“Some say man has no hurts, some seek them to reveal,
And to exasperate some, and some to hide and heal.”

Trench.

A LITTLE before Christmas I received an intimation through the women whom I used to meet, that their husbands would be glad to talk with me, if I would give them an opportunity for that purpose. I fixed an evening, and sixteen men came. They told me they had been thinking a great deal about the bad management of their affairs generally, and especially about their habit of buying everything at a great disadvantage; that they wished very much they could see their way to do better. One man had a copy of the rules of a Loan Society which had worked very well in other places, and might be a great help to them. They would require assistance from some of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood to help them to start it. This they asked me to obtain for them, and also the use of the school-room, where they might make their payments; since, if they had to go to a public-house for this purpose, they might as well abandon all thought of saving. Two or three of the men told me they wanted, in some quiet way, to learn to read and write better; for though, when they were asked, they said they could do both, yet they could do neither well enough for the occupation to be pleasant to them. I knew what they meant by the “quiet way:” men have a great dislike to learning as children, or with children. I told them, as to the writing, the best thing they could do would be to save a few sixpences, and buy some of Darnell’s copy-books. Any man might teach himself to write well from them, with no other assistance than just being told how to hold his pen. Good reading, too, they might acquire by constant practice and listening to others who could read better than they.

This last observation opened the way for me to introduce another subject. I told them that, before we separated, I wished to read a chapter in the Bible. Though we differed in many other respects, we were all alike in this, that each needed God’s teaching; and if we expected any of our plans for improving our condition in life to be successful, we must ask God’s guidance in making the plans, and His blessing in carrying them out. One of the men immediately got up and brought me a Bible, adding, “Now we shall be all right.” This man was a great professor of religion, but I knew, alas! not always a consistent one; and I saw the scornful curl of the lip directed against him from some of his comrades. Out of these sixteen men a great variety of creeds might have been collected. One or two of my listeners were stanch Baptists; about the same number were Wesleyans; one, I believe, was in the habit of attending the Church: but those who had hitherto taken the leading part in the conversation were men who have always a great deal to say against “parsons;” who use the word “humbug” more frequently than any other in reference to anything of a religious nature. Most of the rest belonged to a very numerous class; more numerous among working-men than is generally supposed. They might be styled Gallios; for they professedly, at least, “cared for none of these things.”

I felt the difficulty of suiting such an audience, and as I turned over the pages of the book, had to encourage myself by the thought, “Never mind; it is God’s Word, and not yours.” I began by saying that amongst the many different characters who came to Jesus, when He was upon earth, there was one in particular, mentioned in the 3d chapter of St John, whose history would interest us. He differed from others in this respect, that he was not a poor man. He was a Ruler among the Jews,—a master of Israel; but that did not much signify, since we need in our smaller affairs the same wisdom that he was seeking to enable him to be a better Ruler.

Now, though this man wished to be wiser and better, he thought it would never do for the people, who looked up to him as their Ruler and Guide, to see him going to Jesus to be taught just like any common man; so at last he thought of the plan of seeing Jesus by night. In this way, he hoped he should get what he wanted, without making his visit known to other people. Many teachers would have said, “Well, as you are ashamed to be seen coming to me, you had better not come at all.” But Jesus did not think of the affront put upon Himself; He only saw before Him a man whose heart was not right with God, who was not safe for heaven. I dare say, too, that as Jesus knew all that was passing in the mind of this Ruler, He knew that he had not come to Him for heavenly knowledge only. He rather perhaps wished to learn from Jesus some arts of government, by which he could obtain a greater influence over the people. He would have liked to have known how long the Jews were to be in subjection to the Romans, and many other things of that kind. But Jesus had made this man’s soul, and knew its worth; knew it as a fact that it must live for ever, and that, if He helped him now to gain or to govern the whole world, it would be of some little use to him for a few prosperous years, and then would come the blackness of darkness for ever. Therefore, without taking any notice of Nicodemus’s compliments, whatever they may have meant, He lost not a moment in announcing to His wondering disciple the great and solemn truth, “Ye must be born again.”

