liER. RUSKIN AND THE BISHOP OF MANCHESTER ON USURY.

FORD, great moralist, which in essence Mr. Ruskin certainly is, we cannot help observing that he is much too fond of that refined and delicate sneering which is the most bewilder- ing form of sarcasm. In the correspondence between Mr.

Ruskin and Dr. Fraser, published in the new number of the Contemporary Review, Mr. Ruskin's share in the matter con- sists chiefly in the discharge of a perfect volley of such arrows as those with which Lilliput received Gulliver. Very fine they are, and each is of a kind to draw its drop of blood, but almost

all of them are aimed rather at his opponent, than at the mark which that opponent had challenged Mr. Ruskin to hit. Many

of Mr. Ruskin's comments are very- fine in their literary structure. But they want almost entirely not only that broad and plain homeliness of manner which the subject requires, but also that evidence of ardent desire to reach the mind of the person he is addressing, and the heart of the subject to which he is addressing himself, which is of the very essence of persuasive eloquence. Dr. Fraser, in this respect, is a great contrast to his antagonist. He now and then, no doubt, lays himself open to Mr. Ruskin's bitter sarcasms, by the per- fectly natural and sincere hesitation with which he speaks of some precept in the Bible, which Mr. Ruskin jeers at him for feeling any

hesitation about. But the Bishop seems made up of simplicity, sagacity, and thoroughness, compared with the great moral critic who comments on him, and who never even once touches the centre of the question with which he has to deal. If* Ruskin asserts the immorality of usury, or interest on money lent, in any shape whatever. It is hardly possible to lay the

matter down more strongly than he does in the following passage :— "But—thin strange question being asked" [as to what usury means]—" I give its simple and broad answer in the words of Christ,—' The taking up that thou layedst not down ; '— or, in explained and literal terms, usury is any money paid, or other advantage given, for the loan of anything which is re- stored to its possessor uninjured and undiminished. For simplest instance, taking a cabman the other day on a long drive, I lent him a shilling to get his dinner. If I had kept thirteen pence out of his fare, the odd penny would have been usury. Or again. I lent one of my servants, a few years ago, eleven hundred pounds, to build a house with,Nnd stock its ground. After some years, he paid me the eleven hundred pounds back. If I had taken eleven hundred pounds and a penny, the extra penny would have been usury."

Of course, the most ordinary person will reply at once that when, after keeping a man's horse, or his carriage, or his house, or his tools, for some years, you return them again, you

do not give back what you took from him, for you have taken from him the use of these things for the time for which they have been lent, which use you can never restore, and for which you may fairly give him, either gratitude, if he will

not take anything else, or any equivalent in money or otherwise which he prefers. Why did Mr. Ruskin pay for the

use of the cab during "the long drive ?" The cab was no more useful to him than money borrowed is to the borrower; and the payment for the cab was no more essential to the cab- owner than payment for money borrowed is to the borrower. Mr. Ruskin will hardly say that it was merely by way of equivalent for the keep of the horse and the cab-driver. Would he hesitate to recommend a glazier to pay something for the hire of a diamond with which to cut glass, in case the glazier could not buy one for himself; or would he hesitate to subscribe to the London Library for the privilege of borrowing books? Yet the diamond for glass-cutting would certainly suffer as little in wear-and-tear during the time for which it was borrowed, as would gold borrowed for the same time ; and the books, if properly used, would

not suffer anymore. Mr. Ruskin does not, we suppose, hesitate to pay for the hire of ordinary tools, and to pay very much more for that hire than would represent the loss of efficiency they undergo in his service; for he knows that while he is using them, their real owner cannot use them, and may fairly claim an equivalent for their use. And what applies to other useful instruments of work, applies in its fullest sense to money. This

is the very essence of the argument. But this central point of it Mr. Ruskin does not once touch upon throughout his long

series of very elaborate, and often very eloquent, taunts.

The Bishop of Manchester, having adduced Christ's parable of the talents as " implying " that in some circumstances usury was not only lawful, but a duty, since the Lord reproaches the servant who buried his talent in a napkin, for not having put it out to the exchanger's, in order that at his coming he might have received his own "with usury," Mr. Ruskin replies to the Bishop with this volley of fine grape-shot :—

"To take a definite, and not impertinent instance, I observe in the continuing portion of your letter that your Lordship recognises in Christ himself, as doubtless all other human perfections, so also the perfection of an usurer ; and that, confidently expecting one day to hear from his lips the convicting sentence, Thou knewest that I was an austere man,' your Lordship prepares for yourself, by the disposition of your capital, no less than of your talents, a better answer than the barren Behold, there thou host that is thine !' I would only observe in reply, that although the conception of the Good Shepherd, which in your Lordship's language is 'implied' in this parable, may indeed be less that of one who lays down his life for his sheep, than of one who takes up his money for them‘ the passages of our Master's instruction, of which the meaning is not implicit, but explicit, are perhaps those which his simpler disciples will be safer in following. Of which I find, early in his teaching, this, almost, as it were, in words of one syllable, Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.' There is nothing more 'implied' in this sentence than the probable disposi- tion to tarn away, which might be the first impulse in the mind of a Christian asked to lend for nothing, as distinguished from the disciple of the Manchester school, whose principal care is rather to find, than to avoid, the enthusiastic and enterprising him that would borrow of thee.' We of the older tradition, my Lord, think that prudence, no less than charity, forbids the provocation or temptation of others into the state of debt, which some time or other we might be called upon, not only to allow the payment of without usury, but oven altogether to forgive."

