YOUNG GENTLEMEN:--

      A DISTINGUISHED poet has said, "The world's a stage, and all the men and women players." On such a stage, covered with so many actors, one might expect a splendid drama. And such indeed is the momentous drama of human life.

      Its acts are numerous and eventful. Its scenes are infinitely diversified and interesting. Its principal characters are few. They are the thunderbolts of war and the angels of peace. Its master-spirits are a fallen seraph and a risen Lord.

      On the proper performance of our respective parts eternal issues hang. Not empires nor worlds only, but the universe itself, is the prize for which we play. All ranks and orders of intelligence, celestial and terrestrial, are interested in the grand result. The galleries above and around us are filled with an assembly of spectators and auditors as immense as it is grand and imposing; while the pit beneath is crowded with classes of a very different character, but equally interested in the whole performance--in the development of the plot and in the awfully sublime and glorious catastrophe.

      The players are grouped in generations, making their respective debuts and exits in good keeping with the immense area of the stage, the length of the performance, the infinite number of actors engaged and the eternal hazards in debate. The antagonistic genii of the stage have so conducted the plot as to have every human being acting a part in subordination to their conflicting views, characters and designs. The drama is divided into seven nights of a thousand years each. Almost six of them are already past, and, as the consummation advances, the scenes become more interesting and the struggle more impetuous and absorbing.

      Few, very few, indeed, of the actors comprehend the part they [504] assume,because they do not apprehend the master-spirits nor their designs. The points at issue between them, the plot and the catastrophe, are not understood nor appreciated by one in a thousand of either the actors or the spectators. The multitude are not informed that some six thousand years ago a seraph, the most puissant of the peers of heaven, rebelled against God and formed a party against his government. This caused their expulsion from the court and palace of the King of Eternity, and secured their banishment to the desolate regions of unending night.

      Man, not long after, made his appearance in Eden, sitting under the shade of the Tree of Life, hard by a crystal stream of living water issuing from a hidden fountain near the throne of God. No sooner seen than envied, he became the object of the implacable hate of the lapsed archangel. His ruin was instantly plotted, undertaken, and as far accomplished as was possible under the first constitution of humanity. The Divine Father of man had, however, anticipated the prince of demons, bearing in his bosom deep concealed a counterplot of mercy and judgment. Soon after the first act of the mighty drama, the scheme was darkly intimated to man and put into the hands of the heir of the universe for its consummation. This illustrious person, during a succession of full forty centuries, conducted incog. this scheme of redemption in the persons of prophets, priests and kings, till in the fulness of time he appears in person upon the stage and commences the work of illumination, setting on foot schemes of remedial mercy profoundly wise yet divinely simple and intelligible. He associates with him all the liege angels of heaven, and enlists into his service all the truly noble of earth. He institutes a new form of government, and presents a splendid scheme of bringing light out of darkness, good out of evil, beauty from deformity, and immortality from the grave. The fallen seraph, under the name of Satan, the antagonist of the Great Philanthropist, brings upon the battle-ground of earth his confederate angels of darkness and revolt, and makes a strong party of worshippers. He embodies all the passions of men in the form of "gods many and lords many," and in their worship fills the earth with ignorance and idolatry, with lust and violence. Meanwhile his career is suddenly and unexpectedly arrested for a time by the catastrophe of a watery deluge, then by the confusion of human language and the abbreviation of human life.

      Numerous and various acts and scenes of this complicated and mysterious drama are made to pass before us, during a succession of many generations of actors. Many prominent characters, of much conspicuity and a long-enduring fame, appear upon the stage. After Noah and [505] Shem, Ham and Japheth, we see the great actors Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, with illustrious lines of Jewish prophets, priests and kings. Finally, the Incarnate Word and Oracle of Jehovah is solemnly announced by his harbinger as "the Light of the world," the High-Priest of the human race, and the Founder and King of a new order of society.

      He associates around him a school of evangelists and apostles, selects a host of prime ministers of light and sends them to the world on missions of mercy. He voluntarily falls into the hands of his enemies, who, as wickedly as foolishly, murder him, and thus seek to extirpate his party. But while among the dead, and in the dungeon of the grave, he grapples with the monster Death and gives him a fatal wound. He revives again, unbolts the mighty gates of the grave, and, like Samson of old imprisoned in Gaza, he carries upon his shoulders the gates and bars and pillars of the city of death, and upon Mount Olivet breaks them to atoms.

