38 LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. [in. 



physical world, or of the relations of cause and effect 

 therein. And this is the more to be lamented, as the 

 poor are especially exposed to physical evils, and are 

 more interested in removing them than any other class 

 of the community*. If any one is concerned in knowing 

 the ordinary laws of mechanics one would think it is the 

 hand-labourer, whose daily toil lies among levers and 

 pulleys ; or among the other implements of artisan work. 

 And if any one is interested in the laws of health, it is 

 the poor workman, whose strength is wasted by ill-pre- 

 pared food, whose health is sapped by bad ventilation and 

 bad drainage, and half whose children are massacred by 

 disorders which might be prevented. Not only does our 

 present primary education carefully abstain from hinting 

 to the workman that some of his greatest evils are trace- 

 able to mere physical agencies, which could be removed 

 by energy, patience, and frugality ; but it does worse — 

 it renders him, so far as it can, deaf to those who could 

 help him, and tries to substitute an Oriental submission 

 to what is falsely declared to be the will of God, for his 

 natural tendency to strive after a better condition. 



What wonder then, if very recently, an appeal has 

 been made to statistics for the profoundly foolish pur- 

 pose of showing that education is of no good — that it 

 diminishes neither misery, nor crime, among the masses of 

 mankind? I reply, why should the thing which has 

 been called education do either the one or the other ? If 

 I am a knave or a fool, teaching me to read and write 

 won't make me less of either one or the other — unless 

 somebody shows me how to put my reading and writing 

 to wise and good purposes. 



Suppose any one were to argue that medicine is of no 

 use, because it could be proved statistically, that the 

 percentage of deaths was just the same, among people 

 who had been taught how to open a medicine chest, and 



