Now I call on the St. George’s Company, first, to separate themselves clearly, as a body, from persons who practise recognized, visible, unquestionable iniquity. They are to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of Darkness; but to walk as Children of Light.
Literally, observe. Those phrases of the Bible are entirely evaded, because we never apply them to immediate practice.
St. George’s Companions are to have no fellowship with works of darkness; no companionship whatsoever with recognizable mischief, or mischievous men. Of every person of your acquaintance, you are solemnly to ask yourselves, ‘Is this man a swindler, a liar, a gambler, an adulterer, a selfish oppressor, and task-master?’ [[85]]
Don’t suppose you can’t tell. You can tell with perfect ease; or, if you meet any mysterious personage of whom it proves difficult to ascertain whether he be rogue or not, keep clear of him till you know. With those whom you know to be honest, know to be innocent, know to be striving, with main purpose, to serve mankind and honour their God, you are humbly and lovingly to associate yourselves: and with none others.
“You don’t like to set yourself up for being better than other people? You dare not judge harshly of your fellow-creatures?”
I do not tell you to judge them. I only tell you not to dine with them, and not to deal with them. That they lose the pleasure of your company, or the profit on your custom, is no crushing punishment. To their own Master they stand or fall; but to your Master, Christ,[2] you must stand, with your best might; and in this manner only, self-asserting as you may think it, can you confess Him before men. Why do you suppose that thundrous word of His impends over your denial of Him, “Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before Angels,” but because you are sure to be constantly tempted to such denial?
How, therefore, observe, in modern days, are you so tempted. Is not the temptation rather, as it seems, [[86]]to confess Him? Is it difficult and shameful to go to church?—would it not require more courage to stay away? Is it difficult or shameful to shut your shop on Sunday, in the East,—or, to abstain from your ride in the Park on Sunday, in the West? Is it dangerous to hold family worship in your house, or dishonourable to be seen with a cross on your Prayer Book? None of these modes or aspects of confession will bring any outcry against you from the world. You will have its good word, on the contrary, for each and all of them. But declare that you mean to speak truth,—and speak it, for an hour; that you mean to abstain from luxury,—and abstain from it, for a day; that you, obeying God’s law, will resolutely refuse fellowship with the disobedient;—and be ‘not at home’ to them, for a week: and hear then what the High Priests’ servants will say to you, round the fire.
And observe, it is in charity for them, much more than by duty to others, that you are required to do this. For half, at least, of these Caiaphas’ servants sin through pure ignorance, confirmed by custom. The essential difference in business, for instance, between a man of honour and a rogue, is that the first tries to give as much to his customer for his money as he can, and the second to give as little; but how many are at present engaged in business who are trying to sell their goods at as high a price as possible, supposing that effort to be the very soul and vital principle of [[87]]business! Now by simply asserting to these ignorant persons that they are rogues, whether they know it or not; and that, in the present era of general enlightenment, gentlemen and ladies must not only learn to spell and to dance, but also to know the difference between cheating their neighbours and serving them; and that, as on the whole it is inexpedient to receive people who don’t know how to express themselves grammatically, in the higher circles of society, much more is it inexpedient to receive those who don’t know how to behave themselves honestly. And by the mere assertion, practically, of this assured fact to your acquaintance’ faces, by the direct intervention of a deal door between theirs and yours, you will startle them out of their Rogues’ Paradise in a most healthful manner, and be the most orthodox and eloquent evangelical preacher to them that they have ever heard since they were born.
But all this must, of course, be done with extreme tenderness and modesty, though with absolute decision; and under much submission to their elders by young people—especially those living in their father’s houses. I shall not, of course, receive any Companions under age; but already there are some names on my list of young unmarried women: and, while I have shown in all former writings that I hold the power of such to be the greatest, because the purest, of all social ones, I must as definitely now warn them against any manifestation [[88]]of feeling or principle tending to break the unity of their home circles. They are bound to receive their father’s friends as their own, and to comply in all sweet and subjected ways with the wishes and habits of their parents; remaining calmly certain that the Law of God, for them, is that while they remain at home they shall be spirits of Peace and Humility beneath its roof. In all rightly ordered households, the confidence between the parent and child is such that in the event of a parent’s wish becoming contrary to a child’s feeling of its general duty, there would be no fear or discomfort on the child’s part in expressing its thoughts. The moment these are necessarily repressed, there is wrong somewhere; and in houses ordered according to the ways of modern fashionable life, there must be wrong, often, and everywhere. But the main curse of modern society is that, beginning by training its youth to be ‘independent’ and disobedient, this carefully cultivated independence shows itself, of course, by rejecting whatever is noble and honourable in their father’s houses, and never by healing or atoning what is faultful.
Of all St. George’s young Companions, therefore, he requires first the graces of gentleness and humility; nor, on the whole, much independent action of any kind; but only the quiet resolve to find out what is absolutely right, and so far as it may be kindly and inoffensively practised to fulfil it, at home; and so [[89]]far as it may be modestly and decorously uttered, to express the same abroad. And a well-bred young lady has always personal power enough of favour and discouragement, among persons of her own age, to satisfy the extremest demands of conscience in this direction.