OR let him go to Edinburgh, the "modern Athens," of which
Scotsmen speak with pride, and in buildings from whose
roofs a bowman might strike the spires of twenty churches he
will find human beings living as he would not keep his
meanest dog. Let him toil up the stairs of one of those
monstrous buildings, let him enter one of those "dark
houses," let him close the door, and in the blackness think
what life must be in such a place. Then let him try the
reduction to iniquity. And if he go to that good charity
(but, alas! how futile is Charity without Justice!) where
little children are kept while their mothers are at work,
and children are fed who would otherwise go hungry, he may
see infants whose limbs are shrunken from want of
nourishment. Perhaps they may tell him, as they told me, of
that little girl, barefooted, ragged, and hungry, who, when
they gave her bread, raised her eyes and clasped her hands,
and thanked our Father in Heaven for His bounty to her. They
who told me that never dreamed, I think, of its terrible
meaning. But I ask the Duke of Argyll, did that little
child, thankful for that poor dole, get what our Father
provided for her? Is He so niggard? If not, what is it, who
is it, that stands, between such children and our Father's
bounty? If it be an institution, is it not our duty to God
and to our neighbor to rest not till we destroy it? If it be
a man, were it not better for him that a millstone were
hanged about his neck and he were cast into the depths of
the sea? —
The
Reduction to Iniquity (a reply to the Duke of Argyll) -- at page 25 -- originally in
The
Nineteenth Century, July, 1884.
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