Ruskin quotes from Luke 11.23, where Jesus rebukes the Pharisees who accuse him of casting out devils in the name of Beelzebub: 'He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.' (The otherwise identical verse, Matthew 12.30, ends 'scattereth abroad'.)
Although Ruskin had been accused by the clerical art critic Eagles of blaspheming in his application of biblical texts to Turner in the first edition of Modern Painters I (1843), and had responded with revisions to the text, he is here unembarrassed about applying an important text from the gospels to a secular subject. (See Ruskin and Eagles and Ruskin and religion.)