"
Will you leave the youth to know nature only in the sense in which an ape
or a swine knows it; and to conceive of no more splendid vision than that
which he may behold at a penny theatre? Truly again, and too truly, he
goes on--
"At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."
Yes, to weak, mortal man the prosaic age of manhood must needs come, for
good as well as for evil. But will you let that age be--to any of your
fellow citizens--not even an age of rational prose, but an age of brutal
recklessness; while the light of common day, for him, has sunk into the
darkness of a common sewer?
And all the while it was not the will of their Father in heaven that one
of these little ones should perish. Is it your will, my friends; or is
it not? If it be not, the means of saving them, or at least the great
majority of them, is easier than you think. Circumstances drag downward
from childhood, poor, weak, fallen, human nature. Circumstances must
help it upward again once more. Do your best to surround the wild
children of Liverpool with such circumstances as you put round your own
children.
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