"Is it not an acknowledged moral truth, that we are answerable for all evil which we are able, but failed to prevent? Were Providence to put us in possession of a remedy for a man dying at our feet, and if we were to withhold it, would not the guilt of his death lie at our door? 

On the same ground, much of the guilt and misery around us must be imputed to ourselves. Why is it that so many children in a large city grow up in ignorance and vice? Because that city abandons them to ruinous influences, from which it might and ought to rescue them. Whence come many of the darkest crimes? From despondency, recklessness, and a pressure of suffering which sympathy would have lightened. Human sympathy, Christian sympathy, were it to penetrate the dwellings of the ignorant, poor, and suffering, and were its voice lifted up to encourage, guide, and console, and its arm stretched out to sustain, what a new world would it call into being!"  William Ellery Channing.