Forty- fifth Annual Meeting. 7 



-which they work is not the transient, changing and perishable 

 forms of matter, but the living, immortal mind. How far superior 

 this to the best forms of matter I need hardly tell. Matter in its 

 noblest forms, its most beautiful combinations, is matter still, and 

 subject to the laws of corruption and decay. He who works upon 

 material subjects, and for material results, must do it under the 

 pressure of a conviction that the results of his labor must be 

 transient and temporary, and that time will write on his noblest 

 memoranda the significant words, "Passing away." What can be 

 accomplished with material forces that will be permanent ? It was 

 a sublime achievement to rear the colossal pyramids, that stand 

 covered with the dust of three thousand years upon their hoary 

 summits, and for aught we know may stand for many thousand 

 years to come, but the day will come when those mighty structures 

 must crumble and not a stone be left to mark the place where they 

 so long stood in their useless grandeur. But he that makes an 

 impression on a human mind, for good or evil, is working with 

 things that can not die, and achieving results that will survive for- 

 ever. 



One glance at the nature of the mind must set the worth and 

 dignity of the teacher's vocation in a striking light. It is spiritual 

 essence; hence above the power of change, decay, or corruption. 

 It has nothing to fear from relentless time; its existence is not 

 numbered by years; it takes no count of ages. After all the 

 sublime and beautiful forms with which this creating is crowned 

 have passed away, the mind, the thing on which the teacher works, 

 will but have entered on the infancy of a being which knows no 

 age, and blushes with the rosy dawn of a morning to which gray 

 evening never comes. Then consider the essential ^powers of the 

 mind, and learn something of the worth and dignity of a vocation 

 which attempts to educe and cultivate these powers. The power 

 of thought or reason is its birthright. You may combine and ar- 

 range the particles of matter into striking and beautiful forms, but 

 you can not inspire them with reason ; you can not make them think 

 or act. The sculptor may chisel out of the marble a form of won- 

 drous symmetry and matchless grace; it may stand before you, in 

 its exquisite proportion and radiant beauty, like a thing of life; 

 but after all it is a cold, passionless, dead thing; speak to it, it 

 answers not; clasp it, you feel no returning pressure; call upon it 

 to move, to act, and to do, there it stands to mock your urgent ap- 

 peal. Why seek ye the living among the dead? 



