for the moment. The really important point is,
that the principle should be allowed, the question raised, by a society,
composed of religious men, and teaching to those poor deaf and dumb as
almost their primary work that true religion which they are just as
capable of receiving as we. The right path has been entered--the path
which is certain in due time to lead to success. And meanwhile our duty
is, while we confess that it is the fault of society and not of God, that
these afflicted ones exist among us--it is our duty, I say, to cultivate
and to develop to the highest every faculty, instinct, and power, in them
which God's order has preserved from the effects of man's disorder; to
feed the eye with fair and noble sights, though the ear be shut to
soothing and inspiring sounds; to cultivate the intellect to such a pitch
that it may be able to perform practical work, and if possible to earn a
sufficient livelihood, even though the want of speech makes it impossible
for them, deaf and dumb, to compete on equal terms with their fellow-men;
to awaken in them, by religious training, teaching and worship, those
purer and more unselfish emotions by which their hearts may become a
field ready and prepared for God's grace. To do this; and to regard
them, whenever we come in contact with them; not merely with pity, while
we remember how much their intellects lose, in losing the whole world of
sound; but with hope, when we see that through the one sense which is
left they take in fully not only the meaning of the voluble hands which
teach them, but more, the meaning of that meaning--the spiritual truths
and feelings which signs express; with wonder, not at the defect, but at
the innate health which almost compensates for the want of hearing by
concentrating its powers upon the sight; and lastly, with admiration for
that humanity which, as it were imprisoned, fettered, maimed, yet can, by
the God-given force of the immortal spirit, so burst its prison-bars, and
rise, through hindrances which seem to us impassable, to the tenderest,
the noblest, the purest, and most devout emotions.

SERMON VI. THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT.

ST JOHN III. 8,

The wind bloweth whither it listeth, and thou hearest the sound
thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth: so
is every one that is born of the Spirit.

It is often asked--men have a right to ask--what would the world have
been by now without Christ