In every age and in every period, when and where Fate has called upon men and women to play the man, human nature has not been found wanting.They were a poor lot, those French aristocrats that the Terror seized: cowardly, selfish, greedy had been their lives.Yet there must have been good, even in them.When the little things that in their little lives they had thought so great were swept away from them, when they found themselves face to face with the realities; then even they played the man.Poor shuffling Charles the First, crusted over with weakness and folly, deep down in him at last we find the great gentleman.
I like to hear stories of the littleness of great men.I like to think that Shakespeare was fond of his glass.I even cling to the tale of that disgraceful final orgie with friend Ben Jonson.
Possibly the story may not be true, but I hope it was.I like to think of him as poacher, as village ne'er-do-well, denounced by the local grammar-school master, preached at by the local J.P.of the period.I like to reflect that Cromwell had a wart on his nose; the thought makes me more contented with my own features.I like to think that he put sweets upon the chairs, to see finely-dressed ladies spoil their frocks; to tell myself that he roared with laughter at the silly jest, like any East End 'Arry with his Bank Holiday squirt of dirty water.I like to read that Carlyle threw bacon at his wife and occasionally made himself highly ridiculous over small annoyances, that would have been smiled at by a man of well-balanced mind.I think of the fifty foolish things a week _I_do, and say to myself, "I, too, am a literary man."I like to think that even Judas had his moments of nobility, his good hours when he would willingly have laid down his life for his Master.Perhaps even to him there came, before the journey's end, the memory of a voice saying--"Thy sins be forgiven thee." There must have been good, even in Judas.
Virtue lies like the gold in quartz, there is not very much of it, and much pains has to be spent on the extracting of it.But Nature seems to think it worth her while to fashion these huge useless stones, if in them she may hide away her precious metals.Perhaps, also, in human nature, she cares little for the mass of dross, provided that by crushing and cleansing she can extract from it a little gold, sufficient to repay her for the labour of the world.
We wonder why she troubles to make the stone.Why cannot the gold lie in nuggets on the surface? But her methods are secrets to us.
Perchance there is a reason for the quartz.Perchance there is a reason for the evil and folly, through which run, unseen to the careless eye, the tiny veins of virtue.
Aye, the stone predominates, but the gold is there.We claim to have it valued.The evil that there is in man no tongue can tell.
We are vile among the vile, a little evil people.But we are great.
Pile up the bricks of our sins till the tower knocks at Heaven's gate, calling for vengeance, yet we are great--with a greatness and a virtue that the untempted angels may not reach to.The written history of the human race, it is one long record of cruelty, of falsehood, of oppression.Think you the world would be spinning round the sun unto this day, if that written record were all?
Sodom, God would have spared had there been found ten righteous men within its walls.The world is saved by its just men.History sees them not; she is but the newspaper, a report of accidents.Judge you life by that? Then you shall believe that the true Temple of Hymen is the Divorce Court; that men are of two classes only, the thief and the policeman; that all noble thought is but a politician's catchword.History sees only the destroying conflagrations, she takes no thought of the sweet fire-sides.
History notes the wrong; but the patient suffering, the heroic endeavour, that, slowly and silently, as the soft processes of Nature re-clothing with verdure the passion-wasted land, obliterate that wrong, she has no eyes for.In the days of cruelty and oppression--not altogether yet of the past, one fears--must have lived gentle-hearted men and women, healing with their help and sympathy the wounds that else the world had died of.After the thief, riding with jingle of sword and spur, comes, mounted on his ass, the good Samaritan.The pyramid of the world's evil--God help us! it rises high, shutting out almost the sun.But the record of man's good deeds, it lies written in the laughter of the children, in the light of lovers' eyes, in the dreams of the young men; it shall not be forgotten.The fires of persecution served as torches to show Heaven the heroism that was in man.From the soil of tyranny sprang self-sacrifice, and daring for the Right.Cruelty!
what is it but the vile manure, making the ground ready for the flowers of tenderness and pity? Hate and Anger shriek to one another across the ages, but the voices of Love and Comfort are none the less existent that they speak in whispers, lips to ear.
We have done wrong, oh, ye witnessing Heavens, but we have done good.We claim justice.We have laid down our lives for our friends: greater love hath no man than this.We have fought for the Right.We have died for the Truth--as the Truth seemed to us.
We have done noble deeds; we have lived noble lives; we have comforted the sorrowful; we have succoured the weak.Failing, falling, making in our blindness many a false step, yet we have striven.For the sake of the army of just men and true, for the sake of the myriads of patient, loving women, for the sake of the pitiful and helpful, for the sake of the good that lies hidden within us,--spare us, O Lord.