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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031451622 
 
PUBLIC ADDRESSES, 
 
 COLLEGIATE AM) POPULAR. 
 
 BY D. D. WHEDON. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 PUBLISHED BY JOHN P. JEWBTT & CO. 
 
 CUCTIiLiLin), OHIO: JETrXIT, PBOCIOB ft WOBIHINOION. 
 
 1852. 
 
EnUnd toeoiding to Act of CoagnM, in the jau 1862, hj 
 
 Jomi P. Jxmr & Cor, 
 
 In tin Olnk't OfflM of th« Diitrict Contt of tha VWriet of MuMChnNtki. 
 
 S08ION : 
 
 Ptlntad by Dakbili. asd Moou, 
 
 It SoTOBililn Street. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 COLLEaiATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 Inangonl Address, 9 
 
 Baccalaureate at the Wesleyan UniTersity, 21 
 
 Baccalaureate at the nnirecsity of Michigan, ■ ■ • • i 46 . 
 
 Phi Beta Kappa Address at the TTesleyan UniTersity, 61 
 
 Second Baccalaureate at the Unirersity of Michigan, 87 
 
 Candidate's Oration at Hamilton College, 99 
 
 POPULAR ADDRESSES. 
 
 Tribute to the Memory of President Fiik, 107 
 
 Psychology, 133 
 
 The Christian Citisen's Political Duties 153 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 To IHI 
 
 CraciiS OF PDPl 
 BT WB03X INTITAIIOH HOST OF THESE PIECES WISE 
 
 DEUTERED, 
 
 AT WHOSE BIQDEST BOUE OF IHSU tVERX BIHOIT 
 
 PUBLISHED, 
 
 THIS COLLECIMS IS XESPECTFOUT 
 
 DEDICATED. 
 
THE CLASSICS. 
 
 AN 
 
 INAUGUEAL ADDRESS, 
 
 AS 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT lANGUAGES AND LITERATURE, 
 
 IN THE WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY, 
 
 AtrairsT, I833, 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 Between the enunciated word upon the human lips and its 
 correspondent idea in the human mind there is no natural and no 
 necessary connection. Language, when viewed in the light of an 
 invention, must be considered as the application of sound to the 
 purposes of the conveyance of thought ; and so viewed, appears the 
 mightiest of all the achievements of combining intellect. 
 
 Considered, however, as a divine endowment, most strikingly 
 simple, indeed, is the providential arrangement. The intellect 
 might be stored with treasures of inestimable knowledge; the 
 imagination may be all gorgeous with vivid imagery ; the bosom 
 may throb with heaving emotions j yet, without this magic key to 
 unlock their sources, they must be suffocated in agonized dlence. 
 Man would be a virtual idiot, though endowed with the loftiest 
 capacity, and a real hermit, though surrounded with the densest 
 society. Yet, mark how simple the apparatus which Providence 
 has adjusted to the most exalted purposes. The whole process is 
 performed, the whole object is gained, by sound — vox et preterea 
 nihil. Within some prolific intellect awakes to new existence the 
 eloc[uent thought, seizes the buoyant sound, and flits, a living mes- 
 senger, a winged fancy, through liquid air, and descending upon 
 the congenial organ, and melting into other minds, becomes a thrill- 
 ing impulse to surrounding thousands. By an analogous process, 
 the word becomes associated with the written character, and the 
 mighty conception of one master spirit speeds a more than lightning 
 2 
 
10 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 flight, tbrougb space and time, to far distant continents and far 
 coming centuries. 
 
 Amidst the remains of antiquity there are two preeminent lan- 
 guages, that stand in unrivalled solitude, the magnificent deposi- 
 tories of departed genius. Other nations have indeed existed, and 
 they rise upon the imagination like shadows, vast and magnificent, 
 indeed, yet shadows still. But our own ancestral traditions are 
 scarce more familiar to our youthful ears, than the glorious recollec- 
 tion of Grrecian arts and Homan arms. Who has not been often and 
 eloquently told that they reared in noblest grace the architectural 
 column, they drew the most thrilling melody from the silent shell, 
 they gave the most speaking life to the sculptured marble ? Their 
 arts have been the amateur's raptured admiration, their eloquence 
 the scholar's model, their heroism the patriot's inspiration. Philos- 
 ophy first lectured in their lyceums, liberty thundered her undying 
 echoes in their forums, and poetry peopled their sceneries with; 
 forms of living ideal beauty, until every forest, dale, and hiU,_ 
 became classic and consecrated, and "not a mountain reared its 
 head unsung." 
 
 Objections are often, indeed, expressed against the study of the 
 productions of ancient genius. We frequently hear it complained 
 that they have a too little practical character, and too feebly avail 
 the young champion upon the arena, and amid the bustle of life's 
 arduous contest. Be it so. But might I suggest that excitement 
 is too much the characteristic of the age — that the youthful pulse 
 beats but too early, and too intensely for the maddening contest ; 
 that the vortex of the political whirl is but too absorbing, and fasci- 
 nates too frequently the ardent eye of young ambition ? May I ask, 
 should there not exist at least a class, less practical, if you please, 
 retired from the intoxication of the actjve aspirants, of gentler nerve 
 and milder tone, who love the classic grove and the academic hall, 
 and who there, in their sphere of quieter usefulness, might form an 
 allaying element amid the ferment and the whirl; who might 
 temper the rfwtempered pulsations of the young aspirant, rushing to 
 the contest, and before he engage?, form him to gentler tastes, and 
 ojen to him, in his own njia^, elements and traits which he would 
 
INAUQURAL ADDRESS. 11 
 
 never discover amid the rush of the multitude ; who might dispense 
 precepts of integrity, stigmatized, indeed, as impracticable, by the 
 hackneyed adept, yet so efifective as to guard his steps in many a 
 trying moment, and elevate his views in many a depressing hour ; 
 who might store his imagination with generous and lofty conceptions, 
 pronounced, indeed, romantic, by the common-place, yet go enno- 
 bling in effect as to exalt his nature, to render him the inspirer of 
 lofty conceptions, illustrious purposes, and animated action in other 
 minds ; who might, in fine, create within his soul an entire depart- 
 ment of intellectual resources, denounced as worthless, indeed, by 
 the utilitarian, and totally beyond the reach of the arithmetician's 
 figures and the economist's scales, which, though they may add not 
 one farthing to his estate, nor one inch to his successful career of 
 ambition, may constitute, in his own breast, a treasure which the 
 Indies could not buy, a moral elevation to which the presidential 
 chair could not exalt f 
 
 There are places and times in which it is emphatically the rage 
 for people to be practical ; — and practical they are with a vengeance. 
 This feeling is sometimes extended into an affectation of barbarism. 
 There is abroad a spirit of literary fanaticism, that under the pre- 
 tence of ultra-utilitarianism, would, we might think, with one 
 flourish of the torch of Omer, send the whole world of classic litera- 
 ture to join the ashes of the Alexandrian library. Making the five 
 senses supreme umpire, it estimates the value of any object by its 
 transmutability into consumable material. I, too, would claim to 
 be an advocate of utility ; but not of such a utility as they would 
 propose. True utility would prompt us ever to store the youthful 
 character with generous sentiments, refined taste, and varied acqui- 
 sitions. In so doing, we should communicate many a fact, and 
 many a principle, which the scholar might subsequently have, in 
 fact, no actual occasion to use ; which some would, therefore, pro- 
 nounce useless; but of which any liberally educated gentleman 
 would blush to be ignorant. A lawyer, or a minister, may never, 
 in the course of his professional life, have occasion to mention the 
 fact that Jupiter was the supreme deity of Grecian mythology ; and 
 yet who would not smile in contempt, if such a man, on such a sub- 
 
12 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 jeot, should expose his ignorance ? A countless multitude of facts, 
 whole departments of knowledge, may exist in the mind, which tho 
 possessor is never called to apply in practice, but the acquirement of 
 which has communicated a discipline to the powers, and the posses- 
 sion of which presents a richness and a range of thought that consti- 
 tute alone the completely accomplished character. True utility 
 would dictate that to such a model should be formed the educated 
 gentleman of our land, — a character where every nerve of the mind 
 has received its full training, every department of the intellect has 
 been so stored, and every weight of the character so equipoised, as to 
 present that object, on earth most supremely beautiful to the mental 
 eye, the finished model of complete intellectual symmetry. 
 
 It has been sometimes complained that the youthful mind should 
 so long be employed upon mere language — simply words — words — 
 words. But how much are mankind governed by these same words ! 
 The philosopher, who said that words were things, pronounced an 
 apothegm of far more wisdom than pretence. Things they are, and 
 powerful things too. To obtain the mastery of the energies of lan- 
 guage, to acquire the art by which the marshalled array of sentences 
 outrivals in gigantic effect the marshalled array of bayonets, to possess 
 the magic mystery of binding in the fascination of uttered syllables, 
 and ruling with more than imperial sway the' wilderness of free minds 
 — these are objects for which ambition believes that years of toil are a 
 cheap requisition. But what method better than classic study for 
 the acquirement of such a mastery of language ? Not only does 
 the student, by a knowledge of etymology, acquire new perceptions 
 of the force of a large part of his own language, but from the com- 
 parison with a far different structure than any which any modern 
 language affords, he acquires new ideas of the mechanism of lan- 
 guage, and new powers of collocation and arrangement. He is 
 obliged to pass from the circle of his own little vocabulary, and 
 range and ransack through the whole extent of lexicography, to 
 equip the idea which his author obliges him to clothe in words. 
 Hence every language lesson is, in effect, an effort at composition, 
 in which a given idea is propounded, for which the scholar is to sup- 
 ply the phraseology. The whole mass of English lies funded in his 
 
INADQUBAL ADDBESS. 13 
 
 lexicon, and upon this he is obliged successively to draw, until the 
 whole language has passed repeatedly through his use. During 
 this process he is obliged to examine, reject and select, to weigh well 
 the force of term by term, to catch the slightest shades of differ- 
 ence, and to discriminate with critical accuracy the least palpable 
 niceties of idea. It is difficult indeed to imagine what process can 
 more effectively discipline the mind to a oepious command of lan- 
 guage, or that any mind could pass through such a process without 
 feeling, within itself, the new acquirement of such a mastery. 
 
 Frequent reference is made to those who without such training 
 heve become eminent authors, in disproof of its use and necessity. 
 A Franklin, perhaps, or a Shakspeare, found no such training neces- 
 sary, while hundreds have passed through this process without its 
 bestowing upon them any Superior power of eloquence. And do 
 these extraordinary instances of less educated greatness disprove 
 the necessity of education ? Dulness may east,- which no polishing 
 can brighten ; while on the other hand, brilliancy may shine, which 
 no deficiency of refining can obscure. If an untaught Hogarth 
 could snatch up his pencil, and, laughing at all rule and defying the 
 whole combined academy, with every touch of fearless genius could 
 bid living nature stand forth upon the canvass, did he demonstrate 
 that all rules were restraints upon genius, and all academicians ped- 
 ants 1 If he could dispense with the lessons afforded by the expe- 
 rience of other masters, must we forget the numbers whose tastes 
 have been nurtured and whose hands, guided, until every conception 
 seemed to soften into faultlessneiss, and every touch glow to perfec- 
 tion ? The uncouth vigor of unpolished genius is becoming less 
 and less acceptable to the growing fastidiousness of the public eye 
 and ear. Advancing public taste requires, not so much the bolder 
 stroke of genius, as the more exquisite finish of refinement. When 
 we are told that the frequent exhibitions of the most perfect oratory 
 among the ancient Athenians had given a delicate discrimination 
 even to the market women, we cease to wonder at the labor of their 
 rhetorical preparation, or that the prince of orators should have con- 
 sidered the cave, and the mirror, and the sea-side declamation 
 necessary to meet the demands of the public taste. 
 
 2* 
 
14 COLLEGTATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 It would appear to me that little need be said of the comparative 
 worthlessness of translations as substitutes for the original classics. 
 Genius is untranslatable ; you may parallel the phraseology, but 
 you can never translate the mind of antiquity. He whose taste 
 at all qualifies him to appreciate or feel the beauties of finished style, 
 must be aware, that whatever constitutes the charm of any given 
 passage must be peculiar to its own mould of expression, and if that 
 mould bp broken, all that gave it its most exquisite magic is marred. 
 Who that knows what beauty of language is, has not felt, in, the 
 process of composition, nay, perhaps, of conversation, that on some 
 occasion language afforded but a single term which would most com- 
 pletely hit the exactness of his meaning ? or that if a period has 
 been so exquisitely rounded to his own taste, that any marring its 
 proportions would despoil the felicity of its execution ? Change a 
 word, the finish is dashed and the spell broken. It has now re- 
 ceived the impress of his peculiar mind ; if his be the mind of 
 heaven-thrilled genius, he has left there a dash of its ethereal spirit, 
 and depend upon it, it can never be transferred. It is unique. Let 
 now a foreign mind endeavor to catch that spirit in a foreign phrase- 
 ology, and mark how it will evanesce in the transfer. The idea does 
 not flash upon the translator's view with the vividness of the original 
 conception ; his mind may be tempered with different elements ; 
 his periods may be tuned to a different melody ; his native language 
 possess a foreign spirit, or if generally congenial, it may not have 
 an idiom to hit with a happy touch the precise crisis of idea. One, 
 or all these causes together, must ever give translations the whole 
 impression of a different mind ; and prove, as it strikes me, most 
 conclusively, that you cannot translate the genius of antiquity. 
 
 Scarcely necessary is it, at this day, to urge the particular impor- 
 tance of a knowledge of the original Scriptures to the theologian. 
 One language there is, indeed, of special importance to him ; a lan- 
 guage which stands apart, sanctified and peculiar — ^the venerable 
 Hebrew. It speaks to us from the glooms of the farthest antiquity, 
 like the voice of Omnipotence from the cloud-wrapt Sinai. It is 
 the language of holy seers and heaven-rapt bards — of the sainted, 
 the inspired, and the martyred — of the psalm, the prophecy, and 
 
INAUGUKAl ADDEBSS. 15 
 
 the law ; nay, Jehovah's own voice hath echoed its syllables. Its 
 fragments now remain like the ruins of some broken temple, whose 
 every relic bears the impress of the once present Jehovah. 
 
 It is not asserted that every minister must be a profound critic, 
 nor need we be asked if we expect them to be able to correct the 
 learned translators of our common version. Without being special- 
 ly qualified to untie a knotty philological point, it may be safely 
 asserted, that a moderate scholar would see more luminously the ex- 
 act vein of inspired thought in the sacred originals, than can be the 
 case when veiled by the most transparent translation. Nor would I 
 assert that no one can be a successful minister of the cross, without 
 the ability to read the Scriptures in their own dialect. The names 
 of many a burning light of the Church, through every age of her 
 eventful history, beam forth in glorious refutation of such an asser- 
 tion. The fact is, that there is an immense range of theological 
 knowledge in our own language too often neglected by the 
 classical, and sometimes by the Biblical critic, the pages of which 
 are well worthy to be turned by his " daily and his nightly hand." 
 Through this field should he pass, he might occupy a position in the 
 varied departments of the Church, fully as impoftant and as useful 
 as his whose powers have been lavished for years upon the analysis 
 of etymologies. The minister of Christ may, and should, indeed, 
 make the whole intellectual world tributary to his purpose. He 
 may range through every field, and find a flower for the paradise of 
 Grod ; he may ascend into every atmosphere, and borrow a ray of 
 illustration to beam upon his subject. The wider the sweep of his 
 studies, the more large will be his resources, the more liberal his 
 views, and as a universally probable consequence, the more eflfective 
 his efforts. History, poetry, mathematics, natural and mental phi- 
 losophy, the languages, and literature, ancient and modern, each in 
 its own sphere presents advantages, either to discipline the powers 
 or supply the materials of the mind. But living encyclopedias are 
 rare beings ; and as these different kinds of acquirement are of dif- 
 ferent degrees of importance, and consonant respectively with differ- 
 ent tastes, it becomes in many cases necessary to describe a narrower 
 circle, which shall include those things mainly, of which no minister 
 
16 COLLEQIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 of the Gospel should be ignorant. And assuredly, as a matter of 
 feeling, every minister would wish to catch the prophecy and the 
 Gospel as it burst from the inspired lips of Isaiah, or flowed from 
 the apostolic pen of Paul. But especially in the great contest for 
 the truths of the Bible, the combatant at the present day must be 
 fully furnished with Biblical literature. The exigencies of the Church 
 demand, to say the least, a class of men who are fully competent 
 for the field where Greek meets Greek, and who are perfectly at 
 home wherever the discussion is carried. At no point, if duty be 
 done, need the result be feared. If a Wesley, even in the chair of 
 his own classic Oxford, amid the rival masters by whom he was sur- 
 rounded, was by preeminence surnamed "the Grecian ; " if a Walsh, 
 firm by his side in the day of apostolic exertion, from his capability ■ 
 of stating from memory the number of the recurrences of any Hebrew 
 word in the Old Testament, was titled, without hyperbole, the living 
 concordance ; if a Clarke, surmounting the most extraordinary ob- 
 stacles by the most extraordinary perseverance, united the most ex- 
 tensive acquirements to the most unique simplicity, and flung 
 around the sacred text the most luminous and the most copious, 
 the most original* if not always the most defensible expositions, 
 those who coincide with their general views and make their pursuits 
 an exemplar, need not fear that thorough research will disturb the 
 foundations of their faith, or intense application chill the ardor of 
 their piety. 
 
 Nor is it so perfectly clear, that even the pulpit may not derive 
 from classic antiquity the most illustrious models of eloquence. If 
 the dicta of the most eminent masters are the best directories in the 
 pursuit of any high acquirement, it may be safely asserted that this 
 point is well-nigh unquestionable. If that eminent pulpit orator of 
 England, Robert Hall, pronounced Demosthenes the greatest of all 
 human orators, averred that no man of soul or feeling could read 
 his oration upon the crown without catching fire at every page, and 
 drew his rhetorical illustrations, and even the spirit that animated 
 his own performances, in a great measure from him ; if that preem- 
 inent pulpit orator of Germany, Reinhardt, was surprised in the 
 day of his prime, -to find that in his early perusal of the choicest 
 
INAUGUEAL ADDRESS. 17 
 
 I 
 
 writers of antiquity, he had unawares made the best preparation for 
 his subsequent distinguished success ; if that most eminent of the 
 pulpit orators of France, Bossuet, constantly wrote with the poems 
 of Homer before him, averring as a reason, that he wished to imbibe 
 his light immediately from the sun, it becomes the minister of the 
 Gospel who has the same models within his reach, to hesitate before, 
 in the face of such authorities, he pronounces them unworthy of his 
 study. And still more authoritative is the weight of such and other 
 revered and venerable names against the charge of the immoral 
 tendency of classical pursuits. That there are no productions of 
 immoral tendency, that there is no occasion for a discriminative selec- 
 tion, is more than need be asserted of classic literature, and more 
 than can be asserted of any other. It is an impracticable policy to 
 endeavor to guard a free, inquisitive and liberal mind from the 
 reach of immoral tendencies ; these infect alike every moral and 
 every literary atmosphere, and that must be an imbecile integrity 
 which is to be preserved in a depraved world, not by being armed 
 against the force of temptations, but by an attempted artificial quar- 
 antine from them. Should the literature of France be proscribed, 
 because it opens at once to the youthful reader the voluptuous- 
 ness of Rousseau and the impieties of Voltaire ? He who acts upon 
 this principle must neglect every modern language ; — he must un- 
 learn his own. 
 
