PROCEEDINGS OF PROVINCIAL SOCIETIES. 127 



animal, without hope in the world. It is education, it is knowledge, which 

 seals the human with the divine presence ; and thus if an uneducated man 

 can claim no just affinity (for where is the bond of alliance ?) with the wise and 

 good Spirit — so the sum of knowledge possessed gives the only legitimate 

 ascendency and power. Truly, knowledge is power ! it places the lowest in 

 worldly greatness in the places and palaces of princes ; and what is more, 

 opens stores, inexhaustible stores, of wealth — gives every object a richer 

 value, heightens every enjoyment, and elevates the spirit of our mortal na- 

 ture into the presence of the Eternal — 



" Hail, holy light— offsprinsj of heaven — ' 



First-born and of the eternal co-eternal 

 Beam I — may I express thee unblamecl." 



" Looking over the different periodicals which load the tables of our public 

 libraries and reading rooms, I pause with hopeful exultation when J see so 

 many pages allotted to the subject of popular education — I dwell with grati- 

 fied feeling on the notices of Mechanics' Institutions and Education Societies 

 — I read with ardour the descriptions of different professors, and, in the spirit 

 of an enthusiast, fancy I already behold in the distance a new era when light 

 shall cover the land, and men shall walk worthily, fulfilling the law.* I may 

 be an eutopiist, but in this I feel all the faith of a devotee, that, as we depart 

 from the brute only as we depart from ignorance, with all its evils of un- 

 limitted credulity or incredulity, prejudice, cruelty, and all uncharita- 

 bleness, and as we approach to higher nature by intellectual acquirement, 

 we shall become possessed thereby of a sort of divine prescience ; that is, to 

 foresee, by a comparison of past events with present states, a future result, 

 or by first causes trace through the intricacies of effects to an ultimate good. 

 The age of metaphysics, — in which the blind lead the blind, — of magic and 

 mystery, is gone ; the age of superstition and bigotry is going, the age of 

 truth is advancing ; for where every man becomes his own teacher and mas- 

 ter, he is accelerating an universal revolution. But sometimes I awake as 

 from a dream of the night, when I read of the wretched moral condition of 

 thousands of people who are actually so steeped in besotted ignorance and 

 gross darkness, that knowledge whispered to them is as a ray of light shooting 

 athwart the deepest gloom, leaving no trace of its path. It is melancholy; 

 yet if we think of it, how confidently the modern Pythagorean foretells 

 the benefits of a pure and simple diet in restoring health and happiness ! 

 May we not, ceteris paribus, affirm as confidently that, by removing the dele- 

 terious poison of a depraved mind, and substituting a moral diet suited to 

 its own existence and health, the mental deformities may be removed, and 

 happiness perpetuated ?" 



CHESTER MECHANICS' INSTITUTION. 



The object of this Institution is to communicate useful know- 

 ledge, and thereby to increase the respectability and happiness of 

 individuals, and to promote the welfare of society. The means for 

 attaining this desirable end, are the establishment of a library and 

 reading-room, the delivery of lectures on popular and useful sub- 

 jects, and the opening of classes for the study of English grammar, 

 arithmetic, mathematics, drawing, or other branches of know- 

 ledge which at any time may appear to be requisite. 



