Scripture texts illustrated by general literature

While Elijah stood upon the mount before the Lord, there arose a great and strong wind that rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. We are not told that the Lord was not in the still small voice. We find that He was. And with that voice He addressed Elijah, reasoned with him, admonished, sustained, and directed him. May it not be said, in applying and adapting the narrative, which things are an allegory? The import of the narrative sublimely anticipates the homely fable of sun and wind. Wind, earthquake, and fire, are mighty agents; but they may pass by without tangible result as regards real influence on the spirit of man; whereas the gentle influence of a still small voice speaks home to it at once, and it responds to the strain, and is subdued by the spell.

The drift of the present annotations, in their applied sense, finds expression in Ben Jonson’s reminder:

In Landor’s Parable of Asabel, the angel’s gentleness wrought upon that turbulent, refractory spirit, “even as the quiet and silent water wins itself an entrance where tempest and fire pass over.” It is written that other angels did look up with loving and admiration into the visage of this angel on his return; and he told the younger and more zealous of them, that whenever they would descend into the gloomy vortex of the human heart, under the softness and serenity of their voice and countenance its turbulence would subside.

Plutarch tells us of Fabius Maximus, that he thought it hard that, while those who breed dogs and horses soften their stubborn tempers, and bring down their fierce spirits by care and kindness, rather than with whips and chains, he who has the command of men should not endeavour to correct their errors by gentleness and goodness, but treat them in even a harsher and more violent manner than gardeners do the wild fig-trees, pears, and olives, whose nature they subdue by cultivation, and which by that means they bring to produce very agreeable fruit.[5]

We read of the distinguished Spanish author and statesman, Fermin Caballero, that while under the care of a kind and judicious instructor, he, as a boy, made rapid advance in the study of classical literature; but that on being removed from this tutor, and subjected to harsh and grinding discipline, he lapsed into idleness and obstinacy beyond all control. Not the least wise of the maxims to be culled from the pages of Terence is that in which satius esse credit Pudore et liberalitate liberos retinere, quam metu. Southey insists that no man was ever more thoroughly ignorant of the nature of children than John Wesley, as when he enjoins: “Let a child from a year old be taught to fear the rod, and to cry softly; from that age make him do as he is bid, if you whip him ten times running to effect it.” If Wesley had been a father himself, urges that tenderest of fathers, Robert the Rhymer, “he would have known that children are more easily governed by love than by fear.” And as with children, so with men, who are but children of a larger growth; and especially so with women, if we may take the word of one of Shakspeare’s most winsome women for it:

So with Landor’s Filippa, on whom harsh treatment and compulsory measures are simply thrown away:

And as with men and women, so with peoples, who are made up of men and women. And yet, although, as the author of the “Wealth of Nations” expresses it, management and persuasion are always the easiest and safest instruments of government, as force and violence are the worst and most dangerous; such, it seems, is the natural insolence of man, that he almost always disdains to use the good instrument, except when he cannot or dare not use the bad one. Not that nations are without diversities of character, and so of susceptibility to diverse modes of government. Gibbon apologises, as it were, for Diocletian’s utter destruction of those proud cities, Busiris and Coptos, and for his severe treatment of Egypt in general, by the remark, that the character of the Egyptian nation, insensible to kindness, but extremely susceptible to fear, could alone justify this excessive rigour. The tone is that of the courtier Crispe, to Phocas, in Corneille’s “Heraclius:”

And Coke maintains that if they are the best whom love induces, they are the most whom fear restrains: Si meliores sunt quos ducit amor, plures sunt quos corrigit timor. La Fontaine’s fable of the fishes and the flute-playing shepherd, intimates the sheer futility of wasting sweet sounds on ears not to be so caught. There are men, sententiously quoth Dr. Tempest, in the “Last Chronicle of Barset,” who are deaf as adders to courtesy, but who are compelled to obedience at once by ill-usage.

