function of the statesman to watch over the outward interests of a people; that of the educator to quicken its soul. The statesman must study and manage the passions and prejudices of the community; the educator must study the essential, the deepest, the loftiest principles of human nature. The statesman works with coarse instruments for coarse ends; the educator is to work by the most refined influences on that delicate, ethereal essence, the immortal soul.

Nothing is more common than mistakes as to the comparative importance of the different vocations of life. Noisy, showy agency, which is spread over a great surface, and therefore seldom penetrates beneath the surface, is called glory. Multitudes are blinded by official dignity, and stand wondering at a pigmy, because he happens to be perched on some eminence in church or state. So the declaimer, who can electrify a crowd by passionate appeals, or splendid images, which give no clear perceptions to the intellect, which develope no general truth, which breathe no firm, disinterested purpose, passes for a great man. How few reflect, that the greater man is he, who, without noise or show, is wisely fixing in a few minds broad, pregnant, generous principles of judgment and action, and giving an impulse which will carry them on for ever. Jesus, with that divine wisdom which separates him from all other teachers, declared, that the first requisite for becoming

great in his kingdom," which was another phrase for exerting a great moral influence, was Humility; by which he meant a spirit opposed to that passion for conspicuous station with which he saw his disciples inflamed, a spirit of deep, unpretending philanthropy, manifested in sympathy with the wants of the mind,

and in condescension to any efforts by which the ignorant and tempted might be brought to truth and virtue. According to these views, we think it a greater work to educate a child, in the true and large sense of that phrase, than to rule a state.

Perhaps the direction which benevolence is taking at the present day, has some influence in turning from the office of education the high honor which is its due. Benevolence is now directing itself very much to public objects, to the alleviation of misery on a grand scale, to the conversion of whole nations, to the instruction of large bodies, and in this form it draws the chief notice and admiration of multitudes. Now we are far from wishing to confine this action of charity. We respect it, and recognise in it one of the distinctive fruits of Christianity. But it must not be forgotten, that the purest benevolence is that which acts on Individuals, and is manifested in our particular, social, domestic relations. It requires no great improvement in charity, to sympathize with the degradation and misery, into which the millions of India are sunk by the worship of Juggernaut, and other superstitions. It is a higher action of the intellect and heart, to study and understand thoroughly the character of an individual who is near us, to enter into his mind, to trace his defects and sufferings to their true springs, to bear quietly and gently with his frowardness and relapses, and to apply to him patiently and encouragingly the means of intellectual and moral elevation. It is not the highest attainment to be benevolent, to those who are thousands of miles from us, whose miseries make striking pictures for the imagination, who never cross our paths, never interfere with our interests, never try us by their waywardness, never

shock us by their coarse manners, and whom we are to assist by an act of bounty, which sends a missionary to their aid. The truest mode of enlarging our benevolence, is not to quicken our sensibility towards great masses, or wide-spread evils, but to approach, comprehend, sympathize with, and act upon, a continually increasing number of individuals. It is the glory of God to know, love, and act on, every individual in his infinite creation. Let us, if we can, do good far and wide. Let us send light and joy, if we can, to the ends of the earth. The charity, which is now active for distant objects, is noble. We only wish to say, that it ranks behind the obscurer philanthropy, which, while it sympathizes with the race, enters deeply into the minds, wants, interests of the individuals within its reach, and devotes itself patiently and wisely to the task of bringing them to a higher standard of intellectual and moral worth.

We would suggest it to those who are anxious to do good on a grand and imposing scale, that they should be the last to cast into the shade the labors of the retired teacher of the young; because education is the germ of all other improvements, and because all their schemes for the progress of society must fail without it. How often have the efforts of the philanthropist been foiled, by the prejudices and brutal ignorance of the community which he has hoped to serve, by their incapacity of understanding him, of entering into and coöperating with his views! He has cast his seed on the barren sand, and of course reaped no fruit but disappointment. Philanthropists are too apt to imagine, that they can accomplish particular reformations, or work particular changes in a society, although no foundation for these improve

ments has been laid in its intellectual and moral culture.

They expect a people to think and act wisely in special cases, although generally wanting in intelligence, sound judgment, and the capacity of understanding and applying the principles of reason. But this partial improvement is a vain hope. The physician, who should spend his skill on a diseased limb, whilst all the functions were deranged, and the principle of life almost extinguished, would get no credit for skill. To do men permanent good, we must act on their whole nature, and especially must aid, foster, and guide their highest faculties, at the first period of their developement. If left in early life to sink into intellectual and moral torpor, if suffered to grow up unconscious of their powers, unused to steady and wise exertion of the understanding, and strangers to the motives which ought to stir and guide human activity, they will be poor subjects for the efforts of the philanthropist. Benevolence is short-sighted, indeed, and must blame itself for failure, if it do not see in education the chief interest of the human race.

One great cause of the low estimation, in which the teacher is now held, may be found in narrow views of education. The multitude think, that to educate a child is to crowd into its mind a given amount of knowledge, to teach the mechanism of reading and writing, to load the memory with words, to prepare a boy for the routine of a trade. No wonder, then, that they think almost everybody fit to teach. The true end of education, as we have again and again suggested, is to unfold and direct aright our whole nature. Its office is to call forth power of every kind, power of thought, affection, will, and outward action; power to observe, to reason, to judge, to contrive; power to adopt good ends firmly,

and to pursue them efficiently; power to govern our selves, and to influence others; power to gain and to spread happiness. Reading is but an instrument; education is to teach its best use. The intellect was created, not to receive passively a few words, dates, facts, but to be active for the acquisition of Truth. Accordingly, education should labor to inspire a profound love of truth, and to teach the processes of investigation. A sound logic, by which we mean the science or art, which instructs us in the laws of reasoning and evidence, in the true methods of inquiry, and in the sources of false judgments, is an essential part of a good education. And yet how little is done to teach the right use of the intellect, in the common modes of training either rich or poor! As a general rule, the young are to be made, as far as possible, their own teachers, the discoverers of truth, the interpreters of nature, the framers of science. They are to be helped to help themselves. They should be taught to observe and study the world in which they live, to trace the connexions of events, to rise from particular facts to general principles, and then to apply these in explaining new phenomena. Such is a rapid outline of the intellectual education, which, as far as possible, should be given to all human beings; and with this, moral education should go hand in hand. In proportion as the child gains knowledge, he should be taught how to use it well, how to turn it to the good of mankind. He should study the world as God's world, and as the sphere in which he is to form interesting connexions with his fellow-creatures. A spirit of humanity should be breathed into him from all his studies. In teaching geography, the physical and moral condition, the wants, advantages, and striking peculiarities of different nations,