have fancied they found it in this system or in that, and in them only.
They have cursed it in its own name, when they found it too wide for their
own narrow notions. They have cried, 'Lo here!' and 'Lo there!' 'To this
communion!' or 'To that set of opinions.' But it has gone its way--the way
of Him who made all things, and redeemed all things to Himself. In every
age it has been a gospel to the poor, In every age it has, sooner or later,
claimed the steps of civilization, the discoveries of science, as God's
inspirations, not man's inventions. In every age, it has taught men to do
that by God which they had failed in doing without Him. It is now ready,
if we may judge by the signs of the times, once again to penetrate, to
convert, to reorganize, the political and social life of England, perhaps
of the world; to vindicate democracy as the will and gift of God. Take
it for the ground of your rights. If, henceforth, you claim political
enfranchisement, claim it not as mere men, who may be villains, savages,
animals, slaves of their own prejudices and passions; but as members of
Christ, children of God, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven, and therefore
bound to realize it on earth. All other rights are mere mights--mere
selfish demands to become tyrants in your turn. If you wish to justify your
Charter, do it on that ground. Claim your share in national life, only
because the nation is a spiritual body, whose king is the Son of God; whose
work, whose national character and powers, are allotted to it by the Spirit
of Christ. Claim universal suffrage, only on the ground of the universal
redemption of mankind--the universal priesthood of Christians. That
argument will conquer, when all have failed; for God will make it conquer.
Claim the disenfranchisement of every man, rich or poor, who breaks
the laws of God and man, not merely because he is an obstacle to you,
but because he is a traitor to your common King in heaven, and to the
spiritual kingdom of which he is a citizen. Denounce the effete idol
of property-qualification, not because it happens to strengthen class
interests against you, but because, as your mystic dream reminded you, and,
therefore, as you knew long ago, there is no real rank, no real power, but
worth; and worth consists not in property, but in the grace of God. Claim,
if you will, annual parliaments, as a means of enforcing the responsibility
of rulers to the Christian community, of which they are to be, not the
lords, but the ministers--the servants of all. But claim these, and all
else for which you long, not from man, but from God, the King of men. And
therefore, before you attempt to obtain them, make yourselves worthy of
them--perhaps by that process you will find some of them have become less
needful. At all events, do not ask, do not hope, that He will give them to
you before you are able to profit by them. Believe that he has kept them
from you hitherto, because they would have been curses, and not blessings.
Oh! look back, look back, at the history of English Radicalism for the last
half century, and judge by your own deeds, your own words; were you fit for
those privileges which you so frantically demanded? Do not answer me, that
those who had them were equally unfit; but thank God, if the case be indeed
so, that your incapacity was not added to theirs, to make confusion worse
confounded! Learn a new lesson. Believe at last that you are in Christ, and
become new creatures. With those miserable, awful farce tragedies of April
and June, let old things pass away, and all things become new. Believe
that your kingdom is not of this world, but of One whose servants must not
fight. He that believeth, as the prophet says, will not make haste. Beloved
suffering brothers! are not your times in the hand of One who loved you to
the death, who conquered, as you must do, not by wrath, but by martyrdom?
Try no more to meet Mammon with his own weapons, but commit your cause to
Him who judges righteously, who is even now coming out of His place to
judge the earth, and to help the fatherless and poor unto their right, that
the man of the world may be no more exalted against them--the poor man of
Nazareth, crucified for you!"