childhood, to consider those who are surrounded with the most savage
aspects and the worst influences of the world. And, beside the absolute
duty which is imposed upon us by their natural position, I observe that
the Children of the Poor create an appeal to _prudential_
considerations. They form a large proportion of those groups known in
every city as "The _Dangerous_ Classes." For they will be developed
somehow. If they receive not that attention which is demanded by their
position; if they are left to darkness and neglect; still, it is no mere
mass of negative existence that they constitute. There is vitality there
and positive strength, in those lanes and cellars, put forth for evil if
not drawn towards the good. We must not confound ignorance with torpor
of spirit or bluntness of understanding. One of the most remarkable
characteristics of vagrant children is a keen, precocious intellect. A
boy of seven in the streets of a city is more developed in this respect
than one of fourteen in the country--a development, of course, which is
easily accounted for by the antagonisms with which the child has had to
contend, and the devices which have been inspired by the sheer pressure
of want. He has been pitched into the sea of events to sink or swim, and
those sharpened faculties are the tentacles put forth by an effort of
nature in order to secure a hold of life. And there is something very
sad and very fearful in this precocity. The vagrant boy has known
nothing of the stages of childhood, conducting with beautiful simplicity
from one timid step to another, and gradually forming it for the
realities of the world. But the neglected infant has wilted into the
premature man, with his old cunning look, blending so fantastically, so
mournfully, with the unformed features of youth. Knowing the world on
its worst side--knowing its hostility, its knavery, its foulness, its
heartless materialism--knowing it as the man does not know it who has
only breathed the country air, and looked upon the open face of nature.
Is it not very sad, my friends, that the vagrant boy _should_ know so
much; and, without one hour of romance, one step of childish innocence
and imagination, should have gone clear through "the world" which so
many boast that they understand--the knave's world, the libertine's
world, the world of the skeptical, scoffing, Ishmaelitish spirit? And
yet he has so little _real_ knowledge--there is such a cloud of
ignorance and moral stupor resting upon his brain and heart! So much of
him is merely animal, foxy, wolfish, and this sharpened intellect only a
faculty, an instinct, a preternatural organ pushed out to gain
subsistence with. It is a terrible anomaly, and yet, I say, it is none
the less an active power, and shows us that, however neglected, the
child of the abject poor is not dormant or undeveloped. In the first
place, very likely, it has developed itself into a dogged atheism--a
sulky unbelief. The brain of the vagrant boy is active with speculation
as well as with practice--he has some theory of this life in which he
lives, and, as might be expected, a theory woven with the tissues of
his own experience; woven with the shadows and the lurid lights of his
lot. A gentleman passing one day through the streets of Edinboro', saw a
boy, who lived by selling fire-wood, standing with a heavy load upon his
back, looking at a number of boys amusing themselves in a play-ground.
"Sometimes," says the writer, "he laughed aloud, at other times he
looked sad and sorrowful. Stepping up to him I said--'Well, my boy, you
seem to enjoy the fun very much; but why don't you lay down your load of
sticks?'... 'I wan't thinking about the burden--I wan't thinking about
the sticks, sir.' 'And may I ask what you were thinking about?' 'Oh, I
was just thinking about what the good missionary said the other day. You
know, sir, I don't go to church, for I have no clothes; but one of the
missionaries comes every week to our stair, and holds a meeting. He was
preaching to us last week, and among other things he said--"Although
there are rich folks and poor folks in this world, yet we are all
brothers." Now, sir, just look at these lads--every one of them has
fine jackets, fine caps, with warm shoes and stockings, but I have
none;--So I was just thinking if those were my brothers, it doesn't look
like it, sir--it doesn't look like it. See, sir, they are all flying
kites, while I am flying in rags--they are running about at kick-ball
and cricket; but I must climb the long, long stairs, with a heavy load,
and an empty stomach, whilst my back is like to break. It doesn't look
like it, sir--it doesn't look like it.'" Or, take the following
instance, which I extract from the Records of one of the Benevolent
Societies of our own city: "Can you read or write? said the visitor to a
poor boy. Marty hung his head. I repeated the question two or three
times before he answered, and the tears dropped on his hands, as he
said, despairingly, and I thought defiantly--'No, sir, I can't read nor
write neither. God don't want me to read, sir. Indeed, so it looks
likely. Didn't He take away my father since before I can remember him?
