately do with advantage for St. George's help. 2. If those of my readers who have been under the impression that I wanted them to join me in establishing some model institution or colony, will look to § 3 of Letter 1,' they will see that, so far from intending or undertaking any such thing, I meant to put my whole strength into my Oxford teaching; and, for my own part, to get rid of begging letters and live in peace. Of course, when I have given fourteen thousand pounds away in a year,* everybody who wants some money thinks I have plenty for them. But my having given fourteen thousand pounds is just the reason I have not plenty for them; and, moreover, have no time to attend to them, (and generally, henceforward, my friends will please to note that I have spent my life in helping other people, and am quite tired of it; and if they can now help me in my work, or praise me for it, I shall be much obliged to them; but I can't help them at theirs). But this impression of my wanting to found a colony was founded on §§ 20-21 of Letter 5, and § 10 of Letter 8.2 Read them over again now, altogether. 3. If the help I plead for come, we will indeed try to make some small piece of English ground beautiful; and if sufficient help come, many such pieces of ground; and on those we will put cottage dwellings, and educate the labourers' children in a certain manner. But that is not * Seven thousand to St. George's Company; five, for establishment of Mastership in Drawing in the Oxford schools; two, and more, in the series of drawings placed in those schools to secure their efficiency,3 1 [See Vol. XXVII. p. 13.] 2 [See Vol. XXVII. pp. 95, 96, 142. Yet it will be observed that on the next page he speaks of "my model colony." What he means is that, though giving directions for the foundation of such a colony or colonies, he declined any manner of political action which should interfere with his Oxford work: see Letter 81, § 7 (Vol. XXIX. p. 197).] 3 [For Ruskin's gift of a "tenth" to St. George's Guild, see Letter 12, § 1 (Vol. XXVII. p. 199); for his gifts to Oxford, Vol. XXI. pp. xix. seq.] founding a colony. It is only agreeing to work on a given system. Any English gentleman who chooses to forbid the use of steam machinery-be it but over a few acres,and to make the best of them he can by human labour, or who will secure a piece of his mountain ground from dog, gun, and excursion party, and let the wild flowers and wild birds live there in peace;-any English gentleman, I say, who will so command either of these things, is doing the utmost I would ask of him;-if, seeing the result of doing so much, he felt inclined to do more, field may add itself to field, cottage rise after cottage,-here and there the sky begin to open again above us, and the rivers to run pure. In a very little while, also, the general interest in education will assuredly discover that healthy habits, and not mechanical drawing nor church catechism, are the staple of it; and then, not in my model colony only, but as best it can be managed in any unmodelled place or way-girls will be taught to cook, boys to plough, and both to behave; and that with the heart,—which is the first piece of all the body that has to be instructed. 4. A village clergyman (an excellent farmer, and very kind friend of my earliest college days) sent me last January a slip out of the Daily Telegraph, written across in his own hand with the words " Advantage of Education." The slip described the eloquence and dexterity in falsehood of the Parisian Communist prisoners on their trial for the murder of the hostages. But I would fain ask my old friend to tell me himself whether he thinks instruction in the art of false eloquence should indeed receive from any minister of Christ the title of "education" at all; and how far display of eloquence, instead of instruction in behaviour, has become the function, too commonly, of these ministers themselves. 5. I was asked by one of my Oxford pupils the other day why I had never said any serious word of what it [The extract is given in a note to Vol. XXIII. p. 250. It comes from the Daily Telegraph of January 10, and following days, 1872.] might seem best for clergymen to do in a time of so great doubt and division. I have not, because any man's becoming a clergyman in these days must imply one of two things-either that he has something to do and say for men which he honestly believes himself impelled to do and say by the Holy Ghost,1 -and in that case he is likely to see his way without being shown it, or else he is one of the group of so-called Christians who, except with the outward ear, "have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost,' "2 and are practically lying, both to men and to God;-persons to whom, whether they be foolish or wicked in their ignorance, no honest way can possibly be shown. 6. The particular kinds of folly also which lead youths to become clergymen, uncalled, are especially 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 these 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. I went into a ritualistic church, the other day, for instance, in the West End. It was built of bad Gothic, lighted with bad painted glass, and had its Litany [For a reference by a correspondent to this passage, see Letter 54 (below, p. 359).] 2 [Acts xix. 2.] intoned, and its sermon delivered-on the subject of wheat and chaff by a young man of, as far as I could judge, very sincere religious sentiments, but very certainly the kind of person whom one might have brayed in a mortar among the very best of the wheat with a pestle, without making his foolishness depart from him.1 And, in general, any man's becoming a clergyman in these days implies that, at best, his sentiment has overpowered his intellect; and that, whatever the feebleness of the latter, the victory of his impertinent piety has been probably owing to its alliance with his conceit, and its promise to him of the gratification of being regarded as an oracle, without the trouble of becoming wise, or the grief of being so. 7. It is not, however, by men of this stamp that the principal mischief is done to the Church of Christ. Their foolish congregations are not enough in earnest even to be misled; and the increasing London or Liverpool respectable suburb is simply provided with its baker's and butcher's shop, its alehouse, its itinerant organ-grinders for the week, and stationary organ-grinder for Sunday, himself his monkey, in obedience to the commonest condition of demand and supply, and without much more danger in their Sunday's entertainment than in their Saturday's. But the importunate and zealous ministrations of the men who have been strong enough to deceive themselves before they deceive others;-who give the grace and glow of vital sincerity to falsehood, and lie for God from the ground of their heart, produce forms of moral corruption in their congregations as much more deadly than the consequences of recognizedly vicious conduct, as the hectic of consumption is more deadly than the flush of temporary fever. And it is entirely unperceived by the members of existing churches that the words, "speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron,"2 do not in the least apply to wilful and self-conscious hypocrites, but only to those who do not recognize themselves for such. Of wilful assumption 1 [Proverbs xxvii. 22. Compare Letter 15, § 7 (Vol. XXVII. p. 264).] |