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On the Old Road Volume 2 (of 2), essay(s) by John Ruskin |
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Theology - The Lord's Prayer And The Church - Letter VI |
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_ VI. [Greek: hagiastheto to onoma sou] _Sanctificetur nomen tuum._ BRANTWOOD, _12th July, 1879._ 230. I wonder how many, even of those who honestly and attentively join in our Church services, attach any distinct idea to the second clause of the Lord's Prayer, the _first petition_ of it, the first thing that they are ordered by Christ to seek of their Father? Am I unjust in thinking that most of them have little more notion on the matter than that God has forbidden "bad language," and wishes them to pray that everybody may be respectful to Him? Is it any otherwise with the Third Commandment? Do not most look on it merely in the light of the statute of swearing? and read the words "will not hold him guiltless" merely as a passionless intimation that however carelessly a man may let out a round oath, there really _is_ something wrong in it? On the other hand, can anything be more tremendous than the words themselves--double-negatived: [Greek: "ou gar me katharise ... kurios"] For _other_ sins there is washing;--for this, none! the seventh verse, Ex. xx., in the Septuagint, marking the real power rather than the English, which (I suppose) is literal to the Hebrew. To my layman's mind, of practical needs in the present state of the Church, nothing is so immediate as that of explaining to the congregation the meaning of being gathered in His name, and having Him in the midst of them; as, on the other hand, of being gathered in blasphemy of His name, and having the devil in the midst of them--presiding over the prayers which have become an abomination. 231. For the entire body of the texts in the Gospel against hypocrisy are one and all nothing but the expansion of the threatening that closes the Third Commandment. For as "the name whereby He shall be called is THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS,"--so the taking that name in vain is the sum of "the deceivableness of _un_righteousness in them that perish." Without dwelling on the possibility--which I do not myself, however, for a moment doubt--of an honest clergyman's being able actually to prevent the entrance among his congregation of persons leading openly wicked lives, could any subject be more vital to the purposes of your meetings than the difference between the present and the probable state of the Christian Church which would result, were it more the effort of zealous parish priests, instead of getting wicked _poor_ people to _come_ to church, to get wicked rich ones to stay out of it? Lest, in any discussion of such question, it might be, as it too often is, alleged that "the Lord looketh upon the heart," etc., let me be permitted to say--with as much positiveness as may express my deepest conviction--that, while indeed it is the Lord's business to look upon the heart, it is the pastor's to look upon the hands and the lips; and that the foulest oaths of the thief and the street-walker are, in the ears of God, sinless as the hawk's cry, or the gnat's murmur, compared to the responses in the Church service, on the lips of the usurer and the adulterer, who have destroyed, not their own souls only, but those of the outcast ones whom they have made their victims. It is for the meeting of clergymen themselves--not for a layman addressing them--to ask further, how much the name of God may be taken in vain, and profaned instead of hallowed--_in_ the pulpit, as well as under it. |
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