LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--

      We have selected for this occasion; connected, as it is, with the erection of a temple for Christian worship, the subject of Colleges. Colleges and churches go hand in hand in the progress of Christian civilization. Indeed, the number of colleges and churches in any community is the index and exponent of its Christian civilization and advancement. There is, it appears, designedly or undesignedly, some sort of a connection or relationship between them. The oldest college found in the annals of the world is thus associated. Seven hundred years before the Christian era there was a college in Jerusalem, intimately associated with religion. A prophetess made it her abode, in connection with other eminent personages. But we presume not to say what were its peculiarities or distinguishing characteristics. "Schools for the Prophets" there were in the days of the kings of Israel. Indeed, in the latitude of this word prophets, nothing is specific, save that they were teachers of the people, and, in some way, connected with the teaching of religion.

      But, as we can learn little from these colleges, we shall say little of them, and request your attention to those institutions called colleges amongst ourselves, and in the history, progress and philosophy of which we and our contemporaries are better informed and incomparably more interested.

      Colleges and schools of every rank are, or ought to be, founded on some great principle in human nature and in human society. They are presumed to have been, and of right ought to be, founded on a sound philosophy of man, in all his relations to society and the universe. Hence, the first question to be satisfactorily settled is, What is man? Lord, what is man? The greatest mystery to man is often man himself. It is yet with myriads of our race a litigated question, Is he a mere animated particle of this earth--a purely physical and animal being? If he be so, then his education or development should be [291] purely physical, differing little from that of a horse, a dog or an ox. These are gregarious animals, and, therefore, social in their nature. And, having been created for the use of man, they are only susceptible of such an education as fits them for his use and service. Apart from their relation to man, they need no education for themselves. They, indeed, according to those who deny the inspiration of the Bible, are superior to man in this respect,--that they have in themselves an instinctive and! infallible law, that safely conducts them through life, and with reference to their whole destiny. The gross materialists and skeptics, of all schools, degrade themselves below these animals, in denying the Bible. Man has not instinct sufficient to choose or to refuse food or medicine. But the brute creation have an infallible instinct, adequate to all that is necessary to their whole destiny. They are, moreover, as we have just remarked, susceptible of receiving such an education and training as amply fits them for the service of man. We have schools and teachers for them. The graduates in the schools of dogs, oxen and horses are much more valuable than uneducated and untrained dogs, oxen or horses. A well-educated ox, ass, horse or dog will command a much greater price, because much more valuable to man. If man, then, were a mere animal, his education, of course, should differ little from that of the dog, the horse or the ox. And, indeed, with shame be it spoken, we occasionally find some in human form not even so well educated as their dogs, oxen and horses.

      But is man himself a mere case of well-assorted instruments, with locomotive power? A mere beast of burden? A purely carnal machine? If so, in what consists his superiority to the beasts that perish? Is it that he is a biped, and more sagacious than the beasts of the field--more imitative than a monkey or an ape? Then, indeed, his education is a very simple affair, and soon consummated. But who so contemplates man? Shall we admit such a fallen creature into the circles of humanity? We need not argue such a question in the nineteenth century and in the presence of American citizens.

      We venture to assume, in your presence, that man was not originally a sensitive-plant, detached from its stem by the balmy Zephyrus, breathing on Flora, metamorphosing its roots into limbs and its branches into arms, and then sending him adrift in quest of new adventures.

      Nor shall we poetically imagine that blind dame Nature tried her youthful hand on the crustacea of old ocean and Terra, produced a lobster and graduated it up to man. We will rather acquiesce with Moses, in his record of the six days' operations of the Self-Existent Jehovah, whose omnipotent volition spread out the heavens like a [292] curtain, and founded the earth upon nothing extraneous of his own fiat; guided by nothing but his own wisdom and benevolence; radiating from himself countless systems of suns and planets moving in the boundless fields of space, and in the infinite harmonies of his own unbounded goodness. Such an origin is infinitely more honorable to man than would be all the fictions of all the poets of six thousand years. Here, then, we fix our Jacob-staff, in commencing the survey of the grand plantation of our common humanity.

      Lord, what is man? Thine own offspring, reared out of the dust of earth, inspired with a portion of thine own spirit, and endowed with an intellectual and a moral as well as with an animal nature. Man, then, is, in one sense, a triune personality. In his constitution, like that of the Temple, there is an outer court, a holy place and a most holy. Such is his specific and essential constitution and embodiment. In the more plain and less figurative style of an apostle, he has a body, a soul and a spirit. No two of these are identical. His body is an animal body of the most admirable structure and the most exquisite finish and adornings. It is a splendid edifice, a beautiful building of God, an exquisite habitation for an ethereal guest called the soul, or animal life, which is itself but the envelope of a spirit that communes with the finite and the infinite in the universe.

