LETTER 641 THE THREE SARCOPHAGI 2 1. I WILL begin my letter to-day with our Bible lesson, out of which other necessary lessons will spring. We must take the remaining three sons of Ham together, in relation to each other and to Israel. Mizraim, the Egyptian; Phut, the Ethiopian; Sidon, the Sidonian: or, in breadth of meaning, the three African powers,-A, of the watered plain, B, of the desert, and C, of the sea; the latter throning itself on the opposite rocks of Tyre, and returning to culminate in Carthage. A. Egypt is essentially the Hamite slavish strength of body and intellect. 5 B. Ethiopia, the Hamite slavish affliction of body and intellect; condemnation of the darkened race that can no more change its skin than the leopard its spots; yet capable, in its desolation, of nobleness. Read the "What doth hinder me to be baptized? If thou believest with all thine heart thou mayest" of the Acts; and after that the description in the Daily Telegraph (first Monday of March') of the Nubian king, with his sword and his Bible at his right hand, and the tame lioness with her cubs, for his playmates, at his left. [With this Letter was issued another of Mr. Girdlestone's pamphlets: see below, § 19 n., p. 576.] 2 [See below, § 10.] 3 [The analysis of Genesis is here continued from Letter 62, p. 523.] 4 See Genesis x. 6 and 15.] 5 Jeremiah xiii. 23.] 6 Acts viii. 36, 37.] 7 Ruskin refers to Johannes, King of Abyssinia, against whom an Egyptian expedition was at this time proceeding. A special correspondent of the Daily Telegraph (Monday, February 26, 1876) describes this royal warrior' as "regularly attended by three loose lions who are always on hand when he receives his nobility or foreigners of distinction."] XXVIII. 561 2 N C. Tyre' is the Hamite slavish pleasure of sensual and idolatrous art, clothing her nakedness with sea purple. She is lady of all beautiful carnal pride, and of the commerce that feeds it,—her power over the Israelite being to beguile, or help for pay, as Hiram.2 But Ethiopia and Tyre are always connected with each other: Tyre, the queen of commerce; Ethiopia, her goldbringing slave; the redemption of these being Christ's utmost victory. "They of Tyre, with the Morians-there, even there, was He born." "Then shall princes come out of Egypt, and Ethiopia stretch forth her hands unto God." "He shall let go my captives, not for price; and the labour of Egypt, and merchandise of Ethiopia, shall come over unto thee, and shall be thine."* 2. Learn now, after the fifteenth, also the sixteenth verse of Genesis x.,3 and read the fifteenth chapter with extreme care.1 If you have a good memory, learn it by heart from beginning to end; it is one of the most sublime and pregnant passages in the entire compass of ancient literature. Then understand generally that the spiritual meaning of Egyptian slavery is labour without hope, but having all the reward, and all the safety of labour absolute. Its beginning is to discipline and adorn the body,-its end is to embalm the body; its religion is first to restrain, then to judge, "whatsoever things are done in the body, whether they be good or evil." Therefore, whatever may be well done by * Psalm lxviii. 31; lxxxiii. 7 and 8; lxxxvii. 4;6 Isaiah xlv. 13, 14. I am not sure of my interpretation of the 87th Psalm; but, as far as any significance exists in it to our present knowledge, it can only be of the power of the Nativity of Christ to save Rahab the harlot, Philistia the giant, Tyre the trader, and Ethiopia the slave. 1 [Compare the notes on Tyre, appended in this edition to St. Mark's Rest (Vol. XXIV. pp. 447_seq.).] 2 [See 1 Kings v.] 3 [Compare Letter 65, § 11 (p. 596).] 4 [For the author's exposition of Genesis xv., see Letter 65, §§ 1 seq. (pp. 587 seq.).] 52 Corinthians v. 10.] 6 [Prayer-book version.] For correction of this interpretation, see Letters 66, §§ 8 and 26 (pp. 618, 637), and 75, § 12 (Vol. XXIX. p. 69). See also St. Mark's Rest, § 26 (Vol. XXIV. p. 228).] measure and weight,-what force may be in geometry, mechanism, and agriculture, bodily exercise, and dress; reverent esteem of earthly birds, and beasts, and vegetables; reverent preparation of pottage, good with flesh;-these shall Egypt teach and practise, to her much comfort and power. "And when Jacob heard that there was corn in Egypt he called his sons. 3. And now remember the scene at the threshing-floor of Atad (Gen. 50th, 10 and 112). "A grievous mourning." They embalmed Jacob. They put him in a coffin. They dutifully bore him home, for his son's sake. Whatsoever may well be done of earthly deed, they do by him and his race. And the end of it all, for them, is a grievous mourning. Then, for corollary, remember, all fear of death, and embalming of death, and contemplating of death, and mourning for death, is the pure bondage of Egypt. 