34 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [in. 



carefully abstain from hinting to the workman that some of his- 

 greatest evils are traceable 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 purpose 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 among those who did not so 

 much as know the key by sight. The argument is absurd ; but 

 it is not more preposterous than that against which I am con 

 tending. The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the 

 other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and 

 write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the 

 wisdom box. But it is quite another matter whether he ever 

 opens the box or not. And he is as likely to poison as to cure 

 himself, if, without guidance, he swallows the first drug that 

 comes to hand. In these times a man may as well be purblind, 

 as unable to read lame, as unable to write. But I protest that, 

 if I thought the alternative were a necessary one, I would rather 

 that the children of the poor should grow up ignorant of both 

 these mighty arts, than that they should remain ignorant of that 

 knowledge to which these arts are means. 



It may be said that all these animadversions may apply to 