      Greeks, Romans, Anglicans and Americans, have three distinct names for the three constituents of the triune man. The Greeks had their soma, their pseuchee and their pneuma. The Romans had their corpus, their anima and their spiritus. The English have their body, their soul and their spirit. No two of these three are identical, or equivalent, either in Greek, Roman or English. In the freedom or licentiousness of our language, we often confound the soul and the spirit. But this is as ungrammatical as it is unphilosophical. In the New Testament the word pneuma occurs some three hundred and eighty times, and is never once translated soul--always spirit or ghost. The word pseuchee occurs one hundred and fifty times, and is never once translated spirit, but always soul or life. The horse and the dog--indeed, every creature possessing life, from the mammoth to the veriest animalcule--has an anima, a soul or a life, but not one of these has a pneuma, a spirit or a guest. This word is always used when speaking of the Holy Spirit--sometimes Holy Guest or Ghost. Physicology and pneumatology are, and ought to be, distinct sciences.

      From these data we ascend gradatim to the conception of the dignity and glory of man. Man is not a mere vegetable, a mere animal, nor even a mere intellectual being. In his present condition he is truly [293] an animal, an intellectual and a moral being, and, consequently, he is a microcosm, an epitome of the universe, having within himself the elements of the earth and of the heavens--something in common with God, with angels, and with the brutes that perish. There is therefore a divinity stirring within him; for as humanity and divinity were united, not mixed, but embodied in one personality, in the person of Adam the second, so by the Divine Spirit shall our ransomed humanity be changed into the image and likeness of the glorified Adam, who is equally the son of Adam and the Son of God, and constituted an heir of the whole empire of creation.

      Such being the true data of man, we have made some progress in eliminating the true theory of his education or development. We have neither amplified the field nor exaggerated the nature of the soil to be cultivated by all the sciences of the schools, and by all the arts of the highest Christian civilization.

      Man is not merely his own body, his own soul, or his own spirit. These three comprehend neither more nor less than the legitimate meaning of the great pronominal I, myself. The pronoun I is purely a personal pronoun, indicative of all that constitutes the thinking, feeling, willing, acting personality, and not any one portion of it. True, indeed, grammarians give it gender, number and case. But in this they philosophically err. I has no gender, number or case. Other words, such as me and mine, have been associated with it, and substituted for it, in certain relations, after the example of the Greeks and the Romans. But I, as well as ego, and all its ancient and venerable ancestry, only indicate the perplexity of grammarians in attempting to subject this singular-plural and plural-singular to grammatical and philosophical proprieties. All our august personages betake themselves for refuge to the plural we. Hence kings, potentates and all sovereigns shelter their majesties under a singular-plural, and say, we enact, ordain and establish.

      The grandeur of the fact is this, that God, after whose image man was created, is singular and plural; singular in one ineffable nature, and plural in three personalities--all of which is adumbrated in man's three natures in one personality. His spirit, soul and body are, therefore, three distinct entities; constituting one thinking, willing, acting, sublime personality, the brightest image of that Divinity whose awful fiat gave birth and being to this stupendous universe.

      Grammar and philosophy have no greater difficulty to compromise than in this case. The reason is obvious: grammar is arbitrary and tyrannical, while philosophy is rational and consistent. I is, therefore, [294] in our language, a mere representative of one personality--of one body, soul and spirit, acting in one corporation, constituting one substantive pronoun and one human person.

      This human person, this pronominal I, may live, and move, and have its proper being and individuality in ten bodies during seventy years. Still, it is the same person inhabiting ten different houses. It may in some of these houses lose a room and some of its furniture--an arm or a limb, for example, or both arms and limbs--and yet the personal identity, and the consciousness of this thinking, willing, acting I myself, remain immutably the same.

      But there is, most happily, another fact. This spirit, or inner man, while residing in one house of two stories, is not necessarily one immutable character. It is impressible and transformable by intellectual, moral and spiritual considerations, arguments or motives. Hence a new spirit, or tenant, is conceivable and possible in an old house.

      It is, indeed, propounded as a scriptural fact. But it is new only in its character, not in its essence. The spirit of a man is a positive entity, and not a mere mode of being--a new temper or a new feeling; more or less, indeed, depending upon, and affording impressions ab extra--by its associations with other persons and their respective characters. Thus, even in one and the same body, a pure, holy and happy spirit may become a very monster in all that defiles and degrades human nature. And hence the value and importance of a rational and moral education, and of proper teachers and associates, "since as the twig is bent the tree's inclined."

      Thus we are led to conceive of the proper elements that enter into the constituency of a philosophical, rational and moral education.

      A school is well defined to be "any establishment in which persons are instructed in arts, science, languages, or in any species of learning; and occasionally it merely indicates the pupils assembled for instruction." It may be a family school, an infant school, a common school, an academy, a college, or a university. But, of whatever character its subjects or its objects, its aim should be the physical, the intellectual, the moral and the religious development and culture of the pupils that compose it. Such are the views now generally entertained by all writers of reputation, in the Old World and in the New. Such, certainly, are our views, long since reported, frequently repeated, and now reiterated in the full assurance of understanding, as truly in harmony with the wants of human nature and of human society.

