Amid the numberless exaggerations of the day, one of particular capacity has arisen connected with the supposed character of a gentleman.  Those who regard all things through the medium of religious feeling, are apt to insist that he who is a Christian, is necessarily a gentleman; while he can be no thorough gentleman, who has not most of the qualities of the Christian character.  This confusion in thought and language, can lead to no really useful result, while it embarrasses the minds of many, and renders the expression of our ideas less exact and comprehensive than they would otherwise be.

We conceive that a man may be very much of a Christian, and very little of a gentleman; or very much of a gentleman, and very little of a Christian.  There is, in short, not much in common between the two characters, though it is possible for them to become united in the same individual.  That the finished courtesies of polished life may wear some of the aspects of that benevolence which causes the Christian “to love his neighbor as himself,” is certainly true, though the motives of the parties are so very different as to destroy all real identity between them.  While the moving principle of a gentleman is self-respect, that of a Christian is humility.  The first is ready to lay down his life in order to wipe away an imaginary dishonor, or to take the life of another; the last is taught to turn the other cheek, when smitten.  In a word, the first keeps the world, its opinions and its estimation, ever uppermost in his thoughts; the last lives only to reverence God, and to conform to his will, in obedience to his revealed mandates.  Certainly, there is that which is both grateful and useful in the refined deportment of one whose mind and manners have been polished even in the schools of the world; but it is degrading to the profoundly beautiful submission of the truly Christian temper, to imagine that anything like a moral parallel can justly be run between them.

Of course, Peter had none of the qualities of him who sees and feels his own defects, and relies only on the merits of the atonement for his place among the children of light, while he had so many of those qualities which depend on the estimate which man is so apt to place on his own merits.  In this last sense, this Indian had a great many of the essentials of a gentleman; a lofty courtesy presiding over all his intercourse with others, when passion or policy did not thrust in new and sudden principles of action.  Even the missionary was so much struck with the gentleness of this mysterious savage’s deportment in connection with Margery, as at first to impute it to a growing desire to make a wife of that flower of the wilderness.  But closer observation induced greater justice to the Indian in this respect Nothing like the uneasiness, impatience, or distrust of passion could be discerned in his demeanor; and when Parson Amen perceived that the bee-hunter’s marked devotion to the beautiful Blossom rather excited a benevolent and kind interest in the feelings of Peter, so far at least as one could judge of the heart by external appearances, than anything that bore the fierce and uneasy impulses of jealousy, he was satisfied that his original impression was a mistake.