e. The
warriors of the Middle Ages hoped that they might be able to serve
God in the world, even in the battle-field. At least, the world and
the battle-field they would not relinquish, but make the best of
them. And among them arose a new and a very fair ideal of manhood:
that of the 'gentle, very perfect knight,' loyal to his king and to
his God, bound to defend the weak, succour the oppressed, and put
down the wrong-doer; with his lady, or bread-giver, dealing forth
bounteously the goods of this life to all who needed; occupied in
the seven works of mercy, yet living in the world, and in the
perfect enjoyment of wedded and family life. This was the ideal.
Of course sinful human nature fell short of it, and defaced it by
absurdities; but I do not hesitate to say that it was a higher ideal
of Christian excellence than had appeared since the time of the
Apostles, putting aside the quite exceptional ideal of the blessed
martyrs.

A higher ideal, I say, was chivalry, with all its shortcomings. And
for this reason: that it asserted the possibility of consecrating
the whole manhood, and not merely a few faculties thereof, to God;
and it thus contained the first germ of that Protestantism which
conquered at the Reformation.

Then was asserted, once for all, on the grounds of nature and
reason, as well as of Holy Scripture, the absolute sanctity of
family and national life, and the correlative idea, namely, the
consecration of the whole of human nature to the service of God, in
that station to which God had called each man. Then the Old
Testament, with the honour which it puts upon family and national
life, became precious to man, as it had never been before; and such
a history as David's became, not as it was with the mediaeval monks,
a mere repertory of fanciful metaphors and allegories, but the
solemn example, for good and for evil, of a man of like passions and
like duties with the men of the modern world.

These great truths, once asserted, could not but conquer; and they
will conquer to the end. All attempts to restore the monastic and
feminine ideal, like that of good Nicholas Ferrar at Little Gidding,
failed. They withered like hot-house exotics in the free, keen,
bracing English air; and in our civil wars, Cavalier and Puritan, in
whatever they differed, never differed in their sound and healthy
conviction that true religion did not crush, but strengthened and
consecrated a valiant and noble manhood.