Chapel Royal, Whitehall, 1871.
Proverbs xxii. 2. "The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the
maker of them all."
I have been asked to preach here this afternoon on behalf of the
Parochial Mission Women's Fund. I may best describe the object for which
I plead, as an attempt to civilise and Christianise the women of the
lower classes in the poorer districts of London and other great towns, by
means of women of their own class--women, who have gone through the same
struggles as they have, and who will be trusted by them to understand and
to sympathize with their needs and difficulties. These mission women are
in communication with lady-superintendents in each ecclesiastical
district. These are, I understand, usually the wives of small tradesmen,
or of clerks. They, again, are in communication with ladies at the West
End of London, who are willing to give personal help and money for
certain objects, but not indiscriminate alms. And thus a series of links
is established between the most prosperous and the least prosperous
classes, by means of which the rich and the poor may meet together, and
learn--to the infinite benefit of both--that the Lord is the maker of
them all. Considering this excellent scheme, I could not help seeing as
a background to it, a very different and a far darker scene. I could not
help remembering that during these very days, the poorer classes of
another great city had taken up an attitude full of awful lessons to us,
and to every civilized country upon earth. We have been reading of a
hundred thousand armed men encamped in the suburbs of Belleville and
Montmartre, with cannon and mitrailleuses, uttering through their organs,
threats which leave no doubt that the meaning of this movement is--as
some of them boldly phrase it,--a war of the poor against the rich.
There is no mistaking what that means. This madness has been stopped for
the time, we are told, principally (as was to be expected), by the
superior common sense of their wives. But only, I fear, for a time.
Such men will go far, if not this time, then some other time. For they
believe what they say, and know what they want. They have done with
phrases, done with illusions. They are no longer deceived and hampered
by party cries against this and that grievance, real or imaginary, the
abolition of which the working classes demand so eagerly from time to
time, in the vain belief that if it were only got rid of the millennium
would be at hand. They have done long ago with remedial half-measures.
Landed aristocracy, Established Church, military classes, privileged
classes, restricted suffrage, and all the rest, have been abolished in
their country for two generations and more: but behold, the poor man
finds himself (or fancies himself, which is just as dangerous) no richer,
safer, happier after all, and begins to see a far simpler remedy for all
his ills. He has too little of this world's goods, while others have too
much. What more fair, more simple, than that he should take some of the
rich man's goods, and if he resists, kill him, crying, "Thou sayest, let
me eat and drink, for to-morrow I die. Then I too will eat and drink,
for to-morrow _I_ die?" And so will the rich and poor meet together with
a vengeance, simply because neither of them has learnt that the Lord is
the maker of them all.
This is a hideous conclusion. But it is one towards which the poor will
tend in every country in which the rich are merely rich, spending their
wealth in self-enjoyment, atoned for by a modicum of alms.
I said a modicum of alms. I ought to have said, any amount of alms, any
amount of charity. Throughout the great cities of Europe--in London as
much as anywhere--hundreds of thousands are saying, "We want no alms. We
intend to reconstitute society, even at the expense of blood, so that no
man, woman, or child, shall need the rich man's alms. We do not choose,
for it is not just, that he should take credit to himself for giving us a
shilling when he owes us a pound, ten, a hundred pounds--owes us, in
fact, all by which he and his class are richer than us and our class.
And we will make him pay his debt."
I do not say that such words are wise. I believe them to be foolish--
suicidal. I believe that it is those who patiently wait on the Lord, and
not the discontented who fret themselves till they do evil, who will
inherit the land, and be refreshed in peace. I believe that all those
who take the sword will perish by the sword; that those who appeal to
brute force will always find it--just because it is brute force--always
strongest on the side of the rich, who can hire it for evil, as for good.
I only say, that so hundreds of thousands think; so they speak, and will
speak more and more loudly, as long as the present tone of society
endures,--good-natured and well meaning, but luxurious, covetous,
ignoble, frivolous, ignorant; believing--all classes alike, not only that
money makes the man, but worse far--that money makes the woman also; and
all the while half-ashamed of itself, half-distrustful of itself, and
trying to buy off man by alms, and God by superstition.
