104 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE, 



material value. Before the rise of commerce the only intercourse nations held 

 with each other was that of warfare. 



"There were then only two sources of wealth, agriculture and pillage." "Cy- 

 rus led the Persian armies to the rich provinces of Asia for the express purpose of 

 plunder." " The Romans who were then masters of the world arrogated to them- 

 selves all treasures." Having heard of the fabulous riches of one of the kings of 

 Egypt, "they passed a law by which they constituted themselves the heirs of a 

 living monarch and confiscated the dominion of an ally." Such was the state of 

 the world when commerce began its career. It entered the arena as an educator, 

 it laid its fashioning hand on every department of life, it transformed hostile na- 

 tions into admiring and devoted friends and bound them together in their efforts 

 to subdue the earth and make it yield up its treasures to the will of man. Al- 

 though-itdid not abolish war, it showed the highway to the golden age by devel- 

 oping new industries and making attractive and possible the arts of peace. Com- 

 merce began to manifest its powers a thousand years before the Christian era. It 

 originated among the Phoenicians and, although subjected to many adverse influen- 

 ces and suffering many reverses, it has steadily gained in extent, power and influ- 

 ence, and at the present time it is in a great measure shaping the policy of all 

 nations and projecting enterprises which cheer the hearts and brighten the homes 

 of millions of the human race. 



But there are two prime factors in the education of the masses, two agencies 

 that in a larger and more general sense contribute to the education outside of 

 the school room; the lecture platform and the pulpit. These are educating 

 forces in the strictest sense of the term. The lecture platform of this age is a 

 modification of the ancient forum. The orators of Rome and Greece were the 

 educators of the people. But the form of society in which we live gives to the 

 platform a wide range and more extended influence. 



Committees on special subjects, boards of health, trustees of benevolent insti- 

 tutions, legislative bodies,' and almost every conceivable variety of deliberative 

 assemblies meet and discuss questions of commerce, education, social reform and 

 political economy, and while this form of society remains, the lecture platform 

 must always be an agency for the instruction of the people, voicing alike the 

 grandest thought of the scientific man and the orator who directs the thought of 

 the common citizen in the ordinary affairs (3i life. While the pulpit does not cover 

 so wide a range of topics as the platform, is not possessed of the almost limitless 

 variety, it is more forceful, in manner more definite and impressive than any 

 other method of instruction. From the days when Ezra, the scribe, " stood upon 

 a pulpit of wood and read the law " to the present time, the pulpit has been a defi- 

 nite and authoritative means of instruction. It is not an institution which may 

 lose its influence in the lapse of years. Since the days of Jesus the forums of 

 Greece and Rome have perished or have been superseded by the modern lecture 

 platform, while the pulpit has multiplied itself and more nearly controls the pub- 

 lic conscience than any single influence, and perhaps excels all other agencies out- 

 side the schools. 



