570 APPENDIX TO PART III

majority Christian or a majority Pagan. If the majority and government are Pagan, of course the State is not the Church.

The rest of your note refers to the endless question of Authority of Scripture, into which it is vain to enter. I say only this-If the Bible does not speak plain English enough to define the articles of saving faith, burn it, and write another, but don’t talk of Interpreting it. I will keep your note to talk it over with you.

Ever affectionately yours,

J. RUSKIN.

P. S.-I ended my note in some indignation, because really a man of your intelligence ought to be above repeating the stale, and a thousand times over stale, equivocation between Authority and Belief. Is it possible you don’t see the difference between having Authority to Pronounce an unwritten Truth and to Announce your belief of a written one. I lay my hand on the Bible and say I believe I read this here. You say you don’t. I say-Then it seems to me you either lie or are judicially struck blind, and I will have no company with you. The retort is of course the same. Both parties call, and should call, each other Heretics, and God will see which is right at the last day.

II

TRINITY LODGE, Sunday.

[Postmark: March 28th, 1851.]

MY DEAR FURNIVALL,-I really have not been able to answer so much as a word, either to your letter or card, until now. Nor now will I answer at any length, for, as you rightly say, the differences between us lie deep, and could not be argued out in less than a volume of letters on either side. But I will answer your one question-Dare you say “I serve God”-for the answer to this will express the difference between us clearly, and that will be always something gained.

Yes. Whenever I do serve Him, I dare to say so; whenever I do not serve Him, I know that I do not. How often I do not, is not your question. Be it enough to say that there are some moments of my life in which I try to serve Him (and to try to do it, is to do it); and that I perfectly know the difference between those moments, and the innumerable other moments in which I serve the Devil and my own Lusts. Farther, I believe with all my heart and soul that His children do, on this Earth, “diligently serve God day and night;”¹ that they are just as certain that they are in His Service, as any Footman is who receives daily wages for daily work done. And that these His children can say, and must say, to many men around them, I serve God, you do not.

I believe that all men are God’s children, in the sense in which dogs, mice, and rats are His children; but until they are converted, or born again, in no other sense; only, the offer of salvation, by becoming His children, is held out to them all. And if you call this doctrine Pharisaical, I cannot help it. But I would ask you this-whether a child snatched by

¹ [Acts xxvi. 7: “Instantly serve God day and night.”]

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