      There are in this view of the subject two capital ideas. The first is development, the second is culture. The first supposes that in a human [295] being there are certain organs, powers or capacities, that may be expanded, developed and corroborated to a certain maximum or extent, which will give to the subject the entire use of himself in respect to himself and to his species.

      1. Physical education takes under its special surveillance and instruction the physical constitution, in all its characteristics, and sets about the scientific development and corroboration of all its organs, especially its head, heart, lungs, stomach and viscera, essential to vital action, good health and growth. It directs the character and the extent of the self-denial and physical exercise essential to these ends, with the necessary attention to food and raiment.

      2. Intellectual education, after giving an analysis of the intellectual powers--perception, memory, reflection, reason, imagination, abstraction--proceeds to the exercise and employment of them in the acquisition and communication of knowledge, including grammar, logic, rhetoric, oratory, taste, discussion and debate.

      3. Moral culture is not the mere study of moral science. It begins with an analysis of the moral powers--the conscience, the affections, the passions, and the continual exercise of them in all the relations of life--in truthfulness, justice, horror, benevolence, humanity and mercy.

      4. Religious development. Man being the subject of religious and moral obligations, he must be made to perceive, realize and acknowledge these obligations in every step of his progress in all the relations of life. The only text-book for this study and science is the Bible. It is, therefore, and ought of right to be, more or less the study of every day in every seminary of learning. It is the only proper text-book for these most essential and important of all the sciences and studies of life. Its Author is also the Author of man. He who formed the human eye formed it for the light of the sun, or formed the light of the sun with a reference to it. He who formed the sun and the human eye for each other, so far as vision is concerned, formed, in like manner, both the Bible and man. But the Bible came into being after man lost Paradise and had fallen into a preternatural state, and therefore it is as admirably adapted to man, as he now is, as the laws of nature were to man as he was at the beginning.

      The Bible is, therefore, the only infallible text-book of the true science of man. No mere man, nor all humanity, could have been the author of it. None but the Author and Creator of man could furnish the textbook of man in all his relations to matter and spirit; to things past, present and to come. Without it no man ever was, is now, or will hereafter be educated. Mankind in all ages, and under all [296] circumstances, have felt and acknowledged, in word and deed, the indispensable need of religion in order both to education and to nationality. Hence the mythologies of the barbarous tribes of earth in all the eras of humanity. Gods, altars, priests, sacrifices and worship, are both as ancient and universal as human kind. There cannot be found in universal history a people without something called religion. A man without reason is not a man, though he may wear the outward form and livery of man; and reason without religion is both halt and blind, although it may be, by the simpleton, presumed to be perfect and complete.

      In all nations, as well as in our own, there is a by law established religion. "What?" say some American citizens: "have we a by law established religion?" Yes, fellow-citizens, we have a by law established religion. I do not affirm that we have a by law established Jewish, Christian or Pagan religion, in the specific terms of a Jewish, a Christian, a Roman or an English hierarchy. Still, we have a by law established religion; not, indeed, in any specific form of worship, but in the rights of conscience, in the administration of oaths, or appeals to God, on the part of all the organs of civil government, from the President of the United States down to a common magistrate, and in the administration of oaths to all witnesses, according to the conscience. In these we have a solemn recognition of the being and perfections of God, of a day of judgment, of future and eternal rewards and punishments. We have, moreover, a still more specific recognition, though not an exclusive recognition, of the Christian religion, in the observance of the ordinances of Christian worship, in the cessation of all secular and legal business on the "Christian Sabbath," or Lord's day, in the recognition of every citizen's right to exemption from all civil interference on that day, and in a perfect freedom to worship God according to the dictates of every citizen's own conscience.

      Indeed, we might go further, and affirm that the Christian religion, but no sectarian form of it, is by law established and recognized in the institution of marriage, in the inhibitions of bigamy, adultery, fornication and incest. The Jew and the Gentile are alike protected in the practice and enjoyment of all the religious dictates of their consciences towards God, without any interference or infraction of these rights and dictates of conscience on the part of their fellow-citizens. This is a very broad and rational provision in behalf of religion--of all religious faith and worship. No Jew nor Greek, no Romanist nor Protestant, can in reason or in justice demur at our national religious ordinances [297] and constitutional provisions on the subject of religion in general, or of any special form of religion in particular.

      Religion, in its essence and spirit, can never be compulsory, as in the Papal States and territories; but it can, and of political right and immunity ought to, be left to the free choice and spontaneous action of every human being. And such is its exact position in these United States; and it is as it ought to be, the pre-eminent source and fountain of all our national prosperity, dignity, honor and happiness. And may it ever be the boast and the glory of our common country that every citizen, and even every alien, may freely worship Almighty God according to the last and the best dictate of his reason, his conscience and his affections! We regard this not as an act of mercy, but as an act of justice, not to ourselves only, but to our species--to our common humanity.