After explaining this to them as well as I could, together with a few of the following verses, we came to the words,—“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up.” I turned to the chapter in Numbers, giving the account of this. From the intense interest with which these men listened to this simply as a narrative, I was led to suppose that to some of them it might be new. I told them I once saw a picture of this extraordinary story. In one corner of the picture was the pole with the serpent lifted upon it. Strong men, women, and little children were there; some in great agony, as if just bitten; others perfectly prostrate, with the hue of death upon their faces. Mothers were standing with little children in their arms, trying to raise the head that seemed to have drooped in death, and to rouse it just for one look. But that which struck me most was the figure of a man standing before an apparently dying woman. He had something in his hand, to which he endeavoured to draw her attention; and his figure was placed exactly between her and the brazen serpent, so that without stretching her head either to the one side or the other, she could not see the object from which alone she was to derive life. The artist had made it appear that, with the little dying strength which remained, she was trying to move herself out of the way of this hindrance; and as I continued to look at the picture, so strongly was I impressed, that I felt myself saying, “This man must be got out of the way, or she will die.”

“In thinking over this afterwards,” I continued, “it occurred to me that there were many now acting the part of this cruel man. All teachers of error resemble him. Those lecturers, whom some of you men hear occasionally, and who tell you to believe in nothing you cannot see,—that as to your being bitten with the old serpent, sin, it is all a fiction, although, even whilst you are listening, you can hardly be still for the agony which the bites have inflicted; the Roman Catholic priest, too, who comes and tells us we need not look for ourselves, that his looking for us, or the intercession of the Virgin Mary, will do equally well—that at any rate we need not trouble ourselves,—are like this man in the picture. Then you yourselves sometimes stand in one another’s way; and when you see any eye directed aright, instead of removing all impediments, you rather, by your jesting, ridicule, and banter, cause the eye to be turned away. And what is it turned to? It just goes back to the old dreary state of ‘seeking rest, and finding none.’ Nothing ever strikes me so much in false teaching as its cruelty. These self-constituted leaders will see you suffer without relief, knowing, too, that bad as it is, this is only the beginning of suffering, they will still interpose themselves and their false doctrines between you and the look that would bring such healing and joy as you have never known before. It is something like this:—Suppose there was but one large fountain of water in the street from which the inhabitants could obtain their supplies, and that this fountain was in the keeping of one person, whose duty it was to open it to all who applied, and to allow them to help themselves as freely as they pleased; suppose, then, that instead of aiding you to fill your pitcher, he exercised a great deal of ingenuity in persuading you that if you carried it to the top of Notting Hill, or over to Kensington, perhaps you would get water which would answer your purpose much better—that the wells there had been more recently dug—that the water there would suit your particular constitution better; that he said anything, rather than allow you to supply your wants in the most simple and direct way—in the way intended and provided by one who really did know exactly what was adapted for you.

“I should be sorry to undertake to persuade any of you to go this round-about way to supply your wants. Your own good sense would be stronger than any arguments I could possibly use. You would say, ‘It has answered the purpose for years past, and those who have gone before us have done very well upon it; why should I change?’

“Whenever your worldly interests are concerned, I do not consider you men are easily to be taken in; it is only about the salvation of your souls—your eternal interests—that which will be living on still when the heavens and the earth have passed away,—it is only on these points that you allow yourselves to be—to be—I must use one of your own words—to be ‘humbugged.’

“Then, again, if it were some difficult thing which God asked us to do, we might make many excuses—we might plead the want of learning, the want of capacity, the want of strength; but we have only to ‘Look, and live.’”

“Ma’am,” said one of the men, “will you pray for us?”

We all kneeled together, and prayed that whatever prevented our looking to the “Crucified One” might be removed; and that, instead of going to earthly fountains to quench our thirst, we might drink of the water of everlasting life, and thirst no more.Just as we were separating, one of the men said—“Ma’am, if you will come here to meet us every Wednesday evening, we’ll all come, and bring about a hundred more with us.” I replied that I was much obliged to them, but I really had not the time to spare. If my help was the only help they could get, I would make any sacrifice and come; but if they would only take the trouble to walk about half a mile, to Mr Lewis’s school-room, at Westbourne Grove, he would be very glad to see them in their working clothes, and would explain everything to them much better than I could.

Several of them promised to go; and as most of them were still lingering about over the fire, I said to them,—“I wish you men, would try and get out of the way of talking about ‘parsons’ as you do. I don’t mean to say that all ‘parsons’ are what they ought to be by a great deal; but the way you often speak of them is as unjust as it would be for me to speak with contempt of all working-men, because some amongst them are drunkards and thieves.”

“Ah, that’s true,” said one of them. “Fair play’s a jewel, anyhow.”

