LETTER XXV.
169.I was interrupted yesterday, just as I was going to set my soldiers to work; and to-day, here comes the pamphlet you promised me, containing the Debates about Church-going, in which I find so interesting a text for my concluding letter that I must still let my soldiers stand at ease for a little while. Look at its twenty- fifth page, and you will find, in the speech of Mr. Thomas, (carpenter,) this beautiful explanation of the admitted change in the general public mind, of which Mr. Thomas, for his part, highly approves, (the getting out of the unreasonable habit of paying respect to anybody.) There were many reasons to Mr. Thomas's mind why the working classes did not attend places of worship; one was, that "the parson was regarded as an object of reverence. In the little town he came from, if a poor man did not make a bow to the parson he was a marked man. This was no doubt wearing away to a great extent" (the base habit of making bows), "because, the poor man was beginning to get education, and to think for himself. It was only while the priest kept the press from him that he was kept ignorant, and was compelled to bow, as it were, to the parson.… It was the case all over England. The clergyman seemed to think himself something superior. Now he (Mr. Thomas) did not admit there was any inferiority" (laughter, audience throughout course of meeting mainly in the right), "except, perhaps, on the score of his having received a classical education, which the poor man could not get."
Now, my dear friend, here is the element which is the veriest devil of all that have got into modern flesh; this infidelity of the nineteenth century St. Thomas in there being anything better than himself alive;[1] coupled, as it always is, with the farther resolution—if unwillingly convinced of the fact,—to seal the Better living thing down again out of his way, under the first stone handy. I had not intended, till we entered on the second section of our enquiry, namely, into the influence of gentleness (having hitherto, you see, been wholly concerned with that of justice), to give you the clue out of our dilemma about equalities produced by education; but by the speech of our superior carpenter's, I am driven into it at once, and it is perhaps as well.
170. The speech is not, observe, without its own root of truth at the bottom of it, nor at all, as I think, ill intended by the speaker; but you have in it a clear instance of what I was saying in the sixteenth of these letters,—that education was desired by the lower orders be-cause they thought it would make them upper orders, and be a leveller and effacer of distinctions. They will be mightily astonished, when they really get it, to find that it is, on the contrary, the fatallest of all discerners and enforcers of distinctions; piercing, even to the division of the joints and marrow, to find out wherein your body and soul are less, or greater, than other bodies and souls, and to sign deed of separation with unequivocal seal.
171. Education is, indeed, of all differences not divinely appointed, an instant effacer and reconciler. Whatever is undivinely poor, it will make rich; whatever is undivinely maimed, and halt, and blind, it will make whole, and equal, and seeing. The blind and the lame are to it as to David at the siege of the Tower of the Kings, "hated of David's soul." But there are other divinely-appointed differences, eternal as the ranks of the everlasting hills, and as the strength of their ceaseless waters. And these, education does not do away with; but measures, manifests, and employs.
In the handful of shingle which you gather from the sea-beach, which the indiscriminate sea, with equality of fraternal foam, has only educated to be, every one, round, you will see little difference between the noble and mean stones. But the jeweller's trenchant education of them will tell you another story. Even the meanest will be better for it, but the noblest so much better that you can class the two together no more. The fair veins and colours are all clear now, and so stern is nature's intent regarding this, that not only will the polish show which is best, but the best will take most polish. You shall not merely see they have more virtue than the others, but see that more of virtue more clearly; and the less virtue there is, the more dimly you shall see what there is of it.
172. And the law about education, which is sorrowfullest to vulgar pride, is this—that all its gains are at compound interest; so that, as our work proceeds, every hour throws us farther behind the greater men with whom we began on equal terms. Two children go to school hand in hand, and spell for half an hour over the same page. Through all their lives, never shall they spell from the same page more. One is presently a page a-head,—two pages, ten pages,—and evermore, though each toils equally, the interval enlarges—at birth nothing, at death, infinite.
173. And by this you may recognise true education from false. False education is a delightful thing, and warms you, and makes you every day think more of yourself. And true education is a deadly cold thing, with a Gorgon's head on her shield, and makes you every day think worse of yourself.
Worse in two ways, also, more's the pity. It is perpetually increasing the personal sense of ignorance and the personal sense of fault. And this last is the truth which is at the bottom of the common evangelical notion about conversion, and which the Devil has got hold of, and hidden, until, instead of seeing and confessing personal ignorance and fault, as compared with the sense and virtue of others, people see nothing but corruption in human nature, and shelter their own sins under accusation of their race (the worst of all assertions of equality and fraternity). And so they avoid the blessed and strengthening pain of finding out wherein they are fools, as compared with other men, by calling everybody else a fool too; and avoid the pain of discerning their own faults, by vociferously claiming their share in the great capital of original sin.
