GENTLEMEN:--

      No one can really understand any thing, who does not know something of every thing. Circles, cycles and centres compose the machinery of the universe. Suns, moons and stars have their respective centres, their orbits and their cycles. But there is one centre that regulates and that governs all other centres; for every centre is both attractive and radiating. It communicates and it receives. It supports and is supported. There must, then, be one self-sustaining centre, and that centre must be forever at rest. It is both the centre of gravity and the centre of motion. And that centre is not God himself, for he is everywhere. He is himself a circle, whose centre is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere.

      There is a reason for every thing, if there be any reason in any thing. Of what use light, if there be not an eye? And of what use an eye, if there be not light? Creator and creature are correlates. The one implies the other. There is, therefore, in the human mind, a necessity for the being and perfections of God. His existence is essential to ours; but our existence is not essential to his. We are, because he was. Had he not been, we never could have been. We are not self-existent. He must, then, be self-existent; consequently, infinite, eternal and immutable.

      But there is in God something passive, as well as something active. A human muscle is passive without a nerve of motion. A nerve of motion is passive without a will; and, therefore, will, and will only, is [163] the primum mobile--the first cause and the last end of this universe. For God's pleasure, or will, we are and were created.

      How much philosophy find we, then, in that beautiful word UNIVERSE! It is a versus in unum. It is every thing in motion around one thing, which is immovably fixed. The true centre of gravity is, then, the true centre of motion. But there is not much gravity in a volition. Volitions are very ethereal entities. Oh for Ithuriel's spear, to dissect one of them! Oh that we could place ourselves yonder, "where fields of light and liquid ether flow!"

      But here we must place ourselves upon an assumption. We do not like that word assumption. We shall, therefore, call it a postulatum. But its very assertion is its proof. It is this: THE UNIVERSE IS FOUNDED UPON A MORAL IDEA. God did not create the universe because he had wisdom to design it. He did not create the universe because he had power to create it. For both wisdom and power are passive instruments. Goodness alone is necessarily, eternally, immutably active. It is essentially and perpetually communicative. It is communicative when it radiates and when it attracts. It is the cause of all motion. But for it, nothing would ever have been. The universe is, therefore, a necessary existence. It must be, because God was. It must be, because Jehovah was God--the absolute Good One. It is but a temple, in which goodness lives, moves and has its being--its local habitation and its home. For its glory all things are and were created. This, and this only, is physical, intellectual, moral and religious orthodoxy. It is orthodoxy in essence, in form, in substance. It is the philosophy of philosophy, and the religion of religion. It is the immovable centre of all the centres of the universe. And here we place our foot upon the Rock of Ages. Our only postulatum is the "Rock of Ages."

      Man having been created in the image of God, and cradled in a universe in perpetual motion, his mind is necessarily active. As soon as man begins to think, he begins to construct circles of thought around some perception or idea; and these, according to their specific nature, are formed into what are properly called systems, or sciences. He has an ideal ontology and a deontology, before he knows the meaning of a single word. His primordial conceptions are, first, being, then relation, then dependence, then duty, then pleasure, then pain. These are all arranged before he understands a word or a thing. These are the centres of his thoughts, his volitions and his actions. But he is surrounded by bad teachers, and has a fallen and, consequently, a shattered constitution. He is passive, and easily led astray. His mind is perverted by bad teachers and bad associations. He soon finds [164] himself in error, and sets about correcting it. He again finds an error in his mode of correcting it; and so the conflict between truth and error, good and evil, begins long before he knows any one thing. This is an inherent calamity, consequent upon an ancestral catastrophe.

      He is necessarily obliged to classify perceptions, reflections, volitions, actions and their consequences. He is born with a pope in his stomach, and that is a very indigestible substance. Hence the dogmatism of children, simpletons and charlatans. Of these big children we have yet a sample in every family of science. I say family of science, for these families have grown and multiplied, and replenished the whole earth. Our great-great-grandfathers had but seven sciences--the number of perfection. But we have seventy sciences; and yet we want another. With the great Hooker, we will say, that "no science doth make known the first principles on which it buildeth." But in this age of progress, any art, or species of knowledge, is called a science. Any one specific idea may become the centre of a science. Indeed, we have, without knowing it, been moving forward to a new nomenclature on the grand subject of sciences, sects and schisms, in all the knowledges of earth, of time, of the universe. The time may come, if it be not already come, when every generic and specific idea shall become the foundation of a science, a sect, a party and a school. Take the following words--Papist, Protestant, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Methodist, Baptist, Monarchist, Aristocrat, Democrat, &c. Does not each one of these terms indicate one specific idea? And is not that one idea, to all within its circle, a centre of attraction, and to all beyond it, a centre of repulsion?

      General assemblies, synods, diets, councils, conventions, &c. are constituted, held and perpetuated upon the sub-basis of one idea, which is the one only essential and differential attribute or idea of the school or party. These ought to be styled the centripetal and centrifugal ideas of all bodies. They are the souls of all ecclesiastical and political corporations. Not one of these bodies has two souls, nor any of these souls two bodies. And just at this corner, this punctum saliens, I place my Jacob's staff on every survey I make of the ecclesiastical and political plantations in our beloved country.

      The body of a democrat differs but in a few accidents from the body of an aristocrat. The essential difference is in their souls. This idea is the living, moving, acting, essential idea which gives them animation, name, action and reaction.

      There is but a paper wall, say some in Scotland, and some in England, and but one idea inscribed upon it, between prelatic and [165] papal episcopacy. And they retort with equal zeal and evidence, that there is but one idea between episcopacy and the moderator of a general assembly. And the Congregationalist says there is but one idea between Old England and New England Congregationalism and Scotch and English Presbyterianism. And all the umpires on the walls of Zion say Amen! But that one idea--that dear, divine and glorious idea, is as centripetal and centrifugal as the law that guides and compacts the spheres of the natural universe. We place it upon our armorial--it is inscribed upon our flag. Its associations are as dear as life and stronger than death. But further on this subject deponent saith not. My charity hopeth all things, and your charity, my respected auditors, endureth all things. And now for the destiny of our divinely favored and beloved country.

