exhorted to acquire, this leads us to bestow deplorable; and one at the same time of some reflections, gratitude to our heavenly Father, who has Secondly, on the best method of acquir-cast our lot in a fairer ground. Some mo ing it. Learning is that which may be learned. As wisdom is not communicated by inspiration, so neither is it born with us. We come into the world without principles of any kind, because without ideas of any kind. This opinion was long controverted, as being thought to militate against religion. But the apprehension appears to have been groundless. The doctrine is established, and religion has received no detriment. dern philosophers seem to think the rocks It is still, nevertheless, imagined that a man may make wonderful discoveries by the exercise of his own powers. But the first step in the process has been sometimes It has been unaccountably overlooked. forgotten, that those powers must be elicited and formed by cultivation; that every man must be taught by some one how to use them, or that he will discover nothing. A From the mountains of Switzerland a truth, when it has been proposed and explained to us, appears clear and evident; voice has been heard, proclaiming that we all the truths contained in the propositions are all mistaken; and that to teach (in matof Euclid appear so: but surely it follows ters of religion and morality) is to prejunot that, without information, we should dice; and, therefore, infuse, says this philohave discovered them, or have once thought sopher, no principles into the minds of concerning them. This is a fallacy, by youth; let them adopt their own when which mankind of late have been greatly they come to years of discretion. misled. No instance can be produced, from Adam to the present hour, of a single human being, brought up apart from all instructors, who ever spoke or reasoned. The state indeed is unnatural, and one into which man cannot fall but by accident. In the common course of things, Providence has been pleased to ordain that he should be born in society, and have those about him, who never fail to teach him as much as they themselves know; their language, and the notions current among them. These he learns; and if he be taught no more, he knows no more. But still, it is an indisputable fact, that men must learn: and they who not learn betimes, will learn with far more difficulty, when advanced in years. The soil stiffens and hardens by continuing untilled. The ground must be broken up, and good seed must be sown, by him who expects to see valleys covered over with corn at the time of harvest. Weeds and thistles only will be the spontaneous and unhappy produce. If children are not early conducted into the paths of truth and virtue, they will be found, at a muturer age, in those of error and vice. We cannot, I am afraid, Our countrymen sent, in quest of a new prevail upon the world, the flesh, and continent, to visit the extremities of the old the devil, to stand neuter, during the ones, and the distant isles of the South experiment; an experiment which whoSea, have returned with accounts which ever shall make once, without pretending confirm what has been said, and may serve to the spirit of prophecy, we may venture to convince us, "that man is born," as the to predict, will find no encouragement to Scripture expresses it, "like a wild ass's make it again. The truth is, we must teach colt" and, without education, will con- children the best we can while they are tinue such that he is born with capabili- young, leaving them to alter and correct ties only, and is in reality what he is made afterwards, if they shall see occasion. The nature of the thing admits of no other method by instruction. These accounts should produce in us a sentiment of pity for our fel- consistent with the dictates of reason and low-creatures, whose condition is so truly common sense. * Job, xi. 12. Instruction being thus necessary, we are to consider through what hands it may be most advantageously conveyed. Through regular succession of business at stated times those, perhaps it will be said of the parents. inures him to live by rule, and forbids him to One should certainly imagine so at first be idle; while the discipline by which it is sight. But then, all parents are not able enforced, renders him healthy and hardy in to instruct, having not been themselves mind and body. By being put so soon to sufficiently instructed. Those of them who manage and bustle for himself, he is prepared are able, may not be willing to submit to for the world into which he must enter, and the task; while many, both able and will- in which he must pass his days: the various ing, cannot find leisure from their. neces- tempers and dispositions of his numerous sary business to undertake it. The fault of companions bring him acquainted with those Mr. Locke's treatise is, that it suppose none of mankind, among whom he is to pass them: of these cases to happen, but that a father and he forms connections, which by banishshall always be at liberty to take care of ing selfishness, by exchanging offices of friendhis son's education. The same fault is ship by mutual assistance and communication chargeable on the plan of a very sensible of studies, as well as in many other ways, and agreeable instructress of a neighboring contribute towards his passing them with kingdom. With great force of genius and pleasure and emolument. If all who are engoodness of heart, she describes two per- gaged in the superintendence of our public sons of noble birth as giving up the world, seminaries could only bestow equal attention and retiring, for a course of years, from on the learning and morals of those under public life, that they might devote their their care, so that they might go forth (and time and fortune to the education of their such, you will all bear me witness, have latechildren.