Frondes Agrestes: Readings in 'Modern Painters'Ruskin, John
Philosophy
Frondes Agrestes: Readings in 'Modern Painters'
Ruskin, John
Art; Painting
And lastly, let us turn our thoughts for a few moments to the cause of
the resurrection of these two prophets. We are all of us too much in
the habit of passing it by, as a thing mystical and inconceivable,
taking place in the life of Christ for some purpose not by us to be
understood, or, at the best, merely as a manifestation of His divinity
by brightness of heavenly light, and the ministering of the spirits of
the dead, intended to strengthen the faith of His three chosen
apostles. And in this, as in many other events recorded by the
Evangelists, we lose half the meaning, and evade the practical power
upon ourselves, by never accepting in its fulness the idea that our
Lord was "perfect man,"--"tempted in all things like as we are." Our
preachers are continually trying, in all manner of subtle ways, to
explain the union of the Divinity with the Manhood--an explanation
which certainly involves first their being able to describe the nature
of Deity itself, or, in plain words, to comprehend God. They never can
explain, in any one particular, the union of the natures; they only
succeed in weakening the faith of their hearers as to the entireness
of either. The thing they have to do is precisely the contrary of
this--to insist upon the _entireness_ of both. We never think of
Christ enough as God, never enough as Man; the instinctive habit of
our minds being always to miss of the Divinity, and the reasoning and
enforced habit to miss of the humanity. We are afraid to harbour in
our own hearts, or to utter in the hearing of others, any thought of
our Lord as hungering, tired, sorrowful, having a human soul, a human
will, and affected by events of human life, as a finite creature is:
and yet one half of the efficiency of His atonement, and the whole of
the efficiency of His example, depend on His having been this to the
full. Consider, therefore, the Transfiguration as it relates to the
human feelings of our Lord. It was the first definite preparation for
His death. He had foretold it to His disciples six days before; then
takes with Him the three chosen ones into "an high mountain apart."
From an exceeding high mountain, at the first taking on Him the
ministry of life, He had beheld and rejected the kingdoms of the
earth, and their glory: now, on a high mountain, He takes upon Him the
ministry of death. Peter and they that were with Him, as in
Gethsemane, were heavy with sleep. Christ's work had to be done alone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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