      Every word I have yet spoken has been spoken with a single reference to our country, our beloved country, and its destiny. Individuals constitute families, families make tribes, tribes constitute nations, nations empires, and empires a world. Nations and empires stand to each other as members of an individual family stand to one another.

      A well-developed family is a miniature world. The duties we owe our superiors, inferiors and equals, and the privileges we derive from them in the family circle, contain in them all the elements that enter into all the relations, duties, obligations, rights, privileges, honors and rewards of the most enlarged communities and corporations, civil or ecclesiastic. And as the individual members of a family have each an individual destiny involved in that of the whole family, each individual has also a mission into that family, upon the perfect or imperfect accomplishment of which his own destiny, for good or for evil, for weal or for woe, must inevitably depend. This is a law of reason, a law of experience; and, above all, it is a law of God.

      When the God of Israel sold Israel, or sent them into captivity under an Assyrian yoke, he enjoined them by his prophet "to seek the good of the country into which he had caused them to be delivered into captivity;" and added, as a reason or motive, "for in the peace thereof you shall enjoy peace." Their condition, at that time, was a very special and peculiar providence; ours is equally so now. That nation had one great idea committed to it for the benefit of the world. It was the unity, spirituality and ubiquity of God. It was his inflexible justice, his immaculate purity and his inviolate truthfulness, as specially the God of the Jews, and generally the God of the whole family of man.

      All Christendom has its special condition, and its special commission [166] into the world. In this designation we comprehend the Greek, the Roman and the Protestant States of Europe, in whatever country or of whatever language. Their mission is very different from that of God's ancient people, the Jews. Polytheism was the damning sin of Pagandom. Goals many, created by the human imagination, against one only living and true God, was their apostasy and their ruin. Polytheism never winked at, and polygamy merely tolerated in certain cases, became the fountains of iniquity, injustice and inhumanity, during the patriarchal and Jewish epocha of the world. Christianity, the consummation of Divine wisdom and benevolence, at a proper period of human experience, at the manhood of the world, was introduced, and gradually and gloriously developed and confirmed. It was not a mere family religion, like the Patriarchal, nor was it a mere national religion, as the Jewish. It was œcumenical, or universal. It recognized neither Jew nor Greek, neither Barbarian nor Scythian, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female; but made the same gracious tender of remission, justification, reconciliation, adoption and glorification, on the principle of sovereign favor, through the absolute merit of the sacrifice of the great Redeemer, and through the sanctification of the Holy Spirit, who, on the formation of the Church of Christ, became its Holy Guest.

      As the admission of many gods constituted the damning sin of the Patriarchal and Jewish ages of the world, so the introduction of many mediators, many altars, priests and sacrifices, constitutes the damning sin under the benignant reign of grace, usually styled the Remedial Dispensation. And thus we approach the destiny of our country. But there is yet another step.

      The Popedom, in its long, dark despotism over Europe and Asia, took away the key of knowledge from the Christian Church, read prayers in an unknown tongue, substituted for Christian ordinances unmeaning and idle ceremonies, consecrated relics, erected holy crosses, hallowed forbidden altars, mitred their priests, girdled a representative of Peter with the keys of paradise, handed to the priests alone the golden chalice of their spiritually medicated wine, established an empty ceremonial, paganized Christian doctrine through an empty and deceitful philosophy, and with unblushing effrontery prated against the dangers of thinking for one's self, of liberty of speech and freedom of action. Thus was consummated the long, dark night of Papal supremacy, during which the immortal Luther was born.

      Protestantism was the legitimate consummation of Lutheranism. Yet had it not been for the threatening attitude of the Turks, Charles [167] the Fifth would not have called a diet at Speyer, A. D. 1529, to ask help from the German princes; and had not Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, and other Popish princes in this diet, decreed that in the countries in which Luther's views had been received, they should he merely tolerated till a general council could meet, and that during the interval no Roman Catholic should be allowed to turn Lutheran, in other words, to think differently from Archduke Ferdinand, and that during the interval the Reformers should not attack the pure and unadulterated doctrine of Popery, Protestantism might never have been born.

      Six Lutheran princes and thirteen deputies of imperial towns, solemnly protested against this gag law,--this Papal ordinance against thinking or speaking contrary to the dicta of one man and his ecclesiastic advisers. Thus Protestantism was born, and although Lutherans were the first occasion of the decree, Calvinists and all other dissenters--that is, thinkers and talkers against his infallible excellency--became heirs in common of all the rights, titles, honors and emoluments of the name and style of Protestants.

      Having given an historical definition of the word Protestant, we must form a clear conception of its import. It is neither a Lutheran nor a Calvinist, as such; neither an Arminian nor a Methodist; neither a high church man nor a low church man; neither an Episcopalian nor a Presbyterian, a whip nor a tory, a monarchist nor a republican. It is a more generic term. These are all specific terms. A true and well-defined Protestant might enter his protest against any one and all of these, and be a better Protestant than any one or all of them. A reverend gentleman educated, I think, within these walls, once said to his congregation, "Brethren, there is a blue, and a better blue; but, brethren, we are the true blue." So there are three degrees of comparison amongst Protestants.

      But there are two species of Protestantism. There is ecclesiastic Protestantism, and there is political Protestantism. These, indeed, have more than a chemical affinity.

