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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 3a

IV

IV.

The gospel, therefore, is in vehement antagonism to every tyranny and to every custom, to every ordinance, and every practice, which harass or injure man, which hinder self-development through the exercise of that freedom whereby he has the opportunity of approving himself as a son of God. It opposes its full strength to ignorance and vice; it counts him an enemy to God and to his kind who consciously encourages, in knowledge of its baleful effects, anything which weakens or destroys the distinctive capacities of man.

It is against the octopus of the liquor traffic, whose debasing and death-dealing influences are a scandal to conscience and to common-sense, as well as a cruel burden to the human heart. We who love the gospel, and recreate our lives in the strength and refreshment of its truth, are under the most solemn and imperious obligation to use every honourable and instant means in order to deliver our fellow-beings from the curse of drunkenness and from page 8 the contributory causes; from a system of trading which encourages the vilest greed and sweeps into prison, asylum and cemetery a bigger wreckage of woe and ruin than any other destructive force known to us. Thank God, the gospel is for man, and against everything that hurts him.

It is against every system of money-making which robs the labourer of the just reward of his toil, which sets against his wasted body, his dwarfed mind, his shortened life, payment according to the iron law of wages. Where there are men living in the spirit of the gospel there can be no iron law of wages. We who follow Jesus Christ should be first—indeed, we must be first—to proclaim our detestation of any system which, glorying in itself as an effective and economical money-making machine, counts the health of manhood, the health of homehood, the health of nationhood, of less importance than solid dividends.

The gospel is against despotism of every kind; it is against the despotism of the unreasoning crowd which sets at nought law and order, and is cruel in its wrath; it is against anarchy, which sets on fire all the worst passions of man, which has never been and never will be the road-maker to peace and prosperity.

The gospel is against all those who take rent for unhealthy dwellings and for places where the worst vices are sheltered. What man who knows and loves the gospel could have a moment's peace, were his conscience testifying and saying, "You get your living out of houses where disease and sin are the paying tenants?" Nor should we who uphold the gospel as the supreme means of social salvation give a moment's respite to those who flout the gospel and live by the pollutions of their fellows. The gospel is against all who despise the sanctity of the person; and against every condition which makes birth into this world a curse and growth a futility.