SENTIMENTALISM.

[Reprinted from The Christian World Pulpit, January 10th, 1877.]

SENTIMENTALISM may be described as a lop-sided development of human nature, in the direction of mere taste, fancy, or feeling. It is not to be defined. as an absolute excess of sentiment. It is rather sentiment not duly balanced or bridled. Even an ounce-weight, placed in one scale, will make the other scale "kick the beam," if there be nothing in it. A single horse will sometimes run away with an inefficient driver, when another driver will hold two, or even three horses in check. And often a sentimental person has really far less feeling than another whose nature is more uniformly cultured and more thoroughly disciplined. Indeed, as a rule, the sentimentalist is rather shallow and superficial, even in the region of emotion. His feelings may be more quick and lively, but they are not so deep and far-reaching. It is not that he has necessarily more sensibility, but he has less self-control. When the intellect is undisciplined, the conscience undeveloped, and the will weak, then sentiment, not being duly balanced, is apt to become sentimentalism. There is a relative-although not an absolute overplus of feeling in the nature. Emotion

comes to be cultivated for its own sake, just for the luxury of indulging it. An exaggerated value is attached to impulse as a guide of conduct. And this sentimentalism in fancy and feeling leads naturally to sentimentalism in word and action. There is apt to come in also an unhealthy self-consciousness, which is not unlikely to produce a kind of affectation. So that a sentimental person may sometimes be found in a moral attitude more graceful than genuine, or making speeches more gushing than sincere.

Now, this tendency to insincerity is one of the dangers of sentimentalism. When even virtue comes to be looked at merely on the side on which it appeals to the taste or the emotions-when its sterner aspects are disregarded-there arises the temptation to say not what we feel, but what we imagine it would be becoming to feel, and to turn our conduct into a kind of dramatic action which is to produce a certain effect on the feelings of the spectators. The endeavour comes to be to make of our conduct a moral picture, and not simply to live a true and good life. Thus words of sympathy are spoken, not so much out of real feeling for the sufferers, as because it is such a pleasant thing to be a comforter; and help is given to those who are in distress, not so much because of any anxiety to relieve them, as because benevolence is such a beautiful and becoming virtue !

But, even when there is no such insincerity or affectation, sentimentalism has still its dangers. It often inflicts injury on others through its incapacity to brace itself to necessary but unpleasant action. You would not admire a surgeon who should prefer

to let his patient die rather than inflict the pain necessary to save life. Yet there are some who would allow society to be cursed by scoundrelism and savagery rather than inflict the needful punishment on our criminals. There are those, too, who can scarcely pass a beggar on the street without giving alms, and who are so quickly moved by any tale of distress, that in order to relieve their own feelings, or to get rid of a disagreeable importunity, they will put their hand into their purse. It would probably be a far truer kindness to say "No"; the chances are that, by this indiscriminate almsgiving, they are only nourishing imposture, idleness, and debauchery; but they cannot give themselves the trouble of investigation or the pain of refusal, and they do not like to figure, even in their own eyes, as apparently hard-hearted. Turning away from a beggar does not make a pretty picture! They forget that, if they really wish to be benevolent, there are many cases of genuine distress which they might search out and relieve; but all this sorrow which is "out of sight" is "out of mind"; whereas the seeming trouble, which proclaims itself aloud, touches their susceptible feelings. Thus the sentimentalist becomes the natural prey of the impostor, and really injures the parasite that feeds on him. Then, again, there are parents who, in their selfish fondness for their children, shrink from subjecting them to salutary discipline. The "little pet" must have everything he cries for! Why, he will scream, and stamp, and kick if he is crossed; and a screaming and kicking child does not make a pretty picture! If the "little darling" is to look like an angel, he must be kept

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pleased! And so self-will, and bad temper, and greediness, and insolence to servants are allowed to go on unchecked; and the poor child, it may be, grows up to make himself and others miserable-the pampered and selfish victim of a sentimental nur

ture.

But not only is sentimentalism dangerous through the injury which it thus inflicts by pampering, flattering, and corrupting others; it is also dangerous to the sentimentalist himself. The man whose sensibilities are keen, and yet unbalanced, is specially open to incursions of temptation on the sensuous side of his nature. His moral fibre is relaxed. He allows his feelings to over-ride his judgment. He loses power of rebuke, remonstrance, moral indignation. He yields goodnaturedly to others at times when he ought rather to assert himself. All this is dangerous. When a ship is crowded with sail, and will not answer to her helm, her condition may be most perilous. And have you not known young men of lively emotions-genial, pleasant, and kindly, but deficient in common-sense and moral sense-whose excitable temperament has driven them on the rocks? Perhaps, however, the danger here is greater for women than for men, because in a man's life there are more generally other interests, lying outside the range of emotion, which tend to balance the sensibilities. But take the case of a girl of susceptible temperament, with perhaps a constitutional tendency to hysteria. Let this girl be constantly reading trashy novels, full of romantic incidents and sentimental conversations; and to this let there be added late hours, exciting dances, and stimulating wines, and verily you are laying a train of gunpowder that is

I enter into no whole

only too ready for the match! sale denunciation of novels, or dancing, or wine; but I say, Let us take care what we are about in the education of our daughters. All this heightening of the sensibilities-this one-sided cultivation of the emotional nature so that ordinary life comes to look dull and prosaic, and there is engendered a longing for romantic episodes, and a picturing of pleasant and pretty situations—all this is full of peril. At the least, it is apt to beget a sentimental neglect of those "proprieties which are often as the floating beacons that indicate the sunken rocks. Sometimes it leads to a selfindulgent flirting which inflicts cruelty on another heart and life. Sometimes, on the other hand, a sentimental ideal-unbalanced by conscience-will lead even to immoral self-sacrifice. And a young woman, who begins with a morbid longing to figure as the heroine of a pleasant romance, may end by turning her life into a veritable and painful tragedy!

Then again, in the religious life sentimentalism is also fraught with danger. It is true, indeed, that religion without emotion-without the thrill of awe, the throb of gratitude, the yearning of aspiration, or the glow of tenderness-is a poor, empty thing. But, on the other hand, when religion is viewed as consisting altogether in certain frames of mind or states of feeling, when it is separated from practical life, or when religious emotion comes to be cultivated for the mere luxury of indulging it, then there is danger. To value religion merely for its beauty and pleasantness, merely for the appeal which it makes to the taste or the imagination, is not the way to become 'strong in the Lord and in the power of His might."