“Now if any man build upon this foundation”

The expression “Now if any man build upon this foundation” introduces a biblical image of judgment in which each person’s work is made manifest and tried by fire. Maud Ruthyn uses it to frame the uncertainty surrounding her uncle’s religion and the moral reckoning implied by his late pursuit of her inheritance: outward professions cannot prevent a life’s underlying character from being revealed.

Biblical Image and Meaning

The passage invokes a foundation on which a person may build with materials ranging from gold, silver, and precious stones to wood, hay, and stubble. Its central promise is disclosure: the day will declare each person’s work, and fire will test what sort of work it is. The image turns judgment into a trial of substance, distinguishing what endures from what cannot withstand exposure.

Maud’s Application to Her Uncle

Reflecting after her uncle’s death, Maud refuses to claim certainty about whether his religion was wholly hypocritical or had once contained a vein of sincerity. She allows that he may have wished for heaven and feared hell, but weighs those uncertain hopes against what he coveted and dreaded in the material world. In her account, his designs to marry her to his son, first by fair means and then by foul, gave way to a plan to seize everything through murder. The biblical test supplies a moral frame for that progression without pretending to settle what he believed in his heart.

A Life’s Hardened Form

Maud pairs the image of fire with a reflection on aging: there comes a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, but retains the form in which it has cooled. She then invokes the accompanying warning that the unjust may remain unjust and the filthy filthy. Together, these images shift the emphasis from a last-minute change of character to the final exposure of a character already formed. The expression thus joins judgment to irreversibility: the test reveals the shape of the life rather than remaking it.