 It is the expression of an eminent Englfsh orator, from whom it 
 may seem immodest to dissent, Edmund Burke, that vice " loses 
 half its evil by losing all its grossness." The depravity of the sen- 
 timent is scarcely disguised by the felicity of the expression. Vice, 
 on the contrary, redoubles the danger of its fascinations by reducing 
 the excess of its grossness. Gross vice is generally repulsive vice. 
 And it is precisely this circumstance which renders the immoralities 
 of ancient literature, for the most part, ineffective. He who is well 
 acquainted with the temperament of antiquity, must well know that 
 much of the delicacy of our social life is essentially modern ; and the 
 reader of antiquity, who even finds it necessary to disturb its dregs, 
 finds comparatively very little of those refined blandishments with 
 which modern genius has tinged seductive vice, to render it more 
 
18 COLLEQIAM ADDRESSES. 
 
 insinuating to the juster fastidiousness of our moral sense. If, how- 
 ever, just views of human depravity be a proper preparatory to 
 human renovation, the very vices of antiquity have an eflScient 
 moral. If the Christian would learn the folly of unguided human 
 wisdom in its highest estate, mythological antiquity may furnish the 
 amplest illustration ; if the prevalence of the GroSpel of peace shall 
 ( hereafter make military enthusiasm appear one of the strange insan- 
 ities of our race, it may then be an object to ascertain, how the 
 early mind of man was addressed, to inspire the martial frenzy ; if 
 posterity shall wonder by what syren notes the cup of inebriation 
 could be radiated with fascination, the anacreontic hymn may then 
 be perused as a rare phenomenon in the history of the human mind. 
 Upon this subject I would be no bookish pedant. Classic litera- 
 ture is no sovereign specific for transforming stupidity to genius, for 
 I really know not where that desirable recipe is to be found. On 
 the contrary, it may, perhaps, aggravate the naturally desperate 
 case, by adding pedantry to dulness. We sometimes meet with 
 scholars who are all scholars ; linguists, whose minds are packed 
 with etymologies and trammelled with syntaxes. Their learning 
 does not seem to be absorbed into the elements of their minds, but 
 to stand out an extraneous unamalgamated mass. Their erudition 
 is ever obtrusive ; the ill-managed allusion and the ill-timed quota- 
 tion are ever informing you that they have read the classics ; — ^they 
 are of the intellectual aristocracy. The pedant in any department 
 is disgusting — no wonder the pedant in languages. The mind of the 
 truly liberal scholar imbibes not their dead mass into his memory, he 
 inhales their spirit into his soul ; they impregnate his entire genius, 
 grow with his growth, and strengthen with his strength, until they 
 have, imperceptibly perhaps, all but reorganized his intellectual 
 constitution. He is above the obtrusive display of ill-introduced 
 erudition ; you might live weeks with him, perhaps, without seeing 
 any other display of his acquisitions than manifested itself in the 
 natural flow of a rich and exuberant mind. Classical learning, 
 (says one well qualified practically to estimate its worth, the eloquent 
 Webster,) classical learning in men who act in conspicuous public 
 stations, perform duties which exercise the faculty of writing, or 
 
INACGURAIi ADBBBSS. 19 
 
 address popular, deliberative, or judicial bodies, is often felt where, 
 it is little seen, aiid sometimes felt more effectually because it is not 
 seen at alL 
 
 It is in accordance with the calm and manly terdict of such 
 minds, and npt with the exaggerated enthusiasm, of pedantry, or the 
 gross Yandalism of indiscriminate innovation, that the value of the 
 classics is becoming decided. Erom the public mind they will 
 receive, we may confidently trust, an estimation accordant with that 
 which they have received from our institution. Without deciding 
 that they are necessary alike for all, or refusing the other privileges 
 of collegiate life to those who neglect them, it earnestly recommends 
 their study to all, and withholds from those who have not acquired 
 them, the appropriate testimonials of a liberal education. Distant, 
 indeed, be the day, when the fair proportions of the educated 
 character of our land shall be marred, by striking them from its 
 requisite accomplishments. 
 
 To the mind, indeed, capable of the refinements of literature and 
 science, how rich is the pleasure of luxuriating in the treasures of 
 its own stored thoughts ! Eloquently true, indeed, was Cicero's 
 description of the ceaseless flow of enjoyment poured from this 
 source upon a mind like his, when he pronounced literary acquisi- 
 tions the nurse of early, and the stay of declining life ; the ornament 
 of prosperous, and solace of adverse vicissitudes ; our constant home 
 companions, yet never impeding us abroad ; attending alike our 
 nightly repose, our arduous journeys, and our rural residences. 
 Such a mind is, indeed, never solitary. Its solitude is peopled with 
 memory's glowing images, and fancy's vivid creations. Its possessor 
 finds within his own soul an" ever fresh and ever salient spring of 
 mental exhilaration. Shall he go forth to contemplate the rural 
 scene ? Nature opens her mysteries to his keen analysis, or expands 
 her prospects to his intense gaze. Does he press amid the bustle of 
 the crowded city ? The mystic page of human character reads les- 
 sons of wisdom to him, invisible or incomprehensible to the common 
 mind. Does he retire to the seclusion of his study ? The hallowed 
 spirits of antiquity are ready to come forth, and utter at his bidding 
 oracles of wisdom which none but minds like his can hear. Does 
 
20 COLLEOIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 he enter the social circle ? Who like him pours forth the flow of 
 colloqmal eloquence, and like him receives the copious reflux of the 
 pleasure which he creates and communicates V He may run no 
 ambitious career, equipped though he be for a mighty contest. He 
 may seek no lofty elevation, though qualified to vie with the most 
 towering crest. His may be a temperament that loves not the excite- 
 ment, or a philosophy that scorns to seek the honors that seek not 
 him, or a piety that loves the quiet usefulness which Heaven's eye 
 alone measures and appreciates. His is a treasure that knows no 
 exhaustion, inflicts no retributive sting, and knows no equal but the 
 joy of an approving conscience and a smiling Heaven. 
 
BACCALAUREATE SERMON: 
 
 SELTTEBED IN 
 
 THE CHAPEL OF THE WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY, 
 
 AT TBra CLOBE OF 
 
 THE OOLLEGIATI! YEAR 1838-9, 
 
 TO XHE 
 
 CANDIDATES FOE THE BACHELOR'S DEGREE. 
 
"Wesietan Univeesitt, JtLY 8, 1839. 
 Rev. PfiOPESsOR Whedon- 
 DeaxSir, 
 
 At a meeting of the Graduating GUuis, lield this morning, the undersigned were 
 appointed a Comnuttee, to (tender to you the thanks of the Class for your very able and 
 interesting Discourse of last evening, and to recLuest a copy for publication. By complying 
 with this request, yon will liighly gratify the CJ»sb ba veil as the Students generally, and 
 confer a favor upon the public. 
 
 Very respectfully yours, 
 
 JONATHAN COB, 
 ABIEL CONVERSE, 
 MEAD HOLMES. 
 
 Wesleyan UmvERSny, Jult, 8, 1889. 
 libssrs. Jonathan Che, Abitl Converse^ Mtad Kolmesj 
 
 Committee of the Cb^aduatiog Class. 
 
 My Dear Sirs— 
 
 I have received, with gratified feeling, through you, the t^timonial of your Class, of 
 their kind estimate of my last evening's Address and their approval of its principles. In 
 complying with your reg.uest for its publication, permit me toavailmyself of this probably 
 final opportunity of expressing to the Class, my cordial interest for, and sympathy with 
 them, at this momentous period of their lives. Be assured, young gentlemen, bo^ for 
 yourselves and for them, of my kindest recollections of the past, and my ardent prayers 
 for your earthly prosperity and eternal happiness. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 D. D. WHEDON. 
 
SERMON. 
 
 Blessed are the pvttB in heaxt, for they shall sec God.— Matt, t, 8. 
 
 It is a frequent incident in th« gorgeous and sometimes instruct- 
 ive fictions of the middle ages, that when a young candidate for 
 earthly fortunes goes forth to seek his future destinies, the patron 
 of his previous years binds, perhaps, about his neck, some amulet, 
 charmed with a secret spell, mysteriously connected with supernat- 
 ural agencies, and holding a mastering arbitration over the fates of 
 the young adventurer. Were I to select for you, my young friends, 
 to whom this evening I address a requested parting charge, not an 
 amulet, touched with lunar influences over your coming vicissitudes, 
 but — what were infinitely more valuable — a high, a holy, an eter- 
 nal principle, pregnant with priceless truth and connected with 
 immortal destinies ; it should be a full appreciation, by deep expe- 
 rience, of that blessedness above all other bliss — the blessedness 
 pronounced by Him who spake as never man spake, upon the genu- 
 inely pure in heart. 
 
 The imaginations even of. grave commentators have glowed into 
 an unwonted vividness, at the picture presented by the evangelic 
 histories, of the primitive scene of the delivery of the Saviour's 
 sermon upon the mount of Beatitudes. From the gentle Summit 
 of that elevation, by this one transaction forever made a consecrated 
 spot — -situated in the midst of one of the most picturesque countries 
 upon creation's map — ^in the fresh morning of one of the balmiest 
 of terrestrial climes, did the Gkeat Teacheb, surrounded by the 
 assembled multitudes, deliver to his /ia&tiTm—^Ms pupils' — upon 
 
24 OOLLEQUTE ADDRESSES. 
 
 whom he was about to confer their collective Apostolic diploma, 
 those lessons of spiritual wisdom, which ,he designed to promulgate 
 through them, with a divine authority, to a listening world. In 
 addressing you, our pupils, about to start forth into the wide world 
 for the fulfilment of your probationary earthly mission, (for you, 
 with every son of humanity, have your responsible life's mission,) 
 what better can I do — what other dare I do, than sink myself from 
 your view, and let the Great Original himself speak? Fancy's 
 picture of the imparadised spot where Jesus preached, amid the 
 surrounding sterility of the heaven-cursed earth, cannot present a 
 purer aspect than the moral freshness of that discourse itself amid 
 the comparative moral Sahara of this world's literature. Wearied 
 and disgusted from the selfish agitations of worldly contests and 
 ambitions, distrustful of the unauthoritative precepts and conjectu- 
 ral guessings of mere human philosophy, tired of the fitful, over- 
 strained inspirations of the half-frenzied spirit of profane genius, 
 how recreating it is to turn to the calm simplicity of this one com- 
 position — ^this fresh, unmingled crystalline flow from the celestial 
 fountains — this voice divine, like a strain of heaven-born music 
 earthward straying — ^breathing the authority of a mild omnipotence 
 through all its gentle syllables — ^beaming through its veil of human 
 words the infinite majesty, the softened radiance of divinity. 
 
 Of this discourse, as of all the teachings of our Saviour and of 
 his whole mission, the topics of our text, viz., purity of heart and 
 communion with the divinity, are the central and primary objects. 
 In the views which it will be our purpose to present, we shall con- 
 sider purity of heart in three respeets : its intrinsic nature ; its 
 development in the formation of our principles ; and its exhibition 
 in practical action. 
 
 I. Purity of heart: they are sublime words; expressive of the 
 height of moral and spiritual perfection. And it is before the very 
 loftiness of their moral elevation, perhaps, that the mind stands 
 aghast. In presenting them to you I almost hear you exclaim, 
 " Truly, if this be the standard which you present us — to be at 
 once perfectly good — 'your purpose defeats itself — you dismiss us 
 
SERMON. 25 
 
 with an admonition dishearteningly impractioaWe." Ib it of any 
 use to suggest, my friends, that in moral, as in intellectual advance- 
 ment, all that man has done, man may do ; nay, that goodness is 
 that quality which Heaven has placed peculiarly at our option ? 
 Fortunate life Heaven has placed at the mercy of earthly vicissi- 
 tudes; honorahle life, at the decision of human opinion; happy 
 life, beyond the reach, perhaps, of all attainment ; but a good life 
 —and how good a life We please, God has suspended upon the 
 choice of our own responsible will. I have stood astonished at the 
 sublime moral conception expressed by one of the loftiest and 
 purest of human spirits, the illustrious Christian sage of Northamp- 
 ton, Jonathan Edwards, when he adopted this resolution, viz., that 
 if it be a supposable fact that but one absolute specimen and model 
 of perfect human goodness is to exist in an age, he would strive to 
 act as if it were his dispensation, to be in his age that model. How 
 does the lofty height of- such a purpose place us above the sordid 
 views, the average moralities and the current examples of a de- 
 praved world ; and what an elevation of moral standard would 
 immediately rise, if all even who are disposed to goodness, would 
 make this the soul-engrossing standard of their lives ! But if our 
 moral purpose sink below this standard of moral purity, still it can- 
 not be profitless for us to form that standard in our minds ; to place 
 among our choicest conceptions, and even among our warm aspira- 
 tions, a model of perfect moral beauty ; and to Dccustora the mind 
 to contemplations of the pure and the good. The poet loves to 
 store his mind with images of varied gracefulness ; and especially 
 does his genius aspire to conceptions of pure and perfect idealities 
 which are unknown to the dreams of the dull and the worldly. The 
 statuary's imagination is an intellectual temple, filled with godlike 
 formations ; and especially does he strive by continued self-refine- 
 ments, by intense and unremitted intellectual abstractions, to form 
 to himself the image of absolute beauty — the ultimate acme of 
 possible loveliness. The absence of every effort and every ideality 
 of this kind, is the attribute of the sensual and the gross — the mere 
 clods of humanity. And though the contemplative poet may not 
 rival the imageries of the great master of song, nor the statuary 
 
 3* 
 
26 COLLEGIATE ADDRESftES. ' 
 
 eclipse the fame of Um who is said to have embodied the? poetry of 
 Homer himself in marble, still is the mind formed to a harmony 
 with the perfection to which it struggles ; the taste is chastened and 
 purified ; the imagination is vivified, and the genius endowed with 
 new and more widely varied powers of creativeness. And so it is 
 with the aspirant after moral attainment. It is something, nay, it 
 is much to be such an aspirant ; for this at once takes the character 
 from among the contentedly bad. And for such a one, it may not 
 be profitless to form in the mind, and to dwell awhile in contempla- 
 tion of, and to return with frequent repetition to, a mind-created- 
 model of goodness, by which the moral taste may be improved, 
 and to which the character may conform itself. In this conform- 
 ing process, an honest self-examination will detect many a failure, 
 and reveal many an inconsistency. Often will it seem that no prog- 
 ress has been made, and even that the course has been retrograde. 
 Yet be not despairing; that very agony of regret is a hopeful 
 symptom ; the very tendency to despair is proof that all is not des- 
 perate ; even while our eflforts have been errant, it is much that 
 our eflforts were not unmade. If in Jhe arduous ascent our feet 
 have strangely slidden and retrograded, let our errors past be trans- 
 formed into lessons of future vigilance ; if the progress for which 
 we had indulged some past self-gratnlation be detected as deceptive 
 and unreal, let it teach us a more searching self-discrimination ; if 
 our path be literally scattered with the fragments of broken resolu- 
 tions, disgraced professions and demolished schemes of self-reform — 
 sorrowing, but not discouraged — ashamed, but not scouted — let us 
 never cease with unyielding patience and persevering faith, study- 
 ing new inventions of self-correction, constructing new plans, and 
 practising all sorts of versatile stratagems of self-discipline, assured 
 that to fight unyieldingly is a certainty of not being conquered, and 
 that the victory can never be fully lost, until the battle field is 
 traitorously deserted. 
 
 Purity of Aeari — they are beautiful words; — happy the mind 
 by whom that beauty is appreciated ; transcendently happy the 
 heart in which that beauty is realized. They are words of physi- , 
 cal origin ; and perhaps their moral import may bot unaptly be 
 
SEEMON. 27 
 
 illustrated by a physical image. See that crystal -goblet which 
 stands in almost shadowless transparency upon your table, filled 
 with an element so limpid, so pure, so impalpable, that like the 
 translucent beauty which it occupies, it scarce presents an object to 
 arrest the ray of the eye which loves to dwell upon it. What more 
 perfect image of purity can the mind present ? And now, while the 
 mind is enjoying a calm delight in unison with such beauty, let 
 your chemist pour in a mass of foul and heterogeneous sediment, and 
 mark how the dense folds of the murky cloud, slowly convolving, 
 heighten by the contrast of its dusk the purity with which it cannot 
 assimilate. Were both fluids of a like blackness, the addition 
 would be unperceived ; for it is by the clearness of the surrounding 
 luminous element, that we mark the sullen outlines of the invading 
 infusion. So with the elements of the heart. There is many a 
 heart the native home of all that is foul and vile ; into which you 
 may infuse any additional element of depravity, and it is soon 
 absorbed into latency and invisibleness by the congenial corruption 
 of the mass. On the other hand, to purity of heart, the introduction 
 of every malign emotion is at once palpable and painful. Like 
 a sullying breath upon the mirror's surface it is at once visible 
 and transient. There are minds naturally pure from certain ma- 
 lignities. To one heart the rankling venom of envy is so unconge- 
 nial, that it rises like a nauseating and corrosive gall, and is instant- 
 ly suppressed. To another amiable heart, the burning passion - 
 of anger is so painful, that like a coal in the bosom, it is a moment's 
 torture and expelled forever. If now some mighty purifying power, 
 entering the soul, could sweep from it every congeniality with the 
 depraved ; if the expulsive energy of some new all-searching, all- 
 pervading affection should preoccupy the bfiing and allow no room 
 for an unhallowed occupancy ; or if some sovereign principle should 
 assume a regal dominance, and with absolute decree banish every 
 insurrectionary rival, whether the causation be divine or human, or 
 whether the process be natural or supernatural, the result would be 
 the blessedness of the pure in heart. And this may bring us to 
 what we may consider as the constituent quality of moral purity. 
 I would therefore lay down the proposition — the test and central 
 
28 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 element of purity of heart, is the absolute and pervading supremacy 
 of the principle of conscience over the whole man. Of conscience 
 may be affirmed what Plato affirmed of truth. It is the shadow of 
 the Almighty. Conscience is the representative image of God in* 
 stalled over the world vrithin the man. Of that image He is the 
 divine prototype — the originate substance — for God is an Alminhty 
 Conscience, and his government is the omnipotence of right. And 
 when conscience is established in sovereignty over the realm of the 
 Boul, then and there is created an image of the government of God 
 '—then is the kingdom of God within you. Beneath its holy sceptre 
 there, peace, truth, and freedom flourish. The absolute despotism 
 of conscience is the most perfect liberty of the soul. The absolute 
 banishment which it decrees, of every thing abominable or that 
 maketh a lie, sanctifies the atmosphere of the spirit and purifies the 
 temper of the heart. This, the blessedness of the pure in heart, 
 
 Which nothing earthly gives or can destroy. 
 The soul's calm sunshine and the heartfelt joy. 
 Is virtue's prize. 
 
