Page:A Few Hours in a Far Off Age.djvu/88

Rh unthinkers assailed them. It was the atom of truth they had surely discovered, which was so offensive to the ignorance and prejudice of their contemporaries. (Turning to the cases facing their alcove.) Now examine those representations—you will there see how little removed from brutes were the men of that fierce age."

In one half of first case are correct models of an arsenal and "munition of war." The other half shows two opposing armies preparing for attack.

The second case well demonstrates the small value of life in our times. Heaps of horses and men dead or dying! The "Conquering Heroes" (so they are labelled) are cruelly illusing every living being, even women and children.

Another represents the two "Crowned Heads," who had directed all these horrors, shaking hands. "The one whose murderous implements had destroyed the most, having thus compelled the other to call a piece of land by another name; all people living upon it to be subject to the conqueror—henceforth to act and feign to think according to his mighty will. Such terrible injustice was frequently perpetrated when one chief or monarch uttered some puerile insult concerning another—or, more often, when he coveted some country not ruled over by him."

I extract the foregoing from book of reference.

As the students examine those horrors and savage pomp, their feelings become too excited for utterance. After observing them during a few minutes, their mother says:

"Yes, my darlings truly a most shocking and pitiable sight—yet those atrocities, and others even exceeding them, were frequently committed under the cloak of religion. So great were their vanity and ignorance of noble ideas that they made loud boasts of their 'victories'—so those murders