And, then, are we not tempted, all of us, to fall down like the Chaldeans and worship our own net, because by it our portion is fat, and our meat plenteous?  Are we not tempted to say within ourselves, ’This present system of things, with all its anomalies and its defects, still is the right system, and the only system.  It is the path pointed out by Providence for man.  It is of the Lord; for we are comfortable under it.  We grow rich under it; we keep rank and power under it:  it suits us, pays us.  What better proof that it is the perfect system of things, which cannot be amended?’

Meanwhile, we are sorry (for the English are a kindhearted people) for the victims of our luxury and our neglect.  Sorry for the thousands whom we let die every year by preventible diseases, because we are either too busy or too comfortable to save their lives.  Sorry for the savages whom we exterminate, by no deliberate evil intent, but by the mere weight of our heavy footstep.  Sorry for the thousands who are used-up yearly in certain trades, in ministering to our comfort, even to our very luxuries and frivolities.  Sorry for the Sheffield grinders, who go to work as to certain death; who count how many years they have left, and say, ’A short life and a merry one.  Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.’  Sorry for the people whose lower jaws decay away in lucifer-match factories.  Sorry for all the miseries and wrongs which this Children’s Employment Commission has revealed.  Sorry for the diseases of artificial flower-makers.  Sorry for the boys working in glass-houses whole days and nights on end without rest, ’labouring in the very fire, and wearying themselves with very vanity.’—­Vanity, indeed, if after an amount of gallant toil which nothing but the indomitable courage of an Englishman could endure, they grow up animals and heathens.  We are sorry for them all—­as the giant is for the worm on which he treads.  Alas! poor worm.  But the giant must walk on.  He is necessary to the universe, and the worm is not.  So we are sorry—­for half an hour; and glad too (for we are a kind-hearted people) to hear that charitable persons or the government are going to do something towards alleviating these miseries.  And then we return, too many of us, each to his own ambition, or to his own luxury, comforting ourselves with the thought, that we did not make the world, and we are not responsible for it.

How shall we conquer this temptation to laziness, selfishness, heartlessness?  By faith in God, such as the prophet had.  By faith in God as the eternal enemy of evil, the eternal helper of those who try to overcome evil with good; the eternal avenger of all the wrong which is done on earth.  By faith in God, as not only our Father, our Saviour, our Redeemer, our Protector:  but the Father, Saviour, Redeemer, Protector, and if need be, Avenger, of every human being.  By faith in God, which believes that His infinite heart yearns over every human soul, even the basest and the worst; that He wills that not one little one should perish, but that all should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth.