26 IMPORTANCE OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 



Perhaps he was right in selecting a more general field 

 of work. He was an inventor, and apart from religious 

 teaching he was always striving to invent ingenious appli- 

 ances for the convenience and benefit of his fellow men. 

 Had he undertaken the duties of a minister of the Gospel, he- 

 was much too sincere a man to have neglected his spiritual 

 work for temporal concerns, and the world might have 

 lost one of the most useful sanitary inventions of the- 

 Victorian age. 



He was singularly skilful in the construction of apparatus, 

 and possessed acquaintance with a great variety of handi- 

 crafts. One day he would be a skilled optician, designing an 

 optical instrument of the most complicated description ; 

 another, he was an electrician, preparing batteries and 

 working out elaborate circuits ; the next he would be a. 

 chemist, solving the mysterious action of gases and the laws 

 which govern explosive compounds. 