      There are, indeed, three species of Protestantism. There is political, ecclesiastic and spiritual Protestantism. These are the positive, comparative and superlative degrees of an abstract, anomalous noun substantive. At its commencement church and state were so mixed and confounded that there was not a metaphysician in Rome or out of it, that could tell where the state ended and the church began. They had the same geographical and astronomical metes and boundaries. Lands intersected by a narrow frith, or river, hated each other for [168] God's sake and man's sake; for their State polity and their church polity were lodged in the same crazy vessels. In the purest casks of ancient Protestantism, there was a considerable sediment of worldly prudence and temporal policy. But the fierce ordeal and fiery trial of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, separated much of the worldly of the times of Luther, and Puritanism began to have a local habitation and a name. The Mayflower ferried over the Atlantic the seeds gathered from the early harvests, the choicest first-fruits of European Protestantism. Brought directly from Old England, they were planted in New England. The soil and climate, however rugged for the germs of earth, were most fertile and happy for the new seeds, and, consequently, rich harvests rewarded the labors of the puritanic husbandmen. God sent them to a new world, that they might institute, under the most favorable circumstances, new political and ecclesiastic institutions. Such, most assuredly, was their Divine mission. Their influence was direct and reflex. It gave life, and vigor, and enterprise to the mother land and those they left behind them, and planted deep and sowed broadcast the seeds of a great, and populous, and mighty empire. England lost at home, but, by her commerce and her missionaries abroad, she planted in the East, the far East, a population and principles homogeneous, more or less, with her American colonies. She became still more Protestant at home and more Protestant. abroad. Her canvas whitened every sea, and wherever British power was felt, it might be said, mankind felt her mercies, too. From the days of Luther until now, her throne, her navies and her armed bands, have directly, or indirectly, been the bulwarks of Protestantism. With all her faults, and they are not few nor small, we love her still; because God has been her shield and buckler, her stay and strength. We are her children, and, according to the fifth commandment, we must honor our parents; though, as duteous sons, we may wish that our fathers had been more wise.

      But Britain and America are of one paternity, of one religion, of one language and of one destiny. They stood by Luther, by the first Protestants, in the times that tried men's souls; and however occasionally perverted in judgment upon and around the throne, the heart of England has ever sympathized with young America, and with all the Protestant States of Europe. From untold myriads of family altars, morning and evening prayers and praises for young America and her infant institutions, and for infant Protestantism, have ascended into the ears of the Lord of Hosts. Councils of States against England and Protestantism, alliances abroad, armies on the continent, armadas [169] on the seas, and treasons at home, have been thwarted, confounded and annihilated, in answer to her prayers.

      To the Saxons in Europe, to the Anglo-Saxons in Britain, to the American Anglo-Saxons on this continent, God has given the sceptre of Judah, the harp of David, the strength of Judah's Lion, and the wealth of the world. He has given to them the oceans of earth, the golden regions of the far West, and the golden regions of the far, far East. California and Australia pour their treasures into their coffers, and Anglo-American, arts, and sciences, and language, pervade the earth, and permeate the populations of the civilized world. To Britain and America God has granted the possession of the new world; and because the sun never sets upon our religion, our language and our arts, he has vouchsafed to us, through these sciences and arts, the power that annihilates time and annuls the inconveniences of space. Doubtless these are but preparations for a work which God has in store for us,--a great, a mighty, a stupendous work, that will bring into requisition the arts, the sciences and the resources with which he has so richly, so simultaneously and so marvellously endowed England and America.

      There are means to ends, great and small, wisely and irrevocably established in all the cosmical and terrestrial operations, which are perpetually in progress. He gave to the mammoth and the mastodon bones, muscles, nerves, tools, and a covering adapted to their localities and to their work, in their day and generation. He does so still to all the existing species that people earth, or sea, or air. The eagle mounts above the clouds, and Leviathan ploughs the mighty deep, with as much ease as the gossamer constructs her filmy balloon or as the spider weaves his slender web. The beaver builds his dam, and the honeybee constructs his waxen honey-cells, with as much science and art as man displays in his stately palaces or in his golden temples.

      Divine providence and moral government equally attest the same power, wisdom and goodness. These, associated with other moral excellencies in the government of the world, as in its creation, to the cultivated mind, with equal assurance, attest his condescending care and providence, in anticipation of all the changing scenes of man's earthly destiny. Coming events cast their shadows before them, while those that have passed away fling their shadows behind them. Hence the value of prophecy and history.

      Men of reflection are wont to conceive of their mission into the world from an attentive survey of their own capacities, circumstances and opportunities. It was doubtless intended that it should be so. Hence, individual accountability will depend much on the use every [170] one makes of those endowments, circumstances and opportunities, which the Governor of the world has vouchsafed to him in reference to the country, population and age in which God has located him.

      The kairon gnoothi of Pittacus, is only second to the gnoothi seauton of Solon. To "know an opportunity," is only second in importance to "know thyself." He is both a wise and a prudent man, that can combine in his own life and action these two. But should he add to these the oracle of Periander, meletee to plan--"nothing is impossible to industry"--he must, if the elements of greatness be in him, become a great man. These, to my taste, the wisest of the wise sayings of the Grecian sages, have, in modern times at least, been more eminently displayed in Britain and in the United States than amongst any other people on earth. And this I ascribe, not so much to soil or climate, or national superiority, or blood, as I do to the fact that these are the lands of Bibles and of Protestantism.

      There is a nobility, a moral grandeur of soul, in saying, I protest against such a law or statute. To protest innocence, is sometimes just and necessary. To protest against political tyranny, is often expedient; but to protest against religious usurpation and ecclesiastic despotism, caps the climax of human nobility and grandeur. And none but Heaven's own noblemen can, ex animo, make such a sublime protestation. Hence temporizers, sycophants, aspirants after worldly honor and influence, could not, in the days of Luther, have protested against a Roman pontiff, when all Roman power and grandeur were leagued in favor of Papal aggrandizement end monopoly.

      From all my premises, I am compelled to think that there is much of moral grandeur in the very name Protestant. There is a moral heroism in non-conformity to unjust laws and unholy requirements for the sake of five barley-loaves and two small fishes. These seven principles and the men who adopt them, will be condemned, now, henceforth and forever before the bar of enlightened reason, of a generous philanthropy and of a just judgment. It was, in the esteem of Philosopher Locke, a fatal act of uniformity to the English hierarchy, which, on St. Bartholomew's day, ejected two thousand non-conformist ministers, alias uncompromising Protestants, from the national pulpits. Hence, it may be logically inferred that there may be occasionally a hypocrite even among Protestants.

