Let us examine his outward qualifications. Ruskin’s judgment was at times erratic; his playfulness and his petulance prevent our taking everything he said with prosaic seriousness; he was not always able to speak in measured tones of sober exactness, but gave way to exaggeration. But his intellectual equipment was of the best. He was heir both to Greece and to Judæa. The Bible was his text-book and Plato was his political teacher. All culture was at his command. Oxford, Geneva, Rome, Venice, the Alps, the Apennines and the Lake of Coniston had yielded up their best to him. He prophesied from no street corner--from the Sheldonian Theatre in the University of Oxford his message was uttered. So much for the signs and for the outward qualifications of the seer. The prophet’s fire is recognizably there. The tabernacle of God is with men, as of old; and if He is to speak with a clear Word to our hasting age, to preach righteousness, purity, work to the idle and rest to the weary, clean cities, and clean hearts, how else would He preach than with the text of Ruskin: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you that your millionaires in all their glory of machines cannot supply to us the loss of these.” At the age of forty-one, about the time when the mind reaches maturity, begin the social teachings of John Ruskin in full completeness--not to be much changed, except in one particular, for the quarter of a century of writing that was left him. The live coal from off the altar came to him as he was wandering in restless suffering among the valleys of Savoy, and his first “Thus saith the Lord” was written at Chamonix. Not that all this came at once. The growth can be traced; but before 1860 he was chiefly an art critic, and in that year the last volume of _Modern Painters_ appeared. Let us look at the advantages of the delay. They were manifold. A man should do something else besides prophesy. He should win his position, take his rank among men, in some walk of life, before he is quite qualified to tell others how to order their steps. He has a degree to take in something besides homiletics. It was from the pulpit of a great literary reputation that the author of _Modern Painters_ opened his mouth to preach. That reputation he was content utterly to throw away; to tread on it, step upon it as upon a ladder, that from the top of it he might be heard when he spoke the words the Spirit taught him. That was the great renunciation of his literary life. What a refusal of a call it would have been had he hugged his reputation, been careful of his influence, that last temptation of noble minds. It is politicians who do that, not prophets. But these know the glorious liberty into which they come.