THE WORKINGMEN'S MEETING
I have told you, my dear Heinrich, that I have latterly attended, and
even spoken at, a number of meetings of the workingmen of this city.
I have just returned from one of the largest I have seen. It was held
in a great underground chamber, or series of cellars, connected with
each other, under an ancient warehouse. Before I retire to my couch I
will give you some description of the meeting, not only because it
will enable you to form some idea of the state of feeling among the
mechanics and workmen, but because this one, unfortunately, had a
tragical ending.
There were guards stationed at the door to give warning of the coming
of the police. There were several thousand persons present. It was
Saturday night. When we arrived the hall was black with people--a
gloomy, silent assemblage. There were no women present; no bright
colors--all dark and sad-hued. The men were nearly all workingmen,
many of them marked by the grime of their toil. Maximilian whispered
to me that the attendance was larger than usual, and he thought it
indicated that, by a kind of instinct, the men knew the great day of
deliverance was near at hand.
The president of a labor organization had taken the chair before we
came in. As I walked up the hall I was greeted with cheers, and
invited to the platform. Maximilian accompanied me.
A man in a blouse was speaking. He was discussing the doctrines of
Karl Marx and the German socialists of the last century. He was
attentively listened to, but his remarks aroused no enthusiasm; they
all seemed familiar with the subjects of his discourse.
He was followed by another workman, who spoke upon the advantages of
co-operation between the employers and the employed. His remarks were
moderate and sensible. He was, however, answered by another workman,
who read statistics to show that, after a hundred years of trial, the
co-operative system had not extended beyond a narrow circle. "There
were too many greedy employers and too many helpless workmen.
Competition narrowed the margin of profit and hardened the heart of
the master, while it increased the number of the wretchedly poor, who
must work at any price that would maintain life." [Applause.] "The
cure must be more radical than that." [Great applause.]
He was followed by a school teacher, who thought that the true remedy
for the evils of society was universal education. "If all men were
educated they could better defend their rights. Education meant
intelligence, and intelligence meant prosperity. It was the ignorant
hordes from Europe who were crowding out the American workingmen and
reducing them to pauperism." [Applause. I
Here a rough-looking man, who, I inferred, was an English miner, said
he begged leave to differ from the gentleman who had last spoken. (I
noticed that these workingmen, unless very angry, used in their
discussions the courteous forms of speech common in all parliamentary
bodies.)
"A man who knew how to read and write," he continued, "did not
command any better wages for the work of his hands than the man who
could not." [Applause.] "His increased knowledge tended to make him
more miserable." [Applause.] "Education was so universal that the
educated man, without a trade, had to take the most inadequate
pittance of compensation, and was not so well off, many times, as the
mechanic." [Applause.] "The prisons and alms-houses were full of
educated men; and three-fourths of the criminal class could read and
write. Neither was the gentleman right when he spoke of the European
immigrants as 'ignorant hordes.' The truth was, the proportion of the
illiterate was much less in some European despotisms than it was in
the American Republic." [Applause from the foreigners present.]
"Neither did it follow that because a man was educated he was
intelligent. There was a vast population of the middle class, who had
received good educations, but who did not have any opinion upon any
subject, except as they derived it from their daily newspapers."
[Applause.] "The rich men owned the newspapers and the newspapers
owned their readers; so that, practically, the rich men cast all
those hundreds of thousands of votes. If these men had not been able
to read and write they would have talked with one another upon public
affairs, and have formed some correct ideas; their education simply
facilitated their mental subjugation; they were chained to the
chariots of the Oligarchy; and they would never know the truth until
they woke up some bright morning and found it was the Day of
Judgment." [Sensation and great applause.]
