It is hardly necessary to mention among disagreeable people those individuals who take pleasure in telling you that you are looking ill,--that you are falling off physically or mentally. "Surely you have lost some of your teeth since I saw you last," said a good man to a man of seventy-five years: "I cannot make out a word you say, you speak so indistinctly." And so obtuse, and so thoroughly devoid of gentlemanly feeling, was that good man, that, when admonished that he ought not to speak in that fashion to a man in advanced years, he could not for his life see that he had done anything unkind or unmannerly. "I dare say you are wearied wi' preachin' to-day: you see you're gettin' frail noo," said a Scotch elder, in my hearing, to a worthy clergyman. Seldom has it cost me a greater effort than it did to refrain from turning to the elder, and saying with candor, "What a boor and what a fool you must be, to say that!" It was as well I did not: the boor would not have known what I meant. He would not have known the provocation which led me to give him my true opinion of him. "How very bald you are getting!" said a really good-natured man to a friend he was meeting for the first time in several years. Such remarks are for the most part made by men who, in good faith, have not the least idea that they are making themselves disagreeable. There is no malicious intention. It is a matter of pure obtuseness, stupidity, selfishness, and vulgarity. But an obtuse, stupid, selfish, and vulgar person is disagreeable. And your right course will be to carefully avoid all intercourse with such a person.
But besides people who blunder into saying unpleasant things, there are a few who do so of set intention. And such people ought to be cracked. They can do a great deal of harm,--inflict a great deal of suffering. I believe that human beings in general are more miserable than you think. They are very anxious,--very careworn,--stung by a host of worries,--a good deal disappointed, in many ways. And in the case of many people, worthy and able, there is a very low estimate of themselves and their abilities, and a sad tendency to depressed spirits and gloomy views. And while a kind word said to such is a real benefit, and a great lightener of the heart, an ingenious malignant may suggest to such things which are as a stunning blow, and as an added load on the weary frame and mind. I have seen, with burning indignation, a malignant beast (I mean man) playing upon that tendency to a terrible apprehensiveness which is born with many men. I have seen the beast vaguely suggest evil to the nervous and apprehensive man. "This cannot end here": "I shall take my own measures now": "A higher authority shall decide between us": I have heard the beast say, and then go away. Of course I knew well that the beast could and would do nothing, and I hastened to say so to the apprehensive man. But I knew that the poor fellow would go away home, and brood over the beast's ominous threats, and imagine a hundred terrible contingencies, and work himself into a fever of anxiety and alarm. And it is because I know that the vague threatener counted on all that, and wished it, and enjoyed the thought of the slow torment he was causing, that I choose to call him a beast rather than a man. Indeed, there is an order of beings, worse than beasts, to which that being should rather be referred. You have said or done something which has given offence to certain of your neighbors. Mr. Snarling comes and gives you a full and particular account of the indignation they feel, and of their plans for vengeance. Mr. Snarling is happy to see you look somewhat annoyed, and he kindly says, "Oh, never mind: this will blow over, as other things you have said and done have blown over." Thus he vaguely suggests that you have given great offence on many occasions, and made many bitter enemies. He adds, in a musing voice, "Yes, as MANY other things have blown over." Turn the individual out, and cut his acquaintance. It would be better to have a upas-tree in your neighborhood. Of all disagreeable men, a man with his tendencies is the most disagreeable. The bitterest and longest-lasting east-wind acts less perniciously on body and soul than does the society of Mr. Snarling.