So long as the great mass of the poor of any city know nothing of the
great mass of the rich of that city, save as folk who roll past them in
their carriages, seemingly easy while they are struggling, seemingly
happy while they are wretched, so long will the rich of that city be
supposed, however falsely, to be what the French workmen used to call
mangeurs d'hommes--exploiteurs d'hommes--to get their wealth by means of
the poverty, their comfort by means of the misery of their fellow-men;
and so long will they be exposed to that mere envy and hatred which
pursues always the more prosperous, till, in some national crisis, when
the rich and poor meet together, both parties will be but too apt to
behave, through mutual fear and hate, as if not God, but the devil, was
the maker of them all.
These words are strong. How can they be too strong, in face of what is
now passing in a neighbouring land? Not too strong, either, in view of
the actual state of vast masses of the poor in London itself, and indeed
of any one of our great cities.
That matter has been reported on, preached on, spoken on, till all other
civilized countries reproach Britain with the unique contrast between the
exceeding wealth of some classes and the exceeding poverty of others;
till we, instead of being startled by the reproach, take the present
state of things as a matter of course, a physical necessity, a law of
nature and society, that there should be, in the back streets of every
great city, hordes of, must I say, savages? neither decently civilized
nor decently Christianized, uncertain, most of them, of regular
livelihood, and therefore shiftless and reckless, extravagant in
prosperity, and in adversity falling at once into want and pauperism.
You may ask any clergyman, any minister of religion of any denomination,
whether the thing is not so. Or if you want to read the latest news
about the degradation of your fellow-subjects, read a little book called
"East and West," and judge for yourselves, whether such a population,
numbered by hundreds of thousands, are in a state pleasing to God, or
safe for those classes of whom they only know that they pay them wages,
and that these wages are as small as they can be forced to take. Read
that book; and then ask yourselves, is it wonderful that, in one
district, before the mission of the society for which I plead was
established, the poor used seriously to believe that it was the wish and
endeavour of the rich to grind them down, and keep them poor. We, of
course, know that the poor folk were mistaken but do we not know, too--
some of us--that there are political economists in the world, who, though
they would not willingly make the poor poorer than they are, are still of
opinion that it is good for the nation, on the whole, that the present
state of things should continue; that there should be always a reserve of
labour, in plain English, a vast multitude who have not quite work enough
to live on, ready to be called on in any emergency of business, and used,
to beat down, by their competition, the wages of their fellow-workmen?
Is this theory altogether novel and unheard of? Or this theory also,
that for this very reason, Emigration, which looks the very simplest
remedy for most of this want,--while nine-tenths of the bounteous earth
is waiting to be subdued and replenished by the poor wretches who cannot
get at it--that Emigration, I say, is an unnecessary movement--that the
people are all wanted at home--to be such as the parson and the mission
women find them?
And it may be that the poor folk have heard--for a bird of the air may
carry the matter in these days of a free press--that some rich folk, at
least, hold this opinion, and translate it freely out of the delicate
language of political economy, into the more vigorous dialect used in the
fever alleys and smallpox courts in which the poor are left to wait for
work. But if there be any rich persons in this congregation who hold
these peculiar economic doctrines, let me recommend to them, more than to
any other persons present, that they would support a society which
alleviates the hard pressure of their system; which helps to make it
tolerable and prudent by teaching the poor to save; by teaching them, in
London alone,--how to save 54,000 in the last eleven years. Let them
help this society heartily.
The children of this world are--in their generation--wiser than the
children of light. But how long their generation will last, depends
mainly (we are told) on how far they make themselves friends out of the
mammon of unrighteousness.
But if, again, there be rich people in this congregation, as I trust
there are many and many, who start, indignant, at such an imputation, and
utterly deny its truth--then,--if it be false, why in the name of God,
and of humanity, and of common prudence, why do they not go to these
people and tell them so? Why do they not prove that it is not so, by
showing a little more human sympathy, not merely for them behind their
backs, but sympathy with them face to face? If they wish to know how
much can be done by only a little active kindness, they have only to read
the pages of that painful, and yet pleasant, book--"East and West,"--
which I have just quoted; and to read, also, an appendix to it--a Paper
originally read at the Church Congress, Manchester, by the present Lord
Chancellor--a document which it would be an impertinence in me to
recommend or praise.
