There is grave danger of a revival of virtue in this country. There
are, I know, two kinds of virtue, and only one of them is a vice
Unfortunately, it is the latter a revival of which is threatened
to-day. This is the virtue of the virtuously indignant. It is virtue
that is not content merely to be virtuous to the glory of God. It has
no patience with the simple beauty and goodness of the saints. Virtue,
in the eyes of the virtuously indignant, is hardly worthy to be called
virtue unless it goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom it may
devour. Virtue, according to this view, is a detective, inquisitor,
and flagellator of the vices--especially of the vices that are so
unpopular that the mob may be easily persuaded to attack them. One of
the chief differences between the two kinds of virtue, I fancy, is
that while true virtue regards the mob-spirit as an enemy, simular
virtue (if we may adopt the Shakespearean phrase) looks to the mob as
its cousin and its ally. To be virtuous in the latter sense is
obviously as easy as hunting rats or cats. Virtue of this kind is
simply the eternal huntsman in man's breast with eyes aglint for a
victim. It is Mr Murdstone's virtue--the persecutor's virtue. It is
the virtue that warms the bosom of every man who is more furious with
his neighbour's sins than with his own. If virtue is merely an
inflammation against our neighbour's sins, what man on earth is so
mean as to be incapable of it? To be virtuous in this fashion is as
easy as lying. Those who abstain from it do so not out of lack of
heart, but from choice. We have read of the popularity of the
ducking-stool in former days for women taken in adultery. Savage mobs
may have thought that by putting their hearts into this amusement they
were making up to virtue for the long years of neglect to which, as
individuals, they had subjected her. They might not have been virtue's
lovers, but at least they could be virtue's bullies. After all, virtue