1 NOVEMBER 1884, Page 11

MR. RUSKIN ON "THE PLEASURES OF FAITH."

MR. RUSKIN'S Oxford Lectures are not so repotted, even in the Pall Mall. as to give one a clear idea of the connection between the different parts of his subject ; but we can feel little doubt that one of the most interesting of the whole series will prove to be that which he delivered last Saturday at Oxford on "The Pleasures of Faith." There is no subject on which Mr. Ruskin would speak with greater enthusiasm ; and the glimpses which we get here and there into his pictures of the pangs suffere8•'ty those who have no faith, and of the light heart with which their often heavier burdens were carried by those who believed that they were but discharging the duties imposed on them 'by God, and that, therefore, they had no responsibility for the result, whether it seemed to be failure or success, are full of charm and promise. There is one passage in which, if the reports of the Lecture be not misleading, as doubtless they are, Mr. Ruskin seems to suggest that his bearers might, if they chose, make a trial of the pleasures of faith by way of 'experi- ment. But that, of course, is impossible. A man without faith may make the same pilgrimage, and go through the same hard- ships, as a man with faith ; but it is certain that he cannothave the satisfactions of faith, whatever other satisfactions he may obtain by way of compensation. If, as Mr. Ruskin appears to have advised, a young Oxonian without faith were really to walk to Rome and back, sleeping in the open air in good weather and in outhouses in bad weather, and to live on the hardest fare all the way, he might perhaps find something to com- pensate him for his troubles in the mere enlargement of his experience, and the confidence in his own power of endurance and self-renunciation which the hardships endured would give him; but he could not possibly enjoy the kind of satisfaction in the achievement which was enjoyed by those who believed that they were doing something well-pleasing to God, and which gained for them the grace of Christ. You cannot have the satisfactions of faith without that faith ; and faith is not a bless- ing of which you can make trial experimentally. If one can really get faith, one cannot help having the peace it brings ; but one cannot try it to see how it answers, for the very excellent reason that until one has it one cannot test it at all, and that if one has it, the question whether it answers or not is no longer relevant. It is obvious, we think, that whatever Mr. Ruskin was really recommending, he was not recommending a tem- porary trial of the satisfaction which faith brings with it when he suggested that some of his audience should try the effect on their habits of life and thought of an ascetic pilgrimage. With the best gifts of life, you can try no voluntary experiments. Faith, hope, and charity are none of them to be put on or put off at pleasure. They are divine gifts, for the grant of which you may do much to prepare yourself indeed, but which no act of mere will can secure.

Probably Mr. Ruskin was really advising his audience not'to make trial of the pleasures of faith without faith,—which would be impossible,—but rather to make trial of the amount of loss they would incur by renouncing the selfish pleasures of the world for a season, which would be very possible and might be very instructive, though we would suggest that they might do it more effectually than by trying a pilgrimage to Rome and back with- out worldly means,—which, unless it were made in faith, would seem rather an idle and arbitrary form of self-discipline. He was surely right, however, when he said that in what are foolishly called the Dark Ages, men felt the keenest delight " in the goodness and wisdom of the Master who had come to dwell with their spirits upon earth." But that delight, which is felt still by hundreds of thousands of Christians, must depend solely on the belief that companionship with him who is the same now that he was then, is still accessible ; and this is not as yet a belief which is attainable by all. You may try, if you please, how little true significance selfish pleasures have ; but you can hardPy try how much true significance there is in faith, without 'having it. Nor do we think it is very hopeful to persuade young men'to give up, experimentally, pleasures which they know, for the mere purpose of comparing with them that vacuum which thalami will leave behind. It would hardly be wiser to persuade men to try blindness experimentally, in order to be able to compare the experience of blindness with the experience of vision, than it would be to persuade them to try the sacrifice of all the pleasures they know, in order to enable them estimate better what these pleasures are really worth. Yon must have some new atmosphere ready with which to expel

the old atmosphere of selfish pleasure, before you will convince most men that it is desirable to get rid of the atmosphere to the presence of which they are accustomed. Physical nature, we know, does not "abhor a vacuum" absolutely, but only up to a certain point. Our moral nature, however, appears to abhor a vacuum absolutely, and to insist on filling up lost interests by fresh interests of some kind, whether evil or good. If Mr. Ruskin hopes to make his hearers really assert their freedom against the fascination of frivolous pursuits, he must contrive to hold out to them something more vivifying than the prospect of making a mere tentative experiment on their own nature. Mr. Ruskin appears to have spoken as if men could " adopt " the feelings and sympathies of their noblest ancestors, without believing what those ancestors believed. But it is clear that to go on a pilgrimage for a purpose which the pilgrim deems en- nobling and purifying, and to go on a pilgrimage for a purpose

which he only admires his ancestors for having, in a very different age of the world, deemed ennobling and purifying, are two very

different things, and so different that they differ in that very " reality " of which Carlyle and Ruskin have always been such emphatic preachers. It must really have ennobled the kings and saints who plodded all the way to Rome in poverty and pain, to make so great a sacrifice for their religion; but would it ennoble any one to plod an equally painful way for the mere sake of an experiment on his own soul ? It is impossible to " adopt " feelings and sympathies that are founded upon faith, in the absence of the faith out of which those feelings and sympathies grew.

