The Toledo chronicle. [volume] (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1873-1924, 1876-05-04
The Christian Gentleman.

THE true Christian gentleman" is ris-
ing in public favor. The phrase is his
torically just. The idea of gentleman
comes more from Christianity than from
all other fountains of thought. Not only
does the spirit of high manhood pervade
the New Testament, but the actual gentle
men are there, and the written law of their
life is that the Testament is both a science
of an art and gallery of the works of the
art. AT once it teaches to paint and pro-
duCe great paintings. All the words of
Christ were laws for the creation and in
spring, not of military despots, or usurp-
ers, or vainglorious lords, or ambitious
seli-seekers, but of simply upright, SYM
metrical men, with whom duty should be
greater than riches or fame. The best de
any part Of literature, ancient or modern,
lies in the letters of st. Paul. He has
painted a picture Of the ideal man more
beautiful than the cherubs of Raphael or
the Madonna OF Murillo. 1t is affirmed
by critics that the Madonnas of the older
masters were too fixed in feature and
seemed all of one pattern, as though the
Mother of Christ had never CHI erished more
tnan one emotion, ana had enjoyed only
one thought. Into such a mechanical
school came Murillo, bringing to the ideal
mother all the variety of expression that
can shadow forth a sweet soul. Thus, at
the hands Of the common host of define
ators, the portrait of the ideal gentleman
suffered until Paul came along and wrote
down the words:
Though 1 speak with the tongues Of men and Of
angels, and have not charity, l am become as
sounding brass or tnkling cymbal.
And though have the gift of prophecy, and I'M
derstand all mysteries and all knowledge and
though l have all faith, that could remove
mountains, and have not charity, am nothing.
And though l bestow all my goods to feed the
poor, and though give my body to be burned,
and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing
Charity sufercth long and is kind: Charity en-
yieh not; Charity vaunteth not, and is not pulled
up.
Doth not behave itself unseemly; seeketh not
her own is not easily provoked; thinketh no evil.
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the
truth
Beareth all things, believeth all things, endureth
all things.
That word which in the Empire of
Britain came to mean man only who
did not toll, but who owned lands and
followed The hounds, and which in all ma
tions indicated high birth rather than
spiritual merit, is in these words rescued
from "durance vile," and is sent forth in
all the depth and power Of its import In
his evcntful life Paul had tried other
forms of manhood. He had charged
around, and upon the country, as high
official; had been man in authority;
had ordered to prison men and women;
had been high churchman at the death
of Stephen; had been a cavalier dashing
in at the gates of Damascus; but all this
"pomp and circumstance had been
driven out of his soul by that beam of
heavenly light that shone into his spirit
at these gates. The Scripture Just read
is part of that beam. The soul into
which those rays fall should never "walk
in darkness but shall have the light of
life" 1t is, therefore, historically just
to speak of the Christian gentlemen, for
Christianity has for many centuries been
teaching just these ideas that enter in that
character under review. But if there are
now in the world estimable men of the
Pauline outline who yet drew nothing
from Christianity, they are so rare as to be
wholly unknown, unseen, and from
thoughts Of them we must turn to those
who have grown up out of an espousal Of
These are the most numer-
Gus, the most visible, the most powerful.
From a Recent Sermon By Prot. Suing,
of Chic1oo.