 Beautifully did Bishop Butler affirm of conscience, that, " had it 
 strength as it has right, had it power as it has manifest authority, 
 it would absolutely govern the world : and sublimely did Hooker 
 remark of that law whose vital principle is conscience, that "its 
 residence was the bosom of God, and its voice the harmony of the 
 universe." And could the peace divine with which it illumines a 
 single beatified bosom, go out like a purely streaming serenity, over 
 the suffering spirits that breathe the troubled atmosphere of this suf- 
 fering earth, how would a holy hush be breathed, and a Sabbath 
 quietness be laid upon all the surging elements of our turbulent 
 humanity. Could the empire of conscience be in one moment 
 invisibly enthroned, in all its silent and gentle omnipotence over the 
 inmost beating bosom of each human individual that lives upon the 
 area of our globe, that one instantaneous, quiet and unseen change 
 would be mightier in its power, than all the revolutions that, through 
 ages past, have overswept the face, or the convulsions that have 
 shaken the centre of creation. It would render, at once, unneces- 
 
SERMON. 29 
 
 sary all the struggles and shocks that are yet to replace the disloca- 
 tions and reverse the overturns of this inverted world ; it would 
 softly sink the despot's throne ; it would sweetly unclasp the bond- 
 man's fetters ; it would gently melt the iron dungeon ; it would 
 stilly crumble the idol altar ; it would blandly wipe the scalding 
 tear, and at once light up the horror of darkness that now densely 
 lies upon the world's surface, with the quick, spontaneous blaze of 
 full millennial day. 
 
 And yet the change, to our conceptions so minute in the individ- 
 ual instance, and so noiseless even in the universality, is a change 
 as far above any revolution in the course of the world, as the super- 
 natural and the divine are above the natural and the human. For 
 should you with a merely natural instrumentality, set about the 
 work of this renovation throughout the world, you would find each 
 individual human heart so intrenched in a defensive apparatus of 
 feeling, will and belief against your operations, both by siege or 
 storm, that doomsday would arrive before the work were even begun. 
 
 For this sovereignty of conscience must be an elective rule. It 
 can only exist by the consenting, independent, spontaneous adoption 
 of the subject powers within the individual man. There must be 
 not only the consent of the judgment and of the will, but the conge- 
 nial cooperation of the affections. And this will bring us, perhaps 
 somewhat unexpectedly, to what, we think, will be to your every 
 mind a most plain explication of what theologians in their vocabula- 
 ries mean by regeneration. The natural passions and affections 
 of every man, it is ascertained by experience, are perpetually 
 wavering and veering from the right conscientious line. Conscience 
 is a dry and unloved abstract principle ; the law of right is a dead 
 precept, and the heart beats not with true and cordial emotions in 
 unison with it. Eegeneration is the transforming of that principle 
 into an affection ; it is making that dead precept a living impulse ; 
 it is the leading the full flow of glowing and ready emotions along 
 the right-lined channel of conscientious obedience. The sovereignty 
 of conscience, no longer a cold and clanking despotism, is loved and 
 claimed as a most spontaneous freedom. Its rules, which once were 
 as fettering cords around the soul, are now the genuine nerve and 
 
30 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 sinew of tbe moral purpose. And this simple change, so easily 
 stated, is after all so great, and so out of the man's own power — ^for 
 who can transform his own affections '? — that the Founder of Chris- 
 tianity with a deep-seeing philosophy pronounced it a renovation — a 
 regeneration— a being born again. 
 
 And perhaps the whole divinely Operative power which Christian- 
 ity offers to exert in our moral renovation, may be comprised in this 
 one statement, — that it transforms a principle into, an affection. 
 It takes, for instance, the pure principle of right, and from a dictate 
 of the conscience, it identi&es it with an emotion of the heart, and 
 endows it with an entire ascendency. It takes the divine law and 
 so transforms it to the sinner's perception, that he who once consci- 
 entiously and coldly assented that " the law is holy, jUst and good," 
 now like the Psalmist exclaims " How love I thy law ! " The doc- 
 trine of the divine goodness, logically inferred through the works of 
 Providence, by the natural religionist, the gracious spirit transforms 
 into a direct and felt affection. 
 
 But the case most to our purpose is this — that while natural the- 
 ology so argues with a philosopher that he believes in an omnipres- 
 ent deity, religion bo transforms that belief into a perception and a 
 sense, that the pure in heart is emphatically said to see Gfod. To 
 see God is to realize God; it is to perceive his presence and his 
 goodness so palpably, that though it be attained not by a mere sense, 
 its force is best expressed by the very strongest of our senses and 
 perceptions. And be it not forgotten, that while it is purity of 
 heart that enables us to see our God, so reciprocally it is the seeing 
 God — the living consciousness of his presence — that can alone pre- 
 serve our purity of heart. He alone that hath this love in him 
 purifyeth himself even as He is pure. Know ye what this meaneth ? 
 My friends, I should prove traitorous alike to the Gospel and to 
 you, could I once admit any power of keeping the heart pure other 
 than the deep perception of the divinity which none of nature's 
 faculties or demonstrations can confer. If in your self-reviews and 
 recognitions of your past mental experiences, conscious memory can 
 call up no moment when you could see and converse with your God 
 —^no moment of a sense of the presence, even in a perfect human 
 
SUBUON. 31 
 
 solihide, of another than yourself— » recognition deep as your own 
 consciousness, of a divinity invisible yet palpable as any humanity 
 around you — a sober, awing certainty of His scrutiny upon the 
 spirit, yet a grateful sense of His approving condescension, — if this 
 forms no part of your experience, then may you fear that you yet 
 want the least germ of that principle that can produce or preserve 
 the purity of the soul. 0, then speedily do your first, your prelim- 
 inary work. Acquaint thyself now with God, and be at peace with 
 him. 
 
 fiut you ask, did not tte lofty minds of unchristianized annuity 
 — as a best instance, the stoic philosophers — by the mere power of 
 natural will subject the whole man to the sternest dictates of ab- 
 solute right ? Did not the portico of Athens, to all &ir appearance, 
 perform this human miracle, and solve this moral problem ? I an- 
 swer, by its own confession — No I Those noble-minded, lofty-look- 
 ing and deep-searching men — the Zenos and Catos of the stoa — 
 saw in its full force and blazing clearness the irreconcilable hostiHty 
 between the mass of human pas^ns and the law divine. Zeno of 
 Athens and Paul of Tarsus, with equal energy believed that the 
 natural heart " is not subject to the law of G-od, neither indeed can 
 be." Here they agreed — now mark ye where they separated ; — it 
 was in the remedy for this warfare. The profoundly thinking stole 
 saw the incompatibility between the divine law and the human pas^ 
 sions; and what was his expedient? Annihilation of the latter; 
 utter extinction of every human affection; total crushing of the 
 heart into nothingness. And to this mighty work did these most 
 honest-minded men — these giant specimens of human virtue-bright 
 manfully apply themselves. Each brought out his apparatus to am- 
 putate the heart from the system — to cauterize all sensibility from 
 the soul— to absorb and abstract all the juices from the spirit. His 
 human saint was a moral skeleton — and a skeleton petrified. His 
 perfect man was a marble man. His moral model was a passionless 
 intellective statue — a half-living automaton ; — ^moving indeed, but 
 mechanically moving, by the geometric exactness of a rightlined 
 law ! All philosophic antiquity saw the irreconcilableness between 
 the natural passions and the law of pure eonsciendowiness ; they 
 
32 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 saw that it was an eztenninating war, and they saw but two possible 
 remedies. Ext«rminate those passions, exclaimed the virtuous Zeno, 
 and leave the law in absolute sway. Exterminate that law, ox- 
 claimed the Epicurean, and let the only law be pleasure. No ! 
 exclaimed the divine man of Nazareth, as his voice rose in startling 
 clearness from out the plains and hills of Palestine, and streamed 
 through the wide and liberal air. Exterminate not that law — 
 heaven and earth shall sooner pass than one jot of its record shall 
 fail. Exterminate not those human affections ; crush not that pal- 
 pitating heart ; break not that bruised reed; for blessed are *the 
 pure in heart — they shall see God. So spake the blessed Jesus ; 
 and not only was there grace upon his lips to pronounce the remedy, 
 but mercy in his heart and power in his hand to make its application. 
 We have thus far endeavored to illustrate the nature of purity of 
 heart, to analyze its essential element, to show the divine source from 
 which it must come, and to point out the hopelessness of any other 
 origin. My next purpose is to furnish a few hints upon the proper 
 influence of pure moral purpose upon the formation of our opinions 
 and the fixing of our principles. 
 
 II. It is one of the not unfashionable liberalisms of the present 
 day, to hold that no man can be blamed for his opinions. " The 
 Great Truth has gone forth to the ends of the earth," proclaimed 
 Lord Kector, subsequently Lord Chancellor Brougham, at the Uni- 
 versity of Glasgow, " that man shall no more render an account to 
 man for his belief, over which he has himself no control. Hence- 
 forth nothing shall prevail upon us to praise or to blame any one for 
 that which he can no more change than the hue of his skin or the 
 height of his stature." Is this doctrine true and sound? Never 
 then was a truth more fit to be enrolled among the primary axioms 
 of falsehood, and to be inscribed upon the title-page of the manual of 
 Libertinism. Has truth, has falsehood no moral character ? Then 
 has the father of lies begotten an innocent progeny. Not responsi- 
 ble for our opinion ? Then we are responsible for nothing. We 
 are not responsible for the use of our powers ; for intellect is the 
 truth-seeking power, and if we are not responsible for the right and 
 
SEKMON. 33 
 
 honest use of that power, we are responsible for the misuse of no 
 other power. Then we are not responsible for the mainspring of all 
 our crimes ; for every crime has its spring in, if not a permanent, 
 yet a momentary opinion, which gave it impulse. Then we are not 
 responsible for the shaping of our moral character ; for as a man 
 thinketh, so is he ; and our principles are the defining lines and 
 bounding angles that delineate and determine the very configuration 
 of our moral being. Then we are not responsible for the issues of 
 our own hearts' corruptions ; for none can doubt that corrupt and 
 depraved sentiments are the natural product of corrupt feelings. 
 This doctrine is not only in itself corrupt and false, but it is the 
 irparov fevSoi — the primal falsity — the lie germinant — ^in which all 
 other falsehoods, if they do not taJi:e their start, at any rate find their 
 license. 
 
 But what, then, are we responsible for pure mistake 1 Are we 
 morally bound to be infallible ? You are responsible, if not for 
 pure mistake, yet for dishonest mistake. You are morally bound, 
 if not to be infallible, certainly to be incorruptible. And here let 
 us draw the true distinction. There is a difiEerence between a mere- 
 ly untrue opinion and a corrupt one. An untrue opinion is an opin- 
 ion which coincides not with the actual reality of things ; a corrupt 
 opinion is one which accords not with moral purity. An untrue 
 opinion is one falsified by real, though, perhaps, hidden fact j a cor- 
 rupt opinion is one falsified by morality and justice. An untrue 
 opinion is tested and corrected by the intellect ; a corrupt opinion is 
 adjudged and condemned by the conscience. An untrue opinion 
 may arise from a failure of perception ; a corrupt opinion is the foul 
 issue of the impurity of the heart. An untrue opinion is likely to 
 lead us into practical blunder ; a corrupt opinion tends to licentious- 
 ness and crime. For the former, we may be innocent and pardona- 
 ble ; for the latter, we are most fearfully responsible, and perhaps 
 justly condemnable. 
 
 To what conclusion, then, can we come other than this? — that 
 though not responsible for honest inaccurcuiy in opinion, we are 
 responsible for the corruptness of our belief. Over the formation of 
 our principleS)^ as over the state of our affections, must conscience 
 
 4 
 
34 COLLEGIATli ADDRESSES. 
 
 bold her holy scepti'e. If there be such an existing reality as purity 
 of moral character, it may exist not only in the emotions but in the 
 doctrines ; and between the pure heart and a pure principle there 
 cannot but be an affinity likely to bring them both into anion. If, 
 then, we have a single purpose to maintain, a single purity of moral 
 disposition ; if it be our sincere and devout wish to attain to pure 
 and holy truth ; if to be right in heart and in sentiment, be the fer- 
 vent and candid purpose of our souls, then, though we may not be 
 secure from honest misjudgment, little is the fear that Heaven would 
 permit our single-heartedness to become the innocent victim of the 
 deceivableness of unrighteousness. And is not a neglect of this 
 subordination of our opinions to the cognition of the moral sense, 
 the great cause of all licentious error ? Do not men, in the forma- 
 tion of opinions upon the most tnomentous moral topics, forget all 
 responsibleness ; and while listening to the dictates of passion or the 
 processes of intellect, shut out the admonitions of conscience? 
 Strange, that upon a moral question, the moral faculty should have 
 no authoritative su£Q:age ! Many, indeed, are the instances that 
 might be specified, of the gross results that have come from this 
 excludve enthronement of usurping authorities! There is scarce 
 any moral absurdity which may not be sustained by some form of 
 logical process, and a pretext wrought out for intellectual heliet ; 
 and yet the secret monitor within forbids the banns between the 
 credence and the falsity. There is scarcely any moral monstrosity 
 which may not be wrapped in a hue of glozing words, and so tuned 
 to a round of beautiful periods, as to captivate the fancy to a fond 
 assent ; and yet there is a stern counter principle beneath, that will 
 not leave,the damnable delusion undisturbed. There is scarce any 
 form of crime, scarce any plot of combined iniquity, scarce any ultra 
 plunge of abandoned profligacy, for which the perpetrator may not 
 dexterously fabricate a goodly frame of phrase, and array it in a 
 showy garb of apologizing plausibleness, sufficient to beguile almost 
 every thing else — save that oracle within the breast, whose voice 
 has so often been hushed or drowned, but whose integrity has never 
 been bribed to Philippize — the deep-seated, truth-responding con- 
 science. Often, indeed, do we see trains of reasoning so well drawn 
 
37 
 
 out, and so apparently solid, that no flaw is discovered and no 
 unsoundness is suspected until they have landed us in conclusions 
 so abhorrent to the moral consciousness, that by instantaneous 
 impulse, the whole soul revolts against the entire process,- and at 
 once, without the trouble of formal refutation, stamps it with repro- 
 bacy. Few men are more truly pitiable, if not too eondemnable for 
 our sympathy, than the interested supporters of opinion at war with 
 their own moral sense ; professional manufacturers of logic in defence 
 of a set and hoary error, maintainable, indeed, by all the arts of 
 dexterous fallacy, but so discordant to the moral feeling, that the 
 contest within, between the intellectual and the moral man, sets the 
 ■whole soul uneasily and perpetually at jar. This galling conscious- 
 ness of untruth within the soul — this burning feeling of a bosom 
 falsehood wilfully maintained — this torture of secret and self- 
 confessed badness both of cause and of purpose — plants a serpent's 
 fang in the heart's core of the proudest and wiliest diplomatist ; it 
 cankers in his pocket and in his soul, the paid wages of the royal 
 conscience-keeper ; it weaves thorns in the salaried sophist's pillow ; 
 and binds, like compressing iron, the very mitre upon the hierarch's 
 brow. Many a structure of false system, indeed, architecturally 
 built, loftily towering and exulting in seeming strength, is really 
 invisibly tottering over an infirm base, sapped by secret and almost 
 unconscious moral misgiving, and ready at the moment's return of 
 honest and pure purpose into the heart upon whose depravity it was 
 based, to be blown up. from its foundation, and " like the baseless 
 fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind." And thus it is that 
 the truth, missed by the proud and sophisticated adepts of logic, are 
 found and embraced by the simple-hearted and the conscientious. 
 Thus it is, that the holiest revelations are hid from the proudly wise 
 and wordly prudent, to be revealed unto babes. And thus is, per- 
 haps, sometimes verified the apothegm that truth dwells with the 
 unsophisticated common people. For as the morning vapor, desert- 
 ing the mountain tops, rolls its cloudy folds adown the declivity, and 
 settles along the fair fields and humble hamlets below, so does truth, 
 often deserting the high places of life, where pride and power and 
 interest have raised their strong intrenchments, descend downward 
 
34 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 Co 
 
 k of humble humanity, where truth and conscience, 
 interest, unawed by power, unperverted by sophistry, 
 ir original simplicity of language. And these are all 
 nple proofs, that God has not left holy verity at the 
 mercy of proud intellect alone ; but has secured, that, when banished 
 by the sophistries of the perverted brain, it may still have another 
 conservative hold upon the ineradicable conscience. 
 
 Picture to yourselves, young gentlemen, a youthful candidate for 
 active life, marching forth upon the world's wide stage, filled with 
 the notion that all opinions are irresponsible and all equally inno- 
 cent; that however carelessly or depravedly adopted, however 
 originating from the basest sources of moral foulness, or however 
 tending to the depths of corruption's bottomless abyss, yet if he can 
 only possess himself of them, if he can but make them bis own, 
 they are innocent and blameless ; and can you imagine a being 
 more exposed to all the plagues and contagions of this world's 
 wildest depravities, more unbound by all the holy ties and sacred 
 obligations that hold man to his sphere, and more totally adrift upon 
 the surging ocean of lawless licentiousness ? What are moral prin- 
 ciples but a coat of moral armor, girt around the man, defending him 
 from the assaults of temptation, and empowering him against his 
 moral foes? What are his moral principles but the cords and 
 chains that bind him round and fasten bim to the orbit of moral 
 rectitude ? Unharness the man of his iron armor, unclasp him of 
 his wreathing fetter, and what is he ? He is, in one emphatic 
 word, unprincipled. 
 
