The million-peopled city
Garwood, John
1853
Their Claim as Immigrants into, to them, a Strange Land.
Then again, a large number of the Irish in London are as strangers in, to them, a strange land. Dire necessity has driven most of them here, and others of them have come possibly to escape from oppression and priestcraft. And God represents that He himself is the patron of such, and that we are to be imitators of Him towards them. " The Lord loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger." "If a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.... I | |
262 | am the Lord your God."[1] If under so exclusive and restrictive a dispensation as the Jewish, these were to be the laws for their governance, how much more binding are they on ourselves, guided as we are by the far more liberal spirit of the new economy! Is it not also a matter of honour to us that we should be a refuge to the distressed and the oppressed? And in our idea of "refuge," what Christian heart must not include a refuge for the soul no less than for the body? Nor ought we to forget to ask whether we have not ourselves, as a nation, been guilty parties in occasioning very much of the misery which the Irish have endured. They are, moreover, although strangers, yet our own fellow- subjects, having resorted to us from a kingdom which we have agreed to consider as "united" to ourselves, and entitled to all our immunities, privileges, and advantages. |
Footnotes: [1] Deut. x. 18, 19; Levit. xix. 33, 34. |