Meanwhile it requires no technical
proficiency to recognize the criminality of those who waste their
brief threescore and ten years in abstract speculations, while the
tangible, visible, and hideous soul-destroying trinity of Vice,
Ignorance, and Poverty, above mentioned, are desolating the world in
their very sight. There are possessors of personal virtue,
enlightenment, and wealth, who dare stand neutral with regard to
these dire exigencies among their fellows. And yet they are the
logical helpers, as holders of the special antidote to each of those
banes! Infinitely more deserving of execration are such folk than
the callous owner of some specific, who allows a suffering neighbour
to perish for want of it.
We who believe in the ultimate development of the Christian notion of
duty towards God, as manifested in untiring beneficence to man, cling
to this faith--starting from the [223] beginning of the New Testament
dispensation--because Saul of Tarsus, transformed into Paul the
Apostle through his whole-souled acceptance of this very creed with
its practical responsibilities, has, in his ardent, indefatigable
labours for the enlightenment and elevation of his fellows, left us a
lesson which is an enduring inspiration; because Augustine, Bishop of
Hippo, benefited, in a manner which has borne, and ever will bear,
priceless fruit, enormous sections of the human family, after his
definite submission to the benign yoke of the same old creed; because
Vincent de Paul has, through the identical inspiration, endowed the
world with his everlasting legacy of organized beneficence; because
it impelled Francis Xavier with yearning heart and eager footsteps
through thousands of miles of peril, to proclaim to the darkling
millions of India what he had experienced to be tidings of great joy
to himself; because Matthew Hale, a lawyer, and of first prominence
in a pursuit which materializes the mind and nips its native candour
and tenderness, escaped unblighted, through the saving influence of
his faith, approving himself in the sight of all [224] an ideal
judge, even according to the highest conception; because John Howard,
opulent and free to enjoy his opulence and repose, was drawn thereby
throughout the whole continent of Europe in quest of the hidden
miseries that torture those whom the law has shut out, in dungeons,
from the light and sympathy of the world; because Thomas Clarkson,
animated by the spirit of its teachings, consecrated wealth, luxury,
and the quiet of an entire lifetime on the altar of voluntary
sacrifice for the salvation of an alien people; because Samuel
Johnson, shut out from mirthfulness by disease and suffering, and
endowed with an intellectual pride intolerant of froward ignorance,
was, through the chastening power of that belief, transformed into
the cheerful minister and willing slave of the weaklings whom he
gathered into his home, and around whom the tendrils of his heart had
entwined themselves, waxing closer and stronger in the moisture of
his never-failing charity; because Henry Havelock, a man of the
sword, whose duties have never been too propitious to the cultivation
and fostering of the gentler virtues, lived and died a blameless
hero, constrained by that faith to be one of its most illustrious
exemplars; [225] because David Livingstone looms great and reverend
in our mental sight in his devotion to a land and race embraced in
his boundless fellow-feeling, and whose miseries he has commended to
the sympathy of the civilized world in words the pathos whereof has
melted thousands of once obdurate hearts to crave a share in applying
a balm to the "open sore of Africa"--that slave-trade whose
numberless horrors beggar description; and finally--one more example
out of the countless varieties of types that blend into a unique
solidarity in the active manifestation of the Christian life--we
believe because Charles Gordon, the martyr-soldier of Khartoum, in
trusting faith a very child, but in heroism more notable than any
mere man of whom history contains a record, gathered around himself,
through the sublime attractiveness of his faith-directed life, the
united suffrages of all nations, and now enjoys, as the recompense
and seal of his life's labours, an apotheosis in homage to which the
heathen of Africa, the man-hunting Arab, the Egyptian, the Turk, all
jostle each other to blend with the exulting children of Britain who
are directly glorified by his life and history.
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