each in their own land and age, and how they did it; or in more modern times what Luther and Calvin, and hundreds like them, who have battled for truth and freedom and God, aimed to accomplish and in what way; such an one will see and feel, that simple, earnest, loving speech, from one overflowing hunian heart to another, is the most powerful instrumentality that man ever uses upon his fellow-men. The great Saviour himself, when upon earth, sought to do little else, because that alone was so much, than to stand up and speak meekly of God and truth, and heaven and the soul, to all men, wherever he could find them, in public or in private.

System, mechanism, organization and contrivances of all sorts, and every kind of policy, outward and inward, he left to others and relied on the simple, living contact of his own loving heart, in open, constant converse with the hearts of others. The commission, "Go! preach my gospel!" is the only order given to his followers, for the mode of spreading the knowledge of his name; and in all ages it has pleased God, "by the foolishness of preaching, to save those that believe."

Who then can overestimate the value, in our courses of education, of thorough attention to the cultivation of high and true forms of expressing thought, or rather of communicating one's whole self unto others, for their good. When all the other advantages of a true education are obtained, then the results of thorough training in composition and declamation, so as to secure the power of uttering one's thoughts in the most vigorous, earnest, tender, moving manner possible, must be superadded to complete the finished man.

And yet, what gifts are squandered by so many; and what high faculties, for impressing others with great truths and influences, remain voluntarily, although unconsciously dormant ; faculties which, rightly employed, might set the hearts of multitudes ablaze with divine truths forever!

V. Artistic execution.

God is a perfect artist, in all his work. Whatever he looks upon, when finished by his own hands, he always sees to be very good; and this pleasurable survey of all his works is no small part of his boundless joy. The more nearly, at whatever

distance, any mind approaches his in style of character, the deeper, fuller, richer, sweeter is its sense of beauty, and its capability not only of enjoying but also of executing it. The highest of all forms of art, in respect to the grandeur and variety of its subjects, the diversity of its uses, the number of its beneficiaries, and the splendor of its results, is the art of composition, or the art of making, arranging and expressing thought, in a manner that shall best answer the true end to be attained. Here not only do all previous knowledge and training and study find their appropriate outlet, showing perpetually both their fulness and their quality; but also in no way can one so perfect himself in exactness and power and beauty of thought, for the growth of his own mind or the increase of his usefulness, as by the careful and continual practice of the art of composition, upon great themes and for high ends. And, while art in general should be greatly magnified as such, in all our higher courses of instruction, this one art itself should be specially taught, in all the departments of criticism, taste, and style, throughout the whole breadth of their historical, logical, and rhetorical characteristics. As the utterance of language reacts upon the very processes of thought themselves, establishing and enlarging them, so composition, which is not only the studious elaboration of the outward expression, at which point so many stop in all their conceptions of it, but also of all its inward contents, serves wonderfully to highten and perfect the native vigor of the mind.

Thirdly. In reference to the heart.

The habit which so many have, in the work of education, of systematically dealing only with the intellect, or rather of confining their attention and labor, to even the most narrow part of its vast dimensions, is morally abnormal and absurd. A man is what his heart is. His faith and hopes and purposes; these are himself, both the foundation and the superstructure of his entire personality. All education in heaven begins and ends with the heart; and so must it on earth, in the family and the school, ere God's will shall be done here as it is above, or man be educated, as he designed in making the strange and varied organism of his capabilities, that he should be. The most

impressible of all things in this world, to outward influence and culture, is man himself. The air and sea, which are perpetually in such a state of flux, are relatively immobile, as if made of iron or marble, compared with the intensely vital instincts and impulses of his nature. By insensible imitation almost, he will become what men and things around him claim, invite, or even suggest, that he should become. The power of a right example, clothing, as in a garment of light, all true principles, and of a heart set on fire of heaven, and earnestly at work by design to spread the sacred flame among others, is morally irresistible by the young, whose nature has been everywhere purposely thrown wide open by its Maker to all right influences from without.

