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Cbe inconveniences
of the G50lben 'iRule,

(ſo
&rederich iſſl, ºthmam.
THE GOLDEN RULE.
HE GOLDEN RULE is not a pleasing sub-
T ject to discuss because its cultivation
ceases with controversy. To prove how
inconvenient it is, we must accuse, and to
accuse is to do as we would not be done by.
We are not properly responsible for the errors
of our ancestors, though we bear the penalty.
To defend them indeed, is to repeat them in
little. It was once my unhappy privilege to
hear a man with voluble utterance discourse
zealously of his own glorious share in the
proceedings of the Know-N othings. That indi-
vidual did not hesitate to affirm that the
Roman Catholics connived at the sin of our
first parents.
The Golden Rule is the foundation of our
faith and is necessarily obscured by the super-
structure. Humanly speaking, it is aggravating
3
to be asked to look upon the welfare of others
with as much enthusiasm as upon our own
prosperity. In theory, the request is divine;
as a matter of fact it is a nuisance. To be
sincerely elated as the ducats clink profitably
in your neighbor's till and be unenvying in
your own poverty,+that is the sublimest act
of faith—and the rarest. It is at war with the
natural instinct. It may be our ideal but the
ideal is theoretical and exalted; we lower our
eyes bashfully upon a successful deacon, and
are within the confines of the practical at once.
The Golden Rule has suckled every sect and
swaddled every heresy, and, like a nurse, has
always been dismissed, with the fine scorn
characteristic of infant independence. It is
honored by those whose good wishes do not
recommend and whose donations cannot cor-
rupt.
Saint Thomas Aquinas one day entered the
chamber of the pope whose attendants were
busily counting money there. “You see,”
said the pontiff to his visitor, “that the time
4.
is past when the Church could say ‘Gold and
Silver have I none’.” “True, holy father,”
replied Thomas, “the time is also past when
it could say to the palsied, ‘Take up thy bed
and walk ’.” 1
Miracles cease but the Church flourishes.
An impecunious fellow worshipper might doubt
the former if it were easy to borrow ten
dollars, but the difficulty dissipates belief,
though it helps to explain the success.
“Do unto others as ye would that they
should do unto you.” That is the rule, the
command and the duty. There are two parties
to it, “others ” and “you.” Each must re-
frain from saying or doing anything which
would justly displease the other. “You’ must
be controlled by absolute respect for the situa-
tion, feelings and opinions of “others.” But
if a man is sure that what he believes is right,
the contrary opinion must be an error, and to
respect an error must be wrong. It follows
that he who is sure he is right is unlikely to
*m-m-
I. Biog. Univ. XI,V. 447.
honor the Golden Rule. Not improbably, he
will smash it to pieces on the pate of his ad-
versary in an earnest attempt to spoil him and
his goods.
It is an open secret that there are men whose
principles are so good that they judge evilly
of every one who does not agree with them.
One such was a dear friend of mine, a hater
of the weed, who wished to think ill of a cus-
tomer's credit, and the fact that the customer
once lived next door to a tobacconist's was
deemed a good ground for suspicion.
When we are pivoted on indecision, the
kindly gives way to the spiteful with marvel-
lous facility. The world seems to tip easily
aside to aid a movement in the wrong direc-
tion; the infernal touch is given, we turn evil-
wards and anticipate our victim’s mortification
with positive delight. We are sorry for it
afterwards, perhaps, and try to recall which
feeling it was that influenced us; but at the
moment there was a vinegary yearning, an ach-
ing for acerbity which neglected disease had
6
made palatable. The motive, at bottom, is
the vulgarest egotism, a desire to be thought
intellectually superior, a desire to exhibit an-
other's incapacity and our own surpassing wis-
dom and having done it, we perch upon our
excellence with the grimace of a fiend, though
without a fiend's excuse. If the exercise of
our malice provoke a laugh at our victim's dis-
comfiture, we are prouder of this additional
testimony to human weakness than if Gratitude
had thanked us for a deed well done. Roche-
foucauld was right, “in the misfortunes of our
friends there is something not unpleasing to
us;” and rather than be deprived of the pleas-
ure we are not unwilling to aid the mishap.
Something like this was illustrated in the
early days of the church. When Pope Theo-
dorus wrote the sentence of deposition against
Pyrrhus the Monothelite, it was with ink mix-
ed with wine from the sacramental cup to give
the curse the deeper power of damnation. I
That showed a lovely trait in the character
1. Eccl. Hist. Bernino III. 236.
7
*
of the Pontiff Theodorus. Pyrrhus might have
said it was “rubbing it in.” The phrase is
homely but indignation prohibits a search for
one less expressive. A better use, though
hardly commendable, was that to which writ-
ing fluid was put by the bereaved M. de
Brunnoi, who procured from Paris a great
quantity of black ink and mixed it with the
water which supplied his fountains, to put his
jets d'eau in mourning for his mother.