 Go forth into the world, then, young gentlemen, with the pro- 
 foundest sense, both of the weighty responsibility and of the mo- 
 mentous consequences that press upon the work of forming your 
 principles of moral action. Forget, never, that there is not only 
 honest mistake, but that there are also corrupt, fearfiil, fatal errors. 
 Holy truth may suflFer herself to be misled with impunity; but ter- 
 rible is her retribution upon him, who is too indolent to seek her 
 existence, or so gross as to slight her value. When the world's lax 
 maxims are loosening and solving the tight bands of rigid principle 
 from around you, when you lend a listening and adopting ear to 
 
SEKMON. 37 
 
 adventurous tenets, then is the moment to work out your salvation 
 with fear and trembling. Suspect and dread any principle, 
 however plausible and insinuating, which tends in any degree 
 to deprave and adulterate the purity and sensibility of your moral 
 feelings ; which dims or obliterates the immutable boundary 
 lines of right and wrong ; which lowers the standard of virtue and 
 piety ; which blunts the power of conscience ; which diminishes the 
 sensible pressure of eternal responsibility, or weakens your full ap- 
 preciation of solemn accountableness and divine retribution. If 
 these be true, they are truths of a price beyond all price, and to 
 miss them is a ruin beyond all depth ; if they be false, the opposite 
 truths are comparatively little worth, and indeed all truth sinks in- 
 value, and if missed, small indeed is the harm. 
 
 Before I conclude this part of my subject permit me to allude to a 
 point upon which we tmght say much, viz., the firm stand with which 
 this reasoning fixes us upon the immutable basis of Christianity. 
 The great and demonstrative evidence of the Gospel is its absolute 
 sameness with absolute right. It is, that the precepts of the Gros- 
 pel and the dictates of conscience are identical. It is one of the 
 clearest of certainties that the contest between religion and irre- 
 ligion, is the same as the contest" between holiness and unholiness, 
 between good and bad, between right and wrong. Oh the one 
 hand, it is sure that Christianity somehow has identified itself with 
 rigid principle and conscientious rectitude; and on the other, irre- 
 ligion has somehow become one with loose principles and licentious 
 practice. [Sure, then, as there is truth in conscience there is truth 
 Jn Christutnity. If right and truth be not diverse, but self-evidently 
 one, then pure religion is the identity of both. 
 
 And we do think it obvious to the most casual, candid glance, 
 that somehow or other, those doctrines which are looked upon as the 
 more central dogmas of Christianity — the specific tenets of evan- 
 gelical Christianity — do possess a grappling affinity with all the 
 holy virtues, the domestic purities and the living active benevo- 
 lences that bless mankind. Now this fact cannot well be drawn 
 out into a train of severe and consecutive logic ; but to the mind 
 predisposed to " whatsoever things are lovely," it gives to Chris- 
 
 4* 
 
38 COLLEGIATK ADDBESSKS. 
 
 tianity a demonstrated divinity beyond all scientific demonstration. 
 I have ardently studied the evidences of the Gospel derived from 
 the voluminous sources of prophecy, and history, and miracle ; and 
 I feel a full assurance that were one half their body struck out of 
 existence, the argument that Christianity is identical with pure, 
 essential right, is the unmoved and the all-sufficient proof that 
 Christianity is identical with essential truth. 
 
 And thus opens to us a clear reply to those who denounce the 
 rigid grapple which the Christian heart fixes upon the Christian 
 truths,, as being bigotry and prejudice. That affinity which the 
 pure heart feels for the evidences of a purifying truth, is a holy 
 affinity. A predisposition for a demoralizing dogma — a presump- 
 tion in favor of a licentious sophism, is both bigotry and prejudice ; 
 but the preference of the pure in feeling for the pure in sentiment 
 is neither passion nor prejudice, but a blessed freedom from both. 
 
 When, therefore, I contemplate the vast mass of historical evi- 
 dences, I feel that they are an impregnable iron armor, with which 
 we may triumphantly meet the sceptic's logical assault ; but when I 
 contemplate this identificajion of Christianity with the moral sense, 
 I feel that to be the demonstration of the spirit, which goes most 
 deeply with its assurance to the soul. The deductions of reason 
 are drawn through a fallible length of process ; the decisions of 
 conscience are instantaneous and immediate. When by the light of 
 the former I see the historic proof of its truth, I feel that there is 
 no sophism ; when by the light of the latter, I see that it is ahso- 
 lute right, I know that there can be no mistake. 
 
 If then in the matter of purifying the affijctions, we commended 
 you to the precepts and the divine spirit of the Gospel, in the 
 matter of forming a purity of principles, would we commend to 
 your entire and fervent faith, her doctrines. Her truths are no 
 ineffective dogmas; when brought into operation upon the heart and 
 soul, sanctifying to our nature are their whole purpose and power. 
 The more that heart is purified, the more those doctrines are con- 
 genial and embraced ; and then, the more deeply they are em- 
 braced, the more purifying, reciprocally, is their power. And thus 
 Christian experience has long proved, that the highest attainment of 
 
SEKMON, 30 
 
 holiness is ever in union with the most perfect possession of faith. 
 The whole theory — the summary purpose of the Gospel truths, is, 
 in the Apostle's striking phrase, to purify the heart by faith. 
 Sanctify them through thy truth, was the dying prayer of your aton- 
 ing Saviour. 
 
 III. Too much I have not said upon the two former parts of my 
 subject, if I have presented an impressive view of the momentous 
 importance Of a pure heart, united with pure principle ; for when 
 these are imbued with a spirit of rectitude, action will be spontane- 
 ously right. You are now standing upon the threshold of the world 
 of action. To your eyes, the scenes that now surround you are 
 momentary. To your view, dim and shadowy evanescence hangs, 
 veil-like, over the halls, and seats, and rooms, over the hills and 
 fields, so long your own familiar home. The years which you have 
 here spent, have gone to join the centuries of the irrevocable past ; 
 the future looms up before you, filled with the shadowy outlines of 
 incalculable events ; and from its distant prospective, the summons 
 to action, action, action, thrills upon your spirit's ear. Already the 
 restraints and details to which you were here confined are losing 
 their common-place character ; momently there rushes upon you a 
 gushing, agonizing sense of the crisis, which usually you can scarce- 
 ly realize to have come upon you in your life's journey ; you fling 
 an anxious eye forward, to descry if " coming events cast their 
 shadows before ; " you scrutinize with tremulous anxiety, your own 
 capabilities of success ; and you fluctuate, with alternate vibration, 
 between a dread of life's future uncertainties and an impetuous 
 ardor to try the dashing hazard. Could I hold up before you a 
 mirror in whose transparent scope should be imaged the visible pan- 
 orama of your future destinies — ought I to hold it forth — and would 
 you dare to contemplate its presentations 1 Alas, young gentle- 
 men, rightly and beautifully has one said, " the veil that hides from 
 our sight the events of succeeding years is a veil woven by the 
 land of mercy." 
 
 Naturally as the very blood's pulsation, in youth's warm hey- 
 day, are the promptings of an impulsive, aspiring ambition. But 
 
40 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 in those moments wben the conscientious principle has been alert, 
 the question cannot but have occurred to you, how far these feelings 
 require to be chastened ; or whether the desire and purpose of emi- 
 nence, in other words, the principle of emulation, be at all a justi- 
 fiable impulse of action. Important as it preeminently is, that the 
 ardor of ambitious action should be regulated by principle, I know 
 no point more obviously worthy our present attention. 
 
 I cannot join, then, with those excellent men who wholly condemn 
 emulation as an impulse of action. I should at least place it upon 
 a level with a desire of property, or any other constitutional princi- 
 ple of man as man, requiring indeed regulation, but performing 
 under that regulation, a natural and healthful action, and securing 
 its proper and legitimate happiness. The objection that emulation 
 is not itself a praiseworthy motive, is true of the desire of food, or 
 the love of the beautiful, both of which, ^though in themselves not 
 praiseworthy motives, are the proper impulses to correct and salu- 
 tary action ; the objection that emulation is liable to abuse, is no 
 more than is obviously true of all our active, powers and principles ; 
 the objection is closely allied to a vice ; that it is liable to be trans- 
 formed into envy, is true even of the noblest virtues, all of which 
 are bounded by an almost invisible line, from some closely adjacent 
 vice. Emulation, like most of Our natural active principles, if right- 
 ly directed and properly checked, although in itself neither a moral 
 nor an immoral quality, may be made a productive cause of great 
 and happy and beneficial result. If it ever fire you with an excess 
 above a healthful medium ; if ever it engross the soul to the pre- 
 occupancy of the place appropriate to higher and more sacred 
 feelings ; if it ever crush a holy emotion, or suppress a pure sympa- 
 thy ; if it ever induce you to trample upon a bounden duty, or 
 violate a just obligation ; if it eve; degenerate into a base and malig- 
 nant envy at a rival's fair success, or lead you to the use of an unfair 
 advantage to prevent it ; if it inspire in you a haughty supercilious 
 triumph in the hour of success, or unmanly and rankling despond- 
 ency in defeat, then has your generous emulation degenerated into 
 a base passion, a curse embosomed within your soul. 
 
 Go forth then into the world, again I say, young gentlemen, 
 
SERMON. 41 
 
 animated with tbe purpose of attaining all the eminence in whatever 
 path you tread, which can be attained without one holy principle 
 sacrificed. Go, nobly, yeb purely aspiring; and doubt not that the 
 noblest of the sons of men, is he, who, from the highest watch-tower 
 of human eminence, attained without one unholy compromise, looks 
 out upon the world of men, swaying them with all the might of 
 moral influences, and proclaiming in their hearing thrilling truths — 
 " truths that wake to perish never." And what gives the ultimate 
 finish to this model is, that while he may humanly yet temperately 
 enjoy the pleasures of elevation and success, so chastened is that 
 ambition, that he could have passed through a humble line of life 
 without one murmur against Providence ; that he could have seen 
 the success of some undeserving rival, with pity, indeed, for those 
 who ipay suffer for Ais false advancement, but without one rankle 
 of envy at his triumph ; that he could have lived unknown, un- 
 praised, unsung, and never once pined with the gnawing discontent 
 of unappreciated merit. This, young gentlemen, is pure and perfect 
 greatness ; this is a noble ambition ; a plant that may spring and 
 bloom even in the soil of that heart whose very element is purity. 
 
 And scarcely may I admit that this ambition can exist in any 
 other than those to whom is' realized the promise of the pure in heart, 
 that they shall see God. To see God, is to recognize his existence — 
 his very living presence around, within us. And he who possesses 
 this recognition, even upon the summit of earthly power, feels, — 
 how deeply ! — that there is an approbation in comparison with 
 which human applause is vanity ; and in the very depths of humilia- 
 tion he may feel that though his diamond worth be invisible to mor- 
 tal eye, an eye there is which omnisciently looks down, and amid 
 the earthly rubbish that surrounds it, knows and estimates full well 
 the priceless jewel. Such is a pure ambition; and this, young 
 friends, be yours. 
 
 The places that here now know you, will soon know you no more, 
 perhaps, forever. It is the place of us; your former instructors, 
 permanently here to stand and observe as your successive ranks pass 
 on. To us ye are a most thrilling emblem, how rapidly one gene- 
 ration goeth away and another cometh. And how like are the 
 
42 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 events of collegiate existence to the great events of real life ! If 
 anj class of human beings can bo called men of two lives, it is that 
 of the academic graduate. Here in this little world have you been 
 placed, an enclosed world preparatory to the great world now be- 
 fore you. Your little republic has had in its own little horizon — ^ita 
 events and its history — its excitements and its politics — its oligar- 
 chies and its aristocracies — its rise and fall of popular leaders — ^nay, 
 the whole routine of vicissitudes and passions, which human nature, 
 ever on a less or greater scale the same, exhibits in larger and 
 fiercer democracies. Justly then and beautifully has a college been 
 called a world in miniature. 
 
 But in this comparison, there is one analogy which is as moment- 
 ous as it has been unnoticed. Solemn is the consideration that in 
 all your past collegiate life, you have been laying up a retribution 
 which you are to meet in the world into which you are now stepping. 
 Of not a neglect have you been guilty, not an acquirement have you 
 lost or gained, not a habit have you formed, which will not send its 
 retributive consequences across the boundary line, to expend them- 
 selves in your future life, either in direct effects upon yowsdf, or 
 upon those counteractives which you may feebly afford against 
 them. 
 
 There is no light in which man's nature can be viewed more 
 striking than the light of his infinite responsibUities. No finite be- 
 ing can perhaps be presented npon a position at once so fearful and 
 so grand, as an immortal being standing upon the lofty promontory 
 of his own eternal responsibility, balancing in his own vibrating 
 hand, and deciding by his own vibrating will, two opposite infinities 
 of eternal bliss and eternal woe. If in those trembling scales he 
 weighs such destinies, it is at once his vast prerogative, and God's 
 full justification, that his own hand must fling in the weight that set- 
 tles the momentous preponderance. And how does it give at once 
 an appalling consequence to each least breath we draw, io know that 
 every deed — every word— *-every thought — tells weightily upon that 
 high suspended balance ! Tread carefully, child of eternity, upon 
 the stage of your probation, for the echoes of your every footstep 
 send their undying peal through the ceaseless ages of your immor- 
 
SBBMON. 43 
 
 tality. Breathe softly, heir of retribution ; for thy every whispered 
 word, nay, each unwhispered thought — immortal as thyself — swiftly 
 ascends on high and inscribes itself, in imperishable letters, upon 
 the records of eternal judgment,, to be read by the eye of G-od Om- 
 nipotent, in the light of a blazing world, to the ears of a trembling 
 universe. Trembling with you, my friends, before the dread eter- 
 nal issue, to life's great trial we commit yon ; and could we com- 
 mission our prayers as guardian angels, they should wing their 
 hovering presence perpetually around your path. May the spirit 
 of the pure Jehovah breathe his purity in your hearts, and may his 
 approving eye beam in conscious blessings upon your steps. Puri- 
 fied may you come at the issue of life's great ordeal ; peacefully 
 may you behold your God in the trying day, and blissfully may you 
 dwell in his eternal presence, 
 
IH£! MANLV MAIT. 
 
 A BACCALAUREATE, 
 
 DEUTEKEB AT 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, 
 
 AT THS 
 
 ANNtfAL COMMENCEMENT, 1831. ' 
 
THE MANLY MAN. 
 
 Young Gentlemen : 
 
 Hating delivered you the sign, manual, and seal of your 
 Alma Mater, it is now my duty to pronounce to you her benedictory 
 adieu. You are standing upon her threshold with your faees forth- 
 ward, our little world behind you, and the broad world before you. 
 However trite repetition may make the scene to others, it is — yes, 
 it is — an ^a to you. It diminishes none of our individual joys or 
 woes, to know that they have been experienced, with the same poig- 
 nancy, by every child of Adam, since the flowers of Eden first faded 
 from human view. Just as freshly blooms young romance, or burns 
 keen ambition, in the breast of the youthful aspirant, as if his was 
 the first heart that ever knew the strange emotion. Just as bitter is 
 the pang of sorrow, the gnaw of remorse, or the very agony of d^ath 
 itself, as if now the first tear, the first guilt, the first expiring sigh 
 had just surprised the world. Grod is a divine author, who ever re- 
 peats himself, with an ever fresh originality. And so this self-same 
 world is ever at once both old and new. To one tired eye its scenes 
 are colorless and dull ; its events roll on with a heavy rumbling 
 monotony ; while to the sparkling gaze of the new-comer, every re- 
 volve of the glass discloses some new kaleidescopic splendor ; and 
 every glance at the prospect reveals, in the far background, the 
 broad green expanse, and the Alps on Alps towering out higher and 
 higher in the panoramic distance. Many successive collegiate gen- 
 erations have passed, and will pass along this way, on their route. 
 
48 COLLEOIATB ADDAKSSES. 
 
 with full intention to emigrate into that Eldorado of the future, of 
 which there are so many contradictory rumors. They are going to 
 try, and then they will know. And this morning you have come — 
 and you will go. Pass on, then,- pass on, juvenes candidati, to 
 what fortunes I cannot tell if I would, I would not tell if I could. 
 
 No, young gentlemen, if the young eye is thus able to throw the 
 hues of its own youthfolness over the scenes of this venerable world, 
 if the new spirit is thus able to renew the face of this old creation, 
 let me lend to you none of my leaden-eyed vision, or fling any of the 
 obsoleteness of my experience over the originalities of your hopeful 
 fancies. Whatever those hopes may be to me, they are true to you, 
 and done up by a divine hand, for the best of purposes, in the youth- 
 ful nature. If upon some sign, hung out over the sidewalk of life, 
 from different positions, you read painting, gilding, while I read 
 glazing, though each reads differently, all may read right Believe, 
 then, if that faith and hope and love for the future nerve your sinews 
 and elevate your soul for high performance in that future. Believe 
 with a young heart's strong faith ; and if that can carry you with a 
 high bearing through all the sordidness of life, if it has made you 
 brave through all the conflicts, cowardices, and treasons you will 
 meet in life, it has done>its noble work. It has bldomed with the 
 blossom, it has ripened with the fruit, it shall roll in the harvest for 
 which God has planted the precious seed in the noble soil. And 
 yours be that happier lot, in which the soul shall retain its youth 
 ' amid the decay of years ; so shall that same buoyancy of heart, en- 
 riched with science, ennobled by honor, purified by religion, and 
 crowned with the laurels of a memorable history, transmit you through 
 life's close to life's triumphant reward. 
 
 Better or worse, however, in a great degree what you have been 
 you will be. Character, even partially formed, with difficulty sub- 
 mits to sudden transformations. It is among the penalties of an 
 erroneo\is course in the past, that it holds a powerful influence over 
 the present and the future. And past virtues make future virtues 
 easy. The future is not c[uite to you an extended gallery, along 
 whose walls are suspended, like ready-made wardrobes, those forms 
 and fashions of character, which you can at once, by the mere 
 
THE MANIY MAN. 49 
 
 assuming, identify with yourself. It is less ewyeloptnent, than 
 development, which forms the character. In life, as in logic, ther 
 conclusion is very much contained in the premises. If from within 
 yourself, go forth the vow, " From every, model I will catch its excel- 
 lency," though you fail much, you will much succeed. Enraptured 
 with some specimen of nobleness, say, " I will be that nobleness," 
 and though you be not that nobleness, you will be the nobler for the 
 effort and the aim. Physicial constitution will in some degree lay 
 herpowerupon the man, and say, " Thus do I form him ; " education 
 then takes him into her moulding grasp, and says, " This will I 
 fashion him ; " temptations and inducements steal around him, and 
 bid him, " This consent to be ; " fortune and circumstances lay their 
 laws upon him, " To this issue must he come ; " and yet triumphing 
 more or less in spite or in accordance with all these, the man may, 
 he should, he often does, seize hold of lofty excellence, and success- 
 fully exclaim, " This will I be, and this I am." 
 
