568 APPENDIX TO PART III

to become as the other-and as surely as I believe the Bible, I must believe in a man’s power to know to which class he belongs-and often to know to which class others belong also.

And all this plain and positive Scriptural assertion you calmly ignore-to pursue a speculative ratiocination on the “Reveal His Son in me.”

In the same manner you pass over, utterly without explanation, the plain texts on which I based my positions. “With such an one not to eat” is thorough, short, unmistakable English, and so are the other texts I alleged. All I ask is practical instruction how to obey those texts. I do not care to call the obedience excommunication, it is an ugly word; but I want to have the texts understood and practised, and you have not told me how you practise them. The fact is, I always longed to meet with any one who could explain in a merciful way the Scriptural language of condemnation. I did conceive some hope from those very texts you quote that there might be some ray of hope for all mankind-that, as you express it, one might be saved “only as a man.” Therefore I wrote in answer to your first letter. But the thought I have been induced by this correspondence to give to this special subject ends in a more fixed conviction that, if indeed all men are to be saved, the Bible is the falsest Book ever written by human hand.

I rose just now from my writing-table, feeling so wonderstruck at the doctrine of your letter that I hardly knew how to speak of it more. I went mechanically to my Bible, and it opened-where think you? At the twentysixth Psalm.¹

But I will write no more. Your most humble and tender feeling cannot make you less useful-and God forbid I should argue against it; and may He also give me strength to make the Choice betwixt His love and His anger, which is, I believe, offered to us all in the Strait of Life.

Thank you again and again for your letter,

Respectfully and faithfully yours,

J. RUSKIN.

[Maurice wound up the correspondence by a short reply, dated April 28, of which the gist was as follows: “I was not denouncing our Lord’s doctrine of excommunication, I was denouncing yours. He says, ‘If your brother trespass against you, tell him his fault alone; then, take with you two or three men; then, if he neglect them, tell it to the Church; then, if he refuse the Church, give up all intercourse with him.’ Beautiful and divine method! for which you and this age substitute the method of not acknowledging men as brothers at all, of refusing intercourse with them, without telling them their fault or going to the Church, on the assumption that they are publicans and sinners, and therefore have no part or lot in the matter.”]

¹ [“4. I have not dwelt with vain persons: neither will I have fellowship with the deceitful.

“5. I have hated the congregation of the wicked; and will not sit among the ungodly,” etc.]

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