9 

 40 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS 



ning, let us ask ourselves — What is education? Above all 

 things, what is our ideal of a thoroughly liberal education ? 

 — of that education which, if we could begin life again, we 

 would give ourselves — of that education which, if we could 

 mould the fates to our own will, we would give our children ? 

 Well, I know not what may be your conceptions upon this 

 matter, but I will tell you mine, and I hope I shall find that 

 our views are not very discrepant. 



Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and for- 

 tune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend 

 upon his winning or losing a game of chess. Don't you 

 think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to 

 learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have 

 a notion of a gambit, and a 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 

 frorh 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 infi- 

 nitely 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 on 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 small- 



