Page:A Plea for the Middle Classes.djvu/10

 with each other; and, so when difficulties arise, they cannot feel alike or pull together. They have no thoughts in common, and the people could not possibly understand the genius of the Church, if ever so well inclined. The dreadful consequences which daily result from this coldness between Priest and people are too many to be numbered, and too great to be thought of, without the deepest emotion by those who have the best interests of mankind at heart. These will suggest themselves to your own mind without any observations of mine; for who has not been struck with the secular cast of mind of the great bulk of the population? Even their religion takes that form. They have no idea of the Church as a Divine institution; never once think that they have any share in her fortunes; could not be brought to understand the privileges secured to them when they were admitted into the Church by Baptism; test all the acts of the Church by the same rule by which they try their secular affairs, viz., that of success; think all payment for religion unendurable, and expect a competent return for all subscriptions and donations of charity, in the shape of influence by right of voting or otherwise. And for the injury done them, what can be greater than this? Once baptized, they are left to themselves; they never receive any intelligible dogmatic teaching. They have no arguments whereby to sustain their minds in times of temptation. The religious instruction they received at school may have been of the very worst kind, or, at best, of such an indefinite character, that, in after life, they could make no use of it. Even the Holy Scriptures have not been made familiar to them, and the helps to their interpretation not so much as alluded to. When are they then to learn even the Apostle's "first principles"? They start without knowledge; they enter on the duties of life without any rule except that which is given them by the world around them. They rush heart and soul into the bustle and cravings after this world's goods; they practise the conventional arts of their calling, unconscious of any harm even where it exists. If they have any qualms of conscience, or plan of religion, it is rather an effort of outraged nature to throw off a burden and an inconvenience, than any settled choice of truth. And how can it be otherwise? They began without a guide; they have gone on without one. The world has been against them. The system in which they were born was the most inimical to the practice of the precepts of the Gospel. They have no standing ground so as to