when they offer up the poor man's sweat to the abomination,--when they lay
before it the crippled child of the factory,--when they take from life its
bloom and dignity, and degrading human nature to mere brute breathing,
make offering of its wretchedness as the most savoury morsel to the
perpetual craving of their insatiate god,--when we consider all the
"manifold sins and wickednesses" of the barbarians in purple and fine
linen, of those pampered savages "whose eyes are red with wine and whose
teeth white with milk,"--we do earnestly hope that the suggestion of
Doctor Chalmers will be carried into immediate practical effect, and that
Missionaries, preaching true Christianity, will be sent among the rich and
benighted people of this country,--so that the poor may believe that the
Scriptures are something more than mere printed paper, seeing their
glorious effects in the awakened hearts of those who, in the arrogance of
their old idolatry, called themselves their betters!
"A universal Christian education!" To this end, the Bench of Bishops meet
at Lambeth; and discovering that locusts and wild honey--the Baptist's
diet--may be purchased for something less than ten thousand a year,--and,
after a minute investigation of the Testament, failing to discover the
name of St. Peter's coachmaker, or of St. Paul's footman, his valet, or
his cook,--take counsel one with another, and resolve to forego at least
nine-tenths of their yearly in-comings. "No!" they exclaim--and what
apostolic brightness beams in the countenance of CANTERBURY--what
celestial light plays about the fleshy head of LONDON--what more than
saint-like beauty surprises the cowslip-coloured face of EXETER--what
lambent fire, what looks of Christian love play about and beam from the
whole episcopal Bench!--"No!" they cry--"we will no longer have the spirit
oppressed by these cumbrous trappings of fleshy pride! We will promote an
universal Christian education--we will teach charity by examples, and live
unto all men by a personal abstinence from the bickerings and malice of
civil life. We will not defile the sacred lawn with the mud of turnpike
acts--we will no longer sweat in the House of Lords, but labour only in
the House of the Lord!"
Their Christian hearts sweetly suffused with sudden meekness, the Bishops
proceed--staff in hand, and Bible under arm--from Lambeth Palace. How the
people make way for the holy procession! Hackney-coachmen on their stands
uncover themselves, and the drayman, surprised in his whistle, doffs his
beaver to the reverend pilgrims. With measured step and slow, they proceed
to Downing-street; the self-deputed Missionaries, resolved to give her
Majesty's ministers "a Christian education." Sir ROBERT PEEL is
immediately taken in hand by the Bishop of EXETER; who sets the Baronet to
learn and exemplify the practical beauties of the Lord's Prayer. When Sir
ROBERT comes to "give us this day our daily bread," he insists upon adding
the words "_with a sliding scale_." However, EXETER, animated by a sudden
flux of Christianity, keeps the baronet to his lesson, and the Premier is
regenerated; yea, is "a brand snatched from the fire."
Lord LYNDHURST makes a great many wry mouths at some parts of the
Decalogue--we will not particularise them--but the Bishop of London is
resolute, and the new Lord Chancellor is, in all respects a bran-new
Christian.
Lord STANLEY begs that when he prays for power to forgive all his enemies,
he may be permitted to except from that prayer--DANIEL O'CONNELL. The
Bishop is, however, inexorable; and O'Connell is to be prayed for, in all
churches visited by Lord STANLEY.
Several of the bishops, smitten by the heathen darkness of the great
majority of the Cabinet--affected by their utter ignorance of the
practical working of Christianity--burst into tears. It will not be
credited by those disposed to think charitably of their fellow-creatures,
that--we state the melancholy fact upon the golden word of the Bishop of
EXETER--several Cabinet ministers had never heard of the divine sentence
which enjoins upon us to do to others as we would they should do unto us.
Sir JAMES GRAHAM, for instance, declared that he had always understood the
passage to simply run--"_Do_ others;" and had, therefore, in very many
acts of his political life, squared his doings according to the mutilated
sentence. All the Cabinet had, more or less, some idea of the miracle of
the Loaves and the Fishes. Indeed, many of them confessed that with them,
the Loaves and the Fishes had, during their whole political career,
contained the essence of Christianity. Sir EDWARD KNATCHBULL, Lord
ELLENBOROUGH, and GOULBURN declared that for the last ten years they had
hungered for nothing else.