      Soon after he leaves the battle-ground and ascends to heaven. Being there received with great honor, he sends to earth a new and omnipotent agent, who, in the person of apostles, evangelists and teachers, takes the field, becomes the advocate of his cause, the true esprit du corps of his party, and more than copes with all the unseen agents that animate and inspire the opposition. He plants his standard in a hundred cities in less than one generation, and soon constrains the homage of his enemies, who, after a few acts of the drama, instigated by the evil spirit, make for him a Vicar Christ and a politico-ecclesiastic sanctuary. The "sable goddess from her ebon throne," in "rayless majesty," again extends her "leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world," and ignorance, superstition and error regain much of their former ascendancy. Under the mask of an humble sanctity, the stage is filled with new hosts of actors. From a cardinal down to a begging friar, the world is filled with spiritual wretches, seeking, Satan-like, whom they might devour. Meantime, skepticism, in the person of Leo X., perches itself on the altar of St. Peter. Literature revives. Luther is born. The Elector of Saxony espouses his cause. Princes smile upon him, kings wink at him, emperors do him homage. Many were willing to patronize the bright star of a new destiny, and the school-master rose in rank next to the priest.

      From that time to the present, Christian society has advanced in intelligence and civilization. And the nations that most revere the Bible and patronize the school-master have greatly transcended, in literature and science, in the arts of war and the arts of peace, in all the [506] elements of national greatness and national glory, those who, disparaging the school-master and the Bible, have done obeisance at the shrine of a Papal supremacy or offered incense to the genius of atheism or universal skepticism. Still, the work of illumination and human exaltation is but advancing to a higher standard. The conflicts between a true and false philosophy of God and man, of nature and society, of literature and science, have not yet wholly ceased. We are, indeed, but partially convinced (for the conviction is not yet deep and universal) that man is susceptible of a better education than he has hitherto enjoyed, and that it is the interest of the whole community that it be universal.

      What education is, and who should participate in it--whether it should be universal or partial--are indeed the peculiar themes of the present century. And, young gentleman, this leads me to address you specially on the part you should act in the pending controversy on the two great questions, What is education, and who should enjoy it?

      I need not now intimate to you what education is, nor need I even say to you that, in some reasonable portion, it ought to be secured to every child born within the confines of what we call our country. My present purpose is to call your attention to the obligations resting upon you to advocate this cause, and to suggest to you how you may do it most effectually.

      1. As to your obligation to plead this cause, be it observed that our obligations are sometimes both common and special. Every man is under obligation, so far as talent, opportunity and means are possessed, to use his influence to promote the happiness of the human race, and especially in that way most important to them and to him most ready and available.

      2. But especially are you under obligation to advocate just views of education, and to plead for its universal diffusion throughout society. You are to consider yourselves as charged with this duty from the special call given you in this dispensation of Divine Providence. You enter the drama of life under peculiar advantages--Americans by birth, citizens of the United States, the gifted sons of a gifted ancestry, a majority of you Christians, and all of you ought to be. You have yourselves laboriously passed through the whole course of a liberal education. You have read Grecian and Roman history, philosophy, poetry and eloquence, in the language of Greece and Rome. You have made the grand tour of the sciences, physical, intellectual and moral. You are well read in mathematics, pure and mixed, and in the mysteries of number and magnitude. Few of your juvenile contemporaries will enter the arena of public life with more advantages than you possess. [507] You ought, then, to occupy a large space in the pending conflicts, in the passing acts of the grand drama now in progress in this department. You may be captains not of hundreds only, but of thousands and of ten thousands; provided you can only comprehend your abilities and opportunities, and the virtue of making preparations to plead this cause ably and persuasively.

      But I must speak to you more definitely, and perhaps more perspicuously. I do not say, then, that you should all become authors of treatises on these subjects. Alas! this is an age too prolific of authors--of mushroom authors--of books with one idea, and of books without one idea., original or useful. We have many writers of very expansive minds, who can convert one drop of water into many gallons of vapor; who can from one grain of sense manufacture pounds of nonsense; who can transform some of the primers of our fathers into ponderous tomes of huge dimensions, in which a man may read a hundred pages without knowing what the author means. Gentlemen, I do not mean that you should punish the world or afflict your country with new books--short methods to be wise, easy ways to be learned, the art of making a fortune out of nothing, or of being great or good by wishing. Leave this task to the authors of panaceas, catholicons and specifics for all maladies--to the herbalists, the vaporists, the mineralists, who profess to heal all diseases and to remove all obstructions by one sovereign remedy. No, gentlemen: we mean nothing so superlatively ridiculous and absurd.

