Poor King David! What would
the local Vigilance Society have had to say to him?
Noah, according to our plan, would be denounced from every teetotal
platform in the country, and Ham would head the Local Vestry poll as
a reward for having exposed him. And St. Peter! weak, frail St.
Peter, how lucky for him that his fellow-disciples and their Master
were not as strict in their notions of virtue as are we to-day.
Have we not forgotten the meaning of the word "virtue"? Once it
stood for the good that was in a man, irrespective of the evil that
might lie there also, as tares among the wheat. We have abolished
virtue, and for it substituted virtues. Not the hero--he was too
full of faults--but the blameless valet; not the man who does any
good, but the man who has not been found out in any evil, is our
modern ideal. The most virtuous thing in nature, according to this
new theory, should be the oyster. He is always at home, and always
sober. He is not noisy. He gives no trouble to the police. I
cannot think of a single one of the Ten Commandments that he ever
breaks. He never enjoys himself, and he never, so long as he lives,
gives a moment's pleasure to any other living thing.
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