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Charity and Justice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2024
Extract
Shelley told Leigh Hunt in the duomo at Pisa that a new religion might be founded on charity instead of faith. It is in quite another sense that it is now so often and so passionately declared that what is wanted is not charity, but justice; further, that charity is only possible in an unjust society. It is one of the gravamina against the Gospel that it says so much about charity. ‘Curse your charity!’ was the legend on a Hyde Park banner. And ‘Christian-Socialist’ divines go so far as to say : ‘We do not want brotherhood, but justice.’ The reason is obvious. Brotherhood speaks of sympathy and helpfulness, of mercy and gratitude; whereas what is demanded is rather equal rights.
So St. Simonism, that pantheistic and epicurean religion of humanity, had for its object ‘the harmonious development of human society by the establishment of justice, and the increase of well-being and comfort.’ Roaring Camp and Poker Flat have also this aim.
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- Copyright © 1931 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 See the noble passage in Job xxix, 12, beginning : ‘ I delivered the poor that cried and the fatherless. ‘
2 The first words of Justinian’s Institutes define justice as ‘ Constons et perpetitna : voluntas jus suum cucique tribuendi.’- S. Paul commands : ‘ Obey your parents in the Lord, for this is justice ‘ (Eph. vi., Col. i i i . . 20).
3 Or, as Mrs. .Alexander’s hymn puts it : ‘ God has given to each his station, All may have His precious grace.’