The Ragamuffins
It has got to be a question of stupendous import what is to be done with the destitute children of our country, or the ragamuffins, as society contemptuously calls them. We must act upon them, or they will act upon us. We must Christianize them, or they will heathenize us.
All over this land, what multitudes of the homeless, and the houseless, and the Godless! Could you gather them all together, what a scene of rags, and filth, and hunger, and desolation! If you could see those little feet on the broad way to death which, through Christian charity, ought to be pressing the narrow path of life, if you could hear the words of cursing blistering those lips which ought to be singing the praises of God, if you could see those hearts which, at that age, ought not to have been soiled by one vile thought, already become the sewers of iniquity, through which floats the most disgusting depravity, if you could see these suffering little ones sacrificed on the altar of every iniquitous passion, and scalded with a baptism of fire from the very lava of the pit, — your soul would recoil from the scene crying, “Begone, thou dream of hell!”
The Spartans who threw their sickly children to the wild beasts were merciful compared with that stolid indifference which, in this age, would give up the destitute youth of our country to be eaten up of their own depravity.
These so-called ragamuffins are coming up to be the men and women. That spark of iniquity which you might put out with one drop of the water of life, will flame up into a conflagration of every green thing that God planted in the soul, and that which was intended to be a temple of the Holy Ghost will be a scarred and blasted ruin, every light quenched, and every altar in the dust.
That petty thief who slipped into your store and took a yard of cloth from your counter will be the highwayman of the forest, or the burglar at midnight picking the lock of your money-safe, and blowing up your store to hide the villainy. A great army, with staggering step, and blood-shot eye, and drunken hoot, they will come on, gathering recruits from every grog-shop and den of infamy, to take the ballot-box and hurrah at the elections.
The great, hard-knotted fist of ruffianism will have more power than the gentle hand of sobriety and intelligence. Men bloated, and with the signature of crime burned in from the top of their forehead to the bottom of their chin, will look honest men out of countenance. Moral corpses which ought to be buried a hundred feet deep to keep them from poisoning the air will rot in the face of the sun at mid-day. Industry, in her plain frock, with her hand at the spindle, will be unappreciated, while multitudes of able-bodied men will wander about in utter idleness, with their hands on their hips, saying, “The world owes us a living.”
Oh what a terrible force there is in iniquity when, uneducated, unrestrained and unblanched, it goes on concentrating, and deepening, and widening, and gathering momentum, until it swings ahead with a very triumph of desolation, drowning like surges, scorching like flame, crushing like rocks!
Cold indifference meQts these desperate ones and says, “What a pity! but it can’t be helped.” The law meets them and says, “Blackwell’s Island and Sing-Sing are the places for you.” Fashionable fastidiousness meets them, and gathering up its robes, says, “They are so dirty I cannot bear to have them touch me.”
But genuine Christian charity stretches forth its arms and says, “Come in your rags and desolation; the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin!” And while I believe in all good worldly reforms, I also believe that one drop of the blood of Christ will cure more of the woes of the world than an oceanful of human quackery.
Some have said, “Let the Church through its regular services do this work.” We reply there are a great multitude of the destitute who do not come under the ministrations of the pulpit. “Oh,” said a poor boy to a good man who reproved him for wickedness, “it is very easy for you, mister, to be good, but I tell you we poor chaps hain’t got no chance. My father died when I was very small, and I have to pick rags for a living; and when I can’t get the rags, I has to steal. You see, we poor chaps ain’t got no chance.”
When they got up from their hands and knees to walk, their first step was on the road to ruin, and every day since, they have been plunging down to lower depths, and wilder despair, and deeper darkness.
There are many about us in boyhood and girlhood in comfortable circles that are going to be something very good or very bad — very bright or very ignorant; and they will yet make their parents glad with an infinite gladness or pain them with an infinite sorrow. They go bounding through the hall; they shout in the yard; they sing in the school. This activity that now strikes the ball, and runs the race, and rolls the hoop, and flies the kite, will soon be ready for the higher game of life, where fortunes are to be made, and reputation achieved, and temptations combated, and immortal souls jeopardized, and kingdoms of glory won.
Call up that child; push back his hair. Shall this face be ever brightening up with benevolence, or scarred and pinched and blasted with low excesses? Shall those eyes become more and more intelligent, or shall they acquire the dishonest glance and the servile downcast? Put your hand on that child’s heart. Shall it always beat with noble impulses, or will it be a thief’s heart, a coward’s heart, a traitor’s heart?
My soul stands back abashed and overwhelmed in the presence of these young princes of God, these sons and daughters of immortality, these voyagers eternity bound. They have started out on a journey which will never end, but winding up among hierarchical splendors, yet upward bound for higher thrones and loftier empires, for ever, for ever; or else pitching off the verge of a great night, deep, fathomless, irremediable, down for ever, for ever!
I have so much faith in the advancement of our race under the gospel that I suppose the rising generations are to have in their number more noble men than their predecessors. I suppose that every day we are walking unconsciously among Enochs, and Augustines, and YYilberforces, and Clarksons, and Moffits, and Robert Halls. There they are! on the back seat in the mission school. There they are! playing marbles in the low alley, their knees out, their elbows out, their toes out, their hats rimless, and their souls Christless; and in double columns there is printed on their countenance a tragedy of unutterable pain.
But they shall be gathered in. Sabbath-schools will do their work. Tract and Bible societies will do their work. A Christian printing-press will do its work. And they who are now scoffed at as ragamuffins will pass on to be the men of might and the men of God in future vears, though now their knees are out, and their elbows out, and their toes out.
Stand back, and let them pass on, the long procession of Christians, and philanthropists, and heroes, and reformers, and statesmen, and let our prayers go with them, and all Christian influences attend them, long after we have unbuckled the sword of the conflict and gone home to rest.