Annie Kilburn - Page 135/183

Annie's pew was just in front of Lyra's, and Lyra pursed her mouth in

burlesque surprise as Annie got into it with Idella and turned round to

lift the child to the seat. While Mr. Peck was giving out the hymn, Lyra

leaned forward and whispered-"Don't imagine that this turnout is _all_ on your account, Annie. He's

going to preach against the Social Union and the social glass."

The banter echoed a mechanical expectation in Annie's heart, which was

probably present in many others there. It was some time before she could

cast it out, even after he had taken his text, "I am the Resurrection and

the Life," and she followed him with a mechanical disappointment at his

failure to meet it.

He began by saying that he wished to dissociate his text in his hearers'

minds from the scent of the upturned earth, and the fall of clods upon

the coffin lid, and he asked them to join him in attempting to find in it

another meaning beside that which it usually carried. He believed that

those words of Christ ought to speak to us of this world as well as the

next, and enjoin upon us the example which we might all find in Him, as

well as promise us immortality with Him. As the minister went on, Annie

followed him with the interest which her belief that she heard between the

words inspired, and occasionally in a discontent with what seemed a

mystical, almost a fantastical, quality of his thought.

"There is an evolution," he continued, "in the moral as well as in the

material world, and good unfolds in greater good; that which was once

best ceases to be in that which is better. In the political world we have

striven forward to liberty as to the final good, but with this achieved we

find that liberty is only a means and not an end, and that we shall abuse

it as a means if we do not use it, even sacrifice it, to promote equality;

or in other words, equality is the perfect work, the evolution of liberty.

Patriotism has been the virtue which has secured an image of brotherhood,

rude and imperfect, to large numbers of men within certain limits, but

nationality must perish before the universal ideal of fraternity is

realised. Charity is the holiest of the agencies which have hitherto

wrought to redeem the race from savagery and despair; but there is

something holier yet than charity, something higher, something purer and

further from selfishness, something into which charity shall willingly grow

and cease, and that is _justice_. Not the justice of our Christless

codes, with their penalties, but the instinct of righteous shame which,

however dumbly, however obscurely, stirs in every honest man's heart when

his superfluity is confronted with another's destitution, and which is

destined to increase in power till it becomes the social as well as the

individual conscience. Then, in the truly Christian state, there shall be

no more asking and no more giving, no more gratitude and no more merit, no

more charity, but only and evermore justice; all shall share alike, and

want and luxury and killing toil and heartless indolence shall all cease

together.