      As Cowper sung of England's mercy, so say we of American justice--

      The genius and spirit of our national institutions, it is fairly presumed, and as all our experience demonstrates, must more or less pervade, indeed, permeate, all the institutions of our country, whether religious, moral or educational. We need in this case no legislative act of, conformity. It is a law of our species--an order, a decree of Heaven. A theology necessarily terminates in a theocracy; a christology, in a christocracy; an oligarchy, in an absolute monarchy; a universal freedom of speech and action, in a fierce or in a tame democracy. There is a centre in every circle, and a central idea in every system in heaven and on earth. All the rest are either chemical or philosophical, intellectual or moral, religious or political, conglomeration. The central idea gives character, form and spirit to every system, whether ontological or deontological, material or spiritual.

      Absolutism pervading the state, it will pervade the church, the synagogue, the school and the family. Democracy pervading the state, it will pervade every human, and sometimes every Divine, institution in it. Hence a political despotism terminates in Paganism or Popery. Is there a Jupiter Tonans in the state? There will be a Pope--a spiritual Jupiter Tonans--in the church. Is there an aristocracy in the state? There will be an aristocracy in the church. Is there democracy in the state? There will be democracy in the church. Is there anarchy in the state? There will be anarchy in [298] the church. Hence Protestantism and Liberty are like the Siamese twins--united in life and united in death.

      A papacy is an exotic in a land of Protestantism, and can never thrive in such a soil. It, therefore, largely imports guano.

      Protestantism, under an absolute despotism, if permitted to live at all, lives only in a hot-bed. Thus, in America, we have, as yet, common schools; but how long we shall have them, is already a question mooted by foreign Romanists. Odious they, indeed, are, and always have been, to the taste of the whole Roman See; yet every true American citizen regards them as the palladium of our free government and the true nurse and cradle of both civil and ecclesiastic liberty. Without them, indeed, we would have either a tyrannical oligarchy, an absolute autocracy, or a fierce democracy, in both church and state.

      All the centres in the universe, like our sun, are both attractive and radiating. Moons are only reflectors. In all Papal countries, the Pope is symbolically the sun; the king is only the moon. There was, indeed, one Joshua, a Hebrew, who bade both sun and moon to stand still, and they immediately obeyed him. We once had an American Joshua, who bade the politico-ecclesiastic sun and moon to stand still, and they, too, obeyed him. But our Joshua sleeps in Mount Vernon, and all the thunders of earth cannot wake him. He has, indeed, no successor,--because God creates nothing in vain. We shall, therefore, cherish the hope that we may never need another. But should we, by neglect of duty, apostatize from our religious and political faith, and superinduce a second reign of darkness, ignorance and terror, we might then need another Joshua. I fear that in that case our prayers would not be heard. For should we, or our children, for so many benefits received, crouch to such arrogance, and meanly and ungratefully sacrifice these principles and birthrights for a mess of pottage, at the shrine of ignorance, superstition and despotism--

our country might expect from heaven a second Alaric rather than a second Washington.

      Would we, then, have our posterity to escape such a calamity and mortification, let us ever plead the cause, and be the efficient aiders and abettors, not only of universal education, but of a universal education founded on the Bible, the charter of all earthly blessings, as well as of eternal life to man.

      No man ever saw himself, ever knew himself, who has not stood [299] before this mirror. It is as much a revelation of man to himself, as of God to man. A man who has never heard God speak to his soul is not only ignorant of his proper self, but also of his own species. He alone can be a true philanthropist who contemplates himself in all his relations to the universe, as developed in the Holy Bible. He must listen to the angelic anthem sung when Adam rose out of dust at the bidding of the Almighty. He must hear the morning stars sing the song of creation, when, in one grand concert, all the sons of God shouted for joy, especially when light from darkness issued, and man from earth arose, the diapason of earth's first anthem pealing through heaven's imperial dome. With these seraphic echoes and emotions in our souls, let us listen to the wail of suffering humanity, under the heartless, remorseless tyranny of ignorance and superstition which would debar even the Book of Life from the schools of childhood, youth and manhood, as if it designed to make man the tame and easy prey of a foul and mercenary man-worship.

      But while we hold in superlative importance to our country and the church the common school, the Sunday-school, the infant-school--and, after these, the academies and colleges of our country--the grave question rises, How are these schools to be supplied with teachers? We at once answer, just as the little springs and rivulets in our fields and gardens, the creeks, the rivers, the lakes and the seas, are supplied with water. They are, one and all, supplied by the great oceans of earth.

