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