      But, in speaking of Protestantism we speak not of a pretended Protestantism, but of a true, real and unsophisticated Protestantism. And what is Protestantism, but a solemn negation of all human dictation and usurpation over man's understanding, conscience and affections; [171] over his personal liberty of thought, of speech and of action, in reference to each and every thing pertaining to himself, his fellows, his God and his Redeemer?

      Education, religion, morals and politics are, therefore, the fields and realms over which Protestantism, de jure divino, presides.

      Man's whole destiny in this world is comprehended in these four words, education, religion, morals and politics. I own the ambiguous use of these four cardinal points of human destiny. Volumes without number have been written, and our shelves are burdened with ponderous folios, quartos, octavos and duodecimos, on each and every one of these great centres of thought. And still they come. Yes, they come, and not in single file, but in platoons, extended wings and hollow squares, terrible as an army with banners. But, under a good intellectual and moral power--press, how meagre their solid contents! If even gold, as Newton affirmed, has more pores than particles, and water forty times more pores than solid parts, how beautifully gaseous must these volumes be.

      Education is the development of a man's physical, intellectual and moral constitution; religion, his moral and spiritual obligations to God; morals, his duties and obligations to man; and politics, his duties and obligations to the state, or social compact, in which he lives and moves and has his being. In each and all of these Protestantism affirms he must think, will and act of and from himself, according to the free and unbiassed dictates of his own best thoughts and understanding.

      Popery says of this grand principle of human responsibility, of free and voluntary action, of self-government, of merit and demerit, that it is, in essence, impiety, insubordination--a Pandora's box of ills and evils, intolerable and accursed. To Protestants, and in Protestant communities, they exclaim, How gross and infamous this calumny! See how resolutely, boldly and cheerfully Saint Carrol, of Maryland, and other distinguished Romanists, took active part in the Revolutionary War; "how they bared their breasts, and shed their generous blood," in support of the cause of American independence! Yes; but was this the real motive? Did they love England less, or Rome more, than American independence? Did they not, in other words, hate England ineffably more than they loved either church or state independence?

      On landing in Philadelphia, a day after the commencement of the Revolutionary War, an honest son of the Emerald Isle, on hearing the news, taking his companion by the hand, exclaimed, "By Saint Patrick, Jack, I'll 'list and fight for nothing, for nothing, sir, against [172] old Johnny Bull." He was an unsophisticated exponent of the part taken in the war of the Revolution by Romanists for American independence. It is not possible, or, in other words, it is not in human nature, to love liberty, freedom of thought, of speech and of action, in the state, and to hate it in the church; or to love it in the church and to hate it in the state. The love of liberty is a law or principle as uniform and immutable as the law of gravity. I mean liberty--rational, moral, social liberty; not licentiousness, recklessness, lawlessness. I mean not lust nor passion, the love of plunder and robbery. It is a moral principle, founded upon the perception and approbation of justice and humanity. If a Protestant becomes a tyrant, he is a hypocrite or a freebooter. And if a Romanist becomes a true republican, the man has triumphed over his religion, and cares not for it.

      Do you think of the French Revolution? Do you say, France was then Catholic, and did she not array her power against tyranny and oppression? If you think so, you are not enlightened, and have never read with discrimination the history of the French Revolution.

      Roman Catholicism had converted France into a nation of infidels, seared the national conscience, and inspired the masses with the spirit of murder and rapine. It was vengeance and freebooting, not benevolence and freedom, that erected bastilles and guillotines during the Reign of Terror. France, as a nation, was then infidel. She is so now, and has been so during the whole reign of Napoleon. Spain, Portugal, Italy and Austria, too, in the main, are infidel, much more than Roman Catholic. The whole heart of Popedom is gangrenous. Italy and Rome are but the centre of European infidelity and atheism. Nothing but French cannon and French bayonets has kept Pio Nono in St. Peter's worm-eaten chair. She took the sword and Messiah's word is pledged that she shall perish by the sword. Be the day near or remote, Rome, eternal Rome, the Rome of the Cæsars, the Rome of the Pontiffs, shall be baptized in blood and drenched with the gore of human sacrifice. There are still some names in Sardis that have not received the mark of the beast, and so we humbly hope a remnant may be saved.

      But if any one desires to know Roman Catholicism, we advise him to go to Rome or to Paris. View it at home. Did I wish an inhabitant of the mountains of Wales or of Scotland to see our Indian corn in all its mid-summer or autumnal grandeur, should I invite him to the Valley of the Penobscot or to the Valley of the Mississippi, to view it in its glory? As impolitic in any American to judge of Romanism as it appears in New York, in Baltimore, in Cincinnati, in New Orleans, [173] or in Mexico. Let him go to the meridian of St. Peter's, on the banks of the Tiber, and see it at home in all its glory. We ask no more.

      That Protestantism is essential to political liberty, is the best-substantiated fact in the annals of European nations. It is endorsed by the most enlightened and philosophic journalists and essayists of the present day. Take a single passage from Blackwood's Magazine. Although itself anti-republican, and an apologist for Toryism, it utters the truth on this vital subject. Weigh the following sentences:--

      "The Papist demands religious liberty. The words, in a Papist's lip are jargon. He has never had it in any country on earth. Has he it in Rome? Can a man have the absurdity to call himself a freeman when the priest may tear the Bible out of his hand? when, without a license, he cannot look into the Book of Life? when, with or without a license, he cannot exercise his own understanding upon its sacred truths, but must refuse even to think except as the priest command? when, for daring to have an opinion on the most essential of all things--his own salvation--he is branded as a heretic? and when, for uttering that opinion, he is cast into a dungeon? when the priest, with the Index Expurgatorius in his hand, may walk into his house and strip it of every book displeasing to the caprice, insolence and ignorance of a coterie of monks in the Vatican?