And haven't I been working all the time to fetch in something to eat,
and for the fire, and for clothes? I went out to pick coal when I could
take a basket in my arms--and I have had no chance for school since.'"
Now this is fallacious and dangerous reasoning, my friends;
nevertheless, it _is_ reasoning, and shows that the mind of the poor boy
is not inactive as to the problems of life. And the intellect which is
so acute in theory will soon drive to practice. Stimulated by that
selfish instinct which, as I have shown, will under pressure absorb
every other consideration, he speedily commences the career of _crime_.
And have you ever looked into this matter of crime? Or do you know it
only as a monstrous fact in the social mechanism, and in the records of
human nature? If so, it would be well for us to consider the way in
which it appears to the violator of right--the way in which things look
to him who works _inside_ the web of guilt. And we may be sure that it
does not look to him as it does to us from the midst of respectabilities
and comforts, or from a high intellectual and moral stand-point. Now I
am not going to justify crime, or to indulge any sentiment upon the
subject. But, really, one of the most practical questions that can be
asked is--"_Why_ is this one, or that one, a criminal?" Do I say that
the guilt should be imputed to the condition--that it is all owing to
circumstances? No: but I _do_ say that, in nine cases out of ten, crime
is no proof of _special_ depravity apart from _general_ depravity, and
that the circumstances have just so much weight as this--that put you or
me in those same circumstances, in nine cases out of ten, we should be
criminals too. In the same circumstances, my friends; and this involves
a great deal. It involves an hereditary taint stamped in the very mould
of birth; it involves physical misery; it involves intellectual and
moral destitution; it involves the worst kind of social influence; it
involves the pressure of all the natural appetites, rioting in this need
of the body and this darkness of the soul. And it implies no suspicion
of a man's moral standard--it is no insult to his self-respect--to tell
him that, under similar conditions, it is extremely probable he would
have been a criminal too. Reasoning in an arm-chair is very proper, and
often very accurate, but the logic of starvation is too peremptory for
syllogisms. There is a sort of compound made up of frost, damp, dirt and
rags, which works double magic: it sometimes converts a thief into a
philosopher, and sometimes a philosopher into a thief. I am not
speaking, however, of the mere impulse of animal want, but of this
condition where the counter-acting forces are dormant. And for this
reason you and I can draw no immoral conclusion from the doctrine of
circumstances. We could not be like the moral leper who infests the dark
regions of the city--we could not be like the child of sin and shame who
broods there--without losing our identity. In contemplating this matter,
the feeling for ourselves should be simply one of humility and
thankfulness. We have grown up in pure light and air, appeased with the
comforts, and braced by at least the current morality of society. But,
concerning those degraded ones, what some call "charity" is no more than
"justice." It is no more than justice to say--all the conditions being
considered--that as to a vast majority of them, crime is no proof of
_special_ depravity. It is the genuine humanity that is there--not base
metal. It came from the common mint--somewhere you will find upon it a
faint scar of the Divine Image--but the coin was pitched into this
bonfire of appetite and blasphemy, and it has come out a cinder. Thus,
proud and happy Mother, might _your_ boy have been a defaced and
distorted being, kicked, cuffed, knotted with frost, blackened with
bruises; a pick-pocket, a wharf-rat, a panel-thief; with his intellect
sharpened to an intense and impish cunning--only knowing that it is a
hard world, and he must get out of it what he can. Thus, fond Father,
might _your_ daughter, whom the very winds must salute with courtesy,
have gone through the streets at night--a painted desolation, a reeling
shame. Do you think these were made of better texture than those who
blacken and fester yonder? Do you think that when these last came into
the world there was no milk in mothers' breasts for them, no Divine
solicitude about them, no tenderness in the heart of Christ; but that
they were the refuse, whirled into existence as the great wheel of Life
shaped the finer mould of the respectable and the happy? I tell you
that God made them complete souls, and stamped His Image upon them--but
they have fallen into the dark and dreary ways; the fierce flames have
hardened them; the foul air has tainted them; and their special
depravity, over and above the common depravity, is the infection of
circumstances. The young boy, the young girl, driven by necessity and
sharpened with cunning, run into crime. They are all _educated_; for
circumstances--not merely books--are education; but this is their
seminary, and the alphabet is spontaneous, and the science of quick
growth. And with the consequences of all this exposure and temptation we
are all mixed up; and, if the claim of the child in its intrinsic
position does not move us, _prudential_ considerations should--the
consideration of what society does suffer, and must suffer, if these
conditions are not changed.
