laces where virtue dies a bleeding sacrifice to sensuality. These are
the schools in which the mighty in wickedness are educated. And then we
have lesser schools all about us in which the young take lessons in
vice: schools on the street, schools at home, schools at the toilet,
schools in pleasure circles, schools in the market and counting-room,
where they take lessons in deception, slander, folly, anger, backbiting,
sensuality, and vice. Our schools for Education in evil are numerous,
and their teachers are legion. I believe much more in evil Education
than in innate depravity. The little cherubs that come into our arms
right from the hands of Deity are innocent and pure. The skies above us
and the flowers around us are not purer and sweeter than they. Their
little souls are immaculate. "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." I can
not believe in depraved babyhood; but I must believe in depraved youth
and manhood. All about me are the sinful wrecks of once pure souls. It
is wrong Education that has made them the sad, pitiable things they are.
Oh, what wretched contortions of God's beautiful handiwork have men made
of themselves! Of all the things that God has made, the human soul is
most perfect and beautiful. The flower and trees and fields are
beautiful. The flashing aurora, the golden clouds, the sapphire sky, are
beautiful. The circling planets, the blazing sun, the starry canopy, are
beautiful. But what are they compared to a human soul? What is an
ephemeral flower or an age-lasting star compared with glorious reason,
with eternal love, with deathless benevolence, and conscience? What were
the material universe with all its sublime grandeur and awe-inspiring
magnificence with no soul to gaze upon it? And yet perfect and beautiful
as were our souls when God gave them to us, what unsightly, miserable,
demoniac things we have made of them! It is evil Education that has done
it all. We have trained our minds in wrong schools. We have educated our
powers at the feet of evil teachers. We have taken lessons in the
science of wickedness. We have followed bad examples and copied corrupt
manners. And we still do so. These things have made us what we are.

Our Education is not all got in our organized schools. Our hired
teachers and printed books are not all that act on our powers to develop
them. Life is one grand school, and its every circumstance a teacher.
Society pours in its influences upon us like the thousand streams that