Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/143

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 119 century before Clovis entered Gallia. And it was not ignorance of all or any of those civilizing influences which are the glory of Ancient Greece and Borne, which caused China to be torn up and tossed about as it was ; but it was the effeminacy which luxurious habits invariably and inevitably produce in spite of, nay, by means of, what is commonly called civilization ; for communities must necessarily be civilized before they become luxurious; for civilization in the past, as in the present, ministers to luxury, and luxury to effeminacy, to political decay and to national destruction^ If Britain is desirous to glide down the smooth slope, she requires only to be guided by her new school of namby-pamby sweetness and light, and decry all earnestness of purpose as Philistinism. In the pulpit and in the press, in religion, in politics, and in the social circle, the leaven is already actively at work, changing our national character. It has framed our recent foreign policy, it dictates to our home authorities. It proscribes earnestness except for dinner, it denounces enthusiasm except for the fine arts. It is a universal laissezfaire in all kinds of religious opinions, in all manner of moral conduct, in all modes of existing political government, and in all variety of existing unequal legislation. It is the essence of conservatism, of selfishness, of self-seeking, at whatever cost to others, at whatever hazard of morality. No man should be hated, but the man who stands in the way of my interests ; no opinions should be despised, but those of the man of conviction, who endeavours to propagate his own ; and no man should be laughed to scorn, but the bigot who is willing to sacrifice his life for his beliefs, or spend that life in endeavouring to spread them. This spirit of easy good-will to all forms of iniquity ; this smiling, dainty self-complaceny, which is satisfied as long as oneself is not injuriously affected by the evils in the world, has over and over again deluged China with blood. It has brought to the dust every proud kingdom which has fallen ; and it ia working now in the Christian countries of Britain and America, and will, if it becomes as general among the middle classes as