Let me pass next to the Charity and Brotherly Love which are a usual fruit of saintliness, andhave always been reckoned essential theological virtues, however limited may have been the kindsof service which the particular theology enjoined. Brotherly love would follow logically from theassurance of God's friendly presence, the notion of our brotherhood as men being an immediateinference from that of God's fatherhood of us all. When Christ utters the precepts: "Love yourenemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them whichdespitefully use you, and persecute you," he gives for a reason: "That ye may be the children ofyour Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, andsendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." One might therefore be tempted to explain both thehumility as to one's self and the charity towards others which characterize spiritual excitement, asresults of the all-leveling character of theistic belief. But these affections are certainly not merederivatives of theism. We find them in Stoicism, in Hinduism, and in Buddhism in the highestpossible degree. They HARMONIZE with paternal theism beautifully; but they harmonize with allreflection whatever upon the dependence of mankind on general causes; and we must, I think,consider them not subordinate but coordinate parts of that great complex excitement in the study ofwhich we are engaged. Religious rapture, moral enthusiasm, ontological wonder, cosmic emotion,are all unifying states of mind, in which the sand and grit of the selfhood incline to disappear, andtenderness to rule. The best thing is to describe the condition integrally as a characteristic affectionto which our nature is liable, a region in which we find ourselves at home, a sea in which we swim;but not to pretend to explain its parts by deriving them too cleverly from one another. Like love orfear, the faith-state is a natural psychic complex, and carries charity with it by organicconsequence. Jubilation is an expansive affection, and all expansive affections are self-forgetfuland kindly so long as they endure.
We find this the case even when they are pathological in origin. In his instructive work, laTristesse et la Joie,[162] M. Georges Dumas compares together the melancholy and the joyous phase of circular insanity, and shows that, while selfishness characterizes the one, the other ismarked by altruistic impulses. No human being so stingy and useless as was Marie in hermelancholy period! But the moment the happy period begins, "sympathy and kindness become hercharacteristic sentiments. She displays a universal goodwill, not only of intention, but in act. . . .
She becomes solicitous of the health of other patients, interested in getting them out, desirous toprocure wool to knit socks for some of them. Never since she has been under my observation haveI heard her in her joyous period utter any but charitable opinions."[163] And later, Dr. Dumas saysof all such joyous conditions that "unselfish sentiments and tender emotions are the only affectivestates to be found in them. The subject's mind is closed against envy, hatred, and vindictiveness,and wholly transformed into benevolence, indulgence, and mercy."[164]
[162] Paris, 1900.
[163] Page 130.
[164] Page 167.
There is thus an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship inthe saintly life need in no way occasion surprise. Along with the happiness, this increase oftenderness is often noted in narratives of conversion. "I began to work for others";--"I had moretender feeling for my family and friends";--"I spoke at once to a person with whom I had beenangry";--"I felt for every one, and loved my friends better";--"I felt every one to be my friend";-theseare so many expressions from the records collected by Professor Starbuck.[165]
[165] Op. cit., p. 127.
"When," says Mrs. Edwards, continuing the narrative from which I made quotation a momentago, "I arose on the morning of the Sabbath, I felt a love to all mankind, wholly peculiar in itsstrength and sweetness, far beyond all that I had ever felt before. The power of that love seemedinexpressible. I thought, if I were surrounded by enemies, who were venting their malice andcruelty upon me, in tormenting me, it would still be impossible that I should cherish any feelingstowards them but those of love, and pity, and ardent desires for their happiness. I never before feltso far from a disposition to judge and censure others, as I did that morning. I realized also, in anunusual and very lively manner, how great a part of Christianity lies in the performance of oursocial and relative duties to one another. The same joyful sense continued throughout the day--asweet love to God and all mankind."Whatever be the explanation of the charity, it may efface all usual human barriers.[166]
[166] The barrier between men and animals also. We read of Towianski, an eminent Polishpatriot and mystic, that "one day one of his friends met him in the rain, caressing a big dog whichwas jumping upon him and covering him horribly with mud. On being asked why he permitted theanimal thus to dirty his clothes, Towianski replied: 'This dog, whom I am now meeting for the firsttime, has shown a great fellow-feeling for me, and a great joy in my recognition and acceptance ofhis greetings. Were I to drive him off, I should wound his feelings and do him a moral injury. Itwould be an offense not only to him, but to all the spirits of the other world who are on the same level with him. The damage which he does to my coat is as nothing in comparison with the wrongwhich I should inflict upon him, in case I were to remain indifferent to the manifestations of hisfriendship. We ought,' he added, 'both to lighten the condition of animals, whenever we can, and atthe same time to facilitate in ourselves that union of the world of all spirits, which the sacrifice ofChrist has made possible.'" Andre Towianski, Traduction de l'Italien, Turin, 1897 (privatelyprinted). I owe my knowledge of this book and of Towianski to my friend Professor W.
