The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1859-08-19


our theme. Look at him again, not
as being coming, we know not otwhence,
alighting for brief residence upon
this earth, and then making his exit,
through the door of the tomb to be seen
and heard of no more, and leaving no
more impression on society, than the
sea-bird leaves upon the surface of the
deep, when she stoops from the upper
air, dips her breast for a moment in the
wave and then rises again to viewless
height; but look at him in his relations
toposterity, as the father of a family,
as a amember of a generation, that sows
those seeds ST virtue or vice, that cen
turies hence, shall bear fruit or poi
son. Look at him as a citizen of a free
government, throwing his influence
and his vote into one or the other of the
seals, when peace and war, glory and
infamy are weighed.
Look at him in all these relations,
and consider how a virtuous or vicious
education tends to fit or unfit him for
them all, and you viii catch one more
glimpse of the Importance Of the sub
ieetnow under consideration. But if
we ascend to a still higher point Of Wis
ion and forgetting the earthly person
al career and the wide sphere OF. social
influences and those acts of life, which
survive life-fasten our eyes upon
effects, which education may throw
forward into immortal destinies, it is
then, that we are awed, amazed, over
powered by the thought, that we have
been created and placed in system,
where souls eternal fight may be made
higher or lower, by those who plum its
tender wing and directits early course.
Such is the magnitude, the transcend
ence of our subject.
In a philosophical view, beginning
at what point we viii, and following,
the most rigid connection and depend
ence of cause and effect, of antecedent
and consequence, we shall find that
education is ultimately related to every
good, and every evil, which we, as NOR
tai on immortal beings desire or need
Were a being Of a benevolent hear.
and understanding mind to see, for the
firsttime peaceful babe reposing on iti
cradle, or on its mothers breast ant
were he TO be told, that that infan-
had been SO constituted, that every
joint and organ in its frame might be:
come the RENDEZVOUS of disease and
racking pain; that such was its inter-
nal structure, that every nerve ant
| fabre beneath its skin might be made Il
threb with a peculiar torture; that il
the endless catalogue of human dis.
eases, maladies, adyersities or shame
there was scarcely one, to which j
would not be exposed: that in the Who'll,
criminal law of society and in the still
more Comprehensive and self-axeeutins
lawef God, there, was not crime
which its heart might not at some tim,
will,or its hand perpetrate. Shot il
the ghastly host Of tragic passions
Fear, Envy, Jealousy, Hate, Remorse
i Despair, there. was not one, whichmigh
not lacerate its soul and bring down O
it an appropriate catastrophe. Wer
the beneyolet spectator, whom | hay3
supposed, to see this environment ofill
underlying, surrounding and overhang
ing their feeble and uneonciou
victim, and as it were, watching. t
dart forth and seize if, might he not b
excused for wishing the newly create
being, we'll back again into nonentity
But ne cannot return to nonetity
Here we find ourselves in existenc
and how best to educate ourselves,
fit and prepare US, for all the relation
Of life is most momentous qnestiol
Before such a question I stand IL aw'
On which side shall its vastness be al
preached Shall speak of the pril
ciples on which an educational systei
for state should be organized; or I
the means and agencies BY which
: should be administered, in contra
with the absence of any fundamenti
/. plan Upon which Of these shall
E expatiate ! | have ventured ON th
e occasion, to solicit yoar attentio.
5 while / attempt to lay before you son
e of the relations, which we bear to Il
f cause of education, because, we a
I