That a
Becky Sharp and a Beatrix Castlewood are drawn with the consummate skill
and force of the most perfect artist in his own special sphere our age
has produced, few will be disposed to deny: and that they have momentous
lessons to teach us all,--that they may by sheer antagonism rouse some
from dreams of selfish vanity and corruption, and awaken within some germ
of better and purer elements of life,--will scarcely be disputed. But it
is not from these, or such as these, that the highest and noblest, the
purest and most penetrative, the most extended and enduring teaching and
elevation of the world has come. That has come emphatically from Him
whose self-chosen name, "the Son of Man," designates Him the ideal of
humanity on earth; Him who is at once the "Lamb of God" and "the Lion of
the tribe of Judah," the "Good Shepherd," and the stern and fearless but
ever-righteous Judge--the concentration of all tender and holy love, and
of divinest scorn of, and revulsion from, everything mean and false in
humanity; Him who for the repentant sinner has no harsher word of rebuke
than "Go and sin no more," and who over the self-righteous, self-wrapt,
all-despising Pharisees thundered back, to His own ultimate destruction,
His terrible "Woe unto you _hypocrites_.
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