Bring yourselves then boldly into contact with these classes, and
especially into contact with the women--with the wives and mothers. For
it is through the women, through them mainly, if not altogether, that
civilization and religion can be introduced among any degraded class. It
was so in the Middle Age. The legends which tell us how woman was then
the civilizer, the softener, the purifier, the perpetual witness to
fierce and coarse men, that there were nobler aims in life than pleasure,
and power, and the gratification of revenge; that not self-assertion, but
self-sacrifice was the Divine ideal, toward which all must aspire. These
old legends are immortal; for they speak of facts and laws which will
endure as long as there are women upon earth. Through the woman, the
civilizer and the Christianizer must reach the man. Through the wife, he
must reach the husband. Through the mother, he must reach the children.
I say he must. It is easy to complain that the clergy in every age and
country have tried to obtain influence over women. They have been forced
to do so, because otherwise they could obtain no influence at all. And
if a priesthood should arise hereafter, whose calling was to teach not
religion but irreligion, not the good news that there is a good God, and
that we can know Him; but the bad news that there is no God, or, if there
is, we cannot know Him; then would that priesthood find it necessary to
appeal like all other priesthoods, to the women, and to teach them how to
teach their children.
But more. It is not religion only which must be taught through the wives
and mothers, but sound science also, and sound economy. If you intend
(as I trust some here intend) to teach the labouring classes those laws
of health and life, on which depend the comfort, the wholesomeness, often
the decency and the morality of the poor man's home, then you must teach
those laws first to the house-mother, who brings the children into the
world, and brings them up, who puts them to bed at night, and prepares
their food by day. If you wish to teach habits of thrift, and sound
notions of economy to the labouring classes, you must teach them first to
the housewife, who has to make the weekly earnings cover, if possible,
the week's expenses. If you wish to soften and to purify the man, you
must first soften and purify the woman, or at least encourage her not to
lose what womanliness she has left, amid sights, and sounds, and habits
which tend continually to destroy her womanhood. You must encourage her,
I say, to remember always that she is a woman still, and let her teach--
as none can teach like her--true manfulness to her husband and her sons.
And how can you best do that? Not by giving her shillings, not by
preaching at her, not by scolding her: but by behaving to her as what
she is--a woman and a sister--and cheering her heavy heart by simple
human kindliness. What she wants amid all her poverty and toil, her
child-bearing and child-rearing, what she wants, I say, to keep her brave
and strong, is to know by actual sight and speech that she is still not
an outcast; not alone; that she is still a member of the human family,
that her fellow-woman has not forgotten her; and that, therefore, it may
be, He that was born of woman has not forgotten her either. That she
has, after all, a God in heaven, who can be touched with the feeling of
her infirmities, and can help her and those she loves, to struggle
through all their temptations, seeing that He too was tempted in all
things like them, yet without sin.
It is only personal intercourse with them--only the meeting of the rich
and poor together, in the belief that God is the maker of them all, that
will do that. But it will do it.
Only personal intercourse will reconcile these people to their condition,
in as far as they OUGHT to be reconciled to it. But personal intercourse
will reconcile them to it, as far as it ought, but no further. And I
think that the system of personal intercourse attempted by this Society
is, on the whole, the best yet devised. It is imperfect, as all attempts
to make that straight which is crooked, and to number that which is
wanting--to patch, in a word, a radically vicious system of society,--
must be imperfect; but it is the best plan which I have yet seen. I find
no fault with other plans, God forbid! Wisdom is justified of all her
children; and the amount of evil is so great, and (as I believe, so
dangerous), that I must bid God-speed to any persons who will do
anything, always saving and excepting indiscriminate almsgiving.
But it seems to me that the soothing and civilizing, and in due time
Christianising, effect of personal intercourse cannot begin better than
through a woman, herself of the working class, who has struggled as these
poor souls have struggled, and conquered, more or less, where they are
failing. That through her they should be brought in contact with women
of the more comfortable and cultivated class, who are their immediate
employers, if not their immediate neighbours; and through them, again,
brought in contact with women of that class, of whom I shall only say,
that if they were not meant for some such noble work as this--and not for
mere pleasure and mere display, then for what purpose, in heaven or
earth, were they made? and why has Providence taken the trouble (as it
were) to elaborate, by long ages of civilization, that most exquisite of
all products of nature and of art--A Lady?
