46 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS 



had merely been taught the axioms and definitions of math- 

 ematical science? 



A workman has to bear hard labour, and perhaps priva- 

 tion, while he sees others rolling in wealth, and feeding 

 their dogs with what would keep his children from starva- 

 tion. Would it not be well to have helped that man to 

 calm the natural promptings of discontent by showing him, 

 in his youth, the necessary connection of the moral law 

 which prohibits stealing with the stability of society — by 

 proving to him, once for all, that it is better for his own 

 people, better for himself, better for future generations, 

 that he should starve than steal? If you have no founda- 

 tion of knowledge, or habit of thought, to work upon, what 

 chance have you of persuading a hungry man that a capi- 

 talist is not a thief ''with a circumbendibus"? And if he 

 honestly believes that, of what avail is it to quote the com- 

 mandment against stealing, when he proposes to make the 

 capitalist disgorge? 



Again, the child learns absolutely nothing of the history 

 or the political organisation of his own country. His general 

 impression is, that everything of much importance happened 

 a very long while ago; and that the Queen and the gentle- 

 folks govern the country much after the fashion of King 

 David and the elders and nobles of Israel — his sole models. 

 Will you give a man with this much information a vote? 

 In easy times he sells it for a pot of beer. Why should he 

 not? It is of about as much use to him as a chignon, and 

 he knows as much what to do with it, for any other purpose. 

 In bad times, on the contrary, he applies his simple theory 

 of government, and believes that his rulers are the cause of 

 his sufferings — a belief which sometimes bears remarkable 

 practical fruits. 



Least of all, does the child gather from this primary 



