110 ON THE EXPEDIENCY AND MEANS OF 



corporated and indissoluble compact, and conspire one and all to sink^ 

 the office deeper and deeper in public estimation. But " up to reas- 

 cend through utter and through middle darkness" to the most elevat- 

 ed rank of the profession ; the comparison is striking, but so indefinite- 

 ly remote from the opposite extreme as not to be obvious. The office 

 now assumes a new existence has metamorphosed its lean and withered 

 look into the full-blown plethora of excess, framed and gilded with the 

 extrinsic gewgaws, mystical sessamees, and attalantan wealth, of the col- 

 leges and universities. But even in these few, far separated instances 

 of the elevated dignity of the " profession of teaching" the elevation is 

 carefully concealed that no identity is felt between the two extremes. 

 By the jugglery of pride, the teacher is transformed into the '* pro- 

 fessor" and the office is lost sight of in the " professorship." The 

 benefit of a comparison is therefore dead to the public who can hardly 

 recognize an alliance where not only the circumstances but even the 

 designation is exchanged.* The distinctions so widely drawn between 

 the qualities of teaching, are not less carefully preserved, that it 

 would call for a more than ordinary discrimination to trace a connec- 

 tion ; while a ban excommunicates and vilifies the office of the educa- 

 tor, the ministerial agency, which however worthy of the highest hon- 

 our, must be by a natural succession posterior to the first truth of 

 education, is yet beheld with an exclusive and therefore tyrannous re- 

 verance, as though the efficacy of prevention was subordinate to that 

 of cure, or the building up of the tender and obedient spirit of youth, 

 to a more willing disposition to receive the truth with meekness, were 

 an object less valuable to the world or less acceptable to God than 

 the tardy conversion of men grown old in sin.t 



" LycurgusJ also in the institution of the Lacedemonian common- 

 wealth took no care about learning, but only the lives and manners 

 of their children, though I should think that the care of both is best 



• Let it be understood that the author does not condemn the elevated po- 

 sition and name of the professorships of our colleges, he laments rather that 

 the whole system of education is not equally elevated in importance ; the com- 

 parison is not meant to be invidious but merely to make the evil of such ex- 

 tremes more obvious. 



f " Einige sagen, der Unterricht fangt an ; die Uebung und das Beispiel 

 voUendet. Wir sagen umgekehrt, die Uebung und das Beispiel fangen an, 



und der Unterricht voUendet." — Wocchenschriftfur Menschenhildung Some 



say instruction should begin, practice and example perfect. We say, on the 

 contrary, that practice and example should begin, and instruction perfect. 



X Tillotson, Concerning the Educating of Children, Sermon 62. 



