Church of England -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 19th century
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, thought, and skill.
No; if you would see how low man can fall, you must go to the tropic
jungle, where geniality of climate, plenty and variety of food, are
in themselves a cause of degradation to the soul, as long as the
Spirit of Christ is absent from it. Not in the barren desert, but
in the rich forest, wanders the true savage, eating and eating all
day long, like the ape in the trees above his head; and (I had
almost said), like the ape, too, with no thoughts save what his
pampered senses can suggest. I had almost said it. Thank God, I
dare not say it altogether; for, after all, the savage is a man, and
not an ape. Yes, to the lowest savage in the forests of the Amazon,
comes a hunger of the soul, and whispers from the unseen world, to
remind him of what he might have been, and still may be. In the
dreams of the night they come; in vague terrors of the unseen, vague
feelings of guilt and shame, vague dread of the powers of nature;
driving him to unmeaning ceremonies, to superstitious panics, to
horrible and bloody rites--as they might drive, to-morrow, my
friends, an outwardly civilized population, debauched by mere peace
and plenty, entangled and imprisoned in the wilderness of a great
city.
I can imagine--imagine?--Have we not seen again and again human
souls so entangled and opprest by this vast labyrinth of brick and
mortar, as never to care to stir outside it and expand their souls
with the sight of God's works as long as their brute wants are
supplied, just as the savage never cares to leave his accustomed
forest haunt, and hew himself a path into the open air through the
tangled underwood. I can imagine--nay, have we not seen that, too?--
and can we not see it any day in the street?--human souls so
dazzled and stupefied, instead of being quickened, by the numberless
objects of skill and beauty, which they see in their walks through
the streets, that they care no more for the wonders of man's making,
than the savage does for the wonders of God's making, which he sees
around him in every insect, bird, and flower. The man who walks the
streets every day, is the very man who will see least in the
streets. The man who works in a factory, repeating a thousand times
a day some one dull mechanical operation, or even casting up day
after day the accounts of it, is the man who will think least of the
real wonderfulness of that factory; of the amount of prudence,
skill, and science, which it expresses; of its real value to himself
and to his class; of its usefulness to far nations beyond the seas.
He is like a savage who looks up at some glorious tree, capable, in
the hands of civilized man, of a hundred uses, and teeming to him
with a hundred scientific facts; and thinks all the while of nothing
but his chance of finding a few grubs beneath its bark.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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