home upon their authors and voluntary instruments, until what, for so many ages, has been called mili

tary glory, should turn black and hideous, and become horrible to the imagination.

THE

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.

HE phenomena of history should be so recorded as to aid the reader, and particularly the young reader, in discovering its philosophy, instead of being recorded as they have hitherto generally been, in such a way as to obliterate the better instincts of humanity.

BIOGRAPHY.

IOGRAPHY, especially the biography of the

BIOGR

great and good, who have risen by their own exertions from poverty and obscurity to eminence and usefulness, is an inspiring and ennobling study. Its direct tendency is to reproduce the excellence it records.

LITERATURE.

VEN the choicest literature should be taken as

EVE

the condiment, and not as the sustenance, of life. It should be neither the warp nor the woof of existence, but only the flowery edging upon its borders. Neither deep wisdom, bold action, the administrative faculty, nor that soundness of

judgment whose predictions are always ratified by results, ever comes from the study of literature alone.

LAWS OF NATURE.

F in studying the works and laws of Nature, we

I at

are walking with its great Author and Sustainer, then we behold this department of truth as He beholds it; we recognize the order of nature and the relations of cause and effect as He recognizes them, and the whole tendency of this must be to bring.our minds into grateful harmony with His.

SPIRITUAL TRUTH.

S the Infinite Spirit does not exhibit Himself to

us personally, I believe He intended to make known to us His natural attributes, through a knowledge of His works; and that, for this purpose, He pre-adapted our minds to acquire this knowledge; and that, so far as we do acquire, we are growing in His natural image, and are becoming better prepared for the reception of spiritual truth.

CLASSICAL STUDY AS A DISCIPLINE.

T is said that the classics are valuable as a

means of disciplining the mind; but can any

thing impart so true and perfect a discipline as the

errorless teachings of God? The inflections of a Greek verb may be strikingly symmetrical and harmonious; but even in the polished and sculptured language of the Greeks, is there aught so harmonious and symmetrical as the evolution of a flower, or the crystallization of a rock, or the formation of the rainbow, or the unfolding of a goldenwinged insect from its chrysalis, or the marvellous workmanship of the human eye, where spiritual and material beauties glow together in unison?

IN

GOD'S LESSONS IN NATURE.

N the paradigms given us by the All-wise there is nothing irregular or defective. Neither exception nor anomaly deforms His perfect lessons. We need no expurgated edition of His works, for all His teachings are stainless and untainting, and like rays of light from the sun, they may fall upon corruption or permeate impurity, but cannot themselves be defiled.

THE

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY.

HE study of natural philosophy is of recent origin. History and literature have been studied wherever men have studied anything; but it is only since the time of Lord Bacon that natural philosophy has been successfully cultivated, and far

more has been done for it within the last hundred

and fifty years than in all the previous centuries of the world's existence.

I

MORAL INFLUENCE OF INTELLECTUAL

CULTIVATION.

AM not only profoundly convinced that it is the general tendency of intellectual cultivation to promote virtue, but that no community can ever rise to any high eminence in virtue without intellectual development. Still it is true that, as a good man may be so much better, in proportion to his intellectual power, so may a bad man be so much worse. The powers of the intellect are like the mercenary soldiers which Switzerland formerly sent forth to join in the European wars, equally ready to fight in the ranks of despot as of republican. Precisely the same powers of combination, judgment, prescience, by which Napoleon built up his blood-cemented empire, were employed by Washington in spreading over our heads the allsheltering dome of a republic.

R

FANATICISM.

almost

ESISTANCE to improvement contradicts the noblest instincts of the race. It begets its opposite. The fanaticism of reform is only the

raging of the accumulated waters caused by the obstructions which an ultra conservatism has thrown across the stream of progress; and revolution itself is but the sudden overwhelming and sweeping away of impediments that should have been seasonably removed. The French Revolution was a frightful spectacle of a too rapid effort at reform. The present condition of England and Ireland is a spectacle still more frightful of an almost inflexible conservatism.

COLLEGES AND THE people.

HE relation which colleges bear to the commu

THE

nity is but little less than that which the brain bears to the rest of the body. It is not enough to say that "knowledge is power." In our times, knowledge is government. Once the soldier bestrode and ruled mankind, and by the soldier I mean the intellect of Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon, superinduced on a moral substratum of tiger or wildcat. Then came the priest. The priest planted his batteries in the world that is to come rather than in the world that now is, and he plied his artillery at long range. Standing secure behind the ramparts of the future life, he could strike, but no one could strike back. The priest professed to act under