The Water of Life, and Other SermonsKingsley, Charles
Religion
The Water of Life, and Other Sermons
Kingsley, Charles
Church of England -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 19th century
Meanwhile, we are sorry (for the English are a kind-hearted people) for
the victims of our luxury and our neglect. Sorry for the thousands whom
we let die every year by preventible diseases, because we are either too
busy or too comfortable to save their lives. Sorry for the savages whom
we exterminate, by no deliberate evil intent, but by the mere weight of
our heavy footstep. Sorry for the thousands who are used-up yearly in
certain trades, in ministering to our comfort, even to our very luxuries
and frivolities. Sorry for the Sheffield grinders, who go to work as to
certain death; who count how many years they have left, and say, ‘A short
life and a merry one. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.’
Sorry for the people whose lower jaws decay away in lucifer-match
factories. Sorry for all the miseries and wrongs which this Children’s
Employment Commission has revealed. Sorry for the diseases of artificial
flower-makers. Sorry for the boys working in glass-houses whole days and
nights on end without rest, ‘labouring in the very fire, and wearying
themselves with very vanity.’—Vanity, indeed, if after an amount of
gallant toil which nothing but the indomitable courage of an Englishman
could endure, they grow up animals and heathens. We are sorry for them
all—as the giant is for the worm on which he treads. Alas! poor worm.
But the giant must walk on. He is necessary to the universe, and the
worm is not. So we are sorry—for half an hour; and glad too (for we are
a kind-hearted people) to hear that charitable persons or the government
are going to do something towards alleviating these miseries. And then
we return, too many of us, each to his own ambition, or to his own
luxury, comforting ourselves with the thought, that we did not make the
world, and we are not responsible for it.
How shall we conquer this temptation to laziness, selfishness,
heartlessness? By faith in God, such as the prophet had. By faith in
God as the eternal enemy of evil, the eternal helper of those who try to
overcome evil with good; the eternal avenger of all the wrong which is
done on earth. By faith in God, as not only our Father, our Saviour, our
Redeemer, our Protector: but the Father, Saviour, Redeemer, Protector,
and if need be, Avenger, of every human being. By faith in God, which
believes that His infinite heart yearns over every human soul, even the
basest and the worst; that He wills that not one little one should
perish, but that all should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the
truth.
We must believe that, if we wish that it should be true of us, that the
just shall live by his faith. If we wish our faith to keep us just men,
leading just lives, we must believe that God is just, and that He shows
His justice by the only possible method—by doing justice, sooner or
later, for all who are unjustly used.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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