Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/164

 the unique spectacle of a modern city in which this principle was discussed as though it were something newly discovered. Some seemed to think that Jones had invented it; they said it was absurd, that it really would not work. Of course most regarded it, as most now regard the Golden Rule, as a pretty sentiment merely, something for the children in Sunday-school. It is considered, of course, as any sophisticated person knows, as altogether impractical, and even silly and absurd.

To be sure, the clergymen were under some sort of professional necessity of treating it seriously, and they used to prepare profound papers, arranged in heads and subheads, with titles and subtitles, and after all the usual ostentatious preliminary examination of the grounds and the authorities, and with the appearance of academic fairness, in discussions that were formal, exact, redolent of the oil, bearing the hallmark of the schools, they would show that Jesus meant there were only certain exigencies in which, and certain persons to whom, this rule was to be applied. It was all very learned and impressive, but one was apt to develop a disturbing doubt as to whether one was of those to whom it was to be applied. It was certainly not to be applied to criminals, or perhaps even to politicians. It was not to be applied to poor people, or to the working people, unless they were in Sunday-school as conscious inferiors, in devout and penitent attitudes. And as these people were so seldom in church or Sunday-school, and as those who were there apparently needed no such consideration, these discourses