Agricultural colonies; Poor -- Great Britain; Salvation Army; Unemployed -- Great Britain
What we want to do is to exemplify to the world the family idea.
"Our Father" is the keynote. One is Our Father, then all we are
brethren. But in a family, if anyone is troubled in mind or
conscience, there is no difficulty. The daughter goes to her father,
or the son to his mother, and pour out their soul's troubles, and are
relieved. If there is any serious difficulty a family council is held,
and all unite their will and their resources to get matters put
straight. This is what we mean to try to get done in the New
Organisation of Society for which we are labouring. We cannot know
better than God Almighty what will do good to man. We are content to
follow on His lines, and to mend the world we shall seek to restore
something of the family idea to the many hundreds of thousands--ay,
millions--who have no one wiser or more experienced than themselves,
to whom they can take their sorrows, or consult in their difficulties.
Of course we can do this but imperfectly. Only God can create a mother.
But Society needs a great deal of mothering, much more than it gets.
And as a child needs a mother to run to in its difficulties and troubles,
to whom it can let out its little heart in confidence, so men and
women, weary and worn in the battles of life, need someone to whom they
can go when pressed down with a sense of wrongs suffered or done,
knowing that their confidence will be preserved inviolate, and that
their statements will be received with sympathy. I propose to attempt
to meet this want. I shall establish a department, over which I shall
place the wisest, the pitifullest, and the most sagacious men and women
whom I can find on my staff, to whom all those in trouble and
perplexity shall be invited to address themselves. It is no use saying
that we love our fellow men unless we try to help them, and it is no
use pretending to sympathise with the heavy burdens which darken their
lives unless we try to ease them and to lighten their existence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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