Letters to the Clergy on the Lord's Prayer and the Church. John Ruskin

      ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου

       Adveniat regnum tuum.

      Brantwood, 14th July, 1879.

      Dear Mr. Malleson,—Sincere thanks for both your letters and the proofs sent. Your comment and conducting link, when needed, will be of the greatest help and value, I am well assured, suggesting what you know will be the probable feeling of your hearers, and the point that will come into question.

Yes, certainly, that "His" in the fourth line[4] was meant to imply that eternal presence of Christ; as in another passage,[5] referring to the Creation, "when His right hand strewed the snow on Lebanon, and smoothed the slopes of Calvary;" but in so far as we dwell on that truth, "Hast thou seen Me, Philip, and not the Father?"[6] we are not teaching the people what is specially the Gospel of Christ as having a distinct function, namely, to serve the Father, and do the Father's will. And in all His human relations to us, and commands to us, it is as the Son of Man, not as the "power of God and wisdom of God," that He acts and speaks. Not as the Power; for He must pray, like one of us. Not as the Wisdom; for He must not know "if it be possible" His prayer should be heard.

      And in what I want to say of the third clause of His prayer (His, not merely as His ordering, but His using), it is especially this comparison between His kingdom, and His Father's, that I want to see the disciples guarded against. I believe very few, even of the most earnest, using that petition, realize that it is the Father's—not the Son's—kingdom, that they pray may come,—although the whole prayer is foundational on that fact: "For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory." And I fancy that the mind of the most faithful Christian is quite led away from its proper hope, by dwelling on the reign—or the coming again—of Christ; which, indeed, they are to look for, and watch for, but not to pray for. Their prayer is to be for the greater kingdom to which He, risen and having all His enemies under His feet, is to surrender His, "that God may be All in All."

      And, though the greatest, it is that everlasting kingdom which the poorest of us can advance. We cannot hasten Christ's coming. "Of the day and the hour, knoweth no man." But the kingdom of God is as a grain of mustard-seed:—we can sow of it; it is as a foam-globe of leaven:—we can mingle it; and its glory and its joy are that even the birds of the air can lodge in the branches thereof.

      Forgive me for getting back to my sparrows; but truly in the present state of England, the fowls of the air are the only creatures, tormented and murdered as they are, that yet have here and there nests, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. And it would be well if many of us, in reading that text, "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink," had even got so far as to the understanding that it is at least as much, and that until we had fed the hungry, there was no power in us to inspire the unhappy.

      Ever affectionately yours,

       J. Ruskin.

I will write my feeling about the pieces of the Life of Christ[7] you have sent me in a private letter. I may say at once that I am sure it will do much good, and will be upright and intelligible, which how few religious writings are?

[4] In a proof sheet of a book of the Editor's at that time in the press.

[5] Referring to the closing sentence of the third paragraph of the fifth letter, which seemed to express what I felt could not be Mr. Ruskin's full meaning, I pointed out to him the following sentence in "Modern Painters:"—

      "When, in the desert, Jesus was girding Himself for the work of life, angels of life came and ministered unto Him; now, in the fair world, when He is girding Himself for the work of death, the ministrants came to Him from the grave; but from the grave conquered. One from the tomb under Abarim, which His own hand had sealed long ago; the other from the rest which He had entered without seeing corruption."

      On this I made a remark somewhat to the following effect: that I felt sure Mr. Ruskin regarded the loving work of the Father and of the Son as equal in the forgiveness of sins and redemption of mankind; that what is done by the Father is in reality done also by the Son; and that it is by a mere accommodation to human infirmity of understanding that the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed to us in language, inadequate indeed to convey divine truths, but still the only language possible; and I asked whether some such feeling was not present in his mind when he used the pronoun "His" in the above passage from "Modern Painters" of the Son, where it would be usually understood of the Father; and as a corollary, whether, in the letter, he does not himself fully recognise the fact of the redemption of the world by the loving self-sacrifice of the Son being in entire concurrence with the equally loving will of the Father. This, as well as I can recollect, is the origin of the passage in the second paragraph in this seventh letter.—Editor of Letters.

[6] "Yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father" (John xiv. 9).—Editor.

[7] The Life and Work of Jesus Christ. Ward and Lock.

VIII

       Table of Contents

      γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου, ὡς ἐν οὐρανᾦ, καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς.

       Fiat voluntas tua sicut in cœlo et in terra.

      Brantwood, 9th August, 1879.

      I was reading the second chapter of Malachi this morning by chance, and wondering how many clergymen ever read it, and took to heart the "commandment for them."

      For they are always ready enough to call themselves priests (though they know themselves to be nothing of the sort), whenever there is any dignity to be got out of the title; but, whenever there is any good, hot scolding or unpleasant advice given them by the prophets, in that self-assumed character of theirs, they are as ready to quit it as ever Dionysus his lion-skin, when he finds the character of Herakles inconvenient.

      "Ye have wearied the Lord with your words;" (yes, and some of His people too, in your time), "yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied Him? When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delighteth in them; or, Where is the God of judgment?"

      How many, again and again I wonder, of the lively young ecclesiastics supplied to the increasing demand of our west ends of flourishing Cities of the Plain, ever consider what sort of sin it is for which God (unless they lay it to heart) will "curse their blessings, and spread dung upon their faces;" or have understood, even in the dimmest manner, what part they had taken, and were taking, in "corrupting the covenant of the Lord with Levi, and causing many to stumble at the Law."

      Perhaps the most subtle and unconscious way in which the religious teachers upon whom the ends of the world are come, have done this, is in never telling their people the meaning of the clause in the Lord's Prayer, which, of all others, their most earnest hearers have oftenest on their lips: "Thy will be done." They allow their people to use it as if their Father's will were always to kill their babies, or do something unpleasant to them; and following comfort and wealth, instead of explaining to them that the first and intensest article of their Father's will was their own sanctification; and that the one only path to national prosperity and to domestic peace, was to understand what the will of the Lord was, and to do all they could to get it done. Whereas one