2. Who will not joyfully labor, and court sacrifices, and suffer reproach, if he may hasten, by even so much as a day, its blessed coming? Who will not take courage from a contemplation of what the last century has seen accomplished, if not in absolute results, yet in preparing the approaches, in removing impediments, in correcting and expanding the popular comprehension of the work to be done, and the feasibility of doing it? 3. Whatever of evil and of suffering the future may have in store for us-though the earth be destined yet to be plowed by the sword, and fertilized by human gore, until rank growths of the deadliest weeds shall overshadow it, stifling into premature decay every plant most conducive to health or fragrance the time will surely come when universal and true education shall dispel the dense night of ignorance and perverseness that now enshrouds the vast majority of the human race; shall banish evil and wretchedness almost wholly from earth, by removing or unmasking the multiform temptations to wrong-doing; shall put an end to robbery, hatred, op pression, and war, by diffusing widely and thoroughly a living consciousness of the brotherhood of mankind, and the sure blessedness, as well as righteousness, of doing ever as we would have others do to us. 4. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Such is the promise which enables us to see to the end of the dizzy whirl of wrong and misery in which our race has long sinned and suffered. On wise and systematic training, based on the widest knowledge, the truest morality, and tending ever to universal good, as the only assurance of special or personal well-being, rests the great hope of the terrestrial renovation and elevation of man. 5. Not the warrior, then, nor the statesman, nor yet the master-worker, as such, but the Teacher, in our day, leads the vanguard of humanity; whether in the seminary or by the wayside - by uttered word or printed page. Our true king is not he who best directs the siege, or sets his squadrons in the field, or heads the charge, but he who can and will instruct and enlighten his fellows, so that at least some few of the generation of which he is a member shall be wiser, purer, nobler, for his living among them, and prepared to carry forward the work, of which he was a humble instrument, to its far grander and loftier consummation. 6. Far above the conqueror of kingdoms, the destroyer of hosts by the sword and the bayonet, is he whose tearless victories redden no river and whiten no plain, but who leads the understanding a willing captive, and builds his empire, not of the wrenched and bleeding fragments of subjugated nations, but on the realms of intellect which he has discovered, and planted, and peopled with beneficent activity and enduring joy! 7. The mathematician who, in his humble study, undisturbed as yet by the footsteps of monarchs and their ministers, demonstrates the existence of a planet before unsuspected by astronomy, unobserved by the telescope; the author who, from his dim garret, sends forth the scroll which shall constrain thousands on thousands to laugh or weep at his will-who topples down a venerable fraud by an allegory, or crushes a dynasty by an epigram -shall live and reign over a still expanding dominion, when the pasteboard kings, whose steps are counted in court circulars, and timed by stupid huzzas, shall have long since moldered and been forgotten. 8. To build out into chaos and drear vacuity to render some corner of the primal darkness radiant with the presence of an idea to supplant ignorance by knowledge, and sin by virtue-such is the mission of our age, worthy to enkindle the ambition of the loftiest, yet proffering opportunity and reward to the most lowly. 9. To the work of universal enlightenment be our lives henceforth consecrated, until the black clouds of impending evil are irradiated and dispersed by the full effulgence of the divinely-predicted day when "all shali know the Lord, from the least unto the greatest," and when wrong and woe shall vanish forever from the presence of UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE, PURITY and BLISS! HORACE GREELEY. CXXXVII.-GOD'S FIRST TEMPLES. 1. The groves were God's first temples. Ere men learned 2. 3. To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them,- ere he framed The sound of anthems,-in the darkling wood, For his simple heart Might not resist the sacred influences That, from the stilly twilight of the place, Ah! why Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect Only among the crowd, and under roofs That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least, 5. Father, Thy hand Hath reared these venerable columns: Thou Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down All these fair ranks of trees. They, in Thy sun, Communion with his Maker. Here are seen No traces of man's pomp or pride; no silks The boast of our vain race to change the form 6. Here is continual worship; nature, here, In the tranquillity that Thou dost love, Passes; and yon clear spring, that midst its herbs 7. 8. MODEL SERIES. Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale Thou hast not left In all the proud old world beyond the deep, Wears the green coronal of leaves with which Nestled at his root 9. My heart is awed within me when I think 10. O, there is not lost |