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Sugar-coated. Pills.

Some people have a strange knack of making nice things nasty; but it is a still more subtle art by which nasty things are made nice. We have had a tolerably broad sample during the last week or ten days of the former tendency, namely, that of making pleasant things disagreeable. Tea, as a general rule, is not set down amongst the most offensive of beverages; although its merits are not so fully appreciated by a great many as to install the tea-cup as a substitute for the "pewter" or the gin noggin. Still, it has been poetically sung as "the cup that cheers but not inebriates;" it has formed the innocuous provocative of sociality in many a cottage; and has given a quiet philip to the pulse of gossip and scandal in many a conventicle. Tea seems almost as potent in bringing out our good or evil tendencies as gin, rum, or brandy. More so decidedly in bringing out the good ones, and as much so, though in a less be isterous way, in reference to the bad. When does the cottage household look so cheerful as around the tea-table? When is the home-picture so charming as when the family group appears behind a foreground of tea-cups, muffins, water-cress, and bread and butter? The wife never looks more wife-like than when the kettle is be iling, and the tray is clattering before her with its load. And little be bby never does his childhood more thorough justice than when he is smearing the treacle and bread over his cheeks and chin. Mr. Bright's "free breakfast table" is a very pretty political and social theory. May it soon become a political and social fact! Only let us hope it may not be a sugar-coated pill to make us page 4 swallow heavier taxation in another form. But if the tea-pot has an influence in eliciting and developing the love-side of home life, and the friendship-side of social life, it also has the power of drawing out the mischief side of characters in which mischief predominates. There is a certain order of old women, and old womanish men, who only need a cup of tea to set the scandal-pulse throbbing to blood heat. They seem to "infuse" along with the tea, and the gossip comes out with the Gunpowder, and the scandal with the Souchong. Instead of a water-cress, they want a reputation to devour, to give relish to their tea-cake. To worry a crumpet and a character at one and the same time is their favourite employment. Shrimps are all very well, but reputations are still better as an adjunct to the tea-table. Marmalade is a sweet thing to help down the meal, but a neighbour's fair fame is a still more succulent dainty to feed upon. "Come and take tea with me, my dear," says Mrs. Gamp to Mrs. Prig, "we will have seed-cake, turnip-radishes, and Mr. Bigwig's character for tea, and I think we shall enjoy ourselves." These are the sort of invitations which ought to be sent out by parties of a certain bent of mind whenever they propose to have a small tea party. But scandal is not necessarily inseparable from tea, though it may be a question with some of us which is the worse, to have our eyes blackened under the inspiration of gin and water, or to have our reputations blackened under the influence of Horniman's pure uncoloured tea. It may be the fault of the tea as much as of the tea-drinkers, that so much evil speaking arises from tea-tables. We hear of "death in the pot," and we have seen that there is scandal in the pot, and recent disclosures have made it apparent that there is dirt in the pot. When people drink dirt, it is not wonderful if it makes them bilious and censorious, and causes them to talk scandal. It seems that certain grocers of rather a grosser turn than most gentry in the trade, down at the East-end, have been decoying the public with a sugar-coated pill in the shape of a tempting announcement of tea at one and four-pence, one shilling, and eightpence per pound. This tea on being subjected to analysis, proves to be composed of sixty per cent, of tea-dust swept from a warehouse floor, and forty per cent, of wood, iron, and dirt. Iron certainly is regarded as a tonic, but is generally administered in a more delicate preparation than fragments of rusty hoops. The celebrated, ostrich of Ceylon was eulogised by his exhibitor as having "lived for page 5 fourteen years on tenpenny nails and never suffered nothin' in his in digestion." But the Christians at the East-end are not ostriches, and we can hardly wonder at the discovery leading to a magisterial investigation. But after all, these East-end grocers are not alone in the sugar-coated pill business. The whole social system is a system of sugar-coated pills. The advertisements which we see in the papers, on the hoardings, in the railway carriages, what are these but sugar-coats to make us swallow somebody's pills? The prospectuses of every bubble company which promise to pay sixty per cent, without risk—what are these but