4. And whatsoever is formal, literal, miserable, material, in the deeds of human life, is the preparatory bondage of Egypt; of which, nevertheless, some formalism, some literalism, some misery, and some flesh-pot comfort, will always be needful for the education of such beasts as we are. So that, though, when Israel was a child, God loved him, and called his son out of Egypt, He preparatorily sent him into Egypt. And the first deliverer of Israel had to know the wisdom of Egypt before the wisdom of Arabia; and for the last deliverer of Israel, the dawn of infant thought, and the first vision of the earth He came to save, was under the palms of Nile.1 1 [Genesis xlii. 1.] 2 3 ["And they came to the threshing-floor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation: and he made a mourning for his father seven days. And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians: wherefore the name of it was called Abel-mizraim, which is beyond Jordan."] 3 [Hosea xi. 1.] [Matthew ii. 14, 15: "He took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt; and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son." Compare Appendix 15 (Vol. XXIX. p. 563).] Now, therefore, also for all of us, Christians in our nascent state of muddy childhood, when Professor Huxley is asking ironically, "Has a frog a soul?"1 and scientifically directing young ladies to cut out frogs' stomachs to see if they can find it,-whatsoever, I say, in our necessary education among that scientific slime of Nile, is formal, literal, miserable, and material, is necessarily Egyptian. As, for instance, brickmaking, scripture, flogging, and cooking,-upon which four heads of necessary art I take leave to descant a little. 5. And first of brickmaking. Every following day the beautiful arrangements of modern political economists, obeying the law of covetousness instead of the law of God, send me more letters from gentlemen and ladies asking me "how they are to live?" Well, my refined friends, you will find it needful to live, if it be with success, according to God's Law; and to love that law, and make it your meditation all the day.2 And the first uttered article in it is, "In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread." 3 "But you don't really expect us to work with our hands, and make ourselves hot?" 4 1 [On November 8, 1870, Huxley read a paper to the Metaphysical Society, entitled "Has a Frog a Soul? and if so, Of what Nature is that Soul?" A brief abstract of the paper is given in Leonard Huxley's Life and Letters of Huxley, vol. i. pp. 458-459 (ed. 1903); its purport was "to give pause to current theories on the supposed relations of soul and body in the human subject," by arguing that a frog also may be credited with "a soul distributed along its spinal marrow.' For another reference to Huxley's paper, see Vol. XXII. p. 504 (where the note should be cancelled). Ruskin describes the meeting of the Society at which the paper was read in a letter to Professor Norton of November 10, 1870 (see a later volume of this edition).] 2 [Psalms cxix. 97.] 3 Genesis iii. 19.] [A sheet of MS. gives another draft of this passage, which seems to have been first written for the Letter to Girls (p. 608): "My dear, neither your father, nor all your ancestors back to Noah or Deucalion-though every one of them had been a king and every one left you a king's treasury-could all together, with any command or gift of theirs, give you the right to live an hour in idleness. To every daughter, to every son of man, the same absolute command is given, 'Child, go work to-day in my vineyard.' In death only shall you find permitted rest. "I will suppose that you are a girl of rank, and a Christian; and that Why, who, in the name of Him who made you, are you then, that you shouldn't? Have you got past the flaming sword, back into Eden; and is your celestial opinion, there, that we miserable Egyptians are to work outside, here, for your dinners, and hand them through the wall to you at a tourniquet? or, as being yet true servants of the devil, while you are blessed, dish it up to you, spiritually hot, through a trap-door? Fine anti-slavery people you are, forsooth! who think it is right not only to make slaves, but accursed slaves, of other people, that you may slip your dainty necks out of the collar! "Ah, but we thought Christ's yoke had no collar!" It is time to know better. There may come a day, indeed, when there shall be no more curse; '-in the meantime, you must be humble and honest enough to take your share of it. 6. So what can you do, that's useful? Not to ask too much at first; and, since we are now coming to particulars, addressing myself first to gentlemen,-Do you think you can make a brick, or a tile ?2 But you have been doing, hitherto, a more or less embarrassed and doubtful "First Article of the Law. In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread.' "Now therefore-What can you do? But, you don't expect us really to work with our hands and make ourselves hot'? Why, who are you, I wonder, that you shouldn't? "Did you ever get into Eden again, or anywhere out of the way of the curse, outside? For the Bible reference in this passage, see Matthew xxi. 28; for "death the only freedom," see Cestus of Aglaia, § 79 (Vol. XIX. p. 126).] [Revelation xxii. 3.] [Compare Stones of Venice, vol. ii. (Vol. "the best academy for English architects. . X. p. 304), where Ruskin says that would be the brick-field."] |