322 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



good, the doors of the museums and galleries which we have purchased, 

 and for the maintenance of which we pay. But I would have them 

 not only prepare for the coming change, but to aid and further it by 

 anticipation. They will thus, in a new fashion, " dish the Whigs," 

 prove themselves men of foresight and common sense, and obtain a 

 fresh lease of the respect of the community. 



As the years roll by, the term " materialist " will lose more and 

 more of its evil connotation ; for it will be more and more seen and 

 acknowledged that the true spiritual nature of man is bound up with 

 his material condition. Wholesome food, pure air, cleanliness hard 

 work if you will, but also fair rest and recreation these are necessary 

 not only to physical but to spiritual well-being. The seed of the spirit 

 is cast in vain amid stones and thorns, and thus your best utterances 

 become idle words when addressed to the acclimatized inhabitants of 

 our slums and alleys. Drunkenness ruins the substratum of resolu- 

 tion. The physics of the drunkard's brain are incompatible with moral 

 strength. Here your first care ought to be to cleanse and improve the 

 organ. Break the sot's associations ; change his environment ; alter 

 his nutrition ; displace his base imaginations by thoughts drawn from 

 the purer sources which we seek to render accessible to him. For two 

 centuries, I am told, the Scottish clergy have proclaimed walking on 

 Sunday to be an act of " Heaven-daring prof aneness an impious en- 

 croachment on .the inalienable prerogative of the Lord God." Such 

 language is now out of date. If we could establish Sunday tramways 

 between our dens of filth and iniquity and the nearest green fields, we 

 should, in so doing, be preaching a true gospel. And not only the deni- 

 zens of our slums, but the proprietors of our factories and counting- 

 houses, might perhaps be none the worse for an occasional excursion 

 in the company of those whom they employ. A most blessed influence 

 would also be shed upon the clergy if they were enabled from time to 

 time to change their " sloth urbane " for healthy action on heath or 

 mountain. Baxter was well aware of the soothing influence of fields, 

 and countries, and walks, and gardens on a fretted brain. Jeremy 

 Taylor showed a profound knowledge of human nature when he wrote 

 thus : " It is certain that all which can innocently make a man cheer- 

 ful, does also make him charitable. For grief, and age, and sickness, 

 and weariness, these are peevish and troublesome ; but mirth and 

 cheerfulness are content, and civil, and compliant, and communicative, 

 and love to do good, and swell up to felicity only upon the wings of 

 charity. Upon this account, here is jileasure enough for a Christian at 

 present ; and if a facete discourse, and an amicable friendly mirth, can 

 refresh the spirit and take it off from the vile temptation of peevish, 

 despairing, uncomplying melancholy, it must needs be innocent and 

 commendable." I do not know whether you ever read Thomas Hood's 

 " Ode to Rae Wilson," with an extract from which I will close this 

 address. Hood was a humorist, and to some of our graver theologians 



