Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 417]

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History University of Illinois

well as bodily sustenance and strength from these instruments of their art and their toil ? Why has God linked the light, the dew drop, the clouds, the sunshine and the storm, and concentrated the mighty powers of the earth, the ocean and the sky, directed by that unknown and mysterious force which rolls the spheres, and arms the thunder-cloud—why are all these mystic and potent influences connected with the growing of every plant, and the opening of everyflower,the motion of every engine and every implement, if he did not intend that each son and daughter of Adam's race should learn through the handicraft of their daily toil, to look through nature up to nature's God, trace his deep designs, and derive their daily mental and moral culture, as well as their daily food, from that toil that is ever encircled and circumscribed on all hands, by the unfathomed energies of his wisdom and his power? "No foundation for the development and culture of a high order of science and literature, and the noblest capacities of mind, heart and soul, in connexion with the daily employments of the industrial classes! How came such a heathenish and apostate idea ever to get abroad in the world? Was God mistaken when he first placed Adam in the garden, instead of the academy? or when he sentenced him to toil for his future salvation, instead of giving him over to abstract contemplation ? when he made his Son a carpenter instead of a rabbi? Or when he made man a man instead of a monk? No; God's ways are ever, ways of wisdom and truth; but Satan has, in all ages, continued to put darkness for light—sophistry and cant; for knowledge and truth—cunning and verbiage, for wisdom and virtue—tyranny and outrage, for government and law—and to fill the world with brute muscles and bones, in one class—luxurious, insolent and useless nerves and brains, in another class, without either bodies or souls, and to call the process by which the result, in the latter case, is reached, education. And from the possibility of such an education as this, God has, in his mercy, hitherto sheltered his defenseless poor. And if such hot-bed processes are, alone, to be dignified with the name of education, then, it is clearly impossible that the laboring classes should ever be educated ?§ God has interdicted it. Or, even if no other system of education is ever to be devised or attempted, except that alone which is most fit for the professional and the