"The poor need more than food
; they need the knowledge, the character, the happiness which
is the gift of God to this age.
The age has received His best gifts, but their blessings have
fallen mostly to the side of the rich .... It is an age of the
higher life. Higher conceptions of virtue, a higher ideal of what
is possible for man, is the best gift to our day; but it is received
only by those who have time and power to study." They who
want the necessaries of life want also virtues and an equal mind,
says the Chinese sage; and so the poor, being without those things
necessary to the growth of mind and feeling, lose also salvation,
the possession of a life at one with the Good and the True ....
No theory of` progress, no proof that many individuals among the
poor have become rich, will satisfy them; they simply face the
fact that in tl1e richest country of the world the great mess
of their countrymen live without the knowledge, the character,
and the fullness of life which is the best gift to this age, and
that some thousands either beg for their daily bread or live in
anxious misery about a wretched existence." (T. A. BARRETT).
There will be difference of opinion as to the desirability of
a more industrious, thrifty, happy people ; but how is this to
be
achieved? By a persistent effort on the part of all to "make
the best of this world." Explain to men their constitutions
and capacity, and what they must do to make the best of it and
the world in which they live ; explain to them the causes of poverty,
illness, early death, miserable, wretched lives; show them the
cause of, and remedy for, most of the ills that hitherto
