While Elijah stood upon the mount before the Lord, there arose a great
and strong wind that rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks;
but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but
the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but
the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
We are not told that the Lord was not in the still small voice. We find
that He was. And with that voice He addressed Elijah, reasoned with him,
admonished, sustained, and directed him. May it not be said, in applying
and adapting the narrative, which things are an allegory? The import of
the narrative sublimely anticipates the homely fable of sun and wind.
Wind, earthquake, and fire, are mighty agents; but they may pass by
without tangible result as regards real influence on the spirit of man;
whereas the gentle influence of a still small voice speaks home to it at
once, and it responds to the strain, and is subdued by the spell.
The drift of the present annotations, in their applied sense, finds
expression in Ben Jonson’s reminder:
“There is
A way of working more by love than fear:
Fear works on servile natures, not the free.”
In Landor’s Parable of Asabel, the angel’s gentleness wrought upon that
turbulent, refractory spirit, “even as the quiet and silent water wins
itself an entrance where tempest and fire pass over.” It is written that
other angels did look up with loving and admiration into the visage
of this angel on his return; and he told the younger and more zealous
of them, that whenever they would descend into the gloomy vortex of
the human heart, under the softness and serenity of their voice and
countenance its turbulence would subside.
Plutarch tells us of Fabius Maximus, that he thought it hard that, while
those who breed dogs and horses soften their stubborn tempers, and bring
down their fierce spirits by care and kindness, rather than with whips
and chains, he who has the command of men should not endeavour to correct
their errors by gentleness and goodness, but treat them in even a harsher
and more violent manner than gardeners do the wild fig-trees, pears, and
olives, whose nature they subdue by cultivation, and which by that means
they bring to produce very agreeable fruit.[5]
We read of the distinguished Spanish author and statesman, Fermin
Caballero, that while under the care of a kind and judicious instructor,
he, as a boy, made rapid advance in the study of classical literature;
but that on being removed from this tutor, and subjected to harsh and
grinding discipline, he lapsed into idleness and obstinacy beyond all
control. Not the least wise of the maxims to be culled from the pages
of Terence is that in which _satius esse credit Pudore et liberalitate
liberos retinere, quam metu_. Southey insists that no man was ever more
thoroughly ignorant of the nature of children than John Wesley, as when
he enjoins: “Let a child from a year old be taught to fear the rod, and
to cry softly; from that age make him do as he is bid, if you whip him
ten times running to effect it.” If Wesley had been a father himself,
urges that tenderest of fathers, Robert the Rhymer, “he would have known
that children are more easily governed by love than by fear.” And as
with children, so with men, who are but children of a larger growth; and
especially so with women, if we may take the word of one of Shakspeare’s
most winsome women for it:
“You may ride us
With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs, ere
With spur we heat an acre.”
So with Landor’s Filippa, on whom harsh treatment and compulsory measures
are simply thrown away:
“Rudeness can neither move nor discompose her:
A word, a look, of kindness, instantly
Opens her heart and brings her cheek upon you.”
And as with men and women, so with peoples, who are made up of men and
women. And yet, although, as the author of the “Wealth of Nations”
expresses it, management and persuasion are always the easiest and safest
instruments of government, as force and violence are the worst and most
dangerous; such, it seems, is the natural insolence of man, that he
almost always disdains to use the good instrument, except when he cannot
or dare not use the bad one. Not that nations are without diversities
of character, and so of susceptibility to diverse modes of government.
Gibbon apologises, as it were, for Diocletian’s utter destruction of
those proud cities, Busiris and Coptos, and for his severe treatment
of Egypt in general, by the remark, that the character of the Egyptian
nation, insensible to kindness, but extremely susceptible to fear, could
alone justify this excessive rigour. The tone is that of the courtier
Crispe, to Phocas, in Corneille’s “Heraclius:”
“Il faut agir de force avec de tels esprits ...
La violence est juste où la douceur est vaine.”
And Coke maintains that if they are the best whom love induces, they are
the most whom fear restrains: _Si meliores sunt quos ducit amor, plures
sunt quos corrigit timor_. La Fontaine’s fable of the fishes and the
flute-playing shepherd, intimates the sheer futility of wasting sweet
sounds on ears not to be so caught. There are men, sententiously quoth
Dr. Tempest, in the “Last Chronicle of Barset,” who are deaf as adders to
courtesy, but who are compelled to obedience at once by ill-usage.