Lutoslawski, author of "Plato's Logic."Here, for instance, is an example of Christian non-resistance from Richard Weaver'sautobiography. Weaver a collier, a semi-professional pugilist in his younger days, who becameamuchbelovedevan(was) gelist. Fighting, after drinking, seems to have been the sin to whichhe originally felt his flesh most perversely inclined. After his first conversion he had a backsliding,which consisted in pounding a man who had insulted a girl. Feeling that, having once fallen, hemight as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, he got drunk and went and broke the jaw ofanother man who had lately challenged him to fight and taunted him with cowardice for refusingas a Christian man;--I mention these incidents to show how genuine a change of heart is implied inthe later conduct which he describes as follows:-"I went down the drift and found the boy crying because a fellow-workman was trying to takethe wagon from him by force. I said to him:-"'Tom, you mustn't take that wagon.'
"He swore at me, and called me a Methodist devil. I told him that God did not tell me to let himrob me. He cursed again, and said he would push the wagon over me.
"'Well,' I said, 'let us see whether the devil and thee are stronger than the Lord and me.'
"And the Lord and I proving stronger than the devil and he, he had to get out of the way, or thewagon would have gone over him.
So I gave the wagon to the boy. Then said Tom:-"'I've a good mind to smack thee on the face.'
"'Well,' I said, 'if that will do thee any good, thou canst do it.' So he struck me on the face.
"I turned the other cheek to him, and said, 'Strike again.'
"He struck again and again, till he had struck me five times. I turned my cheek for the sixthstroke; but he turned away cursing.
I shouted after him: 'The Lord forgive thee, for I do, and the Lord save thee.'
"This was on a Saturday; and when I went home from the coal-pit my wife saw my face wasswollen, and asked what was the matter with it. I said: 'I've been fighting, and I've given a man agood thrashing.'
"She burst out weeping, and said, 'O Richard, what made you fight?' Then I told her all about it;and she thanked the Lord I had not struck back.
"But the Lord had struck, and his blows have more effect than man's. Monday came. The devilbegan to tempt me, saying: 'The other men will laugh at thee for allowing Tom to treat thee as hedid on Saturday.' I cried, 'Get thee behind me, Satan;'--and went on my way to the coal-pit.
"Tom was the first man I saw. I said 'Good-morning,' but got no reply.
"He went down first. When I got down, I was surprised to see him sitting on the wagon-roadwaiting for me. When I came to him he burst into tears and said: 'Richard, will you forgive me forstriking you?'
"'I have forgiven thee,' said I; 'ask God to forgive thee. The Lord bless thee.' I gave him my hand,and we went each to his work."[167]
[167] J. Patterson's Life of Richard Weaver, pp. 66-68, abridged.
"Love your enemies!" Mark you, not simply those who happen not to be your friends, but yourENEMIES, your positive and active enemies. Either this is a mere Oriental hyperbole, a bit ofverbal extravagance, meaning only that we should, as far as we can, abate our animosities, or elseit is sincere and literal. Outside of certain cases of intimate individual relation, it seldom has beentaken literally. Yet it makes one ask the question: Can there in general be a level of emotion sounifying, so obliterative of differences between man and man, that even enmity may come to be anirrelevant circumstance and fail to inhibit the friendlier interests aroused? If positive well-wishingcould attain so supreme a degree of excitement, those who were swayed by it might well seemsuperhuman beings. Their life would be morally discrete from the life of other men, and there is nosaying, in the absence of positive experience of an authentic kind--for there are few activeexamples in our scriptures, and the Buddhistic examples are legendary,[168]--what the effectsmight be: they might conceivably transform the world.
[168] As where the future Buddha, incarnated as a hare, jumps into the fire to cook himself for ameal for a beggar--having previously shaken himself three times, so that none of the insects in hisfur should perish with him.
