After a few sensible words, pointing out the misery in houses, and the harm done to the soul, by a quarrelsome spirit, she lamented there was too much of it in Huntercombe: with this opening she went into personalities: reminded them of the fight between two farm servants last week, one of whom was laid up at that moment in consequence. “And,” said she, “even when it does not come to fighting, it poisons your lives and offends your Redeemer.”
Then she went into the causes, and she said Drunkenness and Detraction were the chief causes of strife and contention.
She dealt briefly but dramatically with Drunkenness, and then lashed Detraction, as follows:
“Every class has its vices, and Detraction is the vice of the poor. You are ever so much vainer than your betters: you are eaten up with vanity, and never give your neighbor a good word. I have been in thirty houses, and in not one of those houses has any poor man or poor woman spoken one honest word in praise of a neighbor. So do not flatter yourselves this is a Christian village, for it is not. The only excuse to be made for you, and I fear it is not one that God will accept on His judgment-day, is that your betters set you a bad example instead of a good one. The two principal people in this village are kinsfolk, yet enemies, and have been enemies for twenty years. That's a nice example for two Christian gentlemen to set to poor people, who, they may be sure, will copy their sins, if they copy nothing else.
“They go to church regularly, and believe in the Bible, and yet they defy both Church and Bible.
“Now I should like to ask those gentlemen a question. How do they mean to manage in Heaven? When the baronet comes to that happy place, where all is love, will the squire walk out? Or do they think to quarrel there, and so get turned out, both of them? I don't wonder at your smiling; but it is a serious consideration, for all that. The soul of man is immortal: and what is the soul? it is not a substantial thing, like the body; it is a bundle of thoughts and feelings: the thoughts we die with in this world, we shall wake up with them in the next. Yet here are two Christians loading their immortal souls with immortal hate. What a waste of feeling, if it must all be flung off together with the body, lest it drag the souls of both down to bottomless perdition.
“And what do they gain in this world?—irritation, ill-health, and misery. It is a fact that no man ever reached a great old age who hated his neighbor; still less a good old age; for, if men would look honestly into their own hearts, they would own that to hate is to be miserable.
“I believe no men commit a sin for many years without some special warnings; and to neglect these, is one sin more added to their account. Such a warning, or rather, I should say, such a pleading of Divine love, those two gentlemen have had. Do you remember, about eight years ago, two children were lost on one day, out of different houses in this village?” (A murmur from the crowd.)
“Perhaps some of you here present were instrumental, under God, in finding that pretty pair.” (A louder murmur.)
“Oh, don't be afraid to answer me. Preaching is only a way of speaking; and I'm only a woman that is speaking to you for your good. Tell me—we are not in church, tied up by stait-laced rules to keep men and women from getting within arm's-length of one another's souls—tell me, who saw those two lost children?”