24 



Judge of all, and to the community of spiritual intelligences throughout eternal 

 ages — the sanctions, namely, of the Christian faith, without which, as the expe- 

 rience of man in all ages has shown, the best constituted and most perfectly 

 balanced social structures have tended uniformly to decay and dissolution. 



These ministrations of the pulpit require skilled labor. Sound policy and 

 sound economy therefoi-e demand that these ministrations be committed to the 

 clergy, as a distinct and independent profession. Give thyself wholly to these 

 things, is the apostolic injunction. 



Such is a very brief analysis of the economy of civilized society, as we now 

 see it. 



The producing classes, throughout the various subdivisions of the agricultural 

 and mechanic arts, create all the values destined to the supply of the physical 

 wants, and to the gratification of the tastes of the whole community. 



The mercantile classes produce nothing ; but by transfer and exchange make 

 such a disposition of existing products, as to benefit producers, to enlarge the 

 volume of production, and minister to the well being of all. 



The professions, strictly so called, terminate their industrial processes, not on 

 physical products, but on those conditions of society, which give to producing 

 and exchanging agents the power and the disposition to contribute in the highest 

 degree to the general good, and to their own profit, through the more efficient 

 and beneficial action of the various industrial agencies. The results of jjrofessional 

 labor, are the health, the order, and the morality of the community. 



But there is another element in modern civilization, which our analysis has 

 not yet reached, whose office it is to qualify, and mould and fashion all the 

 rest — I mean the great work of free and universal education. 



The agency of the educator terminates not on 23hysical j^roducts, nor yet 

 directly on social conditions, but on the man himself. His raw material is the 

 young mind, the unformed intellect of the community. His resulting product 

 is the finished man, prepared by varied knowledge and intellectual discipline, to 

 act well his part, as an agriculturist, as an artizan, as a merchant, as a physician, 

 as a lawyer, as a divine; to be useful in the varied relations of private life; useful 

 in the civil state, and in those more exalted relations, which (.'oneein him as a 

 member of the human family, and a subject of the universal empire of God. 



It is quite obvious, then, that the educator, whether of the school or the press, 

 stands at the point of power, and applies the moving force to the mechanism of 

 human society. For the successful action of this mechanism, intelligence is ne- 

 cessary at every point — on the farm, in the manufjxctory, in the counting-house, 

 in the practice of the healing art, at the bar, and in the sacred desk. 



There is not a single employment, within the scope of our economical analysis 

 of society, whose results would not be rendered, by an increase of intelligence. 



