24 INTRODUCTORY

far as it goes, to Him who is the origin of virtue. The former is commonly the more persuasive method, the latter assuredly the more conclusive; only it is liable to give offence, as if there were irreverence in adducing considerations so weighty in treating subjects of small temporal importance. I believe, however, that no error is more thoughtless than this. We treat God with irreverence by banishing Him from our thoughts, not by referring to His will on slight occasions. His is not the finite authority or intelligence which cannot be troubled with small things. There is nothing so small but that we may honour God by asking His guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands; and what is true of the Deity is equally true of His Revelation. We use it most reverently when most habitually: our insolence is in ever acting without reference to it, our true honouring of it is in its universal application. I have been blamed for the familiar introduction of its sacred words.¹ I am grieved to have given pain by so doing; but my excuse must be my wish that those words were made the ground of every argument and the test of every action. We have them not often enough on our lips, nor deeply enough in our memories, nor loyally enough in our lives.² The snow, the vapour, and the stormy wind fulfil His word.³ Are our acts and thoughts lighter and wilder than these-that we should forget it?

§ 6. I have therefore ventured, at the risk of giving to some passages the appearance of irreverence, to take the higher line of argument wherever it appeared clearly traceable: and this,

¹ [Of Ruskin’s constant use of Biblical words and phrases, the footnotes in previous volumes have given illustration. See on this subject, Vol. III. p. 674 n., and for a passage which was criticised as “blasphemous,” Vol. III. p. 254. See on the general subject Ruskin et la Bible, by H. J. Brunhes, Paris, 1901.]

² [The MS. proceeds thus:-

“and this will seem to us a graver fault, when we remember the wide definition they have given of the wicked man, not that he does not think of God at all, not that he does not think of God at solemnities and stated times: but that he does not answer continual protection, continual life giving, with continual (purpose?) of obedience and praise:-’God is not in All his thoughts.’”

(Psalms x. 4.) With the matter of this paragraph cf. Lectures on Architecture and Painting (1854), Lecture iv., §§ 114 seqq.]

³ [Psalms cxlviii. 8.]

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