Major D’Orville is one of the locusts swarming the lady in General Bounce: The Lady and the Locusts (see “General Bounce 1”). He’s at times the most dangerous of the several suitors of the two young ladies at the center of the novel. Dangerous not only because he is the biggest and burliest of the lot, but also because he doesn’t often know his own mind.
The major gets knocked around, and not just by the ladies, he beats up some people, has some of the horrible experiences that soldiers have, and ends up somewhat at loose ends. He starts thinking about Jesus, and he does so in a manner appropriate for a soldier and for a character in a story from before the decline of sentimentalism (and you’ll have to pay attention to the old use of capitals to distinguish pronouns for God or Jesus from pronouns for the rest of us):
One by one, thoughts came back to him that had lain dormant for more than thirty years; one by one he recalled the miraculous facts, the touching sufferings that had awed his boyish imagination and moved his boyish heart. For the first time for more than thirty years, he thought as a reality of the Great Example who never quailed nor flinched, nor shrank one jot from His superhuman task. Did he admire courage? There was One who had faced the legions of hell, unaided and alone, with but human limbs and a human heart to support Him through the dread encounter. Did he admire constancy? There was One who voluntarily endured the obloquy of the world, the agonies of the most painful death, and moved not an eyelash in complaint or reproach. Did he admire self-denial—that most heroic of all heroism? What had that One given up to walk afoot through this miserable world, with such a prospect as the close of His earthly career!—and for whom?—even for him amongst the rest . . .
There’s quite a bit of 19th-century soldierly “honor” in this conception of Jesus, along with ample opportunity for theological quibbling, but one could hardly imagine a Major D’Orville getting at Jesus by any other route. We can leave till later the lesson about what Jesus had to say about honor.
Jesus was sinless (Hebrews 4:15; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 John 3:5). “Sinless” is an adjective of absence: it says not what or who Jesus was but what he wasn’t. We can understand Jesus better by saying he is one who completed his mission (see my post “Sinless”), and, in expressing this, Major D’Orville’s language of military heroism is right on target.
- George John Whyte-Melville, General Bounce; Or, The Lady and the Locusts (1854). The quotation is from chapter 20 (of 27).
The One Story 