NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS

JOHN RUSKIN

Lecture by Newell Dwight Hillis, pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, since 1899, previously of the Central (Independent) Church, Chicago (born in Magnolia, Iowa, September 2, 1858), delivered in various parts of the country, as a Sunday evening sermon-lecture. The particular theme of the discourse is indicated by its formal title: "John Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture as Interpreters of the Seven Laws of Life: a Study of the Principles of Character-Building." His address on "The

Pulpit in Modern Life" is given in Volume VI.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:-Among the heroic souls who have sought to recover the lost paradise and recapture the glory of an undefiled and blessed world stands John Ruskin, oft an apostle of gentle words that heal like medicines, and sometimes a prophet of Elijah-like sternness and grandeur, consuming man's sins with words of flame. "There is nothing going on among us," wrote Carlyle to Emerson, "as notable as those fierce lightning bolts Ruskin is copiously and desperately pouring into the black world of anarchy around him. No other man has in him the divine rage against iniquity, falsity, and baseness that Ruskin has, and every man ought to have." Full fifty years have passed since this glorious youth entered the arena, his face glowing with hope, the heroic flame of the martyrs burning within his breast, his message a plea for a return to the simplicities of virtue. During all these years he has been pouring forth prose of a purity and beauty that have never been surpassed. Over against the brocaded pages of Gibbon and the pomposity of Dr. Johnson's style stands Ruskin's prose, every page embodied simplicity, every sentence

From "Great Books as Life Teachers." Published by permission.

clear as a cube of solid sunshine. Effects that Keats produced only through the music and magic of verse, John Ruskin has easily achieved through the plainness of prose. What Leigh Hunt said of Shelley we may say of Ruskin-he needs only the green sod beneath his feet to make him a kind of human lark, pouring forth songs of unearthly sweetness.

But if the critics vote him by acclamation the first prose writer of the century, it must be remembered that his fame does not rest upon his skill as a literary artist. An apostle of beauty and truth, indeed, Ruskin is primarily an apostle of righteousness. Unlike Burns and Byron, Shelley and Goethe, no passion ever poisoned his purposes, and no vice ever disturbed the working of his genius. What he taught in theory he first was in character and did in practice. Rich with great wealth, inherited and acquired, he refused interest upon his loans, and having begun with giving away his income, he ended by giving away much of his capital. Unlike that rich young man who went away from Christ sorrowful, John Ruskin gladly forsook all possessions to follow Jesus. The child of leisure, he chose to earn to-morrow's bread by to-day's labor and toil.

Going every whither seeking for pictures and marbles that represented ideal beauty, he used these art treasures not so much for enriching his own life, and happiness, as for diffusing the beauty and furnishing models to laborers who worked in iron, steel and stone. If other rich men have given money to found workingmen's clubs, Ruskin gave himself also, and lent the toilers independence and self-reliance. It is said that through his favorite pupil, Arnold Toynbee, he developed the germ of the social settlements. But his fame rests neither upon his work as an art critic, nor his skill as a prose author, nor his work as a social reformer; it rests rather upon his unceasing emphasis of individual worth as the secret of happiness and progress. If Mazzini preached the gospel of social rights, and Carlyle the gospel of honest work and Matthew Arnold the gospel of culture, and Emerson the gospel of sanity and optimism, John Ruskin's message, repeated in a thousand forms, is one message-never altered and never retreated from-goodness is more than gold, and character out

weighs intellect. Because he stood for fine, high heroic regimen, he conquered confidence, and has his place among the immortals.

If we search out the fascination of Ruskin's later works, we shall find the secret in their intense humanity. Loving nature, Ruskin's earliest, latest, deepest enthusiasm was for man. With eager and passionate delight, in "Modern Painters" he sets forth the claim of rock and wave, of herb and shrub, upon man's higher life. But the white clouds, the perfumed winds, the valleys covered with tended corn and cattle, the mountains robed in pine as with the garments of God, seemed as nothing compared to man, who goes weeping, laughing, loving through his pathetic career. One morning, crossing the field toward the Matterhorn, he met a suffering peasant, and in that hour the mountain became as nothing in the presence of his brother man. In all his later books, therefore, he is a light-bearer, seeking to guide men into happiness and virtue. He reminds the weary king and tormented slave alike that the secrets of happiness are in "drawing hard breath over chisel, or spade, or plow, in watching the corn grow and the blossom set, and, after toil, in reading, thinking, in hoping and praying." Would any man be strong, let him work; or wise, let him observe and think; or happy, let him help; or influential, let him sacrifice and serve. Does some youth deny beauty to the eye, books to the mind, and friendship to the heart, that he may gather gold and daily eat stalled ox in a palace? Such a one is a prince who hath voluntarily entered a dungeon to spend his time gathering the rotting straw from the damp stones to twist it into a filthy wreath for his forehead. Does some Samson of industry use his superior wisdom to gather into his hands all the lines of some branch of trade while others starve? He is like unto a wrecker, who lures some good ship upon the rocks that he may clothe himself with garments and possess purses unwrapped from the bodies of brave men slain by deceit. Wealth, he asserts, is like any other natural power in nature-divine if divinely used. In the hands of a miserly man wealth is clogged by selfishness and becomes like rivers that "overwhelm the plains, poisoning the winds, their breath pestilence, their work famine," while honest and

benevolent wealth is like those rivers that pass softly from field to field, moistening the soil, purifying the air, giving food to man and beast, bearing up fleets of war and peace.

For John Ruskin the modern Pharisee was the man who prayed, "God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are; I feast seven days a week, while I have made other men fast." And against every form of selfishness and injustice he toiled, ever seeking to overthrow the kingdoms of Mammon and Belial, laboring to make his land a "land of royal thrones for kings, a sceptered isle for all the world, a realm of light, a center of peace, a mistress of arts, a faithful guardian of great memories, in the midst of irreverence and ephemeral visions." But from the first volume of "Modern Painters" to the last pages of the "Præterita" his own message is, Doing is better than seeming, giving is better than getting, and stooping to serve better than climbing toward the throne to wear an outer crown and scepter.

Over against these books dealing with man's ambitions, strifes, defeats and sins stands Ruskin's "Lamps of Architecture," a book written at an hour when the sense of life's sins, sorrows, and wrongs swept through his heart with the might of a destroying storm. In that hour when the pen dropped from his hands and hope departed from his heart, one problem distracted his mind by day and disturbed his sleep by night"Why is the fruit shaken to the earth before its ripeness, the glowing life and the goodly purpose dissolved away in sudden death, the words half spoken chilled upon the lips touched into clay forever, the whole majesty of humanity raised to its fullness, with every gift and power necessary for a given purpose at a given moment centered in one man, and all this perfected blessing permitted to be refused, perverted, crushed, and cast aside by those who need it most-the city which is not set upon a hill, the candle that giveth light to none, enthroned in the candlestick?" The world's ingratitude to its best men rested like a black cloud upon his spirit. In that hour when the iron entered his soul and ingratitude blighted the blossoms of the heart, Ruskin turned from the baseness of man to the white statue that lifts no mailed hand to strike, and exchanged the coarse curses of the market-place for the sacred silence of the