will punish them if they do not, will not do their duty at all.  But sure I am also, and thankful to God, that we cannot neglect any duty whatsoever without being punished in some way or other for our neglect of it.  That is not a curse, but a blessing:  it is a blessing to us to be punished.  The only real curse of God in this life is to be left unpunished for our sins.  It is a blessing for us that our sins find us out.  For if our sins did not find us out, we should very often, I fear, not find our sins out.  And, therefore, when I tell godfathers and godmothers, not that God will perhaps punish them for their neglect, but that He does punish them for it already, I am telling them good news, if they will only open their hearts to that good news.

For God does punish people for neglecting their godchildren.  Those who have eyes to see may see it round us now, in this very parish, and in every parish in England, in the selfishness, distrust, divisions, and quarrels which prevail.  I do not mean that this parish is worse than others, or England worse than other countries.  That is no concern of ours:  our own parish, and our own evils, are quite concern enough for us.

Are people happy together?  Do they pull well together?  Look at the old-standing quarrels, misunderstandings, grudges, prejudices, suspicions, which part one man from another, one family from another; every man for his own house, and very few for the kingdom of God;—­no, not even for the general welfare of the parish!  Do not men try to better themselves at the expense of the parish—­to the injury of the parish?  Do not men, when they try to raise their own family, seem to think that the simplest way to do it is to pull down their neighbour’s family; to draw away their custom; oust them from their places, or hurt their characters in order to rise upon their fall? so that though they are brothers, members of the same church, nation and parish, the greater part of them are, in practice, at war with each other—­trying to live at each other’s expense.  Now, is this profitable?  So far from it, that if you will watch the history, either of the whole world, or of this country, or of this one parish, you will find that by far the greater part of the misery in it has sprung from this very selfishness and separateness—­from the perpetual struggle between man and man, and between family and family:  so that there have been men, and those learned, and thoughtful, and well-meaning men enough, who have said that the only cure for the world’s quarrelling and selfishness was to take all children away from their parents, and bring them up in large public schools; ay, and even to try plans which are sinful, foul, and wicked, all in order to prevent parents knowing which were their own children, that they might care for all the children in the parish as much as if they were their own.