Such, then, are some of the _principles_ involved with my theme. Let us
in the second place pass to consider, very briefly, a few of the
_facts_. Briefly, because I have no time for details, and because the
general state of the case is but too well known to you.
It is a fact, then, that there are among us a vast number of children in
the most miserable and perilous condition. In the year 1849, the Chief
of Police reported the destitution and vice among this class of vagrants
as almost "incredible." In that report he says--"The offspring of always
careless, generally intemperate, and oftentimes dishonest parents, they
never see the inside of a school-room, and so far as our excellent
system of public education is concerned, it is to them a nullity." It
appears that, at that time, in 12 wards of the city, there were 2,955 of
these children, of whom two-thirds were females between the ages of 8
and 16. I am informed, also, by the Chief of Police, that 100 per cent.
should now be added to this estimate; not all attributable, of course,
to growth in depravity, but to the increase of population, especially by
immigration. I understand, moreover, that within the past year there
have been ten thousand arrests, and five thousand commitments of boys
alone between the ages of 5 and 15.
These are naked statistics, affording you an outline of the actual state
of things. Need I paint the costume and the scenery, and describe the
sad and awful drama in which these children play their parts? I could
not if I would. But think of that vast amount of young life running to
waste, sweeping through the sewers of the social fabric, an
under-current of taint and desolation! Think of them, starved, beaten,
driven into crime not merely by necessity, but by the very hands of
their parents! and think of them this night, cuddling in rags, shivering
on straw, cradled in reeking filth, drinking in blasphemy and obscenity
and cunning policies of sin, under that dark canopy that shuts out
social sympathy, and hides the very Face of God. And if you have, I will
not say parental hearts, but human souls, you will ask if there ought
not to be some remedy, and will say that all who can should help in
administering that remedy.
And _remedies_ there appear to be, my friends. For, while I said that
there is no condition in the city more sad and momentous than that of
these children of the poor, I said, likewise, that there is none more
_hopeful_. The essential and comprehensive remedy of all I indicated in
the close of the last discourse, and shall have occasion to dwell upon
in the next. That remedy is the practical operation of
Christianity--first of all in our own hearts, and then flowing out in
action. I mean especially the _method_ of Jesus, which consisted not of
mere teaching but of _help_--which touched not only the issues of the
sin-sick soul, but the weakness and want of the body. To the demoniac,
to the leper, to the impotent man by the pool, he brought not abstract
truths, but words of healing and works of practical deliverance. How
striking is the fact that the freshest and noblest charities of this
nineteenth century are only developments of the manner in which the
Redeemer soothed the sorrows and vanquished the evils of the world! For
those institutions which especially excite the public interest at the
present day, are those whose plan it is first to remove the children of
the poor from those wretched and foul _conditions_ upon which I have
laid so much stress, and to lead them to a higher culture by extending,
first, the hand of temporal relief. They aim to break up the sockets of
custom, and to introduce the degraded child to fresh motives of action
and fields of endeavor; to throw around him the atmosphere of a true
home, and to blend intellectual, and moral, and religious training with
that true charity which teaches one how to assert his own manliness, and
support himself by the honest labor of his own hands. Now I do not wish
to be invidious, I am glad that such a constellation of philanthropic
promise has risen upon the dark places of the abject poor. I point with
pleasure to what has been accomplished in the Sahara of the Five Points,
and in what still remains to be done I discern a field broad enough to
prevent collision and dispute--broad enough to employ the means and the
generous energies of thousands. With equal pleasure I refer to that
"Juvenile Asylum," with its noble interposition ere the feet of the
erring boy shall take the _second_ step in crime, and which has recently
rendered still more efficient its system of labor and relief by
extending the benefit to girls. But as I wish this evening to
concentrate your sympathies, I call your attention especially to the
institution known as "The Children's Aid Society," the general character
and the practical results of which I will briefly state. Its main object
is sufficiently indicated by its name. Its machinery is simple, and acts
upon the principle just laid down. It seeks first to remove the poor
child from the coil of evil influences which have been thrown around
him, and which have been daily strengthened by the sharpest pressure of
animal necessities. It comprehends the two-fold benefit of _education_
and _labor_ in its system of "Industrial Schools." Of these, at the
present time, in this city, there are eight, in which a multitude of
children are educated, taught to work, supplied with a warm dinner
daily, and with such clothing as they can learn to make. In connection
with these there is one shoe-shop, in which thirty or forty boys earn a
livelihood. Another object of this society is to find employment for its
beneficiaries out of the city, and during the past year places in the
country have been found for one hundred and twenty-five, where their
employers treat them as their own children.
