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Untitled Article
It is of importance to remark that the alternative to the plan now suggested is not the adoption of another perhaps equally , perhaps more , beneficent , but the continuance of ignorance , vice , and misery . Long enough to set its inefficiency beyond a question has that mode of Christianizing the people been tried , which consists in building places of worship and supporting stationary ministers . Such a remedy is wholly inadequate . It does
not reach the disorder . Good as it is for certain objects , it leaves almost untouched the evils of which we have complained ; while the very persons who most need the aid of the Christian minister , the greater part of the working classes of society , to whom of all others religion would prove a solace and a friend , these keep at a distance from the means of improvement , and pass their days in alternate labour , vice , and misery . We say , therefore , that such must be sought , or they will not be found . There must
be a going forth into the highways and the hedges , into the moral wastes of our towns , and a compelling of the miserable dwellers there to come into the fold of Christ . This must be done ; we must , as Jesus did , go about to seek and save that which is lost , or thousands of our countrymen , of our fellow-creatures , of our brethren , with their families and their descendants , will be left to brutalize in ignorance and vice—in themselves miserable , to their neighbourhoods a pest , to their country a dishonour , to Christians a
disgrace . It may be thought that our Sunday-schools and our Mechanics' Institutions meet and remedy the evils of which we have complained . But what is the fact ? Are the evils actually removed ? Does not an increase of population bring an increase of crime ? In truth , our schools keep at a distance from the evil almost as great as that at which our churches stand . And for our Mechanics' Institutions , the same may be said , with this in
addition , that the instruction which they supply is not of the nature requiredis instruction which may teach men how to increase , but not how to use their means , how to controul the elements , but not how to controul their own passions . Something more is needed , and that something is of all other things the most important . Moral and religious aid the people need , and without it we fervently hope they will not long remain . Shall it be said , that an age which spent every passing year immense sums on the conversion of the Heathens , and provided intellectual food for all who chose to come
and take thereof , left multitudes in that very country where these beneficent efforts originated , left multitudes in the very depths of moral and spiritual degradation ? Alas I the reproach we have already incurred . It lies full and large upon us ; how long ? The Unitarian body will , we hope most ardently , do something to remove the foul spot . We speak not now of
proselyting . The effort we call for is not only a home , but a moral or spiritual effort . We recommend no compromise with error , but solely the exhibition of the pure gospel of Christ . In the Christian armour we would have the soldier of Christ to go forth warring every where against moral and spiritual wickedness , that moral , spiritual , and domestic peace , may take the place of moral , spiritual , and domestic misery .
Something has already been done by other denominations , but the effort actually made is insignificant compared with the existing evil . Glad , therefore , shall we be , if haply so p leasing a vision rises before our sight , to witness Unitarian Christians actively and generally engaged to bring about a moral regeneration among the irreligious poor ; glad to see our missionaries , men of God , stationed in neighbourhoods where their aid is needed , and visiting the population from house to house , drawing them by the cords
Untitled Article
On Home Missions . 81
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1831, page 81, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2594/page/9/
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