the exact words of my text as applied to his social,
moral and civil state and surroundings: "One thing is needful." That
one thing, properly infused and evolved, and in connection with such
infusion and evolution therefrom, properly applied to use, would have
transformed him from a savage to a civilized state; from temporal
misery and wretchedness into the enjoyments of life, liberty and the
high pursuits of happiness.

You may now wonder what that one thing would have been. One word
expresses it all, and that word is EDUCATION. The wonderful gifts of
divine goodness, in the shape of latent treasures of coal, iron, and
the precious metals; the exhaustless fertility of American soils; the
salubrity of its climates; the boundless power of its falling streams,
all, all these were here for the Indian alone, for hundreds, perhaps
thousands of years before the white man came. Why did he not use them?
Because he lacked the one thing needful, the proper education or
development of his mind, the knowledge of understanding the ways and
means of converting the heterogeneous into the homogeneous; the
useless into the useful; the ill-formed into the suitable. What the
Indian lacked is the very basis of the white man's individual and
national prosperity.

I have here laid a broad foundation on which I hope to erect a
superstructure of doctrine that may do us all good. I will here say
that EDUCATION into the knowledge and love of God's revealed Truth in
its true relation to man's life is the one thing needful to every
human being. I use the word EDUCATION in its most comprehensive and
exalted sense, that of preparing the mind and heart for the attainment
of the highest and noblest ends of life on earth and in heaven. In
this sense it takes in salvation with its happy experiences and
results. It takes in regeneration, that wonderful and radical change
in man wrought by God through his Holy Spirit, by which man passes
from darkness to light, and out of death into life.

The word _disciple_ means a learner, one who is receiving instruction.
Our Lord had twelve disciples whom he was training in a special way
for a special work. He was divinely educating them. He was opening
their minds and hearts as he opened Lydia's heart so that she attended
the things spoken of by Paul. He was imparting to them by parables, by
miracles, and by private interpretations, and still above all by the
examples he set, the means of acquiring this spiritua