ROMANS — 22
338 THE POLEMICS OF CHRISTIANITY
Nothing responds more infallibly to the secret cry of goodness than the secret cry of goodness that is near. While you are actively good in the invisible, all those who approach you will unconsciously do things that they could not do by the side of any other man. Therein lies a force that has no name ; a spiritual rivalry that knows no resistance. It is as though this were tha actual place where is the sensitive spot of our soul ; for there are souls that seem to have forgotten their existence, and to have renounced everything that enables them to rise ; but, once touched here, they all draw themselves erect ; and in the Divine plains of the secret goodness the most humble souls cannot endure defeat.^
3. The effectual way to subdue public evil is the strategy of the text.
(1) We do not really overcome evil by substituting one evil for another, or by setting one evil to drive out another. Scientists neutralize one kind of microbe by introducing another, and sometimes, it would seem, they introduce one disease to expel another; but manoeuvres have little place in the moral world. Statesmen will attempt to end an evil practice or institution by introducing it in a different shape, as the Siamese are said to domesticate spiders to drive out cockroaches ; the profit of such devices, however, is generally dubious. Whatever the endless shifts and compromises of politics may be worth, they do not belong to the invincible strategy whenever they propose to vanquish evil by evil. Christianity implies a profounder process.
^ Your fire will not put out your companion's fire ; rather will they combine, and make a bigger and hotter blaze. Good arguments are best pressed home by soft words, and a righteous cause will be better pleaded with m.eekness than with passion. You remember how Jephthah's roughness to the Ephraimites, who were angry because they were not asked to help in the battle against their country's enemies, exasperated them further, and led to a terrible strife between brethren, in which thousands of lives were lost. And, on the other hand, you remember how the wise Gideon treated the same Ephraimites on a similar occasion ; how he spoke gently to them, and made flattering excuses, and so pacified them that they gladly gave their help against the common foe.^
1 Maurice Maeterlinck. * H. Macmillan.
ROMANS XII. 21 339
^ The African is now appreciating the fact that there is industrial work for him to do, that he is needed for the work, and able to do it. The missionaries had lately to refuse over one hundred and twenty who wished to be trained as carpenters. We are told that in Ngoniland education is to-day as much prized as in Great Britain. The Ngoni lived as wolves among sheep till they were tamed by the messengers of Jesus Christ. " Give me a Gospel for an assegai," one of them said to the missionary, " as the love of war has been taken out of my heart." ^
(2) We shall not overcome evil by the representation of it. Ghastly things are represented in art on the plea that they will disgust. The stark expression of naturalism in literature is excused on the ground that its loathsomeness is discredited by being described. And the drama pictures vice and violence with moral design. No mistake can be greater. Wickedness at once repels and fascinates, too often in the end proving contagious and destructive. It is infectious to represent evil, often dangerous to talk of it, and even an injustice to ourselves to figure it in fancy. The morbid element in life must be dealt with in art and literature ; but it ought to be described, delineated, and dramatized with utmost reticence.
^ To make our idea of morality centre on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men a secret element of gusto. If a thing is wrong for us, we should not dwell upon the thought of it; or we shall soon dwell upon it with inverted pleasure.^
^ The fabled basilisk was said to perish if it saw itself in a mirror; it could not survive the sight of its own hideous- ness. Evil is not killed in this way. It feeds on the vision. With regard to the spirit of terrible cruelty which marked the Eenaissance in Italy, Symonds traces it to the influence of the fiendish atrocities of the tyrant Ezzelino. "In vain was the humanity of the race revolted by the hideous spectacle. ... It laid a deep hold upon the Italian imagination, and by the glamour of loathing that has strength to fascinate, proved in the end contagious." ^
^ An artist one day visited a friend of his, an undergraduate at Oxford. As he looked round upon the walls of his young friend's rooms, and saw the gross and sordid prints and photo-
* James "Wells, Stewart of Lovedale, 145.
' E. L. Stevenson, A Christmas Sermon. » W. L. Watkinson.
340 THE POLEMICS OF CHRISTIANITY
graphs, the artist's heart went out in eager longing to purify the thought and sanctify the passion of his young friend. A day or so afterwards, a beautiful picture came addressed to the Oxford undergraduate with a little note enclosed from his artist friend : " Hang this up in your room, it will banish the chorus girls and the jockeys." And it did ! ^