I

JOHN RUSKIN, PREACHER

ALTHOUGH he wore no black Geneva gown and never stood behind the sacred desk, John Ruskin all of his days was a golden-mouthed, burning-hearted, spiritually minded preacher of the truths of God. The Rev. W. P. Paterson, a Scottish theologian, recently said, "During the bygone century it may be doubted if the ornaments of the Christian pulpit did as much as lay preachers like Carlyle and Ruskin to quicken the social conscience and to commend lofty ideals in the various departments of secular life and labor." Like the melancholy prophet of Judah's shadowed days, Ruskin was "valiant for truth." For over twenty years he was preeminently a critic of art. But he was no dilettante defender of that pictorial putrescence which is sometimes foisted upon a gullible public by depraved purveyors of vileness which they miscall art. Ruskin was the unfailing champion of the things which are honest and just and pure and lovely and of good report. His dominant

7

concern was with the mighty truths of human nature upon which the laws of both art and life are based. In one of his key sentences he tells us "that the manual arts are as accurate exponents of ethical states as other modes of expression: first, with absolute precision, of that of the workman, and then with precision disguised by many distorting influences, of that of the nation to which it belongs."

In the gospel according to Ruskin, we are taught that there can be no real beauty which does not emanate from beauty of soul. The character of a people is both the cause and result of its art. By their fruits ye shall know them. A noble art can exist only as the fruit of a noble soul. It cannot be produced by a besotted, materialized, shriveled-souled people. Neither is art without its reaction upon life. Ruskin's father would not allow his son to look at an impure or careless painting. If a people are compelled to live in constant contact with that which is common and vile, the very warp and woof of their lives is bound to be coarsened. A real interpreter of art must be an interpreter of life as well. Ruskin as he battled for purity and sincerity in painting and sculpture and architecture, was fighting a good fight for noble ideals of thought and action. "Be a good man," says Carlyle,

"and there'll be one rascal less." Ruskin again and again teaches the same lesson. Whatever his theme, before he is through with it he is sure to make it a discussion of the conduct of life.

In Traffic he says: "The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is, 'What do you like?' Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are. Go out into the street and ask the first man or woman you meet what their taste is; and if they answer candidly, you know them, body and soul." He most strenuously objected to being regarded as a "respectable architectural man-milliner," dispensing the latest information as to the "newest and sweetest thing in pinnacles." This great prophet of reality was not satisfied with mere doing of the right, but he insisted on the necessity of loving the right. His Scottish mother had so indoctrinated him with the spirit of the New Testament that he well understood that there is that which goes beyond verbose piety and Pharisaic legalism. He never failed to emphasize the dominance of the inner life. He knew that above all else the cup must be pure within. He writes: "Would you paint a great picture? be a good man. Would you carve a perfect statue? be a pure man. Would you enact a wise law?

be a just man.” But Ruskin was no effete preacher of a nebulous ethical culture. He is quoted as saying that his life was dedicated not to "the study of the beautiful in face or flower, in landscape or gallery, but to an interpretation of the truth and beauty of Jesus Christ."

But when Ruskin was about forty years of age he saw a new vision. He had been growing more and more sensitive to the hammer blows struck by Carlyle in Sartor Resartus, in Chartism and Past and Present. In all of his efforts to secure practical application of his art teaching, he was impeded by unjust and revolting social and industrial conditions. England, full of wealth, with its multifarious produce, with supply for every human want, was, as has been said with tragic truth, “dying of inanition." Two million of her workers, "the cunningest, the strongest, and the willingest our earth ever had," sat in workhouses and in the poor-law prisons. In counties of which the green fields were dotted with herds and flocks, the farm laborer did not taste meat from one year to another. On many a night there set out from London a vehicle loaded to the breaking point with "two-legged live stock": London foundlings being disposed by contract to employers of labor in northern