      The sun, that great fountain of all heaven's temporal blessings to man, plays off his artillery of calorific rays upon the waves of the widespread ocean of earth, giving life, activity and wings to its invisible particles, uplifting them towards heaven, and placing them in the swaddling-bands of the atmosphere. They are nursed into fog; then, misting along the mountain-tops, they launch into the bosom of some congenial realm of air, and, coalescing, form large companies or schools of clouds. Soon a war of elements begins. The electric spark gleams into life, coruscating amidst these vapors, until, condensed by a change of temperature, in the strife of elements, they fall upon the fields and gardens, pouring their contents into the reins and arteries of earth. Hence the springs, the brooks and the rivers of earth are supplied; thus replenishing all nature with its water of life, which makes the hills and valleys glad, Carmel and Sharon to rejoice, the wilderness and the solitary place to rejoice and blossom in the fulness of their joy. And all this in answer to the cries of earth, parched and dry, invoking in poetic strains-- [300]

      Thus the oceans and seas furnish every drop that irrigates our fields and gardens, cools the air, and warms our hearts with food and gladness. Such, analogically, are our colleges--our great seminaries and fountains of learning. They are the sources whence issue the science and the literature, the professors and the teachers, that create the academies, the schools and the seminaries of every grade, furnishing teachers for all the schools in Christendom.

      But A, B and C respond, We are teachers, male and female teachers, and we never were within the walls of a college. True; often, alas! too true.

      And whence derived you your learning and science? From books. And whence the books? Originally, doubtless, from those who were nurtured and cherished in colleges. Colleges furnish the garniture and the means by which you, male and female teachers, were your selves furnished and fitted for the work. As well assume that the early and the latter rain, "the green-growing showers" that fall on your fields, and the diamond dew-drops that bespangle the flower-buds of your gardens, originated not in the ocean, but in the balmy breezes that bear them from the lakes or rivers or seas of the earth. Or as well assume that the calorific rays that create the heat of summer originate not in the sun, but are radiated from the earth.

      Men, and not brick and mortar, make colleges, and these colleges make men. These men make books, and these books make the living world in which we individually live, and move, and have our being. How all-important, then, that our colleges should understand and teach the true philosophy of man! They create the men that furnish the teachers of men--the men that fill the pulpit, the legislative halls, the senators, the judges and the governors of the earth. Do we expect to fill these high stations by merely voting or praying for men? Or shall we choose empirics, charlatans, mountebanks, and every pretender to eminent claims upon the suffrages of the people? Forbid it, reason, conscience, and Heaven!

      But, as radical and most fundamental of all, we must have the true theory of education--a theory grounded in the true philosophy of man--before we can devise any system of public or private education in harmony with the genius of humanity and the wants of society. And here, again, we call attention to the importance of having the true [301] science or theory of man before we can devise a system of instruction in accordance with the wants of the individual and of society. It has become a trite saying, that the whole man--body, soul and spirit--must be developed and educated up to the entire capacity of his nature, and with especial reference to his present, future and eternal destiny.

      And at this stand-point we must congratulate ourselves that we live not merely, in an age of progress, but that we have progressed so far as to ascertain from the analytic and synthetic science of the past and the present age, that man has a purely physical, a purely intellectual and a purely moral nature, in his own proper personality. And also that these three are of necessity to be subjects of man's education from the cradle to the grave. Of these now conceded points, we shall not speak particularly. Nor need we dilate upon the physical department of our constitution, nor, indeed, upon the intellectual. Light, no doubt, has greatly increased, even beyond our practice, upon these two departments of human culture and of the human constitution. The third, usually called the moral, is, by some, made to include the religious nature and constitution of man. We cannot dissect the inward as we do the outward man. The inner man is not made of materials separable and distributable, as are the bones, the muscles, the arteries and the veins of the outer man. Nor can we separate the constituents of the intellectual man. We can, indeed, learnedly speak of perception, reason, judgment, memory, imagination; but we cannot separate and discriminate the lines within which they operate and cooperate. And still more subtle the moral man, and too remote from all personal analysis. Indeed, the phrase or term "moral constitution" is more current and popular than appreciable by most thinkers and speakers--two classes of men very dissimilar in certain attributes of character.

      Moral, moral action, moral evidence, moral sense, &c., show how vague and indefinite the term has become. We have, in our dictionaries, columns of definitions of this term and all its family, derived from the Roman mos, moris,--a custom. Morals, with the Romans, formerly indicated the customs, or the established usages, of society, good and bad. But we choose to define it more legally and evangelically, from the second table, or what has, in Christendom, been called "the moral law"--the ten commandments.

      But this is somewhat indefinite, because the ten precepts contain alike the elements of religion and morality. The last six are, however, scripturally, philosophically and formally, the moral law. Hence our duties to man, to each and every individual, is the true, the legal and [302] the evangelical import of the term. The moral sense or conscience is that power which, when properly educated, dictates and appreciates the character of actions, as they affect and bear upon the persons, the property and the character of our neighbors and fellow-citizens. Religion sanctions these, but religion properly indicates our duties to God. Hence the law of the ten commandments is the summary outline of all our duties to God and to our fellow-man.

      We, therefore, prefer to use the word moral, in reference to our proper theme, as indicative of our relations to God and man, merely because the term in reference to education is so used; and especially as the authority that sanctions the purely moral code must be regarded as alike sanctioning all the principles of religion and morality.