Here I interposed:
"Universal education is right; it is necessary," I said; "but it is
not all-sufficient. Education will not stop corruption or
misgovernment. No man is fit to be free unless he possesses a
reasonable share of education; but every man who possesses that
reasonable share of education is riot fit to be free. A man may be
able to read and write and yet be a fool or a knave." [Laughter and
applause.] "What is needed is a society which shall bring to Labor
the aid of the same keenness, penetration, foresight, and even
cunning, by which wealth has won its triumphs. Intellect should have
its rewards, but it should not have everything. But this defense of
labor could only spring from the inspiration of God, for the natural
instinct of man, in these latter days, seems to be to prey on his
fellow. We are sharks that devour the wounded of our own kind."
I paused, and in the midst of the hall a thin gentleman, dressed in
black, with his coat buttoned to his throat, and all the appearance
of a clergyman, arose and asked whether a stranger would be permitted
to say a few words. He was received in sullen silence, for the clergy
are not popular with the proletariat. His manner, however, was quiet
and unassuming, and he appeared like an honest man.
The chairman said he had no doubt the audience would be glad to hear
his views, and invited him to the platform.
He said, in a weak, thin voice:
"I have listened, brethren, with a great deal of interest and
pleasure to the remarks that have been made by the different
speakers. There is no doubt the world has fallen into evil
conditions; and it is very right that you should thus assemble and
consider the causes and the remedy. And, with your kind permission, I
will give you my views on the subject.
"Brethren, your calamities are due, in my opinion, to the loss of
religion in the world and the lack of virtue among individuals. What
is needed for the reformation of mankind is a new interest in the
church--a revival of faith. If every man will purify his own heart,
all hearts will then be pure; and when the hearts of all are pure,
and filled with the divine sentiment of justice and brotherhood, no
man will be disposed to treat his neighbor unjustly. But, while this
is true, you must remember that, after all, this world is only a
place of temporary trial, to prepare us for another and a better
world. This existence consists of a few troubled and painful years,
at best, but there you will enjoy eternal happiness in the company of
the angels of God. We have the assurance of the Holy Scriptures that
riches and prosperity here are impediments to happiness hereafter.
The beggar Lazarus is shown to us in the midst of everlasting bliss,
while the rich man Dives, who had supported him for years, by the
crumbs from his table, and was clothed in purple and fine linen, is
burning in an eternal hell. Remember that it is 'less difficult for a
camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
enter the kingdom of heaven;' and so, my friends, you may justly
rejoice in your poverty and your afflictions, for 'those whom the
Lord loveth he chasteneth;' and the more wretched your careers may
be, here on earth, the more assured you are of the delights of an
everlasting heaven. And do not listen, my brethren, to the men who
tell you that you must hate government and law. 'The powers that be
are ordained of God,' saith the Scripture; and by patient resignation
to the evils of this world you will lay up treasures for yourselves
in heaven, where the moth and rust cannot consume, and where thieves
do not break in and steal. They tell you that you should improve your
condition. But suppose you possessed all the pleasures which this
transitory world could give you, of what avail would it be if your
earthly happiness made you lose the eternal joys of heaven? 'What
will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own
soul?' Nothing, my brethren, nothing. Be patient, therefore----"
As the reverend gentleman had proceeded the murmurs and objections of
the audience kept increasing, until at last it broke forth in a storm
of howls and execrations which completely drowned his voice. The
whole audience--I could see their faces from where I sat on the
platform--were infuriated. Arms were waving in the air, and the scene
was like Bedlam. I requested the clergyman to sit down, and, as soon
as he did so, the storm began to subside. A man rose in the midst of
the audience and mounted a bench. Loud cries and applause greeted
him. I could distinguish the name on a hundred lips, "Kelker!
Kelker!" As I ascertained afterwards, he was a professor, of German
descent, a man of wide learning, who had lost his position in the
university, and in society as well, by his defense of the rights of
the people. He now earned a meager living at shoemaking. He was a
tall, spare man, with gold eyeglasses (sole relic of his past
station), poorly clad; and he had the wild look of a man who had been
hunted all his life. He spoke with great vehemence, and in a
penetrating voice, that could be heard all over that vast assemblage,
which, as soon as he opened his mouth, became as still as death.
