CHAPTER IV - SUFFERERS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 August 2010
Summary
“One of the universal sentiments which Christianity has deeply imbedded in the human heart is that of the natural equality of men. ….. It has produced the spectacle, which I believe to be peculiar to Christian times, of one class uplifting another, the happy toiling for the miserable, the free vindicating the rights of the oppressed. With all the noble examples of disinterested friendship and patriotism, which ancient history affords, I can remember no approach to that wholesale compassion, that general action of one order of society on another, that system of benevotent agitation in behalf of powerless and forgotten suffering, which characterises the history of modern times.”
Rationale of Religious Inquiry.The idea of travelling in America was first suggested to me by a philanthropist's saying to me, “Whatever else may be true about the Americans, it is certain that they have got at principles of justice and mercy in the treatment of the least happy classes of society which we may be glad to learn from them. I wish you would go and see what they are.” I did so; and the results of my investigation have not been reserved for this short chapter, but are spread over the whole of my book. The fundamental democratic principles on which American society is organised, are those “principles of justice and mercy” by which the guilty, the ignorant, the needy, and the infirm, are saved and blessed.
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- Information
- Society in America , pp. 179 - 204Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009