and so says he who has the
charge of you--to you. Therefore I beg all good boys among you to think
over this story, and settle in their own minds whether they will be eyes
or no eyes; whether they will, as they grow up, look and see for
themselves what happens: or whether they will let other people look for
them, or pretend to look; and dupe them, and lead them about--the blind
leading the blind, till both fall into the ditch.

I say "good boys;" not merely clever boys, or prudent boys: because using
your eyes, or not using them, is a question of doing Right or doing
Wrong. God has given you eyes; it is your duty to God to use them. If
your parents tried to teach you your lessons in the most agreeable way,
by beautiful picture-books, would it not be ungracious, ungrateful, and
altogether naughty and wrong, to shut your eyes to those pictures, and
refuse to learn? And is it not altogether naughty and wrong to refuse to
learn from your Father in Heaven, the Great God who made all things, when
he offers to teach you all day long by the most beautiful and most
wonderful of all picture-books, which is simply all things which you can
see, hear, and touch, from the sun and stars above your head to the
mosses and insects at your feet? It is your duty to learn His lessons:
and it is your interest. God's Book, which is the Universe, and the
reading of God's Book, which is Science, can do you nothing but good, and
teach you nothing but truth and wisdom. God did not put this wondrous
world about your young souls to tempt or to mislead them. If you ask Him
for a fish, he will not give you a serpent. If you ask Him for bread, He
will not give you a stone.

So use your eyes and your intellect, your senses and your brains, and
learn what God is trying to teach you continually by them. I do not mean
that you must stop there, and learn nothing more. Anything but that.
There are things which neither your senses nor your brains can tell you;
and they are not only more glorious, but actually more true and more real
than any things which you can see or touch. But you must begin at the
beginning in order to end at the end, and sow the seed if you wish to
gather the fruit. God has ordained that you, and every child which comes
into the world, should begin by learning something of the world about him
by his senses and his brain; and the better you learn what they can teach
you, the more fit you will be to learn what they cannot tea