The ability to curse piously had all the
charm of independence without any of its
danger, and though its exercise might be ob-
jected to, I sigh for a modicum of the power.
In summer-time, a man who is bald-headed
cannot think with equanimity of the virtue of
St. Bernard which allowed him to damn flies
with impunity. ”
The “swear words” of a layman are always
improper; those of a weakling are ridiculous,
but the curses of our mother church were pro-
tºms
1. Prudhomme II. 120.
2. He killed flies by excommunicating them. Zwinger II. 1515.
8
vided with a satisfactory muscular accompani-
ment and sufficient exercise to keep it in con-
dition. The popes, the saints and the fathers
carried the banners and led the armies of the
militant church, and their banners were some-
times as singular as they were efficacious.
When the Scandinavians who had settled in
Russia appeared with an army (A. D. 866),
before Constantinople, the northern barbarians
were tumultuously scattered by modesty or fear
as the priests of Byzantium marched out
against them, bearing on high the holy virgin's
chemise which they afterwards washed in the
sea. *
Thus too, at Chartres (A. D. 911), another
chemise of Mary's, which had long been the
chief object of veneration in the cathedral,
was used with similar effect when Rollo laid
siege to the city. Again the priests marched
boldly out with the irresistible relic, and again
the horde of Odin was blasted by its power. 2
*
I. Mallet's Northern Antiq. p. 192 and note.
2. Roger of Wendover's Chron. I. 238.
9
In sacrilegious imitation probably, that per-
severing enemy of Christianity, the Turkish
Admiral Tekedmus flung to the breeze a pair
of blasphemous breeches; but the miraculous
virtue was wanting, and Coeur de Lion drove
him and his troops in righteous disorder from
the bloody field of Assur. 1
It was natural that commanders should sigh
for the possession of such holy objects, objects
which made skill and bravery useless and
snatched victory from the bosom of fate. It
is without astonishment, therefore, that we read
of Christian generals who would raise a siege
or surrender a city for the gallant acquisition
of such a sanctified relic. *
The medieval supporters of the faith made
excellent saints but they were villainous neigh-
bors. They upheld the church and knocked
out the Golden Rule with admirable precision
and vigor. That holy pirate St. Charlemagne,
overran the country of the Saxons, the Ger-
1. Geoffrey de Vinsauf's Itinerary of Richard I., p. 268.
2. Grandeur and Declension of Rome, Montesquieu, C. XXIC.
IO
mans and the Huns to instill the true faith,
and in cold blood decimated the inhabitants. I
Otho persuaded the Danes by similar argu-
ments. 2 Saint Olaf propagated the truth “by
means the most revolting to humanity.” “ The
Prussians were “dragooned into the Christian
Church "4 by Boleslaus. Pope Urban declared
a holy war against the Livonians, while Pope
Innocent sent bishops and commissioned the
military order of Knights Sword bearers to
force the unhappy creatures to receive the
benefits of baptism. “So cruelly oppressed,
slaughtered and tormented were this wretched
people, that exhausted at length and un-
able to stand any longer firm against the arm
of persecution, strengthened still by new ac-
cessions of power, they abandoned the statues
of their Pagan deities, and substituted the im-
ages of the saints. But while they received the
benefits of the Gospel, they were deprived of
Hume, Hist. Eng. I, 67. Mosheim, Eccl. Hist. II. 208-2Io.
I.
2. Mosheim, Eccl. Hist. II. 379.
3. # 6. § { tº $ 4 tº 382.
4. { & § { { % { { 436.
II
all earthly comforts; their land and possessions
were taken from them, with the most odious
circumstances of cruelty and violence, while the
knights and the bishops divided the spoil.” "
These missionary bishops were fitly repre-
sented with half mitre, half helmet upon their
heads, with a cross in one hand and a sabre
in the other; half rochet and half cuirass
about their loins; commanding to sound to
horse in the middle of the Mass, and a charge
at the place where they should give the bene-
diction. ”
Saint Louis preached the Golden Rule and
encouraged conversion in a truly orthodox
fashion. The incredulity of a reasoner should,
he said, be ventilated with “a sharp-edged
sword which should enter their bodies as far
as the hilt.” 8
This admirable recommendation was follow-
ed by the popes, who called upon all in au-
Tº Mosheim, keel hist in .s.º.
2. Bayle's Commentary, Prelim. Disc. p. 4.
3. Joinville's Memoirs, Louis IX, p. 1.
I2
thority, as they wished to be saved, to put
away foolish love, and to crush the heretics for
the glory of the Lord and the augmentation
of the faith.
