LETTER 77

THE LORD THAT BOUGHT US1

VENICE, Easter Sunday, 1877.

1. I HAVE yet a word or two to say, my Sheffield friends, respecting your religious services, before going on to practical matters. The difficulties which you may have observed the School Board getting into on this subject, have, in sum, arisen from their approaching the discussion of it always on the hypothesis that there is no God: the ecclesiastical members of the board wishing to regulate education so as to prevent their pupils from painfully feeling the want of one; and the profane members of it, so as to make sure that their pupils may never be able to imagine one. Objects which are of course irreconcilable; nor will any national system of education be able to establish itself in balance of them.

But if, instead, we approach the question of school discipline on the hypothesis that there is a God, and one that cares for mankind, it will follow that if we begin by teaching the observance of His Laws, He will gradually take upon Himself the regulation of all minor matters, and make us feel and understand, without any possibility of doubt, how He would have us conduct ourselves in outward observance.* And the real difficulty of our Ecclesiastical

* The news from Liverpool in the third article of Correspondence [p. 119], is the most cheering I ever read in public papers.

1 [2 Peter ii. 1 ("But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them"). Ruskin also wrote on the wrapper of his copy "Epistle of Jude," as a summary of the contents of this Letter.]

party has of late been that they could not venture for their lives to explain the Decalogue, feeling that Modernism and all the practices of it must instantly be turned inside-out, and upside-down, if they did; but if, without explaining it, they could manage to get it said every Sunday, and a little agreeable tune on the organ played after every clause of it, that perchance would do (on the assumption, rendered so highly probable by Mr. Darwin's discoveries respecting the modes of generation in the Orchideæ,1 that there was no God, except the original Baalzebub of Ekron, Lord of Bluebottles and fly-blowing in general; and that this Decalogue was only ten crotchets of Moses's, and not God's at all), -on such assumption, I say, they thought matters might still be kept quiet a few years longer in the Cathedral Close, especially as Mr. Bishop was always so agreeably and inoffensively pungent an element of London society; and Mrs. Bishop and Miss Bishop so extremely proper and pleasant to behold, and the grass of the lawn so smooth shaven. But all that is drawing very fast to its end. Poor dumb dogs that they are, and blind mouths, the grim wolf with privy paw daily devouring apace,3 and nothing said, and their people loving to have it so, I know not what they will do in the end thereof; but it is near. Disestablishment? Yes, and of more powers than theirs; that prophecy of the Seventh from Adam is of judgment to be executed upon all, and conviction of their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed."

2. I told you to read that epistle of Jude carefully," though to some of you, doubtless, merely vain words; but

2

1 [See Letter 46, § 15 (Vol. XXVIII. p. 183).]

seq.).]

[Compare Val d'Arno, § 226 (Vol. XXIII. p. 132 n.).]

[Milton, Lycidas; compare Sesame and Lilies, §§ 20 seq. (Vol. XVIII. pp. 69

[Compare Jeremiah v. 31.]

"And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed" (Jude 14, 15). Compare Letter 75, § 3 (above, p. 56).]

6

[Letter 76, § 13 (p. 95).]

to any who are earnestly thoughtful, at least the evidence of a state of the Christian Church in which many things were known, and preserved (that prophecy of Enoch, for instance), lost to us now; and of beliefs which, whether well or ill founded, have been at the foundation of all the good work that has been done, yet, in this Europe of ours. Well founded or not, at least let us understand, as far as we may, what they were.

With all honour to Tyndale (I hope you were somewhat impressed by the reward he had from the world of his day, as related in that final letter of his 1), there are some points in the translation that might be more definite: here is the opening of it, in simpler, and in some words certainly more accurate, terms :—

"Judas, the servant of Jesus Christ, and the brother of James, to all who are sanctified in God, and called and guarded in Christ.

"Pity, and Peace, and Love, be fulfilled in you.

