Sanitary and Social Lectures and EssaysKingsley, Charles
Science
Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays
Kingsley, Charles
Essays; Social problems
And, therefore, because I am a priest, and glory in the name of a priest,
I have tried to fulfil somewhat of that which seems to me the true office
of a priest—namely, to proclaim to man the Divine element which exists in
all, even the smallest thing, because each thing is a thought of God
himself; to make men understand that God is indeed about their path and
about their bed, spying out all their ways; that they are indeed
fearfully and wonderfully made, and that God’s hand lies for ever on
them, in the form of physical laws, sacred, irreversible, universal,
reaching from one end of the universe to the other; that whosoever
persists in breaking those laws, reaps his sure punishment of weakness
and sickness, sadness and self-reproach; that whosoever causes them to be
broken by others, reaps his sure punishment in finding that he has
transformed his fellow-men into burdens and curses, instead of helpmates
and blessings. To say this, is a priest’s duty; and then to preach the
good news that the remedy is patent, easy, close at hand; that many of
the worst evils which afflict humanity may be exterminated by simple
common sense, and the justice and mercy which does to others as it would
be done by; to awaken men to the importance of the visible world, that
they may judge from thence the higher importance of that invisible world
whereof this is but the garment and the type; and in all times and
places, instead of keeping the key of knowledge to pamper one’s own power
or pride, to lay that key frankly and trustfully in the hand of every
human being who hungers after truth, and to say: Child of God, this key
is thine as well as mine. Enter boldly into thy Father’s house, and
behold the wonder, the wisdom, the beauty of its laws and its organisms,
from the mightiest planet over thy head, to the tiniest insect beneath
thy feet. Look at it, trustfully, joyfully, earnestly; for it is thy
heritage. Behold its perfect fitness for thy life here; and judge from
thence its fitness for thy nobler life hereafter.
HEROISM.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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