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to accompany and aid you as counsellors. They are now assembled to witness, with affectionate and eager interest, your departure from the retreats of preparatory study, and to welcome you to the open field of manly exertion. They are to co-operate with you in its toils, to sustain you, as far as may be, in its perils,-to sympathize with you in good and in evil fortune. As you advance in life, new relations of a dearer and tenderer kind than any that you have yet formed await you. A home of your own creation,the true temple of happiness and virtue,-will receive you into its charmed circle, and bind you with new and delightful ties to your brother men. It is also your fortune to have your birth in a land of equal laws, and of wise and well-administered political institutions. Your country spreads over you her broad protecting shield, to guard you from all injustice or oppression at home or abroad; secures to you unimpaired the fruits of your industry; lays open to your enterprize, unfettered by monopoly or privilege, every branch of useful and honourable labour, and holds out to your noble ambition her highest places of trust and honour as the rewards of zealous and successful exertion in her service. In a still more elevated sphere, the All-Seeing Eye watches over you with a love surpassing that of friends, parents, or protectors, and will make all changes and chances work together for good for those who love him and keep his commandments.

It is, therefore, under happiest auspices, gentlemen and friends, that you this day go forth from the shades of academic retirement to the walks of busy life. You go forth, as well you may, with fresh and buoyant spirits. You look forward with hope and confidence to the future. To the eye of ingenuous youth the world appears in prospect like some enchanted landscape of perennial verdure, adorned with fairest roses, and glittering with the fresh dews of the morning.

"Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm,

In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes,

Youth at the prow, and Pleasure at the helm."

For you, gentlemen, may no clouds overspread this bright pro

spect! May no disappointment blast the promise of so fresh a spring! May the highest hopes and wishes of your friends be more than realized in your future course! May your country hereafter register your names among those of her worthy and wellbeloved children! And may the Great Being, in whose hands are the issues of all events, receive you, on the final day of account, to the rewards of good and faithful servants!

In executing the task which you have assigned me, I would gladly say something to enforce upon your minds the motives to upright and honourable conduct that result from the various considerations to which I have now alluded. Of these motives, the highest, the purest, and, if duly weighed, the most effective and powerful are those which are founded in religion. When we view the mind, not as a mere ephemeral form of matter, but as a substantial intelligence,-kindred in some sense, as we are permitted to say, to the High and Holy One that inhabiteth eternity,-every pleasure, care, and duty, presents itself under a new aspect; the ordinary temptations to vice lose their charm; the passing troubles of the world are divested of their sting; and a celestial day-spring illuminates the otherwise dark and dreary chaos of human existence. A full exposition of the nature of the religious motives to good conduct, would, however, be hardly appropriate to the present occasion, and still less so to the studies and pursuits of the present speaker. It belongs to the habitual duties of the sacred desk. The objects of our meeting are of a literary character, and naturally suggest for our reflections a theme of the same description, In accordance with this suggestion, and with a view, at the same time, to the high importance of religious influences on the minds of the young, I propose to offer, in the present address, a few remarks upon the literary and scientific character of the Scriptures. These ancient records that embody for us the religious spirit, which, we may hope, is not entirely foreign to other forms of faith, are venerable and interesting under every point of view. Their most important aspect is that under which they are considered as the symbols and assurances of divine truth; but regarded merely as literary monuments, they are not only the most ancient and curious, but I may safely say, the most extraordinary and valuable in the whole

compass of literature. "Independently of the divine origin of the Scriptures," says the accomplished and clear-headed Sir William Jones, "I have found in them more true wisdom,-more practical good sense,-a warmer benevolence, and a higher strain of thought and poetry than I have met with in any other work that I have perused, or indeed all other works put together." In this opinion I entirely concur. On a subject so extensive, you will, of course, not expect a complete and regular disquisition. I can only offer a few imperfect hints, which for the sake of some appearance of method, I will arrange under the three heads, into which the illustrious Bacon divides the whole field of Learning, Philosophy, Poetry, and History.

1. The Philosophy of the Scriptures is at once sublime and simple. It satisfies the highest aspirations of the highest minds, and it falls within the comprehension of the humblest inquirer, who honestly seeks to understand it. It embraces the material universe with its glorious and complicated system of

66 planets, suns, and adamantine spheres,

Wheeling unshaken through the void immense;"

the moral world, where the ruling spirits of good and evil carry on a perpetual warfare, with alternate, and apparently not unequal advantage; the great problems that have attracted, exercised, and defied the severest study of generation after generation :-it embraces them both with unshrinking grasp, and solves them with a single word. It carries home the sublime truth to the simple heart of the common believer with a clearness of conviction, that Socrates and Cicero in their happiest hours of inspiration never knew. This word of power that solves these mighty and momentous problems, that carries home this cheering conviction to the believing heart,―need I say to you, gentlemen,--is God !

