It is better to keep a man out of the mire than to let him fall in first and then risk the chance of plucking him out.Any Scheme,therefore,that attempts to deal with the reclamation of the lost must tend to develop into an endless variety of ameliorative measures,of some of which I shall have somewhat to say hereafter.I only mention the subject here in order that no one may say I am blind to the necessity of going further and adopting wider plans of operation than those which I put forward in this book.The renovation of our Social System is a work so vast that no one of us,nor all of us put together,can define all the measures that will have to be taken before we attain even the Cab-Horse Ideal of existence for our children and children's children.All that we can do is to attack,in a serious,practical spirit the worst and most pressing evils,knowing that if we do our duty we obey the voice of God.He is the Captain of our Salvation.
If we but follow where He leads we shall not want for marching orders,nor need we imagine that He will narrow the field of operations.
I am labouring under no delusions as to the possibility of inaugurating the Millennium by any social specific.In the struggle of life the weakest will go to the wall,and there are so many weak.The fittest,in tooth and claw,will survive.All that we can do is to soften the lot of the unfit and make their suffering less horrible than it is at present.No amount of assistance will give a jellyfish a backbone.
No outside propping will make some men stand erect.All material help from without is useful only in so far as it develops moral strength within.And some men seem to have lost even the very faculty of self-help.There is an immense lack of common sense and of vital energy on the part of multitudes.
It is against Stupidity in every shape and form that we have to wage our eternal battle.But how can we wonder at the want of sense on the part of those who have had no advantages,when we see such plentiful absence of that commodity on the part of those who have had all the advantages?
How can we marvel if,after leaving generation after generation to grow up uneducated and underfed,there should be developed a heredity of incapacity,and that thousands of dull-witted people should be born into the world,disinherited before their birth of their share in the average intelligence of mankind?
Besides those who are thus hereditarily wanting in the qualities necessary to enable them to hold their own,there are the weak,the disabled,the aged,and the unskilled;worse than all,there is the want of character.Those who have the best of reputation,if they lose their foothold on the ladder,find it difficult enough to regain their place.What,then,can men and women who have no character do?When a master has the choice of a hundred honest men,is it reasonable to expect that he will select a poor fellow with tarnished reputation?
All this is true,and it is one of the things that makes the problem almost insoluble.And insoluble it is,I am absolutely convinced unless it is possible to bring new moral life into the soul of these people.This should be the first object of every social reformer,whose work will only last if it is built on the solid foundation of a new birth,to cry "You must be born again."To get a man soundly saved it is not enough to put on him a pair of new breeches,to give him regular work,or even to give him a University education.These things are all outside a man,and if the inside remains unchanged you have wasted your labour.You must in some way or other graft upon the man's nature a new nature,which has in it the element of the Divine.All that I propose in this book is governed by that principle.
The difference between the method which seeks to regenerate the man by ameliorating his circumstances and that which ameliorates his circumstances in order to get at the regeneration of his heart,is the difference between the method of the gardener who grafts a Ribstone Pippin on a crab-apple tree and one who merely ties apples with string upon the branches of the crab.To change the nature of the individual,to get at the heart,to save his soul is the only real,lasting method of doing him any good.In many modern schemes of social regeneration it is forgotten that "it takes a soul to move a body,e'en to a cleaner sty,"and at the risk of being misunderstood and misrepresented,I must assert in the most unqualified way that it is primarily and mainly for the sake of saving the soul that I seek the salvation of the body.
But what is the use of preaching the Gospel to men whose whole attention is concentrated upon a mad,desperate struggle to keep themselves alive?You might as well give a tract to a shipwrecked sailor who is battling with the surf which has drowned his comrades and threatens to drown him.He will not listen to you.Nay,he cannot hear you any more than a man whose head is underwater can listen to a sermon.The first thing to do is to get him at least a footing on firm ground,and to give him room to live.Then you may have a chance.
At present you have none.And you will have all the better opportunity to find a way to his heart,if he comes to know that it was you who pulled him out of the horrible pit and the miry clay in which he was sinking to perdition.
