hat moral and mental torture which to noble
souls is worse than any bodily pain. As for any real improvement in
human nature--where is it? There is just as much falsehood, cheating,
and covetousness, I believe, in the world as ever there was; just as much
cant and hypocrisy, and perhaps more; just as much envy, hatred, malice
and all uncharitableness. Is not the condition of the masses in many
great cities as degraded and as sad as ever was that of the serfs in the
middle ages? Do not the poor still die by tens of thousands of fevers,
choleras, and other diseases, which we know perfectly how to prevent, and
yet have not the will to prevent? Is not the adulteration of food just
now as scandalous as it is unchecked? The sins and follies of human
nature have been repressed in one direction only to break out another.
And as for open and coarse sin, people complain even now, and I fear with
justice, that there is more drunkenness in England at this moment than
there ever was. So much for our boasted improvement.

Look again at the wars of the world. Five-and-twenty years ago, one used
to be told that the human race was grown too wise to go to war any more,
and that we were to have an advent of universal peace and plenty, and
since then we have seen some seven great wars, the last the most terrible
of all,--and ever since, all the nations of Europe have been watching
each other in distrust and dread, increasing their armaments, working
often night and day at forging improved engines of destruction, wherewith
to kill their fellow-men. Not that I blame that. It is necessary. Yes!
but the hideous thing is, that it should be necessary. Does that state
of things look much like progress of the human race? Can we say that
mankind is much improved, either in wisdom or in love, while all the
nations of Europe are spending millions merely to be ready to fight they
know not whom, they know not why?

No, my good friends, obey the wise man, and clear your minds of cant--
man's pretensions, man's boastfulness, man's power of blinding his own
eyes to plain facts--above all, to the plain fact that he does not
succeed, even in this world of which he fancies himself the master,
because he lives without God in the world. All this saddens, I had
almost said, sickens, a thoughtful man, till he turns away from this
noisy sham improvement of mankind--the wages of sin, which are death, to
St John's acco