Sentinel Of The Valley

If there is one matter of greater importance to the Human Family than all others, it is the EDUCATION of the Young.

WE ARE ALL AT SCHOOL.

Every man should seriously take into consideration that he is in a course of education which he may vary indeed, but from which he can by no means escape; training for something—should he not know for what and how the process is going on:

The child roams about the street untaught, uncared for; it follows temptation; it obeys the impulse of its nature; is it not at school? Yes, verily; and it drinks in greedily the instruction it receives, and will show its improvement in precocious wickedness.

The youth passes his time in idleness; visits the places where other loungers congregate; seeks occupation enough to dispel the discomfort of total inactivity, in drinking, smoking, or loose conversation; and to diversify life, and put on the show of manhood, indulges in other vices of maturer life; and is he not at school? Yes, and so you will see that he is making advances from day to day. His former notions, if he ever had any, of religious obligation, passing away, he is forming new habits of thinking; he gets new views of men and things, and fancies that he knows the world; he learns a new language; acquires new skill in reasoning upon moral subjects, and graduates a loafer.

So too the full grown man, by attending to his daily business, forms habits of industry; by neglecting them, habits of idleness. By the careful discharge of his daily duties, he confirms himself in habits of virtue; by neglecting them, his character loses its form and consistency, and he gradually, but surely, passes to that state in which moral obligation has no hold upon him, and he is completely the slave of temptation.—Wright's Paper.