enduring monument of his genius, to be looked at and admired when he is gone. The physician compounds and deals out his medicines, and the lawyer prepares and pleads his cases,—all well enough, and useful to some extent; but all secondary in their nature, and limited to time in their results. But the teacher, who takes a right view of his office, has a higher and a nobler aim. It is to draw forth and form for usefulness and happiness, here and hereafter, the hidden, god-like powers of the soul. It is to write imperishable characters on immortal mind, fit to be read before the universe. He looks through the scenes of time, onward through endless ages, and his great object is to qualify those committed to his training for whatever duties and events may attend them in the whole progress of their future being. In this way he erects monuments of intelligence, virtue and honor, lasting as eternity. He erects temples of God, which shall reflect his glory and sound forth his praise, eternal ages after this temple of the creation shall have crumbled into dust and passed away.

And here I must insist, that no teacher takes a right view of the duties of his office, who does not connect with it the moral and immortal training of those entrusted to his care. To fail here is to leave out of view, is to disregard and neglect, by far the noblest and most important part of his work. Immortality is a great fact, responsibility is a great fact in the nature and destiny of man; and that education is radically defective, which does not direct its first and most assiduous efforts to the training of the moral

and religious affections, the conscience and the heart; thus imparting to its subject a quick perception and a deep feeling of right and duty, and so qualifying and disposing him to discharge with fidelity his high and sacred obligations as an immortal and accountable subject of the divine government.

Let me request you to consider next, the means which the teacher employs to accomplish the end at which he aims. The means is as simple as the object is sublime. It may be expressed in one word, truth; truth, derived from whatever objects and from whatever source, applied, with affection and skill, to elicit the faculties, and mould the sensibilities of the mind. The mind was made for truth, and truth for the mind. There is an admirable adaptation of the one to the other; and he is the best teacher, who has the greatest love of truth himself, and the happiest talent for making others understand and love it. And how excellent is that office, which calls one to deal continually with intelligent mind, through the medium of truth as his instrument. There is here no room for physical force. It is all a matter of light and persuasion. The mind is not trained by coercion or compulsion. It yields only to truth and love. It has been justly said, we are to regard the "mind, not as a piece of iron to be laid upon the anvil and hammered into shape, nor as a block of marble, in which we are to find the statue by removing the rubbish, nor as a receptacle into which knowledge may be poured;" nor, we may add, as a passive machine to be moved by mere external force, and to

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have a character given to it without its own voluntary activity and free choice; - but rather, as a "flame that is to be fed, as an active being that must be strengthened to think and feel, to dare, to do, and to suffer." It is as a germ, endowed with a hidden life; and the teacher's province is to cause that life, that internal force to expand; to wake it into vigor and activity by shedding the light of truth upon the intellect, and plying the heart and conscience with appropriate motives. The teacher's office is at an end, when he has brought his pupil to an ardent love of truth, and has taught him how to use his faculties in searching after it.

I have spoken of truth as the great means of training the mind. But I should fail of my duty, and do injustice to my subject, if I did not, in this connection, speak of divine truth, truth as contained in the Bible, as having a power, above all other means, in effecting the great object of teaching. So we should judge beforehand, if it once be admitted, that the Bible is from God, and is designed by him to be the grand instrument of re-forming men after his image, and fitting them for his service and kingdom. And so it is in point of fact. The Bible is preeminently a book for the people. It speaks to the inner man with a voice of tenderness and power, which turns into feebleness all other means of instruction and influence. It is the most powerful quickener of intellect that can be brought to act on the mind; and as to all that relates to enlightening the conscience, regulating the affections, and adorning the

character with the graces of true virtue and piety, the Bible has an influence altogether its own. As a book of government in the family and in the school, it is more efficient than any other instrumentality that can be employed. In its history, in its biography, in its poetry, in its eloquence, in the knowledge it imparts of God and the soul, and of duty and salvation, in a word, in all that can enlighten the understanding, comfort the heart, elevate the affections, and form the mind for high and noble purposes, it is emphatically the book of books; and the teacher who should dismiss it from his plan of instruction, or who neglects to give it a prominent place among the means he adopts for training minds, divests his office of more than half its dignity, and throws away the most effective instrumentality which he can use, in effecting the object at which he professedly aims. And I can think of nothing more insane or impious, than the attempt which many in our land seem willing to make, to exclude the Book of God from our systems of juvenile instruction, and thus abandon the rising generation to be trained up with no religious knowledge, or under a system no better than refined heathenism or deism.

Further to show the dignity of the teacher's office, I will next advert to the qualifications demanded of him in order to a right and successful discharge of his duties. Here again I must speak, not of what is, but of what ought to be. It is strange what crude notions many people have of the business of teaching. They insist that their tailor shall know how to cut

their clothes to the fashion. The mechanic, who makes the furniture of their houses, must be an accomplished workman. The doctor, who prescribes for them in sickness, must be a man of skill; and the lawyer whom they employ to manage a case in court, must be well read and competent in his profession. But the teacher of their children, he to whom they commit the training of their minds and the forming of their characters, -alas! almost any novice will answer for that service. Hence, the first inquiry with many, when seeking an instructer, is not whether he is well qualified for his business, intelligent, apt, devoted and successful; but can he be had cheap; and will he make the children mind him? How poor and unworthy a conception is this of the requisite qualifications of a teacher of youth? And yet how common? Mr. Simpkins's "four dollar master is not, even in our day, altogether an imaginary character. He is, after all, in too many cases, the most popular master; and most in demand. And because it is so, many who lose their way in following the plough, or in keeping sheep and cows, wander off, and find employment as schoolmasters. This lets down the teacher's calling from its true dignity, and leads people to entertain very inadequate views of the qualifications demanded in that calling, in order to a right discharge of its delicate and difficult duties. What a pity, it was wont to be said of the late Dr. Arnold, while head-master of Rugby School, what a pity that a man fit to be a statesman, should be employed in teaching boys. A far nobler and