      By moral culture or education, we, therefore, include the proper development and direction of our moral constitution, both as respects our duties to God and to man. Both are not only within the legitimate precincts of moral education, but indispensable elements of it; for all that sanctions the six precepts of the moral code is contained and found in the four precepts of the religious code, and of these the first precept is the only one in its nature and relation absolutely religious. Hence, the greatest philosopher that ever lived said that all religion and all morality are contained in two precepts--purely, abstractly and philosophically sublime and explicit. The authority that sanctions both is asserted and clearly stated in the sublime preamble, "I AM THE LORD THY GOD:" "therefore." This is a nonesuch therefore. It has no parallel in all the tomes of earth. Without the recognition of its preamble or premises, neither religion nor morality can be studied, taught or learned. Hence our grand corollary--that moral culture, or moral education, cannot be communicated or received except upon and after the admission and acknowledgment of this superlatively sublime and ineffably grand oracle. Without it, you may create a popular gentleman, or a fashionable philosopher, at the meridian of London, Paris or Washington. But without it, you cannot create a man, in all the nobility, moral grandeur and sublimity of his origin, relations and destiny in God's universe. A college or a school, therefore, adapted to the genius of human nature--to man as he is, and as he must hereafter be--cannot be found in Christendom, in the absence of a moral education founded upon the Bible, and the Bible alone, without the admixture of human speculations, or of science falsely so called.

      But, essential as religion is, both to the school and to the state, the preternatural and unfortunate condition of Christendom is such as to [303] inhibit the introduction of any form of Christianity into colleges and seminaries of learning. And the masses of religionists of every school are so sensitive on this subject as to prefer a college or a school wholly disconnected with any form of religious instruction, unless it should happen to be of their own peculiar type. Many prefer to banish the Bible from the college or the school, rather than to jeopard the spiritual fortunes of a child or a ward through the gloss or the theory of a teacher, that might possibly conflict with that class of opinions which they have already pronounced to be orthodox and Divine. The consequence is, that we must either have no college with the Bible in it as a text-book, or as many colleges as there are sects in any given state or territory. Either of these is a misfortune not easily to be exaggerated. The question of this age is, How is this difficulty to be met and overcome?

      That it should be met and overcome, no reflecting mind can reasonably doubt. A bald infidelity or a gross polytheism must be the necessary consequence, in the absence of Bible studies. The Greek and Roman classics, and the Pantheon, are essential constituents of a college education. Not only the infidel Gibbon and Hume, but the Westminster Review, and many similar infidel works, are placed on the shelves of college libraries, and largely read by many of the students of every institution. And what antidote have we for all this poison, made pleasant and agreeable by all the associations of a brilliant style and a luxuriant imagery? None whatever, in college studies, if the Bible and its evidences are excluded.

      To substitute for it the cold and lifeless formulae of a metaphysical creed, the shade of departed truth, or the cut-and-dry question and answer of some quaint spectacle-bestridden orthodoxy, is not Peter robbing Paul, nor Paul Peter, but some cynical Diogenes torturing both. What a compliment to the towering genius of our American youth, to put into their hands the yet litigated opinions of the hoary rabbis of far-distant centuries, compelling them, ferule in hand, to take sides with those holding the dogmata of one school against those holding the dogmata of another! Such is, indeed, the fact in Romandom, and in some portions too of our American Protestantdom. And shall we of the second half of the nineteenth century, citizens of these United States, countenance, aid and comfort such an irrational, discourteous and intolerant despotism over the minds of our own offspring?

      There is but one sovereign remedy for these educational difficulties and embarrassments. We Protestants have a Bible, as well as a literature; and that Bible, as well as the Greek and Roman Bible, [304] states certain prominent Christian facts, precepts and promises, so plainly, so perspicuously and so fully that all Christendom admits them. These facts, so fundamental, are, in the judgment of all, the capital items of the whole Christian institution. They, moreover, contain all in them that enters into the remedial system, and are the foundation of all Christian faith, hope and love. They are not only catholic in fact, but in import. All Christian ordinances are founded on them, and ordained to perpetuate them. These, with the moral evidences which sustain them, are so evident that no Christian denomination doubts or denies them. They, therefore, are common property, and, without any factitious aid, are competent to man's redemption. They are--1st. That Christ died for our sins; 2d. That he was buried; and, 3d. That he rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven. Some make of the last two distinct facts. But whether ascension is to be regarded as distinct from his resurrection, or as only exegetical of it, it matters not, so far as faith, hope and charity are concerned. Every man that believes that Christ died for our sins and rose again for our justification, so far as his faith is concerned, is said by the Holy Spirit to be saved.

      Since, then, these facts are admitted by every denomination of Christians, they may, with great propriety, in all their evidence and moral grandeur, be taught in every school and college in Christendom; and that, too, without any censure or exception taken by any Christian denomination, Greek, Roman or Protestant. That this can be done, is demonstrated by actual experiment on our part, and with the consent and concurrence of every denomination in our country. Further than this, public instruction, ex cathedra, in Christianity, is neither desirable nor expedient during a collegiate course of learning.

