“‘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.”