ow purer, freedom
more settled, law more honoured, life more full and glad. What is your
heaven? A heaven in the clouds! I point to a heaven attainable on
earth. 'All warmth'? What! you serve warmly a God unknown and
invisible, in a sense the projected shadow of your own imaginings, and
can only serve coldly your brother whom you see at your side? There is
no warmth in brightening the lot of the sad, in reforming abuses, in
establishing equal justice for rich and poor? You find warmth in the
church, but none in the home? Warmth in imagining the cloud glories of
heaven, but none in creating substantial glories on earth?' All
inspiration'? If you want inspiration to feeling, to sentiment,
perhaps you had better keep to your Bible and your creeds; if you want
inspiration to work, go and walk through the East of London, or the
back streets of Manchester. You are inspired to tenderness as you gaze
at the wounds of Jesus, dead in Judaea long ago, and find no
inspiration in the wounds of men and women, dying in the England of
to-day? You 'have tears to shed for Him,' but none for the sufferer at
your doors? His passion arouses your sympathies, but you see no pathos
in the passion of the poor? Duty is colder than 'filial obedience'?
What do you mean by filial obedience? Obedience to your ideal of
goodness and love--is it not so? Then how is duty cold? I offer you
ideals for your homage: here is Truth for your Mistress, to whose
exaltation you shall devote your intellect; here is Freedom for your
General, for whose triumph you shall fight; here is Love for your
Inspirer, who shall influence your every thought; here is Man for your
Master--not in heaven, but on earth--to whose service you shall
consecrate every faculty of your being. 'Inexorable law in the place
of God'? Yes; a stern certainty that you shall not waste your life,
yet gather a rich reward at the close; that you shall not sow misery,
yet reap gladness; that you shall not be selfish, yet be crowned with
love; nor shall you sin, yet find safety in repentance. True, our
creed _is_ a stern one, stern with the beautiful sternness of Nature.
But if we be in the right, look to yourselves; laws do not check their
action for your ignorance; fire will not cease to scorch, because you
'did not know.'"[17]

With equal vigour did I maintain that "virtue was its own reward," and
that payment on the other side of the grave was unnecessary as an
incentive to right living. "What sh