Preached for the Kirkdale Ragged Schools, Liverpool, 1870.
St Matt, xviii. 14. "It is not the will of your Father which is in
heaven, that one of these little ones should perish."
I am here to plead for the Kirkdale Industrial Ragged School, and Free
School-room Church. The great majority of children who attend this
school belong to the class of "street arabs," as they are now called; and
either already belong to, or are likely to sink into, the dangerous
classes--professional law-breakers, profligates, and barbarians. How
these children have been fed, civilized, christianized, taught trades and
domestic employments, and saved from ruin of body and soul, I leave to
you to read in the report. Let us take hold of these little ones at
once. They are now soft, plastic, mouldable; a tone will stir their
young souls to the very depths, a look will affect them for ever. But a
hardening process has commenced within them, and if they are not seized
at once, they will become harder than adamant; and then scalding tears,
and the most earnest trials, will be all but useless.
This report contains full and pleasant proof of the success of the
schools; but it contains also full proof of a fact which is anything but
pleasant--of the existence in Liverpool of a need for such an
institution. How is it that when a ragged school like this is opened, it
is filled at once: that it is enlarged year after year, and yet is
filled and filled again? Whence comes this large population of children
who are needy, if not destitute; and who are, or are in a fair way to
become, dangerous? And whence comes the population of parents whom these
children represent? How is it that in Liverpool, if I am rightly
informed, more than four hundred and fifty children were committed by the
magistrates last year for various offences; almost every one of whom, of
course, represents several more, brothers, sisters, companions, corrupted
by him, or corrupting him. You have your reformatories, your training
ships, like your Akbar, which I visited with deep satisfaction yesterday-
-institutions which are an honour to the town of Liverpool, at least to
many of its citizens. But how is it that they are ever needed? How is
it--and this, if correct, or only half correct, is a fact altogether
horrible--that there are now between ten and twelve thousand children in
Liverpool who attend no school--twelve thousand children in ignorance of
their duty to God and man, in training for that dangerous class, which
you have, it seems, contrived to create in this once small and quiet port
during a century of wonderful prosperity. And consider this, I beseech
you--how is it that the experiment of giving these children a fair
chance, when it is tried (as it has been in these schools) has succeeded?
I do not wonder, of course, that it has succeeded, for I know Who made
these children, and Who redeemed them, and Who cares for them more than
you or I, or their best friends, can care for them. But do you not see
that the very fact of their having improved, when they had a fair chance,
is proof positive that they had not had a fair chance before? How is
that, my friends?
And this leads me to ask you plainly--what do you consider to be your
duty toward those children; what is your duty toward those dangerous and
degraded classes, from which too many of them spring? You all know the
parable of the Good Samaritan. You all know how he found the poor
wounded Jew by the wayside; and for the mere sake of their common
humanity, simply because he was a man, though he would have scornfully
disclaimed the name of brother, bound up his wounds, set him on his own
beast, led him to an inn, and took care of him.
Is yours the duty which the good Samaritan felt?--the duty of mere
humanity? How is it your duty to deal, then, with these poor children?
That, and I think a little more. Let me say boldly, I think these
children have a deeper and a nearer claim on you; and that you must not
pride yourselves, here in Liverpool, on acting the good Samaritan, when
you help a ragged school. We do not read that the good Samaritan was a
merchant, on his march, at the head of his own caravan. We do not read
that the wounded man was one of his own servants, or a child of one of
his servants, who had been left behind, unable from weakness or weariness
to keep pace with the rest, and had dropped by the wayside, till the
vultures and the jackals should pick his bones. Neither do we read that
he was a general, at the head of an advancing army, and that the poor
sufferer was one of his own rank and file, crippled by wounds or by
disease, watching, as many a poor soldier does, his comrades march past
to victory, while he is left alone to die. Still less do we hear that
the sufferer was the child of some poor soldier's wife, or even of some
drunken camp-follower, who had lost her place on the baggage-waggon, and
trudged on with the child at her back, through dust and mire, till, in
despair, she dropped her little one, and left it to the mercies of the
God who gave it her.
In either case, that good Samaritan would have known what his duty was.
I trust that you will know, in like case, what your duty is. For is not
this, and none other, your relation to these children in your streets,
ragged, dirty, profligate, sinking and perishing, of whom our Lord has
said--"It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of
these little ones should perish?" It is not His will. I am sure that it
is not your will either. I believe that, with all my heart. I do not
blame you, or the people of Liverpool, nor the people of any city on
earth, in our present imperfect state of civilisation, for the existence
among them of brutal, ignorant, degraded, helpless people. It is no
one's fault, just because it is every one's fault--the fault of the
system. But it is not the will of God; and therefore the existence of
such an evil is proof patent and sufficient that we have not yet
discovered the whole will of God about this matter; that we have not yet
mastered the laws of true political economy, which (like all other
natural laws) are that will of God revealed in facts. Our processes are
hasty, imperfect, barbaric--and their result is vast and rapid
production: but also waste, refuse, in the shape of a dangerous class.
