sacerdotalists, and we may quietly arrange our commercial combinations
and protect our manufacturing interests!
I want to see the seats under the dome of St. Paul’s filled not by
only the middle-aged middle classes, who for the most part are
Christian in creed, but by the young artisans and craftsmen, and the
strong politicians who fill the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, and
crowd the great Assembly Rooms of Birmingham and Liverpool when an
election is drawing near. The timid members of the Episcopate who may
be reminded that “He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he
that regardeth the clouds shall not reap,” are not our only Bishops.
Occasionally a Prime Minister offers for election and consecration a
man who can reach the minds and consciences of men. Is it too great an
ambition for a storyteller to try to arouse in people’s minds a
suspicion that after all something may be said for the Catholic Faith,
and so to bring them to listen to those who know and can teach it?
Each man must do his work with such tools as have come in his way. The
Mission preacher will use his magnetic power, the artist whose skill
it is to build or to paint, will make his appeal to the love of order
and beauty, the musicians will meet the heart through the ear. May not
the writer of fiction use his psychological training and his knowledge
of many sides of human life to create a story which shall set men
thinking about the old doctrines which he believes to have lost none
of their regenerating power?
There is danger lest men with good intentions should go blindly to
work to redress and diminish social grievances. Individualism with its
hateful cry, “Each man for himself and the devil take the hindmost,”
is now at a discount, but it may be replaced by a despotism of State
regulation which will destroy the family and the home. There is, I
believe, only one creed which can make the capitalist unselfish and
the sons of labour satisfied, which will tell men that wealth means
responsibility and that there is dignity in toil, which will teach the
rich man to order himself lowly and reverently to those who are _his_
betters and to hurt nobody by word or deed, which will teach the
labourer that his chief need is not other men’s wealth, but the
“carrière ouverte aux talents” and the determination to do his duty in
that state of life, whatever it may be, unto which God _shall_ call
him.
It is the Holy Catholic Faith which makes equality of opportunity for
all men its earthly ambition, and offers refreshment and hope to those
who are not strong enough to strive with the rest. The old men saw
visions and we have found that they were prophecies, a young man may
dream dreams. My dream is that the men who are doing the work of the
world to-day may be taught that Christ is their best teacher and the
Incarnate God their refuge and strength.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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