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Untitled Article
We roust teach the intelligent , the rich , and all in the prospered classes of society , who call themselves Christians , what it is to have a Christian sense of relation to their fellow-men , and a Christian sense of responsibility for all those advantages by which they are made to differ from others . How vast is this work , and how great the obstacles to be overcome in it ! But have you a doubt , whether our religion is belter understood now than it was fifty years ago ? or whether it is better practised ? I have not . And great changes are to take place within half a century to come . Why , then , amidst the
mass of mistaken judgments , of false and destructive principles , and of prevailing vices and crimes , which characterize the times , do we not seize with greater earnestness upon the just sentiments of right , and liberty , and truth , and duty , which are professed by many , and do what we can to extend them , and to secure their wider influence ? Why do we not more zealously seek those objects , the advancement of which is our only security against the most fearful misrule , desolation , and misery ? What can you do for
your country , and what for Europe , which will so effectually repress the bloody spirit of revolution , as by adopting measures for the widest possible improvement of the intellectual and moral condition of those whom the ambitious would make the blind instruments of their revolutionary designs ? My dear Sir , there is a great amount of moral element in that mass of depravity , as it is called , the poor of England and of Europe . I am quite sure that there is as much Christianity here among the poor as among the
rich : and I I have strono * doubts whether the sins of vour rich and ereat men . rich ; and have strong doubts whether the sins of your rich and great men , if weighed against those of the poor and despised among you , would give them any ground of self-gratulation before God . Let us not , then , think and talk of the work of improving the condition of the poor , by improving their characters , as an enterprise too great to be attempted . You say that much has been done by the leaven of knowledge that has been diffused
among the operatives of England . I doubt it not . But the objects of English" philanthropists should be , the establishment of a system of free instruction , which will comprehend the whole number of the children of the poor . It should be , also , to leave no family of the poor and vicious without the pale of the Christian sympathy and fellowship of the cultivated and prospered classes . Excuse me for the freedom with which I speak to you
upon this subject . And I ought to say also , excuse me for the random manner in which I have written to you of it . Should I live a few years longer , I hope to be able to throw some light on the great subjects of poverty and crime . But light on these subjects must be as bright as that of the sun , if it is to penetrate the thick darkness of the passions and interests which now obscure it . In other words , the most efficient causes of the
poverty and crime of the world are to be shewn and manifested there , where men are least disposed to look for them ; among the rich , the powerful , the Jords of the earth ; and there , too , we are to seek for some of the most im-
Untitled Article
668 £ > r . Tucker man on City Missions .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1831, page 668, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2602/page/16/
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