EDUCATION OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL ROOM. 103 



agency, plagues worse than those that destroyed the land of the Pharaohs are 

 diffused over society, poisoning the pure fountain of public and private virtue. 

 Cowper says : 



" Thou fountain at which drink the good and wise. 

 Thou ever bubbling spring of endless lies, 

 Like Eden's dread probation tree, 

 Knowledge of good and evil comes from thee." 



War and commerce are educating forces, and although intimately related, 

 each has its distinctive features. The varied lessons of war cannot be analyzed, 

 the subtle influence cannot be measured; it is beyond the reach of all chemical 

 solvents known to the world; it breaks up all existing forms of thought and com- 

 pels society to take on new ideas and clothe itself in new attire. War does not 

 always educate aright, When its power is sought for perpetuating despotism, for 

 oppressing the toiling millions of earth, it awakens no holy aspirations; it devel- 

 ops the lowest and darkest passion of the soul ; it puts out the light of home, and 

 settles like the shadows of death upon the crushed and blighted sons of men. 

 But when war is necessary for the purpose of guarding freedom's holy altars and 

 defending the honor of home and preserving beneficent institutions for those who 

 shall live in coming years, it takes on a brighter hue and its educational powers 

 are exerted along other lines; if it inaugurates political convulsions, these, like 

 geological upheavals, usher in new epochs in the world's history that indicate its 

 rapid growth, for the public mind that is indifferent to the arguments of a states- 

 man is educated quickly and thoroughly by the events that are the sequences of 

 a defensive war. 



So far as we can judge from the view we can get of the subject, the Divine 

 mind contemplated this earth as the sphere of man's noblest activities, and in 

 providing for his progress, for the discipline of his moral faculties and for his in- 

 tellectual nature. He so constructed the earth that commerce should become a 

 science, and, that while it should administer to man's physical wants, it should 

 at the same time contribute to the adornment and development of his mental and 

 moral being. In order that man might not fail of this, He distributed with a 

 lavish hand the gold and silver in the crevices of the mountains. He set the 

 sturdy oak and the pine in the Northern forests. He gave the cotton and the 

 corn to the rich valleys of the South and West. He filled the caverns or the 

 earth with coal and oil, and deposited the pearls and gems in the depth of the sea. 

 So, that while in every land there are the staples and the luxuries, an exchange of 

 commodities is a necessity, and while the American fills his home with the pro- 

 ductions of foreign lands, the streets of the cities of ancient learning and wealth 

 are lighted from the oil wells of his native land. The desire for wealth has al- 

 ways been a spur to human exertion and the possession of wealth has been and 

 ever must be a source of power to the individual and the state. Gold is the sin- 

 ews of war and the amount of gold possessed by any nation is the measure of its 