      "We affirm, in the most unequivocal manner, that, to be free, nations must be Protestant. The Popish religion is utterly incompatible with freedom in any nation. The slave of the altar is essentially the slave of the throne. We prove this by the fact that no Popish country in the world has been able to preserve, or even to have a conception of the simplest principles of civil liberty. If we are told France is free, the obvious reply is, that though France is the least of all Popish countries, it is wholly under military government; it has no habeas corpus; and no journalist can discuss any subject without exposing himself to Government by giving his name. Would this be called liberty in England?"

      And yet this would be our American liberty if Romanism should ever gain the day in America. The holy, infallible, apostolic Church of Rome is essentially immutable. This is her boast. The reign of Popery ever must be a reign of terror to all who love liberty of thought and freedom of speech.

      To Protestant America and Protestant England, young gentlemen, the world must look for its emancipation from the most heartless spiritual despotism that ever disfranchised, enslaved and degraded human kind. This is our special mission into the world as a nation and a people; and for this purpose the Ruler of nations has raised us up and made us the wonder and the admiration of the world.

      A nation--a nation great and mighty and prosperous--has been [174] born in a day. Compared with other nations, we have had no childhood. We were born and nurtured and developed in a day, some seventy-five years ago. And now I stand in the midst of the first literary society ever instituted in the immense Valley of the Mississippi. And this, strange to tell, is its fifty-fourth anniversary, and the first semi-centennial anniversary of Jefferson College, under whose generous maternal auspices it has been nurtured and matured.

      And what an imposing scene presents itself here to the philosopher and the philanthropist! Here, on the environs of the Monongahela, on whose waters, just eighty years ago, the first white man's cabin was reared and the first Christian hymn was sung amidst the solemn stillness of the deep, dense forests in which, till then, had only echoed the warwhoop and the Indian's yell. The white man, moccasined with his deer-skin boots, wrapped in his hunting-shirt, with a tomahawk suspended from his girdle on his right side, and a scalping knife, sheathed in a deer-skin scabbard, dangling on his left, with rifle on his shoulder, his faithful dog by his side, sallies forth from his cabin or his fort, at early dawn, and, with cautious step and listening ear, surveys his environs. If neither savage man nor savage beast greats his watchful eye, he grounds his rifle, seizes his axe, and begins to girdle the forest tree, or, with mattock in hand, engages in grubbing the virgin earth in quest of his daily bread. Gathering courage as he proceeds, day after day the forests bow beneath his sturdy strokes, and an opening is made through which the sun penetrates the newly-opened soil and quickens into life the precious seeds which, with so much parsimony, he had hopefully deposited in the bosom of his mother earth. Thus began, twice forty years ago, the settlements around us. And what a change!

      On every side around us, far as the eye can reach, a thousand hills and valleys, waving in rich harvests or covered with green pastures, overspread with bleating flocks of sheep or lowing herds of cattle, interspersed with beautiful villas and romantic hamlets, shaded with venerable oaks, the remains of ancient forests, or enclosed with evergreens of other climes, that vie with each other in lending enchantment to the scenes that environ the homesteads of the rugged pioneers of the great and mighty West, present themselves to our enraptured vision. They are alike the trophies of bold adventure, of successful enterprise, and the imposing evidence of industry, morality and good taste.

      And what shall we say of the sons and daughters of those brave and magnanimous pioneers? We are unable to do them justice. The [175] beautiful towns and cities spread all over the new western world, "with glistening spires and pinnacles adorned," pyramidal trophies of industrial art, monuments of generous liberality, piety and good sense, in solemn and majestic silence, speak their praise. Thrones of justice, solemn temples, stately residences, colleges, male and female seminaries, everywhere attest their good taste, their liberality, patriotism and genuine philanthropy.

      The Americans very generally seem to have made a new and valuable discovery. They strongly affirm that good mothers make good sons, and that good fathers make good daughters. Hence the prudence and policy of educating both sexes with equal generosity.

      Solomon long since discovered that a man's wisdom made his face to shine, but went no farther. The Yankees, however--a very shrewd people--with equal clearness discovered that a woman's learning made her face to shine with superior lustre. They went to work on this sound theory, and what has been the result? We look around us here and everywhere, on all public occasions, on crowds of ladies whose faces shine with such beauty that it is always dangerous for them to travel abroad unveiled. It is not the lily and the rose that vie with each other for precedence on their fair faces, but it is the sparkling, intellectual eye, the philosophic smile and the graceful assenting nod. So imposing, are their charms and their influence, the fascinations of their imagination and the poetry of their manners, that no heart of man is proof against their charms. They have a decided and controlling influence upon all our seminaries of learning for young men. Students in our colleges grow pale over the midnight lamp, and are distilling the nectar of poetry and philosophy from Greek and Roman Springs, to render themselves acceptable, in prose and verse, to the refined sensibilities, the chaste imaginations, the good sense and mellifluent eloquence of American ladies in general, and of Western American ladies, in particular.

      But, gentlemen, I know that you are not insensible to their charms. You are not such stoics or book-worms as not to lay down Plato or Socrates, Newton or Euclid, even Milton or Shakspeare, to hang in profound attention upon their soul-subduing disquisitions, their profound dissertations upon the higher magnetism and centripetal tendencies of the sublimer sentimentalities of their philosophy, which pauses not in the outer court of humanity, but reposes only in the penetralia of the human heart.

      We have, young gentlemen, been involuntarily borne away from the plume and square of a strictly logical address. But even the stars in [176] their courses cannot move in perfect circles. The orbits of all planets are elliptical; and we are all but planets--not wandering stars, I hope, nor meteors of the night. Besides, this is a semi-centennial occasion and a semi-centennial address--the first of the kind ever pronounced in any college of the great West--the great and mighty West. And you, gentlemen, are the oldest literary association in the vast Valley of the Mississippi--an area sweeping through twenty degrees of north latitude and thirty degrees of west longitude--an area of arable land and hospitable climate not greatly inferior, when all proper subtractions of seas and mountains are made, to all inhabitable Europe.