Beloved, when I was making all the haste I could to write to you of the common salvation, I was suddenly forced to write to you, exhorting you to fight for the faith, once for all delivered to the Saints.

"For there are slunk in among you certain men, written down before to this condemnation, insolent, changing the grace of God into fury, and denying the only Despot, God; and our Lord, Jesus Christ.

"And I want to put you in mind, you who know this,-once for all, -that the Lord, having delivered His people out of the land of Egypt, in the second place destroyed those who believed not.

"And the Angels which guarded not their beginning, but left their own habitation, He hath guarded in eternal chains, under darkness, to the judgment of the great day." 2

3. Now this translation is certainly more accurate, in observing the first principle of all honest translation, that the same word shall be used in English, where it is the same in the original. You see I have three times used the word "guarded." So does St. Judas. But our translation varies its phrase every time; first it says "preserved,"

1 [See Letter 76, § 22 (p. 105).]

2 Jude 1-6.]

[For other passages in which Ruskin insists on this point, see Vol. XXVII. p. 202.]

2

then "kept," and then "reserved,” -every one of these words being weaker than the real one,' which means guarded as a watch-dog guards. To "reserve" the Devil, is quite a different thing from "watching" him. Again, you see that, for "lasciviousness," I have written "fury." The word " is indeed the same always translated lasciviousness, in the New Testament, and not wrongly, if you know Latin; but wherever it occurs (Mark vii. 22; Ephesians iv. 19, etc.), it has a deeper under-meaning than the lust of pleasure. It means essentially the character which "refuses to hear the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely," which cannot be soothed, or restrained, but will take its own way, and rage its own rage,*-alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them,-who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to fury* (animal rage, carnivorousness in political economy,'-competition, as of horses with swinging spurs at their sides in the Roman corso, in science, literature, and all the race of life), to work all uncleanness,-(not mere sensual vices, but all the things that defile, comp. Mark vii. 22, just quoted), with greediness;—then, precisely in the same furrow of thought, St. Jude goes on,-"denying the only Despot, God;" and St. Paul, "but ye have not so learned Christ—if so be that ye have heard Him, and been taught by Him"-(which is indeed precisely the point dubitable)" that ye put off the old man," etc.,-where you will find, following, St. Paul's explanation of the Decalogue, to end of chapter (Eph. iv.), which if you will please learn by heart with the ten commandments, and, instead of merely praying, when you hear that disagreeable crotchet of Moses's announced, "Thou

shalt not steal," "Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this-crotchet," which is all you can now do,-resolve solemnly that you will yourselves literally obey (and enforce with all your power such obedience in others) the Christian answering article of Decalogue, “Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth," 2 you will, in that single piece of duty to God, overthrow, as I have said, the entire system of modern society, and form another in righteousness and true holiness, by no rage refusing, and in no cowardice denying, but wholly submitting to, the Lord who bought them with a price, the only Despot, God.

4. For our present translation of the passage is finally better in retaining the Greek word "Despot" here rather than "Lord," in order to break down the vulgar English use of the word for all that is evil. But it is necessary for you in this to know the proper use of the words Despot and Tyrant. A despot is a master to whom servants belong, as his property, and who belongs to his servants as their property. My own master, my own servant. It expresses the most beautiful relation, next to that of husband and wife, in which human souls can stand to each other; but is only perfected in the right relation between a soul and its God. "Of those whom thou gavest me-mine-I have lost none,-but the son of perdition." Therefore St. Jude calls God the only Despot. On the other hand, a Tyrant, Tyrannus, Doric for Cyrannus, a person with the essential power of a Cyrus, or imperial commander from whose decision there is no appeal, is a king exercising state authority over persons who do not in any sense belong to him as his property, but whom he has been appointed,

3

1 [Exodus xx. 15.]

2 Ephesians iv. 28.]

3

[John xvii. 12: compare Letter 28, § 3 (Vol. XXVII. p. 508).]

[On this subject, compare Letter 71, § 10 (Vol. XXVIII. p. 738).]