ABSTRACT
Two courses are open to the poor man’s preacher: either he must explain the mystical teaching of Jesus by the facts of materialism, or he must explain his social teaching by the Utopia of spiritualism—must show how Jesus built his postponed kingdom by idealising material facts, or show how, by idealising material facts, a similar condition of things to that promised by Jesus could be realised here and now. He must either explain heaven by earth or earth by heaven. Had I been a true seer I might, when looking at my wretched congregation, have seen in their labour-bent bodies, in their hard hands, in their pinched faces, the surest promise of their coming social salvation. Could I have seen things then with the eyes of to-day, ah, what a Gospel I might have preached! I might have cried aloud, ‘My brothers! let us call the whole of your faculties by the old-fashioned word soul. These souls, your souls, do not contain a single thought or impression which has not reached them through your senses. If I read to you of a paradise from which a happy pair were expelled, how would you know what I meant if you had not tramped the country roads of England in search of work? It is because you have seen fields and orchards that you understand paradise. If I wish you to understand heaven as a place to be desired, I describe it in a way which brings up in your minds all the transformation scenes of pantomimes, all the pageants you have ever seen; and your ideas of heaven are broader or narrower according to your experience of such things. The idea of Paradise is explained by Nature; the idea of Heaven is explained by Art. The priests of Jehovah do not invite you to restore paradise here—they dare not. They invite you to a heaven instead, to make you forget it. Whose hands have given the priests the things from which they have manufactured heaven? I answer, Art, and her interpreter, Labour. But neither Art nor Labour have owned the priests of Jehovah for sole superiors. Art found a new mistress—Refinement. Labour found a new master—Avarice. Avarice and Refinement soon led the priests of Jehovah captive in their train, so that there was 130none to protect and teach Labour till Science came. Science slays the priests at the altar—the priests who had wedded Avarice to Refinement. Yes, our hands, in the attempt to make the world the luxurious abode of the few, have called forth Science, who will soon make it the happy home of all.’