“It is not only the unfairness to them,” I said, “but you put yourselves very often out of the way of receiving benefit from those who do most sincerely and earnestly wish to help you. As long as we dislike people, it is hardly possible that they can do us any good. If you are not in a hurry to go, I will tell you about a man I met with lately, who was doing himself a great deal of mischief in this way.”They said they were in no hurry,—they shouldn’t do anything more that night; they were glad to stay.

(I did not give them the story so fully as I have written it here. I had no notes with me; and simply told them from memory the part that would apply to our previous conversation.)

“For some weeks before we went into the house in which we now live, several workmen were employed there; and I generally went once in the course of the day, to see how they were getting on. One of them, a painter, was a remarkably clever man; he seemed to have read an endless number of books, papers, and everything else. It was the time of the Indian mutiny; and if I had been unable to look at the papers, he could always tell me anything that was going on. He often made remarks upon the government of the country, and sometimes these were very sensible. As he was a single man, and did not seem to care much where he spent his time, I proposed to him that (as he had to come all the way from Blackfriars) he should take possession of a little bed-room in the house, and make himself comfortable there. He seemed very glad to do this. A day or two after he had settled himself, I had occasion to go to his room; and I found, amongst other things, a great quantity of books and newspapers strewed about. Some of the books were political, some on India; and there were a few novels, by no means the best. After I had finished speaking to him about his work that day, I said to him, ‘When I was up in your room just now, I was looking at your books. Some of them are very good. I am going to ask you to be so kind as to lend me one for a few days, it is “Napier’s India.”’ He seemed much pleased, and ran off directly to fetch it. When he returned, I said, ‘There was one thought that came into my mind while I was looking at your books. If I had not known whose they really were, I should have supposed that they belonged to some one who had no interest in anything beyond the present life; some one who meant to get as cleverly as possible through that;—but that was all.’

“‘I suppose you mean, ma’am, there were no religious books there? As to those, I gave all them up long ago: I couldn’t stand such twaddle.’

“‘Have you had a great experience of religious books?’

“‘Why, no. I went to a Sunday-school once, but it wasn’t much of it; and some ladies used to call and leave us some tracts, and beg us to read them. I didn’t like to promise to do so, and not do it; but it was such “bosh!” Do you know, ma’am, after you had been here for a day or two, we were talking about you; and I said, “I do think she is one of the right sort; she doesn’t bring us any tracts, or any twaddle.”’

“‘I am afraid I am going to lose my good character.’

“‘Oh no, ma’am; I shall be happy to listen to anything you have to say!’

“‘Well, I want to hear what you have to say. It interests me very much to know how you are planning it out. Do you intend to make the best of this life; and then—what then? Are you so pleased with it, as to feel satisfied that all shall end here?’

“‘Why, as to being pleased with it, I don’t think anybody who has lived five-and-twenty years in the world can be much pleased with it. I am sure it ain’t much to me. I’ve nobody, hardly, belonging to me, to care anything about me; and if it wasn’t for the liking I have for books, and that sort of thing, I should have nothing but my work to do, and to eat, and drink, and sleep: and I don’t call that worth living for; do you, ma’am?’

“‘No, indeed, I do not. I feel very sorry for you. I should so like to help you to be happier, if I only knew how; but, perhaps, if I told you what I think about it, you might call it “bosh” or “twaddle,” or something of that sort.’

“‘No, ma’am, I shouldn’t. You see, ma’am, it isn’t because I haven’t thought about these things, for I thought myself almost crazy once; and the people who, I expected, might have helped me were worse to me than anybody. My father was a mighty religious man in his way, and dreadful strict: we couldn’t hardly speak or look of a Sunday, but we got a thrashing for it. My brother and I have said often and often, that, as soon as we took to the world for ourselves, we’d have done with all that sort of thing; we had had enough of it. The masters I have worked for have made a great fuss, some of ’em, about their own religion; but they haven’t minded cheating us a bit when they could do it in a quiet way. And as to caring about our souls, they have never troubled themselves about that. And don’t you think, ma’am, that if they really thought we were going to burn in hell-fire for ever, if we went on a bad way, that they’d make some fuss about it, and try to stop us? I know, if I believed it, I wouldn’t do much besides try to prevent people going there; but you may depend upon it, ma’am, they don’t believe it; they keep it in store, like, as something to frighten poor ignorant people with.’