 , All these subtractions then being made, appealing to that self 
 constructive power that still remains, permit yourselves to be asked 
 — What would you be? I ask not with what happy circumstantials 
 you would love to be surrounded, nor what high destinies you would 
 like to attain ; but fixing your eye directly upon your essential self — 
 What would you be ? For it must be yourself that must form your- 
 self, and by yourself so formed must all your fortunes be built. So 
 well do I know your reply, that I do not fear to draw it out in pic- 
 ture. Physically, you would have a corporeal constitution, in 
 form and strength developed to the completed style of manhood, as 
 the healthfiil basis of a high superstructure of character ; scholas- 
 TiCALLY, you would, in the language of Bacon, claim all knowledge 
 as your department, keeping a drawer for every form of fact and 
 principle, esteeming no acquirement worthless, as- not knowing of 
 what brilliant conclusions it may be the pregnant premise ; ^isthbt- 
 iCALLy, you would have a quick sensibility to enjoy, and a chastened 
 taste to judge the excellences that the divine or the human artist 
 may spread before you ; dynamically, you would have your forces 
 and powers of character, by nature and by training, alert for the 
 moment's ready action, or largely capacious for the most elaborate 
 5» 
 
50 COLL£GIIAT£ ASSKESSDS. 
 
 effort and the most extended effect ; spiKiiuAiiLY, you would main- 
 tain that heart-felt faith in those rich provisions which Christianity 
 holds forth to human weakness, guilt and woe, which should lead to 
 a pure obedience to its requirement and a glad ayailment of its sup- 
 port in life, and its bright assurance for that period when our drop of 
 life melts away into life's all-boundless sea. Such in all its depart- 
 ments and all its completeness is the manly man. And such a 
 character cannot fail of success and fortune in life, for it is of itself 
 success and fortune to he such a man. 
 
 But let us occupy our brief moments in expanding this miniature 
 into a portrait. 
 
 I. The PHYSICAL MAN, then, is the material basis of the intellect- 
 ual man — the corporeal temple of the spiritual resident. And while 
 we would not with ancient Greece adore the material form, yet we 
 would not affirm that even ancient Greece herself, with all her palaes- 
 trae and athletse, did too much for the physical culture of the human 
 frame. If one who wrote, not in classic, but in inspired Greek, 
 could declare that the human body is a temple of the divine Spirit 
 himself, certainly, not only defilement, but defacement and negli- 
 gent dilapidation of the divine residence, is a crime. We are not 
 yet emancipated from that monastic pietism, that spurious Christian- 
 ity of a post-apostolic day, which teaches that the maceration of the 
 body is the health of the soul. The prayer of the classic poet for 
 the mens sana in copore sano, proves that even Pagan wisdom 
 knew that soundness of body and soundness of mind, if not identi- 
 cal, were mutual requisites. As the rancidness of the oil tarnishes 
 the lustre of the blaze, so does the marasmus of the body dim the 
 beams of mind. And even a sound and well-grounded piety is a 
 serene and healthful piety — clear as the ether, and cheerful as 
 the morning. How often does the disturbance of the corporeal sys- 
 tem reach with its derangements the mental action, and disturb the 
 symmetry and consistency even of the Christian character ! And 
 that serene and cheerful piety too, knowing the moral value of 
 health, will not proscribe those relaxations and recreations which 
 God prescribed when he assigned the laws of our healthful nature. 
 
TUE MANLT MAN. 51 
 
 Not healthful is that piety, which would shed a conventual gloom 
 over the social circle, or lay a suppression over those hilarities, 
 which, trenching upon no saeredness, and running into no licen- 
 tiousness, have a right to take their turn amid the phases of life, 
 when the solemnities of devotion or the cares of business have had 
 their place. 
 
 And science, too, as well as misjudging conscience, has been the 
 innocent occasion of fatal violations of Nature's law. The intense 
 absorption of his studies oft fastens the scholar within his cloister ; 
 his physical energies, like the particles of his midnight candle, go to 
 feed the ever-burning blaze of thought ; the over-tasked mind 
 prostrates the maltreated body through years of preparatory, 
 collegiate and professional study, until the moment having arrived 
 when his genius is prepared to soar with no common flight, to the 
 loftiest heights of fame and fortune, lo ! the arrow of permanent 
 disease strikes the shining mark, and fastens him to the earth — for- 
 ever. Often too, the collegiate honor is bought with the candidate's 
 life, and the academic laurel is bound upon the pallid brow. Alas ! 
 learning made him not wise, until wisdom came too late. He 
 studied the laws of every nature but his own ; and the laws of his 
 own nature revealed themselves in, the form of irreversible penalty. 
 If, indeed, the ancient law which forbade the suicide an honorable 
 sepulture, were now extended to every appropriate case, would not 
 our cross-roads be our most populous burying grounds ? 
 
 II. But the material basis being laid, how noble the picture of 
 the manly frame, exulting in the richness and the range of every 
 manly acquirement and every manly accomplishment ! Mark that 
 kingly sage in his own realm «f science ; what monarch moves with 
 so majestic a tread, bears so stately a brow, beams with a glance of 
 so magnificent an ambition, wields a sceptre of so wide, so proud a 
 domain, or roars a monument of a more impregnable eternity? No 
 line of titled, princely, or regal ancestry can boast the nobil- 
 ity of giving his birth to the world. His nobility is underived, 
 incommunicable, and all his own. Or if he impart it to a line of 
 descendants, ennobled in his nobleness, it is that lineage of ambi- 
 
52 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 tious and grateful scholars, children of the mind, posterity of the 
 soul, to whom he has given the impulse of his own spirit, upon 
 whom he has stamped the image and superscription of his own 
 grandeur — the stamp that proclaims them hegotten in the likeness 
 of his own imperial intellect. 
 
 How shall a character like this be built ? Built, I say, for it 
 presents itself to my conception, as a massy and stupendous strnc- 
 ture. Crystal palaces are fragile fabrics, and Egyptian pyramids 
 are worthless masses ; but here is a crystal monument no shock can . 
 fracture and no value buy. How can such a character be con- 
 structed? Not upon a narrow and jealous foundation. That big- 
 oted and exclusive spirit, that limits itself within some special 
 department and asks of half the territory of thought — What is it 
 worth? — ^before the very conception of such a character, should 
 shrink from native littleness into merited nothingness. His very 
 atmosphere is destructive to that fragmentary and meagre spirit of 
 sciolism which says to its pupils, " Gret a scrap of knowledge suffi- 
 cient for a trade and a fee — the starkest of folly is superfluous 
 study ; and the greatest of simpletons is the man who knows too 
 much." His own chosen department, indeed, every scholar should 
 have, in which he may master the ultimate, and push discovery 
 beyond the known ultimate ; but the very epithet liberal, so often 
 applied to the scholar, should remind him that his part is not the 
 whole, and that there are far distant regions of thought, cultivated 
 by tastes as rational as his own, in whose success it would become 
 him, with a catholic spirit, to rejoice. 
 
 m. And what should be the iESTHETic character of the true man ? 
 Just what is the aesthetic character of our divine Creator. For, 
 strange as this answer may seem, is not a divine regard to the senti- 
 ment of beauty spread, with softening and serene eflfect, over the 
 hardness and asperity of the whole creation^ The globe's surface, 
 thanks to divine beneficence, is not one cragged floor of primary 
 granite, where the aching eye parches the soul, with a boundless 
 monotony of adamant. And science and morals, too, are severe 
 and adamantine ; they alone crisp and dry up the soul, unless the 
 
THE MANLY MAN. 53 
 
 genial elements of sensibility and taste mingle their softening and 
 refining effect. Even scientific enthusiasm, alone, has a crotchety 
 aspect; the Iq^es of the triangles have many sharp corners; the 
 very smile of the " pure reason " is grim and bony. Go out, 
 shrivelled abstractionist, into the pure air, and let the Joeauty that 
 Grod has spread all over creation, call out the response of the con- 
 ■ genial sensibilities. And human art, too, a sweet and humble imi- 
 tator of the omnipotent artist, has pointed her pencil and edged her 
 chisel, to copy the forms and reduplicate the charms of nature. 
 And the lively Greek, in his graphic language, called the copier of 
 nature in immortal rhyme, ■Kolrirrn — the maker — for he was creator 
 of a new ideal world. And the world of thought and of social 
 manners presents many a form and movement on which taste may 
 expatiate, and with her subtlest of logic, may lay her transcendental 
 rules, and draw a thousand refining inferences. And, refining the 
 feelings, and softening the features of the otherwise austere thinker, 
 these reflex influences spread their amenities over his life and man- 
 ners, and invest the scholar with the attributes of the gentleman. 
 
 The gentleman, I say, but not the fop. For, exquisite refine- 
 ments are but the light trimmings, not the solid staple of life. He 
 who allows his manhood to be expended upon the draperies and 
 furbelows — the graces and effeminacies of life — has mistaken the 
 masculine purpose of living, and has sunk from man to dandy. 
 And over-refinement becomes a vice, and clusters around itself a 
 whole genus of vices, so numerous and so dark, that the moralist 
 questions whether ultra-civilization is not worse than barbarism. 
 And when, as in the decline of the Roman Empire, civilization has 
 plunged into her ocean of licentious degeneracy, in spite of the 
 consequent misery, history all but rejoices when the populous forests 
 pour their inundations of healthful barbarism into that chasm of 
 human corruption. What wonder, then, that the Puritan, in his 
 reformatory mission, often delivers a denunciatory malediction upon 
 the whole tribe of amusements and gratifications of taste as the fair 
 allies of evil — the Delilahs of the human race ! What wonder that 
 the stem Iconoclasts, of all ages, have made short work with the 
 idola of taste and art ; and that the ascetic element of religion has, 
 
54 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 ever and anon, been obliged to reappear as tbe antagonist of the 
 seductive blandishments of these soft subduers of the vittues, s 
 well as the ferocities of less civilized life. 
 
 IV. Our live pattern of a man thus far being outlined — oor- 
 poieally, intellectually, and sestheticallj — we may fairly assume id 
 to be dynqmdcdily (if I may use the metaphysician's ordinary priv-; 
 ilege of pillaging tho yocabulary of physios) the fit residence of 
 Blighty motive powers. These dynamics of the manly character 
 X reckon as three : genius, talent, and objective enterprise. 
 
 1. Most envied, least , enviable of the attributes of moA, gerdus 
 is the victim of the inspiration by which it is immortal and immortal- 
 izes all it touches. It is a splendid fever whose deliriums enchant 
 the woirld. It is an ^olian music, breathed by an ethereal aura, 
 through a framework of fine-strung nerves. Corporeal health is 
 too gross for its presence. As its body is scarce sound, so its mind 
 is scarce sane. What work it makes when it undertakes worldly 
 business and sagacious management! Earthly-minded common 
 sense stares with homely pity at its daiiity attempts at plans and 
 statesmanship. And then among its unaccountables will be rare 
 strokes of power — ^hits of miraculous accident, facile achievements 
 where common sense would have denied even a forlorn hope. 
 
 With such traits of infantile simplicity and such supernatural 
 shoots of irregular power, it is the very image with which artists 
 picture the cherub — the baby-angel. But it has neither an infant 
 innocence nor an angel bliss. It is unhappy. It is nervous, and 
 cannot sleep o'nights ; it is dreamy, and scarce awake by day. It 
 is imprudent, and in its anger speaks irreverent words. Then its 
 .basilisk eye sees things in rare lights, detects unexpected vulnerabil- 
 ities, and strikes the exposed skin with a sting that leaves a venom 
 and. a vengeance. Its bon-mots are fiery flying serpents ; whoso is 
 bitten, dies supernaturally. And those who are smitten by its 
 brilliant hits are nowise thankful, or considerate that all this is 
 "genius," and "nervousness," and "a way it has." If any of 
 you have, in your nonage and simplicity, prayed for genius, go 
 bring a thank-offering if Providence has not granted in wrath your 
 
THE MANLY MAN. 55 
 
 supplication. The man who could sell a whole conflagration of 
 genius for a few sparks of common sense, would make a common 
 sense bargain. And yet the world owes a tenderer dealing, a 
 warmer gratitude, and a richer compensation to the cWld of genius. 
 Its infirmities and miseries are the conditions of its power, and of 
 its brilliant donations to the world. Those rare beings who have 
 provided us ambrosia for the soul, are after all somewhat nobler 
 than the rustic who raises breadstuffs for the stomach. Their very 
 hearts' substance has fed the blaze which has been the world's light 
 and glory. The power that has possessed them has strung them 
 up to preternatural heights, has borne them on high, to see supei^nal 
 things and speak immortal wordsj and then has dropped them in 
 deep reaction beneath their natural level. And how has genius filled 
 the world with her ethereal music, animating men's frames with a 
 celestial elasticity, making our souls more capacious of grand con- 
 ceptions, giviffg' our very nature new phases of grace and power 
 and elevation ! Over our hard material earth genius has spread a 
 spiritual world ; and into our dense and murky atmosphere has in- 
 fused a purer ether ; and through all sensuous sounds has breathed 
 a sweeter music ; and within the spirit of man himself has created 
 a higher being ; so that genius is a renovator of nature and of man. 
 And if those true genii of inborn magic, the sons of genius, though 
 tutelar benefactors of our kind, are themselves not happy, sorrow 
 for their woes should mingle with our gratitude, and iiidulgence for 
 their errors should sustain the full tribute of our reverence for 
 their greatness and glory. 
 
 There were good daemons, (for such was great Jove's supreme counsel,) 
 The blessed, terrestrial warders of sufEeiing mortals. 
 The guardians of justice, averters of terrible misdeeds ; 
 Invested with ether, their pathway eneireles creation. 
 Wealth-giving geniuses — such was their legal office. 
 
 •■- » Tol fi£v idi/iovec elQi, Ajdf fur/hCkm Svb. povMs 
 
 ■Ol 'pa i^vTuoQiooQiv re dikOc not ?;i;ft-/Ua Jpya, 
 'Hepa' ic^a/xcvoi, icavnt ^crCnini hr 'ciav, 
 TDmitoSotcu. Kat tovto yepac paaOiifiov hxoi» 
 
56 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 2. But there stands talent — manly and self-sustained — maimed 
 with no infirmities, and asking no favors. Talent is the great strength 
 of all the manly faculties, working with a spontaneous flexibility, in 
 the most arduous modes of action. It is stately, healthful, large, 
 proportioned ww'nrf ; fit resident to occupy and endow the manly 
 person, with all possible of human majesty. It has no inspirations, 
 like genius : it is merely the earthly faculties grown to their utmost 
 latitude and altitude. Genius is intense and dazzling ; talent is 
 clear and illuminating. Grenius leaps to daring, and sometimes to 
 priceless originalities ; talent walks by the route of a sure and natural 
 logic to the just conclusion. Talent is an accurate calculator, a 
 profound planner ; genius is the intuitive discoverer, the creative in- 
 ventor. Talent belongs to the conservative, and genius to the move- 
 ment party. Talent regulates itself by practical conventionalities ; 
 genius strikes at the radical element and sweeps into the universal 
 principle. Talent is overbearing, prescriptive, aristocratic ; genius 
 is audacious, defying, democratic. Genius startles, but talent guides ; 
 genius charms mankind, but talent justly rules the world. 
 
 Yet talent alone constitutes not the highest known style of intel- 
 lectual man. It is noble, but it has not grandeur, far less sublimity. 
 It is not until the noble outlines of talented manhood radiate with 
 the sparklets of genius superadded, — when the noblest human model 
 is invested with some flashing fringes of tho divine, that we behold 
 the MAN — the MkN wonderful to men. It is then that intellect 
 walks to the ultimate verge of a sure-stepping logic, and then darts 
 up into an infallible intuition. It is then that the profound plan is 
 deepened into a memorable invention. It is then that the far fore- 
 casting calculation shoots out into prophecy. It is then the man is 
 a phemonenon — rarer than miracles — one of the upper half-dozen in 
 all the world's ages. 
 
 Genius is a pure gift ; talent, more — yet not mainly — an at- 
 tainment. " Acquire a taste, "nay, even " acquire a talent " — but 
 no teacher bids his pupil, acquire a genius. Physicial health, men- 
 tal strength, stored memory, disciplined reason, cherished imagina- 
 tion, chastened taste, trained activity, these are " such stuflf as " 
 
THE MANLT MAN. 57 
 
 talent "is made of." Combine these togetber into yourself so far 
 as nature, eircumstancea, and self-training will afford, and you bave 
 attained your own highest development. Combine them togetber, 
 ideally, in some model conception, and you have the man, in the 
 the highest degree prepared to walk out upon the world and make 
 performances for history. 
 
 3. Physical and mental accomplishments, genius and and talent, 
 are valuable to the world only through enterprise and action. Noble 
 doing is the best proof as well as fruit of noble being. God and the 
 world have a stern reckoning to make with the lazy possessor of 
 waste excellence and stagnant powers. What is he strong and ex- 
 cellent for, if the world have no good of him 1 He might as well 
 have been a minus — and the space he fills, a vacuity. If, in 
 physics, the effect is measure of the cause, so in character, the pro- 
 duct is the final measure of the value. The true man, at the present 
 day, is a centre around whom the avenues of noble action open, like 
 radii, in myriads of diverging directions. Every route of active use- 
 fulness is now honorable. Science is giving aid and conferring 
 honor upon every beneficial pursuit, and making almost every occu- 
 pation a profession. The lawyer, the physician, and the preacher, 
 the teacher, the editor, and the lecturer, the merchant, the mechanist, 
 and the agriculturist, may each, by the dignity of his character and 
 action, impart to his pursuit the professional rank. And it is this 
 grand union of the mental and the manual, of thought and labor, of 
 intellectual ability with olyective enterprise, that is quickening the 
 action and changing the face of the world. And truly no knightly 
 champion, caparisoned and mounted, moving to the tournament ; no 
 hero, rushing in power and bravery to the field of conquest, ever shone 
 more" nobly than the youthful aspirant, endowed with high qualities 
 of nature, trained with all the appliances of education, inspired with 
 an honorable ambition, going forth to the enterprise of a life-time. 
 All our sympathies kindle in his favor -; the eye of age drinks in 
 youth as it gazes upon him ; and an involuntary prayer quivers 
 upon the lip, " Propitious Providence, bless the world with his 
 
58 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 V. CoDcentratiDg and crowning, finally; all these qualities of 
 character, which unite to build up our true man, is the spiritual 
 principh by which the seal of God himself is set upon his own no- 
 blest work. Without religion, as a faith and a hope, a feeling and 
 a law, the whole combination is of the earth, earthy. This places 
 him in his true position, located on earth yet connected with heaven ; 
 occupying a serial place in human history, and yet, organized as a 
 part of the divine plan, — a plan which, drawing its origin from 
 depths of past eternity, sends its issues into all eternity to come. 
 
