The Quakers have a proverb in England
that a family carriage never drives for two generations past the parish
church door. Of which state of matters Shame showed himself a shrewd
prophet two hundred years ago when he said that but few of the rich and
the mighty and the wise remained long of Faithful's Puritan opinion
unless they were first persuaded to be fools, and to be of a voluntary
fondness to venture the loss of all.
And I will tell you two other things, said sharp-sighted and plain-spoken
Shame, that your present religion will compel you to do if you adhere to
it. It will compel you from time to time to ask your neighbour's
forgiveness even for petty faults, and it will insist with you that you
make restitution when you have done the weak and the friendless any hurt
or any wrong. And every manly mind will tell you that life is not worth
having on such humbling terms as those are. Whatever may be thought
about Shame in other respects, it cannot be denied that he had a sharp
eye for the facts of life, and a shrewd tongue in setting those facts
forth.
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