The great city of this earth is London, which in itself is representative of the world. Here are gathered from every civilized and semi-civilized land of earth its representatives and products. The extremes of wealth and poverty, of elegance and squalor, of refinement and coarseness, of culture and ignorance, of gentleness and brutality, of plenty and want, of happiness and misery, of righteousness and sin.
Rotten Row, Hyde Park, London.
One and one-half miles west of the center of London, in this great Babylon, along Piccadilly on the south, or by the way of Regent and Oxford Streets on the north, in the heart of the West End, is one of London's most famous resorts—Hyde Park, with the beautiful Kensington Gardens on the west. The park consists of five hundred and ninety-five acres in irregular shape, formerly a part of the Manor of Hyde, which was once possessed by the Westminster Abbey. When Henry VIII. overturned the religion of the kingdom, the manor became a deer park, stag hunts taking place there as late as Queen Elizabeth, and horse races in the time of Charles II. In the eighteenth century frequent duels were fought here.
The southeast entrance of the park is a fine gateway of three arches. From Oxford Street one enters under the Marble Arch, costing $400,000. Stately and noted monuments have been erected in various places in the Park, and the grounds are well arranged and beautified with varied scenery and flora. The Serpentine is a beautiful sheet of water.
Two of the noted features of the Park are the South Drive and Rotten Row. The former is on the south side, in which, during “the season,” society walks or drives between the hours of 5 and 7 P. M. The border of the walk is lined with chairs (rentable for a penny each) for those who wish to look upon the display of wealth or fashion.
North of this drive is Rotten Row, a corruption of the term, Route de Roi, or King's Road, an illustration of which is reproduced on this page. Here, on the soft easy track, the nobility and gentry drive and ride during the fashionable hours of from 12 M. to 2 P. M. Upon all this lavish display of wealth and luxury look the poor and needy and squalid, with ever-growing discontent; and it is not too much to say that in this famous park and by these famous drives not a few of the seeds of discontent have developed into bitter hatred of the rich, and rebellion against the present unequal social order, in which some are living in unexampled wealth, while others, equally worthy of life, are dying in squalor and poverty. It is a wonderful gulf which separates the East End and the West End of London and other typical cities, and it is growing deeper and wider as the days of deepening contrasts go by.
And yet the wealth and the station in life do not bring happiness. The fact that a man is a duke or an earl does not make him happy. The lowest scullion in his kitchen may be happier than he. The duke may possess great estates, entailed from far-off ancestors, but this, of itself, can not add to his enjoyment. He may own mines and factories; thousands of workmen may do him reverence as he walks through their midst; the rich and great may honor him; but none of these will give the heart rest or the disturbed conscience peace. None of these things can stay the ravages of age, or ward off the cold clutch of death. Money can not purchase peace; position and prominence can not give rest of heart. To the shallow, the superficial, they may seem to be the climax of desire;2 (402)but the vivacious manners, the sweet smiles manifest toward each other, are but society's gilding to hide the unsatisfaction, the ennui, the heart emptiness, of the slavish life of fashion. The gilt trappings and splendid exterior often hide utter hollowness or rottenness within.
These thoughts are not written to set class against class; God forbid. Some of those who are rich are so by inheritance. Personally, they have oppressed no one, defrauded no one. They are simply living the fashionable life, ignorant of how to do better, with but little time in the slavery of fashion to think of aught else. Others are in these circles because, through shrewd business ability, they have “won their way.” Sometimes that way is paved with the broken and ruined fortunes of others. Sometimes the oppressed cry out at every increment to the vast fortune. But God will hold all the possessors of wealth responsible for the way they have obtained it, and the way they use it.
We pity those who have thus obtained their wealth. We pity not less those who covet the ill-gotten gain. They show by their very covetousness that they would acquire fortunes in the same way did they have the ability and opportunity. We pity those who withhold their wealth and influence from the world's great need. God will hold them also responsible. But tho the very rich may do nothing to relieve the world's needs, that does not prevent those who are partakers of God's blessings from using them to help their brother in need; God will hold us each and all responsible, not for what others have, nor for what we have not, but for what we have, in time, in opportunity, in talent, and in ability.
One of the great lessons, which ought to come home with tremendous force to every heart, is that sinful human nature in its motives and principles is essentially the same, whether found in fustian or satin, in denims or in cloth of gold. God designed that the highways of this earth's teeming multitudes should be the Route de Roi, the way of a king, kings over every form of sin and lust and fraud and unrighteousness, kings with the King of kings and Lord of lords. But sin entered, and the Route de Roi became in the natural heart of humanity, the Rotten Row, filled with corruption of every form. Never try to gloss or gild and hide the awful fact, but sooner or later, if left to itself, it is revealed in all its hideous repulsiveness. Happy is he or she who yields all to Jesus Christ, and lets the rightful ruler come in and bear sway. He will take away all the sin, the rottenness, the emptiness, and change the corruption to purity, and make the heart and life once more the way of the King of Righteousness and peace and rest. Then will all the beauty not be the gilded covering of sin, but the outgrowth of life and peace and rest in the King.
