g over them; and they said
unto the olive-tree, 'Reign thou over us.'

"But the olive-tree said unto them, 'Should I leave my fatness wherewith
by me they honor God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?'

"And the trees said to the fig-tree, 'Come thou and reign over us.'

"But the fig-tree said unto them, 'Should I forsake my sweetness and my
good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees?'

"Then said the trees unto the vine, 'Come thou and reign over us.'

"And the vine said unto them, 'Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God
and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?'

"Then said the trees unto the bramble, 'Come thou and reign over us.'

"And the bramble said to the trees, 'If in truth ye anoint me king over
you, then come and put your trust in my shadow; and if not, let fire come
out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.'"

In our day a conflagration of the cedars of Lebanon has been the only
result of the kingship of the bramble.

In the opinion of many, our universal education is one of the chief
causes of the discontent. This might be true and not be an argument
against education, for a certain amount of discontent is essential to
self-development and if, as we believe, the development of the best
powers of every human being is a good in itself, education ought not to
be held responsible for the evils attending a transitional period. Yet we
cannot ignore the danger, in the present stage, of an education that is
necessarily superficial, that engenders conceit of knowledge and power,
rather than real knowledge and power, and that breeds in two-thirds of
those who have it a distaste for useful labor. We believe in education;
but there must be something wrong in an education that sets so many
people at odds with the facts of life, and, above all, does not furnish
them with any protection against the wildest illusions. There is
something wanting in the education that only half educates people.

Whether there is the relation of cause and effect between the two I do
not pretend to say, but universal and superficial education in this
country has been accompanied with the most extraordinary delusions and
the evolution of the wildest theories. It is only necessary to refer, by
way of illustration, to the greenback illusion, and to the whole group of
spiritualistic disturbances and psychological epidemics. It sometimes
seems as if half the American people were losing the power to app