"What then is to be done?" said Dr. Barlow. "Must a discreet and pious man give up a principle because it has been disfigured by the fanatic, or abused by the hypocrite, or denied by the skeptic, or reprobated by the formalist, or ridiculed by the men of the world? He should rather support it with an earnestness proportioned to its value; he should rescue it from the injuries it has sustained from its enemies; and the discredit brought on it by its imprudent friends. He should redeem it from the enthusiasm which misconceives, and from the ignorance or malignity which misrepresents it. If the learned and the judicious are silent in proportion as the illiterate and the vulgar are obtrusive and loquacious, the most important truths will be abandoned by those who are best able to unfold, and to defend them, while they will be embraced exclusively by those who misunderstand, degrade, and debase them. Because the unlettered are absurd, must the able cease to be religious? If there is to be an abandonment of every Christian principle because it has been unfairly, unskillfully, or inadequately treated, there would, one by one, be an abandonment of every doctrine of the New Testament."
"I felt myself bound," said Mr. Stanley, "to act on this principle in our late conversation with Mr. Tyrrel. I would not refuse to assert with him the doctrines of grace, but I endeavored to let him see that I had adopted them in a scriptural sense. I would not try to convince him that he was wrong, by disowning a truth because he abused it. I would cordially reject all the bad use he makes of any opinion, without rejecting the opinion itself, if the Bible will bear me out in the belief of it. But I would scrupulously reject all the other opinions which he connects with it, and with which I am persuaded it has no connection."
"The nominal Christian," said Dr. Barlow, "who insists that religion resides in the understanding only, may contend that love to God, gratitude to our Redeemer, and sorrow for our offenses, are enthusiastic extravagances; and effectually repress, by ridicule and sarcasm, those feelings which the devout heart recognizes, and which Scripture sanctions. On the other hand, those very feelings are inflamed, exaggerated, distorted, and misrepresented, as including the whole of religion, by the intemperate enthusiast, who thinks reason has nothing to do in the business; but who, trusting to tests not warranted in the Scripture, is governed by fancies, feelings, and visions of his own.
"Between these pernicious extremes, what course is the sober Christian to pursue? Must he discard from his heart all pious affections because the fanatic abuses them, and the fastidious denies their existence! This would be like insisting, that because one man happens to be sick of a dead palsy, and another of a frenzy fever, there is therefore in the human constitution no such temperate medium as sound health."
CHAPTER XL.
Since the conversation which had accidentally led to the discovery of Miss Stanley's acquirements, I could not forbear surveying the perfect arrangements of the family, and the completely elegant but not luxurious table, with more than ordinary interest. I felt no small delight in reflecting that all this order and propriety were produced without the smallest deduction from mental cultivation.
I could not refrain from mentioning this to Mrs. Stanley. She was not displeased with my observation, though she cautiously avoided saying any thing which might be construed into a wish to set off her daughter. As she seemed surprised at my knowledge of the large share her Lucilla had in the direction of the family concerns, I could not, in the imprudence of my satisfaction, conceal the conversation I had had with my old friend Mrs. Comfit.
After this avowal she felt that any reserve on this point would look like affectation, a littleness which would have been unworthy of her character. "I am frequently blamed by my friends," said she, "for taking some of the load from my own shoulders, and laying it on hers. 'Poor thing, she is too young!' is the constant cry of the fashionable mothers. My general answer is, you do not think your daughters of the same age too young to be married, though you know marriage must bring with it these, and still heavier cares. Surely then Lucilla is not too young to be initiated into that useful knowledge which will hereafter become no inconsiderable part of her duty. The acquisition would be really burdensome then, if it were not lightened by preparatory practice now. I have, I trust, convinced my daughters, that though there is no great merit in possessing this sort of knowledge, yet to be destitute of it is highly discreditable."
In several houses where I had visited, I had observed the forwardness of the parents, the mother especially, to make a display of the daughter's merits: "so dutiful! so notable! such an excellent nurse!" The girl was then called out to sing or to play, and was thus, by that inconsistency which my good mother deprecated, kept in the full exhibition of those very talents which are most likely to interfere with nursing and notableness. But since I had been on my present visit, I had never once heard my friends extol their Lucilla, or bring forward any of her excellences. I had however observed their eyes fill with a delight, which they could not suppress, when her merits were the subject of the praise of others.