At the worst, we are so fallen and passive that we may say shortly we have none.

An arctic torpor seizes upon men.
Although built of nerves, and set adrift in a stimulating world, they develop a tendency to go bodily to sleep; consciousness becomes engrossed among the reflex and mechanical parts of life; and soon loses both the will and power to look higher considerations in the face.

This is ruin; this is the last failure in life; this is temporal damnation, damnation on the spot and without the form of judgment.

'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and _lose himself_ ?' It is to keep a man awake, to keep him alive to his own soul and its fixed design of righteousness, that the better part of moral and religious education is directed; not only that of words and doctors, but the sharp ferule of calamity under which we are all God's scholars till we die.

If, as teachers, we are to say anything to the purpose, we must say what will remind the pupil of his soul; we must speak that soul's dialect; we must talk of life and conduct as his soul would have him think of them.