48 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS 



been taught how to open a medicine chest, and among those 

 who did not so much as know the key by sight. The argu- 

 ment is absurd; but it is not more preposterous than that 

 against which I am contending. 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, with- 

 out 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 igno- 

 rant of that knowledge to which these arts are means. 



It may be said that all these animadversions may apply 

 to primary schools, but that the higher schools, at any rate, 

 must be allowed to give a liberal education. In fact they 

 professedly sacrifice everything else to this object. 



Let us inquire into this matter. What do the higher 

 schools, those to which the great middle class of the coun- 

 try sends its children, teach, over and above the instruction 

 given in the primary schools? There is a little more read- 

 ing and writing of English. But, for all that, every one 

 knows that it is a rare thing to find a boy of the middle or 

 upper classes who can read aloud decently, or who can put 

 his thoughts on paper in clear and grammatical (to say 

 nothing of good or elegant) language. The "ciphering" 

 of the lower schools expands into elementary mathematics 

 in the higher; into arithmetic, with a little algebra, a little 

 Euclid. But I doubt if one boy in five hundred has ever 



