1 Raskin, The Study of Architecture ( Works, xix. 32).
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which had been of the same shape in its early days. When I saw it, the owner's slippers, and sundry other impedimenta, had destroyed its squareness, and the varnish had given way, here and there, in honourable scars of roughened brown leather. *I suppose you thought that wasn't respectable enough for a parson,' said Berry, as the attendant gave the bag a dusting. ■ Bless you, sir, we never thinks of you as a parson ; we always thinks of you as a man,' was the reply. I never saw Berry more touched than at this spontaneous tribute." x
^[ Away back in the Middle Ages was a very beautiful and radiant thing named chivalry — a thing partly real and partly ideal, the ideal part of it being just as precious for us as the real part. Now, one great purpose lying at the root of chivalry was that of cultivating a fine and stately type of manhood ; in fact, of breeding up the manliest race of men that had ever trod up and down in the world. And what was their notion of manliness — theirs, in that epoch of coarseness, and of animal lusts, and of violent lives? Listen. The finest dream of chivalry was embodied in that superb personage, King Arthur, and in the gorgeous knights who sat with him at the Bound Table. And by what principles were their splendid lives controlled ? Tennyson has told us, in the best English that has been written in our time — putting the testimony into the lips of King Arthur himself.
I was first of all the kings who drew The knighthood-errant of this realm and all The realms together under me, their Head, In that fair Order of the Table Bound, A glorious company, the flower of men, To serve as model for the mighty world, And be the fair beginning of a time. I made them lay their hands in mine and swear To reverence the King, as if he were Their conscience, and their conscience as their King, To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, To honour his own word as if his God's, To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her by years of noble deeds, Until they won her ; for indeed I knew Of no more subtle master under heaven
1 Charles A. Berry, 274.
5<x> THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT
Than is the maiden passion for a maid, Not only to keep down the base in man, But teach high thought, and amiable words, And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man.
3. Manliness is a great word ; it is a many-sided word ; but in general, we have this feeling about it, when we use it with emphasis — that it is an idealizing word. It is a word that will not suffer us to stay down among the small actualities of the manly character as known to us ; but it continually points us up and away from the small actualities towards the grand possibilities of the manly character which we hope may sometime be known to us. The word manliness, perhaps, is greater and richer in noble attributes than was any one real specimen of manliness that we have ever looked upon with these eyes of ours. Nevertheless, when we think of true manliness, we are not content with the discouraging real, we lift ourselves up towards the inspiring ideal ; and we begin to place before our eyes, one by one, all those qualities that we can think of as going to the formation of a noble, strong, splendid, and complete man. The manly man, we say — why, that is the ideal man ; that is the man, not as he is, perhaps, but as he ought to be, as he may be, as he will be.
What are the attributes of this complete man, which St. Paul may be supposed ttThave had in mind when he exhorted us to act like one? There should be no difficulty in answering this question. The very word which St. Paul used is one the exact meaning of which is still perfectly well known. For our phrase in four words, " Quit you like men," he used a single word, a verb formed from the familiar noun for man. The primary meaning of that noun was simply man as distinct from woman; its secondary meaning was man as a person of mature years, in contrast with a child; and then, for its; third and supreme meaning, the word broadened and blossomed into the large conception of man as a being possessed of intelligence, wisdom, moral light and force, and a spiritual nature, in contrast with creatures of inferior order who are devoid of these endowments. So when St. Paul said to the little group of Christians at Corinth, environed by the spiritual perils of that most corrupt pagan city, " Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men," he very
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 501
likely charged that last word with all the ennobling and stimu- lating meanings which in the usage of poets and historians and orators it already had. For long before St. Paul's time the word had been often used, somewhat as he used it, as a word to spur and inspire men to great and worthy and difficult deeds. In Homer and Herodotus and in Xenophon the word comes up again and again, when some great chieftain, at a moment of danger, in the presence of some grand or tremendous duty, just turns round to his followers and tells them to remember that they are men, and to act accordingly. Of course, St. Paul must have charged the word with richer meanings than they did, by as much as his conception of the spiritual range and possibility of man's nature was grander than theirs ; but the basis of his appeal was just the same as theirs.