Читать книгу Life of Octavia Hill as Told in Her Letters онлайн

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I do not know whether I ought to apologise for writing such a long letter; but I hardly remembered what I was doing.

CHILDREN’S CONSCIENCES

Ladies’ Guild,

4, Russell Place,

Fitzroy Square,

July 16th, 1855.

To Miss Harrison.

It has given me much pleasure to receive your very kind letter. I thank you in my own name and in that of the children for your welcome invitation. It will give us very great pleasure to accept it.... Your letters have given me much pleasure because they are assurances that we are not working utterly alone; because we want this assurance; because the evil which is so great, and so near, is almost crushing, without a consciousness of having fellow labourers. It is such a very small number that can come within our reach; our influence is so limited even on those with whom we have most to do; there is so much in ourselves that hinders us from understanding and loving these children as we should do; so much in them that hinders them from caring for our love. Fancy appealing to a child’s sense of duty to do something which will delay her work, prevent her earning so much as she would otherwise have done, perhaps deprive her of a meal, very often of a new pair of shoes! How strong her sense of duty must be, how real right must seem to her (if she is to prevail), to counterbalance the reality of the dinner and clothes! How dare I hope, I very often ask myself, to awaken this sense? And yet I do go on acting as if it were existing; appealing to it, and receiving proofs of its existence continually. I dare not hope that I shall have the power of creating it. I dare not disbelieve that I ought to be the agent in awakening it. It is a very wonderful work in which we are engaged. It is a very awful work, when you feel how easily you can reach their hearts, how hard it is to reach their consciences; they will do anything for you, they will do hardly anything because it is right. And tho’ this is dangerous, because so false a ground to stand upon, yet this inclination testifies of a precious truth. It might teach us, if we would only learn, how much all human beings must crave for personality; how cold, how dead, how distant are all abstractions. A soul diffused thro’ nature, an ideal, an essence, a principle, may seem to satisfy a comfortably situated philosopher. It is sufficient to dream and speculate about; it is not enough to live upon. Even in his most easy moments, there will be strange questionings in him as to what connection this God of his bears to life; and there will come a time when the ground beneath him shall be shaken; when he shall ask what he is standing upon; when evil shall rise before him as something very real, very near; then he will have to ask whether there is nothing nearer, nothing more real; yes! in his old creeds (if they deserve the name) there is an essence pervading all things. An essence, when this is a real battle, when evil is gathered up in some person, is felt to be most terribly personal. If evil is all vague, all mysterious, and yet most real, is there no Person stronger than it, mysterious through His divinity? Yes! then all history, all life will testify there is such a one. Man has been trying to bow down even to himself; he has longed to worship, but it must be something definite, something eternal; such a one has been shown. Every man is to act as if it were so. You are all to speak to those around you, as if they had that in them which would recognise and reverence this Conqueror, this Knight; and yet as if they knew that He could only be God’s warrior, because He came not to crush but to raise; and yet that, just because of this, He was bound to fight with evil, bound to destroy; and I do hope we may be able to awaken in the hearts of these children a knowledge that they are called soldiers of Christ, in whatever place they may find themselves; that it is their duty not to speak or act or think as if there were no evil; that it is no proof of trust in God to shut their eyes. They do see evil, they do feel it in themselves, they are bound to testify that God is stronger than the devil, light than darkness, life than death. There is all danger of our disbelieving this. I feel it in myself. I am frequently inclined to act as if I believed that another than a righteous God was ruling, especially in the hearts of others; as if there was nothing so strong as selfishness, nothing so mighty as self interest; and yet I am bound to claim for these children, to claim for all of us, the name of Christians, children of God, inheritors of His Kingdom.