Psychologically and in principle, the precept "Love your enemies" is not self-contradictory. It ismerely the extreme limit of a kind of magnanimity with which, in the shape of pitying tolerance ofour oppressors, we are fairly familiar. Yet if radically followed, it would involve such a breachwith our instinctive springs of action as a whole, and with the present world's arrangements, that acritical point would practically be passed, and we should be born into another kingdom of being.
Religious emotion makes us feel that other kingdom to be close at hand, within our reach.
The inhibition of instinctive repugnance is proved not only by the showing of love to enemies,but by the showing of it to any one who is personally loathsome. In the annals of saintliness wefind a curious mixture of motives impelling in this direction. Asceticism plays its part; and alongwith charity pure and simple, we find humility or the desire to disclaim distinction and to grovel onthe common level before God. Certainly all three principles were at work when Francis of Assisiand Ignatius Loyola exchanged their garments with those of filthy beggars. All three are at workwhen religious persons consecrate their lives to the care of leprosy or other peculiarly unpleasantdiseases. The nursing of the sick is a function to which the religious seem strongly drawn, evenapart from the fact that church traditions set that way. But in the annals of this sort of charity wefind fantastic excesses of devotion recorded which are only explicable by the frenzy of self-immolation simultaneously aroused. Francis of Assisi kisses his lepers; Margaret Mary Alacoque, Francis Xavier, St. John of God, and others are said to have cleansed the sores and ulcers of theirpatients with their respective tongues; and the lives of such saints as Elizabeth of Hungary andMadame de Chantal are full of a sort of reveling in hospital purulence, disagreeable to read of, andwhich makes us admire and shudder at the same time.
So much for the human love aroused by the faith-state. Let me next speak of the Equanimity,Resignation, Fortitude, and Patience which it brings.
"A paradise of inward tranquillity" seems to be faith's usual result; and it is easy, even withoutbeing religious one's self, to understand this. A moment back, in treating of the sense of God'spresence, I spoke of the unaccountable feeling of safety which one may then have. And, indeed,how can it possibly fail to steady the nerves, to cool the fever, and appease the fret, if one besensibly conscious that, no matter what one's difficulties for the moment may appear to be, one'slife as a whole is in the keeping of a power whom one can absolutely trust? In deeply religiousmen the abandonment of self to this power is passionate. Whoever not only says, but FEELS,"God's will be done," is mailed against every weakness; and the whole historic array of martyrs,missionaries, and religious reformers is there to prove the tranquil-mindedness, under naturallyagitating or distressing circumstances, which self-surrender brings.
The temper of the tranquil-mindedness differs, of course, according as the person is of aconstitutionally sombre or of a constitutionally cheerful cast of mind. In the sombre it partakesmore of resignation and submission; in the cheerful it is a joyous consent. As an example of theformer temper, I quote part of a letter from Professor Lagneau, a venerated teacher of philosophywho lately died, a great invalid, at Paris:-"My life, for the success of which you send good wishes, will be what it is able to be. I asknothing from it, I expect nothing from it. For long years now I exist, think, and act, and am worthwhat I am worth, only through the despair which is my sole strength and my sole foundation. Mayit preserve for me, even in these last trials to which I am coming, the courage to do without thedesire of deliverance. I ask nothing more from the Source whence all strength cometh, and if that isgranted, your wishes will have been accomplished."[169]
[169] Bulletin de l'union pour l'Action Morale, September, 1894.
There is something pathetic and fatalistic about this, but the power of such a tone as a protectionagainst outward shocks is manifest. Pascal is another Frenchman of pessimistic <281> naturaltemperament. He expresses still more amply the temper of self-surrendering submissiveness:-"Deliver me, Lord," he writes in his prayers, "from the sadness at my proper suffering whichself-love might give, but put into me a sadness like your own. Let my sufferings appease yourcholer. Make them an occasion for my conversion and salvation. I ask you neither for health norfor sickness, for life nor for death; but that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my lifeand my death, for your glory, for my salvation, and for the use of the Church and of your saints, ofwhom I would by your grace be one. You alone know what is expedient for me; you are thesovereign master; do with me according to your will. Give to me, or take away from me, onlyconform my will to yours. I know but one thing, Lord, that it is good to follow you, and bad tooffend you. Apart from that, I know not what is good or bad in anything. I know not which is most profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth or poverty, nor anything else in the world. Thatdiscernment is beyond the power of men or angels, and is hidden among the secrets of yourProvidence, which I adore, but do not seek to fathom."[170]
[170] B. Pascal: Prieres pour les Maladies, Sections xiii., xiv., abridged.
When we reach more optimistic temperaments, the resignation grows less passive. Examples aresown so broadcast throughout history that I might well pass on without citation. As it is, I snatch atthe first that occurs to my mind. Madame Guyon, a frail creature physically, was yet of a happynative disposition. She went through many perils with admirable serenity of soul. After being sentto prison for heresy-"Some of my friends," she writes, "wept bitterly at the hearing of it, but such was my state ofacquiescence and resignation that it failed to draw any tears from me. . . . There appeared to be inme then, as I find it to be in me now, such an entire loss of what regards myself, that any of myown interests gave me little pain or pleasure; ever wanting to will or wish for myself only the verything which God does." In another place she writes: "We all of us came near perishing in a riverwhich we found it necessary to pass. The carriage sank in the quicksand. Others who were with usthrew themselves out in excessive fright. But I found my thoughts so much taken up with God thatI had no distinct sense of danger. It is true that the thought of being drowned passed across mymind, but it cost no other sensation or reflection in me than this--that I felt quite contented andwilling it were so, if it were my heavenly Father's choice." Sailing from Nice to Genoa, a stormkeeps her eleven days at sea.
"As the irritated waves dashed round us," she writes, "I could not help experiencing a certaindegree of satisfaction in my mind. I pleased myself with thinking that those mutinous billows,under the command of Him who does all things rightly, might probably furnish me with a waterygrave. Perhaps I carried the point too far, in the pleasure which I took in thus seeing myself beatenand bandied by the swelling waters. Those who were with me took notice of my intrepidity."[171]
[171] From Thomas C. Upham's Life and Religious Opinions and Experiences of Madame de laMothe Guyon, New York, 1877, ii. 48, i. 141, 413, abridged.
The contempt of danger which religious enthusiasm produces may be even more buoyant still. Itake an example from that charming recent autobiography, "With Christ at Sea," by Frank Bullen.
A couple of days after he went through the conversion on shipboard of which he there gives anaccount-"It was blowing stiffly," he writes, "and we were carrying a press of canvas to get north out ofthe bad weather. Shortly after four bells we hauled down the flying-jib, and I sprang out astride theboom to furl it. I was sitting astride the boom when suddenly it gave way with me. The sail slippedthrough my fingers, and I fell backwards, hanging head downwards over the seething tumult ofshining foam under the ship's bows, suspended by one foot. But I felt only high exultation in mycertainty of eternal life. Although death was divided from me by a hair's breadth, and I was acutelyconscious of the fact, it gave me no sensation but joy. I suppose I could have hung there no longerthan five seconds, but in that time I lived a whole age of delight. But my body asserted itself, and with a desperate gymnastic effort I regained the boom. How I furled the sail I don't know, but Isang at the utmost pitch of my voice praises to God that went pealing out over the dark waste ofwaters."[172]
[172] Op. cit., London, 1901, p. 230.
The annals of martyrdom are of course the signal field of triumph for religious imperturbability.
Let me cite as an example the statement of a humble sufferer, persecuted as a Huguenot underLouis XIV:-"They shut all the doors," Blanche Gamond writes, "and I saw six women, each with a bunch ofwillow rods as thick as the hand could hold, and a yard long. He gave me the order, 'Undressyourself,' which I did. He said, 'You are leaving on your shift; you must take it off.' They had solittle patience that they took it off themselves, and I was naked from the waist up. They brought acord with which they tied me to a beam in the kitchen. They drew the cord tight with all theirstrength and asked me, 'Does it hurt you?' and then they discharged their fury upon me, exclaimingas they struck me, 'Pray now to your God.' It was the Roulette woman who held this language. Butat this moment I received the greatest consolation that I can ever receive in my life, since I had thehonor of being whipped for the name of Christ, and in addition of being crowned with his mercyand his consolations. Why can I not write down the inconceivable influences, consolations, andpeace which I felt interiorly? To understand them one must have passed by the same trial; theywere so great that I was ravished, for there where afflictions abound grace is givensuperabundantly. In vain the women cried, 'We must double our blows; she does not feel them, forshe neither speaks nor cries.' And how should I have cried, since I was swooning with happinesswithin?"[173]
[173] Claparede et Goty: Deux Heroines de la Foi, Paris, 1880, p. 112.
