How many iniquities shriveled up in his presence! This man,
representing the noblest ancestry, wealth and culture, wrought
numberless reforms. He became a voice for the poor and weak. He gave
his life to reform acts and corn laws; he emancipated the enslaved boys
and girls toiling in mines and factories; he exposed and made
impossible the horrors of that inferno in which chimney-sweeps live; he
founded twoscore industrial, ragged and trade schools; he established
shelters for the homeless poor; when Parliament closed its sessions at
midnight Lord Shaftesbury went forth to search out poor prodigals
sleeping under Waterloo or Blackfriars bridge, and often in a single
night brought a score to his shelter. When the funeral cortege passed
through Pall Mall and Trafalgar square on its way to Westminster Abbey,
the streets for a mile and a half were packed with innumerable
thousands. The costermongers lifted a large banner on which were
inscribed these words: "I was sick and in prison and ye visited me."
The boys from the ragged schools lifted these words; "I was hungry and
naked and ye fed me." All England felt the force of that colossal
character. To-day at that central point in Piccadilly where the
highways meet and thronging multitudes go surging by, the English
people have erected the statue of Shaftesbury--the fitting motto
therefor; "The reforms of this century have been chiefly due to the
presence and influence of Shaftesbury." If our generation is indeed
held back from injustice and anarchy and bloodshed, it will be because
Shaftesbury the peer, and Samuel, the seer, are duplicated in the lives
of our great men, who stand forth to plead the cause of the poor and
weak.

But man's atmosphere is equally potent to blight and to shrivel. Not
time, but man, is the great destroyer. History is full of the ruins of
cities and empires. "Innumerable Paradises have come and gone; Adams