Preface

The writer of the following pages has some acquaintance with working-men. In early life he numbered many of them among his friends — was admitted to their meetings for religious and intellectual improvement — and at the table of a noble-minded relative, who regarded piety as the true gentility, he met them as frequent guests. Subsequent years have given him no reason to regret that intercourse, nor to repudiate those ancient friendships; but they have taught him that British Christianity is ill acquainted with British industry. Seldom, for instance, has he found a religious book entirely suited to the laborer as he is. We have good books in abundance, but they are usually written with an eye to the parlor or boudoir. And we have myriads of tracts; but their topics and their style are mostly a tradition from Hannah More, and do not meet our modern exigency, “Sorrowful Sam” and “Diligent Dick” are gone the way of all living, and a new generation has started up: a generation shrewd, active, and knowing; a generation of vigorous minds, fond of information, and bent on improvement. To that generation these papers are inscribed. Their author writes for the English and Scottish operative, for the mechanic, the daily laborer, and the artisan. He does not constitute himself their patron or their censor; he will be content if he can earn the name of friend. And with a view .0 this, he will tell the truths which he deems rrpjst urgent; and tell them simply, as they are simple to his own perception — and briefly, for they are busy men whose leisure he solicits.

With politics he does not intermeddle. From his faith in Christianity, he has great hope for the popular future; but, anxious to secure a tranquil hearing for matters more urgent, he abstains from subjects of ephemeral interest. He has too much love for the gospel to employ it as gilding for party-prescriptions, and too much reverence for the Bible to use it as a bird-lime for the politicians who fly, or a ground-bait for those who grovel. So far as it is known to himself, his aim is philanthropic, and he asks no help from any civil faction. Nor is he recruiting for a religious sect. He has his favorite haunts, and it is long since he fixed his denominational dwelling. But

Kent need not contend with Cornwall, because the one fends off the sea with cliffs of chalk, and the other with granite bulwarks; or because the one gleans its wealth on the surface, and the other digs it from the depths. Each is a portion of the same favored isle, and each helps to make the other rich. And, blessed be God! there is such a thing as evangelic patriotism. The writer seeks the extension of the universal church. His creed is the gospel; his sect is Christianity; and ‘* One is his Master, even Jesus Christ.”

His mission is to working-men. He knows that few of them are happy. Some of them subscribe to the sentiment of a popular Frenchman: “The Redeemer has come; the redemption is not come yet.” They forget that it was to the world that the Redeemer came, and that it is to the individual that the redemption comes. To render evident this truth is the object of the following pages; and in the attempt we shall take for guides those famous working-men who once revolutionized the world, and who infected many a gloomy spirit with their own exuberant blessedness. Listening to their lesson, we learn that God has made every man the keeper of his own comfort. We find that happiness is not a political adjustment, but a personal possession. We are told that, however wrong the state, of society, the religion of Jesus is portable and self-contained felicity. We shall go back to the times of these tent-makers, and sit beside them as they shape the canvass and carve the stretching-pins,* and will ask them why they sing those stately psalms, and feel so rich amid their poverty. And whether read in an English cottage or on a colonial wild, by the village laborer or the city artisan, we trust and pray that the answer may reveal to some who have not found it yet — the secret of a Happy Home. Saturday, June 17, 1848.

* Acta xviii. 3