 Matter of congratulation it is, that I am not, upon this subject, 
 obliged to address you in the words of doubt or despair, uttered by 
 an eloquent French Professor, Joffroy, to the young men of the 
 University of France. I am not obliged with him to announce that 
 the progress or the pride of our age had outgrown Christianity as a 
 former age outgrew Paganism ; and that we are now arrived at a 
 blank interval for weary ages of creedless, faithless, hopeless de< 
 epair, until the far-off future shall construct or recdve a new reli- 
 gious system, suited to its era. And we feel no envy when we thus 
 see the orb of an infidel philosophy, towering to its highest noon — 
 alas ! the noon of night,— eclipsed, wifh a total eclipse, at its very 
 zenith — able from its dusky disk to shed only ebon beams of Egyip- 
 tian gloom ; radiating the blackness of darkness on the human soul. 
 This is the triumph of the gospel of despair ! and what Pandemo- 
 nium can theology fulminate deeper or blacker than its consumma- 
 tion 1 The direct curse upon its ghastly Apostles is the completest 
 success of their Atheist mission. Providence has only to breathe 
 upon them and compel themselves to be their proper hell. 
 
 No, young' gentlemen, thanks be to God, in our native land 
 Christianity still stands, militant indeed, yet master of the field. 
 Christianity and EepubUcanism — rfaith and freedom — still go hand 
 in hand, yielding each other a mutual support — ^yet each the more 
 firm for standing by their own strength upon the moveless platform 
 of reason, truth and human good. Still on and onward shall be 
 their associate march. Advancing time shall deepen the intensity 
 of their lustre, establish the centralism of their power, and spread 
 the area of their triumph and dominion. Their struggle is the 
 
THE MANLY MAN. 59 
 
 moral battle of the world ; and the millennium of their reign shall be 
 the joy of the earth, and the salvation of the race. 
 
 When the celebrated Chesterfield was asked by a Parisian lady, 
 "Why, my lord, does England still retain Christianity ? " — " Mad- 
 ame," he replied, with that mixture of repartee and philosophy 
 which met the case he was dealing with, " Madame, because, as 
 yet, we have been able to find nothing better." And, gentlemen, 
 be assnred you will, in your journey through life, find nothing better 
 than the faith of your fathers. You cannot wait until centuries 
 shall roll up that religion of the far future; predicted by the philoso- 
 , pher-prophet of Paris. And in the formation of manly character 
 \neid you any thing better ? Can any system, under the present 
 constitution of nature, present motives more powerful for walking in 
 the path of righteousness ; principles of purer rectitude to enlighten 
 the conscience ; a standard of higher sanctity of soul in life ; conso- 
 lations more sustaining for the hour of repentance ; or brighter assur- 
 ances amid the shades that margin around the gates of death ? With 
 the present constitution of nature premised, what but a system of 
 supernatural truth, could so interweave itself with the very warp of 
 human history, placing itself in the very texture of historic facts 
 BO inextricably as not to be rent away, without leaving the credibili- 
 ty of history itself in fragments ? And entering its circle of doc- 
 trines, were I to name one truth more essential, more divinely wise 
 than any other, it should be that one which demands our highest 
 elevation of faith — the central truth centrally maintained by the 
 church of ages — the identification of Grod with man in the person of 
 its glorious founder. For what rival religious founder can stand in 
 competition with the demonstrated Deus ipse — the Jehovah incar- 
 nate — God manifest in the flesh ? With that pinnacle truth 
 assumed, r arraign every other system, and every no-system, before 
 the bar of Christianity, try its character and pronounce its destiny. 
 Whether pope, prophet or reformer, — Gregory, Mahomet or Luther 
 — or, whether wit, philosopher or clairvoyant, Voltaire, Hume or 
 Swedenborg — ^if they preach any other gospel, or any anti-gospel, 
 ' let them be anathema. Until that new sun-like system, foreseen by 
 Parisian prophecy, shall blaze upon us — ^brighter than noonday in 
 
CU COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 the splendor of its own self-demonstration — we may safely place the 
 gospel of Christ in the category of unquestioned and primary as- 
 sumptions — to submit to the touch of no other test — the test of all 
 things else. Happy indeed our case, if ourselves can stand its test. 
 Happy, if guided by its truths, sustained by its hopes, and purified 
 by its spirit, in the morning of eternity, we be tried in its balance 
 and found not wanting. 
 
 Young gentlemen, in the name of your Alma, Valetei, gaudete, 
 abite. Go, but return — ^return again and again. Come,^when the 
 day comes — and inscribe yourselves with her second sanction. Join 
 your brother alumni— cherish a fraternal affection with each other, 
 and a filial allegiance to this your common intellectual parent. The 
 day is coming, when your young brotherhood, whom she shall send 
 out, will be her strong pillars of support, and her rallying host of 
 defence. The fathers of our peninsular state, and the light of our 
 peninsular church, in the future, sent forth, credentialed from her 
 halls, will one day cluster around her as a central nucleus, gathering 
 to her festivals as a happy family around the paternal board. To 
 have been a denizen of her republic, will yet be a gladsome title. 
 Through all her changes, then, stand by her ; find she shall be to 
 you a crown of honor. Curators and Faculties are transient ; but 
 our noble University is monumentod. Depart, then, sons of the 
 University of Michigan ! proud of that title, may you be that title's 
 pride ; and may the blessing of your Alma, your State and your 
 God, forever rest upon you. 
 
THE MAN-RSFUBIiIC. 
 
 A** PHI BETA KAPPA OEATION 
 
 DEUVERED AT ' 
 
 THE WESLEYAN UNIVEKSITY, 
 
 AUGUST, 1850. 
 
THE MAN-EEPUBLIC. 
 
 Gentlemen of thk $.' B. K : ' 
 
 It is at your bidding, kindly given and still more kindly repeated, 
 that onee more — aye, once more — ^I stand amid the old familiar 
 scenes, surrounded by mine ancient &iends, beneath the shade of our 
 already venerable Alma, and on the very palaestra — the platform of 
 by-gone intellectual contests. The world has very much agreed to 
 look upon the literary profession as a charmed and half-fabulous 
 existence. The academic man is a man of paper — the College fes- 
 tival is but a performance of paper characters upon a paper stage ; 
 and the utterances are but a papery sort of reality — a shadow of a 
 sound — a vox et preterea nihil. But every heart knoweth its own 
 emotions — every man is important to himself. The universe, in fact, 
 is nothing to me, but as it creeps in through the little spy-glass of 
 my perceptions ; and makes itself important to me, only in some 
 awakened emotions. When therefore the great noisy, insolent 
 world is pleased to say to us, " Of what value are your little shad- 
 owy events and personages?" — we have a retort which is perhaps 
 quite as true as it is brave — Of what value to us are your rumbling 
 machineries and blustering stage heroes ? Like most wordy contro- 
 versies, where the importance of the champions comes into the de- 
 bate, this altercation must become a draw game. Each party con- 
 vinces himself, and retires triumphant from the battle, content to 
 allow his opponent the privilege of enjoying a triumph which there is 
 no possibility of destroying. Yes, the emotions of each beating 
 
64 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 heart are often big enough to fill its whole measure ; and what then 
 is the outside world, with all it magnitudes and momentums, to that 
 tpiTuyv Klip — that dear heart ? 
 
 It is sixteen years since, in the sanguine morning of my young 
 manhood, upon the second Commencement day of our Alma, that, 
 called by that voice whose tones of mild authority still live in the 
 ear of memory, I here stood, to pronounce the inaugural essay which 
 recognized my place among the honored brothers in letters who filled 
 your professors' chairs. Sixteen years ! and now here I stand, 
 corporeally as well as mentally, very much a paper man. And the 
 shadows of the years, as they have over-rolled us, have cast their 
 dimness over my brother efiSgies. Mingled memories of what we 
 were, and perceptions of what, after such an interval, we are, blend 
 themselves dreamily together, before my gazing and somewhat eon- 
 fused eye. I see double. On every feature I descry a filmy mask 
 — a false face, and yet a true ; the face of memory and the face of 
 reality — the expression of the past dimming over the lineaments of 
 the present. I see treble. I catch a glimpse of the deep future. 
 Its features are more dream-lSse and varying still ; but distinctly 
 enough I see it, to know that it is not the scholar alone who is the 
 paper man. The giants of this world, as well as the pigmies, the 
 actors as well as the musers, are but the rag articfe — paper men in 
 a paper world. 
 
 And truly a sexdecennial interval 'carves an integral segment 
 from one man's brief biography. Youth passes to mid-life ; mid-life 
 verges into the margin of age. It forms one of the bearings of the 
 public upon the individual, that our periodic national changes ser'^e, 
 like the Roman Consulships, as chronometers for each man's private 
 history. Each Presidential inauguration cuts a big notch in our 
 own little life-tally. The world's great clock keeps our pocket time- 
 pieces correct; and all the world keeps time together. The 
 same moment crosses all alike. Th^ same indivisible instant, like 
 an omnipresence, lies upon all immensity at once. And so all our 
 pulses keep tune. Our sympathies move in symphonies. Of the 
 little literary republic of whom our Alma forms the radiating centre, 
 the chartered denizens beffling our letters-patent are forth in every 
 
THE MAN-REPUBLIC. 65 
 
 C[uarter on their misBions| and in each separate pathway, their 
 hearts have throbbed with life's varied emotions. But to a heart- 
 seeing eye, whose glance could pervade them all at once, it would 
 be seen that their throbs have been mutually responsive to each 
 other, and all to the heart of all humanity ; and the same moments 
 that pervade all immensity alike, witness the stupendous gushes of 
 the infinite heart of the universe. 
 
 But interesting as the sympathy may be, which consists in iden- 
 tity of time, or in the combination of one all-grasping mind, it is to 
 another oneness that I wish to invite your attention. It was one of 
 the very truth-like hallucinations of that most splendid of all mono- 
 maniacs, Immanuel Swedenborg, that man is an epitome of the 
 creation ; and that the universe exists in the human shape. Thought- 
 ful minds have often perceived the analogy between the individual 
 and the nation ; rhetoric has often attributed the qualities of person- 
 ality to a kingdom ; logic has often based her reasonings on this 
 imaginative analogy ; and here, as often elsewhere, Swedenborg has 
 transformed conception into dogma, rhetoric into theology. Yet it 
 is an analogy which ever haunts the mind, that a nation is a great 
 organic personality ; popular imagination loves to personify a people 
 into some ideal embodiment — endowing it with individual traits, 
 and labelling it with some, perhaps homely, nickname. Frequently 
 such impersonations are but burlesque effigies — rather reflections of 
 the prejudices of the constructors, than true representatives of their 
 supposed originals. 
 
 ' A nation, let us assume, then, is a great personality. It has a 
 soul ; and if we would paint it a body, we must assume that body 
 may somehow be the expression of soul ; and so make we for this 
 great soul, a body to match. A nation's soul is the great collective 
 of the individual souls ; a public mind is the grand aggregation of 
 single minds. Politicians often talk of manufacturing public opinion ; 
 and that is a small business ; there is a creation of a public mind, 
 and that is a momentous business. For the national person, like 
 the individual person, has its character, its responsibility and its ret- 
 ribution. The individual soul i^ immortal, and its retribution fills 
 eternity ; the organic soul is dissoluble, and its retribution is confined 
 
66 C0I.LEOIATE ASBBESSES. 
 
 to time. As a component part of the great organism, tte individual, 
 however excellent his personal character, shares the liabilities of the 
 whole body, and must share that body's fate. He may suffer here, 
 the penalty of public sins of which, singly, he is singularly guiltless. 
 As yet, the world's ages have not produced the nation which has 
 stood the test of its responsibilities. Guilt has been thefr umfohn 
 character ; judgment has been their uniform destiny. Each in suc- 
 cession, under God's permission, has started up, ambitious to try its 
 blind experiment ; each has had ample means and light for the right 
 path; each has had ample temptation to test its temper ; each in turn 
 has achieved a voluntary, yet ignominious failure. However it may 
 have been with individual, national souls have been uniformly 
 damned I History is a perfect book of judgment ; and earth has 
 become a gehenna of doomed nations. Struck with the recurrence 
 of the same great historic decay, men have resolved its uniformity 
 into a law, and have made it an ultimate mazim, which maxim they 
 have endeavored to make plausible by the analogy between the 
 national and the individual personality. As a man has his infancy, 
 manhood, and decline, so, they infer, must nations. If this paral- 
 lelism means simply to stand as an impressive illustration, it ig 
 striking ; but let it not set up for reasoning. That the vital powers 
 of an individual body soon physicially decline, we know to be an in- 
 herent law. But what is meant by the physioial old age and decline 
 of a race ? All races are equally old — the ^U-conquering Anglo- 
 Saxon as the all-submitting Italian. My family is as old as the Duke 
 of Buckingham's, only I have lost my pedigree. Though I cannot, 
 from loss of documents, name the live men who stand, in a direct 
 hereditary row, between the great navigator of the ark and myself, 
 yet they all lived, and doubtless had names. Men are transitory ; 
 races are perpetual. Why, then, do nations die ? We answer. 
 Great Babylon comes up before God and is judged. The thrones 
 are set and the books are openeil, and the beast is cast into the burn- 
 ing flame, to be consumed to the end. 
 
 National character then embraces all the elements of national des- 
 tiny. As in the individual, so in the collective, if the organic 
 INTELLECT be wisc, if the great public hbaet, natural and moral, be 
 
THE MAN-RBrUBLIC. 67 
 
 sound, if the executive will, in all its deeds and volitions, be just, 
 then shall the reward be glory, honor, immortality, and eternal life. 
 When the advent of that nation comes, or when the advent of such 
 a state comes to any nation, then let the glad 'Evprim peal through 
 the world. The grand problem of human history is solved ; the 
 grand hope of humanity is fulfilled. 
 
 Let us, then, take up these several elements that form the charac- 
 ter of our national person. Patriot enough I would be, to wish either 
 to find, or to m^e, this happy equilibrium of saving qualities in our 
 own gr^at country. And yet I find it difficult to frame the concep- 
 tion of — not merely a " man-mountain," but of — a man-continent ! 
 Impatient of magnitude or limit, I see our monster-mortal stretch- 
 ing itself over a hemisphere^-^a vast mermaid, or rather mer-man — 
 always annexing a little more room-rr-until with its head baptized by 
 the polar sea,, it listens with either ear to the duet of the Atlantic 
 and Pacific j and projecting the spinal ridge oftheEocky Mountains 
 from its back, it seeks to unfold its tail downward along the Darien. 
 If our faith and patriotism be intense enough to repose high hopes 
 in this continental CsJiban, then it is for this body that we are to 
 furnish the well-balanced soul. 
 
 I. Taking, then, first, the INTELLECT, as distinguished from 
 the heart and mill, we ha;ve noble tools, in this our day, wherewith 
 to make a nation's intellect. We will class them as three : the 
 SCHOOL, the PRESS, and the post. 
 
 Of these three, the school, taking also in its three-fold division, 
 oi primary, academic, and university, stands, in time and in im- 
 portance, first. So important is it, that all civilized ages have had 
 it in some form ; so that the modem shares it with the ancient world. 
 A complete consummation of a nation's intellect demands that the 
 primary school communicate to every child that grows up within our 
 limits, the complete elements of an English education. I am sorry 
 for the statesman who can quote as a maxim, applicable and worthy of 
 our times, the celebrated msh of Henry the Fourth, that every peasant 
 iin his realm might have a chicken in his pot. Poultry is good — is 
 
68 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 necessary; but, then, where there exists a real complete public soul, 
 the pottage may be taken for granted ; and a higher standard of wish 
 may be erected. Let a benevolent despot look upon his subjects as 
 so many live stomachs, necessary to be fed, in order that the pair of 
 toil-seared hands thereto attached, may be kept stout and operative. 
 Poor democracy cannot live without brains ; and in a democratic na- 
 tion's vast cerebrum there must not be one particle unimpregnated 
 with the essence of knowledge. The immense infusion of foreign 
 population into our nation, renders the work of seeing that every in- 
 habitant of our land is educated, a truly Herculean task. This is an 
 «vil to be met, not by exclusion, but by a more active effort. The 
 great double mission of our country, to preserve freedom for the 
 home-born, and to offer it for the refugee, has been, and must be, 
 nobly accomplished. It is a toil of glory, and it is a toil too for life. 
 It is a right maxim — give the people all the education, and then all 
 the power possible. Give the great body a wise soul, and then give 
 up the body to the soul. Now that soul, wise or foolish, has acquired 
 possession of that body ; the popular will has completely gained the 
 power over the national body. Power, which some have said steals 
 from the many to the few, has with us, gone completely over to the 
 side of the many. Whether education has sufficiently preceded the 
 power, some doubt, and I will not decide ; but in either case, vital 
 safety demands that, with all our might, we supply the primary 
 educational deficit. From foreign lands, and from our own home 
 cradles, every passing year is rolling up a world-wide wave of popu- 
 lation, ever calling for a fresh supply of knowledge. Otherwise, it 
 is a wave of overwhelming ignorance, which must sink our national 
 ship, unless all hands rush to the rescue. And when one wave is 
 conquered, another and another roll up their perpetual successions, 
 and make this labor for life, a life's labor. O, your pedagogue is 
 the true patriot. The pedagogue, indeed, you never allow to be the 
 demagogue. You would sooner give him your heart's blood, or even 
 your pocke)>-book, than your vote. His only palace is the school 
 house ; his sceptre, the birch ; and his sinecure is the delight of labor, 
 without the burden of a salary. And yet he is the ruler of your 
 
THE MAN-EEPUBLIC. 69 
 
 rulers. He can never be your senator, but he is your senate-former. 
 He can never be President, nor of the Cabinet, but he is the Presi- 
 dent's creator, and your noblest sort of Cabinet-maker. 
 