      Your society lacks but twenty days of being fifty-four years old. Your regular members are fourteen hundred and eight, and your honorary members two hundred and twenty-nine; amongst which you have been pleased to place my humble name. In looking over your proper membership, we notice many eminent men, now filling high and important stations in both church and state. Amongst your honorary members we see a constellation of the most dignified and honored names in the annals of our country; men known all over Christendom, pre-eminent in the national executive department, on the bench, in the Cabinet, in the Senate, in the legislative halls and on the field of war. In this great valley, your college will continue to hold in the future, as it has done in the past, a pre-eminent place. Its destiny is not only onward, but upward. Its career will be still more brilliant in the future than it has been in the past. You will not only leave behind you, but you will carry with you in all the walks of life, an influence favorable to its usefulness and its honor.

      The cause of education--of rational, moral, philosophical, religious education--is the most transcendent cause in any and every community. On it depend the prosperity, the influence, the honor and the happiness of every state and of every people. It has, therefore, intrinsically, the strongest claims upon the liberality, the fostering care, the aids, the smiles, the prayers and the patronage of both church and state. It is a law of God and it is a law of society, paramount and insuperable, that educated mind shall govern the world. It has done it, it now does it, and it will continue to do it till the last pulse of time, despite the clamors of ignorance and the thunders of the Vatican. How necessary, then, that it be conducted according to the genius of true religion and true humanity! How important that it be founded on the Bible--that great library of heaven, the combined product of four thousand years, the result of the labors of a [177] constellation of forty divinely-inspired men, embracing a period of sixteen centuries, and holding positions the most dignified and honorable amongst men!

      Of the one hundred and twenty-one colleges in the United States, ninety have been chartered since Jefferson College. But some thirty colleges are older than it. Of this aggregate, twelve are Roman Catholic. All the others are Protestant, or, what is the same thing, State institutions. Besides these, we have, in the American Union, forty-two theological schools, all Protestant. Romanists have no theological schools. Their colleges being wholly under the influence of their theology and church, they are, upon the whole, more theological than literary, and, more than either, scientific. Protestants, therefore, have the literature, the science and the arts of the country, we may say, exclusively under their direction. The whole literary and theological force of Romanists, is, therefore, concentrated in twelve colleges. Indeed, Romanism is their body, soul and spirit. They are sold to the Pope and absolutism. With them, the church and state are one idea. Proportional to their number and their population, they are stronger, richer and more centralized than the Protestant institutions. They are conducted, too, with more secrecy than ours. They are pure crystallizations of selfishness, and like all secret societies, more to be feared than to be loved.

      Their influence is the only portentous cloud in our horizon. It is seen charged with an electricity ominous to our destiny, because ominous of mischief to liberty of thought, of speech and of action on all the vital interests of such a community as ours. In a community based on universal suffrage, unless that community be enlightened, moral and religious, there is no guaranty of a prosperous and glorious career. A Protestant conscience is essential to political and religious liberty, and as necessarily tends that way as all the rivers of earth ultimately disembogue themselves into the ocean. And a Protestant conscience is the legitimate consequence of Bible literature and Bible institutions.

      The star of our destiny is that star which attracted the attention of the Persian Magi, and directed their steps and their offerings to "the new-born King of the Jews," now the King of kings and Lord of lords, "by whom all the kings of the, earth do reign, and all the princes thereof do decree justice." Philo-literary institutions, under Protestant colleges, under Protestant auspices, and Bible literature and morals, are the solid sub-basis of a free and an enlightened government, in the church and in the state--the real Jachin and Boaz--the antitypes of [178] the right and left brazen pillars which Solomon reared in the porch of the Temple, to emblazon its solemn and august entrance.

      As through our verdant valleys flow the limpid rivulets that make our creeks, our rivers and our seas, on whose bosom float the gallant navies which, under the Stripes and Stars, the symbolic ensign of our nation's destiny, command the respect, the homage and the admiration of all the nations of the earth, so from your literary institutions, and from all similar ones in our colleges, flow those healing streams which swell the rivers that fill the ocean of literature that shall bless the world.

      In our country's destiny is involved the destiny of Protestantism, and in its destiny that of all the nations of the world. God has given, in awful charge, to Protestant England and Protestant America--the Anglo-Saxon race--the fortunes, not of Christendom only, but of all the world. For this purpose he has given to them all the great discoveries and improvements in the arts and sciences that have made the wilderness and the solitary places glad, and that have caused the deserts to rejoice and blossom as the rose. He has vouchsafed to them "the splendor of Lebanon," and added "the excellency of Carmel and Sharon," and "has caused them to see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of our God."

      To us, especially, he has given the new world and all its hidden treasures, with all the arts and sciences of the old. Europe, Asia and Africa look to Protestant America as the wonder of the age, and as exerting a preponderating influence on the destinies of the world. We have, then, a fearful and a glorious responsibility. Let us cherish in our individual bosoms this feeling of personal as well as national responsibility; and not only enter upon, but prosecute, the duties which we owe to ourselves, our country and the human race. Thus, and thus only, will our career be glorious, our end victorious, and our destiny, and that of our country, "fair as the moon, clear as the sun," and to our enemies "terrible as an army with banners."

      But there is yet one position which, because of its importance--its transcendent importance--I would make stand out before you in bold relief, and leave it with you in solemn charge, as the paramount duty of every American citizen, and especially of the educated and talented youth of our country, who, from a benevolent and insuperable law of the Great Philanthropist, must ever hold in their hands the casting vote on each and every great question in every grand crisis that may involve its future weal or woe. The position which I have in my eye is founded on one strongly affirmed, viz. that educated mind must govern the [179] world. It is the grand corollary of my address, first in intention, though last in execution. It is more than a corollary. It is the corolla itself. It is the flower that contains the seed that yields the fruit of the political tree of life to every community on earth, and more especially in a community to which God has given in solemn charge the key that opens the chest that holds the covenant of future peace and happiness to man, as a social and immortal being.

