they have, in different degrees and combinations, the
same underlying elements of power. In the family, we have, in its
rudimental form, both teaching and government. It is a patriarchate--a
little commonwealth; and to its head--a priest as well as a
patriarch--that Scripture should ever be relevant, 'the church that is
in thy house.' In the school, the simplest offshoot, perhaps, from a
congeries of families, we have, or ought to have, the parental
element; we have magistracy also, and a certain statehood; we have, or
should have, worship. The state, properly apprehended, is not only
governmental but didactic--it is a teaching power; and though not, at
this age of the world, theocratic, it should be, in a large view,
religious. In the church, having specially and predominantly the
last-named characteristic,--being of divine appointment, and as
ministering to our imperative needs, the foster-mother of
devotion,--we have, also, as essential to its purpose, both rule and
instruction. And in the influence they wield, these great moulding
agencies are perpetually interpenetrating and modifying each other.

"It is of the second of these, the school, that we are now called to
speak. The service we essay is connected with an educational
institution, using the term in the specific sense; a fact, it may be
said at the outset, which of itself dignifies the occasion. Not to
insist on those affinities and mutual influences just adverted to, and
of which there will be further occasion to speak, there is a view of
education, a large and comprehensive one, which gives to it the very
grandest elevation. It is the end, next to that which the good old
Catechism makes chief, and subordinate to that, of all the divine
provisions and arrangements. God is the great Educator of the
universe. More glorious in his didactic offices is He than even in
creation; nay, creation was for these. Earth is our training
place--time is our curriculum; eternity will but furnish to the true
pupil the higher forms of his limitless advancement. We have our
lessons in all providence, in all beings and things, God teaching us
in and through all. No mean vocation, then, is that of the earthly
educator; no unimportant theme that now in hand. Yet even of the
school in the more technical sense of the term, we cannot speak at
large, except as in touching on any one department we more or less
affect every other. Our thought may be fitly limited to that class of
inst