So it is in the grand struggle of human life. Myriads perish at the very start, and as the process of life goes forward, as its conditions become complicated and antagonistic, one by one--always the weaker,--by reason of some poverty in organization, inherited or acquired, falls out by the way, while the vast procession of humanity presses on and upward on its mysterious mission. So it has ever been in the past, and so it will be in the future. The stronger in body and mind will rise above and triumph over the hardnesses and roughnesses of life, becoming stronger by the very effort of so doing. To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have an abundance of the possessions of life, but that abundance is drawn from him that has but little, and he falls out by the way, as the fruit untimely falls from the tree. Many of these poverty-stricken ones are the psychological windfalls of society. Christianity has taught us to pick them up and try to nurse them to strength for further battle. She has built hospitals and asylums of refuge from the storm, into which these weaker ones drift, and here, at least for the present, lies the field for her efforts toward ameliorating their condition. It was true thousands of years ago that the poor were everywhere and always present in all conditions of society. It has been so since, and probably will always continue to be so, so long as society continues; and we have no reason to expect other results from the conditions of poverty hereafter than heretofore. Only as the number of its victims may become fewer, through the influence of an education which will enable persons to be self-supporting, will the grand total of mental disease and the misery caused by it become less. CHAPTER XIV. RELIGION. Two facts relating to the history of religious belief stand out with clearness and prominence in the past. The first is, that man's belief in his relation toward and responsibility to a Supreme Being has been one of the most important and influential factors in guiding his conduct, and leading him on and up in the pathways of civilization, since his history began. Indeed, it has been the foundation on which governments and societies have been built up, and the relations and obligations of man toward man have been established. The other, which is no less clear and important, is, that this belief has been made an instrument, in the hands of designing men, of vast suffering to thousands of the human race, and its history, under the influence of fanaticism, has been too often written in suffering. The most gigantic wars have been instituted, and the most cruel wrongs have been perpetrated; the advancement of science and liberty has been retarded, in too many instances, by those claiming to be the ministers of religion. Perhaps it is not too much to allow that some of the most bigoted cruelties which have ever disgraced the human race have been done in the name and under the garb of religion.