Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created; and thou renewest
the face of the earth.

But--The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever. The Lord shall
rejoice in his works. Amen.



HOW TO STUDY NATURAL HISTORY {290}



Ladies and gentlemen, I speak to you to-night as to persons
assembled, somewhat, no doubt, for amusement, but still more for
instruction. Institutions such as this were originally founded for
the purpose of instruction; to supply to those who wish to educate
themselves some of the advantages of a regular course of scholastic
or scientific training, by means of classes and of lectures.

I myself prize classes far higher than I do lectures. From my own
experience, a lecture is often a very dangerous method of teaching;
it is apt to engender in the mind of men ungrounded conceit and
sciolism, or the bad habit of knowing about subjects without really
knowing the subject itself. A young man hears an interesting
lecture, and carries away from it doubtless a great many new facts
and results: but he really must not go home fancying himself a much
wiser man; and why? Because he has only heard the lecturer's side
of the story. He has been forced to take the facts and the results
on trust. He has not examined the facts for himself. He has had no
share in the process by which the results were arrived at. In