In institutions like these, then, you perceive the indications of a
remedy for the condition of these children of the poor--a system of help
which gives something more than spiritual instruction on the one hand,
something more than mere food and clothing on the other; which combines
measures of relief and nourishment for the demands of our whole nature
in the form of the ignorant and suffering child; and which, better than
all, lifts him out of the humiliating condition of a mere pauper or
dependent, and sets him in a channel of manly exertion,
self-development, and self-support; which not only does the negative
work of removing a mass of evil from society, but makes for it the
positive contribution of an improved and educated humanity. I do not say
that all the relief lies here, that it will do all that is needed, or
that nothing better will be devised. But I think the _tendency_ of these
institutions is the right one, and that they indicate the _way_ in which
this great social problem is to be solved. But it is not necessary to
say that the faith which we cherish in such a system is dead without
works; and that something more is needed than a few model institutions
working here and there. This matter makes a practical claim upon us all,
in the fact that, in one way or another, we may all help forward this
method of relief--we may help it forward as active laborers in the very
midst of the field, as teachers and missionaries, or contributors of our
goods and money. Each knows what he can best do--what is his special,
Providential _call_ in the matter; but let him be assured that he _has_
a call; and that this spectacle of exposed, needy, suffering childhood
is not a mere spectacle for his sympathies, but a field white with a
harvest that waits for his effort. Have we nothing but sympathies
wherewith to answer the poor woman's prayer--a prayer that echoes
through so many hearts in this great city--"May the Lord spare my Archy
from the bad boys, and from taking to the ways of his father!"
There is one thing which strikes me as very affecting in the condition
of any child. It is when that condition is necessarily a melancholy
one--when the circumstances which hem it around cast over the surface of
that young life an abiding gloom. A melancholy child! What an anomaly
among the harmonies of the universe; something as incongruous as a bird
drooping in a cage, or a flower in a sepulchre. The musical laughter
muffled and broken; the spontaneous smile transformed to a sad
suspicion; and the austerities of mature life, the fearful speculation,
and forecast of evil, fixed and frozen on a boy's face! And then the
sorrow of a child is so _absorbing_--for he lives only in the present.
In the afflictions which fall upon him, man has the aid of reason and
faith--he looks beyond the present issue, he detects the significance of
his calamity, and strengthened thus a brave heart can vanquish any
sorrow. But, as Richter beautifully says--"the little cradle, or
bed-canopy of the child, is easier darkened than the starry heaven of
man." Surely, then, it is a blessed thing to contribute aught that will
lighten this gloom, and place the child in natural conditions.
But there is one phase of this subject which, in its appeal to us, is
more eloquent than all the rest. It is where there are children who
stand not merely in the intrinsic claim of their childhood; or in their
touching sadness; or pushing their energies into vice and crime; but
nobly struggling _against_ the tide of evil--struggling to bear up in
their lot--enduring and achieving for the sake of those who, young as
these children are, are dependent on them. If I had time, I think I
could write a "Martyrology;" not following the track of famous men,
whose faces look out upon us from the brutal amphitheatre and from the
fire with a halo of glory around them, and whom we behold, by the vision
of faith, with their gory robes transfigured to celestial whiteness,
waving palms in their hands; but tracing out incidents in the lives of
some of the children here in our city--not dead, but _living_ martyrs!
O! I think I _could_ write such a Martyrology, with blood and tears,
over many a gloomy threshold, on the walls of many a desolate room; and
let future generations come and read it--a fearful record of human
suffering--a sweet memorial of human virtue--when many of these old
woes, we trust, shall have passed away for ever.
