And, then, we
feel no shame at all at the most dishonourable things, and that simply
because the men around us are too coarse in their morals and too dull in
their sensibilities to see any shame in such things. And thus it comes
about that, in the very best of men, their still perverted sense of shame
remains in them a constant snare and a source of temptation. A man of a
fine nature feels keenly the temptation to shrink from those paths of
truth and duty that expose him to the cruel judgments and the coarse and
scandalising attacks of public and private enemies. It was in the Valley
of Humiliation that Shame set upon Faithful, and it is a real humiliation
to any man of anything of this pilgrim's fine character and feeling to be
attacked, scoffed at, and held up to blame and opprobrium. And the finer
and the more affectionate any man's heart and character are, the more he
feels and shrinks from the coarse treatment this world gives to those
whom it has its own reasons to hate and assail. They had the stocks and
the pillory and the shears in Bunyan's rude and uncivilised day, by means
of which many of the best men of that day were exposed to the insults and
brutalities of the mob.
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