for the future education of their beloved child. How cheerfully had they pledged themselves to devote the earnings of their daily toil, and the income of their little farm, to the education of a boy who was to be the ornament of their lives and the honor of their name. But the dear deceit had passed away ;" and the gloom which death alone can leave, had shrouded her humble home, and buried all her hopes. "I could bear it," she exclaims, "yes, I could bear it all, but my orphan boy, what shall I do for him? These poor, feeble hands of mine cannot sustain us both, and must he, too, toil by his mother's side? Shall his playmates be clad in rich apparel, and live and sport in leisure, while my dear boy must be clothed in rags, and bow down his neck to the yoke! Shall the children of pride pass him by with a glance of scorn, while he shall raise his form, bowed down with poverty and toil, and return only the sad, submissive look of a slave? I cannot bear it. My God, what have I done that I should be thus afflicted? Why dost thou dash my hopes, my plans, all to the earth?"

But a better spirit speaks to the widow's heart. It is a heavenly warning it is a father's reproof. It whispers: This is God's plan for the education of thy son, and thou must submit. It is God's plan, and the toil and the affliction are but a part of the plan, and thou must submit."

It was, indeed, a voice of heavenly wisdom. It was light to her darkened mind — it was balm to her torn and wounded spirit. The future now grew bright. That widow and her son toiled cheerfully on. Labor and weariness, disappointment and sadness, often check

ered their humble career; but the heavenly voice, “it is God's plan," as often whispered comfort to the widow's heart. She lived to see many a child of the rich and the proud, whose lot she had envied in that dark hour of her affliction, descend to a fool's or a drunkard's grave, while she, upon her death-bed, was permitted to rest her eye upon a man who, through all her declining years, had been her comfort and her pride, and whom she left behind, an ornament to a beloved father's name, an honor to himself and to his race.

The secret of that poor woman's success in the instruction of her son, is shortly told. She brought him up according to God's plan, and not her own.

Such has been the education of the noblest minds

the world has ever seen. and disappointment, and the summit of their glory.

Through toil, and struggling, affliction, they have reached

The simple picture which fancy has already drawn, has foreshadowed the subject of my address this morning:

I.

GOD'S PLAN FOR EDUCATING MAN.

I ask, then

What is God's plan for educating man?

II. What will be the result of all attempts to improve upon this plan?

III. How can the study and contemplation of this plan, aid us, as teachers, in the practical instruction and government of our schools.

1. What is God's plan for educating man?

Let us first look to Revelation for an answer. I do not speak of man, as he once was, a pure, innocent

being, whom the loveliness of virtue and the beauty of truth, were motives sufficiently powerful to restrain from every sinful thought and every unhallowed deed, but of man after he had sold his birthright and resigned his crown. I come not here as a theologian, but I see, in letters of light, almost upon the first leaf of the Bible, the clear declaration of God's plan for educating man. His destiny is thus recorded: "Cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it, all the days of thy life. Thorns, also, and thistles, shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground.

Sad destiny, but yet the destiny of fallen man — a destiny which he must not, cannot escape -laws which he must and shall obey. Hereafter all human happiness consisted in a cheerful conformity to these laws. When God says, "in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," he means that man's happiness, his interest, demanded that he should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. This, henceforth, was to be a part of his discipline; and the sorrow and the toil, the thistle and the thorn, were to be essential elements in subduing his passions, in chastening his pride, and in developing his mind. Without these, man could be neither happy, great, or wise. And could our first parents have scaled the walls of Paradise, or passed by the flaming sword and the Cherubim that kept the guard, no bowers of Eden would restore the joys of innocence, or gentle zephyr waft its wonted delight. They would feel that Paradise itself was not their home, and once more,

"with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden take their solitary way,"

and once more, as their only source of real happiness, resign themselves cheerfully to their new destiny, in which it is God's mysterious will that they shall toil on in sorrow and sadness, and eat their bread in the sweat of their brow.

Sad destiny, indeed, were it not for one bright star of hope, which glimmered from afar:-"the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." This star of promise shines brighter and brighter, as the years of revelation roll on. It reveals, in the distant future, the great Atonement for sin, and the rewards of heaven. Its light is the solace of man's weary pilgrimage, the final rest from his suffering and his toil.

And here I may remark, that it is this light which constitutes the difference between God's government and human bondage. The one is a discipline of toil and sorrow, cheered up by visions of hope and of future glory; the other is a discipline of toil and sorrow, darkened by the gloom of despair.

But to return to our subject — let us trace down the pages of Revelation, and everywhere the same lesson is taught us. The sufferings of the cross do not change the destiny or the discipline, but only confirm the promise and secure the reward; and even the great apostle, whose intellect equalled his zeal, confesses that God's plan for educating man had not changed, and thanks his God for his stripes and his bonds, as a part of a wise and wholesome discipline, and calls them but a "light affliction, which is but for a moment," and which shall

work out and educate him for "a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

Such is the teaching of the Word of God. Throughout its sacred pages, earth is a wilderness, man is a pilgrim, and life is but a shadow.

What does History, the great interpreter of revelation, teach us to be God's plan for educating man? What nations and what men have attained the highest summit of glory? What races now rule in the empires of the earth? Did they come from the mild and gentle South, or pour forth from the cold and barren North? Were they bred in the lap of luxury or nurtured by the hand of toil? If it is now true that

"Westward the star of empire takes its way,"

has it not been always true that the tide of power has moved from the ruder to the fairer clime? And has it not been equally true, that this emigration has tended to undermine and destroy the physical and intellectual strength of the races of men? Indeed, I fear not to venture the assertion, that if, in some yet unknown land, there could be discovered a second garden like that of Eden, alluring man to enter in and dwell, there is no race of fallen beings, who could inhabit it, and still retain their physical, or moral, or intellectual power. The serpent again would tempt the woman; the flaming sword of pestilence again would guard the gate. God has doomed man to a ruder destiny, and his interest and his happiness demand that he should submit.

Hence it is that the most renowned nations are those which, by their own laws or the laws of nature, have been forced to pass through the ordeal of hardship and