Educationists must provide for the contingency of having to deal with abnormal natures of this crabbed and distorted kind. But as exceptions only. The Jesuits are confessedly masters of the arts of education; and the rule of the Jesuits is to lead not to drive, their pupils; to allure and win, not to coerce and constrain them. Winsome womankind is mistress of the like arts. Those of the sex who are winsome, it has been said, with their plastic manners and non-aggressive force, always have their own way in the end. “They coax and flatter for their rights, and consequently they are given privileges in excess of their rights; whereas the women who take their rights, as things to which they are entitled without favour, lose them and their privileges together.” Kitely’s advice is good, in “Every Man in his Humour,” and of general application:

The first bishop sent from Iona for the Northumbrian Church was Corman, a man described by Dean Milman as of austere and inflexible character, who, finding more resistance than he expected to his doctrines, in a full assembly of the nation sternly reproached the Northumbrians for their obstinacy, and declared that he would no longer waste his labours on so irreclaimable a race. A gentle voice was heard: “Brother, have you not been too harsh with your unlearned hearers? Should you not, like the apostles, have fed them with the milk of Christian doctrine, till they could receive the full feast of our sublimer truths?” All eyes, it is added, were turned on Aidan, a humble but devout monk; and by general acclamation that discreet and gentle teacher was saluted as bishop. The same historian describes Aldhelm of Malmesbury, in minstrel’s garb, arresting the careless crowd of church-goers on a bridge they must pass, and having fully enthralled their attention by the sweetness of his song, anon introducing into it some of the solemn truths of religion; thus succeeding in winning to the faith many hearts, which he would have attempted in vain to move by severer language, or even by the awful excommunication of the Church.[6] When Fénélon was intrusted by Lewis the Fourteenth with a mission to Poitou, to convert the Protestants, he refused the aid of dragoons, and resorted to suavity of persuasion alone as an instrument of conversion. Of the Protestant missions in the west of Ireland, complaint has been made of their being conducted too offensively, like raids upon heathendom: the Romanist, who might possibly open his bosom to the warm rays of charity, only folds the cloak of his hereditary faith more closely round him, when assailed by the bitter wind of a propagandism which seeks its way to the heart by violence and insult.[7]

It is at once, on the one part pleasant, on the other painful, to find the Lord Treasurer Burleigh, who had ever been the fast friend of Whitgift, frequently expressing his disapprobation of the primate’s severity against non-conformists, and his wish “that the spirit of gentleness might win, rather than severity.” And being here on Elizabethan ground, let us note Mr. Froude’s reference to the diverse procedure of Cecil and Throgmorton in their several dealings with the queen,—she being one of the many strong-willed people, on whom menaces and reproaches operate only as a spur. Cecil understood best Elizabeth’s disposition. “By ‘practices,’ by ‘bye-ways,’ as he afterwards described it, by affecting to humour what he was passionately anxious to prevent, he was holding his mistress under delicate control; and he dreaded lest his light leading-strings should be broken by a ruder touch.” As with the queen, so with her people. When Catherine de Medici expressed astonishment to Sir Thomas Smith, at a certain deference paid by his sovereign to the nation she ruled, “Madam,” he replied, “her people be not like your people; they must be trained by douceur and persuasion, not by rigour and violence.” The greatest of Russian empresses emulated in this respect the greatest of English queens. Indeed, her tendency to indulgence was imputed to Catharine II. as a fault, advantage being taken of her constant reluctance to punish. But how far greater things did she, on the whole, achieve with her subjects, exclaims Mr. Herman Merivale, “thus gently led, than those of her predecessors and successors who employed on them in such abundance the more forcible methods of government!”