The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, andpeace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of thepersonal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it sooften comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down. Thisabandonment of self-responsibility seems to be the fundamental act in specifically religious, asdistinguished from moral practice. It antedates theologies and is independent of philosophies.
Mind-cure, theosophy, stoicism, ordinary neurological hygiene, insist on it as emphatically asChristianity does, and it is capable of entering into closest marriage with every speculative creed.
[174] Christians who have it strongly live in what is called "recollection," and are never anxiousabout the future, nor worry over the outcome of the day. Of Saint Catharine of Genoa it is said that"she took cognizance of things, only as they were presented to her in succession, MOMENT BYMOMENT." To her holy soul, "the divine moment was the present moment, . . . and when thepresent moment was estimated in itself and in its relations, and when the duty that was involved init was accomplished, it was permitted to pass away as if it had never been, and to give way to thefacts and duties of the moment which came after."[175] Hinduism, mind-cure, and theosophy alllay great emphasis upon this concentration of the consciousness upon the moment at hand.
[174] Compare these three different statements of it: A. P. Call: As a Matter of Course, Boston,1894; H. W. Dresser: Living by the Spirit, New York and London, 1900; H. W. Smith: TheChristian's Secret of a Happy Life, published by the Willard Tract Repository, and now inthousands of hands.
[175] T. C. Upham: Life of Madame Catharine Adorna, 3d ed., New York, 1864, pp. 158, 17274.
The next religious symptom which I will note is what have called Purity of Life. The saintlyperson becomes exceedingly sensitive to inner inconsistency or discord, and mixture and confusiongrow intolerable. All the mind's objects and occupations must be ordered with reference to thespecial spiritual excitement which is now its keynote. Whatever is unspiritual taints the pure waterof the soul and is repugnant. Mixed with this exaltation of the moral sensibilities there is also anardor of sacrifice, for the beloved deity's sake, of everything unworthy of him. Sometimes thespiritual ardor is so sovereign that purity is achieved at a stroke --we have seen examples. Usuallyit is a more gradual conquest. Billy Bray's account of his abandonment of tobacco is a goodexample of the latter form of achievement.
"I had been a smoker as well as a drunkard, and I used to love my tobacco as much as I loved mymeat, and I would rather go down into the mine without my dinner than without my pipe. In thedays of old, the Lord spoke by the mouths of his servants, the prophets; now he speaks to us by thespirit of his Son. I had not only the feeling part of religion, but I could hear the small, still voicewithin speaking to me. When I took the pipe to smoke, it would be applied within, 'It is an idol, alust; worship the Lord with clean lips.' So, I felt it was not right to smoke. The Lord also sent awoman to convince me. I was one day in a house, and I took out my pipe to light it at the fire, andMary Hawke--for that was the woman's name--said, 'Do you not feel it is wrong to smoke?' I saidthat I felt something inside telling me that it was an idol, a lust, and she said that was the Lord.
Then I said, 'Now, I must give it up, for the Lord is telling me of it inside, and the woman outside,so the tobacco must go, love it as I may.' There and then I took the tobacco out of my pocket, andthrew it into the fire, and put the pipe under my foot, 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust.' And I have notsmoked since. I found it hard to break off old habits, but I cried to the Lord for help, and he gaveme strength, for he has said, 'Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee.' The dayafter I gave up smoking I had the toothache so bad that I did not know what to do. I thought thiswas owing to giving up the pipe, but I said I would never smoke again, if I lost every tooth in myhead. I said, 'Lord, thou hast told us My yoke is easy and my burden is light,' and when I said that,all the pain left me. Sometimes the thought of the pipe would come back to me very strong; but theLord strengthened me against the habit, and, bless his name, I have not smoked since."Bray's biographer writes that after he had given up smoking, he thought that he would chew alittle, but he conquered this dirty habit, too. "On one occasion," Bray said, "when at a prayer-meeting at Hicks Mill, I heard the Lord say to me, 'Worship me with clean lips.' So, when we gotup from our knees, I took the quid out of my mouth and 'whipped 'en' [threw it] under the form.