      Nor do we mean that you should all become professional teachers and school-masters; though I know of no calling in which you could act a more useful or honorable part, if a sense of duty or if your taste or inclination should incline you to it. Some of the greatest philosophers, statesmen, authors and public benefactors have been teachers of schools. Nor do I say that you are to study any particular profession or calling with a reference to the performance of this duty. But, whatever be your calling or profession or position in life, you are, one and all, to prepare yourselves to advocate this cause, to seek an influence and a power to promote this great object. You are to make yourselves able to expose the abuses of the word "education." You must show what is not education, and what is education--that it is not the art of reading, writing, and ciphering as far as Vulgar Fractions; that it is not the acquisition of languages, living or dead; that it is not the cultivation of the head, nor the activity of the hand, nor the improvement of any fraction or part of a human being. You are to show that the intellect, the conscience and the heart are to be educated, first at home, then in the [508] primary school, in the academy and in the college. On the development, training and corroboration of the physical, intellectual and moral constitution of man you must learn to speak clearly, forcibly, learnedly and convincingly.

      But, gentlemen, the great point to which I would now specially call your attention, and for which I have introduced this subject, is to show some reasons and to offer some suggestions why you ought to become advocates of universal common-school education. It is not to plead the cause of education in general terms, nor to plead for a liberal collegiate education. It is not to lift either your pen or your voice in favor of grand schemes of education for the aristocracy of the community, to induce them to patronize and build up great universities for the benefit of their sons and wards, the future patricians and nobles of our country. "Capital," as the saying is, "can take care of itself," and the patricians can take care of themselves and their families. Should they prefer wealth to education, and seek to build up banks rather than schools or colleges--if they prefer to make deposites of their superabundant wealth in lands and tenements and mortgages, rather than in the minds of their sons and daughters, permitting them to continue a dreary, uncultivated desert, to grow up a moral waste--you cannot help it, and you need not grieve for it. But there are the plebeians in all communities, and these are the great majority. Besides these, there is a third caste: these are the improvident, thriftless, dissipated tatterdemalions, whose wealth consists in an open cabin, that needs neither light nor ventilation, well filled with a numerous retinue of ragged, squalid, ill-fed and untaught children. These also furnish a respectable class--if not in rank, at least in number--in some of our States and Territories. Have these no claims upon our benevolence nor upon our selfishness? These are to be your neighbors--possibly your servants, the inmates of your families. To prevent the increase of such a caste, of such poverty and wretchedness, of such vice and misery, is an object worthy of every patriot, philanthropist and Christian in the land. Common-school education is an essential element of every scheme of human improvement, of social enjoyment, of true national prosperity, without which all other means will fall short of that great desideratum.

      Do you ask me how you are to contribute to such a consummation? I will make a few suggestions, and leave the subject to your own reflections.

      You are, first, to make yourselves well acquainted with the subject of common-school education--what it means, what it comprehends, and what stakes and interests the state has in it, the church has in it, what [509] interest yourselves have in it. When these subjects are well understood, you will not lack arguments to convince every thinking and intelligent man that it is the paramount interest and duty of every government and community to provide by law for the education of its entire population,--nay, that it is the first duty of every government to make provision for the practical literary and moral education of its youth, by levying and collecting imposts for this purpose, by setting on foot and supporting a vigorous and efficient system of common schools, commensurate with the means, the wants, the interests, of the whole community.

      To make such a system popular, you must make it appear that it is not only the public interest, but the individual interest of every man, that such an education be universal. You must show that it costs more to have an ignorant, immoral, thriftless and wretched state or community than to have such a one as that of Massachusetts, Connecticut, or Rhode Island. This you can do only by opening to the mind of the community the sources of national wealth, national greatness and national prosperity. You must be able to charge upon ignorance and vice all the poverty, wretchedness and misery in any country possessed of a soil and climate worthy of human residence.

      The statistics of every well-read political economist will furnish you with the data for such a development. You need only to assume that the natural wealth of a community is found in its territory, in its soil, its climate, its mineral, vegetable and animal products, and in its industry, skill and economy in discovering and applying these, or in importing them from other countries and manufacturing them for themselves and for others. You must prove--because it can be proved--and you must be able to prove it to the conviction of every man of good common sense, that the wealth of a community--its entire wealth, personal and real--is but the embodiment of its science, industry and virtue.

