Political animosities have doubtless been mitigated by freer social intercourse, which gives more opportunities for meeting on neutral ground. It is only during a heated campaign that we think of all of the opposing party as rascals. There is time between elections to make the necessary exceptions. It is customary to make allowance for a certain amount of partisan bias, just as the college faculty allows a student a certain number of “cuts.” It is a just recognition of human weakness.
Our British cousins go farther, and provide means for the harmless gratification of natural prejudices. There are certain questions on which persons are expected to express themselves with considerable fervor, and without troubling themselves as to the reasonableness of their contention. In a volume of published letters I was pleased to read one from a member of the aristocracy. He had been indulging in trivial personalities, when suddenly he broke off with “Now I must go to work on the Wife’s Sister’s Question; I intend to make a good stout protest against that rascally bill!” There is no such exercise for the moral nature as a good stout protest. We Americans take our exercise spasmodically. Instead of going about it regularly, we wait for some extraordinary occasion. We make it a point of sportsmanship to shoot our grievance on the wing, and we are nervously anxious lest it get out of range before we have time to take aim.
Not so the protesting Briton. He approves of the answer of Jonah when he was asked, “Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?” Jonah, without any waste of words, replied, “I do well to be angry.” When the Englishman feels that it is well for him to be angry, he finds constitutional means provided. Parliament furnishes a number of permanent objects for his disapproval. Whenever he feels disposed he can make a good stout protest, feeling assured that his indignation is well bestowed. He has such satisfaction as that which came to Mr. Micawber in reading his protest against the villainies of Uriah Heep: “Much afflicted but still intensely enjoying himself, Mr. Micawber folded up the letter and handed it with a bow to my aunt, as something she might like to keep.”
These stout-hearted people have learned not only how to take their pleasures sadly, but, what is more to the purpose, how to take their sadnesses pleasantly. We Americans have, here, something to learn. We should get along better if we had a number of argument-proof questions like that in regard to marriage with the deceased wife’s sister which could be warranted to recur at regular intervals. They could be set apart as a sort of public playground for the prejudices. It would at least keep the prejudices out of mischief.
Religious prejudice has an air of singularity. The singular thing is that there should be such a variety. If we identify religion with the wisdom that is from above, and which is “first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, without partiality,” it is hard to see where the prejudice comes in. Religious prejudice is a compound of religion and several decidedly earthly passions. The combination produces a peculiarly dangerous explosive. The religious element has the same part in it that the innocent glycerine has in nitro-glycerine. This latter, we are told, is “a compound produced by the action of a mixture of strong nitric and sulphuric acids on glycerine at low temperatures.” It is observable that in the making of religious prejudice the religion is kept at a very low temperature, indeed.
We are at present in an era of good feeling. Not only is there an interchange of kindly offices between members of different churches, but one may detect a tendency to extend the same tolerance to the opposing party in the same church. This is a real advance, for it is always more difficult to do justice to those who differ from us slightly than to those whose divergence is fundamental. To love our friends is a work of nature, to love our enemies is a work of grace; the troublesome thing is to get on with those who are “betwixt and between.” In such a case we are likely to fall between nature and grace as between two stools. Almost any one can be magnanimous in great affairs, but to be magnanimous in trifles is like trying to use a large screw-driver to turn a small screw.
In a recently published correspondence between dignitaries of the Church of England I find many encouraging symptoms. The writers exhibit a desire to do justice not only to the moral, but also to the intellectual, gifts of those who differ from them even slightly. There is, of course, enough of the old Adam remaining to make their judgments on one another interesting reading. It is pleasant to see brethren dwelling together in unity,—a pleasure seldom prolonged to the point of satiety. Thus the Dean of Norwich writes to the Dean of Durham in regard to Dean Stanley. Alluding to an opinion, in a previous letter, in regard to Archbishop Tait, the writer says: “I confess I shouldn’t have ranked him among the great men of the day. Of our contemporaries I should have assigned that rank, without hesitation, to little Stan, though I quite think he did more mischief in our church and to religion than most men have it in them to do. Still I should say that little Stan was a great man in his way.” There you may see a mind that has, with considerable difficulty, uprooted a prejudice, though you may still perceive the place where the prejudice used to be.
While the methods of the exact sciences have had a discouraging effect on partisan and sectarian prejudices, they seem, for the moment, to have given new strength to those which are the result of differences in race. Time was when Anti-Semitism derived its power from religious rancor. The cradle hymn which the Puritan mother sang began sweetly,—
Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber!
Holy angels guard thy bed!