The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— <strong>The</strong> <strong>Death</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Christian</strong> <strong>Britain</strong> —<br />
As to drums and flags, we should never think <strong>of</strong> encouraging these<br />
as toys for our children lest we should excite in their minds a warlike,<br />
and consequently a wicked spirit. ... We will try to prepare them,<br />
not to be generals in the field, but heroes in the moral world. 25<br />
Boys had to suppress their masculinity to be good <strong>Christian</strong>s: ‘Now, why<br />
is it you boys are always ashamed <strong>of</strong> your best side – anxious to be thought<br />
gruff and hard-hearted? I fancy it is because you dread all things to be<br />
called unmanly – “s<strong>of</strong>t”.’ <strong>The</strong>ir mothers were the source <strong>of</strong>, and should<br />
remain the constant inspiration for, their true religion:<br />
You will stand by her open grave in the churchyard, and you will<br />
weep – for men and boys shed tears – ay! – hot tears over their<br />
mothers’ graves, and there will come back to your memory all the<br />
kindly things she did for you, and all the good words she said to<br />
you, and all the tears she shed for you, and the sacrifices <strong>of</strong> pleasure<br />
she made for you, until the thought <strong>of</strong> it all swells your heart to<br />
bursting. Yes, one day you will remember! . . . Never get too big, or<br />
too busy, or too manly for mother’s love and mother’s counsel. 26<br />
Adult men were constantly challenged in religious discourse about their<br />
masculinity. In 1878, the British Messenger mounted a series on ‘Are you<br />
a man?’<br />
My friend, are men – real, downright, genuine men – men that would<br />
meet God’s high purpose, plentiful now? Has our boasted civilization<br />
largely produced them? Do they congregate in our towns and<br />
great commercial cities? Have our political schemes and parties, even<br />
our numerous churches and chapels, evoked them? Is the crop really<br />
good? 27<br />
Even the men <strong>of</strong> ‘so-called <strong>Christian</strong> nations’ did not supply ‘what in God’s<br />
sight would be accounted a man’. Heaven’s definition was at variance with<br />
earth’s: ‘We are fully aware that according to men’s own ideas <strong>of</strong> themselves<br />
there are plenty <strong>of</strong> men, that they are to be numbered by the million,<br />
and no bad specimens <strong>of</strong> the race either’. But men defined manly qualities<br />
in physical terms: courage, muscular strength, brains, independence. <strong>The</strong>se<br />
were not God’s definitions: ‘to be a man, a true and real man, we must<br />
keep the “body in subjection,” put a rein upon the appetites, and a bridle<br />
on the passions. So far as anyone fails in this, he ceases to be a man, and<br />
takes level with the brutes.’ <strong>The</strong> ‘unclean person’, anyone who ‘lives after<br />
the flesh’, is not a man. Even intellect is not enough: ‘Is the drunkard, with<br />
brain soddened in strong drink, a man?’ 28 A true man has feminine qualities;<br />
he has sympathy and compassion for other men, is righteous, ‘has<br />
mastery over his lower self’, and has ‘the courage <strong>of</strong> the truth’. True men<br />
have been ‘a moral and spiritual power in the world’: Abraham, Paul,<br />
92