^ In the department of the "minor morals" various little changes of fashion are observable. The change in the drinking habits of society is too hackneyed a topic to be more than men- tioned, but if we are not mistaken, a striking change has taken place in the matter of " strong language." It is quite true that " damns had their day " once — and it is equally certain that they
* Alfred Aiiijiicr.
234 IN FASHION OR IN FAVOUR
are having another one now. Twenty years ago when one wa? sitting in the stalls it was not unusual, when the obnoxious word was uttered, to hear materfamilias let fall some such remark as, " I really do think he might have left that out ! " Nowadays of course it passes absolutely unnoticed ; nor does any man in telling a story think it necessary to omit the word, if it comes in naturally, because of the presence of women-folk. Nay, we appeal to our readers whether they do not hear it, more or less in play, from the lips of beauty in distress — in a bunker or else- where. Noils ne discutons jjas — nous constatons. We merely remark that the mothers of this generation would not have done it any more than they would have smoked cigarettes.^
^ " One day," says Madame de Hausset, in her curious memoirs of the Pompadour, " Madame said to the Due d'Ayen that M. de Choiseul was very fond of his sisters. ' I know it, Madame,' said he — 'and many sisters are the better for it.' 'What can you mean ? ' she asked. ' Why,' he answered, ' as the Due de Choiseul loves his sisters, it is thought fashionable to do the same ; and I know silly girls, whose brothers formerly cared nothing for them, who are now most tenderly beloved. No sooner does their little finger ache than their brothers are running all over Paris to fetch the doctor for them. They flatter themselves that some one will say in M. de Choiseul's drawing-room, " Ah, what a good brother
is M. de ! " and that they will gain advancement thereby.' "
We need scarcely add that the Due de Choiseul was chief minister, and the dispenser of royal favours.^
ii. This World.
1. The marginal reference here gives " age " as an alternative reading for " world " — " be not fashioned according to the age or time" — and it should not be overlooked that the Greek word, here rendered " world," does really mean the world in special relation to time as distinguished from place or space. The changing forms or fashions to which the Apostle here refers are those which essentially belong to changes incident to time, the suppressed contrast being, of course, with a heavenly order, which is eternal. The idea is not necessarily theological : we are quite accustomed to the thought as a necessary consequent on our observations of life and history, and of the changes which every
' Recreations and Heflections, 377.
» J. H. Friswell, This Wicked World, 56.
ROMANS xii. 2 235
careful watcher of life must needs note in other people and even in himself.
The " Time-Spirit " — the " Zeit-Geist " — is naturalized among us as a pliipse to indicate the force which we see to be exercised, however little able we are to grasp and analyse it, in each succeeding epoch of our history ; and it is clearly something after the same kind that St. Paul saw to be at work in the world of his day. And because his beloved converts must needs be in daily touch with the world, though it was their first duty and privilege to be not " of it," he had seen how necessary it was to them to beware of the subtle power, the alluring and plausible charm, which it was certain to exercise over them, unless they were forewarned and forearmed.
2. When St. Paul lifted up his voice against the world, and besought the Christians committed to his charge to be separate from it, he was thinking of that imposing paganism which was ever fronting them. With its love of pleasure, its glorification of power, its imperial pageantry, its idolatrous temples, its un- redeemed Art, its seduction both for the senses and for the intellect, paganism cast its glamour over the new Christian con- verts. Writers so far apart as Cardinal Newman in his Callista and the author of Quo Vadis suggest to our minds the fascinating atmosphere into which Christianity was born, and where in its youth it had to fight the good fight of faith. Beneath the beauty of form and colour, the magnificence of ceremonies and arms, the arts and riches of civilization, that was an unclean and leprous world. Whether they lived in Corinth, with its unblushing wor- ship of lust, or in Rome, which was the moral sewer of the world, or in tlphesus, where Christians were tempted by the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, or in Pergamos, where there were those who held the abominable doctrine of Balaam, or in Thyatira, where Jezebel seduced God's servants, or in Sardis, where only a few had not defiled their garments, Christians had ever to stand on guard. No wonder that some in Corinth had fallen through the lures of the flesh, or that a Demas had forsaken the faith before that imperial magnificence. Christians had to choose between their Lord and their world, and it was a world hard to escape or to resist.