Suspicious people are disagreeable; also people who are always taking the pet. Indeed, suspiciousness and pettedness generally go together. There are many men and women who are always imagining that some insult is designed by the most innocent words and doings of those around them, and always suspecting that some evil intention against their peace is cherished by some one or other. It is most irritating to have anything to do with such impracticable and silly mortals. But it is a delightful thing to work along with a man who never takes offence,--a frank, manly man, who gives credit to others for the same generosity of nature which he feels within himself, and who, if he thinks he has reason to complain, speaks out his mind and has things cleared up at once. A disagreeable person is he who frequently sends letters to you without paying the postage,--leaving you to pay twopence for each penny which he has thus saved. The loss of twopence is no great matter; but there is something irritating in the feeling that your correspondent has deliberately resolved that he would save his penny at the cost of your twopence. There is a man, describing himself as a clergyman of the Church of England, (I cannot think he is one,) who occasionally sends me an abusive anonymous letter, and who invariably sends his letters unpaid. I do not mind about the man's abuse; but I confess I grudge my twopence. I have observed, too, that the people who send letters unpaid do so habitually. I have known the same individual send six successive letters unpaid. And it is probably within the experience of most of my readers, that, out of (say) a hundred correspondents, ninety-nine invariably pay their letters properly, while time after time the hundredth sends his with the abominable big 2 stamped upon it, and your servant walks in and worries you by the old statement that the postman is waiting. Let me advise every reader to do what I intend doing for the future: to wit, to refuse to receive any unpaid letter. You may be quite sure that by so doing you will not lose any letter that is worth having. A class of people, very closely analogous to that of the people who do not pay their letters, is that of such as are constantly borrowing small sums from their friends, which they never restore. If you should ever be thrown into the society of such, your right course will be to take care to have no money in your pocket. People are disagreeable who are given to talking of the badness of their servants, the undutifulness of their children, the smokiness of their chimneys, and the deficiency of their digestive organs. And though, with a true and close friend, it is a great relief, and a special tie, to have spoken out your heart about your burdens and sorrows, it is expedient, in conversation with ordinary acquaintances, to keep these to yourself.
It must be admitted, with great regret, that people who make a considerable profession of religion have succeeded in making themselves more thoroughly disagreeable than almost any other human beings have ever made themselves. You will find people, who claim not merely to be pious and Christian people, but to be very much more pious and Christian than others, who are extremely uncharitable, unamiable, repulsive, stupid, and narrow-minded, and intensely opinionated and self-satisfied. We know, from a very high authority, that a Christian ought to be an epistle in commendation of the blessed faith he holds. But it is beyond question that many people who profess to be Christians are like grim Gorgons' heads, warning people off from having anything to do with Christianity. Why should a middle-aged clergyman walk about the streets with a sullen and malignant scowl always on his face, which at the best would be a very ugly one? Why should another walk with his nose in the air, and his eyes rolled up till they seem likely to roll out? And why should a third be always dabbled over with a clammy perspiration, and prolong all his vowels to twice the usual length? It is, indeed, a most woful thing, that people who evince a spirit in every respect the direct contrary of that of our Blessed Redeemer should fancy that they are Christians of singular attainments; and it is more woful still, that many young people should be scared away into irreligion or unbelief by the wretched delusion, that these creatures, wickedly caricaturing Christianity, are fairly representing it. I have beheld more deliberate malice, more lying and cheating, more backbiting and slandering, denser stupidity, and greater self-sufficiency, among bad-hearted and wrong-headed religionists, than among any other order of human beings. I have known more malignity and slander conveyed in the form of a prayer than should have consigned any ordinary libeller to the pillory. I have known a person who made evening prayer a means of infuriating and stabbing the servants, under the pretext of confessing their sins. "Thou knowest, Lord, how my servants have been occupied this day": with these words did the blasphemous mockery of prayer begin one Sunday evening in a house I could easily indicate: and then the man, under the pretext of addressing the Almighty, raked up all the misdoings of the servants (they being present, of course) in a fashion, which, if he had ventured on it at any other time, would probably have led some of them to assault him. "I went to Edinburgh," said a Highland elder, "and was there a Sabbath. It was an awfu' sight! There, on the Sabbath-day, you would see people walking along the street, smiling AS IF THEY WERE PERFECTLY HAPPY!" There was the gravamen of the poor Highlander's charge. To think of people being or looking happy on the Lord's day! And, indeed, to think of a Christian man ever venturing to be happy at all! "Yes, this parish was highly favored in the days of Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown," said a spiteful and venomous old woman,--with a glance of deadly malice at a young lad who was present. That young lad was the son of the clergyman of the parish,--one of the most diligent and exemplary clergymen in Britain. Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown were the clergymen who preceded him. And the spiteful old woman adopted this means of sticking a pin into the young lad,--conveying the idea that there was a sad falling off now. I saw and heard her, my reader. Now, when an ordinary spiteful person says a malicious thing, being quite aware that she is saying a malicious thing, and that her motive is pure malice, you are disgusted. But when a spiteful person says a malicious thing, all the while fancying herself a very pious person, and fancying that in gratifying her spite she is acting from Christian principle,--I say the sight is to me one of the most disgusting, perplexing, and miserable, that ever human eye beheld. I have no fear of the attacks of enemies on the blessed faith in which I live, and hope to die; but it is dismal to see how our holy religion is misrepresented before the world by the vile impostors who pretend to be its friends.