I must also, therefore, tell you here what properly ought to have begun the next following section of our subject—the point usually unnoticed in the parable of the Prodigal Son.
174. First, have you ever observed that all Christ's main teachings, by direct order, by earnest parable, and by His own permanent emotion, regard the use and misuse of money? We might have thought, if we had been asked what a divine teacher was most likely to teach, that he would have left inferior persons to give directions about money; and himself spoken only concerning faith and love, and the discipline of the passions, and the guilt of the crimes of soul against soul. But not so. He speaks in general terms of these. But He does not speak parables about them for all men's memory, nor permit Himself fierce indignation against them, in all men's sight. The Pharisees bring Him an adulteress. He writes her forgiveness on the dust of which He had formed her. Another, despised of all for known sin, He recognised as a giver of unknown love. But He acknowledges no love in buyers and sellers in His house. One should have thought there were people in that house twenty times worse than they;—Caiaphas and his like—false priests, false prayer-makers, false leaders of the people—who needed putting to silence, or to flight, with darkest wrath. But the scourge is only against the traffickers and thieves. The two most intense of all the parables: the two which lead the rest in love and terror (this of the Prodigal, and of Dives), relate, both of them, to management of riches. The practical order given to the only seeker of advice, of whom it is recorded that Christ "loved him," is briefly about his property. "Sell that thou hast."
And the arbitrament of the day of the Last Judgment is made to rest wholly, neither on belief in God, nor in any spiritual virtue in man, nor on freedom from stress of stormy crime, but on this only, "I was an hungered and ye gave me drink; naked, and ye clothed me; sick, and ye came unto me."
175. Well, then, the first thing I want you to notice in the parable of the Prodigal Son (and the last thing which people usually do notice in it), is—that it is about a Prodigal! He begins by asking for his share of his father's goods; he gets it, carries it off, and wastes it. It is true that he wastes it in riotous living, but you are not asked to notice in what kind of riot: he spends it with harlots—but it is not the harlotry which his elder brother accuses him of mainly, but of having devoured his father's living. Nay, it is not the sensual life which he accuses himself of—or which the manner of his punishment accuses him of. But the wasteful life. It is not said that he had become debauched in soul, or diseased in body, by his vice; but that at last he would fain have filled his belly with husks, and could not. It is not said that he was struck with remorse for the consequences of his evil passions, but only that he remembered there was bread enough and to spare, even for the servants, at home.
Now, my friend, do not think I want to extenuate sins of passion (though, in very truth, the sin of Magdalene is a light one compared to that of Judas); but observe, sins of passion, if of real passion, are often the errors and back-falls of noble souls; but prodigality is mere and pure selfishness, and essentially the sin of an ignoble or undeveloped creature; and I would rather, ten times rather, hear of a youth that (certain degrees of temptation and conditions of resistance being understood) he had fallen into any sin you chose to name, of all the mortal ones, than that he was in the habit of running bills which he could not pay.
Farther, though I hold that the two crowning and most accursed sins of the society of this present day are the carelessness with which it regards the betrayal of women, and the brutality with which it suffers the neglect of children, both these head and chief crimes, and all others, are rooted first in abuse of the laws, and neglect of the duties concerning wealth. And thus the love of money, with the parallel (and, observe, mathematically commensurate looseness in management of it), the "mal tener," followed necessarily by the "mal dare," is, indeed, the root of all evil.
176. Then, secondly, I want you to note that when the prodigal comes to his senses, he complains of nobody but himself, and speaks of no unworthiness but his own. He says nothing against any of the women who tempted him—nothing against the citizen who left him to feed on husks—nothing of the false friends of whom "no man gave unto him"—above all, nothing of the "corruption of human nature," or the corruption of things in general. He says that he himself is unworthy, as distinguished from honourable persons, and that he himself has sinned, as distinguished from righteous persons. And that is the hard lesson to learn, and the beginning of faithful lessons. All right and fruitful humility, and purging of heart, and seeing of God, is in that. It is easy to call yourself the chief of sinners, expecting every sinner round you to decline—or return—the compliment; but learn to measure the real degrees of your own relative baseness, and to be ashamed, not in heaven's sight, but in man's sight; and redemption is indeed begun. Observe the phrase, I have sinned ^"against heaven," against the great law of that, and before thee, visibly degraded before my human sire and guide, unworthy any more of being esteemed of his blood, and desirous only of taking the place I deserve among his servants.