sugar-coated pills to make us be lt the bait while the Directors be lt with our investments? Everyone who tries to coquet with the public, resorts more or less to the concoction of sugar-coated pills. To be honest, I catch myself at it this afternoon, in resorting to this title. I don't want to tell you anything about sugar-coated pills, but I betake myself to the expedient of an absurd heading, that I may insinuate that good advice which men find it so hard to take. I am not sure that I do not rather despise myself for it; but I know that the surest way to empty this place of the people whom I want to influence for good is to tell them plainly that I want to preach to them. How far it is right and legitimate to pander to the taste for the grotesque as a means of suggesting higher things I really am puzzled to determine. It is not for the want of good advice about clap-trap, and all the rest of it, in the shape of newspaper paragraphs, and anonymous letters, that I have not grown wiser and more discreet. But my difficulty is this. I see hundreds of men and women who are open to some kind of moral conviction, and susceptible to good counsel, who refuse to come into our places of worship, because we are dull, stiff, distant, professional, and I don't know what else. I hear my own friends and brethren anxiously discussing among themselves how we are to call these outsiders within the range of religious influence and teaching, and we go on talking and trying, but unless we start right out of the beaten track we don't succeed. We must condescend to a sort of moral harlequinade, or be content to be set down as a stiff, cold sect who are always talking about doing good but never doing it All this is paying you folks a very sorry compliment I know; but I am not here to pay compliments. I am here to tell the truth; and you know it to be the truth, that you don't care to be lectured, that you won't submit to be instructed, page 6 but only care to be amused. A man was passing by this very place while Mr. Murphy was speaking, and another man came out just at the time. "What's going on there, Bill?" says the first; "Niggers?" "No, preaching." "What sort—duffin'?" "No, pretty well; you can stand it for ten minutes." This was complimentary to Mr. Murphy. There are not many who could come up to the ten minutes' standard by the same gauge. But the ten minutes which was endurable was the part of the discourse during which the audience was kept upon the broad grin. The morsels of good have to be apologetically interjected amongst masses of small talk, like a powder given to a child in a spoonful of preserve. It seems to me that it is a question of degree rather than of principle how far this is admissible. I am by no means prepared, when my judgment is not overridden by my zeal, to defend the extent to which I have sometimes carried this plan. But the sugar-coated pill system is not altogether bad. If it were we should not find Paul willing to become all things to all men, if by any means he might save some. We should not have the same apostle confessing that he tried to catch the people with guile; nor should we have the Saviour Himself presenting His deep truths in the dress of familiar parables. Our danger is, lest we only talk round the truth without telling it out, and thus become guilty of omitting the pill altogether, and only administering the sickening sugar. For my own part, I do not call these religious addresses; only little bits of friendly social advice, with a religious leaning. I would not bring an exclusively religious theme into contact with such a subject as the title of this afternoon. But there is some good advice to be packed under such a label as sugar-coated pills. We are all of us sugar-babies. It is not merely working people who are fond of sugar, nor are such unprofessional slovens as myself the only ones who condescend to administer it. Thousands of prudes be th in petticoats and in broadcloth, who would hold up their velvet hands and roll up their pious eyes in horror at the rough things we say here, run after their lollipops quite as eagerly as we do. They take their religion sugared and iced as well, and made respectable by the aid of cushions and cassocks, gowns, bands, and altars. Some of them couldn't think of worshipping God without an incense-pot. And the only terms on which they can by any means admit that they are miserable sinners, are that a well-dressed priest shall intone the confession, and a well-trained choir sing the page 7 supplemental anthem. Speaking for myself, I think I would rather come here and tell you that I talk a good deal of light gossip that I may persuade you to accept and consider a little solid useful truth, than dress myself up, and be w to the east, and leave the people to infer that such millinery is worship, or that such pandering to the fashions and caprices of men is a service rendered to the honour and glory of God.

