H No meanness, hypocrisy, or dishonesty, whether on the part of rich or poor, could escape the rigorous censure of " that terrible Thoreau," as his acquaintances called him ; nor would he waste on thriftless applicants one cent of the money which he had earned by his own conscientious labours. He maintained sincerity to be the chief of all virtues. " The old mythology," he wrote, " is incomplete without a god or a goddess of sincerity, on whose altars we might offer up all the products of our farms, our work- shops, and our studies. This is the only panacea." 2
H Trevelyan speaks of " that ingrained sincerity of character " for the sake of which his party would have followed Lord Althorp to the death.3
^f During Mr. Gladstone's last tenure of office as Prime Minister a clergyman, whose only opportunity of knowing Mr. Gladstone had been through the not too trustworthy descriptions
1 J. G. Stevenson, in Youth and Life, 1.
2 H. S. Salt, Henry David Thoreau, 122. * Life and Letters of Lord ZTacaulay, 260.
504 THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT
of hostile critics, happened to say in the presence of Dean Church that he believed Mr. Gladstone was a thoroughly insincere man. The Dean was sitting in his chair when the remark was made, but he instantly rose, his face even paler than it usually was, and he said, evidently with the strongest suppression of personal feeling : " Insincere ! Sir, I tell you that to my knowledge Mr. Gladstone goes from communion with God to the great affairs of State." It was high testimony to be given to any man, but highest of all when we remember who gave it.1
This is Love's nobility, — Not to scatter bread and gold, Goods and raiment bought and sold; But to hold fast his simple sense, And speak the speech of innocence, And with hand, and body, and blood, To make his bosom-counsel good. For he that feeds men serveth few; He serves all who dares be true.2
(3) Self-control. — Manliness is self-mastery. Any fool, the weakest, dullest, paltriest that ever was, can make a drunkard or a debauchee. There is no human clay so vile, no sludge and scum of humanity so despicable, but out of it you may make an effeminate corrupter or lying schemer; but it takes God's own gold to make a man. No lacquer work, no tinsel suffices for the cherubim of the sanctuary. They must be hammered out of pure gold, seven times purified in the fire. From whom, it has been asked, does the inspiration descend on us? Is it not from the central figures of the great tragedies of humanity; from the creators of law, from the avengers of wrong, from the martyrs of right, from the missionaries of mercy, from the Pass of Thermopylae, from the self-dedication of the Decii, from the fires of Smithfield, from the waters of the Solway, yea ! from the cross of Calvary ? And he who will not take up that cross cannot be a true man ; he cannot be Christ's disciple.
Every man finds in himself two sets of tendencies — one coarse, the other fine ; the one gross and animal, the other spiritual and noble; one set allying him to the beasts that perish, the other allying him to the angels of God and to God Himself. Now, every man's life is going to be habitually controlled by one or
1 Life and Letters of Dean Church, 304. 2 Emerson.
i CORINTHIANS xvi. 13, 14 505
the other of these sets of tendencies, or he is going to vacillate in a helpless, rudderless way between the two. But what will the manly man do about it? This he will do. He will not vacillate; he will not drift rudderless, water-logged, helpless. No ; he will decide firmly between these two sets of tendencies ; he will make his choice, and he will choose to have his life habitually controlled by his finer instincts rather than by his coars'er ones ; he will elect as his master tendencies those which are pure and ennobling rather than those which are low and degrading; he will resolve that within the domain of his personality the soul shall be king, not the body ; that conscience and intelligence shall rule, and not the mob of his animal lusts and passions. With him the decision simply comes to this : the body shall obey the soul, the soul shall not be degraded to the task of obeying the body.
U If one is alive, there will be much in him which needs control, and yet is not going to submit without a struggle. It takes a practised hand to manage a pair of high-spirited horses so that they will not run away ; and he would be a phenomenal charioteer who could drive wild beasts tandem and keep them under the rein together. This is the kind of task which ardent natures have to face. As compared with some primitive peoples, we have lost in frankness and gained in outward decorum, because we hide objectionable eccentricities from public view. But the human heart is still a curious menagerie. Though the animals may be pretty well tamed in the cage of civilization, it does not follow that their rougher instincts are destroyed. A good many different selves often seem to be included in the self. How shall we bind them into a real unity ?