Men and women, practical teachers now before me, a great trust is in your hands; nine tenths of the children of the people depend on you for their early culture, for all the scholastic discipline they will ever get; their manly culture will depend on that, their prosperity thereon, all these on you. When they are men, you know what evils they will easily learn from state and church, from business and the press. It is for you to give them such a developing and such a furnishing of their powers, that they will withstand, counteract and exterminate that evil. Teach them to love justice better than their native land, truth better than their church, humanity more than money, and fidelity to their own nature better than the public opinion of the press. As the chief thing of all, teach them to love man and God. Your characters will be the inspiration of these children; your prayers their practice, your faith their works. The rising generation is in your hands, you can fashion them in your image, you will, you must do this. Great duties will devolve on these children when grown up to be men; you are to fit them for these duties. Since the Revolution, there has not been a question before the country, not a question of constitution or confederacy, free trade or protective tariff, sub-treasury or bank, of peace or war, freedom or slavery, the extension of liberty, or the extension of bondage--not a question of this sort has come up before Congress, or the people, which could not have been better decided by seven men, honest, intelligent, and just, who loved man and God, and looked, with a single eye, to what was right in the case. It is your business to train up such men. A representative, a senator, a governor may be made, any day, by a vote. Ballots can make a president out of almost any thing; the most ordinary material is not too cheap and vulgar for that. But all the votes of all the conventions, all the parties, are unable to make a people capable of self-government. They cannot put intelligence and justice into the head of a single man. You are to do that. You are the "Sacred Legion," the "Theban Brothers" to repel the greatest foes that can invade the land, the only foes to be feared; you are to repel ignorance, injustice, unmanliness, and irreligion. With none else to help you, in ten years' time you can double the value of your schools; double the amount of development and instruction you annually furnish. So doing, you shall double, triple, quadruple, multiply manifold the blessings of the land. You can, if you will. I ask If you will? If your works say "Yes," then you will be the great benefactors of the land, not giving money, but a charity far nobler yet, education, the greatest charity. You will help fulfil the prophecy which noble men long since predicted of mankind, and help found the kingdom of heaven on earth; you will follow the steps of that noblest man of men, the Great Educator of the human race, whom the