Educationists must provide for the contingency of having to deal with
abnormal natures of this crabbed and distorted kind. But as exceptions
only. The Jesuits are confessedly masters of the arts of education; and
the rule of the Jesuits is to lead not to drive, their pupils; to allure
and win, not to coerce and constrain them. Winsome womankind is mistress
of the like arts. Those of the sex who _are_ winsome, it has been
said, with their plastic manners and non-aggressive force, always have
their own way in the end. “They coax and flatter for their rights, and
consequently they are given privileges in excess of their rights; whereas
the women who take their rights, as things to which they are entitled
without favour, lose them and their privileges together.” Kitely’s advice
is good, in “Every Man in his Humour,” and of general application:
“But rather use the soft persuading way,
Whose powers will work more gently, and compose
The imperfect thoughts you labour to reclaim;
More winning, than enforcing the consent.”
The first bishop sent from Iona for the Northumbrian Church was Corman,
a man described by Dean Milman as of austere and inflexible character,
who, finding more resistance than he expected to his doctrines, in a full
assembly of the nation sternly reproached the Northumbrians for their
obstinacy, and declared that he would no longer waste his labours on so
irreclaimable a race. A gentle voice was heard: “Brother, have you not
been too harsh with your unlearned hearers? Should you not, like the
apostles, have fed them with the milk of Christian doctrine, till they
could receive the full feast of our sublimer truths?” All eyes, it is
added, were turned on Aidan, a humble but devout monk; and by general
acclamation that discreet and gentle teacher was saluted as bishop. The
same historian describes Aldhelm of Malmesbury, in minstrel’s garb,
arresting the careless crowd of church-goers on a bridge they must pass,
and having fully enthralled their attention by the sweetness of his
song, anon introducing into it some of the solemn truths of religion;
thus succeeding in winning to the faith many hearts, which he would have
attempted in vain to move by severer language, or even by the awful
excommunication of the Church.[6] When Fénélon was intrusted by Lewis
the Fourteenth with a mission to Poitou, to convert the Protestants,
he refused the aid of dragoons, and resorted to suavity of persuasion
alone as an instrument of conversion. Of the Protestant missions in the
west of Ireland, complaint has been made of their being conducted too
offensively, like raids upon heathendom: the Romanist, who might possibly
open his bosom to the warm rays of charity, only folds the cloak of his
hereditary faith more closely round him, when assailed by the bitter
wind of a propagandism which seeks its way to the heart by violence and
insult.[7]
It is at once, on the one part pleasant, on the other painful, to find
the Lord Treasurer Burleigh, who had ever been the fast friend of
Whitgift, frequently expressing his disapprobation of the primate’s
severity against non-conformists, and his wish “that the spirit
of gentleness might win, rather than severity.” And being here on
Elizabethan ground, let us note Mr. Froude’s reference to the diverse
procedure of Cecil and Throgmorton in their several dealings with the
queen,—she being one of the many strong-willed people, on whom menaces
and reproaches operate only as a spur. Cecil understood best Elizabeth’s
disposition. “By ‘practices,’ by ‘bye-ways,’ as he afterwards described
it, by affecting to humour what he was passionately anxious to prevent,
he was holding his mistress under delicate control; and he dreaded
lest his light leading-strings should be broken by a ruder touch.” As
with the queen, so with her people. When Catherine de Medici expressed
astonishment to Sir Thomas Smith, at a certain deference paid by his
sovereign to the nation she ruled, “Madam,” he replied, “her people be
not like your people; they must be trained by _douceur_ and persuasion,
not by rigour and violence.” The greatest of Russian empresses emulated
in this respect the greatest of English queens. Indeed, her tendency
to indulgence was imputed to Catharine II. as a fault, advantage being
taken of her constant reluctance to punish. But how far greater things
did she, on the whole, achieve with her subjects, exclaims Mr. Herman
Merivale, “thus gently led, than those of her predecessors and successors
who employed on them in such abundance the more forcible methods of
government!”
Mr. Freeman, in the course of showing that Harold’s way of bringing in
the proud Danes of the North to his obedience was not exactly the same as
William’s way, describes him as determining, with that noble and generous
daring which is sometimes the highest prudence, to trust himself in the
hands of the people who refused to acknowledge him. “These his enemies,
who would not that he should reign over them, instead of being brought
and slain before him, were to be won over by the magic of his personal
presence in their own land.” To apply what the Gaulish ambassador says of
a great Roman in Jonson’s tragedy,
“This magistrate hath struck an awe into me,
And by his sweetness won a more regard
Unto his place, than all the boisterous moods
That ignorant greatness practiseth, to fill
The large, unfit authority it wears.”