Mr. Ruskin took stronger ground when, instead of asking his audience to enter experimentally into the hearts of their ancestors without sharing their faith, he pointed out how unsatisfying and cloying, and even, in the end, disheartening, the life of pleasure, properly so-called, is :—

" In everything that we now did, or now sought, we exposed our- selves to countless misery, shame, and disappointment ; because in our doing we depended upon nothing but our own powers, and in seeking chose only our own gratification, and could not for the most part conceive of any work but for our own interests, or the interests of others about whom we were also selfishly interested. We were anxious in the same faithless way for everything about which our passion was excited, or our skill was exercised ; and the idea of doing anything except for our own praise and glory was narrowed within the precentor's invitation to the company of little voice and less practice, to sing to the praise and glory of God."

That is most true ; but what is the inference ? Not surely that we should exchange the pleasure of selfish passion for the pleasure of faith,—which in many cases may be less of a pleasure than of a travail,—but that we should abandon

pleasure as the end altogether, and look for that which will cause our life to grow in magnitude, whether by pleasure or by trampling on pleasure,—by pleasure, if the pleasure merges itself in pangs of a deeper yearning; and by trampling on pleasure, if that is the path by which one comes best to the ripening of one's full strength. We doubt if it is even accurate to speak of the pleasures of faith at all, for pleasure

always means the satisfaction of some limited desire, while faith properly means the awakening of ever new desires the adequate satisfaction of which is recognised as distant, if, indeed, it does not turn out that the more some of them are satis- fied, the more rapidly others grow. The ages of faith, whether past or present, seem to us to have been not ages of pleasure but ages of growth. Faith, or trust, implies the surrender of immediate content for the promise of larger life to come ;

and it is hard to say that pleasure may be found in the sacrifice of content, though it is certain that new life may be found in such a sacrifice. If faith of its very essence pro- jects us into the future, its tendency must be to take our hearts off pleasure, which is in the present or not at all. In the ages of faith men are always resigning their pleasures that their

lives may be lived on a larger scale, and to promote the forma- tion of a type of character not yet attainable. It is impossible that this transmutation can be a pleasant, though it may be a most ennobling process ; for pleasure is the satisfaction of our faculties as they are, and the effort to mould and raise them to something greater and higher is always more or less one of pain. At the same time, no doubt, the maximum of gloom is reached when men live, as Carlyle did, a life of constant struggle without any full trust in the bright issue of that struggle. No wonder that he had nothing

but gloom in his heart, for, while he was quite too noble to sun himself much in the petty pleasures accessible to his nature as it was, he was not confiding enough to surrender himself with

childlike confidence into the hands of God. In him we see the maximum of conflict and the minimum of trust. Mr. Ruskin may well desire to see faith less gloomy than Carlyle's, which only just escaped the impatient sullenness of pure self-will. However, of no age of real faith, though men would not fret themselves into fever like Carlyle, could pleasure of any kind be the prin- cipal note, simply because faith deliberately prefers something larger and purer in the future, at the cost of something smaller and commoner now. If Mr. Ruskin had insisted rather on the new strength given by faith, than on the pleasure it confers, we think he would have had more to say. The life which he condemns is un- questionably one of anxiety, confusion, shame, and disappoint- ment, just because the gratifications it seeks, limit and stunt and disintegrate a nature which is meant to grow, and not meant to feed itself till it fattens, on such pleasures as are alone suited to it now. That is very good evidence that we are constituted for faith, and not for saturating ourselves with such delights as we can attain without growth ; but it is no evidence at all that the pleasures of faith, properly so-called, will be greater than the pleasures of the moment. You cannot prepare yourself for what is far beyond your immediate reach, and yet call your life a life of pleasure. And as it is of the very essence of faith to claim that the soul of man is intended for what is far beyond its immediate reach, it seems to us to be also of its essence to prefer the growing pains of an ardent spirit, to the attainable gratifications of a dwindling vitality.