ing and modes of attack, which they must en counter. Are you interested in advancing human knowledge, and can you think it a matter of indifference, whether men hold the grossest errors or the sublimest truths concerning the very highest subjects of speculation? You can hardly help feeling some degree of indignation and contempt toward those who condemned Galileo to the prisons of the Inquisition, for teaching the motion of the earth; or toward the men who calumniated and persecuted IIarvey, because he made known the circulation of the blood. You respect the good sense and courage of those, by whom these truths were first maintained, in opposition to surrounding ignorance and prejudice. But nobody will think it too much to say, that these truths are not to be compared in importance with those which relate to the character and moral government of God, and to the condition, duty, and destination of man. You are desirous of diffusing the blessings of instruction through the community, of carrying knowledge and light to the poor man's dwelling. Is there any knowledge which will be of such value to him as the knowledge of his duty and his hopes; as that knowledge which will make him a good citizen, which will reconcile him to his situation, and which may, at the same time, raise him to an essential equality with the most favored of mankind? You are interested, generally, in the well-being of your fellow-men; you are ready to afford your aid to those who would lessen the amount of abuses and oppressions, of crimes and miseries, which prey upon society; you admire the intense energy of moral feeling which carried Howard, as a minister of good, wherever human wretchedness was to be found; you know how to estimate the patient, untired, unyielding efforts of those who have almost succeeded in relieving the civilized world from the curse and the infamy of the slave-trade; you at least give your good wishes to those who would save mankind from the guilt and the horrors of war; you are interested in every plan of enlightened benevolence; - is it possi ble, then, that you can be uninterested in asserting the character of those truths which are the support of all the social virtues, and without the belief of which, true, self-denying, persevering benevolence would find no dwelling-place on earth? The belief of these truths has formed the characters of that class of men in society, on which the good order and happiness. of the community depend, and from which alone you can look for safe auxiliaries in any endeavor to reform the evils which are in the world, and to improve the human condition. This belief alone can give birth to that disinterested love of virtue, and of mankind, which pursues its object through good report and evil report, through opposition, and danger, and suffering; and has pursued it even into the arms of death. It is this belief which creates the well-disposed citizen, the real patriot, and the enlightened and practical philosopher. If you doubt the value of true religion, look to experience, and look to human nature. If you do not doubt it, can you fail to give your aid to those who would vindicate its character and extend its influence? |