You cannot expect us to
like people who do not suit us: any more than you can expect us to
like a beetle or a spider. We know the beetle or the spider will
not harm us. We know that they are good in their places, and do
good, as all God's creatures are and do; and there is room enough in
the world for them and us: but we have a natural dislike to them,
and cannot help it; and so with these people. We mean no harm in
disliking them. It is natural to us; and why blame us for it.
Now what is the mistake here? Saying that it is _natural_ to us.
We are not meant to live according to nature, but according to
grace; and grace must conquer nature, my friends, if we wish to save
our souls alive. It is nature, brute nature, which makes some dogs
fly at every strange dog they meet. It is nature, brute nature,
which makes a savage consider every strange savage as his enemy, and
try to kill him. But unless nature be conquered in that savage, it
will end, where following brute nature always ends, in death; and
the savages will (as all savages are apt to do) destroy each other
off the face of the earth, by continual war and murder. It is brute
nature which makes low and ignorant persons hate foreign people,
because their dress and language seem strange. But unless that
natural feeling had been in most of us conquered by the grace of
God, which is the spirit of justice and of love, then England would
have remained alone in conceit and ignorance, hated by all the
nations; instead of being what, thank God! she is--the Sanctuary of
the world; to which all the oppressed of the earth may flee; and
find a welcome, and safety, and freedom, and justice, and peace.
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