Mr. G. W. Foote, which contained a phrase sharply symbolizing and
dividing these two methods. The pamphlet was called BEER AND BIBLE,
those two very noble things, all the nobler for a conjunction which
Mr. Foote, in his stern old Puritan way, seemed to think sardonic,
but which I confess to thinking appropriate and charming.
I have not the work by me, but I remember that Mr. Foote dismissed
very contemptuously any attempts to deal with the problem
of strong drink by religious offices or intercessions, and said
that a picture of a drunkard's liver would be more efficacious
in the matter of temperance than any prayer or praise.
In that picturesque expression, it seems to me, is perfectly
embodied the incurable morbidity of modern ethics.
In that temple the lights are low, the crowds kneel, the solemn
anthems are uplifted. But that upon the altar to which all men
kneel is no longer the perfect flesh, the body and substance
of the perfect man; it is still flesh, but it is diseased.
It is the drunkard's liver of the New Testament that is marred
for us, which which we take in remembrance of him.

Now, it is this great gap in modern ethics, the absence of vivid
pictures of purity and spiritual triumph, which lies at the back
of the real objection felt by so many sane men to the realistic
literature of the nineteenth century. If any ordinary man ever
said that he was horrified by the subjects discussed in Ibsen
or Maupassant, or by the plain language in which they are spoken of,
that ordinary man was lying. The average conversation of average
men throughout the whole of modern civilization in every class
or trade is such as Zola would never dream of printing.
Nor is the habit of writing thus of these things a new habit.
On the contrary, it is the Victorian prudery and silence which is