All Saints' Day and Other SermonsKingsley, Charles
Religion
All Saints' Day and Other Sermons
Kingsley, Charles
Church of England -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 19th century
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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