But, when we got on our knees again, I put another quid into my mouth. Then the Lord said tome again, 'Worship me with clean lips.' So I took the quid out of my mouth, and whipped 'en under the form again, and said, 'Yes, Lord, I will.' From that time I gave up chewing as well as smoking,and have been a free man."The ascetic forms which the impulse for veracity and purity of life may take are often patheticenough. The early Quakers, for example, had hard battles to wage against the worldliness andinsincerity of the ecclesiastical Christianity of their time. Yet the battle that cost them mostwounds was probably that which they fought in defense of their own right to social veracity andsincerity in their thee-ing and thou-ing, in not doffing the hat or giving titles of respect. It was laidon George Fox that these conventional customs were a lie and a sham, and the whole body of hisfollowers thereupon renounced them, as a sacrifice to truth, and so that their acts and the spirit theyprofessed might be more in accord.
"When the Lord sent me into the world," says Fox in his Journal, "he forbade me to put off myhat to any, high or low: and I was required to 'thee' and 'thou' all men and women, without anyrespect to rich or poor, great or small. And as I traveled up and down, I was not to bid peopleGood-morning or Good-evening, neither might I bow or scrape with my leg to any one. This madethe sects and professions rage. Oh! the rage that was in the priests, magistrates, professors, andpeople of all sorts: and especially in priests and professors: for though 'thou' to a single person wasaccording to their accidence and grammar rules, and according to the Bible, yet they could not bearto hear it: and because I could not put off my hat to them, it set them all into a rage. . . . Oh! thescorn, heat, and fury that arose! Oh! the blows, punchings, beatings, and imprisonments that weunderwent for not putting off our hats to men! Some had their hats violently plucked off andthrown away, so that they quite lost them. The bad language and evil usage we received on thisaccount is hard to be expressed, besides the danger we were sometimes in of losing our lives forthis matter, and that by the great professors of Christianity, who thereby discovered they were nottrue believers. And though it was but a small thing in the eye of man, yet a wonderful confusion itbrought among all professors and priests: but, blessed be the Lord, many came to see the vanity ofthat custom of putting off hats to men, and felt the weight of Truth's testimony against it."In the autobiography of Thomas Elwood, an early Quaker, who at one time was secretary to JohnMilton, we find an exquisitely quaint and candid account of the trials he underwent both at homeand abroad, in following Fox's canons of sincerity. The anecdotes are too lengthy for citation; butElwood sets down his manner of feeling about these things in a shorter passage, which I will quoteas a characteristic utterance of spiritual sensibility:-"By this divine light, then," says Elwood, "I saw that though I had not the evil of the commonuncleanliness, debauchery, profaneness, and pollutions of the world to put away, because I had,through the great goodness of God and a civil education, been preserved out of those grosser evils,yet I had many other evils to put away and to cease from; some of which were not by the world,which lies in wickedness (I John v. 19), accounted evils, but by the light of Christ were mademanifest to me to be evils, and as such condemned in me.
"As particularly those fruits and effects of pride that discover themselves in the vanity andsuperfluity of apparel; which I took too much delight in. This evil of my doings I was required toput away and cease from; and judgment lay upon me till I did so.
"I took off from my apparel those unnecessary trimmings of lace, ribbons, and useless buttons,which had no real service, but were set on only for that which was by mistake called ornament; andI ceased to wear rings.
"Again, the giving of flattering titles to men between whom and me there was not any relation towhich such titles could be pretended to belong. This was an evil I had been much addicted to, andwas accounted a ready artist in; therefore this evil also was I required to put away and cease from.
So that thenceforward I durst not say, Sir, Master, My Lord, Madam (or My Dame); or say YourServant to any one to whom I did not stand in the real relation of a servant, which I had never doneto any.
"Again, respect of persons, in uncovering the head and bowing the knee or body in salutation,was a practice I had been much in the use of; and this, being one of the vain customs of the world,introduced by the spirit of the world, instead of the true honor which this is a false representationof, and used in deceit as a token of respect by persons one to another, who bear no real respect oneto another; and besides this, being a type and a proper emblem of that divine honor which all oughtto pay to Almighty God, and which all of all sorts, who take upon them the Christian name, appearin when they offer their prayers to him, and therefore should not be given to men;--I found this tobe one of those evils which I had been too long doing; therefore I was now required to put it awayand cease from it.
"Again, the corrupt and unsound form of speaking in the plural number to a single person, YOUto one, instead of THOU............