"Friends and brothers," he said; "friends by the ties of common
wrongs, brothers in misery, I regret that you did not permit the
reverend gentleman to proceed. Ours is a liberality that hears all
sides; and, for one, I should have been glad to hear what this
advocate of the ancient creeds had to say for them. But since he has
taken his seat I shall reply to him.
"He tells us that his religion is the one only thing which will save
us; and that it is better for us to be miserable here that we may be
happy hereafter. If that is so, heaven must be crowded now-a-days,
for the misery of the earth is unlimited and unspeakable; and it is
rapidly increasing." [Laughter and applause.] "But religion has had
control of the world for nearly two thousand years, and this is what
it has brought us to. It has been, in all ages, the moral
police-force of tyrants." [Great applause.] "It has chloroformed
poverty with promises of heaven, while the robbers have plundered the
world." (Continued applause.] "It has kept the people in submission,
and has sent uncountable millions through wretched lives to shameful
graves. [Great applause.] "With a lot of myths and superstitions,
derived from a dark and barbarous past, it has prevented civilization
from protecting mankind; and, Nero-like, has fiddled away upon its
ridiculous dogmas while the world was burning." [Great cheers.]
"When have your churches helped man to improve his condition? They
are gorgeous palaces, where once a week the women assemble to display
their millinery and the men to maintain their business prestige."
[Laughter and applause.] "What great reform have they not opposed?
What new discoveries in science have they not resisted?" [Applause.]
"Man has only become great when he has escaped out of their
clutches." [Cheers.] "They have preached heaven and helped turn earth
into a hell." [Great cheers.] "They stood by, without a murmur, and
beheld mankind brought down to this awful condition; and now, in the
midst of our unbearable calamities, they tell us it is well for us to
starve; that starvation is the especial gate of heaven; and that
Dives deserved hell because he had plenty to eat while on earth."
[Great cheering.] "And why do they do this? Because, if they can get
possession of our consciences and persuade us to starve to death
patiently, and not resist, they will make it so much the easier for
the oppressors to govern us; and the rich, in return, will maintain
the churches." [Sensation.] "They are throttling us in the name of
God!" [Tremendous applause.] "Our sons march in endless procession to
the prison and the scaffold; our daughters take their places in the
long line of the bedizened cortege of the brothel; and every fiber of
our poor frames and brains shrieks out its protest against
insufficient nourishment; and this man comes to us and talks about
his Old-World, worn-out creeds, which began in the brains of
half-naked barbarians, and are a jumble of the myths of a
hundred-----"
Here the speaker grew wild and hoarse with passion, and the audience,
who had been growing more and more excited and turbulent as he
proceeded, burst into a tremendous uproar that drowned every other
sound. A crowd of the more desperate--dark-faced, savage-looking
workingmen--made a rush for the platform to seize the clergyman; and
they would soon have had possession of him. But in this extremity I
sprang to the front of the platform, between him and the oncoming
mob, and by my mere presence, and the respect they have for me as
their friend, I stilled the tempest and restored order.
"My dear friends!" I said, "be patient! Are you the men who boast of
your toleration? You meet to discuss your sufferings and their
remedy; and when one tells you how he would cure you, you rise up to
slay him. Be just. This poor man may be mistaken--the body of which
he is a member may be mistaken--as to the best way to serve and save
mankind; but that his purpose is good, and that he loves you, who can
doubt? Look at him! Observe his poor garments; his emaciated figure.
What joys of life does he possess? He has given up everything to help
you. Into your darkest alleys--into your underground dens--where
pestilence and starvation contend for their victims, he goes at high
noon and in the depth of the blackest night, and he brings to the
parting soul consolation and hope. And why not? Who can doubt that
there is another life? Who that knows the immortality of matter, its
absolute indestructibility, can believe that mind, intelligence,
soul,--which must be, at the lowest estimate--if they are not
something higher--a form of matter,--are to perish into nothingness?
