ng generation that they shall
rightly understand law, but to infix in their minds the principles of
justice and equity, the attainment of which is the high aim of
legislation. While our legislators enact laws for the government of the
people, the well-qualified and faithful schoolmaster prepares those
under his charge to govern themselves. Without the teacher's
conservative influence, under the best legislation, the great mass of
the people will be lawless; while the tendency of his labors is to
qualify the rising generation, who constitute our future freemen and our
country's hope, to render an enlightened, a cheerful, and a ready
obedience to the high claims of civil law. The well-qualified, faithful
teacher, then, becomes the right arm of the legislator.

The physician is required to become thoroughly acquainted with the
anatomy and physiology of the human body; in a word, to become
acquainted with "the house I live in;" to understand the diseases to
which we are subject, and their proper treatment, before he is allowed
to extract a tooth, to open a vein, or administer the simplest medicine.
Nor with this do we find fault, for we justly prize the body. It is the
habitation of the immortal mind. When in health, it is the mind's
servant, and ready to do its biddings; but darken its windows by
disease, and it becomes the mind's prison-house. But while the
physician, whom we honor and love, is required to make these attainments
before he is permitted _even to repair_ "the house I live in," should
not he who teaches the MASTER of the house be entitled to a respectable
rank in society?

It is common, in the various branches of the Church universal, for men
who feel themselves called of God to preach the Gospel to obtain a
collegiate education, and then devote several years to professional
study, before exercising the functions of the sacred office; and this
has been required by popular opinion. And heretofore, I may add, the
efforts of the minister have been directed chiefly to the _reformation
of adults_ whose early training has been imperfectly attended to, and to
the building up of a religious character where no correct early
foundation has been laid, when the time and energies of a people upon
whom labor is bestowed are devoted chiefly to absorbing secular
pursuits. The competent and faithful teacher, on the contrary, enters
upon the discharge of his duties under circumstances widely different,
and with infinitely be