LETTER XXVIII.

Brantwood, 20th Feb., 1873.

I was again stopped by a verse in St. John's gospel this morning: not because I have not thought of it before, often enough; but because it bears much on our immediate business in one of its expressions,--"Ye shall be scattered, every man to his own."

His own what?

His own property, his own rights, his own opinions, his own place, I suppose one must answer? Every man in his own place; and every man acting on his own opinions; and every man having his own way. Those are somewhat your own notions of the rightest possible state of things, are they not?

And you do not think it of any consequence to ask what sort of a place your own is?

As for instance, taking the reference farther on, to the one of Christ's followers who that night, most distinctly of all that were scattered, found his place, and stayed in it,--"This ministry and Apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place." What sort of a place?

It should interest you, surely, to ask of such things, since you all, whether you like them or not, have your own places; and whether you know them or not, your own opinions. It is too true that very often you fancy you think one thing, when, in reality, you think quite another. Most Christian persons, for instance, fancy they would like to be in heaven. But that is not their real opinion of the place at all. See how grave they will look, if their doctor hints to them that there is the least probability of their soon going there.

And the ascertaining what you really do think yourself, and do not merely fancy you think, because other people have said so; as also the ascertaining, if every man had indeed to go to his own place, what place he would verily have to go to, are most wholesome mental exercises; and there is no objection whatever to your giving weight to that really 'private opinion,' and that really 'individual right.'

But if you ever come really to know either what you think, or what you deserve, it is ten to one but you find it as much the character of Prudence as of Charity, that she "seeketh not her own." For indeed that same apostle, who so accurately sought his own, and found it, is, in another verse, called the "Son of Loss." "Of them whom Thou gavest me, have I lost none, but the Son of Loss," says Christ (your unlucky translation, again, quenches the whole text by its poor Latinism--"perdition"). Might it not be better to lose your place than to find it, on such terms?

But, lost or found, what do you think is your place at this moment? Are you minded to stay in it, if you are in it? Do you mind where it is, if you are out of it? What sort of creatures do you think yourselves? How do those you call your best friends think of you, when they advise you to claim your just place in the world?

I said, two letters back, that we would especially reverence eight saints, and among them St. Paul. I was startled to hear, only a few days afterwards, that the German critics have at last positively ascertained that St. Paul was Simon Magus;--but I don't mind whether he was or not;--if he was, we have got seven saints, and one of the Magi, to reverence, instead of eight saints;--plainly and practically, whoever wrote the 13th of 1st Corinthians is to be much respected and attended to; not as the teacher of salvation by faith, still less of salvation by talking, nor even of salvation by almsgiving or martyrdom, but as the bold despiser of faith, talk-gift, and burning, if one has not love. Whereas this age of ours is so far contrary to any such Pauline doctrine that, without especial talent either for faith or martyrdom, and loquacious usually rather with the tongues of men than of angels, it nevertheless thinks to get on, not merely without love of its neighbour, but founding all its proceedings on the precise contrary of that,--love of itself, and the seeking of every man for his own,--I should say of every beast for its own; for your modern social science openly confesses that it no longer considers you as men, but as having the nature of Beasts of Prey; [15] which made me more solicitous to explain to you the significance of that word 'Park' in my last letter; for indeed you have already pulled down the railings of those small green spots of park to purpose--and in a very solemn sense, turned all England into a Park. Alas!--if it were but even so much. Parks are for beasts of the field, which can dwell together in peace: but you have made yourselves beasts of the Desert, doleful creatures, for whom the grass is green no more, nor dew falls on lawn or bank; no flowers for you--not even the bare and quiet earth to lie down on, but only the sand-drift, and the dry places which the very Devils cannot rest in. Here and there, beside our sweet English waters, the sower may still send forth the feet of the ox and the ass; but for men with ox's heads, and ass's heads,--not the park, for these; by no manner of means the Park; but the everlasting Pound. Every man and beast being in their own place, that you choose for yours.

I have given you therefore, this month, for frontispiece, the completest picture I can find of that pound or labyrinth which the Greeks supposed to have been built by Daedalus, to enclose the bestial nature, engrafted on humanity. The Man with the Bull's head. The Greek Daedalus is the power of mechanical as opposed to imaginative art; [16] and this is the kind of architecture which Greeks and Florentines alike represent him as providing for human beasts. Could anything more precisely represent the general look of your architecture now? When I come down here; to Coniston, through Preston and Wigan, it seems to me that I have seen that thing itself, only built a little higher, and smoking, or else set on its side, and spinning round, a thousand times over in the course of the day.

Then the very writing of the name of it is so like your modern education! You miss the first letter of your lives; and begin with A for apple-pie, instead of L for love; and the rest of the writing is--some little--some big--some turned the wrong way; and the sum of it all to you Perplexity. "Abberinto."

For the rest, the old Florentine engraver took the story as it ran currently, that Theseus deserted Ariadne (but, indeed, she was the