If it be true, as we know it is, that the substance of the poor flesh
that robes your spirits--nay, of the very garments you wear--shall
exist, undiminished by the friction of eternity, æons after our
planet is blotted out of space and our sun forgotten, can you believe
that this intelligence, whereby I command your souls into thought,
and communicate with the unsounded depths of your natures, can be
clipped off into annihilation? Nay, out of the very bounty and
largess of God I speak unto you; and that in me which speaks, and
that in you which listens, are alike part and parcel of the eternal
Maker of all things, without whom is nothing made." [Applause.]
"And so, my friends, every good man who loves you, and would improve
your condition, in time or in eternity, is your friend, and to be
venerated by you." [Applause.] "And while we may regret the errors of
religion, in the past, or in the present, let us not forget its
virtues. Human in its mechanism, it has been human in its
infirmities. In the doctrine of the brotherhood of man and the
fatherhood of God, which are the essential principles of
Christianity, lies the redemption of mankind. But some of the
churchmen have misconceived Christ, or perverted him to their own
base purposes. He who drove the money-changers out of the temple, and
denounced the aristocrats of his country as whited sepulchres, and
preached a communism of goods, would not view to-day with patience or
equanimity the dreadful sufferings of mankind. We have inherited
Christianity without Christ; we have the painted shell of a religion,
and that which rattles around within it is not the burning soul of
the Great Iconoclast, but a cold and shriveled and meaningless
tradition. Oh! for the quick-pulsing, warm-beating, mighty human
heart of the man of Galilee! Oh! for his uplifted hand, armed with a
whip of scorpions, to depopulate the temples of the world, and lash
his recreant preachers into devotion to the cause of his poor
afflicted children!" [Great applause.]
"There is no Power in the world too great or too sacred to be used by
Goodness for the suppression of Evil. Religion--true religion--not
forms or ceremonies, but _inspired purpose_--should take possession
of the _governments_ of the world and enforce _justice!_ The purified
individual soul we may not underestimate. These are the swept and
garnished habitations in which the angels dwell, and look with
unpolluted eyes upon the world. But this is not all. To make a few
virtuous where the many are vicious is to place goodness at a
disadvantage. To teach the people patience and innocence in the midst
of craft and cruelty, is to furnish the red-mouthed wolves with
woolly, bleating lambs. Hence the grip of the churches on humanity
has been steadily lessening during the past two hundred years. Men
permanently love only those things that are beneficial to them. The
churches must come to the rescue of the people or retire from the
field. A babe in the claws of a tiger is not more helpless than a
small virtuous minority in the midst of a cruel and bloody world.
Virtue we want, but virtue growing out of the bosom of universal
justice. While you labor to save one soul, poverty crushes a million
into sin. You are plucking brands from a constantly increasing
conflagration. The flames continue to advance and devour what you
have saved. The religion of the world must be built on universal
prosperity, and this is only possible on a foundation of universal
justice. If the web of the cloth is knotted in one place it is
because the threads have, in an unmeaning tangle, been withdrawn from
another part. Human misery is the correlative and equivalent of
injustice somewhere else in society.
"What the world needs is a new organization--a great world-wide
Brotherhood of Justice. It should be composed of all men who desire
to lift up the oppressed and save civilization and society. It should
work through governmental instrumentalities. Its altars should be the
schools and the ballot-boxes. It should combine the good, who are not
yet, I hope, in a minority, against the wicked. It should take one
wrong after another, concentrate the battle of the world upon them,
and wipe them out of existence. It should be sworn to a perpetual
crusade against every evil. It is not enough to heal the wounds
caused by the talons of the wild beasts of injustice; it should
pursue them to their bone-huddled dens and slay them." [Great
applause.] "It should labor not alone to relieve starvation, but to
make starvation impossible;--_to kill it in its causes_.