      The materials of all human wealth are in the earth and upon it, in the form of minerals, vegetables and animals. These three kingdoms contain it all. Science directs and art converts it all to human health, wealth and happiness. Of what use the metals without the smelter, the furnace, the crucible and the smith? Of what use the most precious gems without the lapidary?--the Egyptian and the Parian marble without the polisher, the mason and the sculptor? Of what use the forests of Lebanon, the cypress, the shittim, the olive and the mahogany, without the carpenter and his tools of art? Of what mercantile value are oceans without ships, the earth without the plough, the spade, the [510] scythe and the sickle? What avail the cotton, the wool, the flax and the silk without the machinist, his spindle and his loom?

      I speak not of the great achievements of science and learning, that have circumnavigated the earth and measured the heavens. I speak not of that science that foretells for ages the phenomena of suns, and comets, and stars. I speak not of that science that directs and manages the lightnings of heaven, that inscribes upon them, as they pass along, the events of the day, and that makes them angels of intelligence from city to city and from nation to nation. I speak not of those developments of science and art that have almost annihilated distance, that have converted nations into neighborhoods and placed us on terms of intimacy and daily intercommunication with those who a few years since were regarded as aliens and foreigners, never to be seen and seldom to be heard from. But I speak of those familiar sciences and arts of social life that make the wilderness and the solitary place glad and that cause deserts to rejoice and to blossom as the rose. I speak of that education and science that make the man, that clothe and feed him--that education and science, that furnish him with a house, a table, a chair and a bed--and those arts that minister to his daily comforts by supplying him with all the implements and instruments essential to the maintenance of the social state and the fruition of social life. And these, I affirm, he can neither possess nor enjoy without schools and colleges and the provisions necessary to their establishment and continuance.

      But this is only one reason why common schools and colleges should be publicly and liberally supported. Another reason is, the safety of the state. Education, in its proper import, not only enlightens the understanding, but forms the conscience and humanizes the heart of man. Some philanthropist has said, and very properly said, "The education required by the people is that which will give them the full command of every faculty, both of mind and body, which will call out their powers of observation and reflection, which will change mere creatures of impulse, prejudice and passion to thinking, living and reasoning men; an education that will lead to objects of pursuit and habits of conduct favorable to the happiness of each individual and of the community; an education that will multiply the means of moral enjoyment and diminish the temptations to vice and sensuality." Such an education is a better defence to a state than standing armies and puissant navies. "To govern men," said some writer, "there must be either soldiers or school-masters, camps and campaigns or schools and churches, the cartridge-box or the ballot-box." "Education," said Edmund Burke, [511] "is the cheap defence of nations." There is no defence, indeed, from vice, but in education. Neither wars nor prison-ships, neither jails nor workhouses, neither laws nor civil magistrates, can secure the person, the family or the fortune of a good man from the assaults of the malignant and the wicked. This is the province of education.

      A Bostonian plebeian said to a Bostonian patrician, who had but one soil, and who was very rich, whose annual tax for the common school in his own district was some one hundred and fifty-six dollars per annum, and who was complaining that, having but one son, and educating him at his own expense, he should be compelled by law to pay one hundred and fifty-six dollars per annum to educate his neighbors' children, "You must not complain, sir: you are as much bound to educate your neighbors' sons as you are to educate your own; for, "continued he, "your son inherits a large fortune, and his estate will be amongst our poor children: if then our sons are not educated, but immoral and wicked men, what guarantee can your son have for his life or property, living among them? None whatever. Your love for your son, then, had you no love for our sons, demands of you tat our sons be morally and religiously trained as well as yours, that he may enjoy the fortune and the life that he has derived from you." This speaks volumes; and, gentlemen, I hope you will make volumes out of it. No insurance of life or property will compare with that insurance of both from wicked men which a rational and moral education, universally dispensed, confers on every citizen. As a means of self-defence, then, it is the paramount duty of every community that taxes and imposts be laid upon the whole community to secure a good and an efficient system of common-school education. "Taxes," said a sensible gentleman to a rich old bachelor, "for the support of schools are like vapors which rise only to descend again, to beautify and fertilize the earth. Education is the great insurance-company which insures all other insurance-companies. No one is so high as not to need the education of the people as a safeguard. No one is so low as to be beneath its uplifting power. The safety of life and the security of property lie in the virtue and intelligence of the people; for what force has law, unless there is intelligence to perceive its justice, and virtue to which that law can appeal?"

