as,
men in whom moral maxims appear organized as moral might. There are
thousands who are prodigal of moral and benevolent opinions, and
honestly eloquent in loud professions of what they would do in case
circumstances called upon them to act; but when the occasion is suddenly
thrust upon them, when temptation, leering into every corner and crevice
of their weak and selfish natures, connects the notion of virtue with
the reality of sacrifice, then, in that sharp pinch, they become
suddenly apprised of the difference between rhetoric and rectitude, and
find that their speeches have been far ahead of their powers of
performance. Thus, in one of Gerald Griffin's novels, there is a scene
in which a young Irish student, fresh from his scholastic ethics, amazes
the company at his father's table, who are all devout believers in the
virtues of the hair-trigger, by an eloquent declamation against the
folly and the sin of duelling. At last one of the set gets sufficient
breath to call him a coward. The hot Irish blood is up in an instant, a
tumbler is thrown at the head of the doubter of his courage, and in ten
seconds the young moralist is crossing swords with his antagonist in a
duel.

But the characteristic of moral grit is equality with the occasions
which exact its exercise. It is morality with thews and sinews and blood
and passions,--morality made man, and eager to put its phrases to the
test of action. It gives and takes hard blows,--aims not only to be
upright in deed, but downright in word,--silences with a "Thus saith the
Lord" all palliations of convenient sins,--scowls ominously at every
attempt to reconcile the old feud between the right and the expedient
and make them socially shake hands,--and when cant taints the air,
clears it with good wholesome rage and execration. On the virtues of
this stubborn conscientiousness it is needless to dilate; its
limitations spring from its tendency to disconnect morality from mercy,
and law from love,--its too frequent substitution of moral antipathies
for moral insight,--and its habit of describing individual men, not as
they are in themselves, but as they appear to its offended conscience.
Understanding sin better than it understands sinners, it sometimes
sketches phantoms rather than paints portraits,--identifies the weakly
wicked with the extreme of Satanic wickedness,--and in its assaults,
pitches _at_ its adversaries rather than really pitches _into_ them.
But, in a large