guished, would not apply themselves to the authorship of primers of science, but for the conviction that the truly scientific mind must be awakened to prosecute successfully these studies in after years for the enlightenment of the people. With such helps, we shall, in a single generation, have a hundred eminent scientists in America where we now have one.

We claim, finally, that the State needs thus early to educate her youth in science, in order to establish in them a reverent belief in God, and in moral truth. We argue this from the scientific character of our most eminent religious teachers, and the reverent attitude of mind of a majority of the eminent scientists of the age.* The sentiment of scholars a century ago, when literature, logic, and philosophy prevailed through a classical education, was to a greater extent infidel in character, than in the present age when scientific study is having free course. We must begin early to counteract the materialistic tendencies of science. Then the mind familiar with these facts and principles will not easily be swerved through mature inquiry, and into disbelief of the great things of religion and moral accountability. Facts which have dropped from the Divine hand, like rain from the clouds, will be associated with the fear and goodness of that Being whose providence everywhere surrounds us. Then the speculations of science in the evolution of worlds or species, will no more shake

*We need not greatly fear the materialistic effects of such studies, when one of the pronounced scientists of America, Professor Gray, tells us that Aristotle still expresses the worthiest thoughts of the modern scientific investigator and reasoner, in these words: "For by the primitive and very ancient men, it has been handed down in the form of myths, and thus left to later generations that the Divine it is which holds together all nature.—Darwinia.

the man's faith in God and his law, than the stupendous fact of a world of beauty and light evoked and proceeding out of the night of chaos, which we learned from the Bible at our mother's knee, staggers our faith in the Divine Word to create worlds in any way, or ever led us to distrust the Infinite Wisdom which planned and still upholds this order of things by the word of Him, "in whom all things consist."

LECTURE IV.

Moral Instruction and Discipline in the Study of the Classic Languages and Literatures.

BY PREST. M. H. BUCKHAM,
BURLINGTON, Vt.

The object of this paper is to set forth the possibilities of moral instruction and discipline offered by the study of the classic languages and literatures. The moral influence of any study is a most important consideration in determining the place and value of that study. If it can be made to appear that classical studies, besides developing, cultivating, and tempering the intellectual faculties, may also be made to render important service in the formation of character, they will establish a claim on our esteem which is not generally recognized. Assuming that every teacher desires. to make the most of the opportunities for moral instruction afforded by every subject which he teaches, I shall offer some suggestions with a view to enlarging, or at the least to defining, such opportunities in connection with classical studies.

All study, rightly pursued, is a moral discipline. It keeps the moral powers in constant exercise. Not only does it, of necessity, exclude immorality for the time. being, but it keeps the mind in the active exercise of

virtuous endeavor. To study well is a kind of virtue. To be studious, even as a boy is studious, is to practice the virtues of diligence, patience, and self-denial; it is to be steadfast to purpose, resolute in action, dauntless before obstacles; it is to prefer the future to the present, things invisible to things of the senses. In the ordinary studies of a faithful and energetic boy, there is both room and call for real moral heroism. It is doubtful whether the after-life of the man, however large the field on which it is displayed, or however great the forces with which it contends, passes through severer moral struggles, or exhibits nobler heroisms, than those witnessed in the student-life of the boy at school, or the young man at college. If it were fully understood by parents that to maintain a high standing in a first-class public-school almost of necessity pledges a boy to the exercise of some of the highest virtues; that, in fact, such a school presents, in its intellectual requirements, some of the strongest incentives to virtue which the boy-nature is capable of appreciating,-parents would not so often forego for their children the advantage of such a discipline for the sake of a premature entrance on business, or of some other questionable enterprise.

While we allow to other studies their full share of wholesome moral influence, it may be claimed for the study of the classics that it touches more closely the moral side of our nature, and introduces the youthful mind more naturally and easily to moral ideas and themes than any other studies.

In the first place, the study of language, properly conducted, is in some respects the study of a moral science. Language is a structure in which moral elements bear an important part. Every language has a moral character of its own, and is the resultant of moral combined

with intellectual forces. Thus the Hebrew language, as a language, apart from the thoughts it has been employed to express, has a distinctive moral character, not easy to analyze, but broad and patent as a fact. So have the Greek, the Latin, the German, the French. If it were possible for us to separate entirely the language and the thought; if we had the Greek language alone without Greek thought, as we have the Latin language in Terence with Greek instead of Roman thought, we might read in the languages themselves; in the flexibility, the grace, the delicate shading, the great compass and various melody of the Greek, and in the regularity, the precision, the ceremonious propriety and dignity of the Latin, the distinctive moral traits of these two peoples. And the same remark holds good of individual writers. The study of any great writer's language becomes largely a study of his moral character. Great men, like Cæsar and the Duke of Wellington, unconsciously write themselves great in every line of their grandly simple style. Cicero lets his vanity, Voltaire his malice, Rousseau his sentimentalism, appear in the turns of their phrases. Gibbon is cynical, Johnson dogmatic, Tom Moore voluptuous, in the very form of their periods and the tone of their cadences. The old proverb says, "There is truth in wine." There is truth, too, that is unconscious utterance of character, in one's style of language. It reveals the entire man better, probably, than anything else except the sum total of his acts.

Now bear in mind that in what are called classical studies, we are actually studying three languages,—the Greek, the Latin, and the English,--and at the same time are studying the literature of two of these languages as represented in its greatest writers; and