VOL. VI.

THE TIME SCHOOL.

No. 1.

ambition, success, failure, disappoint

DETROIT, MICH.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. unto wisdom. Psalm xc, 12.

Man is a perpetual pupil. While his earthly life lasts his education is never completed; and, perhaps, dying is only leaving one school to enter another,exchanging the district school for the university. How many and how varied are his teachers. Arriving on earth, no other animal is so helpless as he; before he leaves he has taken such lessons in power that all things obey him. Every day brings a new lesson. At first a seemingly simple task is given him, and yet probably the most difficult of all his life, how to make the motion of his fingers correspond with his wish, so that he can seize the thing he wants. Then he must learn the use of all other tools,arms, legs, eyes, ears, tongue, become the servants of his will; and he who at first could not cross the floor to save his life, and whose sight was overpowered by the distance between him and the ceiling, at last can traverse continents and oceans, and measure stellar distances. When he has learned the first use of the natural organs, he must learn their relation to other things. By walking, and running, and falling, he learns the laws of gravitation. With blocks, and cards, and chairs, he learns the laws of architecture. With whistle and drum, and hammer, with disregard to the comfort of some of the older members of the school, he explores the laws of sound. Then follow books, and classes, and companions with their instructions. By and by love opens its delicious page to his eyes. Afterwards

travel, pain, sorrow, give him lessons to learn; and when we last see him his eye has a puzzled, and inquiring expression, as if nature had just set him a new problem to solve in the few minutes that are left him before he leaves the earth. But whether the lessons are hard or easy, whether the teachers are kind or stern, the school goes on without holiday or vacation to the end of life.

Many credit marks are set to our account; but we often fail in recitation; and examination day finds many of us unable to pass in certain branches. The tuition is high in this school; and we often find ourselves at the close of 'a severe term, after all the bills are settled, with not much left. Money, strength, health, days, life, all go to pay the charges of this high-priced education.

Does our progress

Now, that we are just entering upon another year, the inquiry becomes worthy as to how we are getting along in our studies. justify the expense? Will our diplomas be such as will pass us to the higher grades when we have completed the course at this school? Some of us have been present at many of these opening days, and by this time we should be able to show some good results. If the days have power to speak to us, and the years to teach wisdom, how good and how wise we should all be! If experience and study are of value, then the sun of the new year should shine upon wiser and better multitudes than ever before trod the earth.

Knowledge breeds knowledge. One invention opens the way to another. Steam begets the railroad; and the railroad begets the telegraph; and the tele

graph begets the telephone and the electric light; and who can tell what or where will be the end? It is impossible to make a catalogue of all the arts and inventions which have sprung out of the human brain, every one of which gives evidence of thought and study in the past, and is guaranty of a greater future for the race. Already the whole earth feels the thrill of the human brain and the throb of the human heart; and if art and power go on as they have thus far come, they will become god like in their mastery of nature. The multitude of years have taught man the form of knowledge that gives him power.

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But how would he stand an examination in the branches of study pertaining to the higher meaning of life? Great is his power of knowing and doing in all the practical affairs of life. In all forms of industry, agriculture, mechanics, commerce, his standing is very high. But in the higher wisdom, which mixes right with all action, he is as yet a tyro, in the lower classes. A giant of power in giving shape to material things, and bending them to his will, he is too often an infant with tottering step and nerveless and uncertain grasp when he passes into the moral field.

What a strange compound is this being! Made up of equal parts of strength and weakness; of philosopher and fool; of hero and coward; of dust and deity; he is to be admired and ridiculed, to be praised and pitied in turn. He has power to tunnel mountains, and subdue continents; yet often without strength to tell the truth. He is like Atlas, with strength to carry a world on his shoulders; yet his soul often breaks down beneath a feather's weight of temptation. He who can measure the distance between the planets, and weigh the earth in his scales, fails to estimate the space which billows between right and wrong, and has no balance with which to weigh an unvirtuous deed. He will lead a forlorn hope to victory; but he can be bought for a few dollars to turn traitor to honesty, and for the sake of a few days of fame and a few words of flattery, will trail the flag of justice in

the dust. Long ago he learned how to carve and paint the perfect form of the body; but he has not learned the use of that chisel, or how to mix the colors with which to carve and paint the perfect soul. A thousand years ago he learned to build Gothic cathedrals; but how slow he is to learn how to build a life, whose arches will be more graceful,, whose music will be more thrilling, and whose spires will mount further toward the everlasting azure than any temple made of stone!

We all think that moral lessons should be learned first, but they are usually postponed until all others are learned. Everywhere people admire truth, and honor, and justice, in the abstract. Like painting, and music, and French, they are too often only ornamental branches of an education and are not intended for every day use.

Our popular education begins with the senses, and ends when the pupil knows enough to make a living. We pretend, in this so-called Christian age, to believe in a spiritual nature, and the supremacy of the moral law; but we have not heard of anyone starting a kindergarten for the soul. We have already journeyed far away from the cave, and the stone axe, and the flint, and the wigwam; but we may keep up our march many days longer before we have reached everything worth having. The age of man the savage has gone out, or is going out; the age of man the soul has not not yet come in. We have thrown off the manners of the hut, but we do not yet feel at ease in the palace.

The world is surely old enough to have learned that the true worth of an age depends not upon its wealth, or its modes of travel, or its commerce, but upon its moral possessions. If power

be not to further right, then of what use is power? If Prospero does not use his power to help justice to prosper, then his alliance with spirits and elemental forces is a crime. Faust would better have remained an intellectual bantling all his life, than to have used his borrowed power to uproot faith and facilitate the downfall of virtue. Of what use is a telegraph around the