was of looking backward. A minister, entrusted with the charge of souls,
cannot afford to retrace his steps. He must go on, and up, to the top of
his abilities, of his spiritual purposes.

In the midst of a glorious summer, I refused to see the long shadows of
departing day; in the midst of a snow deep winter, I declined to slip
and slide as I went on. So it happened that a great many gathered about
me in the tabernacle, because they felt that I was passing on, and they
wanted to see how fast I could go. I aimed always for a higher place and
the way to get up to it, and I took them along with me, always a little
further, week by week.

The pessimists came to me and said that the world would soon have a
surplus of educated men, that the colleges were turning out many
nerveless and useless youngsters, that education seemed to be one of the
follies of 1885. The fact was we were getting to be far superior to what
we had been. The speeches at the commencement classes were much better
than those we had made in our boyhood. We had dropped the old harangues
about Greece and Rome. We were talking about the present. The sylphs and
naiads and dryads had already gone out of business. College education
had been revolutionised. Students were not stuffed to the Adam's apple
with Latin and Greek. The graduates were improved in physique. A great
advance was reached when male and female students were placed in the
same institutions, side by side. God put the two sexes together in Eden,
He put them beside each other in the family. Why not in the college?

There were those who seemed to regard woman as a Divine afterthought.
Judging by the fashion plates of olden times, in other centuries, the
grand-daughters were far superior to the grand-mothers, and the fuss
they used to make a hundred years ago over a very good woman showed me
that the feminine excellence, so rare then, was more common than it used
to be. At the beginning of the nineteenth century a woman was considered
well educated if she could do a sum in rule of three. Look at the books
in all departments that are under the arms of the school miss now. I
believe in equal education for men and women to fulfil the destiny of
this land.

For all women who were then entering the battle of life, I saw that the
time was coming when they would not only get as much salary as men, but
for certain employments they would receive higher wages. It would not
come to them through a spirit of