ith us
now. Thou shalt love God and thou shalt love man, in
the hands of a poor Paley, are found to mean no more
than, Thou shalt love thyself after an enlightened
manner. And the same base tone has saturated not
only our common feelings, but our Christian theologies
and our Antichristian philosophies. A prudent regard
to our future interests, an abstinence from present
unlawful pleasures, because they will entail the loss of
greater pleasure by-and-by, or perhaps be paid for with
pain, this is called virtue now; and the belief that such
beings as men can be influenced by any feelings nobler
or better, is smiled at as the dream of enthusiasts
whose hearts have outrun their understandings. Indeed,
he were but a poor lover whose devotion to his mistress
lay resting on the feeling that a marriage with her would
conduce to 'his own after comforts. That were a poor
patriot who served his country for the hire which his
country would give to him. And we should think but
poorly of a son who thus addressed his earthly father:
"Father, on whom my fortunes depend, teach me to
do what pleases thee, that I, obeying thee in all things
may obtain those good things which thou hast promised
to give to thy obedient children." If any of us who have
lived in so poor a faith venture, by-and-by, to put in
our claims, Satan will be likely to say of us (with better
reason than he did of Job) "Did they serve God for
nought, then? Take their reward from them, and they
will curse Him to His face." If Christianity had never
borne itself more nobly than this, do we suppose that
those fierce Norsemen who had learnt, in the fiery
warsongs of the Edda, of what stuff the hearts of heroes are
composed, would have fashioned their sword-hilts into
crosses, and themselves into a crusading chivalry? Let
us not dishonour our great fathers with the dream of it.
The Christians, like the stoics and the epicureans, would
have lived their little day among the ignoble sects of an
effete civilization, and would have passed off and been
heard of no more. It was in another spirit that those
first preachers of righteousness went out upon their
warfare with evil. They preached, not enlightened
prudence, but purity, justice, goodness; holding out no
promises in this world except of suffering as their great
master had suffered, and rejoicing that they were counted
worthy to suffer for His sake. And that crown of glory
which they did believe to await them in a lif