Is there not in all this enough to distress a sensitive mind, and to lead it to utter the complaint, "O God! wherefore hast Thou placed me in the midst of such contradictions? What am I to do? My father, the man whom I am bound to resemble most on earth, can I condemn him? Can I any the more blame my mother, or charge her with weakness—my mother, whose influence over me is so strong? What, then, am I to do? What must I become? Is life a desert wherein I am lost? Is there no one to guide me? Those who should direct are the first to mislead me. My father says: Do as I do; follow my example. My mother, with all the power of maternal affection, says: 'No, no, my son; do not follow your father, for if you do you will perish'." What shame should we take to ourselves for a state of things like this, and how much should we pity those who are its victims!
And then the lower classes—the people,—who do penance under our eyes in toil and suffering, how can we help loving, how avoid compassionating, them? Undoubtedly, they have their faults, their frailties, and their vices; but are we not more blameworthy than they? The people are always what they are made. Is it their fault if the pernicious doctrines and scandals of the higher orders have stained the lower classes of society? Moreover, they have been treated without pity and without mercy. They have been despoiled of all: even that last resource, hope, has been taken from them. They have been forbidden to dream of happiness. Heartless men have interposed between them and heaven, and have said to them, "Listen; your toil, your trials, your rags, your hunger, the hunger of your wives and children—such is your lot. You have nothing else to hope for; except, perchance, the pleasures of revelry." They have been deprived of every thing: they had hopes of a better future, which have been taken from them; they had God above, who has been robbed from them, and they have been told that heaven consisted in the enjoyments of earth. Meanwhile, they are miserable; and being miserable are, as it were, doomed already: yet, what have they done to merit this?
Yes, there has been no pity shown to the people; for has not the present age regarded Christianity as a delusion? Christianity ought to have been respected among the people, because it benefited them, because it alleviated their wretchedness. But no, a cruel age has had the fell courage to snatch it from them. A tale is told of a prisoner who became deeply attached to a spider, which served to while away the tedium of his captivity. He fed it with his own food, and it was his delight to see it scamper about his cell; but the jailer, noticing this innocent gratification, crushed the insect. … The spider was undoubtedly an insignificant thing; but the jailer's conduct was harsh, and all would denounce it as a gratuitously brutal act. Well, then, if religion among the people had been regarded merely as the spider of this poor prisoner, it ought to have been respected, because it might have done them good. On the contrary, the laborer has been denied the hope that there will be a time of rest; the sufferer, that some day there will be consolation; the wronged has not been allowed to anticipate that hereafter justice will be meted out; the mother who deplores the loss of her child has been denied the hope that some day she shall behold him again. Every thing has been taken from the people, and nothing has been left them but material pleasures to be enjoyed at rare intervals.
What a field is here opened out for the exercise of love, of compassion, and of pity! O ye poor people whom Christ loved! is it that all your struggles and trials are merely a foretaste of eternal misery? If you are to suffer here, and to suffer also after death, then you must needs suffer forever! But that we cannot allow, and after the example of Christ, we should say to ourselves:—"I have pity upon the multitude, for if I send them away fasting they will faint by the way."
Lastly, on this Charity depends the success of evangelical preaching.
To be co-workers with Christ in regenerating and saving mankind, we must love it as He loved. He first did men good, then He addressed them. Hence it was that the people, unmindful of their most urgent wants, followed Him exclaiming: "Never man spake like this man."
Let us never forget that the object of preaching is to turn men from wrong-doing, and to lead them to that which is good. This is the great aim of the Christian orator. But where is the seat of good and evil, and where are both elaborated? According to the divine word, "out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemy."
The heart, then, must be touched, moved, laid hold of. It is the heart which receives or rejects the truth; which says to it: "Come, I welcome you;" or, "Begone, you annoy me;" and it is love alone that can reach the heart and change it. An Arab proverb runs thus:—"The neck is bent by the sword; but heart is only bent by heart." If you love, you yourself will be loved; the truth from you will be loved; even self-sacrifice will be an act of love. … What we most want nowadays is not additional knowledge, for nearly all of us know full well what we ought to do. What we really want is the courage to act, the energy to do what is right. Truth has sadly diminished amongst us, and its characteristics also. What we need, then, is a style of preaching which enlightens and sustains, which threatens and encourages, which humbles and exalts, and which throughout speaks to individuals, saying, "I love thee."