1 George Clarke.
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 497
must have raised in the minds of St. Paul's hearers and those which it would have called up if uttered by one of their civil rulers. How different a thing had manhood become to the Christian from what it was before his conversion. The thought that their life had been lived by the Son of God, the thought that their nature had been worn by Christ, that their bodily form had been sanctified by God's indwelling presence, how overpowering must this have been to the first believers. They could have no doubt, no difficulty in life, when once they had believed. They knew in Him the greatness of their position, the source of their real strength. In following His life they knew wherein true manhood lay ; they knew that it was not in the practice of the conventional virtues of the society around them, not in striking, brilliant exhibitions of their own great powers of mind or body, but in the simple daily life of industry and effort, that the per- fection of human nature was to be found. This fact, this plain unmistakable truth, was stamped upon man's conscience by the human life and death of God's eternal Son. They need not go out of the world to find in solitude, in asceticism, in contempla- tion, their own " highest perfection," as the fanatics even among the Jews maintained. They need not strive laboriously, as the Greeks would teach them, to ascend the lofty heights of abstract thought, where the mind might look calmly down on human things, and rise above them into the region of the Divine. Nay, in order to gain their highest greatness, they need not even struggle with the keen strong weapons of the world's ambition tc rise above their fellows, to do great exploits, to win great glory. to conquer and to rule, as they saw their Eoman masters striving incessantly to do. Christ had revealed to His followers the sufficiency, the grandeur of common life; within the sphere of daily duty can the highest individual perfection be found.
This view of life lies at the bottom of what we call manliness of character. For it implies all those qualities which we most commonly attach to our idea of manliness. A man acting always from such a view is frank and straightforward, for he makes no false pretences and so has nothing to conceal. He is simple because he is too much in earnest to be lost in complexities and misunderstandings. He is fearless, for he is conscious of no aim of which he need be ashamed. He is brave, for whether he gain 1 cor. — 32
498 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT
or lose in each separate undertaking, in the end he cannot but win, for present failure must at least teach a broader wisdom for the future, and a more perfect sympathy with actual surroundings. He is sound and healthy, for he knows himself too well and deals with himself too honestly to leave any room for what is morbid or affected. He is strong, for he is self-controlled, at any moment ready to act decisively up to what he knows, without thinking that what he does is necessarily on that account the wisest and best course possible. He is enduring, for he can afford to wait, knowing that his aim is his own lasting development, not the production of immediate results, not the glory of present praise and honour.
Tf All right exercise of any human gift, so descended from the Giver of good, depends on the primary formation of the character of true manliness in the youth — that is to say, of a majestic, grave, and deliberate strength. How strange the words sound ; how little does it seem possible to conceive of majesty, and gravity, and deliberation in the daily track of modern life. Yet, gentlemen, we need not hope that our work will be majestic if there is no majesty in ourselves. The word " manly " has come to mean practically, among us, a schoolboy's character, not a man's. We are, at our best, thoughtlessly impetuous, fond of adventure and excitement ; curious in knowledge for its novelty, not for its system and results ; faithful and affectionate to those among whom we are by chance cast, but gently and calmly insolent to strangers ; we are stupidly conscientious, and instinc- tively brave, and always ready to cast away the lives we take no pains to make valuable, in causes of which we have never ascertained the justice.1
H In Drummond's Life of Charles A. Berry, there is the following reminiscence by Mr. Holderness Gale, an intimate friend of Berry : — " One day I had been spending an hour or two with him, and we were leaving the Club together, he to go, I think, to Woodford. Our ways parted at the Club door, and when we reached it, he called to me to wait a minute while he claimed his bag. In those days, a member entering the Club might leave his bag with the hall porter, and this Berry had done. He described his bag as a square black one, with a round handle, and was handed one which was beautifully smooth and shone with unsullied varnish. ' That's not mine,' said Berry ; ' mine is over there,' and he pointed to another bag of the same shape, or rather