SOCIETY OF CENTRAL ILLINOIS. 245 



There will be no room for weeds, there will be no waste places, and 

 the man who can do most to hasten this condition of things, who 

 <;an make many plants grow where only one grows now, who can 

 make the desolate places glad and the wilderness to blossom as the 

 rose, he is the coming man. At his magic touch this bountiful 

 land will in time become one vast, luxuriant garden, filled not only 

 with the plants and fruits now familiar to us, but possibly with 

 others that may yet be discovered, developed and utilized by the cun- 

 ning hand of the future horticulturist. 



May we not reasonably anticipate that with this wonderful 

 development, and the aesthetic culture that will doubtless accompany 

 it, there may be a corresponding moral and spiritual growth, that 

 our civilization may be of a more enduring character than that of 

 the nations of antiquity? Greece and Rome were not without cul- 

 ture. In some lines they remarkably excelled their predecessors, and 

 their successors thus far. The Grrecian may have known more of 

 the philosophy of taste, and science of the beautiful than the most 

 enlightened man of the present day, but Grecian culture was only a 

 heathenish thing after all, and entirely lacking in the elements that 

 could have given it perpetuity. It was aesthetic, but it was not 

 symmetrical. It was as if the horticulturist should endeavor to 

 develop a more beautiful flower while neglecting the stalk and the 

 foliage. It could only be a failure, for in order to improve the 

 bloom, the stalk and the foliage must also be improved. There must 

 be a development in all the parts of the plant, and as a natural 

 result the flower will exhibit new beauties and attractions. Fine art 

 and polite culture, growing on the feeble stalk of heathen mythol- 

 ogy, and garnished by the foliage of heathen philosophy, could only 

 wither and die. A genuine culture must grow on the strong and 

 vigorous stalk of Christian rectitude, and be embellished by the 

 foliage of the Christian graces, thereby producing a harmonious 

 development of the whole man. He who loses sight of this great 

 truth, what is he more than a Greek? He who entirely ignores it, 

 what is he more than a Roman? He who lacks the capacity to per- 

 ceive it, what is he more than a barbarian? He who discerns it, 

 comprehends it, and endeavors to profit by it, will, in the coming 

 years, be called the Wise Philosopher. 