"With the widest toleration toward those who address themselves to
the future life, even to the neglect of this, the sole dogma of our
society should be justice. If there is an elysium in the next world,
and not a continuation of the troubled existence through which we are
now passing, we will be all the better fitted to enjoy it if we have
helped to make this world a heaven. And he who has labored to make
earth a hell should enjoy his workmanship in another and more
dreadful world, forever and forever.
"And oh, ye churches! Will ye not come up to the help of the people
against the mighty? Will ye not help us break the jaws of the spoiler
and drag the prey from between his teeth? Think what you could do if
all your congregation were massed together to crush the horrid wrongs
that abound in society! To save the world _you must fight corruption
and take possession of government_. Turn your thoughts away from
Moses and his ragged cohorts, and all the petty beliefs and blunders
of the ancient world. Here is a world greater than Moses ever dreamed
of. Here is a population infinitely vaster in numbers, more
enlightened, more capable of exquisite enjoyment, and exquisite
suffering, than all the children of Israel and all the subjects of
imperial Rome combined. Come out of the past into the present. God is
as much God to-day as he was in the time of the Pharaohs. If God
loved man then he loves him now. Surely the cultured denizen of this
enlightened century, in the midst of all the splendors of his
transcendent civilization, is as worthy of the tender regard of his
Creator as the half-fed and ignorant savage of the Arabian desert
five thousand years ago. God lives yet, and he lives for us."
Here I paused. Although the vast audience had listened patiently to
my address, and had, occasionally, even applauded some of its
utterances, yet it was evident that what I said did not touch their
hearts. In fact, a stout man, with a dark, stubbly beard, dressed
like a workingman, rose on one of the side benches and said:
"Fellow-toilers, we have listened with great respect to what our
friend Gabriel Weltstein has said to us, for we know he would help us
if he could--that his heart is with us. And much that he has said is
true. But the time has gone by to start such a society as be speaks
of. Why, if we formed it, the distresses of the people are so great
that our very members would sell us out on election day." [Applause.]
"The community is rotten to the core; and so rotten that it is not
conscious that it is rotten." [Applause.] "There is no sound place to
build on. There is no remedy but the utter destruction of the
existing order of things." [Great applause.] "It cannot be worse for
us than it is; it may be better." [Cheers.]
"But," I cried out, "do you want to destroy civilization??"
"Civilization," he replied solemnly; "what interest have we in the
preservation of civilization? Look around and behold its fruits! Here
are probably ten thousand industrious, sober, intelligent workingmen;
I doubt if there is one in all this multitude that can honestly say
he has had, during the past week, enough to eat." [Cries of "That's
so."] "I doubt if there is one here who believes that the present
condition of things can give him, or his children, anything better
for the future." [Applause.] "Our masters have educated us to
understand that we have no interest in civilization or society. We
are its victims, not its members. They depend on repression, on force
alone; on cruelty, starvation, to hold us down until we work our
lives away. Our lives are all we have;--it may be all we will ever
have! They are as dear to us as existence is to the millionaire.
"What is civilization worth which means happiness for a few thousand
men and inexpressible misery for hundreds of millions? No, down with
it!" [Immense cheering. Men rising and waving their hats.] "If they
have set love and justice adrift and depend only on force, why should
we not have recourse to force also?" [Cheers and applause, mingled
with cries of "Take care!" "Look out!" "Spies!" etc.] "Yes,"
continued the speaker, "I mean, of course, the force of argument and
reason." [Great laughter and applause.] "Of course none of us would
advocate a violation of the law--that blessed law which it has cost
our masters so much hard-earned money to purchase;" [renewed laughter
and applause,] "and which restrains us and not them; for under it no
injustice is forbidden to them, and no justice is permitted to us,
Our labor creates everything; we possess nothing. Yes, we have the
scant supply of food necessary to enable us to create more."
[Applause.] "We have ceased to be men--we are machines. Did God die
for a machine? Certainly not.
"We are crushed under the world which we maintain, and our groans are
drowned in the sounds of music and laughter." [Great applause.] "We
have a hell that is more desperate and devilish than any dreamed of
by the parsons--for we have to suffer to maintain the pleasures of
heaven, while we have no share in what we ourselves create."