      The evidences of natural and revealed religion, by Paley and others, being already in use in almost every college in the Union, form a happy succedaneum in all respects but one; and this is, the daily reading of the inspired writings themselves, in the audience of the whole institution, with appropriate thanksgivings and invocations.

      Even our legislative assemblies, and both houses of Congress, in their united wisdom, deem it expedient to have some form of religious worship daily dispensed. True, it degenerates into a form, and, too often, into an unmeaning ceremony. Were I a member of any one of these branches of our Government, I would certainly urge the great propriety of prefacing these prayers by the reading of at least one chapter previous to these intercessions and thanksgivings. It would, I conceive, greatly tend to smooth the troubled waters of legislative [305] strife, could our lawmakers hear God speak to them before their orator addresses him.

      But there are other reasons why the Holy Scriptures should be read, daily and publicly read, in every school, from the nursery up to the university. The literature of the Bible is the most sublime literature in all the libraries of earth. Its history, too, is the only authentic history in the world of almost half its existence. The Jewish people and institutions antedate all the literature of Greece and Rome, those two great fountains of European and American literature. More than half the years of the world had passed into eternity before Hesiod or Homer sung, or Plato, Socrates or Aristotle reasoned on the works and ways of God or man. The Jewish Scriptures were finished before Aristotle, Socrates or Plato was born; and David sung in Hebrew verse before Hesiod or Homer saw the light of day.

      The biography and the autobiography of Bible saints--the achievements of its heroes--the wisdom of its sages--the sublimity of its bards--the eloquence of its orators--and the rational and heaven-inspired purity of its saints and martyrs, have commanded, and will, to the last generation of men, command, the admiration and the homage of the world. The Book of God spans the whole arch of time, emblazoned with its momentous deeds; and, leaning on an eternity past, it reposes upon an eternity to come. It is the only book of life, and the only charter of an immortality to come. And shall man, whose grand epic it is, withhold it from his fellow-man, or exclude it from the nurseries, the schools and the colleges in which are educated the generation most dear to us of all the generations of men--our sons and daughters, for whom we wish to live, and for whom we would dare to die? Forbid it, reason, conscience, and every tender sympathy of our hearts!

      We make no apology to any Christian people, and still less to those at whose instigation and at whose behest we now appear before you for thus uniting the Bible and the college. We only wish to wed the college and the Bible in the holy bands of a more indissoluble matrimony than any ever celebrated by priest or squire on the waters or the Mississippi. It is the charter of all our charters, the school of all our wisdom, the alpha and the omega of all the sciences and the knowledges of man as he was, as he is and as he shall hereafter and forever be.

      The learned professions of all civilized communities are the benefactions of our colleges. For their endowment and support, we receive in return, as items of profit, all the wisdom and eloquence that fill the legislative halls, the courts of justice, the synagogues and temples of [306] religion and virtue; all who learnedly minister to our wants and wishes in literature, in science, in physics and metaphysics, in the elegant and useful arts of our age and country. They furnish us not only with lawyers, physicians, ministers of religion, teachers of all the sciences and arts of the living age, but, directly or indirectly, they are the fountains of all the discoveries and improvements in our country and in the present civilized world.

      I know no earthly subject, no political question, so full of eloquence, so prolific in argument, and so powerful in its claims upon the patronage, the support, the liberality, of the age and of a civilized people, as these great fountains of civilization and blessings to ourselves, to our children and to the human race. All that lies between barbarism and the highest civilization, all that distinguishes the rude American Indian and the most polished citizen, the barbarian and the Christian, has been achieved by the learning, the science, the arts, the religion and the morals which colleges have nourished, cherished and imparted to the world.

      And yet, how strange it is, that of one hundred and twenty colleges in these United States, but one has a chair for Sacred History and Bible Literature! Of these one hundred and twenty, one has been in existence two hundred and eighteen years. Yes: Harvard University, in Massachusetts, was erected two hundred and eighteen years ago; William and Mary, in Virginia, and Yale College, in Connecticut, before the close of the seventeenth century.

      The clergy, too, were the prime movers in getting up these institutions. The thirteen colleges of New England annually graduate some five hundred students; not one of whom, during his whole collegiate course, ever heard, in college, a series of lectures on Bible history, Bible facts and Bible institutions.

      The Congregationalists and Presbyterians have been most active, most liberal and most enterprising in erecting colleges as well as theological schools. These denominations have, less or more, the control of full one-half the colleges in America. Methodists and Baptists have each but thirteen colleges. Episcopalians have only eight, and Romanists eleven. Yet, I repeat it, in all these there has never been delivered a course of lectures on the Pentateuch or the four Gospels. The acts of the Greeks and of the Romans are read and expounded with much learning and eloquence; but the acts of Jehovah, the acts of Jesus Christ and the acts of prophets and apostles have not been publicly read or developed in any one of them.

