Holiness!—Holiness in the Strand, in Piccadilly, in Houndsditch, in Whitechapel, in Park Lane, in Somerstown, and the Mint.
Holiness!—In Westminster, and in Fleet Street, and on 'Change.
Holiness!—In a world given over to robbery, to conquest, to vanity, to ignorance, to humbug, to the worship of the golden calf.
Holiness!—With twelve millions of our workers on the verge of famine, with rich fools and richer rogues lording it over nations of untaught and half-fed dupes and drudges.
Holiness!—With a recognised establishment of manufactured paupers, cripples, criminals, idlers, dunces, and harlots.
Holiness!—In a garden of weeds, a hotbed of lies, where hypnotised saints sing psalms and worship ghosts, while dogs and horses are pampered and groomed, and children are left to rot, to hunger, and to sink into crime, or shame, or the grave.
Holiness! For shame. The word is obnoxious. It has stood so long for craven fear, for exotistical inebriation, for selfish retirement from the trials and buffets and dirty work of the world.
What have we to do with such dreamy, self-centred, emotional holiness, here and now in London?
What we want is citizenship, human sympathy, public spirit, daring agitators, stern reformers, drains, houses, schoolmasters, clean water, truth-speaking, soap—and Socialism.
Holiness! The people are being robbed. The people are being cheated. The people are being lied to. The people are being despised and neglected and ruined body and soul.