It is delightful to know that you are right
without the trouble and pain of a mental ex-
amination to determine it; to be assured upon
authority which it is a sin to doubt that we
can exercise all the base passions of the
natural man, increase in spiritual stature by
doing so, and promote religion by demolishing
IſeaSOIle1 S.
Indeed, there was nothing which the popes
were restrained from doing—except to violate
the Golden Rule. Infallibility kept them right
on that. Witness Bellarmine;
“If the Pope should through error or mis-
take command vices and prohibit virtues, the
Church would be bound in conscience to be-
lieve vice to be good and virtue evil.” "
“Good God l’” said South, on reading this,
“that anything that wears the name of a
*ºsº
1. De Pontifice Romano LIV. C, 5.
I3
Christian, or but of a man, should venture to
run such a villainous, impudent and blasphem-
ous assertion in the face of the world as
this ” 1
It may with extreme diffidence be suggest-
ed that Bellarmine here illuminates certain re-
cent historical controversies, smooths out the
ruffled facts, dissipates the harshness of truth
and reveals the benefit which would accrue to
the freest government and “the best instructed
people in the world” 2 if its several States
would unite in a general tax to support sec-
tarian schools.
Yet are there historical subjects which cast
a shadow upon the papal infallibility. Magna
Charta, “which in its thousand reflections and
images has now become the supreme law of
all civilized nations,” still rests under the
curse of Pope Innocent III., who scornfully
termed it “a disgrace to the English nation.” 3
Justice appeals to a higher tribunal than
I. South’s Sermons II. 441.
2. John Bright, Speeches, “The American Question.”
3. Literary Remains of Emanuel Deutsch, p. 219.
I4
that of a pontiff, while the Common Law dis-
sects the fallibility of an infallible understand-
ing. The lawyers and the clergy have al-
ways been at war, yet the world owes a
greater debt than it dreams of to the sustainers
of jurisprudence. The lawyers reversed every
clerical maxim, made decision wait upon sense,
examined evidence and honestly tried to be
governed by correct conclusions. The very
diversity of their daily business caused them
to hate fraud, to distrust prejudice, to respect
truth and to revere impartiality. This is the
solution of the problem which has perplexed
many an honest student who could not under-
stand why those who have most preached the
Golden Rule have least favored its practice,
and why their unrelenting opponents have
done nearly all that has been done to make
Equity honored by the children of men.
But to go on in this easy fashion, honoring
controversy, respecting contradiction and comp-
limenting difference of opinion is to ignore
what the popes, the saints and the fathers
I5
were quick to see, that difference of opinion
makes hell combustible. If sectarianism be
wrong we are wicked in our toleration of it.
We hob-nob with Monsignori, the pope's
chaplains, discuss socialism with the Unitarian
divine, thank God that we are not as other
men with the Presbyterian, and with the Epis-
copalian ask His mercy for our miserable
neighbors.
We call this Civilization, forsooth ! Where
will it end?
There was a time when sects were not re-
spected, and those who lingered in the high-
ways and hedges were compelled to “come
in " or to vanish in a flash of fire. So it
should be now if the orthodox tell the truth,
and if they do not tell the truth, their creed
must be wrong. Yet, in extenuation, it may
be urged that it is better to suffer hereafter
for the sake of toleration than to perish now
in the interests of harmony.
The pseudo-advocates of the Golden Rule
are not less numerous or less selfish than they
I6
were ages ago, but they are more thoughtful
of appearances and seek their own advantage
by conferring material blessings upon the
community in which they live. Inventors are
often worthy men, but the patient merit which
they wear rankles like a thorn in the flesh of
the sensitive human. The benefits which they
are about to inflict upon the world are incal-
culable; they prate of the debt which it will
owe them, with one eye steadily squinting at
prospective profits, till we regret the hasty de-
molition of the Holy Inquisition which sup-
pressed improvements with exhilarating vigor
and crushed a medieval DeLesseps with the
unanswerable assertion that if Heaven had
wished a canal cut through an isthmus it
would have done it itself. ' The Patent Office,
if you will believe patentees, is a monument
of self-sacrificing philanthropy, but the Unjust
steward and the Foolish virgins fortify nega-
tion, while the Golden Rule turns the other
*sº
1. Storch Economie Politique, V. p. 361.
17
cheek and, blushing from apostatical violence,
melts into the ethereal.
An athletic gentleman once asked a puny
friend to inspect a painting which the former
had recently purchased. “I asked ” he said,
“a critic the other day what he thought of it;
he said it was a ‘beastly daub,” whereupon I
kicked the rascal down stairs. Now,” and the
athletic gentleman turned to his puny acquaint-
ance, “will you kindly favor me with your
honest opinion?”