It is about twelve or thirteen years ago that I first began in a northern city, to try to make addresses for working people, and I have just been reading the introduction which I appended to the first address I gave in the Manchester Free Trade Hall, on the Ist of November, 1857. In that introduction I explained how the addresses had been commenced in another and a smaller place, and how it was not my intention to alter the style of address, because we had come into a grander meeting-place, and might be called upon to address other than working people. I said I should not attempt to adapt myself to the taste of the fastidious, or the maxims of the critic, but should use the same familiarity of illustration, the same miscellaneous association of the serious and the grotesque, and that the strictures of the censor would be received in deferential silence, and the social, moral, and religious elevation of the people aimed at conscientiously. Now I am quite prepared to adopt a good deal of this as the description of my present purpose. I do want to aim at the social, moral, and religious benefit of my hearers, but thirteen years of observation and experience have made me less sanguine as to the ways and means. I went on in the introduction I have quoted, to tell the men of Manchester that I was not afraid to come before them as a parson, and to tell them that my main object was to preach the gospel to them. Now, I am hardly prepared to repeat that now. I fancy the best way to effect a good object here is to sink the parson as much as possible, to hide the profession behind the man. I don't go so far as to say that I would sink the gospel too, God forbid! but I fear I must rather lower the standard of my aim, and be content with giving the main prominence to the more social element of address, so as to leave a freer play for that lighter strain of speaking which it might be profane to connect with an exclusively spiritual address. "Can't you trust your own gospel to arrest attention, then? Have you more faith in your own buffoonery than in the power of the truth of Christ to hold your audience together?" I dare say such a question may be page 8 asked me by some one who deprecates this lowering of aim. All I can say in answer is that I can't trust my own power to present gospel truth so as to keep you together, and maintain your interest. My critic may tell me I pay you a very poor compliment. I know it. But I tell you plainly, I don't give you credit for caring to be instructed, but only to be entertained. I know that if I want to form a procession of people all retreating towards the door, I have only to take a text and begin to preach a sermon. It is not the gospel's fault—it is your fault. There is not a sadder sight often to be seen, than a lot of churlish men and women hulking away from an earnest appeal to their hearts and consciences, and turning from an offer of salvation, which one day they will rue bitterly that they did not accept. But we have to deal with facts. We must either let you alone altogether, or shower a heap of sugar-coated pills before you, in the hope that you may find that after all, the solid truth was the real sugar, and the mere gilding was the pill. As far as I am concerned, I am determined that whatever else is laid to my charge in connection with this effort, no one shall be able truthfully to accuse me of dishonesty or reticence. If my pills are sugared, it shall not be with flattery. I want to do good, but am puzzled how to do it. Far better men than I have tried it in this place, and how did you treat them? Mr. Murphy told me that he got a number of the first philanthropists, and clergymen, and ministers in London to come here and talk to the working men of Lambeth, but the working men of Lambeth lounged in and listened for a few minutes, and then spit upon the ground, and struck a match and lighted a cutty, and lounged out again. These men are far more anxious to do good than I am, and are far fitter to teach than I am, and they deplore from their hearts the cold distance which there is between ministers and working-people, and between religion and the masses. What is there for it, but either to give it up, to acknowledge the gulf and to settle down with it yawning betwixt us, or to go into the sugar-coated pill line of business, and try to get at one another that way? Before giving it up, I intend to try the pills. Fortunes have been made by pills—Old Parr, Mr. Morrison, and Professor Holloway have grown rich by