ABSTRACT
It is therefore necessary constantly to remind ourselves that in private life such people were often most humane and kindly, and that the doctrines which justified the social order as an embodiment of God’s will were held in many cases by truly saintly persons devoting their lives to certain kindly ministrations to the poor, and no doubt working the miracle of bringing happiness to individuals in spite of the diabolical nature of their surroundings. The fact is, of course, that once any reform reaches the stage of becoming law, the mind gets used to it, it is gradually accepted, if not by its opposers, at least by the sons of its opposers, as ‘the normal thing,’ and (eventually) as ‘the right thing’; custom gives it sanction, and the truth which it embodies as to men’s obligations to each other at long last works its way into the public conscience. The same sort of people who a century and a quarter ago procured the defeat of Bills to restrict a child’s working day to twelve hours, on the ostensible grounds that such a step would destroy profits, and that a fifteen-hour day was good discipline, and quite harmless to a child’s health, nowadays would oppose the idea of child labour at all, at least before the age of twelve or fourteen. But the ‘Bolshevism’ of one age becomes 44the ‘common sense’ and ‘common humanity’ of the next. Can we for a moment believe that the process of enlightenment has reached its culmination? Has the owning of property ceased now to exercise its perverting influence upon our minds? We do admit many rights to the workers, but progress is slow, and is it not certain that our descendants will feel the same pain and surprise at our lack of sympathy and understanding which we feel at contemplating the child-persecutors of one hundred years ago? Is it not probable that the evolution of our ideas of justice will not stop till equality of opportunity for all others as for ourselves is recognized as the A B C of Christian ethics? Tracing the line of development in our sense of social responsibility and also of the modern reinterpretation of Christianity, it is impossible to imagine that it will stop short of this.