      There yet remains a third topic of argument, which must not be omitted in every efficient appeal in favor of universal common-school education. Religion is founded upon learning so far as it is founded upon truth and the knowledge of truth. The Bible is a written communication from Heaven to man, and must be read in order to be understood, believed and obeyed. Of what use is the art of writing [512] or the art of printing without the art of reading? Why translate the Scriptures of truth into various languages, unless those amongst whom they are distributed are taught to read them? While it is possible--barely possible--to communicate a saving portion of religious knowledge to those who cannot read, certain it is that it is impossible to make any one, however gifted, master of any book, human or divine, which he cannot read. To withhold from myriads the means of reading and understanding the Book of God--the volume of human destiny--is the greatest sin of omission of duty to God and man that any community, acknowledging the Divine authority of that volume, can be guilty of. How it will answer for it, I presume not to say. But such is the melancholy fact.

      If, then, the wealth, the safety and the eternal happiness of a people depend upon education--and education depends upon schools, as we are all constrained to admit--is it not the paramount duty of every individual member of the community to advocate and, as efficiently as possible, to plead the cause of universal education? And is it not the first duty of a civilized Government to provide for and to carry out an adequate and an efficient system of common-school education at the public expense?

      I shall institute no investigation of matters which you, as political economists, can easily demonstrate--such as that it will, in the long run, cost very little more, to those who do educate their children, to have the blessing universally diffused, than it now does to educate their own families under the present system. I affirm the position, and will leave you to prove it hereafter. One of the darkest clouds that lowers over our good Old Dominion of Virginia is the melancholy fact that she has at this moment some one hundred and twenty thousand adults, male and female, and these not slaves, but white men and women, who, if their eternal destiny were staked on it, could not read one verse of Holy Writ.

      Gentlemen, it is with peculiar earnestness and solicitude that I now press this matter upon your consideration, because of the part you are soon to assume in the grand drama of human life as respects yourselves, and because of the bearings of the part you are to act upon the destinies of your country and the world. No man lives for himself alone. If we have some claims upon the world and something at stake in it, the world has its claims upon us and some interest in us. We can all in some degree make the world the better or the worse for our having lived in it. It is all-important, then, that we enter upon [513] the stage on the right side of every question affecting or involving the moral destinies of the world.

      If God began the creation by first creating light, we also should resemble him so far as to begin our career in life by diffusing light ourselves or by making some effort to have it diffused throughout society. The illuminators of the world are its greatest benefactors. The Great Philanthropist himself was THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD and the life of man, and those next to him were the prime ministers of light to the nations of the earth.

      Of all the trees in the forest, the olive is the most verdant, because its product is the oil that once illuminated the sanctuary of the Lord. They, too, are the most verdant in virtue and the most productive of good to the human race whose good fortune it is to resemble the sun in scattering light upon society, or who, if they cannot become radiating centres themselves, at least resemble the moon in reflecting upon others the light which they have themselves received from others.

      But, gentlemen, the sands of our hour-glass are almost exhausted, and I am admonished to remind you once more that the acts of the drama and the scenes in which you are to take a part are but of momentary continuance. More than the one-third of the average of your lives has already passed into eternity, and what portion of the remaining two-thirds may yet be yours is involved in impenetrable obscurity. The young generally calculate on long years of pleasure yet to come; but their extended visions of those happy years are often unexpectedly cut short by some sudden stroke of death. It has often been observed that parents have more frequently to weep over their children's tomb than their children have to carry them to that place where "lies the mouldering heap" of generations already gone, and that the land of silence is more densely peopled by the young than by the old.

      Of ten of your fellow-students who graduated where you now stand, but one short year ago, two have already passed into

And who of you now less expects such an event than they did then? I am sure you will all agree with me that if moral excellency and real worth of character and preparation for extensive usefulness could have secured to them a long and happy life, that life would have been theirs. But, alas! there is in this mysterious world of ours no guarantee of a single hour to youth, to beauty or to virtue, not even to the most [514] athletic frame. Man's life is forfeited as soon as he is born; and whether the respite allotted to him shall be one year or one hundred, is hidden in the deep counsels and sovereign will of Him to whom the issues of life and death belong. But, gentlemen, your incumbent duty it is to be prepared to live many years and to die at any hour. A life of usefulness is a life of wisdom, a life of happiness and the best preparation for a triumphant exit. While on the stage, then,

But, in acting that part which wisdom prompts and taste prefers, remember that your Alma Mater, your country and the world expect from you that on every proper occasion you will lift up your voice and give your support in favor of universal common-school education as the only solid basis of a nation's wealth, the only invincible palladium of its safety and the only enduring charter of its independence, prosperity and happiness. [515]

[PLA 504-515]