Many of them are being brought up without any faith in God or religion; the result will be an increase of vice and crime.

The purblind philosophers, miscalled wise men, who teach the children by the light of poor human reason only, and do away with faith in spiritual things, are bringing down upon the generations to come an unlooked-for and most terrific curse.

Childhood, the happy, innocent, sweet, unthinking, almost angelic age, at which Nature would have us believe in fairies and all the delicate aerial fancies of poets, who are, after all, the only true sages--childhood, I say, is being gradually stamped out under the cruel iron heel of the Period--a period not of wisdom, health, or beauty, but one of drunken delirium, in which the world rushes feverishly along, its eyes fixed on one hard, glittering, stony-featured idol--Gold.

Education! Is it education to teach the young that their chances of happiness depend on being richer than their neighbours?
Yet that is what it all tends to.
Get on!--be successful! Trample on others, but push forward yourself! Money, money!--let its chink be your music; let its yellow shine be fairer than the eyes of love or friendship! Let its piles accumulate and ever accumulate! There are beggars in the streets, but they are impostors! There is poverty in many places, but why seek to relieve it?
Why lessen the sparkling heaps of gold by so much as a coin?
Accumulate and ever accumulate! Live so, and then--die! And then--who knows what then ?" His voice had been full of ringing eloquence as he spoke, but at these last words it sank into a low, thrilling tone of solemnity and earnestness.

We all looked at him, fascinated by his manner, and were silent.
Mr.Challoner was the first to break the impressive pause.
"I'm not a speaker, sir," he observed slowly, "but I've got a good deal of feeling somewheres; and you'll allow me to say that I feel your words--I think they're right true.