“‘But I want to know what you think; I am not just now concerning myself about these people.’

“‘Well, I have pretty well made up my mind, after all I have seen, just to take the world as it comes, and live on in the best way I can, and not trouble my head any more about it. I suppose, God has got it all planned out about us, and He’ll do what He likes with us.’

“‘That is quite true. God has planned it all out; but then He has made no secret of His plans. He has written a book to tell us how we stand towards Him, and how He stands towards us.’

“‘Ah! you mean the Bible. We used to be punished with having to learn chapters out of it, and we hated it; and I have never took up with it since. People talk about its being good news, and all that sort of thing; but I don’t believe there is any good news in it for me.’“‘Supposing, when you first came here, I had written a letter to you, inviting you to come to my house whenever you liked to do so; telling you that I would have a nice room prepared for you, and, in every respect, would make you as comfortable as possible; and supposing that, instead of reading my invitation, and availing yourself of my kind offers, you had treated my letter with contempt, and refused even to open it, pleading as an excuse that a letter once proved disagreeable to you. If, after you left, I should hear that you spread an evil report about me, and accused me of unkindness, do you not think I could justly charge you with injustice?’

“‘Yes; and I see what you mean. I can’t say I’ve tried to find out much about the Book, either good or bad.’

“‘There is another thing. I think that you have rather confused ideas about the character of God. You confound your earthly with your heavenly Father; and thus you think unjustly of Him, and His works also. Now, as I cannot stay longer to-day, I am going to ask you to reward me for not troubling you with tracts, and what you call “twaddle,” by just reading one little chapter that I will leave turned down for you here.’

“I left him the 15th chapter of Luke to read; and he faithfully read it, and the next day we talked about it. He was too intellectual a man not to appreciate its exceeding beauty; but he did not feel himself to be a prodigal needing the love and forgiveness of the kind Father; so that it was to him little else than a ‘pleasant song.’

“After many observations had passed, I asked if he were in the habit of attending any place of worship. He answered, ‘Oh, no! I have been to the cathedral sometimes, but I didn’t like it.’

“This was Saturday. At the end of our conversation, I told him I thought he had better make one more trial of attending a place of worship; and, as he lived in Blackfriars, I recommended him to go to Surrey Chapel, to hear the Rev. Newman Hall. He promised he would. On Monday, I did not get to the house till it was late. Some of the men had gone away; but this painter was still lingering over his work. ‘Oh, ma’am,’ he said, ‘I am glad you have come. I wanted to see you, to tell you I went yesterday to hear the gentleman you spoke about.’

“‘I am glad to hear it. I hope you will often go.’

“‘I believe I shall, for he is something about a parson. I said to myself, “You ain’t a humbug, anyhow.” I went in the morning, and I went again in the evening.’

“I had no time to talk to him then, nor for some days after. I think the Friday of that week was set apart as a fast-day. On the Thursday I found him painting away very busily. As soon as he saw me, he said, ‘We have just been talking about you, ma’am, and we know you are in a hurry to get this house done; and so, instead of knocking off work, because it is the fast-day to-morrow, we are going to stick to our painting, and have a jolly good day at it.’“‘I am very much obliged to you; indeed, I think you are all very kind in trying to accommodate me; and I quite appreciate all you do; but I could not think of allowing you to do what you propose. You know the state the country is in; what terrible accounts we are constantly receiving from India; and what severe general distress there is. Although we may not be suffering from these calamities, it would be selfish and heartless in the extreme not to join with those who are, in praying for God’s mercy to deliver us out of these troubles.’

“‘Well, ma’am, that’s all very right, I dare say; and I don’t object to the thing itself; but what I object to is the way it is done in. I was reading the proclamation outside the Mansion House, the other day; and it says that the Queen commands us all on that day to pray to Almighty God. Now, I don’t think any one has a right to command us to do anything of the sort; and, if I pray at all, I shall do it some other day.’

“‘I gave you credit for being a wiser man. What would become of law and order in this country, if some one had not the power to decide such things? There would be no end of contest and confusion. I don’t suppose that either you or I should make very good Sovereigns; but if there were no one else, it would be much better for the country to give one of us the power of saying what should or should not be done, rather than to leave every question open to be contested. And as to your taking offence at the expression, “her Majesty commands,” that is merely a form of words, meaning that her Majesty confirms the wish of the nation. The term itself is just as much of a form as the “Most Gracious Majesty” which is used to the really gracious and ungracious alike.’

