IT CHAPTER I. THE IMPORTANCE OF HUMANITY. T is the proud boast of many an aristocrat that he can trace his descent from a long line of distinguished ancestors. He glories in the fact of belonging to an ancient and honourable family; and sometimes looks with supreme contempt on men of plebeian blood. We greatly wonder what real or reasonable objection can be taken to his going a few centuries further back, except that then he had ancestors very much like the ancestors of common people. We greatly wonder, again, what real or reasonable objection can be taken to his going some thousands of years further back, as then he would get to the root of the familytree, and greatly enlarge the circle of his relations. If there be any virtue in dating far back, then the argument, taken on its own merits, implies that the farther back the greater the credit and the more abundant cause for glorying. If men boast that the blood of a dozen earls runs in their veins, then the argument, pushed to its logical issue, shows that we have all of us proportionately greater reason to boast on the ground that we belong to the far more ancient aristocracy of Eden. On this principle we see the absurdity and hollowness of attempting to estimate human greatness according to birth or circumstances. Moral worth and intelligence alone form the basis of true greatness. We see, too, that we can all go further back in the pedigree of God's aristocracy than any scion of British or European aristocracy can go in his family pedigree. We are thus brought face to face with the precious and refreshing fact -in these days of hollow pretence-that the aristocracy of Divine creation was an aristocracy of labour. The most ancient and honourable aristocrats were working men. Adam was a gardener. Cain was a tiller of the ground. Abel was a keeper of sheep. And if you come further down the stream of history you find that Jesus was a working carpenter, Matthew was a tax-gatherer, Peter and John and James were fishermen, and Paul was a tent-maker. "Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere, From yon blue heavens above us bent "Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood." Walter Thornbury, in his life of Turner, the painter, says: "I can claim no 'blue blood' for Turner, nor do I want to. All old families have sprung originally from peasants; and every second peasant family will one day be noble. There is no rank in souls or bodies; and our heralds have now grown mere inventors of ancestors for uneasy men who have grown rich and wish to bear arms. Pedigree and genealogy-both are vanity, and I put them behind me as dead and gone." It is both amusing and provoking to examine the artificial distinctions made between the different classes of the community. You find it impossible to ascertain what really constitutes "a gentleman." The aristocracy will not associate with business people for the very singular reason that business people are not gentlemen. According to this social theory, one person is a gentleman because he does absolutely nothing in trade for the commercial prosperity of his country, and another person is not a gentleman because he honestly endeavours to build up the manufacturing industries of the nation. A lady opens a boarding school, and announces to the intelligent public that she will only take the children of gentlefolks. You ask whose children go, and are amazed to find that Robinson's children are excluded, though he is a very large and respectable draper; but Jones's children are not excluded, though he is only a small manufacturer with hardly salt to eat. Robinson is educated, intelligent, and of fine Christian character; Jones is uneducated, ignorant, and brutish. According to this social theory, Jones is a gentleman because he happens to be a tradesman in a small wholesale business; and Robinson is not a gentleman because he happens to be a tradesman in a large retail business. By-and-by Jones finds he cannot make business answer, and so he goes to keep a small shop, and singular to say he by that act ceases to be a gentleman; Robinson retires from business, having made an ample fortune, and by that very act strangely enough he becomes a gentleman. Do we not see the vanity and hollowness of these artificial distinctions? And yet there are people who would sell their souls to Satan,-if such people have souls,-to get introduced into what is called "good society." Some say that professional men are gentlemen, -doctors, lawyers, clergymen, ministers, tutors, and so on. They may be humble or exalted in their origin, they may have had a liberal or a very limited education, they may be wealthy or extremely poor, but as professional men they are allowed to be gentlemen. The lady of a country squire once went so far as to allow that even the son of a Wesleyan minister is a gentleman. It was quite an effort to stretch her liberality so far, but she was perfectly right if that adult son has character and intelligence. When the Archbishop of Canterbury married Prince Albert to Queen Victoria, he asked, "Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife?" When a traveller in America attended a marriage, he was much struck with the altered wording; the minister said, "Wilt thou have this lady to thy wedded wife?" Nature is above rank, the woman above the queen, humanity greater than title. And the Americans have not advanced in civilisation and intelligence by substituting lady for woman in their marriage service. A man gets married-marries a fine woman: and a man might do an immensely worse thing; but you hear the marriage referred to in the railway or omnibus, and the language employed is, "Mr. So-and-so has got married, and has married well; he has married money." Not a word about the intelligence, thrift, diligence, virtue, and great excellence of his wife. The grand wifely qualities are not once mentioned, apparently not even thought of, but the wife's circumstances. And you mostly find the same idea in all ordinary conversation-that circumstances are everything, and the grand attributes of humanity nothing. Now, whatever attaches supreme importance to circumstances, and keeps human nature out of view, is a heavy loss to the race. It is moral worth and culture, Christian principle and intelligence, which make the gentleman,not outward circumstances. Let us look at humanity and value that more than human surroundings. Properly speaking, the man is more important than the gentleman, in the popular acceptation of the term gentleman. We mean man according to the Divine ideal-man as God first made him, and as God intends him to become by the agency of Christianity. "Well," some easy-going person says, who has narrow and superficial views of human nature, "what is the use of disturbing the customs and notions of the community?" We reply, if the ideas and habits of people stand in the way of the true interests of humanity, the sooner the disturbing element is put into operation the better. If pride, or ignorance, or selfishness, or anything else has set up artificial distinctions which turn the minds of men from the more important to the less important concerns of the race, the sooner these distinctions are seen to be hollow and worthless the better for all men. And if men, seeing the hollowness and worthlessness of these distinctions, are led to value themselves, and to improve themselves, rather than to seek admission into "good society," what a real and substantial gain is obtained for the race! Especially if they be led to value human nature as such, and to put forth wise and loving efforts for its improvement, in addition to a proper estimate of their own nature and a diligent attention to its improvement, what a glorious advance in the progress of humanity is secured! To call people working in mills "hands," and not human beings, provoked the ire of Karl Marx, one of the ablest socialistic writers, and in burning indignation he poured forth one withering rebuke after another. |