      Not to prolong, nor to increase your suspense, I must reiterate an aphorism early announced on this occasion--that God created the universe not because of his wisdom or power to do it, but to find a vent for his goodness. Now, the object and aim of goodness is happiness--prolonged, not momentary happiness; increasing, not stationary happiness; multiform, not uniform happiness. Hence it is that the perpetuity and prosperity of a people, or nation, are wholly dependent upon their goodness, their humanity, their philanthropy. And what is either individual or social goodness or humanity, but the proper combination of three ingredients--justice, truth and piety? No nation ever survived the death of these three principles, and no nation ever can die, or will die, till these principles become, with them, a dead letter. A Roman once said, Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum; we say, Fiat justitia, veritas, et benevolentia, et non ruet cœlum in sæcula sæculorum. Let our nation, then, be just, true and benevolent to all nations and to herself, and it will stand while time endures. These are bright stars--a glorious constellation--and they will be the unwaning and unsettling stars of her destiny, and that of every other nation and people. The Jews, the monumental nation--God's ancient elect kingdom--would have remained till the final trumpet, the paragon of nations, had they continued true to these principle's. The Saviour once said that Sodom and Gomorrah, on certain principles, might have remained till his coming. Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach and a desolation to any people. It must be so, because the laws of nature and the laws of God were all fashioned and established under the dynasty or supremacy of the moral sentiments. The pulse of time and of human life is not merely indicative of, but absolutely dependent upon, the action of the heart. The universe was conceived and born in the bosom of absolute, eternal and immutable benevolence. Benevolence has for its sisters righteousness and truth. This being the moral character of the divine being, is immutable and eternal. On these principles our country stands; and on these principles alone she can stand, and rise, and flourish, to meet not only her own wishes and [180] her own happiness, but the expectations and the prayers of all the great and wise and good of mankind.

      Let it, then, be so established and published to the world, that we are the stern, uncompromising advocates of human rights; that America is not only "the home of the brave," but "the land of the free;" that we supremely love equal rights, and bow to no sovereignty but to that of God and the moral sentiments; that with open arms and warm hearts we welcome to our shores the oppressed and down-trodden of all nations and languages; and that while the old world is pouring into our harbors and into our homes her ignorant, superstitious and down-trodden serfs and masses, we will, by common schools and common ministrations of benevolence, dispossess them of the demons of priestcraft and kingcraft, and show them our religion by pointing to our common schools, our common churches, our common colleges, and our common respect for the Bible, the Christian religion and its divine and glorious Founder--the Supreme Philanthropist. But you may ask me what special bearing have these views and sentiments on you, gentlemen, as members of the Philo-Literary Institute. Think for a moment of the moral, as well as of the literal, import of your name.

      The founders of your society, gentlemen, were peculiarly happy in the selection and adoption of its name--a name so apropos to the condition of this great locality, when first they met sub tegmine fagi, and resolved to call it the Philo-Literary Society of Jefferson College. The name of Jefferson, had it no other association than the reputation of the memorable and justly celebrated Declaration of the Independence of the American colonies, will descend to the latest generations in that halo of glory which encircled the sun of our destiny on the first morn of its rising. But that, gentlemen, is not the point, nor the association of ideas on which I would congratulate you, nor from which I would argue with you. It is the special name of your own society, the Philo-Literary Society. And here, for a moment, let us pause and formally propound the question, What is literature? "The knowledge of letters," you promptly respond. But this is a definition too etymological for my taste, or for my use on the present occasion. Literature, in its rhetorical use, denotes not mere letters. It is, indeed, learning. But in its usual and well-defined distinctive sense, while it excludes the positive sciences, it embraces languages, history, grammar, rhetoric, logic, criticism, belles-lettres and poetry. Be it so, then, according to our most approved lexicography. In literature we have, therefore, all [181] the machinery of positive science, without which we could, in fact, have no real science of any sort whatever.

      In my youthful days I sometimes wondered why, in the Scotch universities, this form of literature, or the study of these dead tongues, was called humanity, or, rather, humanities. I ultimately discovered the philosophy of this portion of their nomenclature. The Scotch, you know, are a nation of long heads, while the English, at least of the Puritan stamp, were called round heads, probably more from the cut of the hair without, than from the form of the brains within. Be this as it may, the Scotch early discovered that the gift of tongues, or of languages, was located in the forehead. They imagined that, language being the symbol of ideas, a man of much language had many ideas. Amongst that people, the arts of acquiring and communicating knowledge were highly appreciated and cultivated. Of them they said--

Consequently, they had professors of the humanities called grammar, logic, rhetoric, poetry.

      Literature is, indeed, in its proper import, a lever of prodigious arm. It wants but the DoV Pou Sto of Archimedes, to lift a world from earth to heaven. But this affirmation might over-stimulate some weak and nervous heads, and therefore it ought to be diluted according to the ratios of our modern panaceas, in the ratio of one grain of sense, two of reason and four of faith.

      Religion and morals come to us objectively, through literature. Yet literature is no more religion or morals, than lead is water because the water passes through it. Still it happens, if you have not the leaden pipe, you can have no water in the cup. Now, as religion comes to us through the Bible, or through literature, if you have not some Divine literature in your heads or ears, you will never have Divine love in your hearts. Literature is not paper or parchment. It is that which is inscribed upon it. The envelope of a letter, any more than the paper on which it is written, is not the letter. The letter is the written word. And yet the written word is itself but an envelope. The power that smites the conscience, that melts the heart, that cheers the broken spirit, is not the paper, the ink, the written symbol, but something that underlies the whole. It is the mind, the idea, the spirit, the conception, clothed, embodied, uttered, perceived, received, accredited, that agonizes or consoles, that softens and subdues, that purifies [182] and ennobles the heart, that transforms the man, and adorns him with the beauty of purity, the true graces of religion and morality.

