rises only to the point to which all men may be made to feel that they
might, and that they ought to, rise in religion,--to resignation,
dependence on, and thankful acknowledgement of, the divine mercy and
goodness.

In the education of children, love is first to be instilled, and out of
love obedience is to be educed. Then impulse and power should be given
to the intellect, and the ends of a moral being be exhibited. For this
object thus much is effected by works of imagination;--that they carry
the mind out of self, and show the possible of the good and the great in
the human character. The height, whatever it may be, of the imaginative
standard will do no harm; we are commanded to imitate one who is
inimitable. We should address ourselves to those faculties in a child's
mind, which are first awakened by nature, and consequently first admit
of cultivation, that is to say, the memory and the imagination. The
comparing power, the judgment, is not at that age active, and ought not
to be forcibly excited, as is too frequently and mistakenly done in the
modern systems of education, which can only lead to selfish views,
debtor and creditor principles of virtue, and an inflated sense of
merit. In the imagination of man exist the seeds of all moral and
scientific improvement; chemistry was first alchemy, and out of
astrology sprang astronomy. In the childhood of those sciences the
imagination opened a way, and furnished materials, on which the
ratiocinative powers in a maturer state operated with success. The
imagination is the distinguishing characteristic of man as a progressive
being; and I repeat that it ought to be carefully guided and
strengthened as the indispensable means and instrument of continued
amelioration and refinement. Men of genius and goodness are generally
restless in their minds in the present, and this, because they are by a
law of their nature unremittingly regarding themselves in the future,