We know well how, in some manufactures, a certain amount of waste is
profitable--that it pays better to let certain substances run to refuse,
than to use every product of the manufacture; as in a steam mill, where
it pays better not to consume the whole fuel, to let the soot escape,
though every atom of soot is so much wasted fuel. So it is in our
present social system. It pays better, capital is accumulated more
rapidly, by wasting a certain amount of human life, human health, human
intellect, human morals, by producing and throwing away a regular
percentage of human soot--of that thinking, acting dirt, which lies
about, and, alas! breeds and perpetuates itself in foul alleys and low
public houses, and all dens and dark places of the earth.
But, as in the case of the manufactures, the Nemesis comes, swift and
sure. As the foul vapours of the mine and the manufactory destroy
vegetation and injure health, so does the Nemesis fall on the world of
man; so does that human soot, these human poison gases, infect the whole
society which has allowed them to fester under its feet.
Sad, but not hopeless! Dark, but not without a gleam of light on the
horizon! For I can conceive a time when, by improved chemical science,
every foul vapour which now escapes from the chimney of a manufactory,
polluting the air, destroying the vegetation, shall be seized, utilised,
converted into some profitable substance; till the black country shall be
black no longer, the streams once more crystal clear, the trees once more
luxuriant, and the desert which man has created in his haste and greed
shall, in literal fact, once more blossom as the rose. And just so can I
conceive a time when, by a higher civilisation, formed on a political
economy more truly scientific, because more truly according to the will
of God, our human refuse shall be utilised, like our material refuse,
when man, as man, even down to the weakest and most ignorant, shall be
found to be (as he really is) so valuable, that it will be worth while to
preserve his health, to develop his capabilities, to save him alive,
body, intellect, and character, at any cost; because men will see that a
man is, after all, the most precious and useful thing on the earth, and
that no cost spent on the development of human beings can possibly be
thrown away.
I appeal, then, to you, the commercial men of Liverpool, if there are any
such in this congregation. If not, I appeal to their wives and
daughters, who are kept in wealth, luxury, refinement, by the honourable
labours of their husbands, fathers, brothers, on behalf of this human
soot. Merchants are (and I believe that they deserve to be) the leaders
of the great caravan, which goes forth to replenish the earth and subdue
it. They are among the generals of the great army which wages war
against the brute powers of nature all over the world, to ward off
poverty and starvation from the ever-teeming millions of mankind. Have
they no time--I take for granted that they have the heart--to pick up the
footsore and weary, who have fallen out of the march, that they may
rejoin the caravan, and be of use once more? Have they no time--I am
sure they have the heart--to tend the wounded and the fever-stricken,
that they may rise and fight once more? If not, then must not the pace
of their march be somewhat too rapid, the plan of their campaign somewhat
precipitate and ill-directed, their ambulance train and their medical
arrangements somewhat defective? We are all ready enough to complain of
waste of human bodies, brought about by such defects in the British army.
Shall we pass over the waste, the hereditary waste of human souls,
brought about by similar defects in every great city in the world?
Waste of human souls, human intellects, human characters--waste, saddest
of all, of the image of God in little children. That cannot be
necessary. There must be a fault somewhere. It cannot be the will of
God that one little one should perish by commerce, or by manufacture, any
more than by slavery, or by war.
As surely as I believe that there is a God, so surely do I believe that
commerce is the ordinance of God; that the great army of producers and
distributors is God's army. But for that very reason I must believe that
the production of human refuse, the waste of human character, is not part
of God's plan; not according to His ideal of what our social state should
be; and therefore what our social state can be. For God asks no
impossibilities of any human being.
But as things are, one has only to go into the streets of this, or any
great city, to see how we, with all our boasted civilisation, are, as
yet, but one step removed from barbarism. Is that a hard word? Why,
there are the barbarians around us at every street corner! Grown
barbarians--it may be now all but past saving--but bringing into the
world young barbarians, whom we may yet save, for God wishes us to save
them. It is not the will of their Father which is in heaven that one of
them should perish. And for that very reason He has given them
capabilities, powers, instincts, by virtue of which they need not perish.
Do not deceive yourselves about the little dirty, offensive children in
the street. If they be offensive to you, they are not to Him who made
them. "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say
unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my
Father which is in heaven." Is there not in every one of them, as in
you, the Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world? And
know you not Who that Light is, and what He said of little children?
Then, take heed, I say, lest you despise one of these little ones.
Listen not to the Pharisee when he says, Except the little child be
converted, and become as I am, he shall in nowise enter into the kingdom
of heaven. But listen to the voice of Him who knew what was in man, when
He said, "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall
not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Their souls are like their
bodies, not perfect, but beautiful enough, and fresh enough, to shame any
one who shall dare to look down on them. Their souls are like their
bodies, hidden by the rags, foul with the dirt of what we miscall
civilisation. But take them to the pure stream, strip off the ugly,
shapeless rags, wash the young limbs again, and you shall find them, body
and soul, fresh and lithe, graceful and capable--capable of how much, God
alone who made them knows. Well said of such, the great Christian poet
of your northern hills--
"Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home."