“There are few departments of scholastic instruction, whether higher or lower, that may not be found to yield constant suggestions for virtuous and religious excitement. The teacher who should skilfully avail himself of such opportunities, would produce effects upon society the most extensive and lasting, and the most delightful. Sir James Mackintosh says of Dugald Stewart, and we can scarcely conceive of a higher eulogium, that ‘few men ever lived perhaps who poured into the breasts of youth a more fervid and yet reasonable love of liberty, of truth and of virtue. How many (he adds) are still alive, in different countries, and in every rank to which education reaches, who, if they accurately examined their own minds and lives, would not ascribe much of whatever goodness and happiness they possess to the early impressions of his gentle and persuasive eloquence.’ Few men indeed possess the powers or opportunities of the Edinburgh Professor. But, to every instructer of youth, a sphere is opened for the exertion of the noblest talents and virtues. It is a most mischievous and absurd idea, but one that has prevailed, if it do not still prevail, that such a man is not required to possess great talents—that he may be a dull and plodding man—that he may be dull in his moral sensibility—that he need not be a religious man—and yet may very well discharge the duties of his station. But if heaven has given to any man talent and enthusiasm, or virtue, or piety, let him know that it is all wanted _here_, and that he can scarcely choose a nobler field for its action. Let a man enter this field, therefore, not to go through the dull round of prescribed duty; let him throw himself into this sphere of action with his whole mind and heart—with every wakeful energy of thought and kindling fervor of feeling; to think and to act, to devise and to do, all that his powers permit, for the minds that are committed to him; to develope and exhaust his whole soul in this work; to labor _for_ and _with_ his pupils—to win their affection—to quicken in them the love of knowledge, to inspire with every noble impulse the breast of ingenuous youth; to raise up sound scholars for literature, and devoted pastors for the church, and patriotic citizens for the country, and glorious men for the world: let him do _this_, and none shall leave brighter signatures upon the record of honored and well spent lives. Let him do _this_, and whether he sit in the chair of a university or in the humblest village school—whether as a Stewart or a Cousin, or as an Oberlin or Pestalozzi, he may fill the land with grateful witnesses of his worth, and cause a generation unborn to rise up and call him blessed.