* Undoubtedly, the design is ly gone forth from hence) good MEN as well praise-worthy. They were excellently well as good SCHOLARS, the dispute between the employed. Would to God, that many of patrons of public and private education would their rank were so employed in every king, be, perhaps, in great measure at an end. dom upon earth. But all cannot do it; the scheme can never become general. There is, besides, another difficulty in the way. The partiality and fondness of the tutor, when that tutor is a father, may often do the pupil an injury, the effects of which will go with him through life. To prevent this, the Spartans, by a law of the state, took children, at a certain age, out of the hands of their parents, and placed them under other masters. The Hebrews had their schools of the prophets, the Greeks and Romans their academies and gymnasia; and since the revival of learning in these latter days, the western world has abounded with schools and universities; of which, without incurring the charge of self-adulation, we may truly say, none have exceeded those in our own country. In a public education, the means and instruments necessary for the acquisition of learning are possessed in a more full and complete manner. The master can give his time and his thoughts wholly to the work. Constant and long experience confers a degree of skill not otherwise to be attained. A spirit of emulation is excited in the scholar, who goes on with more sprightliness and alacrity in the company of his school-fellows, forgetting those that are behind, and pressing forward to those who are before, with the determination of a Cæsar, that nothing is yet done while anything remains to be done. A Theodore et Adele, par M. la Comptesse de Gealis Respecting the method of school instruction at present in use amongst us, it is one which has been long tried, and found successful; witness those great and shining characters, formed under its auspices, which adorn our annals; nor have its adversaries yet been. able to propose another, liable, upon the whole, to fewer objections. The observations made by an excellent writer on the plan proposed by the great Milton, are too valuable not to be recited to you upon the present occasion: The of Milton, as it seems, purpose 66 was to teach something more solid than the common literature of schools, by reading those authors that treat of physical subjects, such as the Georgic and astronomical treatises of the ancients. But the truth is, that the knowledge of external nature, and of the sciences which that knowledge requires or includes, is not the great or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong: the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and justice are virtues of all times, and of all places; we are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary and at leisure. Physical know ledge is of such rare emergence, that one man | But a man should know many other thing bemay know another half his life, without be- fore he enters upon that study, or he will do ing able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics well not to enter upon it at all. Let him lay or astronomy; but his moral and prudential in a stock, and that no moderate one, of usecharacter immediately appears. Those au- ful learning and sound principles, ere he set thors therefore are to be read at schools, that out upon his travels; or he will be little the supply most axioms of prudence, most prin- better for having seen the world, though the ciples of moral truth, and most materials for world may be somewhat the merrier for havconversation: and these purposes are best an- ing seen him. If he go out an ignoramus, he swered by poets, orators, and historians."* will come home a profligate, with the atheist ingrafted upon the blockhead. As to the business of the graces-before the gloss can be given, a substance must be prepared to receive it; and solid bodies take the brightest polish. Some have thought that, as we are now furnished with translations of the ancient classical authors, we may spare ourselves the trouble of learning their languages. Were the question only concerning matters of fact, it might be deemed perhaps of little importance to consider by what means we come at the knowledge of them, so that we do but obtain the truth; though, by the way, whether in particular instances we have obtained it, can often only be known (as was observed before in the case of the Scriptures) by consulting the originals. But there is much more in the matter. The writers of Greece and Rome are our masters in style and composition; with relation to which, the spirit of every piece will evaporate in the transfusion. Next in value to knowledge, is the mode of communicating it with ease and propriety. They who have studied the best writers of antiquity with this view, will always themselves be the best writers in any other language. When these shall cease to be regarded as our models, elegant simplicity and manly energy will give place to a false glare of affectation and refinement: loose and licentious tenets will be tricked out in the meretricious