It was here that the strength of
primitive Christianity lay, that it seemed the possession of a
joyful secret that turned all common things, and even sorrow and
suffering, to gold. If a man could rejoice in tribulation, he was
on his way to be invulnerable.
It is not a very happy business to trace the decay of a great and
noble idea; but one can catch a glimpse of the perversion of
"grace" in the hands of our Puritan ancestors, when it became a
combative thing, which instead of winning the enemies of the Lord
by its patient sweetness, put an edge on the sword of holiness, and
enabled the staunch Christian to hew the Amalekites hip and thigh;
so that the word, which had stood for a perfectly peaceful and
attractive charm, became the symbol of righteous persecution, and
flowered in cries of anguish and spilled blood.
We shall take a long time before we can crawl out of the shadow of
that dark inheritance; but there are signs in the world of an
awakening brotherliness; and perhaps we may some day come back to
the old truth, so long mishandled, that the essence of all religion
is a spirit of beauty and of joy, bent on giving rather than
receiving; and so at last we may reach the perception that the
fruitful strength of morality lies not in its terror, its
prohibitions, its coercions, but in its good-will, its tolerance,
its dislike of rebuke and censure, its rapturous acceptance of all
generous and chivalrous and noble ways of living.
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