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



standing the working of one of your own steam-engines, 

 or the nature of the raw products you employ ; and, 

 when you are asked to buy a patent, you shall not have 

 the slightest means of judging whether the inventor is 

 an impostor who is contravening the elementary prin- 

 ciples of science, or a man who will make you as rich 

 as Croesus. 



" You will very likely get into the House of Commons. 

 You will have to take your share in making laws which 

 may prove a blessing or a curse to millions of men. 

 But you shall not hear one word respecting the political 

 organization of your country ; the meaning of the con- 

 troversy between freetraders and protectionists shall 

 never have been mentioned to you ; you shall not so 

 much as know that there are such things as economical 

 laws. 



" The mental power which will be of most importance 

 in your daily life will be the power of seeing things as 

 they are without regard to authority ; and of drawing 

 accurate general conclusions from particular facts. But 

 at school and at college you shall know of no source of 

 truth but authority ; nor exercise your reasoning faculty 

 upon anything but deduction from that which is laid 

 down by authority. 



" You will have to weary your soul with work, and 

 many a time eat your bread in sorrow and in bitterness, 

 and you shall not have learned to take refuge in the 

 great source of pleasure without alloy, the serene resting- 

 place for worn human nature, — the world of art." 



Said I not rightly that we are a wonderful people? 

 I am quite prepared to allow, that education entirely 

 devoted to these omitted subjects might not be a com- 

 pletely liberal education. But is an education which 

 ignores them all, a liberal education ? Nay, is it too 

 much to say that the education which should embrace 



