through eternity. To educate is to develop mind; to expand its
capacities; to strengthen its energies; to deepen its affections; to
elevate its aspirations; to sharpen its perceptions; to quicken its
actions; to intensify its emotions; to harmonize its powers; to empower
its will, and magnify its sweep of action.

Education is a work of progress. It begins in life and has no end. Death
does not terminate it. We learn the elements of things below. Above we
shall study their essences. We progress in proportion to our own
efforts. Education may be good or bad, right or wrong. Reason may grow
strong in error, may revel in falsities. The will may be mighty for
evil. The heart may grow in vice, and the passions expand in misrule.
The mind may be educated into terrible confusion, so that its passions
will clash in battle array, and its powers war with each other like
exterminating demons. The din of mental warfare and the clash of
spiritual arms are heard in almost every soul. Terrible conflicts are
within us. And whole fields of slaughtered virtues are swept over by
their death-dealing siroccos. Like nations of the earth our mental
powers are grouped together, and group confronts group like embattled
armies, sending their hissing arrows of fiery death into each other's
ranks. Power strikes at power, like single combatants on the field of
strife. Such is the awful sight seen by God in many a human soul. And
such to a greater or less extent is what He sees in each one of us; so
direful are the results of bad Education.

Few of us have been educated altogether aright. We have gained much
mental strength in wicked conflict. Our passions have expanded in
lawless riot. Our mental arms have grown strong in corrupting labors.
Our energies have been made vigorous in vicious employments. Our feet
have been made active in the dance of folly and the race of mammon. We
have risen to power in the service of a tyrant master. We have done the
bidding of sin, and made our soldiers broad to bear its Atlas burdens.
But Education has made us mighty in evil. Giants in vice stalk about us
daily who were sweet and beautiful in their babyhood as ever smiled in a
mother's face. On every hand we meet with the graduates of some school
of vice, in whom the powers of darkness are mighty for evil. Some come
out from the dark holes of intemperance; some from the luxurious saloons
of gambling; some from the gilded halls of fashion; some from those dark
p