Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, September 18, 1841 — John Shaqi
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, September 18, 1841Various
General
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, September 18, 1841
Various
English wit and humor -- Periodicals
Their Christian hearts sweetly suffused with sudden meekness, the Bishops
proceed--staff in hand, and Bible under arm--from Lambeth Palace. How the
people make way for the holy procession! Hackney-coachmen on their stands
uncover themselves, and the drayman, surprised in his whistle, doffs his
beaver to the reverend pilgrims. With measured step and slow, they proceed
to Downing-street; the self-deputed Missionaries, resolved to give her
Majesty's ministers "a Christian education." Sir ROBERT PEEL is
immediately taken in hand by the Bishop of EXETER; who sets the Baronet to
learn and exemplify the practical beauties of the Lord's Prayer. When Sir
ROBERT comes to "give us this day our daily bread," he insists upon adding
the words "_with a sliding scale_." However, EXETER, animated by a sudden
flux of Christianity, keeps the baronet to his lesson, and the Premier is
regenerated; yea, is "a brand snatched from the fire."
Lord LYNDHURST makes a great many wry mouths at some parts of the
Decalogue--we will not particularise them--but the Bishop of London is
resolute, and the new Lord Chancellor is, in all respects a bran-new
Christian.
Lord STANLEY begs that when he prays for power to forgive all his enemies,
he may be permitted to except from that prayer--DANIEL O'CONNELL. The
Bishop is, however, inexorable; and O'Connell is to be prayed for, in all
churches visited by Lord STANLEY.
Several of the bishops, smitten by the heathen darkness of the great
majority of the Cabinet--affected by their utter ignorance of the
practical working of Christianity--burst into tears. It will not be
credited by those disposed to think charitably of their fellow-creatures,
that--we state the melancholy fact upon the golden word of the Bishop of
EXETER--several Cabinet ministers had never heard of the divine sentence
which enjoins upon us to do to others as we would they should do unto us.
Sir JAMES GRAHAM, for instance, declared that he had always understood the
passage to simply run--"_Do_ others;" and had, therefore, in very many
acts of his political life, squared his doings according to the mutilated
sentence. All the Cabinet had, more or less, some idea of the miracle of
the Loaves and the Fishes. Indeed, many of them confessed that with them,
the Loaves and the Fishes had, during their whole political career,
contained the essence of Christianity. Sir EDWARD KNATCHBULL, Lord
ELLENBOROUGH, and GOULBURN declared that for the last ten years they had
hungered for nothing else.
We cannot dwell upon every individual case of ignorance displayed in the
Cabinet. We confine ourselves to the glad statement, that every minister
from the first lord of the treasury to the grooms in waiting, vivified by
the sacred heat of their schoolmaster Bishops, illustrate the great truth
of Doctor CHALMERS, that the poor man can only obtain justice "by a
_universal_ Christian education."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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