“Another man then joined in, and said that he thought, ‘what the nation wanted more than fast-days was better government. The government was always getting the country into trouble, and then setting it to pray itself out of it again.’

“‘If that is the case, that would be a very good reason in itself for having a fast-day,’ I said, ‘that we might pray for better government.’

“Most of the men joined in this talk about governments. It was evidently a topic upon which they were much in the habit of conversing; and I could not but be struck with the shrewdness of their observations.

“At last I said, ‘Now, after all you have told me about oppressive governments, bad laws, taxation, and all that, you have not brought forward one thing that would for a moment stand in the way of your following any occupation you like, and becoming great in it, choosing any kind of home your industry and resources would enable you to command, reading what books you like, adopting what form of religious worship you like, sending your children to any school you like, and taking up with any friends you like; so that I cannot offer you much sympathy for the oppressions of which you are complaining. But there is something going on in this country that is oppressing you. I think, if you could prove there was anything in the present government which caused destruction of life and property to 10,000 persons every year, it would excite such indignation in the country that the government would hardly stand another week.’

“‘I should think not,’ one of them said.

“‘And yet there is something going on amongst us that is destroying at least 60,000 precious souls and bodies every year; and I have often wondered that you men, who have such ability to detect and expose the faults of a government, which, after all, is not hurting you much, and which you cannot alter, should expend uselessly the power that might be successfully directed against the monster evil to which I am referring.’

“‘You mean the drink, I suppose, ma’am?’

“‘Yes. Now, here is an evil worth fighting against. If you directed all your efforts against this tyrannical government, and were determined to get rid of it, you would be doing much more good for yourselves, and the country too, than any House of Commons will ever do, even supposing all the members of it were elected by ballot.’

“Then followed a kind of teetotal discussion. Amongst other arguments brought against teetotalism, the painter objected that ‘people who lived altogether upon food ate such a lot that they got heavy and stupid in their minds.’ I asked him if he knew that the preacher he had heard last Sunday was a water-drinker?“‘Dear me, no; I never could have thought it. What! he only drink water? Well, that’s a good un! I’d drink water, too, if I thought I could get such a headpiece as his out of it. I said to myself, on Sunday, when I was hearing him, “Now, you are a right sort of a man; if I could be like you, I shouldn’t get tired of being alive, as I do now sometimes.”’

“‘No, indeed; if you were like him, you would not get tired of living, nor be afraid of dying, either. Now, suppose you set up from this day to try to be like him. You know that his nature is no better than yours. God has made him what he is; and is ready to do everything for you that He has done for him.’

“‘Well, I think, as we are not to work here to-morrow, I shall go and hear what he has to say about things; for perhaps he’ll preach a sermon about the country, or something of that sort. I have been wondering, this week, how he thinks about what’s going on. I have thought of a lot of things I should like to ask him about.’

“He not only went himself to Surrey Chapel, but took some of his comrades; and many of their future discussions were grounded upon what they there heard.

“I saw this man once more, about a month after the house was finished. He told me, he went every Sunday to hear Mr Hall; and ‘ma’am,’ he added, ‘I do believe I am beginning to see some things very different from what I did.’”

We separated that evening with the pleasant feeling that we had become better acquainted, and had found more subjects of common interest than we had expected.

Exception may be taken, and with apparent justice, that I have made no effort to disabuse the mind of this man of its many prejudices and antipathies. Formerly, when I was not so well acquainted with the habits of thought and feeling among working-men as I now am, I used to expend considerable time and trouble in endeavouring to remove their prejudices; but it never appeared to me that I effected any real good in this way. The men were usually so far beyond me in acuteness and capacity to detect and expose what they considered inconsistencies, that if I succeeded in clearing one victim from imputation, another was readily substituted. I have, therefore, come to the conclusion that it is better from the first to treat it as something altogether irrelevant, and not worthy of notice. Instead of wasting precious time, and losing opportunities that may never again present themselves, in arguing about the right and the wrong of other people, I usually meet such attacks in this way:—“Supposing these people are as bad as you say, I cannot see that their faults can make any difference to you, beyond inducing you to be more careful that you yourself entirely abstain from what you seem so to dislike in others. God’s law is, ‘So then, every one of us must give an account of himself to God.’ He has written a perfect law that we may study it, and seek to conform ourselves to it; and to prevent the possibility of our erring through the want of living example, He has Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, lived our earthly life to teach us how to live. Your making your own conduct depend so much upon what other people do, is like the folly of a man who would shut the shutters of his room, excluding all daylight, and then complain that the dim, flickering, uncertain light of the rushlight he had substituted, was insufficient to enable him to do his work properly. If this man, when taking home his work, were to excuse himself to the master for its being so badly done, on the ground that the light of his rushlight was insufficient and uncertain, the master would reply, I never intended you to work by that light; it is none of my providing. You wilfully shut out the glorious sun set up for your use in the heavens, and which I knew would be more than sufficient for every purpose. Whilst you were groping about almost in the dark, it was even then surrounding you, waiting only to be permitted to enter. The blame of this bad work, therefore, returns upon you, and upon you only.”

