"See," says the
wise man, "the poor Irish widow was the Liverpool people's sister
after all. She was of the same flesh and blood as they. The fever
that killed her killed them, but they would not confess that they
were her brothers. They shut their doors upon her, and so there was
no way left for her to prove her relationship, but by killing
seventeen of them with fever." A grim jest that, but a true one,
like Elijah's jest to the Baal priests on Carmel. A true one, I say,
and one that we have all need to lay to heart.
And I do earnestly trust in you that you will lay it to heart. We
have had our fair warning here. We have had God's judgment about our
cleanliness; His plain spoken opinion about the sanitary state of
this parish. We deserve the fever, I am afraid; not a house in which
it has appeared but has had some glaring neglect of common
cleanliness about it; and if we do not take the warning God will
surely some day repeat it. It will repeat itself by the necessary
laws of nature; and we shall have the fever among us again, just as
the cholera has reappeared in the very towns, and the very streets,
where it was seventeen years ago, wherever they have not repented of
and amended their filth and negligence.
Pages:
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192