to be delivered from his manifold earthly miseries,
not by purity and virtue, reason and knowledge, but by magic, masked
under the sacred name of religion. No wonder if, in such a temper of
mind, the physical amelioration of the human race stood still. How could
it be otherwise, while men refused to see in facts the acted will of God;
and sought not in God's universe, but in the dreams of their own brains,
for glimpses of that divine and wonderful order by which The eternal
Father and The eternal Son are working together for ever through The
eternal Spirit for the welfare of the universe?

We boast, my friends, at times, of the rapid triumphs of modern science.
Were we but aware of the vast amount of preventible misery around us, and
of the vast possibility of removing it, which lies in the little science
which we know already, we should rather bewail the slow departure of
modern barbarism.

There has been no period of the world for centuries back, I believe, in
which man might not have been infinitely healthier, happier, more
prosperous, more long-lived than he has been, if he had only believed
that disease, misery, and premature death were not the will of God and of
Christ; and that God had endowed him with an intellect which could
understand the laws of the universe, in order that he might use those
laws for his own health, wealth, and life. Very late is society in
commencing that rational course on which it ought to have entered
centuries ago; and therefore very culpable. And it is not too much to
say, that to the average of persons suffering under preventible disease
or defect, even though it be hereditary, society owes a sacred debt,
which it is bound to pay by making those innocent sufferers from other's
sins as happy as possible; where it has not yet learnt--as it will learn,
please God, some day--to cure them.

There is, thank God, a healthier feeling than of old abroad of late upon
this point. Men are learning more and more to regard such sufferers not
as the victims of God's wrath, but of human ignorance, vice, or folly.
And it was with deep satisfaction that I read in the last Report of the
Schools for the Deaf and Dumb a statement of what were considered the
most probable physical causes of deafness and dumbness, and a hope that
it would be possible, hereafter, to prevent as well as cure those
diseases.

Whether the causes assigned in that Report are the true ones, is a point
of inferior importance