In the character of its educated men, society has the greatest possible interest. The more mighty for good is an engine, when properly used, the more terrible for evil is it, when perverted. The same education, wielded as an instrument of great efficiency, by a heart deeply in love with God and man, or by one of only narrow, selfish aims and purposes, will be potent to produce an earth-wide difference of results. How, in working iron or steel or harnessing any of the forces of nature, must they be tempered, and guaged, and harmonized at the outset, according to the character of their future uses! But how much more necessary to the proper and required issue, is that great neglected and even forgotten work, in all true education, of tempering the heart aright and adjusting all its inner forces to the appointed work of life. From either a perverted, paralyzing sense of the greatness of man's natural propension to evil, or a self-excusing unwillingness to assume and maintain at all times an energetic spirit of duty and effort, most who enter upon the holy office of instructing and forming other minds, neither bestow any earnest, connected labor, nor seem to know that they ought, upon the divine work, of rightly moulding and beautifying their characters.

The great points to be gained by the true educator, in the character of all who drink inspiration from his heart and life, are such as these: elevation of thought, refinement, delicacy and tenderness of feeling, self-forgetfulness of aim, energy of

purpose, and all pure, bright, joyous religiousness of spirit. Many are the forms, in which these may be skillfully and sedulously cultivated; and many the opportunities, in which they may be employed by the teacher, who is himself their possessor. He who diligently seeks them as the treasures of his own character, will, by the natural fire and heat of his heart, its spontaneous, ever outspoken fulness of desire, overflowing at all times into every kind and degree of expression, perpetually teach, and invite, and allure his pupils to enter with him into the same "pleasant paths of wisdom." Such an one will not need, in order to meet in a formal way the sense of duty, to hold up with mock earnestness the dry forms of didactic precepts, as if to discharge his obligations with a will. Men are as little moved to action by skeletons of doctrine, as would be an army, or an audience, by the skeleton of a general or of an orator, instead of the living, breathing man of their hearts himself.

Any education which is not thoroughly and delightfully religious, in its whole inward spirit and outward aim, is not only false, but abominable. False preaching and false teaching are the two great masterpieces of Satan's art, in his work of ruin. Man was made wholly for God; to reach out towards him as a child to its parent, to run lovingly in his footsteps, and to abide in festive union of heart with him forever. For "if any man," saith Christ, "hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him and sup with him and he with me." To call, therefore, such treacherous treatment of a youth, as terminates not merely in his being indifferent to him, but even in his not knowing him at all, education, what barbarity is it, not only of language but also of sentiment! And so, also, not to see and to feel, in undertaking to fashion the future of the pupil, the fact of his immortality; to stand in the presence of his great soul, with no sense, either of its greatness or even of its presence, and much more, to sow daily the seeds of eternal joy or sorrow in it, and not be awed by any just conception of the solemn grandeur of such a work; what is such ignoble conduct but absolute contempt, of both the present and the future, of time and eternity, of man and of God! Christ, not a dead Christ, such as papists

hang up as a curiosity in those great mausoleums of souls called cathedrals, or such as hearts unacquainted with his presence may yet describe with all the glow of poetic inspiration; but the living, reigning Christ of heaven and earth, living and reigning in every human heart that opens "its everlasting gates" to "this king of glory," should be cherished universally by the wise men of the West, as when a babe, "the wise men of the East brought unto him gifts and gold and frankincense and myrrh." The odor of his garments, which "smell of cassia out of the ivory palaces" above, should be in the halls and corridors of all our schools and colleges; and every teacher in them should delight to bathe his feet with tears and to break all precious ointment upon his head. In every form and degree of human culture, Christ is the Model; and constant, earnest, joyful labor—the more joyful the more directly it is laid out in his name is the rule of service for him and to him; while prayer and praise will ever prove themselves to be, to all who try their power, the very wings of successful toil.

The power of Christianity is in its principles, and not at all in its outward conditions; and, therefore, the apostle "knew Christ," after his departure, "no more in the flesh." The power, also, of any human life or character lies in the fact and the degree of its conformity to those principles. The secret of Christ's influence, as a teacher, upon his own age, who did not know him as we do, lay in the truths that he uttered with his tongue and represented in his life; and similar results have never failed to reappear, and can never fail in the history of any one whose heart is all aglow with the same fire from heaven.

All systems of education that are not vitally Christian, are doomed, like all perverted forms of government, science, literature, and religion, in their essential constitution, to perish; and, as, in these other departments of social life since the reformation, false ideas, many of them once of giant hight and strength, have been melting away in rapid succession, so that infidel poetry, philosophy, and letters, have entirely lost the deceitful glitter that they once possessed; so all ungodly principles of education are, in the end, to be still more clamor3

VOL. XVII.