Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1885-10-03

the mirage. This age is peculiarly an
age Of science and progress. In the
fifteenth century was Columbus, in the
eighteenth Newton, but the nineteenth
is Of oil others absolutely unsurpassed.
Our civilization, and especially in this
country, has spread with almost indie
scribable rapidity. The log huts oil
the woodsmen nave grown into cities,
mountains have been tunnelled, and the
virgin forests have resounded with the
noise of the steam engine. Every
where man has left his mark. 1t would
have been disgraceful if education was
to have been left stationary.
Zone great reason for satisfaction IS
that the diyersities Of the modern edu-
cation enable men Of different minds to
follow their bent. The minds Of men
differ radically. Some men, like my
friend the late Dean Stanley, are inter-
ested in the nature and thought OF
man; others breathe most freely in re-
gions Of the abstract. Charles Darwin
said that at school he had learned no.
thing with the exception Of that which
he had taught himself by private exper-
iments in chemistry, and when the head
master discovered him, instead OF en-
couraging him, he reproached him before
all the form with being "poco currente,"
which h, thought dreadful name.
st. Berna. d is so dead to outer impress
sions that he travels all day along Lake
Geneva and then asks where the lake
is, while Linnaeus is so sensitive to the
beauties of nature that when he beholds
a promontory standing boldly forth and
teeming with beauty, he cannot help
falling upon his knees and thanking
God for such a world. 1t is not won
derful, then, that men of such different
minds despise each other. 1t is the
scorn of mems mutual ignorance.
Every ideal university must, there
fore, have appliances for the study Of
the whole circle Of human sciences.
Let me speak of the immense delights
| Of scientific study. God has placed us
in a world which lie means us to adj
mire. There are beauties and wonders,
and God made them all. 1t is impos-
sible to measure the difference of de-
grees of happiness Of a man with see
ing eye and hearing ear and of another
who has grown up blind and deaf to his
surroundings. God has given US the
| instinct of beauty, and there is no
| greater proof of His being than the fact
that He has placed around us the means
| of gratifying those instincts. 1t is
amazing to think what the world might
have learned by grasping the simplest
facts around us. But it was only to
the mind of Newton that the simple
falling of an apple suggested the great
law Of gravtation. To Watts the con-
densation Of steam upon a spoon re-
yealed the secret of the steam-engine.
Calico. watching the swinging of the
great bronze lamp in the cathedral at
Pisa and measuring it by the beating
of his pulse. discovered the isocronism
of the pendulum. Euyghens looked
through a piece of iceland spar and put
| into our hands means of reading the
secuets Of the stars. All these things
may be called accidents, but they are
accidents which happen only to trained
and obscrvant minds, and | think that
even now there are other open secrets
about us, and that the discoveries of
modern times might have been made
earlier if minds had been properly
trained.
"Science is remarkable for its enor-
nous strides. | need but give one
illustration--the progress of the science
of electricity. The ancient Greeks had
discovered that electricity WINS gem
Grated by rubbing a piece Of amber.
Consider the immense advance since
their time. We know now that light
ming is nothing more than what lady
may brush from cats back or from
her own hair. Benjamin Franklin,
with nothing more than a boys kite, a
piece of hempen cord, and key, dashed
to the ground the majestic power. But
what an immense stride has been made
since the days of Franklin, particularly
in the laying Of the first Atlantic cable
Surely this great progress is one of the
special glories Of science.
Let me add a word more as to
the benefcence of science. She has
not only revealed infinite time, infinite
space, and infinite organism, but she
has been a great archangel, lowering
benefcently over mankind. She econo-
mixes labor, extends human life, and
extinguishes human pain. She restores
sight to the blind, mitigates madness,
and tramples upon disease. After all
these enormous services she ought to
be cultivated, and we congratulate the
university deyoting so much to the
subject.
Whether our education lie in the
sciences or in the languages, we must
set steadily before us the one great OBJ
iect we are to obtain. Some wish to
know only to know some to be known.
thia is vanity; some to sell their
knowledge, this is base covetousness
some TO edliy, ana some 10 DC euiued'
But the great object is to learn to see
and know God here and to glorify Hin
hereafter. Our education is that we
may become profitable members o
the church and the community, and
hereafter to partake of the glo'
lies Of an immortal resurrection
Whatever removes us from the power
of our senses, that elevates us in thu
scale of manhood, and that is the OBJ
iect of education. Try to be man.
If i don't succeed in being man | shall
never succeed in being anything else
Behind the clerk, the scholar, the mar
of business, towers the man. 1t is no
right to throw away life in the effort o
getting the means Of living. The trues
form Of education is education in right
eousness and in the essential truths o
one Of the great forms of religion. w
have bodies, but we are spirits, anC
education in its highest function is edu
cation of the spirit. Always be faith
full to God, to country, to fellow-men
and to yourselves. 1t is only q reli
gious education that can give us rea
happiness aud permanent success"
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