BY REV. S. W. FISHER.

I have presupposed three things in reference to education. The field
which it covers is also three-fold--the body, the intellect, and the
heart.

The body is the living temple of the soul. It is more than a casket for
the preservation of the jewel; it is more than the setting of the
diamond; it is more even than an exquisitely-constructed dwelling
wherein the soul lives, and works and worships. It is a living,
sensitive agent, into which the spirit pours its own life, through which
it communes with all external nature, and receives the effluxes of God
streaming from a material creation. It is the admirable organ through
which the man sends forth his influence either to bless and vivify, or
to curse and wither. By it, the immortal mind converts deserts into
gardens, creates the forms of art, sways senates, and sheds its plastic
presence over social life. The senses are the finely-wrought gates
through which knowledge enters the sublime dome of thought; while the
eye, the tongue, the hand, are the instruments of the Spirit's power
over the outer world. The soul incarnate in such a body, enjoys a living
medium of reciprocal communication between itself and all things
without. Meanwhile the body itself does not arrive here mature in its
powers; nor does it spring suddenly from the imbecility of the infant to
the strength of the man. By slow development, by a gradual growth, in
analogy with that of a tree whose life is protracted, it rises, after
years of existence, to its appointed stature. Advancing thus slowly, it
affords ample time for its full and free development.

In this physical training, there are two points of special importance.
The first is the removal of all unnatural restraints and the pressure
of unhealthy customs; the second, is the opportunity, the motive and the
habit of free exercise in the pure air of heaven. These, as causes of
health and fine physical development, are interwoven as are their
opposites. In the progress of society from barbarism to refinement, it
has often been the case that men, in departing from what was savage,
have lost that which was natural; and in their ascent from the rude have
left behind that which was essential to the highest civilization. In
escaping from the nakedness of the barbarian, they have sometimes
carried dress to an extreme of art which renders it untrue to nature and
productive of manifold evils. In ascending from the simple and rude
gas