Permit me, in closing, to present two or three incidents illustrative of
this heroism and sacrifice among the Children of the Poor.
Take, for instance, the account of a writer who tells us that in the
street he "met a little girl, very poor, but with such a sweet sad
expression," adds he, "that I involuntarily stopped and spoke to her.
She answered my questions very clearly, but the heavy, sad look never
left her eyes a moment. She had no father or mother. She took care of
the children herself; she was only _thirteen_; she sewed on check
shirts, and made a living for them." He went to see her. "It is a low,
damp basement her home. She lives there with the three little children,
whom she supports, and the elder sick brother, who sometimes picks up a
trifle. She had been washing for herself and little ones. 'She almost
thought that she could take in washing now,' and the little ones with
their knees to their mouths crouched up before the stove, looked as if
there could not be a doubt of sister's doing anything she tried. 'Well,
Annie, how do you make a living now?' 'I sew on the check shirts, sir,
and the flannel shirts; I get five cents for the checks, and nine cents
for the others; but just now they wont let me have the flannel, because
I can't deposit two dollars.' 'It must be very hard work?' 'O! I don't
mind, sir; but to-day the visitors came, and said we'd better go to the
poor-house, and I said I couldn't like to leave these little ones yet;
and I thought if I only had candles, I could sit up till ten or eleven,
and make the shirts.' ... She had learned everything she knew at the
Industrial School.... She never went to church, for she had no clothes,
but she could read and write.... 'It was very damp there,' she said,
'and then it was so cold nights.'"
I will, in the next place, introduce you to a garret-room, six feet by
ten. The occupants are a poor mother and her son. The mother works at
making shirts with collars and stitched bosoms, at six shillings and
sixpence per dozen, for a man who pays half in merchandise, and who,
when she is starving for bread, puts her off with calico at a _shilling_
a yard that is not worth more than fourpence! But _he_ is not the martyr
in the case. When the visitor entered, her son George, about twelve
years old, "was just coming in for dinner, pale and apparently exhausted
by the effort of climbing the stairs, and sank down upon a rough plank
bench near the door." He worked in a glass-factory, earning a bare
subsistence. "He is a little old man at twelve," says the narrator, "the
paleness of his sunken cheeks was relieved by the hectic flush; his
hollow dry eye was moistened by an occasional tear; and his thin white
lip quivered as he told me his simple story; how he was braving hunger
and death--for he cannot live long--to help his mother pay the rent and
buy her bread. 'Half-past ten at night is early for him to return,' said
the mother; 'sometimes it is half-past eleven and I am sitting up for
him.' Sometimes, in the morning, she finds him awake, 'but he don't want
to get up, and he puts his hands on his sides and says, 'Mother, it
hurts me here when I breathe.' I can work, and I do work,' adds she,
'all the time--but I can't make as much as my little boy.'"
One more account. It is of a beggar-girl who "lives," as the narrative
goes on to say, "in a rear building where full daylight never shines--in
a cellar-room where pure dry air is never breathed. A quick gentle girl
of twelve years, she speaks to the visitor as he enters--'Mother does
not see you, sir, because she's blind.' The mother was an old woman of
sixty-five or seventy years, with six or seven others seated around.
'But you told me you and your mother and little sister lived by
yourselves.' 'Yes, sir--here it is;'" and at the end of the passage the
visitor discovers a narrow place, about five feet by three. The bed was
rolled up in one corner, and nearly filled the room. "'But where is your
stove?' 'We have none, sir. The people in the next room are very kind to
mother, and let her come in there to warm--because, you know, I get half
the coal.' 'But where do you cook your food?' 'We never cook any, sir;
it is already cooked. I go early in the morning to get coal and chips
for the fire, and I must have two baskets of coal and wood to kindle
with by noon. That's mother's half. Then when the people have eaten
dinner, I go round to get the bits they leave. I can get two baskets of
coal every day now; but when it gets cold, and we must have a great
deal, it is hard for me to find any--there's so many poor chaps to pick
it. Sometimes the _ladies_ speak cross to me, and shut the door hard at
me, and sometimes the _gentlemen_ slap me in the face, and kick my
basket, and then I come home, and mother says not to cry, for may be
I'll do better to-morrow. Sometimes I get my basket almost full, and
then put it by for to-morrow; and then, if next day we have enough, I
take this to a poor woman next door. Sometimes I get only a few bits in
my basket for all day, and may be the next day. And then I _fast_,
because, you know, mother is sick and weakly, and can't be able to fast
like me.'"
