"I think not," replied the vicar. "I have not, in my own experience, found true courtesy and consideration to be the fruit of increased intelligence. On the contrary, the keener the intellectual edge, as a rule, the keener the pursuit of selfish ends, and the more conspicuous the absence of a regard to the interests and a respect for the feelings of others." "Then you don't credit education with this improvement in courtesy and consideration." "Certainly not. I believe that with increased intelligence there is also an increased sensitiveness in all our faculties, and so an increased appreciation of what is beautiful and becoming; but it is the heart that must be touched if there is to be that real concern for the welfare and comfort of others which I have observed in many of my present parishioners. They are rough extremely, but there is an honest and warm heart beneath the surface; and when the love of Christ gets down into these hearts, and the grace of Christ dwells there, I do not know a nobler material to work with." Dr Prosser was silent for a minute, then he said, "I suppose we are all agreed that true religion has a very humanising and refining influence. I only feel a wish, at times, that Religion herself were less hampered by creeds and dogmas, so that her full power might be felt, and to a far wider extent. I think that then religious and intellectual advancement would keep steady pace side by side." "Do you, my dear friend?" said Mr Maltby sadly. "I must confess I am quite of a different opinion. People seem to me to have gone wild on this subject, and to have lost their senses in their over-anxiety to cultivate them. Intellect-worship is to my mind the master snare of our day. Cram the mind and starve the heart--this is the great popular idolatry. And so religion must be a misty, dreamy sort of thing; not well-defined truth, plainly and sharply taught in God's Word, requiring faith in revealed doctrines which are to influence the life by taking up a stronghold in the heart, but rather a foggy mixture of light and darkness, of superstition and sentiment, which will leave men to follow pretty nearly their own devices, and allow them to pass through this world with quieted consciences, so long as they are sincere, let their creed be anything or nothing: and as to the future, why, this world is the great land of realities, and a coming judgment, a coming heaven or hell, these are but plausible dreams, or, at the most, interesting speculations. Excuse me, my dear friend, for speaking warmly. I cannot but feel and speak strongly on this subject when I mark the growing tendency in our day to fall down and worship the cultivation of the intellect, to the neglect and disparagement of definite gospel truth, and of that education of the heart without which, I am more firmly persuaded every day, there cannot be either individual peace, home virtue and happiness, or public honour and morality."