garb of false eloquence. A vitiated taste in writing, like that which preceded the decline and downfall of the Roman empire, will precede our own. Tacitus and Seneca will be imitated, rather than Cæsar and Cicero; epithet, point, and antithesis will prevail; and we shall prepare for slavery, by "babbling a dialect of France." Nothing could tend more to accelerate a catastrophe of this kind than the adoption of that system of foppery and immorality recommended by a late noble author, enamored, almost to distraction, of the language and manners of our neighbors upon the continent. Learning and religion would then no longer make a part in the education of our youth. One would be banished under the notion of pedantry, the other excluded by the name of superstition. Travel and a knowledge of the world, it seems, may supply the place of both. To know the world, is doubtless expedient; in some circumstances necessary. * Dr. Johnson in his Life of Milton, p. 142. From what has been said, you will perhaps be induced to think that, in times like these, and in a matter of such importance, projects of innovation are dangerous things. We know what we are to lose; let us be well informed what we are to gain: lest we should be led to exchange an old system with some defects which are of little consequence, for defects which are of very great consequence indeed to the general state of learning, and the constitution of our country. Reformation was the word in the last century; and one was at length effected which swept away schools and universities, with the government civil and ecclesiastical. The revenues allotted to the support of cathedrals and these their appendages, were seized, with a view to augment the smaller livings. But mark the event-When the estates were sold, the presbyterian ministers, who had taken possession of the livings, and expected the augmentation, were told, to their utter astonishment, that the money was wanted to support public credit. It was wanted, and it was applied accordingly." " All was then overwhelmed by a deluge of enthusiasm and illiterate fanaticism. The deluge which now threatens us is one of another kind, but not a whit less formidable. Thus much for the wisdom we are exhorted to acquire, and the method of acquiring it. A few words shall be said, and they shall be but few, in the Third and last place, upon the advantages attending such acquisition to the individual himself, and to the community. To the individual, wisdom is indeed, as Solomon properly styles it, "the principal thing." The seat of its residence is in the noblest part of the human composition; and that noble part it renders still more noble. What else gives to man the superiority over brutes; to angels over man; and to the Omniscient over all his creatures? "The Lord See Warner's Ecclesiastical History, ii. 580, Collier, ii. 848. Nelson, ii. 291. is a God of knowledge ;" and wisdom was with him from eternity.† The pleasures of wisdom exceed all others, in kind, degree, and duration, far as heaven is higher than earth. "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." A studious disposition makes those who are blessed with it valuable, good, and happy. It enables them to find a paradise in solitude, and profitably, as well as agreeably, to fill up the intervals of business. It renders them little sensible to the allurements of external objects, to those trifles and improprieties which disgrace the man, and degrade the Christian. The ill instructed and unemployed are the persons whose imagination is always wandering and afloat. For want of solid nourishment, their curiosity and their appetites turn to objects either vain or dangerous; and hence proceed all those inventions for squandering away thought and time, which generally end in a forgetfulness of God and ourselves. It is incredible what inconvenences are avoided by those, who can pass their vacant hours with books and their own thoughts. "Happy" says a prelate, in his day, the admiration and delight of mankind, I mean the all-accomplished archbishop of Cambray "Happy they, who are disgusted with violent pleasures, and know how to be pleased with the sweets of an innocent life. Happy they who delight in instruction, and find a satisfaction in cultivating their minds with knowledge. Into whatever situation adverse fortune may throw them, they always carry entertainment with them; and the disquiet which preys on others in the midst of pleasures, is unknown to those who can employ themselves in reading. Happy they who love to read."§ Let it be added, that this happiness is one which, as the world does not give, so neither can the world take away. It will never leave us, but continue a fast and firm friend, when every other pleasure shall have forsaken us. Wisdom will comfort us in the day of sorrow, and support us in the hour of death. Like the holy ark accompanying the camp of Israel, she will go with us over Jordan, and conduct us to our inheritance in the land of promise. "Exalt her," says the wise man, in the words immediately following my text-" Exalt her, and she shall promote thee; she shall bring thee to honor when thou dost embrace her; she shall give to thine head an ornament of grace, a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee." To a community the advantages of wisdom are many and great. A nation glories not less in the learning, than in the valor, of her sons. Long and illustrious is the train of literary heroes which Britain beholds with an honest