Ah! what the ladies of England might do, and that without interfering in
the least with their duties as wives and mothers, if they would work
together, as a class! If they would work as well and humanly while they
are in towns, as most of them do work while they are in the country; as
some of them do, to their honour, in the towns already! But how many?
what proportion do those who do good bear to those who do nothing? What
a small amount of humanizing and civilizing intercourse with some women
of the labouring class is there in the case of the wives of rich men who
come up to town, merely for the season, and forget that it is their
temporary and uncertain stay in London which causes much of the temporary
and uncertain employment of the London poor, and their consequent
temptation to unthrift and recklessness! How little humanizing and
civilizing intercourse with the poor is carried on by the wives of those
employers of labour who surely, surely owe something more to their
husband's work people, than to be aware (by hearsay) that they are duly
paid every Saturday night?
But I shall be told: We need not fear--we can justify ourselves before
God and man. I shall be reminded of all that has been done, and done
well too, for the poor during the last generation, and bidden not to
calumniate my countrymen. True, much has been done; and done well. And
true also it is that no effort to make the rich and poor meet together,
to bring the different classes of society into contact with each other,
but has succeeded--has sown good seed--which I trust may bring forth good
fruit in the day when every tree shall be judged by its fruit. The
events of 1830, startling and warning, and those of 1848, more pregnant,
if possible, with warning than the former, awakened a spirit of humanity
in England, which was also a spirit of prudence and of common sense.
But I cannot conceal from myself, or you, that the earnestness which was
awakened in those days is dying out in these. The richer classes of
every country are tempted from time to time to fits of laziness--fits of
frivolity and luxury, surfeits, in which men say, with a shrug and a
yawn--"Why be very much in earnest? Why take so much trouble? Somebody
must always be rich, why should not I? Somebody must enjoy the money,
why should not I? At all events, things will last my time." And that
such a surfeit has fallen upon the rich of this land, is a fact; for that
this is the tone of to-day, and that the tone increases, none can deny
who knows that which calls itself the WORLD, and calls itself so only too
truly; the world of which it is written, that all that is in the world--
the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life--
is not of the Father, but of the world. And the world passeth away, and
the lust thereof. But he who doeth the will of God, he alone abideth for
ever.
God grant that we, who have just seen the most cunningly organized and
daintily bedizened specimen of a world, which ever flaunted on the earth
since men began to build their towers of Babel, collapse and crumble at a
single blow, may take God's hint, that the fashion of this world passeth
away. Let the idle, the frivolous, the sensual, and those who, like
Figaro's Marquis, have earned all earthly happiness by only taking the
trouble to be born--let them look back on this last awful Christmas-tide,
and hear, speaking in fact unmistakeable, the voice of the Lord. Think
ye that they whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices were
sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things? I
tell you, "Nay: but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."
There are those who will hear such words with a smile, even with a sneer,
and say, Such wholesale judgments of God, even granting that there are
such things, are, after all, very rare: it is very seldom that a whole
class, a whole system of society, is punished in mass--and why then need
we trouble ourselves about so remote a probability?
Then know this--that as surely as God sometimes punishes wholesale, so
surely is He always punishing in detail. By that infinite concatenation
of moral causes and effects, which makes the whole world one mass of
special Providences, every sin of ours will punish itself, and probably
punish itself in kind. Are we selfish? We shall call out selfishness in
others. Do we neglect our duty? Then others will neglect their duty to
us. Do we indulge our passions? Then others, who depend on us, will
indulge theirs, to our detriment and misery. Do we squander our money?
Then our children and our servants will squander our money for us.
Do we?--but what use to go on reminding men of truths which no one
believes, because they are too painful and searching to be believed in
comfort? What use to tell men what they never will confess to be true--
that by every crime, folly, even neglect of theirs, they drive a thorn
into their own flesh, which will trouble them for years to come, it may
be to their dying day? And yet so it is.
Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.
As those who neglect their fellow-creatures will discover, by the most
patent undeniable proofs, in that last great day, when the rich and poor
shall meet together, and then, at least, discover that the Lord is the
maker of them all.
Footnotes:
{1} These sermons by the Rev. Charles Kingsley M.A., late rector of
Eversley and Canon of Westminster, were edited by the Rev. W. Harrison,
M.A., rector of Brington.--DP.