in pretending, for the sake of the effort that it may produce, to the victim of some moral weakness, that he really has the power of conquering his fault.  He may say to himself, “Some people have the power of self-mastery, and it is better to assume that all have, because it tends to produce a greater effort than if one merely tries to console a moral weakling for his deficiencies.”  But this is a dangerous and casuistical path to tread.

It may be justified perhaps on the medical theory that if you tell a man he will get well, even if you consider him to be doomed, he is more likely to get well than if you tell him that you consider him to be doomed.  But it is surely wrong to display no more moral indignation in the case of a vigorous person who has perversely indulged some temptation which he might have resisted, than in the case of one who is hampered by inheritance with a violent predisposition to moral evil.  Even the most ardent moralist ought to be true to what he knows to be the truth.  The method of Christ seems here again to differ from the method of the Christian teacher.  Christ reserved his denunciations for the complacency of virtuous people.  We do not see him rebuking the sinner; his rebukes are rather heaped upon the righteous.  He seems to have had nothing but compassion for the sins that brought their own obvious punishment, and to have been indignant only with the sins that brought material prosperity with them.  He treated the outcast as his friend, the respectable as his enemy.  He seems to have held that sin at least taught people to make allowances, to forgive, to love, and that this was the nearest way to the Father’s heart.  Christ was very critical, and relentlessly exposed those of whom he disapproved, but he was never critical of weakness.

But, we may say, the moral principles which we have won with such difficulty will collapse and fail if we do not make a resolute stand against gross faults and strike at them wherever they show their heads.  It is true that we have not got on very fast, but may it not be that we have mistaken the right method?  Perhaps we should have got on faster still if we had reserved our indignation for the right things—­self-satisfaction, complacency, injustice, cruelty.  What we have done is to fight against the faults of the weak, against the faults of which no defence is possible, rather than against the faults of the strong, who can resent and revenge themselves for our criticism.  Christ himself seems not to have been afraid of the sins of the flesh, but to have shown his severity rather against the sins of the world.  Would it be rash to follow his example?  We can all see the havoc wrought by impurity and intemperance, and there are plenty of rich respectable people, chaste and moderate by instinct, who are ready to join in what are called crusades against them.  But as long as sins do not menace health or prosperity or comfort, we easily and glibly condone them.  As long as Christian teachers pursue wealth and preferment, indulge ambition, seek the society of the respectable, practise pharisaical virtues, we are not likely to draw much nearer to the ideals of Christ.