and conscious pride, who from age to age have filled the most exalted stations in church and state, or presided in the different departments of science, or, from the shades of an honorable and lettered retirement, sent forth their writings for the entertainment and instruction of mankind. My young brethren, the hope of the rising generation, our future joy and crown, all these were men like yourselves, trained in the same course of education. Think of their examples, and emulate their fame. The trophies of Miltiades, you know, would not suf fer Themistocles to sleep. Hear the author of the book of Ecclesiasticus upon this subject, in a chapter read constantly at our universities on the days appointed for a solemn commemoration of founders and benefactors: "Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us. The Lord hath wrought great glory by them through his great power from the beginning. Such as did bear rule in their kingdoms, men renowned for their power, giving counsel for their understanding, and declaring prophecies: leaders of the people by their counsels, and by their knowledge of learning meet for the people; wise and eloquent in their instructions. All these were honored in their generations, and were the glory of their times. Their bodies are buried in peace, but their names live for evermore." While the world shall last, and any regard be paid to that which deserves regard, "the people will tell of their wisdom, and the congregation will show forth their praise." If, therefore, there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things, meditate on them, give yourselves wholly to them. Time is on the wing. It flies, to return no more. Seize the moments as they pass, and employ them to the best advantage. Lose not the golden opportunity, the sweet hour of prime, the morning of youth, health, and strength. Conquer the difficulties at first setting out, and all will be pleasure ever after. Labor now, and comfortable will be your rest when the season of labor shall be over. "For glorious is the fruit of labor, and the root of wisdom shall never fall away." the sanctity of your manners keep pace with the improvement of our minds. To your governors be respectful and obedient; to your companions, gentle and loving; to all, courte Let ous and obliging. And that the divine bless- of his glory, that being present, she may labor ing may be upon you in what you do, remem- with you, that you may know what is pleasber to begin and end your studies with prayer. ing unto him. For she knoweth and under"If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of standeth all things, and she shall lead you God."* Let him ask THAT, as the Son of soberly in your doings, and preserve you David did, and all things else, judged proper by her power. So shall your works be for him, shall be added to it. Pray, there- acceptable" in the sight of heaven and fore, that God would "give you wisdom that earth, bringing glory to God, credit to sitteth by his throne, and reject you not from your instructors, comfort to your friends, among his children: that he would send her honor to yourselves, and benefit to your out of his loly heavens, and from the throne country. ⚫ James, i. 5. † 1 Kings, iii. 11. * Wisdom, ix. 4, 10, &c. DISCOURSE LXXII. THE PRAISE OF GOD PERFECTED OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES AND SUCKLINGS. PSALM XXXIV. 11. Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord. IT is one mark of that wisdom by which | supply their places. In the days of Noah, the world is governed, that the assistance af- and in those of Lot, men were as they are forded is proportioned to the necessities of the now: they were more so; for a flood came times wherein such assistance is called for. upon them in one case, a storm of fire and When the darkness which covers a land brimstone in the other. And whenever we becomes so thick as to make men despair of shall be altogether like them (which God forits removal, light shall suddenly arise from an bid we ever should be,) judgment, in some unexpected quarter; small indeed, and scarce shape, will seize upon us. "The kingdom discernible, at first; but gently and gradually of God shall be taken from us, and given to increasing, till the darkness vanishes, and the a nation that will bring forth the fruits thereperfect day is formed. When corruption of of." Such is the rule of Heaven's proceedone kind or other has in such a manner over-ings, and it altereth not. We are not yet spread the face of religion, that its features are scarcely any longer to be distinguished, a reforming hand shall appear, to do away the soil contracted in a course of ages, and restore the picture to its original beauty. If a preacher mentions the iniquity of the age, it is regarded by many as a sort of cant; as a necessary ingredient in the composition of a sermon; and we are asked, if we think nations have not been as bad formerly? Undoubtedly many have; for which reason, God destroyed them, and raised up others to overthrown, because our measure is not yet filled up; but if we continue daily employed in filling it, that measure must in time be full.. come The matter is however, of late, home to our business and our bosoms." A lawless tribe of profligate, desperate, unfeeling villains have broken loose upon the public, to rob, to maim, and to murder; so that we can no longer travel with comfort upon the road, or sleep with security in our beds. Numbers of these wretches are from time to |