Mr. Freeman, in the course of showing that Harold’s way of bringing in the proud Danes of the North to his obedience was not exactly the same as William’s way, describes him as determining, with that noble and generous daring which is sometimes the highest prudence, to trust himself in the hands of the people who refused to acknowledge him. “These his enemies, who would not that he should reign over them, instead of being brought and slain before him, were to be won over by the magic of his personal presence in their own land.” To apply what the Gaulish ambassador says of a great Roman in Jonson’s tragedy,

The Antwerp authorities had reason and experience on their side when they sought to persuade the Prince of Parma, in 1585, that the hearts of, not the Antwerpers only, but of the Hollanders and Zealanders, were easily to be won at that moment: give them religious liberty, and “govern them by gentleness rather than by Spanish grandees,” and a reconciliation would speedily be ensured. Two years later, but then two years too late, we find the prince averring that he liked “to proceed rather by the ways of love than of rigour and effusion of blood.” This was in answer to Queen Elizabeth, who, at a previous juncture, angrily derided any “slight and mild kind of dealing with a people so ingrate,” and was all for corrosives instead of lenitives for such festering wounds. Rulers, who fail to secure what they wish by gentle means, are apt very soon to resort to the less excellent way; like Chilperic, the “Nero of France,” coaxing the Jew Priscus to turn Christian; first employing argument, then trying blandishments, and anon taking to more powerful reasoning by throwing the Jew into prison. Tytler remarks of the “violent instructions” enforced by Henry VIII. on his envoy to James V., that had the overbearing Tudor adopted a suaver tone, a favourable impression might have been made; but the King o’ Scots was “not to be threatened into a compliance with a line of policy which, if suggested in a tone of conciliation, his judgment might have approved,” and his unwounded sense of self-respect have consented to carry into effect.

Simon the glover, in Scott’s story of mediæval Perth, is well described as watchful over the tactics his daughter employs towards Henry Smith, “whom he knew to be as ductile, when influenced by his affections, as he was fierce and intractable when assailed by hostile remonstrances or threats.” Par un chemin plus doux, says a shrewd counsellor in Racine, vous pourrez le ramener; whereas les menaces le rendront plus farouche. Archbishop Whately deprecates the bullying and browbeating system in vogue with certain barristers, and declares it to be a mistake as a means of eliciting truth: he cites his own observation of the marked success of the opposite mode of questioning, and maintains that, generally speaking, a quiet, gentle, and straightforward examination will be the most adapted to elicit truth; the browbeating and blustering which are likeliest to confuse an honest, simple-minded witness, being just what the dishonest one is the best prepared for. “The more the storm blusters, the more carefully he wraps round him the cloak which a warm sunshine will often induce him to throw off.”

We are told of Dr. Beattie, in his relations as a professor with his class, that his sway was absolute, because it was founded in reason and affection; that he never employed a harsh epithet in finding fault with any of his pupils; and that when, instead of a rebuke, which they were conscious they deserved, they met merely with a mild reproof, it was conveyed in such a manner as to throw, not only the delinquent, but sometimes the whole class into tears. Fielding’s boy-hero is at once in tears when the kind squire takes him in hand, instead of the harsh tutor; his “guilt now flew in his face more than any severity could make it. He could more easily bear the lashes of Thwackum than the generosity of Allworthy.” Mrs. Fry used to bear eager record of the docility she had found, and the gratitude she had experienced, from female prisoners, though the most abandoned of their sex: kind treatment, even with restraint obviously for their good, was so new to them, that it called forth, as Sir Samuel Romilly says, “even in the most depraved, grateful and generous feelings.” True to the life is the picture Mr. Reade has drawn of the effect on the actress, of a young wife coming to her as a supplicant, instead of inveighing against her,—coming with faith in her goodness, and sobbing to her for pity: “a big tear rolled down her cheek, and proved her something more than an actress.” In another of his books he illustrates the truth that men can resist the remonstrances that wound them, and so irritate them, better than they can those gentle appeals which rouse no anger, but soften the whole heart. “The old people stung him; but Mercy, without design, took a surer way. She never said a word; but sometimes, when the discussions were at their height, she turned her dove-like eyes on him, with a look so loving, so humbly inquiring, so timidly imploring, that his heart melted within him.” So with Janet Dempster, in George Eliot’s story of clerical life, who “was not to be made meek by cruelty; she would repent of nothing in the face of injustice, though she was subdued in a moment by a word or a look that recalled the old days of fondness.” In fine, we may conclude with the conclusion of old Master Knowell, in the Elizabethan play: