literature, is incomparably the best. Laws and catechisms only represent the human spirit in gross and without delicacy; we want documents in which politics and dogma are living.' This demand of M. Taine reminds us of that grand old Hebrew literature which we call the Bible—it is not a mere book, but a national literature-from which, indeed, many laws and dogmas have been drawn ; but which, we are thankful, is not given us in the form of a creed or a code of laws. 'We want documents in which politics and dogma are living.' We want the transparent language of literature, through which we can clearly discern human sentiment just as it rose, though it rose three thousands years ago. We want this poetic, natural language of the Bible, because the truth we get from it is so human, and touches us nearer than all the definitions of the catechism or the logic of the schools. We want this divine, blessed, saving truth always to wear the human garb which our great Father put upon it!

Lastly. We wind up these remarks on literature by an observation or two on its relation to morals. Charged with sentiments, literature, like a perfume, reveals the internal state of our civilization. Vinet says: 'It seizes only whatever society adopts. It is the echo of life, the expression of society.' It was Milton's opinion that you cannot have the highest literature apart from the purest morality. Contemplating in the far distance the writing of 'Paradise Lost,' he saw and confessed that the first requisite for writing a great and noble poem was the leading of a pure and noble life. And now we know that we could not have had his sublime epic but for the victory which in his life that stern Puritan poet obtained over the sensual and sordid, the unworthy and the false. For the reason just indicated, it is chiefly by the study of literature that (as M. Taine remarks) the moral history of man can be written, and the spiritual laws on which events depend arrived at.

Common history is not so candid as literature, and therefore a great poem, a beautiful romance, or the confessions of a superior man, will often be more instructive than the best

work of the historian. Hence M. Taine asserts he would 'give a hundred volumes of diplomacy for the memoirs of a Cellini, for the letters of St. Paul, for the table-talk of Luther, or for the comedies of Aristophanes.' 'The scholar,' says Emerson, may at some crisis represent a nation;' by a rich literary document one may interpret a whole age; and there is a profound philosophy in the well-known saying of Andrew Fletcher: 'Let me make a nation's songs, who will may make its laws.' It is in the power of literature to create pure, and lofty, and noble sentiments; therefore, it is in your power and mine, by striving to maintain such sentiments in our hearts, to help to create a good literature, and so make the influence of our pure and high sentiments perpetual.

II. We shall see the force of this by a careful consideration of our second question: What is Culture?

The word refers us for its meaning to the tilling of the ground. The land has certain properties or capacities, and it is the business of the cultivator to cause the land to act according to its proper nature, and according to the purpose for which it was made. It will bear either weeds or grain, but his business is to see that it bear grain and not weeds. By removing obstructions, by loosening and mixing the soil, he must keep it in natural working order. He has not to make the soil originally, but only to keep it in a condition in which it will fulfil the required end. He cannot himself make grain, the soil only has the property which does that; but he must establish the proper connection between the grain and the soil. Culture is therefore simply bringing out into full action and effect the natural powers, which, by the original gift of the Creator, we all possess. One may, indeed, render a comparatively barren soil fruitful, but he cannot give to any soil the seed-bearing property. Carlyle tells the story of the stern old school-master, who, when a new pupil was presented, used to ask, 'But are you sure he is not a dunce?' Culture, as the old educator knew, can confer on the mind no new power which it had not naturally; but it can raise dormant powers

into exercise-it can increase their strength-it can remove obstructions. Must the field come into contact with the intelligence of man, in order that it may be properly fruit-bearing? Your mind, in like manner, must come into contact with the intelligence contained in a powerful literature.

It is a question whether, without literature, there could be any culture of the mind. I am, however, far from holding books to be the only means of culture. There is, we all know, much to be learned besides what we get from books. The world rightly suspects the wisdom of the merely bookish man as neither sound nor practical. Shakespeare, the greatest of all literary men, was a student of men and things directly as well as through the medium of the printed page. It is he who speaks of finding 'books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.' Even Pope, the greatest literary man of another age, did not depend on reading alone, but, as he says, tried to 'catch the manners living as they rise.' There are other means of culture besides literature. Every man who knows well his trade or business, and can do it, is, so far, a cultured man. His intelligent faculties, his judgment, memory, and imagination, have been to some extent developed and strengthened. There is a culture in the family where becoming manners, good taste, and sincere religion prevail: moral purity, sweetness of temper, all-embracing charity, heavenly faith, are the plants which grow up under that blessed culture. And there is a scientific culture-the knowledge of the laws of nature-for which some great men are now claiming the highest place.

We all know something of Mr. Huxley's views, and they well deserve to be known and considered. With consummate power, this great, and earnest, and honest thinker puts forward the claims of scientific culture. To him the whole of education is comprehended in 'learning the laws of nature, and training one's self to obey them.' His striking illustration is from a game of chess. In such a game we all engage. While you play, there is opposite you a great unseen player, whose

playing is always fair, just, and patient. But you must know the laws of the game, and play well, else you suffer. The unseen player never overlooks a mistake, or makes the slightest allowance for ignorance. Such is the rough education of nature, or of the world; judging merely from facts, ignorance is treated like wilful disobedience, incapacity is punished like a crime. It is not even "a word and a blow," says Huxley, 'but the blow first without the word.' While we all know, and know to our cost, that here Mr. Huxley is right, yet we think we have good reasons for objecting to an absolute predominance of the scientific spirit. But we thank Mr. Huxley for pointing out to us so forcibly the necessity for studying the laws of nature, and learning to obey them. Some men who neglect or carelessly violate the laws of health may continue to see in sickness only a special interposition of Providence ; but the world is fast moving out of that state of ignorant wickedness and blind superstition. Farmers on the ancient system, who lay the blame of their bad crops on Providence, are becoming extinct. Business men not up to the mark, who think their failures are caused by want of luck, are now rarer than they used to be. Thanks to such men as have taught us to look rationally at the world.

Huxley, who

But we are rob us of a

not yet prepared to allow even Mr. Huxley to higher education than what is to be obtained in playing a game for the highest stakes. However, let us hear Mr. Huxley's famous description of an educated man.

He says: 'That man, I think, has a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready like a steam engine to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great fundamental truths of nature, and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and

fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.'

From this fine picture of an educated man it is evident Mr. Huxley includes under 'learning the laws of nature,' learning obedience to the moral laws of our constitution. With all his scientific study, man is not educated unless 'his will is the servant of a tender conscience,' nor unless he has learned 'to respect others as himself.' Now, we submit, this is a part of education which the study of the laws of nature cannot give. Huxley's picture, therefore, is defective-his theory of education is faulty in one respect. To the end which he proposes he does not furnish adequate means. Learning the rules of the game-learning to be a good player in the game of lifehas this a tendency to make a man 'respect others as himself,' or to produce a 'tender conscience'? Does not everyone know that the tendency of the struggle of life is to make men intensely selfish? With only the prize in view, in the excitement produced by the prospect of winning, do men learn to ' respect others as themselves'? Do they cultivate a tender conscience thus? Mr. Huxley is too great and too noble a man to be content with a liberal education which does not include moral training; but on his own showing he has no means of giving this. If what we know of the great unseen Opposite is to be wholly learned from nature, we must find but little moral impulse in our knowledge. To judge simply from what we experience in daily life, Providence does not always sanction the highest morality. Success and happiness do not always follow it. And if I as a player imitate the character of my unseen Opponent as displayed in His doings, am I not likely to swerve from the highest morality as impracticable, and to care mainly about outward success? It is plain, that in order to arrive at the education described by Huxley, there is required a higher knowledge of God than Huxley proposes to give. We must know Him as a Being of absolutely perfect