 Now, it is a genuine ground of triumph for the common school- 
 master, that he can, (as he often has,) furnish to the nobly aspiring 
 mind, a sufficient start, without any other regular scholastic pupil- 
 age, to attain the highest points of eminence. From the schoolmas- 
 ter many a proud acquirer of high positions sheers the Professor in 
 his career. " When a man fairly understands his alphabet," said a 
 simple-hearted young self-educationist, "be may easily understand any 
 thing else ; for the twenty-six letters are the key to all knowledge." 
 Mighty indeed is the spelling book. It is the pre-requisite to all 
 that is intellectual, free and glorious. It opens the way to the 
 library, the newspaper, and the Bible ; to the pulpit, the university 
 and the senate ; to the public happiness, to popular freedom, and to 
 national glory ; to the improvements of ages and the transfiguration 
 of humanity. With more than the enthusiasm of Diana's worship- 
 pers, then, would we shout— Great is- the hornbook of the school- 
 master. It supplies the first element of public brain, without which 
 thought could never move, and intellectual existence would be im- 
 possible. 
 
 But while I thus claim for the school-house, all that its most en- 
 thusiastic- champion could suggest, I equally affirm the necessity of 
 the Academy and the University, to the full development of a pub- 
 lic mind. Shame on the jacobin cant that would set them in oppo- 
 sition ! The school is indeed the pre-requisite to the higher 
 departments of life ; just as childhood is pre-requisite to manhood. 
 Wondrous is birth ; beautiful and glorious is childhood : but both 
 are little worth without the maturity. Without that maturity, birth 
 and childhood would default and cease. With the primary school 
 alone, the public mind would soon dwarf and then perish. If the 
 alumnus of the school-house often overtowers the alumnus of the 
 University, it is because he ever after moves in an intellectual at- 
 mosphere, made luminous by the emanations of higher institutions 
 of science. Christianity moralizes myriads unembraced within the 
 church ; impregnating with holy influences multitudes whom she 
 7 
 
70 COLLEGIATE ADDKESSES. 
 
 cannot regenerate. So the University educates masses to whom she 
 givfes no diploma. Did not the Univereity exist, higber science 
 would be lost ; a thousand discoveries which have 'beamed from the 
 empyrean towers of schoWsticism, would still have slnmbfered in dark- 
 ness ; and fnyriads of inventions which now are hourly crossing the 
 ~j)ath of the saunterer, would have never come into existence. The 
 school-house cannot stand alone; for as, 6n the one hand, that wis- 
 dom which builds the school-house ^ill soon rear the University, so, 
 on the other hSnd, the Vandalism which would strike down the Uni- 
 versity, would soon blow tip the Bchool-house. Eeduce the public 
 mind to the mere abecedarianism of the hornbook, and the horn- 
 book itself would soon be rat-eaten. The sound existence Of a pub- 
 lic mind fiequires the existence 'of a learned class; not necessarily 
 geiiiuses, nor inventors, nor authors, (although it is well if they be 
 such,) but scbolars. These should be allowed the time and the 
 theans of ]j)f6found study, that they may, 'in their successive genera- 
 tions, be the traditional preservers of the ark of knowledge, the 
 'k^iepers'of the eternal fires of science. I plead not for any thing 
 th&.t pr6p^rly can be called a learned leisure, for profound learning 
 "has no leisure. With the continued brevity of our i postdiluvian 
 lives, with the accumulating masses of new sciences to ba acquired, 
 ■with that Egyptian taskmaster j competition, scourging him on, the 
 great sch6lar'has no fepare moments. " Please, Mr. Scholar," says 
 some lady, intetlsely engaged at embroidering, "read such. — or such 
 — or such a book ; you have plenty of time." " Time ? A thou- 
 sand voluines, half an Alexandrian library, are lying, like grists at 
 ■the hopper, Waiting for their turn. " But if there Can be no learned 
 leisure, there should be a leisure for learning. There is no tenden- 
 cy to barbarism more apparent in ourgreiat and fierce Democracy, 
 or more sure of'its result, than a jealouSy of the professed student's 
 leisure, or an anxiety to overtask him with the worth of his salary 
 in day's 'WOtk teaching. You may thiis make him a teacher ; but 
 do n6t' additionally demand of him to be in the loftiest sense of the 
 term, a- scholar. What is taught in our highest University courses, 
 is'bat a smiall fraction' of the immense stores that are untaught; if 
 ";y9u' confine your learned class to the' ordinary routine, you abandon 
 
THE MAN-EBPUBLIC. 71 
 
 vast contments of learning to silence and old nigbt, from which 
 might, at the good time, be brought those treasures of knowledge 
 that would serve the world which contemns them. We firmly assert, 
 then, that in the new ages, as. under the sway of the hoary past, the 
 school — the school — primary, academic, and University — is the cen- 
 tral sun of eiviliza,tion, whose fires are ever to be supplied with ali- 
 ment, and whose radiations must ever constitute the light of the 
 world's intellect. 
 
 The superiority of the ujodern forms of the School over the an- 
 cient, is by no means as striking as that great triumph — and parent 
 of triumphs: — of modern over ancieut ages, the pbess. What a 
 sorry figure would the establishment of the fraternal copartnership 
 of the Sossii & Co, exhibit — the crack publishing house of Augus- 
 tan Rome — with their few hundreds of unwieldy volumes of rolled 
 parchment, painfully transcribed with a reed or iron pen, beside our 
 Harper & Brothers, whose mere advertisement catalogues would 
 furnish more pages than all Augustan Eome ever published ! Much 
 the same figure which the squadrons of Persian and Grecian barques, 
 which fought the sea-fight of Salamis would exhibit beside the 
 modern " Ironsides " and " Peace-makers " who achieve the Trafal- 
 gars and Navarinos of our day. President Jefferson's immortal 
 squadron of gun-boats might have vanquished the whole navy of all 
 antiquity together in a single fight. But the glories of the modem 
 press are yet to be unrolled, whpn our whole continent is to be 
 oversprea,d with its dense and living civilization ; when the Eockj 
 Mountains shall, like the back-margin of a great book, demark, but 
 not divide, two great outspread pages of united empire, an empire 
 th?it shall cover with a busy population, the hills and vales, the green 
 river-sides and the broad savannas of our young continent. 
 
 The productions of the press may first be contemplated in the 
 more permanent form of the library — the settled form of ancient 
 lore, established seienee, and enshrined genius. It constitutes the 
 entire treasury of the world's standard intellectual wealth. The 
 library is, as it were, the world's great memory, containing all it 
 knows ; it is that cell in the world's phrenology which holds its 
 hoarded masses of fixed thought ; it is reflection which has ceased to 
 
72 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. ~ 
 
 effervesce and has crystallized into solid cubic form. Modern medi- 
 tation is still adding, like the slow accretions of a coral island, its 
 immortal accumulations to the stupendous pile. And of all it still 
 knows, the world must forget nothing. Many an erasure has time 
 made on the old parchments and papyri ; many a hiatus vaMe de- 
 fiendus yawns between immortal paragraphs — valde deflendus, he- 
 cause all the world's wit cannot re-write the lost syllables : but the 
 next best thing shall be — the world wiU not forget any more. To 
 oblivion the Press hath said, "■Thus far and no farther." Not that 
 every offspring of dulness is to be embalmed and lie in everlasting 
 state ; for these are nothings, and cannot enter into memory. The 
 world does not know them, and so cannot forget them. But every 
 real substantive addition is contributed to the world in fee and for- 
 ever; nor can the maker destroy it, or the giver take it back. 
 Much is yet to be gathered from the ruins of the past, and to be 
 booked up. Egypt and Asia, Persepolis and Nineveh have many 
 a recollection buried in their mouldering piles and pyramids. These 
 are all to be disinterred and re-known. They are to go into the 
 everlasting library ; aye, into the world's memory and mind. And 
 such will be our expansion of population, that our intellectual mar- 
 ket will demand that all that is treasured in the vast libraries of 
 Europe shall come under Aijierican type ; and every department of 
 past thought shall find among our million of millions, its alcove and 
 its amateurs. If the mass of erudition so stored is incalculable, 
 so is the multitude of investigators who learn it. There is knowl- 
 edge enough for all learners, and learners enough for all knowledge. 
 I bestow my pity on that little ephemeral mind, who thinks that the 
 world cannot afford to know so much, because it does not pay. 
 Such men seem vexed, because there is more knowledge in the 
 world than one brain can acquire. They are envious, because when 
 they have studied a whole life to become learned, they every day 
 pass another and another man, learned in a department of which 
 they can, in one short life, know nothing. Let them know, that 
 though one cannot learn the whole, yet the whole can be parcelled 
 off to its own set ; and so the world always knows all it ever knew. 
 The world, in its great advances of mind, does not know at what 
 
TUE MAJS-EEPUBLIC. 73 
 
 time it needs some past fact ; these various sets of students, who 
 live to know, are as the recoUective faculty in the mundane crani- 
 um ; a little cerebral vibration only is necessary, a little stir in this 
 knowing mass, and the past fact is forthwith produced. 
 
 But, outside the shutters of the library, the press is generating its 
 live swarms of ephemera — legionary and winged — many of them 
 honey-bearing — rmany venomous — all noisy. These are all ephemera 
 in the sense that they are born to-day ; the most part are ephemera 
 in the sense also that to-day they must' die. The large share are 
 striving to pass from the transient to the permanent, but are mostly 
 {loomed. Some of them are emanations from the library itself, re- 
 produced ; these are no new creations, but duplicates ; they need 
 not go into the library, for they are already there. But still, genius 
 and science are the two producers whose works are ever enlarging 
 the library. Oratory is pouring forth her syllables of wisdom ; po- 
 etry is weaving her spells ; history is reporting her events ; and 
 romance is fabricating her mimic-histories. In the sphere of science, 
 we behold the astronomer with his telescope ; the chemist with his 
 crucible ; the geometer with his diagram ; the geologist with his 
 pickaxe ; each, with his note-book in his hand, ready to record his 
 discovery : that discovery forming but a single line, yet that line a 
 precious and immortal volume. Each is glad to send his little speci- 
 men, carefully labelled with his own name, into the great alcoves. 
 So goes immortal thought into thought's immortal repository. The 
 library, from the spoils of the press, is ever living and ever growing. 
 
 But as atheism itself cannot frame a world, without not only mat- 
 ter, but also motion, so our intellectual system would be inert, as 
 the quagmires of chaos, if to the library and the press we could not 
 add the post. Thinking is not mere thought, but, as Imay say, the 
 motion of thought. What worth is mind, or idea, if it stand stock 
 still ? In spite of all past acquirement, this paralysis of the reflect- 
 ive action would |3e, in the individual, idiocy ; in the public, barbar- 
 ism. But, now, as the press is perpetually pouring permanent 
 acquisitions into the library, so it is pouring the contents of the library, 
 as well as its own ephemeral productions, with intense rapidity, and 
 measureless volume, through all parts of the piiblie system. This 
 7* 
 
74 COLLEGIATE ADDKESSES. 
 
 is the movement of national thought ; and so not only a national 
 mind is formed, but it is set to thinking. Attention concentrates the 
 grand faculties upon some one grand object ; by step after step, does 
 the great simultaneous mind march through the process of problem 
 after problem ; upon the basis of each established conclusion does 
 our corporate man take his stand, for the achievement of further dis- 
 coveries. And all this, with such a masterly unanimity, that upon 
 great central questions, what all know, each knows. And under 
 the term post, I do not include alone the mail, which carries the 
 products of the daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly periodical. 
 When the network of electric wires has completely woven its light- 
 ning texture over our whole land, one idea may at one and the same 
 moment be thought in San Francisco and in Portland. Nay, 
 at one instant, every main point of our whole continental surface may 
 be thinking the same matter. Some knotty enigma of politics, or 
 science, may, at one moment, puzzle the general cogitations ; one 
 shock of feeling may thrill through the general heart ; one master 
 witticism may shake the ponderous' sides of our man-continent, with 
 mirth far out-roaring, what ^schylus calls, the " countless laugh- 
 ters of old Ocean's cheeks." And such may be the transmissibility 
 of thought, that the nation's mind may know its own mental opera- 
 tions, making the highest step of intellect from reasoning to con- 
 sciousness. With wondrous reflectiveness, it may watch its own 
 subjective processes, review its own judgments, and analyze its own 
 interior traits. And thus may the collective, as well as the indi- 
 vidual mind, attain the height of subtle and accomplished intellect. 
 
 n. But our collective man must also be furnished with what all 
 language has symbolized by the physical term HEART — the 
 organic bundle of sensibilities and appetites, natural and moral. 
 And within this bundle, preeminently, destiny is enveloped. Within 
 the stupendous enclosure of a nation's heart, mighty is the struggle 
 between the lower and the higher principles, and most decisive will 
 be the results. There is yet a terrible mass of Heathendom within 
 the bosom of Christendom. Send your missionaries downward, ye 
 guardians of the church, for all the vices of paganism are underlying 
 
THE MAN-REPOBLIC. 76 
 
 US in the depths of our nation's heart, in the subterranean haunts of 
 ignorance and abandonment. And thence ascend moral vapors, pes- 
 tilences and smoke, as of the bottomless pit. Old hereditary deprav- 
 ities, vices of ancient stereotype form, are still perpetuated ; and 
 the freshness of modern genius demonstrates itself in the origination 
 of new iniquity. Still does licentiousness throw poison into the 
 wells of life ; and so diffuse its taint, to an unsuspected extent, 
 through all the streams and veins of public health. Still does in- 
 temperance set on fire the course of nature, itself set on fire of hell. 
 Still does the wai^spirit send its maddening hurrah through the 
 hearts of our populace, ever ready to lead them out into piratical 
 marauds, upon our weaker if not honester neighbors ; ever alert to 
 revive what we had once hoped obsolete, the old-fashioned vice of 
 decrepit royalty, the plain vulgar war of contest ; ever courted by 
 those bowing, simpering courtiers of the mob, who in Bussia would 
 have been the vilest panders of the despot, the demagogues of war. 
 And there stands slavery — never less ashamed than now — not couch- 
 ant, but rampant — making her plans to live forever — boldly claiming 
 to advance by equal steps with freedom — as if darkness were as good 
 as light, and the devil had as fair a right to a lion's share as Mes- 
 siah. Nor may you marvel, friends, if I who was once noted here 
 as the " apologist of slavery," can now present myself its stern 
 assailant. For its existence I did, and would, apologize; but never 
 for its esitension. I would deal gently with the hereditary sin of 
 its being ; but I abhor the stupendous volitional crime of its propa- 
 gandisni. And when I think what a scheme of continental enormity 
 the slave power is struggling to develop before us, my heart sickens 
 with disgust and my soul is paralyzed with horror. The great mar- 
 ket for human cattle, if the slave-power can succeed, is to be opened 
 in the new States of the west, for which the supply is to be raised in 
 the east. OurjAtlantic States are to become the American Guinea. 
 Old Virginia^ the mother of Presidents, barren of tobacco and fecund 
 of bipeds, has already gone to breeding babies for sale I Sweet 
 Carolina is anxious to drive her children to the shambles. Asiatic 
 Georgia has long been celebrated on the page of infamy, for selling 
 her fair offspring to the harem ; American Georgia is eager to out- 
 
76 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 rival that shame, by soiling her tawny daughters to the sugar field 
 and the gold mine. When the trade of human cattle-breeding is fully 
 established, and the east shall annually pour her myriads of yoked, 
 scourged and hand-cuffed live stock, like a mighty gulf-stream, to 
 the west, the prohibition of the foreign slave-trade will be a fine 
 protective tariff for the encouragement of this domestic production. 
 Then will come a grand slaveocratic millennium, in which the east 
 will be the slave-breeders, and the west will be the slave-eonsumers j 
 the south will be the slave-holders, the north the slave-catchers. 
 We shall doubtless then preserve the " glorious Union ! " — as glori- 
 ous, forsooth, as the ropes and chains wherewith old Mezentius 
 bound the living man to the rotting corpse. If these indications of 
 depravity in the national heart were our only omens, or in them- 
 selves were irremovable, small would be the hope of regenerating the 
 public conscience into life. Our history, too, must turn out disas- 
 trous failure. Then wherever the star of hope should turn, whether 
 tracing its steps back to wearied Christendom, or verging to our 
 Occident, should curve over the broad Pacific, until west became 
 east, the prospect would be equally desperate, of renovating human- 
 ity on the shores of Europe, or the plains of Asia. Let these dark 
 influences quench our lamp, and " I know not where is the Prome- 
 thean fire that can that light relumine." 
 
 And yet ours is an era of Hope ! Turn over the pages of history 
 and mark how other centuries have felt ages of despondency. There 
 have been great periods when mankind was at utter discouragement. 
 Trace, for instance, the long decline of the Roman world, in which 
 the effete body of ancient civilization, dying by everlasting inches, 
 sighed that the very quiet of her dissolution must be disturbed, and 
 her corpse insulted by the inroads of the northern hordes. Chris- 
 tianity herself seemed to feel as if just called in to perform the death- 
 bed and funeral rites of a fast departing world ; and looked for her 
 only millennial renewal beyond the judgment day. But at this hour, 
 reli^on, science, freedom, are (each separately) looking with unani- 
 mous eye to their one coinciding terrene millennium. And yet I 
 am perfectly aware, that there are many who feel that the career of in- 
 tellect is so far outstripping the career of religion and political sci- 
 
THE MAN-KEPUBLIC. 77 
 
 ence, that they are dreading the avatar of an intellectual millennium, 
 in which the world will be like the arch-fiend himself, all-wise only 
 for wickedness. Modem civilization is to them as a tower of Shinar, 
 raising its defying summit against a menacing heaven. If this be 
 so, burn your libraries, break down your presses, and demolish 
 your school-houses. Let us return to barbarism, innocence and 
 happiness. Let us retrograde to the refinements of the Choctaws, 
 the social state of the Hottentots, and the simple superstition of the 
 dark ages. 
 
