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MacDonald, George, 1824-1905

"Weighed and Wanting"

Law is indeed necessary, but
woe to the community where love does not cast out--where at least love
is not casting out law. Not all the laws in the universe can save a man
from poverty, not to say from sin, not to say from conscious misery.
Work on, ye who cannot see this. Do your best. You will be rewarded
according to your honesty. You will be saved by the fire that will
destroy your work, and will one day come to see that Christ's way, and
no other whatever, can either redeem your own life, or render the
condition of the poorest or the richest wretch such as would justify his
creation. If by the passing of this or that more or less wise law, you
could, in the person of his descendant of the third or fourth
generation, make a _well-to-do_ man of him, he would probably be a
good deal farther from the kingdom of heaven than the beggar or the
thief over whom you now lament. The criminal classes, to use your
phrase, are not made up of quite the same persons in the eyes of the
Supreme as in yours.
Vavasor began to think that if ever the day came when he might approach
Hester "as a suitor for her hand," he must be very careful over what he
called her philanthropic craze.


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