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Updated: June 1, 2025
The Faith which in 1892 seemed so weak and helpless in the physical exile and imprisonment of its Exemplar and Interpreter, has since, with irresistible power, raised up communities in many countries, and challenges the weakness of a decaying civilization with a body of teachings that alone reveal the future of a despairing humanity.
But this "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," was also he whose blazing words against established iniquity and hypocrisy constitute him the supreme exemplar not only of love but of moral indignation, and of a sublime invective which has been equalled not even by Dante at his highest.
There was the elder Pliny, a prodigy of learning and industry, whose researches in Natural History cost him his life, in that fatal eruption of Vesuvius which buried Herculaneum and Pompeii. There was also the judicious Quintilian, at once neat and nervous in his language, delicate and correct in his criticisms, a man of genius and a scholar, a teacher and an exemplar of eloquence.
When Napoleon called us a "nation of shop-keepers," we were nothing of the kind; since his day we have become so, in the strictest sense of the word; and consider the spectacle of a flourishing tradesman, anything but scrupulous in his methods of business, who loses no opportunity of bidding all mankind to regard him as a religious and moral exemplar.
These acquired habits, or assumed traits of character, are most commonly of an aristocratic cast. The prescriptive position of the leisure class as the exemplar of reputability has imposed many features of the leisure-class theory of life upon the lower classes; with the result that there goes on, always and throughout society, a more or less persistent cultivation of these aristocratic traits.
The individual alone must assess its character, consult his conscience, prayerfully consider all its aspects, manfully struggle against the natural inertia that weighs him down in his effort to arise, shed, heroically and irrevocably, the trivial and superfluous attachments which hold him back, empty himself of every thought that may tend to obstruct his path, mix, in obedience to the counsels of the Author of His Faith, and in imitation of the One Who is its true Exemplar, with men and women, in all walks of life, seek to touch their hearts, through the distinction which characterizes his thoughts, his words and his acts, and win them over tactfully, lovingly, prayerfully and persistently, to the Faith he himself has espoused.
It is not irreverent, but eminently fitting, to compare any singularly pure and virtuous life with that of the great exemplar in whose footsteps Christendom professes to follow. The time was when the divine authority of his gospel rested chiefly upon the miracles he is reported to have wrought.
Lucrezia Tornabuoni, for whom he painted it, was a very remarkable woman, not only a good mother to her children and a good wife to Piero, but a poet and exemplar. She survived Piero by thirteen years and her son Giuliano by five. Botticelli painted her portrait, which is now in Berlin.
Many a mother in looking out that her children are a credit to the family in dress and manners and care of their persons, gives up all thought of standing as an exemplar of these things among the ladies of the community. This is a sacrifice of self that is not commendable, since it defeats its purpose.
Both were conspicuous for their gallantry, but the one impelled by that exuberant physical courage which is distinctive of the leonine type; the other an exemplar of that moral heroism which leads men to brave danger for a principle. They gave everything even their lives for their country.
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