John Ruskin Preacher

Author : W. Hudson Shaw
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9781334425226
Total Pages : 44 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (252 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book John Ruskin, Ethical and Religious Teacher written by W. Hudson Shaw and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2016-11-28 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from John Ruskin, Ethical and Religious Teacher: A Lecture, Delivered at Oxford, August, 1901 Three of the most interesting and distinguished men of letters of the Victorian era - Robert Browning the poet, Charles Kingsley the novelist, John Ruskin the art-critic - all in the first days Of consciousness, before they could read or write, at the age of three Or four years, signalized the beginning of their careers and foreshadowed their life-motives by preaching sermons. The subject matter of Browning's has not been recorded. It survives only in the famous par enthetic aside, due to the interruptions of an unappreciative baby-sister, Pew-opener, remove that child. Kingsley's discourse is personal, practical, slightly heretical. It is not right to fight, it begins. Religion, it concludes, is reading good books, doing good actions, not telling lies and speaking evil and calling t/zez'r brother Fool and Raca. Ruskin's first sermon, delivered before he was three, is brief but characteristic. People, said the little child, be good. If you are good, God will love you. If you are not good, God will not love you. People, be good?' And on that simple text John Ruskin preached all his life through. We think of him too exclusively as a critic of painting and sculpture, or as an enthusiastic worshipper of loveliness in Nature. A thorough examination of all his works will dispel that View. He is primarily and above all things else a moralist, an ethical and religious teacher: from first to last a preacher, by profession and by bent, in gifts and in failings, in the bed-rock purpose and aim Of his life. If I were called upon to define him, I should say this He was a man who cared for Nature more than Art; for Humanity more than Nature; for the glory of God most of all. For Art pure and simple, it may be seriously questioned whether he truly felt. Ruskin's strongest points, says Dr. Waldstein, and greatest achievements are not to be found in the domain and criticism of Art. Art as such does not respond to the natural bent of his mind. I know well that a distinguished French writer, De la Sizeranne, has maintained that passionate love of Nature was Ruskin's Alpha and Omega, and that he discusses morality, industry, and religion in order to lead us up to a higher sense of Art. None of us will deny the passionate love of Nature, but the rest of the judgment is misleading and gives no clue. The English critic who has written with completest insight and subtlest comprehension on Ruskin's work, Frederic Harrison, has found the truth. John Ruskin began, he says, by preaching to us a higher sense of Art, in order to lead us up to a truer understanding of morality, industry, religion, and humanity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.