It must, however, be confessed that there is a cant of philanthropy too
general and abstract for any practical purpose,--a morbid
sentimentalism,--which contents itself with whining over real or
imaginary present evil, and predicting a better state somewhere in the
future, but really doing nothing to remove the one or hasten the coming
of the other. To its view the present condition of things is all wrong;
no green hillock or twig rises over the waste deluge; the heaven above is
utterly dark and starless: yet, somehow, out of this darkness which may
be felt, the light is to burst forth miraculously; wrong, sin, pain, and
sorrow are to be banished from the renovated world, and earth become a
vast epicurean garden or Mahometan heaven.

"The land, unploughed, shall yield her crop;
Pure honey from the oak shall drop;
The fountain shall run milk;
The thistle shall the lily bear;
And every bramble roses wear,
And every worm make silk."

[Ben Jenson's Golden Age Restored.]

There are, in short, perfectionist reformers as well as religionists, who
wait to see the salvation which it is the task of humanity itself to work
out, and who look down from a region of ineffable self-complacence on
their dusty and toiling brethren who are resolutely doing whatsoever
their hands find to do for the removal of the evils around them.

The emblem of practical Christianity is the Samaritan stooping over the
wounded Jew. No fastidious hand can lift from the dust fallen humanity