Among the disagreeable people who make a profession of religion, probably many are purely hypocrites. But we willingly believe that there are people, in whom Christianity appears in a wretchedly stunted and distorted form, who yet are right at the root. It does not follow that a man is a Christian, because he turns up his eyes and drawls out his words, and, when asked to say grace, offers a prayer of twenty minutes' duration. But, again, it does not follow that he is not a Christian, though he may do all these things. The bitter sectary, who distinctly says that a humble, pious man, just dead, has "gone to hell," because he died in the bosom of the National Church, however abhorrent that sectary may be in some respects, may be, in the main, within the Good Shepherd's fold, wherein he fancies there are very few but himself. The dissenting teacher, who declared from his pulpit that the parish clergyman (newly come, and an entire stranger to him) was "a servant of Satan," may possibly have been a good man, after all. Grievous defects and errors may exist in a Christian character, which is a Christian character still. And the Christian, horribly disagreeable and repulsive now, will some day, we trust, have all that purged away. But I do not hesitate to say, that any Christian, by so far as he is disagreeable and repulsive, deviates from the right thing. Oh, my reader, when my heart is sometimes sore through what I see of disagreeable traits in Christian character, what a blessed relief there is in turning to the simple pages, and seeing for the thousandth time The True Christian Character,--so different! Yes, thank God, we know where to look, to find what every pious man should be humbly aiming to be: and when we see That Face, and hear That Voice, there is something that soothes and cheers among the wretched imperfections (in one's self as in others) of the present,--something that warms the heart, and that brings a man to his knees!
The present writer has a relative who is Professor of Theology in a certain famous University. With that theologian I recently had a conversation on the matter of which we have just been thinking. The Professor lamented bitterly the unchristian features of character which may be found in many people making a great parade of their Christianity. He mentioned various facts, which had recently come to his own knowledge, which would sustain stronger expressions of opinion than any which I have given. But he went on to say, that it would be a sad thing, if no fools could get to heaven,--nor any unamiable, narrow-minded, sour, and stupid people. Now, said he, with great force of reason, religion does not alter idiosyncrasy. When a fool becomes a Christian, he will be a foolish Christian; a narrow-minded man will be a narrow-minded Christian; a stupid man, a stupid Christian. And though a malignant man will have his malignity much diminished, it by no means follows that it will be completely rooted out. "When I would do good, evil is present with me." "I find a law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and enslaving me to the law of sin." But you are not to blame Christianity for the stupidity and unamiability of Christians. If they be disagreeable, it is not the measure of true religion they have got that makes them so. In so far as they are disagreeable, they depart from the standard. You know, you may make water sweet or sour,--you may make it red, blue, black; and it will be water still, though its purity and pleasantness are much interfered with. In like manner, Christianity may coexist with a good deal of acid,--with a great many features of character very inconsistent with itself. The cup of fair water may have a bottle of ink emptied into it, or a little verjuice, or even a little strychnine. And yet, though sadly deteriorated, though hopelessly disguised, the fair water is there, and not entirely neutralized.
And it is worth remarking, that you will find many persons who are very charitable to blackguards, but who have no charity for the weaknesses of really good people. They will hunt out the act of thoughtless liberality done by the scapegrace who broke his mother's heart and squandered his poor sisters' little portions; they will make much of that liberal act,--such an act as tossing to some poor Magdalen a purse filled with money which was probably not his own; and they will insist that there is hope for the blackguard yet. But these persons will tightly shut their eyes against a great many substantially good deeds done by a man who thinks Prelacy the abomination of desolation, or who thinks that stained glass and an organ are sinful. I grant you that there is a certain fairness in trying the blackguard and the religionist by different standards. Where the pretension is higher, the test may justly be more severe. But I say it is unfair to puzzle out with diligence the one or two good things in the character of a reckless scamp, and to refuse moderate attention to the many good points about a weak, narrow-minded, and uncharitable good person. I ask for charity in the estimating of all human characters,--even in estimating the character of the man who would show no charity to another. I confess freely that in the last-named case the exercise of charity is extremely difficult.