Wherein lies the superiority of civilized races over barbarians if not in their greater knowledge and superior strength of character? And what but education has placed in the hands of man the thousand natural forces which he holds as a charioteer his well-reined steeds, bidding the winds carry him to distant lands, making steam his tireless, ever-ready slave, and commanding the lightning to speak his words to the ends of the earth? What else than this has taught him to map the boundless heavens, to read the footprints of God in the crust of the earth ages before human beings lived, to measure the speed of light, to weigh the imperceptible atom, to split up all natural compounds, to create innumerable artificial products with which he transforms the world and with a grain of powder marches like a conquering god around the globe? What converts the meaningless babbling of the child into the stately march of oratoric phrase or the rhythmic flow of poetic language? What has developed the rude stone and bronze implements of savage and barbarous hordes into the miraculous machinery which we use? By what power has man been taught to carve the shapeless rock into an image of ideal beauty, or with it to build his thought into a temple of God, where the soul instinctively prostrates itself in adoration? Is not all this, together with whatever else is excellent in human works, the result of education, which gives to man a second nature with more admirable endowments? And is not religion itself a kind of celestial education, which trains the soul to godlike life? No progress in things divine or human is made by man except through effort, and effort is the power and the law of education. The maxim of the spiritual writers that not to struggle upward and onward is to be drawn downward, applies to every phase of our life. Whence do we derive strength of soul but from the uplifting of the mind and heart to God which we call prayer? To pray is to think, to attend, to hold the mind lovingly to its object; and this is what we do when we study. Hence prayer, which is the voice of religion, is a part of education,--nay, its very soul, breathing on all the chords of life, till their thousand dissonances meet in rhythmic harmony. What is the pulpit but the holiest teacher's chair that has been placed upon the earth?