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ence. Whatever controversies may be raised concerning total and partial depravity in the beginning of human life, the universal sweep of moral unsoundness in our race is patent enough to every unprejudiced observer. " Behold I was shapen in iniquity " may be boldly taken as a generalization, and applied to every member of the human family. Such defilement cannot enter into the gates of the eternal city. The " unclean " are for ever the denizens of darkness, and the gates of the city of light give no pathway for their feet.
(1) The margin of the Revised Version tells us that the word translated " unclean " literally means " common." " Common," I.e., shared by other nations, was often used by the Jews in a depreciatory sense. Thus they found fault with the disciples of Jesus for eating food with "common," i.e.y unwashed, hands. Our word "vulgar" has much the same sort of depreciatory meaning, and it would have been such an exact rendering in this passage from the Eevelation that one feels at first inclined to regret that our translators did not adopt it. But they were clearly right. To have said that nothing vulgar could enter the heavenly city would have given an opening to serious misconstruction. A strange vision of a heaven restricted to the world of rank and fashion might have presented itself to people who identify vulgarity with the working classes — to the kind of people who think that it is vulgar to be poor, and vulgar not to dress for dinner. Yet there the word stands, " common," " vulgar " {xamv). In the Authorized Version the rendering is " anything that defileth " (xo/coDi/). But this is an alteration by later copyists. Originally, there is no doubt, the writer wrote, *' There shall in no wise enter anything that is common, anything that is vulgar." The text, then, may be taken as suggesting that there is sometimes to be found in human nature a certain kind of commonness of character, a certain type of vulgarity, which is insufferable in the sight of God, so insufferable that it cannot be admitted into His presence. Whenever it predominates in any human soul, that soul cannot enter into the heavenly city.
(2) It is the egotistic element in our human nature that we cannot even imagine ourselves as bringing into the presence of God. The vulgar person in any rank, from the nobleman to the labourer, is one whose whole interests centre in himself, who is
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unconscious of the feelings of others, lacking all the delicate sympathies and sensibilities of the gentler nature. One who pushes and tramples, and not only that, but one who is simply obtuse and callous, has in him the root of vulgarity. And this dulness of perception is met with equally in all ranks. Now this egotism, which we recognize as the root of vulgarity, is precisely what we must lay aside on entering God's presence. He giveth grace to the humble; to follow Christ it is needful to deny or suppress oneself ; it is the meek and the modest that alone can realize God's presence. All purse-proud, or intellect-proud, or success-proud characters — in fact, all egotisms are alike condemned by our instinct as vulgar, and by our conscience as incapable of entering into the Kingdom of God.
(3) There is often an inherent vulgarity in sin, which we must shut utterly out of our lives, if our heart is to be in communion with Him who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. Vulgarity, it is true, is not exactly the same thing as sin. It is sin seen in a certain light, in a very hateful and ugly light; sin viewed as egotistical, unenlightened, callous, self-complacent. Egotism, callousness, self-complacency — these are just the qualities which we must lay aside if we wish to come before the presence of God. We cannot even begin to lead a religious life unless we are striving to deny self, to love our brother, and to be humble-minded. More terrible, perhaps, than any other kind of vulgarity is the vulgarity of moral uncleanness. What more hopelessly vulgarizes a life than this ? What more completely blinds it to the light of the Divine Presence ? Only to the pure heart is vouchsafed the blessing of seeing God. Let us turn the searchlight of conscience upon our hearts, and ask ourselves whether we have that inner refinement of character and purity of soul which alone can enable us to live the life of the Spirit, or whether we are among the vulgar, the truly vulgar, who can in no wise enter into the heavenly city.
TI The essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation. Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an untrained and un- developed bluntness of body and mind; but in true inbred vulgarity, there is a dreadful callousness, which in extremity becomes capable of every sort of bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, and without pity. It is in
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the blunt hand and the dead heart, in the diseased habit, in the hardened conscience, that men become vulgar ; they are for ever vulgar, precisely in proportion as they are incapable of sympathy — of quick understanding — of all that, in deep insistence on the common but most accurate term, may be called the "tact" or " touch-faculty " of body and soul : that tact which the Mimosa has in trees, which the pure woman has above all creatures — firmness and fullness of sensation, beyond reason ; — the guide and sanctifier of reason itself. Eeason can but determine what is true : it is the God-given passion of humanity which alone can recog- nise what God has made good. This is the chief vulgarity, that of character, the dull unconscious egotism; but there is also a vulgarity of intellect. There are minds which are so absorbed in personalities and trifles as never to rise to human interests in literature or politics, or the life of the home circle; and that without possessing the unlettered and often courteous dignity of the peasant. Ignorance is not vulgarity ; the vulgarity lies in a prostitution of education to trivialities, or worse, which pastures on the criminal, or sporting, or society, or other gossip of the day. We feel the incompatibility of such a mind with all the higher life. This sort of vulgarity also excludes itself from the heavenly city. It is "whatsoever things are true . . . honourable, just, pure, lovely, and of good report " ; it is these and thoughts of these that fit our minds for that city of the heavens. And the vulgarity of character and of intellect leads on by a dreadful law to the worst of all its manifestations, which is spoken of as uncleanness. The utter egotism, the want of respect and sympathy for others, the absorption in self-gratification, kept in check by no thought of what is pure and lovely and divine in others or ourselves, find here their crowning manifestation, and assuredly this blots out, like some dense fumes, the light of the presence of God, and debases the whole nature.