An independent judgment would have been
possible if the conditions had been reversed,
but the weak have little choice in the absence
of the Golden Rule. Honest criticism is pre-
cisely what strength is afraid of and what
weakness gets without dilution. The sin of
lying is, however, invariably visited upon the
questioner; it is the homage of slaves, the po-
liteness of the dependent.
On the other hand, the Golden Rule is the
essence of virtue, the backbone of truth; it
gives to the dwarf the strength of a giant and
18
makes the giant endurable. It charms into
melody the discords of life, refines duty and en-
nobles courtesy. It is the holiest of precepts for
human guidance and He who taught it was
“ The best of men
That e'er wore earth about him,-a sufferer,
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit,
The first true gentleman that ever breathed.”—Decker.
And yet, if we should do unto others as we
would that others should do unto us, that is,
if we were to begin to-day to anticipate others’
wants, and instead of looking out for Number
One, were constant in seeking the well being
of Number Two, all our notions of trade,
finance and politics would be hurled into irre-
trievable disorder. Confusion would not be
worse confounded were the whole country
shaken by an earthquake which should move
every house into a neighbor's lot and shift the
possessions of every stock-holder.
Imagine how the delights of shopping would
vanish The pleasure of detecting a cheat, of
discovering an imposture would be gone. The
I9
dry-goods clerk would soberly inform the cus-
tomer that the entirely new display of Parisian
material just landed from the steamer, and
which was so advertised but yesterday, was
innocent of France, and had really been taken
from the limbo of fashions in the attic,
whither it was relegated on the decadence of
that particular style of goods more than ten
years before. The apothecary would tell the
patient that his drugs were worse than use-
less, that superstition and humbug constituted
his stock in trade, would explain that the
“R” sign upon the physician's prescription,
was an invocation to Jupiter, and was amply
sufficient to prove the degree of heathen non-
sense that is extant. The insurance agent
would think more of the insured than of a
possible commission, and would advise against
the company which he represented if its credit
was in any way questionable. The book
agent would freely admit the possibility of
there being many volumes better suited to the
needs of a purchaser than that which he was
2O
trying to sell. The missionary would preach
in vain to the Moslem, the Buddhist and the
Brahmin if he were to acknowledge that each
had as much right to his premises. News-
paper reporters would be fitting depositaries
of secrets, and hackmen would lean to mercy
in the measurement of distance. We should
be as welcome to the prohibitionist's cellar as
to his advice. Stock-holders would request
lower rates of dividends that the wage-earners
might have a more equitable share of the prof-
its. “Sweetness and light” would be the motto
of the Banner Oil Company, and a cheerful
encouragement of other illuminants would
be its characteristic feature. The Monarch
would abdicate his throne with a bow to his
poorest subject. The spiritual peers of Eng-
land would withdraw from the House of Lords
having first caused the passage of a bill for a
more equal division of the loaves and fishes on
behalf of the poor curates of the Establish-
ment. The Noble Army of British pensioners
would cease to hold out the hat for public
2I
contributions as a reward for the virtues of a
feminine ancestry which had humbled itself
that it might become exalted.
The inconveniences would be many and
grievous if a rigid interpretation of the Golden
Rule were insisted upon, but fortunately there
is no immediate danger of such a contin-
gency; our civilization has improved upon the
the lessons of its teacher, and has made the
Golden Rule as elastic as the conscience of a
syndicate.
There is, however, a favorable side as there
is to every inconvenience. A stout gentleman
never knocks his nose against a door-post in
the dark; his abdomen acting as a buffer
makes collision harmless. If a mistake found
its way into a newspaper account or a sermon,
the speaker would put aside his own infalli-
bility and argue for that of the scribe.
Baggage-masters would handle others' trunks
as tenderly as their own prejudices. There
would be no Napoleons of finance, and no
Moscow retreats of too-confiding creditors,
22
and the geography of South America would
cease to be a text-book of cashiers. Banquets
would no longer be served at ten dollars a
plate while a thousand families were slowly
dying for want of proper nourishment in the
slums of a metropolis. No human being could
enjoy a sea-shore palace regardless of the in-
mates of his steaming and unwholesome tene-
ments. The sowers of scandal would think
upon their own follies and not of their neigh-
bors’, and the penitent would mourn his sin in
sackcloth and in ashes all his days. There
would be no army and no navy; no pauper
and no millionaire; politicians would be honest
and adulteration would be unknown. But en-
terprise would be paralyzed and genius would
be crushed, and the places that know us would
know us no more.
DAvis, PR.
work ces'ſ ER.
ſiliili
$:
O NOT REMOVE
0R
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§§ PRINT sº tº U. S. A. 23-520-002