city; to observe the ever-changing forms and scenes of nature, around and above him. Fine landscapes, sunrises and sunsets, the ever-varying clouds, majestic storms with their thunder trumpets, the moon and stars by night, mountain hights, dells, and gorges, and deep caves, the solemn hush of the forest, and its more solemn moan, the calm hour of twilight, the noise of waterfalls, the laughing stream, the placid lake, the surging sea, the universal chorus of birds, as the gates of day open at dawn and shut at eve upon us, and all nature, full, in high keys and low, of the voices of happy creatures, summering away. their lives in gladness: what endless food do these all furnish for the inspiration of thought and feeling!

Beauty of form or outline is to be seen and studied in nature, as also beauty of color, or of light and shade; and not alone these mere external aspects, but also the inward order of mechanism, and the designs of love that they reveal, and of which the glittering or elegant exterior is but the fitting enclosure.

It is surely one of the most surprising proofs of man's inward blindness, that Nature, the very book whose letters are largest, and which God holds most closely before the eyes of men, and the only one containing the lessons of his wisdom and love, which is ever opened to the mass of mankind, is the very one in which the great majority of the race read not a lesson, and see not even a single letter.

Let no student feel, wherever he is, that he is denied a high and true intercourse with nature. There are walks for meditation, and hights for prospect, even in the crowded city, where swarms cover every open space, and where all original variations of surface are carefully evened; and the scenery of the sky is there, and of the sea, or of some mighty stream, hastening towards it, whose bosom is ever heaving with the burdens of commerce, and within whose arms its sails, like doves whispering to each other, gather themselves together. And, in the want of all material stimulations to poetic sensibility, there are yet books full of thought-pictures, of the selectest beauty, which, indeed, have been nearly always drawn with the most effect by those who, amid the cares of city life,

have pined for the remembrances of a youth spent under more open skies, and on broader fields, and under the shadow of the everlasting hills.

is,

Another of the higher forms of intelligence to be gained,

4th. Acquaintance with art.

Among the elements of the higher education, should be instruction in the principles of art. By art is meant, in the abstract, the theory, and in the concrete, the faculty, of rightly executing, or expressing, the more tender, beautiful, or sublime conceptions of the human mind. Art is therefore the revealer of the best moods of humanity on the one hand, and of the highest capacities, on the other, of the objects, on which the artist works, to receive and to keep the image of himself and of his thoughts that he would stamp upon them. Art has its great generalizations, and its grand ideals, and may be taught and studied in the sphere of its general relations and uses, without centralizing one's thoughts in any one specific department of it. The careful study of Reynolds and Ruskin, than whom no modern writer displays more power and beauty of thought, will open the eye to see, and the heart to feel, through what a world of wonders our path of daily life, however common, passes. In what heathenish neglect is the art-side of our natures left, by almost every one who assumes or ventures upon the holy work of educating them, whether at home or at school! Man has indeed an organism of susceptibilities and capacities, vaster than it has entered into the hearts of most men to conceive; and the work of leading him up to glory and to God is the grandest work, for hight and breadth, in which the efforts of any one can be employed.

But there is a still higher form yet of intelligence to be gained: higher in itself, and higher in its results.

5th. Acquaintance with the word, and character, and plans of God.

The grand fact of the universe, absorbing all others in its vast dimensions, is this: God is. Any and all finite creatures, however numerous or mighty, and all their affairs, are but mere motes appearing in the universal blaze of his being, and made

