566 APPENDIX TO PART III

the publican! Suppose he had taken our Lord to say, ‘Deal with the sinful brother as I deal with the class of publicans’-what must he have thought? ‘Why, there can be no excommunication at all! For He has called me, a publican, to the highest office in His Kingdom.’ Of course he took Him to mean, ‘Exclude the guilty brother from your society, as the well-behaved Jews, who are constantly denouncing me for keeping company with publicans, exclude them.’”

Maurice then passed on to “state his faith-his gospel of “Inclusiveness,” as Ruskin called it. The essence of Conversion, he says, is “God revealing or unveiling His Son IN him;” and he continues: “The revelation or unveiling of Christ as the real ground of Humanity, as the Son of Man and the Son of God, in whom and for whom all things were created, whether things in Heaven or things on earth, in whom all things consist, and in whom all things are to be gathered up, who is the first-born of every creature, the first-begotten from the dead, the Prince of all the Kings of the earth-this I hold to be the subject of Scripture; this is what I see evolving itself from the first book of it to the last. The Gospel, as I understand it, is the good news to man of this Revelation ... It declares that the Spirit of the Father and the Son, the Spirit in whom they are and have ever been one, is given to men that they may be one, that they may be a Society of redeemed creatures, sacrificed, consecrated to God, that Baptism into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost is the divine witness and assurance that this is the true condition and order of the Universe.”

To this letter Ruskin replied as follows:-]

II

MATLOCK,

Easter Sunday [1851].

MY DEAR MR. MAURICE,-I cannot enough thank you for your kind letter. I have not answered it hitherto, having been in a stranger’s house¹-my mind much taken up with other matters. I wished to think over your letter carefully, that I might, if possible, save you further labour in answering or refuting me. But, interesting as your reply is, it is not a solution of the question which troubles me: there is much in it which I hope to talk over with you some day, having no time to write about it. The main points in which as an answer to my askings, it seems insufficient to me, I can state quickly. I asked for a practical explanation of Christ’s meaning in the “Let him be unto thee,” etc. It appears to be connected with the Sermon on the Mount-it seems to me as much a practical and simple order as any therein. I ask you merely how I am to put it into practice.

You evade the question: you say, What must Matthew the Publican have thought, who had been called to one of the highest offices of the Church?

What Matthew’s thoughts were is by no means to the point. I want our Lord’s meaning. Are you prepared to substitute this, which you say Matthew

¹[At Farnley Hall: see above, Introduction, p. liv.]

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