ave scornfully
disclaimed the name of brother, bound up his wounds, set him on his own
beast, led him to an inn, and took care of him.

Is yours the duty which the good Samaritan felt?--the duty of mere
humanity? How is it your duty to deal, then, with these poor children?
That, and I think a little more. Let me say boldly, I think these
children have a deeper and a nearer claim on you; and that you must not
pride yourselves, here in Liverpool, on acting the good Samaritan, when
you help a ragged school. We do not read that the good Samaritan was a
merchant, on his march, at the head of his own caravan. We do not read
that the wounded man was one of his own servants, or a child of one of
his servants, who had been left behind, unable from weakness or weariness
to keep pace with the rest, and had dropped by the wayside, till the
vultures and the jackals should pick his bones. Neither do we read that
he was a general, at the head of an advancing army, and that the poor
sufferer was one of his own rank and file, crippled by wounds or by
disease, watching, as many a poor soldier does, his comrades march past
to victory, while he is left alone to die. Still less do we hear that
the sufferer was the child of some poor soldier's wife, or even of some
drunken camp-follower, who had lost her place on the baggage-waggon, and
trudged on with the child at her back, through dust and mire, till, in
despair, she dropped her little one, and left it to the mercies of the
God who gave it her.

In either case, that good Samaritan would have known what his duty was.
I trust that you will know, in like case, what your duty is. For is not
this, and none other, your relation to these children in your streets,
ragged, dirty, profligate, sinking and perishing, of whom our Lord has
said--"It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of
these little ones should perish?" It is not His will. I am sure that it
is not your will either. I believe that, with all my heart. I do not
blame you, or the people of Liverpool, nor the people of any city on
earth, in our present imperfect state of civilisation, for the existence
among them of brutal, ignorant, degraded, helpless people. It is no
one's fault, just because it is every one's fault--the fault of the
system. But it is not the will of God; and therefore the existence of
such an evil is proof patent and sufficient that we have not yet