GROWTH OF AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES. 27 



great blot of modern civilization and the greatest hindrance 

 to true progress. During the last century .... our 

 mastery over the forces of nature has led to a rapid growth 

 of population and a vast accumulation of wealth ; but these 

 have brought with them such an amount of poverty and crime, 

 and have fostered the growth of so much sordid feeling and 

 so many fierce passions, that it may well be questioned whether 

 the mental and moral status of our population has not on the 

 average been lowered, and whether the evil has not over- 

 balanced the good. Compared with our wondrous progress 

 in physical science, and its practical applications, our system 

 of government, of administering justice, of national education, 

 and our whole social and moral organization, remain in a 



state of barbarism And if we continue to 



devote our chief energies to the utilizing of our knowledge 

 of the laws of nature with the view of still further extending 

 our commerce and our wealth, the evils which necessarily 

 accompany these, when too largely pursued, may increase to 

 such gigantic dimensions as to be beyond our power to 



alleviate Our vast manufacturing system, our 



gigantic commerce, our crowded towns and cities, support 

 and continually renew a mass of human misery absolutely 

 greater than has ever existed before. They create and main- 

 tain in life-long labor an ever-increasing army, whose lot is 

 the more hard to bear by contrasts with the pleasures, the com- 

 forts and the luxury which they see everywhere around them, 

 but which they can never hope to enjoy, and who, in this 

 respect, are worse off than the savage in the midst of his 



tribe This is not a result to boast of, or to be 



satisfied with ; and until there is a more general recognition 

 of this failure of our civilization, resulting mainly from our 

 neglect to train and develop more thoroughly the sympathetic 

 feelings and the moral faculties of our nature, and to allow 

 them a larger share of influence in our legislation, our com- 

 merce, and our whole social organization, we shall never, as 

 regards the whole community, attain to any real or important 

 superiority over the better class of savages." 



There is food for serious reflection in all this. Our moral 

 theories have a very exalted character, but our practice is 

 bad — very bad. Christians believe in the heinousness of sin. 



