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Its spiritual vigor we have sufficiently shown, not less in the inspirations of the saints than in the fiery songs of the bards, called forth by battles and the death of kings. Everywhere there was fierce force and seething energy, bringing forth fruit of piety or prowess. The raiders slowly lost their grasp of the fortresses they had seized. Newcomers ceased to fill their thinning ranks.
Denouncing the policy of getting all one could out of the slaves and of giving back as little as possible, Jones undertook to show how their spiritual improvement would exterminate their ignorance, vulgarity, idleness, improvidence, and irreligion; Jones thought that if the circumstances of the Negroes were changed, they would equal, if not excel, the rest of the human family "in majesty of intellect, elegance of manners, purity of morals, and ardor of piety."
But being unable to eat or drink or rest until he was at ease on the matter, he determined, all piety and law and decorum to the contrary notwithstanding, to look upon the faces of Ashimullah's wives with his own eyes, and determine for himself to whom the crown of beauty belonged, and whether the brown or the black, or the golden or the ruddy, might most properly and truthfully lay claim to it.
When I had succeeded, I became a man in such request among those of my profession that the devotees themselves used to say of me with M. Vincent, "Though I had not piety enough, yet I was not far from the kingdom of heaven." Fortune favoured me more than usual at this time.
On one occasion when the Sisters of the Visitation had made a foundation in a city famous for the piety of its inhabitants and in which there were already a number of Religious Houses highly esteemed for external austerities and severe discipline, they met with much criticism and even harsh treatment on account of their own gentler and apparently easier rule.
And again, for every station they have an ideal of behaviour, to which the master, under pain of derogation, will do wisely to conform. How often has not a cold glance of an eye informed me that my dog was disappointed; and how much more gladly would he not have taken a beating than to be thus wounded in the seat of piety! I knew one disrespectable dog.
After two hours' conversation, it grew dark, and Vanslyperken departed, revolving in his mind, as he walked away, the sublime principles of religion and piety, in the excellent advice given by his aged mother.
If these observations on friendship be correct, as I conceive they are, you will know why I so highly prize the treasure, especially when I find it in a man capable of exercising it to so much advantage as your learning, ability and experience enable you to do. You justly observe that neither piety nor friendship dictated the question, "Am I my brother's keeper?"
It is not a little remarkable that a divine who had been constantly extolled as a very pattern of Christian piety and Christian wisdom should by them be systematically decried as little better than a heathen moralist. The foregoing instances may serve to illustrate the important place which Tillotson held in the religious history of the eighteenth century.
Still, as we look back, it does seem as though with the wit of the Queen, the wisdom of Prince Albert, the philosophy of Baron Stockmar, the philanthropy of Exeter Hall, and the piety of the Bench of Bishops, some sort of peaceful arrangement might have been effected, and the Crimean war left out of history.
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