      We have not yet, gentlemen, capped the climax of the honors due and actually vouchsafed to literature. The Eternal Spirit employed literature in creating light, heaven's own symbol of knowledge, purity and love. How passing strange, beautiful and sublime, the commendation given to language in the first paragraph of the oldest book in the world! God not only said, "Let there be light," but he created all things by language or by words; and what are words, but the utterances of ideas, emotions, volitions? All literature is but the pictured symbols of vocables. Language; rudimentally, is literature, fashioned by the tongue, guided by the ear. Hence the deaf can manufacture no language, can articulate no ideas. Language is fashioned by the ear, addressed to the ear, enters into the brain, and thence enters into the understanding, the conscience and the heart. From the heart again it responds by the tongue and the lips, and enters into the ear, the understanding, the conscience and the heart. Language is, therefore, the spiritual or intellectual and moral currency between main and man, between nation and nation, between ancestors and their descendants; by which, though dead, they commune with us and we with them. This is the whole circuit of language that decorates, enriches and beautifies the lulls of literature, science and religion.

      As all the learning, science and religion in the world, are thus embodied in language, those who are initiated into these sciences, as the graduates of our colleges are presumed to be, go out into the world like a regular army, panoplied cap-à-pie, for a grand and solemn mission; for a sacred warfare against ignorance and error in all their forms. They are, by their education, to become the captains and leaders of the people, especially the uneducated masses, which in all countries, even in our own, constitute the great and fearful majority. Associated with moral excellence and moral character, they are prepared to be the great benefactors of their country and of their contemporaries. When we consider what one well-educated mind has achieved in any one of the departments of literature, of science, or of art, for his country and the world, we are not prepared to estimate or anticipate what may be accomplished, for weal or for woe, by the mighty hosts that are annually pouring forth from all our halls of science, literature and religion, in the great fields of humanity which spread out before us.

      Approve or disapprove it who may, it is a law of reason, a law of God, that the educated portion of every community must direct and [183] form public opinion. In theology, in law, in politics, in physics and metaphysics; in all the errors and diseases of the head, the conscience, the heart, as well as in the body natural, the body ecclesiastic, the body politic, they must exercise an immense power. Approve or disapprove it who may, it is as immutable and uncontrollable as the law that governs the spheres and regulates the seasons of the year.

      Have not a few distinguished individuals, well educated in almost all the fields of literature, science, politics and religion, indelibly stamped their image upon a nation, an age, an empire, a world? These are facts so obvious, so uncontrollable, that to controvert them would be only to stultify one's self, or to falsify the annals of orations and the history of the world. When, then, we speak of the destiny, the special destiny of our beloved country, we cannot but contemplate it through the medium of our schools of learning, of science, politics and religion. Our schools, then, one and all, should command and occupy the profound, the patriotic, the religious deliberation, consideration and supervision of the combined wisdom, talent and learning of the age. Every patriot, every philanthropist, and every Christian, will say from his heart, Amen. Seeing it is a law of God, a principle incorporated in the very constitution of society, it must be wisely, cheerfully and gratefully acquiesced in and submitted to. It must also be regulated and managed with a care, a wisdom, a diligent supervision, commensurate with the immense and eternal interests involved in it.

      Patriotism, it is conceded, has no special place in the Christian religion. Its founder never pronounced a single sentence in commendation of it. The reason is, I presume to say, that the world was his field, and as patriotism is only an extension of the principle of selfishness, he deigned it no regard; because selfishness is now the great and damning sin of mankind. Still, the very test of morality is self-love. We are commanded to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, neither more nor less. And in his enlarged mind and heart, our neighbor is every man in the world. Charity, it is said, begins at home, but at home it does not stay. It goes abroad, and radiates its blessings according to its strength, to the utmost domicile of man. But few men can extend their charity, in its special currency, beyond their village, their parish, or their church. Still, when the frozen Icelander or the sunburned Moor comes within our sphere of doing good, we will, as we ought, pour into his wounds and bruises the soothing and mollifying ointment of Christian benevolence. Our country, then, for the most part, engages our attention, and exhausts all our means of doing good. But in promoting its moral excellence, its wealth, its [184] honor, its character, we increase its power and extend its means of communicating blessings which, without it, no Christian man could bestow upon his species.

      The United States of America, as they grow in learning, in the arts and sciences, and in all the elements of human wealth and power, can extend blessings to many nations; indeed, to the four quarters of the world. In promoting her health, her wealth and greatness, especially that natural characteristic of a paramount regard for the freedom, amelioration; civilization, as well as the evangelization of foreign lands, we lay for her prosperity, for our own, for that of our children, for that of the human race, the most solid, substantial and enduring basis, pregnant, too, with the civilization and advancement of the great family of man. In this way, too, we secure for ourselves and for our posterity the richest inheritance which mortals can secure in heaven or on earth. Philanthropy, like honesty, is the best national, as it is the best individual, policy. It acts and reacts; it blesses and is blessed; i t glorifies and is glorified. If, then, as a nation and a people we stand out upon the canvas of time as the most generous, magnanimous and benevolent nation, we will, as certainly as the sun radiates and attracts, bless the nations and be blessed by them, and grow in every element and characteristic of a great, a mighty, a prosperous and a happy people.

      Now, my young friends, in forming your beau ideal of your individual duty, honor and happiness, should you concur with these views and principles, you will carry with you, in all the private or public walks of life, an influence most benignant and beatific. You will guide the less favored of mankind, because they cannot but look up to you. You will thus form their views, guide their aims and elicit their suffrage, on every question you advocate for the public interest, honor and happiness. And that you may do so--be blessed in blessing, be elevated in elevating, be honored in honoring--is not only the wish of your humble orator, but, doubtless, that of every one who takes any real interest in your true and real happiness, in that of your country and of the human race. [185]

[PLA 163-185]