The Antwerp authorities had reason and experience on their side when they
sought to persuade the Prince of Parma, in 1585, that the hearts of, not
the Antwerpers only, but of the Hollanders and Zealanders, were easily
to be won at that moment: give them religious liberty, and “govern them
by gentleness rather than by Spanish grandees,” and a reconciliation
would speedily be ensured. Two years later, but then two years too
late, we find the prince averring that he liked “to proceed rather by
the ways of love than of rigour and effusion of blood.” This was in
answer to Queen Elizabeth, who, at a previous juncture, angrily derided
any “slight and mild kind of dealing with a people so ingrate,” and
was all for corrosives instead of lenitives for such festering wounds.
Rulers, who fail to secure what they wish by gentle means, are apt very
soon to resort to the less excellent way; like Chilperic, the “Nero of
France,” coaxing the Jew Priscus to turn Christian; first employing
argument, then trying blandishments, and anon taking to more powerful
reasoning by throwing the Jew into prison. Tytler remarks of the “violent
instructions” enforced by Henry VIII. on his envoy to James V., that had
the overbearing Tudor adopted a suaver tone, a favourable impression
might have been made; but the King o’ Scots was “not to be threatened
into a compliance with a line of policy which, if suggested in a tone of
conciliation, his judgment might have approved,” and his unwounded sense
of self-respect have consented to carry into effect.
Simon the glover, in Scott’s story of mediæval Perth, is well described
as watchful over the tactics his daughter employs towards Henry Smith,
“whom he knew to be as ductile, when influenced by his affections, as
he was fierce and intractable when assailed by hostile remonstrances
or threats.” _Par un chemin plus doux_, says a shrewd counsellor in
Racine, _vous pourrez le ramener_; whereas _les menaces le rendront plus
farouche_. Archbishop Whately deprecates the bullying and browbeating
system in vogue with certain barristers, and declares it to be a mistake
as a means of eliciting truth: he cites his own observation of the
marked success of the opposite mode of questioning, and maintains that,
generally speaking, a quiet, gentle, and straightforward examination
will be the most adapted to elicit truth; the browbeating and blustering
which are likeliest to confuse an honest, simple-minded witness, being
just what the dishonest one is the best prepared for. “The more the storm
blusters, the more carefully he wraps round him the cloak which a warm
sunshine will often induce him to throw off.”
We are told of Dr. Beattie, in his relations as a professor with his
class, that his sway was absolute, because it was founded in reason
and affection; that he never employed a harsh epithet in finding fault
with any of his pupils; and that when, instead of a rebuke, which they
were conscious they deserved, they met merely with a mild reproof, it
was conveyed in such a manner as to throw, not only the delinquent, but
sometimes the whole class into tears. Fielding’s boy-hero is at once in
tears when the kind squire takes him in hand, instead of the harsh tutor;
his “guilt now flew in his face more than any severity could make it.
He could more easily bear the lashes of Thwackum than the generosity of
Allworthy.” Mrs. Fry used to bear eager record of the docility she had
found, and the gratitude she had experienced, from female prisoners,
though the most abandoned of their sex: kind treatment, even with
restraint obviously for their good, was so new to them, that it called
forth, as Sir Samuel Romilly says, “even in the most depraved, grateful
and generous feelings.” True to the life is the picture Mr. Reade has
drawn of the effect on the actress, of a young wife coming to her as a
supplicant, instead of inveighing against her,—coming with faith in her
goodness, and sobbing to her for pity: “a big tear rolled down her cheek,
and proved her something more than an actress.” In another of his books
he illustrates the truth that men can resist the remonstrances that wound
them, and so irritate them, better than they can those gentle appeals
which rouse no anger, but soften the whole heart. “The old people stung
him; but Mercy, without design, took a surer way. She never said a word;
but sometimes, when the discussions were at their height, she turned
her dove-like eyes on him, with a look so loving, so humbly inquiring,
so timidly imploring, that his heart melted within him.” So with Janet
Dempster, in George Eliot’s story of clerical life, who “was not to
be made meek by cruelty; she would repent of nothing in the face of
injustice, though she was subdued in a moment by a word or a look that
recalled the old days of fondness.” In fine, we may conclude with the
conclusion of old Master Knowell, in the Elizabethan play:
“There is a way of winning more by love,
And urging of the modesty, than fear:
Force works on servile natures, not the free.
He that’s compelled to goodness, may be good,
But ’tis but for that fit; where others, drawn
By softness and example, get a habit.”
_HAMAN HANGED ON HIS OWN GALLOWS._