FullReads

A little more reflection would have quashed their vain hope. They would have recollected that each of these preachers was already connected with a congregation; that he had already a hold on them, and they on him; that he was bound to provide for their spiritual wants before going forth to seek for fresh objects of his ministry. They would have recollected that on the old principle (and a very sound one) of a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush, the minister of a congregation would feel it his duty, as well as his interest, not to defraud his flock of his labours by spending valuable time on a secular subject like sanitary reform, in the hope of possibly preserving a few human beings, whose souls he might hereafter (and that again would be merely a possibility) benefit.

They would have recollected, again, that these congregations are almost exclusively composed of those classes who have little or nothing to fear from epidemics, and (what is even more important) who would have to bear the expenses of sanitary improvements. But so sanguine, so reckless of human conditions had their theories made them, that they actually expected that parish rectors, already burdened with over-work and vestry quarrels–nay, even that preachers who got their bread by pew-rents, and whose life- long struggle was, therefore, to keep those pews filled, and those renters in good humour–should astound the respectable house- owners and ratepayers who sat beneath them by the appalling words: “You, and not the ‘Visitation of God,’ are the cause of epidemics; and of you, now that you are once fairly warned of your responsibility, will your brothers’ blood be required.” Conceive Sanitary Reformers expecting this of “ministers,” let their denomination be what it might–many of the poor men, too, with a wife and seven children! Truly has it been said, that nothing is so cruel as the unreasonableness of a fanatic.

They forgot, too, that sanitary science, like geology, must be at first sight “suspect” in the eyes of the priests of all denominations, at least till they shall have arrived at a much higher degree of culture than they now possess.

Like geology, it interferes with that Deus e machina theory of human affairs which has been in all ages the stronghold of priestcraft. That the Deity is normally absent, and not present; that he works on the world by interference, and not by continuous laws; that it is the privilege of the priesthood to assign causes for these “judgments” and “visitations” of the Almighty, and to tell mankind why He is angry with them, and has broken the laws of nature to punish them–this, in every age, has seemed to the majority of priests a doctrine to be defended at all hazards; for without it, so they hold, their occupation were gone at once. {13} No wonder, then, if they view with jealousy a set of laymen attributing these “judgments” to purely chemical laws, and to misdoings and ignorance which have as yet no place in the ecclesiastical catalogue of sins. True, it may be that the Sanitary Reformers are right; but they had rather not think so. And it is very easy not to think so. They only have to ignore, to avoid examining, the facts. Their canon of utility is a peculiar one; and with facts which do not come under that canon they have no concern. It may be true, for instance, that the eighteenth century, which to the clergy is a period of scepticism, darkness, and spiritual death, is the very century which saw more done for science, for civilisation, for agriculture, for manufacture, for the prolongation and support of human life than any preceding one for a thousand years and more. What matter? That is a “secular” question, of which they need know nothing. And sanitary reform (if true) is just such another; a matter (as slavery has been seen to be by the preachers of the United States) for the legislator, and not for those whose kingdom is “not of this world.”