[Laughter and applause.] "Do you suppose that if heaven were blown to
pieces hell would be any worse off? At least, the work would stop."
[Great applause, long-continued, with cries of "That's so!"]
Here a great uproar broke out near the end of the hall. A man had
been caught secretly taking notes of the speaker's remarks. He was
evidently a detective. On the instant a hundred men sprang upon him,
and he was beaten and trampled under foot, until not only life, but
all semblance of humanity, had been crushed out of him; and the
wretched remains were dragged out and thrown upon the pavement. It is
impossible to describe the uproar and confusion which ensued. In the
midst of it a large platoon of police, several hundred strong, with
their belts strung with magazine pistols, and great clubs in their
hands, broke into the room, and began to deal blows and make arrests
right and left, while the crowd fled through all the doors.
Maximilian seized me and the poor clergyman, who had been sitting in
a dazed and distraught state for some time, and dragged us both up a
back stairway and through a rear exit into the street. There we took
a carriage, and, after we had left the bewildered clergyman at his
residence, Maximilian said to me as we rode home:
"You see, my dear Gabriel, I was right and you were wrong. That
workman told the truth. You have arrived on the scene too late. A
hundred years ago you might have formed your Brotherhood of Justice
and saved society. Now there is but one cure--the Brotherhood of
_Destruction_."
"Oh, my dear friend," I replied, "do not say so. _Destruction!_ What
is it? The wiping out of the slow accumulations made by man's
intelligence during thousands of years. A world cataclysm. A day of
judgment. A day of fire and ashes. A world burned and swept bare of
life. All the flowers of art; the beautiful, gossamer-like works of
glorious literature; the sweet and lovely creations of the souls of
men long since perished, and now the inestimable heritage of
humanity; all, all crushed, torn, leveled in the dust. And all that
is savage, brutal, cruel, demoniac in man's nature let loose to
ravage the face of the world. Oh! horrible--most horrible! The mere
thought works in me like a convulsion; what must the inexpressible
reality be? To these poor, suffering, hopeless, degraded toilers;
these children of oppression and the dust; these chained slaves,
anything that would break open the gates of their prison-house would
be welcome, even though it were an earthquake that destroyed the
planet. But you and I, my dear friend, are educated to higher
thoughts. We know the value of the precious boon of civilization. We
know how bare and barren, and wretched and torpid, and utterly
debased is soulless barbarism. I see enough to convince me that the
ramifications of your society are like a net-work of wires, all over
the earth, penetrating everywhere, and at every point touching the
most deadly explosives of human passions and hates; and that it needs
but the pressure of your finger upon the pedal to blow up the world.
The folly of centuries has culminated in the most terrible
organization that ever grew out of the wretchedness of mankind. But
oh, my friend--you have a broad mind and a benevolent soul--tell me,
is there no remedy? Cannot the day of wrath be averted?"
The tears flowed down my face as I spoke, and Maximilian placed his
hand gently upon my arm, and said in the kindliest manner:
"My dear Gabriel, I have thought such thoughts as these many times;
not with the fervor and vehemence of your more imaginative nature,
but because I shrank, at first, from what you call 'a
world-cataclysm.' But facts are stronger than the opinions of man.
There is in every conflagration a time when a few pails of water
would extinguish it; then there comes a time when the whole
fire-department, with tons of water, can alone save what is left of
the property; but sometimes a point is reached where even the boldest
firemen are forced to recoil and give up the building to the
devouring element. Two hundred years ago a little wise statesmanship
might have averted the evils from which the world now suffers. One
hundred years ago a gigantic effort, of all the good men of the
world, might have saved society. Now the fire pours through every
door, and window and crevice; the roof crackles; the walls totter;
the heat of hell rages within the edifice; it is doomed; there is no
power on earth that can save it; it must go down into ashes. What can
you or I do? What will it avail the world if we rush into the flames
and perish? No; we witness the working-out of great causes which we
did not create. When man permits the establishment of self-generating
evil he must submit to the effect. Our ancestors were blind,
indifferent, heartless. We live in the culmination of their misdeeds.
They have crawled into their graves and drawn the earth over them,
and the flowers bloom on their last resting-places, and we are the
inheritors of the hurricane which they invoked. Moreover," he
continued, "how can reformation come? You have seen that audience
to-night. Do you think they are capable of the delicate task of
readjusting the disarranged conditions of the world? That workman was
right. In the aggregate they are honest--most honest and honorable;
but is there one of them whose cramped mind and starved stomach could
resist the temptation of a ten-dollar bill? Think what a ten-dollar
bill is to them! It represents all they crave: food, clothes,
comfort, joy. It opens the gate of heaven to them; it is paradise,
for a few hours at least. Why, they would mortgage their souls, they
would trade their Maker, for a hundred dollars! The crime is not
theirs, but the shallow creatures who once ruled the world, and
permitted them to be brought to this state. And where else can you
turn? Is it to the newspapers? They are a thousand times more
dishonest than the workingmen. Is it to the halls of legislation?
There corruption riots and rots until the stench fills the earth. The
only ones who could reform the world are the rich and powerful: but
they see nothing to reform. Life is all sunshine for them;
civilization is a success for them; they need no better heaven than
they enjoy. They have so long held mankind in subjection that they
laugh at the idea of the great, dark, writhing masses, rising up to
overthrow them. Government is, to them, an exquisitely adjusted piece
of mechanism whose object is to keep the few happy and the many
miserable."
"But," said I, "if an appeal were made to them; if they were assured
of the dangers that really threatened them; if their better and
kindlier natures were appealed to, do you not think they might
undertake the task of remedying the evils endured by the multitude?
They cannot all be as abandoned and utterly vicious as Prince Cabano
and his Council."
"No," he replied; "have you not already made the test? The best of
them would probably hang you for your pains. Do you think they would
be willing to relinquish one-tenth of their pleasures, or their
possessions, to relieve the distresses of their fellows? If you do,
you have but a slight conception of the callousness of their hearts.
You were right in what you said was the vital principle of
Christianity--brotherly love, not alone of the rich for the rich, but
of the poor and rich for each other. But that spirit has passed away
from the breasts of the upper classes. Science has increased their
knowledge one hundred per cent. and their vanity one thousand per
cent. The more they know of the material world the less they can
perceive the spiritual world around and within it. The acquisition of
a few facts about nature has closed their eyes to the existence of a
God."
"Ah," said I, "that is a dreadful thought! It seems to me that the
man who possesses his eyesight must behold a thousand evidences of a
Creator denied to a blind man; and in the same way the man who knows
most of the material world should see the most conclusive evidences
of design and a Designer. The humblest blade of grass preaches an
incontrovertible sermon. What force is it that brings it up, green
and beautiful, out of the black, dead earth? Who made it succulent
and filled it full of the substances that will make flesh and blood
and bone for millions of gentle, grazing animals? What a gap would it
have been in nature if there had been no such growth, or if, being
such, it had been poisonous or inedible? Whose persistent purpose is
it--whose everlasting will--that year after year, and age after age,
stirs the tender roots to life and growth, for the sustenance of
uncounted generations of creatures? Every blade of grass, therefore,
points with its tiny finger straight upward to heaven, and proclaims
an eternal, a benevolent God. It is to me a dreadful thing that men
can penetrate farther and farther into nature with their senses, and
leave their reasoning faculties behind them. Instead of mind
recognizing mind, dust simply perceives dust. This is the suicide of
the soul."
"Well, to this extremity," said Maximilian, "the governing classes of
the world have progressed. We will go to-morrow--it will be
Sunday--and visit one of their churches; and you shall see for
yourself to what the blind adoration of wealth and the heartless
contempt of humanity have brought the world."