We look back to-day with horror
on the industrial and social condition of England in the earlier part of
the nineteenth century: the burdened lives and few gross pleasures of
the workers, the horrible cellar-homes of the poor, the ghastly
treatment of child-workers, the stupid and brutal herding of criminals,
the tragedies of asylums and workhouses, the fearful political
corruption and despotism, the subjection of women, the revolting
proportions of the birth-rate and death-rate. We have still much to do
to redeem our civilisation from medieval errors, but when one
contemplates the social revolution that human sympathy has brought about
in the life of England, one feels that this, and not the long-futile
teaching of Christianity, is the hope of the future. Christian preaching
of virtue has been individualistic. Even in our time the clergy hesitate
and are divided in face of social problems which plainly involve moral
principles. But the humanitarian ethic is essentially social, and this
passion of sympathy is its chief root.
We wish, then, not to substitute any creed or organisation for
Christianity, but to sweep away these primitive or medieval speculations
about life, and let the human mind and human heart increasingly devote
themselves, directly, to human interests.
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