While the moving principle
of a gentleman is self-respect, that of a Christian is humility. The
first is ready to lay down his life in order to wipe away an
imaginary dishonor, or to take the life of another; the last is
taught to turn the other cheek, when smitten. In a word, the first
keeps the world, its opinions and its estimation, ever uppermost in
his thoughts; the last lives only to reverence God, and to conform
to his will, in obedience to his revealed mandates. Certainly, there
is that which is both grateful and useful in the refined deportment
of one whose mind and manners have been polished even in the schools
of the world; but it is degrading to the profoundly beautiful
submission of the truly Christian temper, to imagine that anything
like a moral parallel can justly be run between them.
Of course, Peter had none of the qualities of him who sees and feels
his own defects, and relies only on the merits of the atonement for
his place among the children of light, while he had so many of those
qualities which depend on the estimate which man is so apt to place
on his own merits. In this last sense, this Indian had a great many
of the essentials of a gentleman; a lofty courtesy presiding over
all his intercourse with others, when passion or policy did not
thrust in new and sudden principles of action.
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