Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 5.djvu/126

 a little of the wine of sentiment with the cold clear spring water of utilitarianism. I see in the Church of England an immense and omnipresent ramification of machinery working without cost to the people—and daily and hourly lifting the masses of the people, rich and poor alike, from the dead and dreary level of the lowest and most material cares of life, up to the comfortable contemplation of higher and serener forms of existence and of destiny. I see in the Church of England a center, and a source, and a guide of charitable effort, mitigating by its mendicant importunity the violence of human misery, whether mental or physical, and contributing to the work of alleviation from its own not superfluous resources; and I urge upon you not to throw that source of charity upon the haphazard almsgiving of a busy and a selfish world.

I view the Church of England eagerly co-operating in the work of national education, not only benefiting your children but saving your pockets; and I remember that it has been the work of the Church to pour forth floods of knowledge, purely secular and scientific, even from the days when knowledge was not; and I warn you against hindering the diffusion of knowledge, inspired by religion, among those who will have devolved upon them the responsibility for the government of this wide empire. But I own that my chief reason for supporting the Church of England I find in the fact that, when compared with other creeds and other