Now, it is remarkable enough that Mr. Ruskin himself, at the close of his article, takes pains to insist that judgment is mingled with love in the Gospel, and that the Apostles insisted as

much on what was demanded from all, as on that which was offered to all ; yet in this passage he makes it quite a subject

for sneering at the Bishop of Manchester that he, too, finds a

double view of Christ in the Gospels,—finding him portrayed not only as the Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep, but as the austere master who asks what has been done

with the talents given. In point of fact, however, the demand that we shall so use whatever gifts God gives us as to multiply them in value, is exceedingly germane to this question. If "giving freely, hoping for nothing again," is often the mode of using them which multiplies the value of our talents most, as Christ distinctly teaches that it often is, then and there that is the best use of them ; but if not, not. There is nothing more certain than that St. Paul, for instance, freely as he gave, earned the power to give by working at a trade. If a working-man of any kind devoted all his time to helping his neighbours without hire, he would have to depend on begging for his own subsistence and that of his family; and what is true of

one labourer, is true of all other labourers. Each of them increases his stock of talents, his power of usefulness, most, by asking re- muneration for his labour in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and giving it freely in the hundredth case, where he knows all the inner circumstances which justify the gift. And so a man possessed of the products of labour, which is money, will multiply his usefulness most, by asking remuneration for the

use of it in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and selecting the hundredth case, in which he asks for no such remunera- tion, from within the region of his own personal and deeper knowledge. The truth is that Mr. Ruskin has got hold of a

system of his own which is far less consistent with Christ's words than the Bishop of Manchester's, for he has deduced from it that any state of society which results in the rapid accumula- tion of wealth and the existence of great cities is inconsistent with Christ's teaching; while nothing can be more evident than that our Lord's warning against the dependence of the soul on the things which it possesses,—that is, on the accidents of wealth,— was not in the least inconsistent with, but, on the contrary, meant to consist with the existence of the temptation it denounced just as his warnings against "the world" were consistent with

the prayer, "I pray not that thou sbouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil." No doubt, Mr. Ruskin is quite right in saying that covetous- ness in our Lord's mouth goes far beyond the desire to take "more than your share," as the Bishop of Manchester puts it. It is, in our Lord's sense, that desire, the indulgence of which results in the leaning of the spirit on temporary and sensible things ; and the safeguard against it is to remember that true

life consists not in the abundance of things which we possess, but in the share of God's Spirit which we can obtain. But that our Lord never intended to put an end to the Christian posses- sion of wealth is as certain as can be, since he assures his dis- ciples that they shall have, even in this life, houses and, lands more than they ever had before,—with persecutions,—and in the

world to come the true end of all, life in the Spirit. What he strove to teach was the great impossibility with men,—which he declared to be possible with God,—of using great possessions without losing your life in the love of them; and we take it that the world ever since, so far as it has been Christian, has been showing that that great impossibility with men is, as our Lord declared, no impossibility with God.

But Mr. Ruskin charges the Bishop of Manchester, and all who, with him, take the rational and straightforward view of our Lord's teaching as a teaching addressed to the regulation of the desires, rather than of the mere external arrangements of life, with "explaining away" Christ's words, and addresses a whole host of delicate and elaborate sarcasms, which are little more than sneers, to that imputation. Well, but every one who tries to interpret a great spiritual guide at all, must so interpret him as to make his teaching coherent and significant. Even Mr. Ruskin does not take literally the command to give to every one who asks, and from him who would borrow not to turn away. He himself gives only where he thinks the asker right in asking. He lends only where he thinks he can trust the borrower. Even he in- terprets one saying by the spirit of what he has learned from other sayings, and the Bishop of Manchester does no more. This dream of Mr. Ruskin's,—half made up of the scorn he feels for the world as it is, half of the real beauty he sees in the world as it might be, a world without great cities, without con- centrated labour, without nine-tenths of the mechanism it con- tains, with a thousand beauties which these mechanisms and the crowding of a large population into great cities render im- possible,—is no more a purely moral or spiritual dream than it is a scientific dream. It is the dream of a fine moral wstheticism, in which the love of what is beautiful counts for even more than the love of what is good. And it is certainly a mere dreamer's dream. Whatever is certain, it is certain that great cities,— great accumulations of wealth,—grow up by Providential laws far too deeply rooted in the nature which God has given us, for any successful resistance of ours. We may regulate, but we cannot prevent. Mr. Ruskin might as well argue for a return to the world of no books and no pictures, as to the world of no great cities and no great railways. He is a Don Quixote half of art and half of morality; and never knows how to make his choice decidedly between the two.