ABSTRACT
The commentators, often clergymen, developed an ideology that connected the basic need for shelter to a higher moral order. Statistics tell the reader that infants die at the rate of forty per cent before they are five years old, and disease strips a great many more of their strength and physical beauty, and leaves them but of stunted growth, very much like useless trees in the possession of useful ground. For the recovery and salvation of the insensible, insentient, irrational things, what an impulse and agitation would move society to its foundations. The happiness or misery of home consists in the recognition of the sacred tree of duty, on which grow the fruits of good and evil, obedience and the contrary. Truth is withered, dead, lost, a lie occupies its place. Infidelity is where faith should be. Despair has come and brought idleness, wretchedness, and recklessness in its train, love has retired weeping; passion and hatred hold their court rule.