      The Pantheon, the hero gods and goddesses--their amours and [307] intrigues, their lusts and passions, their broils and battles--have been read, studied, lectured upon to satiety in most of these hundred and twenty colleges, as though they had been consecrated to Jupiter Tonans, to Mars, to Bacchus, to Venus and the harlotry of Pagan worship and Pagan lusts and passions.

      Yet we are a Christian people, of professedly noble, humane and philanthropic impulses--glorying in our Christian civilization, our exquisite tote, our good morals, our sound discretion and our benevolent impulses. Why is it, then, that the Bible is, if not by statute, yet, in fact, thus proscribed the halls of literature and science?

      The only apology is, that we fear the misdirection of the judgment, the conscience and the destiny of our children, by what is called sectarian or partisan influences; and, therefore, we must have sectarian institutions of learning, a catechism of doctrines ready made, or made to order, for the conscience and the affections of our sons and wards. Yet, strange to tell, in all the annals of conversion reported in the current century, I have not had the good fortune to find in any journal or record that one single person was either converted or sanctified by memorizing any catechism, heterodox or Orthodox, throughout all the states and territories in our modern Christendom, European and American.

      But we assume that if these formulas of speculative theology do not convert any one, they may save some from being entangled in the meshes of a false faith, a false doctrine or a false philosophy. This is a very questionable assumption; but, when granted, what does it mean? That mere ecclesiastic or magisterial authority alone, and not reason or investigation, is of any value or importance in giving direction to the understanding, the conscience and the heart of saint or sinner.

      In physics or in metaphysics, in philosophy or in science, there was no progress--no perceptible or valuable progress--for many centuries; during, indeed, the entire reign of the Aristoteleian philosophy and the tyranny of the mere logical and catechetical learning. Answers printed or written, for stereotyped questions, propounded in seminaries of learning--I care not what the subject or the science--never made a thinker, a scholar, a philosopher, or a great man, much less a saint or an heir of immortality.

      It is observation, comparison and deduction that make the man, the philosopher, the Christian. It is faith in the mysterious and sublime facts attested by prophets and apostles, obedience to supernatural and divine precepts, well authenticated, and a rational and well-grounded [308] hope in promises guaranteed and sustained by the divine veracity, that constitute a Christian.

      And do we need such auxiliaries to secure the special rights of our creeds and our denominations? So think the Romanists. We may not, indeed, go the length of the Cenobites and the Sarabites. We may not have the Benedictines, the Bernardines and Franciscans; but we may have the same mystic personages, under names quite as sacred and quite as superstitious, too, and not less offensive to humanity and good taste than the Jesuits or the Dominicans, with their Inquisition and its auto da fe.

      But we are Republicans and Protestants. Then let us act in harmony with the oracle of the great Chancellor Chillingworth--"The Bible, and the Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants." Let it be venerated as it superlatively merits, in every school, from the nursery to the university. Let its history of the past and its history of the future be daily studied and taught. Let its stupendous facts, its sublime precepts and its rich and ineffably transcendent promises command a daily portion of our time and of our studies. Let its deep and lofty philosophy and divine science imbue the minds of all our youth that receive instruction and garniture for our social system, and the high offices in the schools, the churches, the courts, the legislative halls and great councils of our august Republic. Let no sectarian dogmata, no ready-made and finished creed or formula of faith, be introduced into any school or into any literary or philosophic institution. Let the Lord himself teach in all our seminaries in his own words and in his own arguments, and let us fear not that he may impinge upon our shibboleths or weaken our earth-born sanctions of heaven descended truths. Bribe not the infant mind with the honeyed arguments and paltry tinsellings of your favorite dogmata, which neither their authors nor their advocates can demonstrate or make intelligible to any discreet and inquiring mind.

      He that made the eye of man, can he not see? He that made the ear, can he not hear? He that made the heart, does he not know how to awaken all its sympathies, to open all its fountains of feeling, to allure it to himself, that he may beatify and gladden it forever? Patronize, then, ladies and gentlemen, no church, no school, no seminary, that does not honor God's own Book, by giving it to all the people as God gave it to the human race.

      When God himself, by plenary inspiration, educated the Bible philosophers, orators and scribes, shall we embargo their tongues by imprisoning them in papal cells and inquisitorial dungeons, or by [309] inhibiting their being read in any or in every vernacular of the many-tongued earth? Let us rather elevate them to the highest schools and chairs in all our colleges, and risk all the consequences of permitting them to speak to us the Divine Oracles, under the plenary inspiration and guidance of the Spirit of wisdom and of utterance.

      Proscribe every creed and manual, every catechism and formula of sound doctrine, from all the theatres of education of every name and of every party, rather than the Bible; and fear not to permit God himself to be heard, in his own wisdom and eloquence, by every pupil and every student in the land, and leave the consequences to God.

      If ignorance be a reproach to any people, and if intelligence and righteousness exalt a nation to the highest rank and dignity amongst the nations of the earth, then, under such auspices, we, as a nation and people, shall stand among the nations of the earth great and happy and powerful--fair as a morning without clouds, "bright as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners." [310]

[PLA 291-310]