The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: An Inquiry into the Condition of the Abject PoorMearns, Andrew
Religion
The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: An Inquiry into the Condition of the Abject Poor
Mearns, Andrew
Poor -- England -- London
The State must make short work of this iniquitous traffic, and secure
for the poorest the rights of citizenship; the right to live in
something better than fever dens; the right to live as something better
than the uncleanest of brute beasts. This must be done before the
Christian missionary can have much chance with them. But because we
cannot do all we wish, are we to do nothing? Even as things are
something can be accomplished. Is no lifeboat to put out and no
life-belt to be thrown because only half a dozen out of the perishing
hundreds can be saved from the wreck? The very records which supply the
sad story we have been telling, give also proofs of what can be done by
the Gospel and by Christian love and tact and devotion. Gladly do many
of these poor creatures receive the Gospel. Little match-box makers are
heard singing at their toil, "One more day's work for Jesus." "If only
mother was a Christian we should all be happy," said one; and on his
miserable bed, amidst squalor and want and pain, a poor blind man dies
with the prayer upon his lips, "Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to Thy
bosom fly." Another writes, "You have filled my heart with joy, and my
little room with sunshine." A second, who now regularly attends a place
of worship, says, speaking of the visits of the missionary, "Before he
came to visit me I used to sit and make match-boxes on Sunday, but a
word now and then has enabled me to look up to the Lord. I don't feel
like the same person." Another who himself became a missionary to his
own class, and exercised great power over them whenever he spoke, was
able to say, "I was as bad as any of you, but the Lord Jesus had mercy
upon me, and has made me better and so happy." This man had been a
"coal-whipper" of notoriously evil life, and was rescued through his
casually going into a room in one of the courts of which we have spoken,
where a missionary was holding a meeting. Such results should rebuke our
faithlessness. Even in these dark and noisome places the lamp of Life
may be kindled; even from these miry spots bright gems may be snatched,
worth all the labour and all the cost.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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