Nowadays, does one man in a thousand give his mind's allegiance (lips and life disregarded) to that ideal of human thought and conduct?
Take your newspaper writer, who speaks to and for the million; he simply scorns every Christian precept.

How can he but scorn a thing so unpractical?
Nay, I notice that he is already throwing off the hypocrisy hitherto thought decent.
I read newspaper articles which sneer and scoff at those who venture to remind the world that, after all, it nominally owes allegiance to a Christian ideal.

Our prophets begin openly to proclaim that self-interest and the hardest materialism are our only safe guides.

Now and then such passages amaze, appal me--but I am getting used to them.
So I am to the same kind of declaration in everyday talk.

Men in most respectable coats, sitting at most orderly tables, hold the language of pure barbarism.