dosing John Bull with pills—and I am going to try to make a fortune by vending my pills in the Lambeth Baths. They are not to be recognised by the government stamp, or obtained at one and page 9 a penny-halfpenny a be x, but they shall be distinguished by plain figures on the wrapper, by being compounded of simple ingredients, and by the frequent cropping out of bitter truth through the sugar-coating with which they are disguised. I would rather hear a man refer to me as the man who abuses than who flatters. I should take it as a compliment if I were to hear that any workman had spoken of me as too outspoken. "Don't go and hear that chap; he won't tell you what an honest fellow you are, and talk about your rights and your liberties, and your citizenship, and all that; but he'll call you a drunken, wife-beating, good-for-nothing blackguard, and raise a regular Billingsgate Fish Market against you, because you sometimes take a drop too much, and like the public better than his meeting-house." That's the sort of eulogy I should like very much to hear. But the great question which the men of Lambeth may be anxious to have answered is why I can't keep my pills to myself: and why I am so solicitous to obtain their opinion—good, bad, or indifferent. Only on this account. I see drunkenness, wickedness, violence, godlessness rife around me. I know there are women and children made sad and wretched by men who ought to make them happy. I know that homes are neglected, and that be dies and souls are perishing because men will not be sober, will not be loving, will not be Christians. And I know that in the lifting up of each fresh voice in the name of humanity and God, against vice, and violence, and sin, there is at least the hope that one feather may be lifted from the crushing tonnage of that incubus beneath which men are sinking. And with the burden of the Lord upon me, I come here to try my little part in the great work. The homes of Lambeth might be happier if temperance, cleanliness, and religion reigned there : and to do anything towards the deposition of the idols of ruination, and the enshrinement of the Penates of domestic joy is an aim worth striving for with heart and might. It is for this we enter on the sugar-coated pill business. Why should we not? It is a universal pursuit. Why should it not be turned to a good and honest end, as well as a base and evil one? I am not alone in the pill trade. You are all of you precious busy at it yourselves sometimes. There is not a man or woman here who does not keep a pestle and mortar for the manufacture of sugar-coated pills. That smirk with which you greeted your sweetheart last night, the extra twist you gave your hair, and the variegated neck-tie which you page 10 tied so carefully, were all sugar-coated pills, to make her believe that you were a sober, hard-working, thrifty man, and never went to the public-house. That new cap with the bright ribbons, and the lovely smile with which the vixen tried to hide a bad temper, was a be lus rolled in sugar, to decoy a hapless patient to his doom. The basin of camomile tea and the pot of raspberry jam which the "widder" sent to old Mr. Weller two days after his bereavement, were only sugar-coated pills in another form. It is a universal trade. Everybody has a hand in it. The whole human race seems to be in partnership in it, and each partner is eager after his share in the dividend resulting.

There are certain exceedingly unpleasant doses which we are obliged to take in the shape of daily experience, which it needs a coating of the sugar of counterbalancing comfort to help us to take with a good grace. Professor Tyndall, you know, has just been playing all sorts of tricks with the air we breathe, sending tunnels of light into it, and burning it over a spirit lamp, and juggling with it in a very scientific way to the infinite delight of crowds of savaris and martinets of be th sexes, and the result has been the rather uncomfortable discovery that you and I swallow just thirty seven millions of living insects, or "organisms" (which is a scientific word for a microscopic crocodile or be a constrictor), between breakfast and supper. One would think that breakfast and supper were out of the question, after such a consumption; but, like seed-time and harvest, summer and winter, they do not fail, and so long as luncheon and dinner, tea-time and dessert come round with even regularity, John Bull may compose himself to his daily dose of alligators with moderate equanimity.

