NOVELISTS AND ETHICS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 247, 11 July 1908, Page 12

NOVELISTS AND ETHICS.

Under the title of "Tho Religion, of _ Jim Bludso," tho " Church Times" deals vigorously with the ethics of certain novelists and poets, and uses its truncheon thus "In the sixpenny twaddlo of our day, whether it be prose or vorse, no one is a hero unless ho has made light of tho Ten Commandments 1 , and every transgressor, whether 'penitent or not, is depicted as an interesting prodigal to' whom, when ho has trampled, on all his opportunities in this world, a complaisant Father is going , to give another chance in the next. Of the Incarnation, of the Redemption, of the Resurrection, of tho Intercession at God's right hand, and of the means of grace, pardon,' and restoration provided now for sinners; of the communion and-fellowship of the redeemed and of tho way of Cavalry—our recent literature, for the inost part, knows nothing, and Christians are supposed by it to lead lives acceptable to God , without the faintest to a Divine Master and Lord, Who gave His lifo for their sakes." The article from which this quotation'is given opens thus: — "The short story has taken as much root in England as tho ballad of pathetic humour has dono in America. They suit tho domand of the ago for literaturo in snippets, just as the demand of our ancestors for solid and enduring reading was met by tho ' Ecclesiastical /Polity,' - Paradise Lost,' and ' Clarissa Harlowo.' ■ J They ask tho minimum of trouble and tho minimum of thought from reader and author alike. Story and ballad are usually incomplete without a moral; but the moral .must be of a cheap and conventional type;' capable of being presented in a paragraph or a phrase. '"No' doubt tho long story also has commonly a conventional and flimsy ending, very far removed from tho actualities of life. _ All is forgiven and forgotten; Nemesis obligingly effaces herself; and an accommodating Providence gots everything straight in tho last chapter. But a narrative of several hundred pages involves some working out of character, some:regard for . the orderly evolution of oonseqirences'acoording ; to universal law. .It would have to give in a good deal more of 'more " "detail "'about 'Posty'., M'Kiltrick's .habits of;life, which might make the heroism -of - his • death rather moro improbable. It would have to explain to us what inw : ard springs of rnotivo; and principlo besides freeliving and'.profanity.. .could. enable a Jim Bludso to. do his duty amid tho horror of •flame rind physical : 'a'gony; ' All' the religion he had':was to'-treat, his engine well '; and ho was not a prig like professing Christians. Naturo' supplied tfie rest. But is Nature so omnipotent? , " ' Ho weron't no 1 saint —them engineers ■ -Is'.all prdtty • much alike— _ ■ ' ' • One' wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill, ' Ancj another ono hero in Pike, _ A koerless man in his talk was Jim, And an awkward man in,a row; : But ho never, funked, and' ne novor lied— . • I . rcckon he never knowed how.' . "Rather a jerry-built philosophy of life. Wo fancy, it was Bret Harto who first ingodless, drunken miner who steps'back into death to let a comrade reach the air tho atheist who is self-sacrificingly loyal'to someone ho loves and so on,' and so on;-. Tho, lato Colonel Hay, who penned 'Jim Bludso' amid the cares of a secretariate of State, gave us also Ben Golyer, who 'wa'n't the best man that ever you seen,' but who let the Indians kill him instead of a littlo In another ballad, the well-known 'Littlo Breeches,' the Colonel remarks: — ".'I think that saving a littlo child, And fotching him to his own, Is a domed sight better business Than loafing around the Throne.'. ■"Of-course, if 'loafing around tho Throno' —a New Theology phraso, apparently, for ohurch-going—were tho general and if it were usual for worshippers to substitute religious, devotion for rescuing fellow-crea-tures i from. death, ono or two poems or stories' to remind us that Christians are sometimes surpassed by people who make no profession of Christianity in graces of unselfishness • might liavo a use. But wo are not aware, that tho public, either ' of England or.of the United States, is addicted to' oxcossivo religious or that tho 'natural virtues', of instjnetivo kindness and goodness aro in danger of being undervalued among us. "Nor is it absolutely certain .that, if a sudden crisis called for an heroic deed, it would bo necessary to find a man of dissolute disordered, and undisciplined life to do it. Such deeds havo actually been performed, incredible as it may sound, by men and women who havo joined in tho Athana'sian Creed; and we noticed a year or moro ago, that the English Church Union had to mourn a devoted member who had charged at Balaclava in the Light Brigade. Wo seem also to have read of famous warriors who woro strict and humble Churchmen. In any case, to found a whole literature on Jim Bludso 1 What a defeat of the sonso of proportion. And what an inverted Pharisaism. . "It is curious that this kind of writing should flourish most in countries that havo been homes of Calvinistic Protestantism, like America and Scotland. It carries on, no doubt, tho idea that tho edifying deathbed and a man's framo of feeling in his' last moments aro of moro consequence than a lifo of holiness. Hut tho now Protestantism is, Pelagian through and through. It discards the .idea of , sin, and aims .it showing hotv much bettor native generosity, and somo fine action resulting from it, should bo esteemed, than a lifo of discipline and duty, of purity and high endeavour. As Miss Harraden tells us—'Prayer and the Bible ajid that sort of thing do not matter. What does matter is to judgo gently and not to come down like a sledge-hammer on other peoplo's failings.' This is a consolation offered to a dying man. Thero was nono of this sloppiness in the old Calvinism—in faot, half of it is a' roaction from Calvinistic formulas. The other half, however, has not that excuse. "Wo are not at present, howover, thinking so much of tho irreligious propaganda of animalism of which Mr. Hardy is tho chief prophet, as of tho kind of shoddy, quartoreducated sentimentalism, which substitutes for Christ and His Cross a kind of maudlin ethics made up of scraps of kind-heartedness and good naturoTo do it justice, it has a

vague admiration for Him Who wont about doing good. But it knows nothing of Christ as Mediator and as the atoning Sacrifico for sin. Miss Edgeworth's 'Moral Tales' wero not Christian, but they were based on the* moral order of God's universe."