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It is surely a disgrace to those cowardly Christians who, having in addition to all the natural powers of the heathen moralist the freely-offered grace of God to work with them and in them, should still walk so unworthy of the high vocation wherewith they are called, as to shrink hopelessly from a moral competition with the ignorant worshippers of old.
In dealing with any savage moralist, we are obliged to turn from the abstract question: Why did he say these things? to the realistic one. What did he hope to effect by what he said?
'Least of all did I expect to find my brother a pulpiteer and a moralist with all the popular faith in the domestic virtues, and the quaint conviction that misery dogs the sinner, said Ryder dryly. 'I have used no cant, answered Jim, 'and I said nothing of sin or virtue. I don't ask you to trust God, but to trust man. Be at peace with your kind!
Length of years, and subsequent reflection, have enabled me to trace, indeed, some remote connection between this passage in the English moralist and a portion of the character of Ligeia.
We must not suppose as is too often assumed that sublimation can be carried out easily, completely, or even with unmixed advantage. If it were so, certainly the old-fashioned moralist would be confronted by few difficulties, but we have ample reason to believe that it is not so.
A bewhiskered moralist in a far northern State would one day try to drive the kings of his racing-stable to the plough. A meddling band of fanatical teetotalers would overthrow his merry monarch, King Barleycorn, and the harassed son of the Blue-grass, whether he would or not, must turn to the new pretender who was in the Kentuckians' midst, uninvited and self-throned.
As proxime accessit I might name Mr. Hall Caine. By the same methods Mr. There have also been many fine writers who did not aim at spurious effects, but received praise by reason of their "moral tone" in circles where they would never have received it on the grounds of literary excellence. If George Eliot had not been a moralist she would not have been so popular in England.
And if this threefold perfection that flatters his pride is no argument for loving her, it is beyond cavil one of the great inducements to the sentiment. Love would soon be convalescent, as the eighteenth century moralist remarked, were it not for vanity. And it is certainly true that for everyone, man or woman, there is a wealth of pleasure in the superiority of the beloved.
Christianity elevates the standard and raises the ideal of moral excellence, and thereby disturbs the self-complacent feeling of the stoic, and the moralist. If the law and rule of right is merely an outward one, it is possible for a man sincerely to suppose that he has kept the law, and his sincerity will be his ruin.
Froude had no faith in Socialism, nor in Christianity as the Church understood it. In this year, 1848, Emerson also came to Oxford, and dined with Clough at Oriel, where they thought him like Newman. Froude was already an admirer of Emerson's essays, and laid his case before the American moralist.
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