These my friends, are some of the "short and simple annals of the poor."
But those of whom Gray spoke rest peacefully in the "country
churchyard;" their spirits are in heaven, and their history is embalmed
in his own immortal Elegy. But _these_ records are of those who yet live
and suffer--"Martyrs _without_ the palm."
And could I summon them here to-night, and would the Master but enter as
when upon earth, surely he would look upon them in tender pity; would
bless them; would take in his arms those whom the world has cast aside
and overlooked. Nay, perhaps he would transfigure their actuality into
their possibility, and we might see "the angels in their faces,"
pleading with us before the Father's throne!
THE HELP OF RELIGION.
DISCOURSE VIII.
THE HELP OF RELIGION.
For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to
come.--HEBREWS xiii, 14.
There are a good many people who, apparently, are never troubled by any
speculations arising out of a comprehensive view of things. They are
keenly alive to all objects within their sphere; but their eyes are
close to the surface, and their experience comes in shocks of sensation,
and shreds of perception. They know the superficial features of the
world and its conventional expressions; are conversant with its business
and its pleasures; with the market, the fashions, the town-talk, the
worldly fortunes of their neighbors. Sometimes, a powerful affliction
startles them in this smooth routine, and for a moment they are
surprised to find how wide the universe is, and among what great
realities we dwell. But, usually, their existence is a narrow revolving
disc, bringing around the same group of incidents and the same
associations, morning, noon, and night. They comprehend Life as they
comprehend the expanse of yonder harbor, dotted with shifting but
familiar forms, ruffled by a passing wind or bright under a summer sun,
and whose tides duly rise and fall. But they little think of the oceanic
vastness which it represents; and how its oscillations come from great
currents that leap out of the Antarctic, and swell around tropical
islands, and sweep the lines of continents, and roll in the Polar Sea.
These, therefore, are not perplexed by questions such as occur to him
who, looking beyond his own worldly interests and the area of daily
routine, takes into view the scope of being and the profounder phenomena
of human life. For such a view will inevitably engender speculation, nor
can he rest until he obtains some _theory_ of existence. These very
conditions of Humanity in the City, for instance--these conditions of
poverty, and responsibility, and relationship, and privilege, and
strife, and toil--yea, the lessons which come to us from the crowd as it
flows through these streets; constitute a great problem, of which every
thinking man will seek some solution.
Now, throughout this entire series of discourses--although I have not
deemed it necessary in every instance to make a specific application--I
have assumed that you and I were looking upon these various phases of
Humanity from the Christian stand-point, and therefore I could not fitly
conclude this work without indicating the Help which RELIGION affords
concerning these problems of existence.
I observe, then, that while it may seem very simple to affirm that a
_theory_ does not, in any case, alter _facts_; yet there is often an
advantage in laying down this proposition. For this leads us to
understand precisely what a theory _may_ do. It does not alter facts,
but it throws them into new relations, and presents them in an entirely
different light. Materialism, for instance, is a theory of Life; and
Christianity--in which term I include not only a system of Doctrines,
but of practical forces--is also a theory of Life. Now, neither of these
gets rid of the great facts of existence. Men sin and suffer and die,
whether we adopt the one system or the other. But, surely, when we
approach these facts from the side of Religion, they appear in very
different lights, and are taken up with very different results, from
their appearance and effect when interpreted by the creed of Unbelief.
It would be very absurd then, because Christianity does not instantly
abolish, or fully explain, all these strange and darker realities, to
fall back upon the opposite ground of skepticism. This is only receding
from the best solution to the worst--or, rather, to no solution at all.
For I maintain that Christianity gives us not merely the best, but the
_only_ solution of these problems. It will be my purpose in this
discourse, at least, to show what kind of help Religion _does_ afford
for Humanity in all these diverse conditions; and, having done this, I
shall leave it to your own convictions to decide whether it is not a
great and practical Help; and whether there _is_ any other help. I
propose to illustrate the influence of Religion to this effect,
first--as a _Conviction_; second, as a _Working Power_; and third, as an
_Interpretation_.