Money, again, is a coat of sugar by means of which many an unsavoury task may be made bearable. It is not a panacea for everything, though it will go along way. Some men who have money fancy it will buy up men and women, be dy and soul. The slave-holder in America carried out this theory to its fullest degree. And here in this "glorious land of the free," or whatever our patriots call it, we have something of the same notion. Our cotton lords do not employ men and women, they only employ "hands." A man offers himself to a farmer as a good "field hand." A woman goes to a West-end milliner as an embroidery "hand." We buy each other up, and work each other up in the mill of life as so much material page 11 in the fortune-fabric. I read a story of the old Star and Garter at Richmond, which was burned down the other day, which rather illustrates this theory of the omnipotence of money. "A certain pursy old lord was in the habit of frequenting the hotel, and one day he went into the coffee-room, and took his customary seat. A new waiter who did not know his lordship was in attendance, and he appears to have assumed some rather offensive airs, and answered the nobleman a little impertinently; whereupon the testy old lord sprang up from his chair, and, seizing the hapless waiter round his clean white waistcoat, he threw him out of the window into the garden. The waiter alighted on some shrubs beneath, more frightened than hurt, slightly scratched on his be dy, but severely wounded in his dignity. The landlord came up and remonstrated with his lordship for resorting to corrective measures so extreme. The nobleman listened to the landlord's lecture with tolerable patience for a minute or two, and then cut him short—" Oh, be ther, never mind, put the beggar down in the bill." Down in the bill! That is really and truly the estimate in which human wealth holds human poverty. One of our London coroners was engaged all day, one day last week, in inquiring into the causes of the deaths of a number of poor people. Three of the "cases" (we always get over the grimness and ugliness of these things by calling them cases) were deaths which had resulted from starvation. One man had been trying the experiment of living on eighteeen-pence a week and two parish loaves. The experiment was a desperate one. It was not easy. It is not easy to dine on eighteen-pence a week, much less to live on it altogether. I once managed to dine for a fortnight on sixpence. I used to go to a little shop in Little Friday Street every day at one o'clock, where they sold a peculiar kind of suet pudding, very blue and mottled in complexion, with about two raisins to the acre. This was called plum pudding, though if little Jack Horner had put in his thumb more than once, he certainly could not have pulled out a plum. They sold a vast slab of this compound for the small sum of one halfpenny. How the dainty mass could be concocted for the money is a mystery to me. But there it was, price one halfpenny. I used to carry away my daily ha'porth in a small piece of blue paper, to prevent the contact of the thumb and finger, and carry it about till I was desperately hungry, and then eat it. There were no drinking fountains page 12 then, and the only public spring I knew was the A'dgate pump, so I washed down the banquet there. It was a very-satisfying, though not a nourishing repast, and I confess when I saw a bricklayer go by with a be ard of wet mortar, I felt almost inclined to vary the bill of fare by begging a trowel-full to build up the inner man. But I had a good breakfast and a good supper every morning and night at some one else's expense, so my case and that of the poor man who was detected by the coroner in the crime of failing to live on eighteen-pence a week, are not quite parallel. For the man did fail. The eighteen-pence and the parish together could not carry it off. It was a be ld venture, but, like the Welsh fasting girl, the adventurer died. And what gives additional interest to the "case" is that the pleasing fact came out in evidence that "the skin hung to the poor fellow's ribs like parchment." The other "cases" were similar; one was a be y who had been trying to live on nothing, or to confine himself to the consumption of Professor Tyndall's crocodiles, but the diet disagreed with him, and the jury sat upon him. A verdict of insufficient nourishment, and something about "tissues" was the sugar-coated pill with which we were made to swallow the ugly word "starvation." All this was within scent of the Mansion-House turtle, and almost within sound of the popping of its champagne corks. And what is Society's verdict. Oh, "put the beggars down in the bill." The bills of mortality will only contain three more items; and what are they among so many? So, put the beggars down in the bill, and jog along. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Let us go without eating and drinking, for to-day we die. There is just that difference between the sitters at the banquets, and those who are sat upon by juries. But is that all? Oh, no; there is an appeal to every one of us in these gaunt disclosures. It is not only to the rich and the easy that the appeal comes, but to all who are dissolute and self-indulgent. The sins of fathers and of grandsires may be being visited upon these starvelings. It is very likely the issue and outflow of the intemperance, degeneracy, and vice of generations which results in these black tragedies. It may be the vice of the poor victims themselves. If thrift, and sobriety, and virtue, had been the heirlooms handed down from the ancestry of these squalid outcasts, instead of drunkenness, and violence, and lust, then the occupation of the coroner would be gone, page 13 and instead of three heaps of earth piled over three parish shells, there would have been so much more force in the aggregate of human nobility and life, and so much less of reproach in the accusation which this age must answer at the last tribunal. And you and I are heaping up similar ruin for our children's children, and transmitting a like curse into coming centuries, in proportion as by selfishness, intemperance, and vice, we vitiate ourselves, or sully our example. Each honest act of self-denial, each deed of manly industry and sturdy thrift, is a fortune for our offspring; a fortune of more worth than gold, and greater price than rubies. While each act of wrong-doing to ourselves to-day is an interest of trial 'and retribution accumulated against our descendants after we are dead; a legacy of loss, a dower of destruction. However poor you are, you can leave your children the legacy of an honest name and the capital of a good example. If they become enthroned upon the seats of vice, drinking on the ale-bench, or chambering in the haunts of lust, let it not be in their power to say, "My father did this before me." But when they appreciate reading, intelligence, work and honesty; let them be able to say, "My father taught me these things by his precept and example."