We cannot dwell upon every individual case of ignorance displayed in the
Cabinet. We confine ourselves to the glad statement, that every minister
from the first lord of the treasury to the grooms in waiting, vivified by
the sacred heat of their schoolmaster Bishops, illustrate the great truth
of Doctor CHALMERS, that the poor man can only obtain justice "by a
_universal_ Christian education."
The Bench of Bishops do not confine their labours to the instruction of
the Cabinet. By no means. They have appointed prebends, deans, canons,
vicars, &c., to teach the members of both houses of Parliament practical
Christianity towards their fellow-men. Lord LONDONDERRY has sold his
fowling-piece for the benefit of the poor--has given his shooting-jacket
to the ragged beggar that sweeps the crossing opposite the Carlton
Club--and resolving to forego the vanities of grouse, is now hard at work
on "The Acts of the Apostles." Colonel SIBTHORP--after unceasing labour on
the part of Doctor CROLY--has managed to spell at least six of the hard
names in the first chapter of St. Matthew, and can now, with very slight
hesitation, declare who was the father of ZEBEDEE'S children!
"An universal Christian education!" Oh, reader! picture to yourself
London--for one day only--operated upon by the purest Christianity.
Consider the mundane interests of this tremendous metropolis directed by
Apostolic principles! Imagine the hypocrisy of respectability--the
conventional lie--the allowed ceremonial deceit--the tricks of trade--the
ten thousand scoundrel subterfuges by which the lowest dealers of this
world purchase Bank-stock and rear their own pine-apples--the common,
innocent iniquities (innocent from their very antiquity, having been
bequeathed from sire to son) which men perpetrate six working-days in the
week, and after, lacker up their faces with a look of sleek humility for
the Sunday pew--consider all this locust swarm of knaveries annihilated by
the purifying spirit of Christianity, and then look upon London breathing
and living, for one day only, by the sweet, sustaining truth of the
Gospel!
Had our page ten thousand times its amplitude, it would not contain the
briefest register of the changes of that day!
There is a scoundrel attorney, who for thirty years has become plethoric
on broken hearts. The scales of leprous villany have fallen from him; and
now, an incarnation of justice, he sits with open doors, to pour oil into
the wounds of the smitten--to make man embrace man as his brother--to
preach lovingkindness to all the world, and--without a fee--to chant the
praises of peace and amity.
_Crib_ the stockbroker meets _Horns_ a fellow-labourer in the same hempen
walk of life. _Crib_ offers to buy a little Spanish of _Horns_. "My dear
_Crib_," says _Horns_, "it is impossible; I can't sell; for I have just
received by a private hand from Cadiz, news that must send the stock down
to nothing. I am a Christian, my dear _Crib_," says _Horns_, "and as a
Christian, how could I sell you a certain loss?"
A mistaken, but well-meaning man, although a tailor, meets his debtor in
Bow-street. A slight quarrel ensues; whereupon, the debtor (to show that
the days of chivalry are _not_ gone) kicks his tailor into the gutter.
Does the tailor take the offender before Mr. JARDINE? By no means. The
tailor is a Christian; and learning the exact measure of his enemy, and
returning good for evil, he, in three days' time, sends to his assailant a
new suit of the very best super Saxony.
How many quacks we see rushing to the various newspaper offices to
countermand their advertisements! What gaps in the columns of the
newspapers themselves! Where is the sugary lie--the adroit slander--the
scoundrel meanness, masking itself with the usage of patriotism? All, all
are vanished, for--the _Morning Herald_ is published upon Christian
principles!
Let us descend to the smallest matters of social life. "Will this gingham
wash?" asks _Betty_ the housemaid of _Twill_ the linen-draper. _Twill_ is
a Christian; and therefore replies, "it is a very poor article, and it
will _not_ wash!"
We are with Doctor Chalmers for Christianity--but not Christianity of _one
side_. "Pray for those who despitefully use you," say the Corn Law
Apostles to the famishing; and then, cocking their eye at one another, and
twitching their tongues in their mouths they add--"for this is
Christianity!"