visible by it. Everything pertaining to him or his ways, is immediately aggrandized by the connection. The Bible, as his word, is rightly denominated in its very title, the Book. No other on earth has such hights in it to climb, none such depths to sound. No book has such power in it to educate the intellect, for force of logic, beauty of conception, breadth of view, tone of feeling, or sweep of thought; for it is God's book. It is the great enigma of our educational system, devised as it has been by Christian men, that this sacred volume not only does not occupy a conspicuous central place in it, but not even for educational purposes, any place at all. The Mohammedan bases his whole system of full long school instruction on the Koran, the Hindû upon the Vedas, and the Papist on the interpretations, and traditions, and perversions of the fathers; but we, who alone have the glorious word of the great God of heaven and earth, instead of bearing it with joy and triumph into the recitation and lecture rooms of our high schools and universities, keep it well bound and gilded, as a cabinet curiosity, in our houses or our hearts. But the Bible is yet to have "free course, and to be glorified," in our colleges and academies, as in all the world beside. Its history and literature should be studied and made familiar, by the educated youth of our land. Its geography and antiquities should be mapped out clearly in their thoughts, as are the marvels of foreign countries in the memory of travelers who have visited them. Its great men, and their great deeds, its many poets, orators, prophets, apostles, and heroes, should ever people their imaginations, as an army of light, moving, with the Lord's banners, over the highway of the past to the land that is above. It should be made the book of life to them, by making its truths a living fire on the altar of their hearts. The character of God as our Father; his intimate presence, in fact and at heart with us; and his high governorship over all our thoughts and ways, and all the fullness of his many great and loving relations to us, should be joyously and flamingly held up as a torch of sacred light before the young, in all our courses of education. In his personal, watchful, ever-brooding care for each one of the race, is contained the whole mystery of life, as a

matter of his ordination, as well as the whole doctrine of its work and worth to us. His plans in behalf of man, or the great scheme of redemption, which contains them all, should ever stand clear and high, like a pyramid of light, before their thoughts. It is because of his designs of mercy, that the world stands at all, and that the generations of men come and go one after another, upon its surface. And ought a young man to be so educated in a Christian college or school, as to know and think a great deal more about the Acropolis at Athens, or the temple of the Parthenon upon its brow, or the statue of the goddess within, and even its ornaments of gold and ivory, and the sacred peplum upon its limbs, than about the very object and end of his own formation, and of that of the world itself? No muse, or grace, or nymph, could so adorn a Grecian grove, fountain, or poem, as the genius of religion will beautify any fireside, school, or heart, in which it is invited to make its abode.

Our attention has been confined thus far to the department of education called intelligence and the elements immediately connected with it, because, for space and time, it is so large in itself, and because it is the foundation of all the rest, as containing the facts on which, and with which, our minds are

to act.

The next point to be gained, in the plan of the higher education, beside the right kind and amount of intelligence, is, II. Aspiration.

Man is placed at the outset, at the bottom of the scale of intelligence and development, and taught to look ever upwards. Voices from above are perpetually calling, in love to him, "Come up higher!" Everything that can be done, to inspire the soul to desire and strife and hope for what is beyond, is among the selectest bestowments of either heaven or earth. No part of the work of a true education is more neglected than this. When once the mind becomes fully awake to the consciousness of itself, and has a true sense of what God is, and what life is under him, and for him; when it feels "the powers of the world to come," breathing like a wind from Heaven upon all its being, and it sets all its faculties astir to fulfill its whole

destiny, what loftiness of purpose! what strength of zeal! what energy and constancy of action will it evince in its high calling! No man has any credentials from God for assuming the great work of a teacher, who is not himself full of the new wine of love for his work. His mind, whether resting or moving anywhere, must be so occupied with great thoughts at all times, as to be surrounded perpetually with a contagious aura of vitalizing influences, into which whoever comes will find his nature kindling, at once, into a blaze. And no one has really obtained a true education, who does not wear "zeal" for all high and good things, "as a cloak." This is the very meaning of the word industry, which, like the words endue and endow, comes from the Latin induo, to put on or wear. It must be as much a part of the man, in all his public life, as his very garments, seen by all men wherever he is seen.

Another great end to be secured is,

III. Not only the power but the habit also of constant, full disciplined application of all one's energies, in right directions.

Information and aspiration are valuable ends to be secured, only as they shall become helps and means to the true work of life and the right development of the soul itself in conducting it. As a fountain is constructed to receive the streams ministered unto it, only to bestow them copiously upon those who need; so, the mind is made capable of receiving, merely for the purpose of giving. Work is the law of life to all intelligent beings, from God to the lowest creature made in his image. My Father worketh hitherto," saith Christ, "and I work." Men are made by their Maker to excel in different kinds and degrees of work. What work any one can perform, and therefore was made to perform, and in what style of thoroughness and finish, can never be known, except by the fullest possible preparation of his powers for working, the most vigorous outlay of them when employed, and the steady holding of the highest of all possible objects of desire and effort before the mind in their employment, together with that earnest, importunate looking of the soul to God, in faith, for his blessing upon