It will often happen at a later period of intimacy with such characters as the one previously described, and when a more reasonable state of mind has taken the place of harsher feelings, that the subject of these antipathies can be renewed with advantage. I remember, in the case of this man, one of the last conversations I had with him was in reference to remarks he had been making about some distinguished person whose conduct to him appeared inconsistent. I said to him, “A few days ago, I had to insist upon one of my children doing something she did not like to do. A short time afterwards, I happened to hear her saying to herself, ‘When I am grown up to be a mamma, I shall not do as my mamma does, I shall do a great deal better, and let my children do every thing they like.’

“If you had been by, you would probably have said, ‘When you are a mamma you will alter your opinion on that subject.’ You would not, probably, by this remark, do much to remove the impression from the mind of the child that she was right and I was wrong; but you would be satisfied that experience would justify you in what you had said.

“I believe we often resemble this child in the estimate we form of people who are moving in an entirely different sphere from our own. I have no doubt, if you could for one week occupy the palaces and take upon yourself the responsibilities of these people against whom you have so much to say, as great a transition would take place in your mind respecting them, as there will probably be in the mind of this child if she ever assumes the duties she now supposes are so badly performed; and your wonder would rather be that, amidst the trials, temptations, and heavy responsibilities attached to their exalted position, you had not been able to detect even more apparent inconsistencies of conduct.”

“Well, ma’am,” the man replied, “I see what you mean, and I will think it over, for I have begun to see lately that I am not always so overright myself. But, ma’am, I don’t think this ill judging that you complain of is all on one side. If we poor men do make the mistake of judging the rich too harshly, I am sure the rich don’t forget to ‘pay us back in our own coin.’”

“I am afraid there is much truth in what you say. This want of consideration for one another is a general evil that pervades all society and is at the present time causing a great deal of unhappiness in this country. I have no doubt you have had masters whose conduct towards you seemed to be entirely influenced by the amount of work they could get out of you; but whilst you could justly charge them with this, must you not at the same time have pleaded guilty if you had been accused of entertaining much the same sentiment towards them? It is not because one man is rich and another poor that there is so little kindly feeling between the two classes, neither is it altogether that one is learned and the other unlearned; for much as there is to deplore in the present state of society, we have still beautiful instances of the most faithful and genuine friendship existing between the serving and the served. It is not, I am persuaded, this difference of position that is at the root of the mischief; it is the mistaken feeling that one class bears to another. It is the hard words that you speak, and the unjust thoughts that you and your comrades encourage each other to entertain towards the rich, that help to make society wrong; and it is because the higher classes do not honour you for your skill, industry, and ability, and acknowledge their dependence upon you, that this wrong is perpetuated.”

I have sometimes wondered, if an angel were to be sent from heaven to endeavour to set us all right on the subject of our duties and feelings one towards another, whether he would give his first lesson to the employers or the employed; but neither party need wait for the extraordinary teaching of a celestial visitant. An angel would bring with him no new lesson-book—he would point out to us for our guidance a few verses from an old and inspired volume; that have been trying to make themselves heard amongst us for the last eighteen hundred years.

“For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

“But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.”

“And be ye kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”

“Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another; love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous.”

“The workshop must be crowded
That the palace may be bright;
If the ploughman did not plough,
Then the poet could not write.
Then let every toil be hallow’d
That man performs for man,
And have its share of honour
As part of one great plan.“Ye men who hold the pen,
Rise like a band inspired;
And, poets, let your lyrics
With hope for man be fired;
Till the earth becomes a temple,
And every human heart
Shall join in one great service,
Each happy in his part.”