Page:A Defence of Revealed Religion.pdf/36

36 but a very faint, idea of what such a world may be. In all our large towns there are portions which we call the slums, which appear like festering Sores upon the body of humanity. In these slums, the idle, the dissolute, and the vicious are congregated together as if drawn by a common sympathy; these are the abodes of human birds of night, shrinking from the clear light of day, and venturing in other localities only as the dusk comes on. Here are mingled in hideous confusion the vagrant, the besotted drunkard, and the thief, the harlot and the pugilist; the streets are narrow, the people are filthy, and the houses ill-ventilated and cramped; scowling and besotted faces, proclaim the victims to sensuality; indeed everything that is human seems altogether banished: nothing is seen but what is revolting and deformed, nothing is heard but the sound of cursing and rioting. And if our slums be such to the one who merely passes through them, what must they be to the wretched inhabitants? To think of the career of these outcasts from all that is holy and pure, these slaves to sin and passion, is enough to make the heart turn sick and the mind to reel. Some of them never knew much better. Nursed in sin and reared in iniquity, with all their nobler faculties undeveloped, dishonesty is to them the means of subsistence, and debauchery the acme of pleasure; all that is sensual and selfish within them has by indulgence acquired strength, and no moral feeling helps to keep it in subjection. Such may be fitly compared to the beasts that