“An universal Christian education!” Oh, reader! picture to yourself London—for one day only—operated upon by the purest Christianity. Consider the mundane interests of this tremendous metropolis directed by Apostolic principles! Imagine the hypocrisy of respectability—the conventional lie—the allowed ceremonial deceit—the tricks of trade—the ten thousand scoundrel subterfuges by which the lowest dealers of this world purchase Bank-stock and rear their own pine-apples—the common, innocent iniquities (innocent from their very antiquity, having been bequeathed from sire to son) which men perpetrate six working-days in the week, and after, lacker up their faces with a look of sleek humility for the Sunday pew—consider all this locust swarm of knaveries annihilated by the purifying spirit of Christianity, and then look upon London breathing and living, for one day only, by the sweet, sustaining truth of the Gospel!
Had our page ten thousand times its amplitude, it would not contain the briefest register of the changes of that day!
There is a scoundrel attorney, who for thirty years has become plethoric on broken hearts. The scales of leprous villany have fallen from him; and now, an incarnation of justice, he sits with open doors, to pour oil into the wounds of the smitten—to make man embrace man as his brother—to preach lovingkindness to all the world, and—without a fee—to chant the praises of peace and amity.
Crib the stockbroker meets Horns a fellow-labourer in the same hempen walk of life. Crib offers to buy a little Spanish of Horns. “My dear Crib,” says Horns, “it is impossible; I can’t sell; for I have just received by a private hand from Cadiz, news that must send the stock down to nothing. I am a Christian, my dear Crib,” says Horns, “and as a Christian, how could I sell you a certain loss?”
A mistaken, but well-meaning man, although a tailor, meets his debtor in Bow-street. A slight quarrel ensues; whereupon, the debtor (to show that the days of chivalry are not gone) kicks his tailor into the gutter. Does the tailor take the offender before Mr. JARDINE? By no means. The tailor is a Christian; and learning the exact measure of his enemy, and returning good for evil, he, in three days’ time, sends to his assailant a new suit of the very best super Saxony.
How many quacks we see rushing to the various newspaper offices to countermand their advertisements! What gaps in the columns of the newspapers themselves! Where is the sugary lie—the adroit slander—the scoundrel meanness, masking itself with the usage of patriotism? All, all are vanished, for—the Morning Herald is published upon Christian principles!
Let us descend to the smallest matters of social life. “Will this gingham wash?” asks Betty the housemaid of Twill the linen-draper. Twill is a Christian; and therefore replies, “it is a very poor article, and it will not wash!”
We are with Doctor Chalmers for Christianity—but not Christianity of one side. “Pray for those who despitefully use you,” say the Corn Law Apostles to the famishing; and then, cocking their eye at one another, and twitching their tongues in their mouths they add—“for this is Christianity!”
Q.