But it is quite possible that you and I may have enough to eat and drink, nay have every comfort which this earth can give, and yet be starving. If we are working hard and getting good wage for what we do, it is well. But if we sit down to its enjoyment as our own creation, saying, "I have earned this"—then it is not well. True, your own strong arm, and your own good health have helped you. But who strengthened that arm? Who breathed the health? O my friends, you must not forget God in your luck, and in all your life. He gives you everything. Then, by prayer and life, do all you can to recognise his favour. To live and seem to thrive without recognising the Fatherhood of God in all, is to starve the soul. It is a bitter fact that these souls of ours are perishing and sinking day by day, if we are living without him who only hath immortality. But it is a thought which makes the bitter sweet to know that for these souls a sacrifice has been offered, and a Saviour has been lifted up. The great problem which we have to grapple with is how to convince men that they are in danger. But you know you have to live after death. And you know that where and how you live must be determined by the way you live here. page 14 "They that have clone good must come forth to the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation." What such a resurrection is, I cannot tell. But that it is misery intolerable arising from the tortures of a taunting memory, and a vain regret, I know. The places of your present vices—the drinking-houses and the dens of revelry-will come before you, disenchanted of their present tinsel charm. What you call "life" will grin upon you with the mask stripped off the very skull of death itself. And you will review the lost chances of to-day with the wail and the lament, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and I am not saved." All this is a dark picture, and we could make it much darker, and yet not come near the truth. The future of the unsaved soul must be dark, because "the wrath of God abideth on him." But that will not be because God loves to be angry, but because he would not let God love him. To-day the love of God abideth over you. Will you take it? Give up your sins. Betake yourself to struggling and prayer. Cast yourself upon the sacrifice by Christ, and gird yourself for the life and duty of true Christian manhood. Death is coming, and there is no repentance in the grave. Don't trust your soul to chance. There is no chance-work about it. It is certain as daylight. Out of Christ, misery and death for ever. In Christ, happiness and joy for ever. Christ calls you now. He holds out His hands pierced by the nails, and asks you to trust in Him and accept His love.

"Arise! for the hour is passing
While you lie dreaming on,
Your brothers are cased in armour,
And forth to the fight are gone.
Your place in the ranks awaits you,
Each man has his part to play;
The past and the future are nothing
In the face of the stern to-day.

Arise from your dreams of the future
Of gaining a hard-fought field,
Of storming the airy fortress,
Of making the giant yield.'
Your future has deeds of glory,
Of honour (God grant it may!)
But your arm will never be stronger,
Or needed as now, to-day.

page 15

Arise! if the past detain you,
Her sunshine and sorrow forget,
No chains so unworthy to hold you.
As those of a vain regret.
Sad or bright, she is lifeless ever,
Cast her phantom arms away,
Nor look back, save to learn the lesson
Of a nobler life to-day.

Arise! for the day is passing,
The sound that you dimly hear,
Is your enemy marching to battle,
Rise! rise! for the foe is near.
Nay, stay not to brighten your weapons,
Or the hour will strike at last,
And from dreams of a coming battle,
You shall waken and find it past."