When from the merely spontaneous exercise of our intellectual and physical powers, we first turn the mind inward to reflection upon its own nature, and outward to an inquiring contemplation of the objects around us, we find ourselves part and parcel of a vast system. We ask, with intense curiosity, with agonizing interest, "What am I? Whence came I? What means this glorious pano

rama of ocean, air, and earth that I see around me,-these splendid orbs that illuminate the day and night,-these lesser lights that twinkle and burn around them,--the seasons with their everchanging round? Who can tell me the secret of the being and working of this wondrous machinery? Did necessity fix it firmly, as it is, from all eternity? Has accident thrown it together to remain till some other accident shall reduce it to nothing, or did some masterworkman adapt it, with intelligent design, to some great and good end? If so, what means this dismal shade of evil that overshadows with its dim eclipse so large a portion of this good, and fair creation? What relation do I bear individually to the grand whole? Am I a mere ripple on the boundless ocean of being, swelling into life for a moment and then subsiding for ever, or is this curiously compacted frame the abode of a substantial, immortal mind, destined to exist hereafter through countless ages of happiness or misery ? ”

The greatest and wisest men of all ages and countries have undertaken to answer these questions in various ways, but generally with slender success. One tells us that the origin of all things is in water, another that it is in fire; a third places it in the earth, and a fourth in the air. Epicurus resolves the universe into primitive atoms, while Zeno fixes it firmly in the brazen bonds of necessity. In regard to the problem of the moral world opinions are equally various. In one system fate is the supreme arbiter, and chance in another. Some acknowledge the existence of gods, but place them apart in some remote celestial sphere, where they live on regardless of the stir and bustle of this lower world. A few, more wise than the rest, obtain some faint glimpse of the truth, of which, however, they avow that they feel no certain assurance. All is doubt, uncertainty, error. There is no absurdity so great, says Cicero, that some distinguished philosopher has not made it the basis of his theory. The labours of modern inquirers have not been attended with better results. They have terminated in reviving successively, one after anot r, the exploded follies of antiquity. One denies the existence of mind, and another that of matter, while a third doubts the reality of either. All,--I mean all whose researches have been conducted independently of Scripture,

deny the reality of moral distinctions, and reduce man to a level with the animals around him. Such are the noble and consolatory views which the wisdom of Europe proclaimed within our own day, through the mouths of her ablest and most judicious apostles, as the last results of the labours of all preceding ages upon the great problem of God, man, and the universe.

If we turn to the teachers of the various religions, the scene is, if possible, still less agreeable. Stocks and stones,-the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air,-the vilest reptiles,--nay, the very vegetable products that serve for daily food, are held up by the most learned and civilized nations as objects of reverence and arbiters of human fortune. Enlightened Egypt, in her brightest days of power, wisdom, and glory, enrolled the beetle and the onion on the list of her divinities. The mythology of Hindostan is, if possible, still more monstrous. Revolting or childish fables are presented as solutions of the great problem of the universe. The world reposes on the back of an elephant, and the elephant, again, upon a tortoise, which finally rests upon nothing. Even in the elegant creations of the brilliant fancy of Greece, we discern little more than the sports of infancy playing in wantonness with ideas, of the importance of which it is utterly unconscious. In its severer moods, the Greek mythology presents the most desolating views of the destiny and character of our race. Take, for example, the fable of Prometheus :-On the side of a rocky precipice of immeasurable height, a human being extends his giant length, writhing in agonies of extremest torture. Chains of iron attach him to the cliff, while a vulture of enormous size, hovering over him perpetually, tears his entrails, which are constantly renewed by the supernatural fiat of destiny. This is the Titan Prometheus, as described by the gloomy genius of Eschylus. His crime was, that he had given life to human figures of clay of his own formation, by touching them with fire which he had stolen from heaven. He is intended as an emblem of humanity. The moral is, that wretchedness is the lot of man, and that superiority of intellect, though employed for the most beneficial objects, only dooms its possessor to intenser misery. The wayward genius of Byron, who had chiefly sought for speculative truth in the sources to which I have alluded above was captivated by this heart-rending fable, which he

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