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XI. CHRIST CHURCH CHOIR 189
216. And here I must stay, for a minute or two, to give some account of the state of mind I had got into during the above-described progress of my education, touching religious matters.
As far as I recollect, the steady Bible reading with my mother ended with our first continental journey, when I was fourteen; one could not read three chapters after breakfast while the horses were at the door. For this lesson was substituted my own private reading of a chapter, morning and evening, and, of course, saying the Lord’s Prayer after it, and asking for everything that was nice for myself and my family; after which I waked or slept, without much thought of anything but my earthly affairs, whether by night or day.
It had never entered into my head to doubt a word of the Bible, though I saw well enough already that its words were to be understood otherwise than I had been taught; but the more I believed it, the less it did me any good. It was all very well for Abraham to do what angels bid him,-so would I, if any angels bid me; but none had ever appeared to me that I knew of, not even Adèle, who couldn’t be an angel because she was a Roman Catholic.
217. Also, if I had lived in Christ’s time, of course I would have gone with Him up to the mountain, or sailed with Him on the Lake of Galilee; but that was quite another thing from going to Beresford chapel, Walworth,1 or St. Bride’s, Fleet Street. Also, though I felt myself somehow called to imitate Christian in the Pilgrim’s Progress, I couldn’t see that either Billiter Street and the Tower Wharf, where my father had his cellars, or the cherry-blossomed garden at Herne Hill, where my mother potted her flowers, could be places I was bound to fly from as in the City of Destruction. Without much reasoning on the matter, I had virtually concluded from my general Bible reading that, never having meant or done any harm
1 [To sit under Dr. Andrews: see above, § 79 (pp. 71-72). Of St. Bride’s, another of Ruskin’s tutors (the Rev. T. Dale) was vicar.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
