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of Edinburgh, Session 1867 - 68 . 
of the works of G-od and of man, of the miracles of nature and of 
art, is the first step in the civilisation of the people. Without 
such information the highest as well as the humblest of our race is 
unfit for a place in the social scale. He may have learned to read 
his Bible, and may have read it. He may have committed to 
memory every sentence of the decalogue ; and he may have packed 
into the storehouse of his brain all the wisdom of Solomon, and all 
the divine precepts of One greater than Solomon, while he is 
ignorant of everything above him, around him, and within him. 
To live upon a world so wonderfully made, without desiring to 
know its form, its structure, and its purpose ; — to eat the ambrosia 
of its gardens, and drink the nectar of its vineyards, without in- 
quiring where, and how, and why they grow;—to toil for its gold 
and its silver, and to appropriate its coal and its iron, without study- 
ing their nature and their origin; — to tremble under its earthquakes, 
and stand appalled before its volcanoes, in ignorance of their origin 
and of their power ; — to see and to handle the fossils of animal 
and vegetable life without asking where, and how, and why they 
perished — to neglect such pursuits as these would indicate a mind 
destitute of the intellectual faculty, and unworthy of the life and 
reason with which it has been endowed. It is only the irreligious 
man that can blindly gaze on the grandeur and beauty of material 
nature without seeking to understand its phenomena and laws. — It 
is only the ignorant man that can depreciate the value of that true 
knowledge which is within the grasp of his divine reason ;—and it 
is only the presumptuous man that can prefer those speculative in- 
quiries before which the strongest intellect quails, and the weakest 
triumphs. “In wisdom hast Thou made them all,” can be the 
language only of the wise ; — and it is to the wise only that “ the 
heavens can declare the glory of God,” and that “ the firmament 
can show forth His handiwork.” 
Under the influence of views like these I have, during the last 
thirty years, in various works and on various grounds, pleaded for 
a national system of secular and scientific education. Like other 
germs of truth, it excited the ridicule of ignorance, and alarmed 
the timidity of a political and religious fanaticism ; but as the 
poorest seed, even when cast among thorns, sometimes springs into 
life, the cause of secular and scientific education has been gradually 
