CHAP. XIL] POPULAR INSTRUCTION. 175 



first-rate talent in the clerical profession, must and will be 

 raised. 



Already there are many indications in Massachusetts that a 

 demand for higher qualifications in men educated for the pulpit 

 is springing up. It is no bad augury to hear a minister exhort 

 his younger brethren at their ordination not to stand in awe of 

 their congregations, but to remember they have before them sin 

 ful men who are to be warned, not critics who are to be propi 

 tiated. &quot; Formerly,&quot; said Channing, &quot; Felix trembled before 

 Paul ; it is now the successor of Paul who trembles :&quot; a saying 

 which, coming as it did from a powerful and successful preacher, 

 implies that the people are awaking, not that they are growing 

 indifferent about religious matters, but that the day of soporific 

 discourses, full of empty declamation or unmeaning common 

 places, is drawing to a close. 



It will be asked, however, even by some who are favorable to 

 popular education, whether the masses can have leisure to profit 

 in after life by such a style of teaching as the government of 

 Massachusetts is now ambitious of affording to the youth of the 

 country, between the ages of four and fourteen. To this I may 

 answer, that in nations less prosperous and progressive it is ascer 

 tained that men may provide for all their bodily wants, may feed 

 and clothe themselves, and yet give up one-seventh part of their 

 time, or every Sabbath, to their religious duties. That their re 

 ligion should consist not merely in the cultivation of a devotional 

 spirit toward their Maker, but also in acquiring pure and lofty 

 conceptions of his attributes a knowledge of the power and 

 wisdom displayed in his works an acquaintance with his moral 

 laws a just sense of their own responsibility, and an exercise of 

 their understandings in appreciating the evidences of their faith, 

 few of my readers will deny. To insure the accomplishment of 

 these objects, a preparatory education in good schools is indis 

 pensable. It is not enough to build churches and cathedrals, to 

 endow universities or theological colleges, or to devote a large 

 portion of the national revenues to enable a body of spiritual in 

 structors to discharge, among other ecclesiastical duties, that ot 

 preaching good sermons from the pulpit. Their seed may full 