177. Now, I do not doubt but that I shall set many a reader's teeth on edge by what he will think my carnal and material rendering of this "beautiful" parable. But I am just as ready to spiritualise it as he is, provided I am sure first that we understand it. If we want to understand the parable of the sower, we must first think of it as of literal husbandry; if we want to understand the parable of the prodigal, we must first understand it as of literal prodigality. And the story has also for us a precious lesson in this literal sense of it, namely this, which I have been urging upon you throughout these letters, that all redemption must begin in subjection, and in the recovery of the sense of Fatherhood and authority, as all ruin and desolation begin in the loss of that sense. The lost son began by claiming his rights. He is found when he resigns them. He is lost by flying from his father, when his father's authority was only paternal. He is found by returning to his father, and desiring that his authority may be absolute, as over a hired stranger.
And this is the practical lesson I want to leave with you, and all other working men.
178. You are on the eve of a great political crisis; and every rascal with a tongue in his head will try to make his own stock out of you. Now this is the test you must try them with. Those that say to you, "Stand up for your rights—get your division of living—be sure that you are as well off as others, and have what they have!—don't let any man dictate to you—have not you all a right to your opinion?—are you not all as good as everybody else?—let us have no governors, or fathers—let us all be free and alike." Those, I say, who speak thus to you, take Nelson's rough order for—and hate them as you do the Devil, for they are his ambassadors. But those, the few, who have the courage to say to you, "My friends, you and I, and all of us, have somehow got very wrong; we've been hardly treated, certainly; but here we are in a piggery, mainly by our own fault, hungry enough, and for ourselves, anything but respectable: we must get out of this; there are certainly laws we may learn to live by, and there are wiser people than we are in the world, and kindly ones, if we can find our way to them; and an infinitely wise and kind Father, above all of them and us, if we can but find our way to Him, and ask Him to take us for servants, and put us to any work He will, so that we may never leave Him more." The people who will say that to you, and (for by no saying, but by their fruits, only, you shall finally know them) who are themselves orderly and kindly, and do their own business well,—take those for your guides, and trust them; on ice and rock alike, tie yourselves well together with them, and with much scrutiny, and cautious walking (perhaps nearly as much back as forward, at first), you will verily get off the glacier, and into meadow land, in God's time.
179. I meant to have written much to you respecting the meaning of that word "hired servants," and to have gone on to the duties of soldiers, for you know "Soldier" means a person who is paid to fight with regular pay—literally with "soldi " or "sous"—the "penny a day" of the vineyard labourers: but I can't now: only just this much, that our whole system of work must be based on the nobleness of soldiership—so that we shall all be soldiers of either ploughshare or sword; and literally all our actual and professed soldiers, whether professed for a time only, or for life, must be kept to hard work of hand, when not in actual war; their honour consisting in being set to service of more pain and danger than others; to lifeboat service; to redeeming of ground from furious rivers or sea—or mountain ruin; to subduing wild and unhealthy land, and extending the confines of colonies in the front of miasm and famine, and savage races.
And much of our harder home work must be done in a kind of soldiership, by bands of trained workers sent from place to place and town to town; doing, with strong and sudden hand, what is needed for help, and setting all things in more prosperous courses for the future. Of all which I hope to speak in its proper place after we know what offices the higher arts of gentleness have among the lower ones of force, and how their prevalence may gradually change spear to pruning-hook, over the face of all the earth.
180. And now—but one word more—either for you, or any other readers who may be startled at what I have been saying, as to the peculiar stress laid by the Founder of our religion on right dealing with wealth. Let them be assured that it is with no fortuitous choice among the attributes or powers of evil, that "Mammon" is assigned for the direct adversary of the Master whom they are bound to serve. You cannot, by any artifice of reconciliation, be God's soldier, and his. Nor while the desire of gain is within your heart, can any true knowledge of the Kingdom of God come there. No one shall enter its stronghold,—no one receive its blessing, except, "he that hath clean hands and a pure heart;" clean hands that have done no cruel deed,—pure heart, that knows no base desire. And, therefore, in the highest spiritual sense that can be given to words, be assured, not respecting the literal temple of stone and gold, but of the living temple of your body and soul, that no redemption, nor teaching, nor hallowing, will be anywise possible for it, until these two verses have been, for it also, fulfilled:—
"And He went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought. And He taught daily in the temple."
- ↑ Compare 'Crown of Wild Olive,' § 136.