These pure gems need to be discovered and polished, and these sweet flowers cultivated and utilized by Christian culture. It is idle to talk of developing these hidden resources of intellectual and moral wealth but by true culture, and this can never exist apart from Christianity. Christianity is the spiritual power that vitalizes the culture of our age. So evident is this that even a Fichte was compelled to confess that, "We and our whole age are rooted in the soil of Christianity, and have sprung from it; it has exercised its influence in the most manifold ways on the whole of our culture, and we should be absolutely nothing of all that we are, if this mighty principle had not preceded us." Culture and Christianity can not now be divorced. Those who would array culture against Christianity are themselves under the influence of that which they oppose. The very imagined imperfections of Christianity must be discovered by the light of Christianity, "just as he who seeks to discover spots in the sun, must for this purpose borrow the light of the sun itself." Culture and Christianity are so interwoven that we may never expect either, separate from the other, as a blessing to the world. The very fact that the Protestant nations of the earth, where God is honored by a free Bible, are the chief exponents of true culture, attests this connection. So vital is this relation that, "United they stand; divided they fall." Another important end to be attained in the culture of the masses is independence of thought. We need to cast off the yoke of human opinion and cultivate the individual judgment. We are too much the slaves of fashion. We are disposed to dress our minds as well as our bodies, after the fashion of the times. This destroys originality and independence of thought, and renders our lives tame and insipid. We need connection with other minds to excite our own, not to enslave them. We want the thoughts of others that we may think; and without correct modes of thinking, all efforts at education and culture are failures. But it may be argued, the masses are denied the privilege of association with the cultivated. This is not true. They may deprive themselves, but they are not denied. This is peculiarly an age of printing. The best of literature may now find its way into the most humble homes. There is not a roof in the land under which the prophets and apostles of God will not enter with the glad message containing the promise of the life that is and that which is to come; not one under which the poets will not come to sing to us of that far-off land; not one too holy for the habitation of the great minds of earth which inspire us "With thoughts that breathe, And words that burn." With these for our companions, we may have the best society that this world affords, and, by such association, fit ourselves for the companionship of the cultivated.