Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/69

Rh has a very graphic picture in his mind's eye of the naturally didactic redundancy of schoolgirl virtue, when girding itself up to do the work of God. He quizzes, too, not without point, those who go about "with white crosses" "in an offensively celestial uniform, as if it were more their business or privilege than it is everybody's to be God's servants." And in general, it may be said that Mr. Ruskin puts his advice to these young girls into a somewhat playfully parabolic form, calling his letter "a splinter of the lance of St. George," — the society which Mr. Ruskin has founded is called the "St. George's Society," — and inveighing against "the present basilisk power of society," — all which, we suppose, he intends his young friends to accept spiritually, and not in its most literal sense. In a word, the first characteristic of Mr. Ruskin's teaching may be said to be that it unites with a very high doctrine of self-renunciation, a strong desire to recommend the constant and very active enjoyment of the brighter side of life, of its glowing colors, its quaint conceits, its ineradicable and sometimes pathetic illusions, its grotesque contrasts. Indeed, the preacher earnestly represents this enjoying spirit as not only perfectly consistent with righteous zeal, but in some sense of positive obligation, if only by way of using reverently a divine gift which, instead of diminishing the earnestness of life, helps to renew and increase it by interrupting that perpetual strain after a single purpose, for which assuredly human nature — at least as we now know it — was never intended.

In the next place, it is remarkable that Mr. Ruskin, though you might have expected him to be more of a disciple of the beautiful and less of a purely spiritual teacher than Mr. M. Arnold, yet, unlike Mr. Arnold, has the religious instinct to see that in pressing self-renunciation — what Mr. Arnold calls "the secret of Jesus" — on his young friends, he must rest it on the same sure foundation on which it was based originally by the Saviour of mankind; that he cannot ask the human conscience to surrender itself to a fate or destiny, or "a stream of tendency not ourselves," with any prospect of turning a habit of surrender directed to such blind agencies as these, into a source of peace and serenity of spirit. Mr. Ruskin makes no such hopeless attempt: —


 * Keep [he says] absolute calm of temper, under all chances; receiving everything that is provoking or disagreeable to you as coming directly from Christ's hand; and the more it is like to provoke you, thank him for it the more; as a young soldier would his general for trusting him with a hard place to hold on the rampart. And remember, it does not in the least matter what happens to you, — whether a clumsy schoolfellow tears your dress, or a shrewd one laughs at you, or the governess doesn't understand you. The one thing needful is that none of these things should vex you. For your mind, at this time of your youth, is crystallizing like sugar-candy; and the least jar to it flaws the crystal, and that permanently. Say to yourselves every morning, just after your prayers, "Whoso forsaketh not all that he hath, cannot be my disciple." That is exactly and completely true; meaning, that you are to give all you have to Christ, to take care of for you. Then if He doesn't take care of it, of course you know it wasn't worth anything. And if He takes anything from you, you know you are better without it. You will not, indeed, at your age, have to give up houses, or lands, or boats, or nets; but you may perhaps break your favorite teacup, or lose your favorite thimble, and might be vexed about it, but for this second St. George's precept.

It is striking enough to see that Mr. Ruskin's insight into moral beauty is so deep, that he perceives at once that the whole serenity and joy which accompanies the abandoning of what is precious, however trifling, or however priceless, can only come of the faith that it is abandoned to One who knows exactly what is needful and what is hurtful to those whom he thus asks to abandon it. Without that profound conviction, there might be wisdom, there might be the highest triumph of self-control, there might be the truest economy, in quietly accepting an inevitable loss, but there could not be joy, there could not be inward happiness, there could not be the serenity which comes of following implicitly the guidance of an inexhaustible love, in such an act. Mr. Ruskin sees what Mr. Arnold does not, — that the beauty of this willingness and even gladness to lose, lies entirely in the faith that it is the act of love, and not the mere operation of a law, which demands the sacrifice. True feeling even for beauty will tell us that a light without a source of light, joy without a fountain of joy, peace without an object of trust, is anomalous and unmeaning, warranting not admiration, but aversion. It is wise not to fret at the inevitable; it is noble not to withhold sacrifices which the general well-being calls for; it is brave to make them without hesitation, and without giving more pain than is necessary to those for whom they are made. But it is not wise 