would leave a richer legacy to those children, and gain a fuller blessing, if he spent a larger share of his earnings for their teaching. What can be done with energy of purpose by any farmer's family is beyond the thought of most people. From my father's farm of one hundred acres, cut out of the woods of Northern Ohio, eight children have grown to full maturity; most of them are past the prime of life, and yet they still turn back with the tenderest love to a father, now in his ninetieth year, who sent them out, equipped for life with cultivated brains. Five of the eight, three brothers and two sisters, were enabled, by the help of home, to complete a seven or more years' course of study, and the other three enjoyed so much of equal opportunity as personal health allowed them. Not one of all his neighbors wishes for that father any greater earthly blessing than his children are to him; and not a child among them has ever wished one cent of what was paid for brains held back for any other use. Fathers and mothers who hoard for ignorant children to spend may live to rue the day that gained a cent of it, but those who spend their hard-earned dollars wisely in aiding willing hands and hearts to fuller control of their powers by education, will enjoy the daily growth they help to bring, and find its fruits maturing in still greater joy, as life wears out. In this alone they find an immortality already reached, a foretaste of the heaven where their treasure is already."

WHAT EDUCATION SHOULD BE.

Education should be varied in accordance with the needs of society and the aptitudes of the individual.

Mr. Matthew Arnold agrees with Plato, that a good education is not fitted for all sorts and conditions of men, and that an intelligent man will pursue those studies which shall result in his getting soberness, righteousness, and wisdom, and will discard all the

rest.

What we need in the United States is to give to a larger proportion of our youth a sound industrial training. The producing classes are in the minority. The boys and girls are educated out of the practical industries into superficial and comparatively useless

scholastic acquisitions, and thus society is becoming top heavy with a nominal gentility. For a generation, a majority of American parents have been harping upon the saying, that if they educate their sons, the latter can take care of themselves. What have they meant by this? Simply that if educated, the rising generation could enter the professions or other genteel pursuits, and gain a support without manual toil. They have pictured beforehand what is now a spectacle of every day life, viz.: a large class of delicatelooking, soft, worthless professionals, living generally in idleness, and getting a living by their wits. The order needs to be changed. .A knowledge of the useful arts must be dispensed alongside with discipline in the classics. Colleges and universities must honor and dignify the one no less than the other. Farmers must educate their sons for the highest and most advanced stages of agricultural life. The few who give practical evidence that they are born for other pursuits and callings need not alter this general rule. Let all educations be as liberal and thorough as possible and natural aspirations will regulate themselves. By liberal education we mean simply this distinctly map out before the student the whole domain of knowledge, and, at the same time, give him thorough acquaintance with that special province wherein he is mainly to work. "A liberally educated man," says Dr. F. H. Newhall, ❝is one who has learned something about everything and everything about something." In a country like ours every father should be ambitious to fit his son thoroughly for some place, and generally for any place in which the course of time and events may place him.

Whether to send children to the institutions of higher education is a question which often perplexes parents. The cost in money and time is no inconsiderable item. A collegiate course implies from six to ten years of study, and as an expenditure, of from one thousand to three thousand dollars. The only benefit many persons see in all this is a knowledge of higher mathematics and familiarity with dead languages-two things little used in practical every-day life. No doubt, if money alone is the object aimed at, a university education will not always pay. Thousands of ignorant men get rich and thousands of educated men remain poor. Nevertheless, other things being equal, educated men have the advantage, even in busi

ness life. If they fail in one line of industry, they are qualified to enter others, whereas ignorant men are confined to limited fields of activity. And this gives occasion to say that the discipline rather than the specific classical acquirements of a college course is invaluable in the after years.

If parents cannot afford collegiate training for their sons and daughters, they can at least do their best to keep them in the common and graded schools, and train them to make good use of their time subsequent to their graduation. There is one opportunity enjoyed in Christian lands, the improvement of which cannot be too definitely urged upon young people. Chancellor E. O. Havin once expressed the opinion that there need not be an ignoramus on the earth. "I believe," he says, " that it is the will of God that the whole human family should be liberally educated; and in order to bring about what we might properly call a liberal education, it is only necessary to observe one commandment in the decalogue, namely, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.' If you have lived to be twenty-one years of age you have had three whole years of Sabbaths; if you have lived to be fifty years old you have had six years of Sabbaths, in which to cultivate your nobler faculties. When the religion of Christ shall become the religion of the world, when all mankind shall remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,' I believe there will not be a fool or knave on the face of the earth. It is the will of God that our intellectual faculties and our moral faculties should be highly developed, and that they should control our actions. Nor does this interfere with our labor. Work is honorable; work with the hands is as honorable as work with the mind; and when all men remember the Sabbath day and carry out the principles of the Christian religion, something far in advance of these glowing pictures drawn by the false reformers of modern times will be obtained, and will be the property and inheritance of the whole world."

Uprightness, truth, purity, should be sought in all educational aims and plans. Toward these ends the Sabbath, the Bible, and Christian institutions generally, are indispensable. "Men may be as cultivated as Robespierre, and yet become as dark-minded and desperate as he. They may be as polished as was Dr. Webster, a

just as wicked." We must not only teach our children to think, but to think rightly. As a man thinketh, so is he. The current of our thoughts forms our character, makes us what we are. Think continually of the low and vulgar, and you will be low and vulgar. Brood over wickedness, and your tendency is to become wicked. If the thoughts which burn within us are of the elevated, our natures rise. "A man's wisdom maketh his face to shine. When we have thoughts of beauty, strength, power, and grandeur even, connected with literary or scientific matters, they change our very appearance. The eye sparkles with intelligence; the countenance exhibits wisdom; we feel that a man who hath these great thoughts in him is something more than an ordinary man; and we notice the changes, so that the character of a man's thoughts influence his very being, and he rises in proportion to the magnitude of those thoughts. Could it be that man should think the thoughts of angels, he would rise higher than the world. The savage remains the savage the thoughts of the savage continually being within him. Place him in the midst of civilization; give him new thoughts, new hopes, new aspirations, new impulses, and you raise him above the savage state. And this is the whole history of civilization, of enlightenment. Now, as thoughts come from above, and find lodgment in our bosoms, our natures rise upward. And this is one of the glorious offices of revelation even here. We take in the thoughts of God revealed in his word, and we mount up to be like God."

The best men, the greatest statesmen, are agreed as to the propriety of introducing Christian doctrines into philosophical studies. A man is efficient in proportion as he is well poised. Educate one part of him to the neglect of other parts, and you destroy the poise. Intellectual development, as Rev. C. W. Cushing, D.D., affirms, "elevates a man on one side, makes him keener, and in that degree more influential. Physical development makes him more enduring, capable of greater exertion. But moral development only will make him correcter, purer, and hence more useful.” "Intellectual culture without heart culture," says President J. C. Price, A. M., 'may be a curse instead of a blessing."

Lord Bacon said: "In knowledge without love there is some