All Saints' Day and Other Sermons

by Charles Kingsley

I said a modicum of alms. I ought to have said, any amount of alms, any amount of charity. Throughout the great cities of Europe—in London as much as anywhere—hundreds of thousands are saying, “We want no alms. We intend to reconstitute society, even at the expense of blood, so that no man, woman, or child, shall need the rich man’s alms. We do not choose, for it is not just, that he should take credit to himself for giving us a shilling when he owes us a pound, ten, a hundred pounds—owes us, in fact, all by which he and his class are richer than us and our class. And we will make him pay his debt.”

I do not say that such words are wise. I believe them to be foolish—suicidal. I believe that it is those who patiently wait on the Lord, and not the discontented who fret themselves till they do evil, who will inherit the land, and be refreshed in peace. I believe that all those who take the sword will perish by the sword; that those who appeal to brute force will always find it—just because it is brute force—always strongest on the side of the rich, who can hire it for evil, as for good.

I only say, that so hundreds of thousands think; so they speak, and will speak more and more loudly, as long as the present tone of society endures,—good-natured and well meaning, but luxurious, covetous, ignoble, frivolous, ignorant; believing—all classes alike, not only that money makes the man, but worse far—that money makes the woman also; and all the while half-ashamed of itself, half-distrustful of itself, and trying to buy off man by alms, and God by superstition.

So long as the great mass of the poor of any city know nothing of the great mass of the rich of that city, save as folk who roll past them in their carriages, seemingly easy while they are struggling, seemingly happy while they are wretched, so long will the rich of that city be supposed, however falsely, to be what the French workmen used to call mangeurs d’hommes—exploiteurs d’hommes—to get their wealth by means of the poverty, their comfort by means of the misery of their fellow-men; and so long will they be exposed to that mere envy and hatred which pursues always the more prosperous, till, in some national crisis, when the rich and poor meet together, both parties will be but too apt to behave, through mutual fear and hate, as if not God, but the devil, was the maker of them all.

These words are strong. How can they be too strong, in face of what is now passing in a neighbouring land? Not too strong, either, in view of the actual state of vast masses of the poor in London itself, and indeed of any one of our great cities.

That matter has been reported on, preached on, spoken on, till all other civilized countries reproach Britain with the unique contrast between the exceeding wealth of some classes and the exceeding poverty of others; till we, instead of being startled by the reproach, take the present state of things as a matter of course, a physical necessity, a law of nature and society, that there should be, in the back streets of every great city, hordes of, must I say, savages? neither decently civilized nor decently Christianized, uncertain, most of them, of regular livelihood, and therefore shiftless and reckless, extravagant in prosperity, and in adversity falling at once into want and pauperism. You may ask any clergyman, any minister of religion of any denomination, whether the thing is not so. Or if you want to read the latest news about the degradation of your fellow-subjects, read a little book called “East and West,” and judge for yourselves, whether such a population, numbered by hundreds of thousands, are in a state pleasing to God, or safe for those classes of whom they only know that they pay them wages, and that these wages are as small as they can be forced to take. Read that book; and then ask yourselves, is it wonderful that, in one district, before the mission of the society for which I plead was established, the poor used seriously to believe that it was the wish and endeavour of the rich to grind them down, and keep them poor. We, of course, know that the poor folk were mistaken but do we not know, too—some of us—that there are political economists in the world, who, though they would not willingly make the poor poorer than they are, are still of opinion that it is good for the nation, on the whole, that the present state of things should continue; that there should be always a reserve of labour, in plain English, a vast multitude who have not quite work enough to live on, ready to be called on in any emergency of business, and used, to beat down, by their competition, the wages of their fellow-workmen? Is this theory altogether novel and unheard of? Or this theory also, that for this very reason, Emigration, which looks the very simplest remedy for most of this want,—while nine-tenths of the bounteous earth is waiting to be subdued and replenished by the poor wretches who cannot get at it—that Emigration, I say, is an unnecessary movement—that the people are all wanted at home—to be such as the parson and the mission women find them?

And it may be that the poor folk have heard—for a bird of the air may carry the matter in these days of a free press—that some rich folk, at least, hold this opinion, and translate it freely out of the delicate language of political economy, into the more vigorous dialect used in the fever alleys and smallpox courts in which the poor are left to wait for work. But if there be any rich persons in this congregation who hold these peculiar economic doctrines, let me recommend to them, more than to any other persons present, that they would support a society which alleviates the hard pressure of their system; which helps to make it tolerable and prudent by teaching the poor to save; by teaching them, in London alone,—how to save £54,000 in the last eleven years. Let them help this society heartily.

The children of this world are—in their generation—wiser than the children of light. But how long their generation will last, depends mainly (we are told) on how far they make themselves friends out of the mammon of unrighteousness.

But if, again, there be rich people in this congregation, as I trust there are many and many, who start, indignant, at such an imputation, and utterly deny its truth—then,—if it be false, why in the name of God, and of humanity, and of common prudence, why do they not go to these people and tell them so? Why do they not prove that it is not so, by showing a little more human sympathy, not merely for them behind their backs, but sympathy with them face to face? If they wish to know how much can be done by only a little active kindness, they have only to read the pages of that painful, and yet pleasant, book—“East and West,”—which I have just quoted; and to read, also, an appendix to it—a Paper originally read at the Church Congress, Manchester, by the present Lord Chancellor—a document which it would be an impertinence in me to recommend or praise.

Bring yourselves then boldly into contact with these classes, and especially into contact with the women—with the wives and mothers. For it is through the women, through them mainly, if not altogether, that civilization and religion can be introduced among any degraded class. It was so in the Middle Age. The legends which tell us how woman was then the civilizer, the softener, the purifier, the perpetual witness to fierce and coarse men, that there were nobler aims in life than pleasure, and power, and the gratification of revenge; that not self-assertion, but self-sacrifice was the Divine ideal, toward which all must aspire. These old legends are immortal; for they speak of facts and laws which will endure as long as there are women upon earth. Through the woman, the civilizer and the Christianizer must reach the man. Through the wife, he must reach the husband. Through the mother, he must reach the children. I say he must. It is easy to complain that the clergy in every age and country have tried to obtain influence over women. They have been forced to do so, because otherwise they could obtain no influence at all. And if a priesthood should arise hereafter, whose calling was to teach not religion but irreligion, not the good news that there is a good God, and that we can know Him; but the bad news that there is no God, or, if there is, we cannot know Him; then would that priesthood find it necessary to appeal like all other priesthoods, to the women, and to teach them how to teach their children.