28 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [IIL. 



keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check ? 

 Do you not think that we should look with a disapprobation 

 amounting to scorn, upon the father who allowed his son, or the 

 state which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a 

 pawn from a knight ? 



Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the- 

 fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, 

 of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing 

 something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and 

 complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for 

 untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two- 

 players in a game of his or her own. The chess-board is the 

 world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules 

 of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player 

 011 the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is 

 always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that 

 he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance 

 for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes 

 are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the 

 strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is 

 checkmated without haste, but without remorse. 



My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture 

 in which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess with man 

 for his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture, a 

 calm, strong angel who is playing for love, as we say, and would 

 rather lose than win and I should accept it as an image of 

 human life. 



Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this 

 mighty game. In other words, education is the instruction of 

 the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include 

 not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways ; and 

 the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest 

 and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws. For me, 

 education means neither more nor less than this. Anything 

 which professes to call itself education must be tried by this 

 standard, and if it fails to stand the test, I will not call it 



