CIVIC DUTIES.

BY THE

REV. CANON BARNETT, M.A.,

Warden of Toynbee Hall.

"Jerusalem is built as a city which is at unity with itself.”—Ps. cxxii. 3.

I.

A FOLLOWER of Christ is always duty bound. He is here to serve. He is a man with a mission.

A Christian cannot say, "I will do what I like with my own; I can enjoy my life or end my life.” Christians glory in being their brother's keeper, and are always about their Father's business. Christians, because of this consciousness of social membership, have always looked on to a kingdom, a church, or a city.

Buddhists look to dreamless ease, to release from the toil of loving; Mohammedans look to a paradise, a garden of delight, an eternity of being served; Christians look to the new Jerusalem, to the city of God, with its busy crowds, its complex duties, its grandeur and its glory.

What men hope for, that they become, and men are what their aspirations are. What men look for, that they work for, and prophets try to establish their own prophecies.

Nations whose golden age is in the past make no progress, and history concerns itself only with people who strive to reach ideals beyond their grasp.

"Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay."

Christians who hope for a city of God, who look to a society whose members will live by lovingChristians with this ideal are always trying to make a state, a Church, a city, after its likeness. They vote, they serve public offices, they are generous, that they may make London, Bristol, Manchester, their city, like the city to which they look. They, when they are about the city's business, are about their Father's business.

But many who call themselves Christian neglect civic duties. They serve, perhaps, their Church, they are members of some charitable society, but they are indifferent to the city government.

This neglect is, I believe, largely due to the absence of a social ideal. Practical modern men have no visions such as those of Isaiah, St. John, or Rienzi. They have no modern equivalent to the holy mountain where the lion and the lamb lie together, or to the city into which nothing enters that defileth or maketh a lie. They have no pattern city in the heavens, and therefore do not strive to make its likeness on earth.

Modern teaching does not sufficiently cultivate the imagination. It holds that the chief thing is to be practical; that the boy of fifteen must take up the technical or business training of his life; that there is no time to develop powers of dreaming, and that the use of the imagination, in pictures, music, and poetry, is a luxury for the rich and idle. Art has no place in industrial education; it is not taken seriously. The teaching is wrong; the imagination has a material use. "It was for want of imagination England

lost America," and it is for the same want that merchants and workmen now miss their opportunities. In commerce the visible is not the eternal result. It is by faith that business is made, and haste for immediate gain often destroys trade. It is, too, for want of the trained imagination that so many Christians neglect their civic duties. They have no social ideal to which Christ directs their march, no city in the heaven carefully fashioned by thought.

Some, therefore, waste their strength as they cry for a state possible perhaps in the moon, and elaborate schemes which shrivel up under a moment's crossexamination. Such good people sacrifice, indeed, their Isaacs and hinder God's promises.

Some settle in suburbs far off from the call to duty which rises from the ill housed and the ill fed. They think most of their rights, demand the service of the local boards to secure their quiet, and keep off hospitals and the poor from their doors. They take short leases, and escape trouble by moving. "A modern city is the embodiment of indefinite change, and citizens make idols of their domestic privacy and private luxuriousness." Many do no civic duties, and satisfy Christ's inspired instincts by gifts to the poor more or less carefully adjusted to their income.

And of the few who nobly serve the city, many find the service dull and weary. They serve because it is a duty, not because they are constrained by an invisible power to an invisible end, and "he gives nothing but worthless gold who gives from a sense of duty."

The failure comes because modern Christians have not elaborated an ideal of Christian society. They use old ideals formed in other times, and talk of a Church, of a heaven, but are not moved thereby. Ideals must be fashioned out of present experience. The city in heaven must rest on the earth. Things

we hope for must be made out of things we know. The imagination must work with the actual.

Let us, therefore, spend a few minutes in thinking out a society, a city, in which men with our experience and our knowledge might live Christ's life. If we see beyond the bound of the waste, the city of God, we shall surely work to establish London in its likeness. We shall serve our city. Our civic duties will be our religious duties; our liturgies will be not only those sung by choirs, but, as in the Greek city, liturgies will again mean the performance by the citizens of public duties. A pure liturgy, as St. James says, is others' service.

How, then, shall we think of the city of the future? It is a city which is at unity with itself.

1. Its past will be at unity with its present. They who walk the streets in one age will be familiar with those who, in past ages, shaped the streets and wrote their thoughts in stone. They will know how the city grew-by what enterprise, by what suffering, by what sacrifice, by what failure. They will move about the streets encompassed by a crowd of witnesses, determined themselves to do something worthy of their surroundings. They will talk of Cæsar, Charlemagne, Alfred, and Cromwell, rather than of athletes, millionaires, and music-hall singers. Their bookstalls will be loaded with books which chasten and kindle, rather than with "bits" and "sketches" which confound, their intelligence. They will be interested in the growth of thought, and keen to admire what is beautiful. Their minds will be nourished on the Bible, on Shakespeare, and on Plato, rather than on the writings of the realists of the human dustbin. They will be concerned that their public buildings and monuments shall be noble and impressive, their private houses pure and simple; so that every one, in the common possession of splendid and historic

monuments, may have the self-respect which comes to a citizen who is of no mean city.

In the Christian ideal society there will be no ignorant classes, no division between the educated and uneducated; none low for want of a high calling, none mean for want of noble traditions, none dull for want of interest. Knowledge will flow over the whole as the waters cover the sea.

2. The city will have its parts at unity with one another. The East End and the West End will be equally attractive, equally well lighted, cleansed, and built. Every part will have its bountiful streams of waters flowing through the public baths, and making lakes in the parks. Everywhere the air will be so clear that flowers will bloom on the window-ledges. Every child will have its playground in the sunshine, and every old person his season for quiet enjoyment. Workrooms will be as healthy as drawing-rooms. Hospitals will be arranged for the convenience of the sick; libraries, museums, and music-halls for the recreation of the strong. Unity in a city is impossible where, as in East London, the buildings are mean, the streets ill kept and ill lighted; where children have to play in the gutter, and the old linger in the dirt and noise-laden air; where cleanliness is an impossible luxury.

In the Christian city there will be no division between east and west, between the washed and unwashed, no rich or poor quarter; all the citizens will have equal opportunities for growth, for enjoyment, for cleanliness, and for quiet.

3. The people of the city will be at unity together. All will co-operate in its keeping and making. It will no longer be that some will give and others take; that a few leaders and officials collect and direct the expenditure of taxes, while the mass of the citizens are absorbed in private concerns. In the