 But ours is an era of high moral hope. I see in the vista of the 
 future, a regeneration of the great heart, as well as an enlightenment 
 of the great intellect. For truth leads to regeneration. Knowledge 
 lifts above the debasement of crime, and shows that right is vrisdom. 
 Statistics have in vaiq endeavored to frighten us into the belief, that 
 crime increases with education ; for a statistical increase of crime is 
 often the result of a higher stringency of law and rigidity of police ; 
 and so is a proof of a high moral tone in the governing power. 
 Where there is no law, there is no transgression ; the multiplication 
 of laws increases the number of convictions ; while it is at once a 
 proof and a cause that crimes are diminishing, and that countless 
 constellations of new virtues, the virtues of civilization, are begin- 
 ning to beam. ?%ree-fourths of our criminals spring from the less 
 educated o«e-fourth of our community. How rare is the presence 
 of a college graduate in the list of our penitentiary criminals ! And 
 there is a moral encouragement in the fact, that every artisan in his 
 shop and every ploughman in the field, and every merchant in his 
 store, is working in the cause of civilization ; and so of moral im- 
 provement. Nay, many great evils are destroying, either other evils, 
 or themselves. Commerce is binding nations in the strongest mu- 
 tual bonds to keep the peace ; and so Mammon is destroying Mars. 
 The railway and telegraph are breaking up the hostile demarcations 
 which once divided and infiamed mankind — and so wing-footed Mer- 
 cury is tearing up old Terminus. Education bestows upon each 
 man that individualism at which despotism is trembling — and so all- 
 Tcnowing Prometheus is dethroning Jove. Slavery itself was once 
 a merciful substitute for the massacre of prisoners of war — and so 
 
78 COLLEGIAIK ADDRESSES. 
 
 the chain superseded the axe. When the science and the unplements 
 of destruction arrive at that point of perfection, that two hostile 
 armies, however unequal in number, can, with complete precision, 
 annihilate each other, the war trade will become unpleasant and 
 unfashionable — and so the serpent shall be poisoned with his own 
 venom — similia similibus curantur-— conquest shall be conquered — 
 captivity be led captive — «nd Death himself shall die. 
 
 To these influences of civilization, favorable to the elevation of a 
 public conscience, I shall add the direct moral means, furnished 
 from a high moral philosophy and a pure Christianity , symbolized by 
 the CHAiE and the pulpit. 
 
 Our chairs of philosophy, at the present day, are doubtless a 
 great auxiliary in the elevation of the standard of public conscience. 
 Even so late as the day of my own pupilage^ the scholar was ex- 
 pected to understand his soul from Locke, bis conscience from 
 Paley, and his responsibility from Edwaids. Of this triad, if the 
 indicated materialism of the first, the low. expediency of the second, 
 and the granite fatalism of the third, did not prepare me for the 
 atheism of Hume, it was because my own moral sensibilities dis- 
 believed and repudiated the whole quaternion. I could neither 
 believe, from the first, that I had no soul ; from the second, that I 
 had no conscience ; from the third, that I had no will ; nor from the 
 fourth, that I had no God. The philosophy of the present period 
 recognizes in the soul the power of knowing ideas that transcend 
 matter, and so authenticates the belief in a spiritual and immortal 
 nature ; it enthrones conscience on the basis of eternal right, and so 
 ennobles the moral and divine law ; it holds the free-will of man 
 unbound to any necessity to crime, and so inexcusable for its com- 
 mission ; and thus with an immortal soul, a, responsible free-agency, 
 and an eternal law divine, it follows that a judgment and an adjudg- 
 ing God arc a matter well-nigh demonstrated. 
 
 Of such a philosophy, imperfectly developed and demonstrated, as 
 I believe it to be, the effects are now being universally and practi- 
 cally felt. In polemics, the overthrow of the philosophy of fatalism, 
 is making sad work with the theology of fatalism ; the dethronement 
 of Spinoza without the church, is shaking the position of St. Augus- 
 
TIIE MAN-BEPUBHC. 79 
 
 tine within the church. Narrow exclusiVeness is enlarging into a 
 Christian liberalism ; and the doctrines of an all-comprehending 
 benevolence aire quickened into an all-reaching action. 
 
 And these tendencies are confirmed even by the fanaticisms that 
 caricature the ascendant philosophy. Every great doctrine has its 
 fanaticism ; that is, its exaggeration and fiery ultraism — the mock- 
 ing shadow, the night-side of a great truth; and that fanaticism is 
 in some degree a test of the character of the system it caricatures. 
 The fanaticism of the Locke philosophy is very rightly styled sen- 
 sual — for earthly, sensual, and devilish, it was in spirit ; and vulgar, 
 ribald, and brutal, in language. It reduced the soul to physical 
 sensations, conscience to calculation, free-will to mechanics, immor- 
 tality to an eternal sleep, man to brute, and God to matter. This 
 bar-room philosophy,, at present, seems to have gone to its own 
 place ; and, so for as I know, it can scarce hiss or howl, even from 
 Tammany. Now the fanaticism of the more spiritual philosophy, the 
 transcendental infidelity, scorns this low Sadducism; ^he is a sleek 
 and holy Pharisee ; she is pious ; she is terribly abusive against all 
 abuses ; Christianity is too unspiritual for her ; Puritanism is not 
 Puritanical enough ; Methodism is not Methodistical enough. She 
 has got into the pulpit — :preaches o' Sundays — and has an "Abso- 
 lute Keligion." Moreover, she is self-righteous — she thinks herself 
 the final effort of time, thus far, in aspiring after perfection. The 
 Bible has some good streaks in it ; but it is not quintessentially per- 
 fect, like the absolute Religion. Jesus of Nazareth was very well ; 
 , but in his day, time had not progressed far enough to produce her 
 great ultimate; it took parturient centuries to gender her last 
 great " ridiculas mus," namely, the advent of the absolute-religion 
 preacher. Now these vagaries are to a sober transcendentalism, 
 what the sensualism of Condillac was to Lockeism — its fanaticism ; 
 .butthey are not a brutal fanaticism. They have an upward, and 
 not a downward aspiration. They view man as formed for a para- 
 dise, rather than a menagerie. They do not peremptorily and 
 totally pronounce the tenets of Christianity one priestly lie. They 
 assert a God, a conscience, a free-will, an immortality ; they even 
 " go about to establish their own righteousness," having a sort of 
 
80 COLLEGIATE ADDEESSES. 
 
 church inspiration and piety. Now the sober philosophy, of which 
 these are the fanaticisms, must be, nearly, the counterpart in our 
 mere reason to Revelation, which the Christian thinker must de- 
 siderate in a philosophy. That philosophy is progressive and 
 aggressive in the direction of Eight and Reform ; and to those who 
 know how powerful, even in ages where thought less controlled the 
 world than now, is the ascendant philosophy, to indicate and to 
 work great Revolutions, there can be little doubt, that our moral 
 system, at the present day, is as the great Harbinger voice in the 
 wilderness, crying, " Prepare." 
 
 Meanwhile, the church through the pulpit is proclaiming the 
 kingdom of God at hand. Hers it is to impregnate the philosophy 
 of the age with spirituality ; and thus to complete the formation of 
 a public conscience. Or, rather, it is her office to appropriate the 
 philosophy and the civilization of the age, and to be herself the pub- 
 lic conscience. Christianity has a right to pervade every depart- 
 ment of the life of responable beings, private or public. Nor has 
 the pulpit.a right to hash itself at the bidding of prince or people. 
 To discuss in the pulpit a matter of secular expediency, of course, 
 misbecomes the pulpit and' the Sabbath. But the pulpit is bound 
 to draw, unflinchingly, the boundary lines of eternal right, across 
 whosesoever field or path it cuts. Whenever a great statesman vo- 
 ciferates across the nation, that " religion has nothing to do with 
 politics," you may be sure there is villany on foot. No man opens 
 a war against conscience, private or public, unless conscience has 
 some cause of quarrel against him. The man who would say to 
 Christianity, Sands off, would be glad to say to the omniscient 
 eye. Be shut. The political profession would, doubtless, a large 
 share, be very glad to know that over their domains the divine law 
 is suspended ; and that Almighty God may not invade their terri- 
 tories. Deeply do I regret to say, that the pulpit has but too often 
 succumbed and fearfully shrunk from standing forth the stern im- 
 personation of the world's conscience. Let the pulpit reassert its 
 place in the front of every enterprise for overthrowing great wrongs, 
 and establishing great rights. Let it firmly apply the divine law 
 to all crime, high and low, individual and governmental. Be this 
 
THE MAN-KEPUBLIC. 81 
 
 done in the pure spirit of the saint, and the heroic spirit of the 
 martyr, and pitiful, indeed, will be the figure of the politician or 
 party who ventures to interfere. 
 
 That the church was not only the divine conscience of the world, 
 but that such conscience had a local centre, and a suecessional order 
 of living utterers, was the ecclesiastical assumption of the middle 
 ages, not yet wholly obsolete. History will, perhaps, show, that so 
 long as much of the ancient remaining civilization, both classic and 
 Christian, in contrast with the barbarism of Europe, really made 
 Rome the eye of the world, the claim to be the moral nucleus of 
 Christendom, was in some degree sustained. But what, when the 
 progressive enlightenment of Europe outshone the enlightenment of 
 Rome 1 What, when the world's conscience became more corrupt 
 than the world itself? If the very light itself be a darkness, how 
 great is that darkness ! Those who quote Scripture promise, that 
 the powers of corruption shall not prevail against any local or organic 
 ecclesiastical centre, are contradicted by history. Scripture can no 
 more prove a historic than a scientific falsehood. The purity cannot 
 be proved by the suecessional churchdom ; but the churchdom must 
 be proved by the purity. And such a test will make short work 
 with the exclusive claims of localities and orders, and soon establish 
 the conclusion, that where is piety, there is Christianity and Christ ; 
 and where is Christ, there is the Church. Christianity as little as 
 civilization can be fixed to one moveless focus. It is spiritual, ac- 
 tive, and diffusive ; and, lik6 the light, must pervade and vary its 
 ever rolling tides through the broad ether. Luminaries and foci 
 may stand awhile, at ten thousand points. Universities may be lu- 
 minaries of civilization ; churches, of Christianity ; but the civilisa- 
 tion and the Christianity themselves, must be the galaxies in whose 
 spacious floods the luminaries float, almost lost, in the light them- 
 selves produce. /Religion, then, must not be the mere dictum ef a 
 central churchdom. It must be the Christianity of Grod's own word, 
 based upon and substantiated by the miraculous facts of the divine 
 history, and impregnating a true moral philosophy, with a vivid 
 spiritual sentiment. Transfuse this into the common heart, and you 
 have a common conscience, in its highest state ; unite this with the 
 
82 
 
 C0LLEOIA.TB ADDRESSES. 
 
 lofty intellectual standard, already supposed, and we have construct- 
 ed two-thirds of our Man-Republic. We have the intellect and the 
 sensibilities — to which we must next afiBx the controlling WILL. 
 
 III. As of the individual, the governmental power is the WILL, 
 so of the great person corporate, the will must be the governmental 
 power. The will is that wondrous transition point, through which 
 mere thought goes forth into action. It is the contact point be- 
 tween the agent within, and the corporeal mechanism without; the 
 hopper through which a mere mental idea is transmuted into a phy- 
 sical force ; the bridge upon which the subjective energy marches 
 out upon the objective world. Parallel to this, are the media by 
 which the sentiments and feelings of a great nation go forth into 
 historical events, in great organic self-directive movements, or great 
 international transactions. The media by which the modern free 
 commonwealth seeks to attain this object, are the Ballot and the 
 Eepresentative system. The Ballot, our Republic inherits from 
 ancient democracy ; the Representative is, in a great degree, an 
 invention of modern political science. 
 
 And yet the grandeur of the ballot is essentially modern and 
 American. When upon the same day a great national election 
 transpires, producing a change which in most nations would be 
 revolution, the quiet movement, and the simple apparatus, by which 
 it takes place, is a specimen of the moral sublime. It is a ser^et, 
 yet decisive shock — a brief silence ensues — by the telegraphic 
 thought, the nation is soon conscious of its own decfsion — and the 
 implicit obedience of all parts of the great system completes the 
 work. And there should be an honor and a sacredness upon the 
 balloirbox. It is freedom's noblest emblem. It should be to 
 Republicanism, what the cross is to Christianity, the image of its 
 power. It should, as our national symbol, displace upon our 
 national banner, that ferocious bird of prey, which, inherited from 
 ancient Rome, betrays the iron Paganism that really larks in our 
 governmental system. And our election process — would to God a 
 holy reverence could be shed around its precincts. Solemn, next to 
 the rites of the church itself, should be these rituals of freedom. The 
 
THE MAN-REPUBLIC. 83 
 
 ballot-box is the ark of our freedom's covenant-^so should the sur- 
 rounding space be a sanctuary. And the vote, the badge of inde- 
 pendence, and none the less a badge of honor, because it is shared 
 by all, and is so an emblem of equality, ought to be impregnated 
 with its fitting superstition, as a little leaf of a great destiny. 
 
 The greatest problem, in a model Kepublic, is to make the gov- 
 ernmental wiU the exact concentration of the diffusive mind and 
 purpose in the general mass. As in the individual the will should 
 execute the intention of the entire mind, so should the government 
 represent the complete soul of the nation. Even should our govern- 
 ment represent the pure conscientious part alone of the nation, such 
 action might be unhealthy action, and result in a still unhealthier 
 reaction. Still more fearful is the danger, when the moral and the 
 Christian part of the community, in fright, disgust, or indolence, 
 abandon the ballot and the election ground to the possession of the 
 intriguer and the depraved, and thus leave the conscience of the 
 country unrepresented in the government of the country. Our 
 country's safety cannot spare a good man's independent, conscien- 
 tious vote. ' Nay, I would even presume to suggest, not the opinion, 
 but the query, that as society is composed of the blended traits of 
 both sexes, in which the stern energies of the one are softened and 
 saved from barbarism by the softer virtues of the other, so might not 
 our government be refined and civilized from much of its present 
 ferocity, if the gentler half of the world possessed their share of 
 right, to select their public as well as domestic lords ? Our gov- 
 ernmental spirit is too masculine ; the representative too nearly of 
 what society would be without the softening spirit of womanhood. 
 And I venture to hint the query, whether the certainty of woman's 
 presence would not soon transform the rabble disorder of our politi- 
 cal election rooms, to the chaste propriety of a Lyceum, or a Church. 
 I question, whether the mobocraey would rule in its present un- 
 washed supremacy ; whether the whiskey cellars would vomit up 
 their florid-faced demonoeracy to come, vote and conquer ; and wheth- 
 er those great cruel abominations, which rear their fierce faces, in 
 opposition to all the impulses of humanity, would long stand with 
 her permission, the sympathies of whose heart are so often, and 
 
84 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 especially upon such subjects, far wiser than the hardened calculations 
 of man's head. At any rate, I trust I may have awakened in your 
 minds, the most serious question, whether it is not the worse part of 
 our nature which is best represented in our government; and 
 whether in our national man, the will does not really misperform 
 the intentions of the entire soul. 
 
 As our Creator has organized man to be controlled by his own 
 will, so he has instituted national government as a divinely author- 
 ized controller of a nation's actions. " !Z%e powers <Aa< " legiti- 
 mately "he" the Apostle assures us, "are ordained of God;" 
 and resistance to their authority is not only political, but moral 
 treason. The apostle does not assume to prescribe any single form ; 
 nor even to lay down any decisive test, as to what legitimately con- 
 stitutes " the powers that be ; " but when that is an admitted point, 
 that a rightful and legitimate government does exist, obedience is a 
 divine law. And as the national government has not, like the 
 individual, a legal magistracy over and above itself to protect its 
 rights, and arbitrate its disputes, so it must, responsibly to the 
 Almighty Kuler of all, possess the power to protect itself, and secure 
 justice in international dealing. Hence, the magistrate is armed 
 with the "sword," to execute even capital penalty upon the domes- 
 tic foe, or prosecute war upon a foreign aggressor. These two 
 exercises of the power of the ' ' swokd " stand upon precisely the 
 same basis ; a power not always or often necessary to be used, but 
 always to be used when necessary. If either or both can be abol- 
 ished, (a question which circumstances must decide,) a step, a 
 grand step has been made in the millennial march. Nevertheless, 
 beyond this power of the magistracy to wield the sword of self- 
 preservation and justice, a nation and a government are bound, as 
 an individual, by the laws of Grod. The obligation of obedience to 
 a government, apostolical example has taught us, does not authorize 
 us to obey man rather than God. If " the powers that he," whose 
 legitimacy even the right of revolution does not allow me to question, 
 should require me to abjure Christianity, I must neither obey nor 
 resist, but suffer. If a government should require me, as a military 
 officer, to fight in an unjust war, I must send in at once my moral 
 
THE MAN-BEPUBLIC. 85 
 
 protest and my resignation. If a government require me, beyond its 
 right of securing self-preservation and justice, to violate eternal 
 right, or the law of God, such a requirement is null, and I must 
 disregard it.. If I have ever taken any oath to support the Constitu- 
 tion, regardless of God's, law, my conscience has been entrapped, 
 and that oath is so far null. If called to^ repeat that oath, to sup- 
 port an unrighteous constitution, audibly and firmly must I utter 
 the reserve, " Except it reverse the law of God ; " and the govern- 
 ment which would make that reserve a ban of ostracism upon me, is 
 a government of blagphemy. 
 
 In our model man-kepublic, finally, we have seen, that the in- 
 tellect should be stored with all the treasures of knowledge, trained 
 to the liveliest activity of thought, and quickened to the highest 
 point of self-consciousness ; of the heart, the natural sensibilities 
 etould be exorcised from their great organic evils, and the moral 
 sensibilities should be informed by an enlightened philosophy, and 
 animated by a holy religion ; while the governmental will, firm and 
 energetic, the true representative and executive of the entire soul, 
 should rule its constituent with a providential authority, and guide 
 its destiny in the pathway of holy right and noble enterprise. Con- 
 dense and enshrine this soul in the individual, within a manly and 
 majestic form, and where in human history will you find the embod- 
 iment of the picture I have drawn, save in him — our nation'0 
 model, as well as our nation's founder — Washington 1 
 
 And now our Promethean task is done. Our man-made man is 
 made. Yet not Promethean task : Prometheus formed the body — 
 I the soul ; he the real — I the ideal. But as the fire from heaven 
 alone could give his body the inspiring soul, so the beams of an 
 auspicious Providence, alone, can supply my soul with a fitting body, 
 and substantiate my ideal into a grand historic real. Park, yet not 
 wholly dark, are the omens of our day. Yet firm be our faith and 
 fixed be our purpose. The individual may easily fancy himself 
 overlooked of Heaven ; but when the contemplation expands over 
 the range of a nation's breadth, and mounts to the summits of a 
 nation's observatory, faith can easily feel that, at that lofty point, she 
 is within the precincts of the very throne of the God of nations. 
 
 8* 
 
86 colilEqiate adsrssses. 
 
 Jehovah's great plan-work will not be marred; for time's great 
 Apocalyptic drama shall yet wind oflF, in victory to the cause of 
 man, and glory to the rule of Grod. 
 
 Sons of the New England Wesleyan Alma ! Plans of life, how- 
 ever modified, are not always illusory ; models of character, however 
 romantic, are not always unrealized. Yet arduous is the life-task 
 to build the structure we have modelled ; still more arduous, to cut 
 ourselves to the pattern which we have marked. In drawing our 
 man-repabUc, we have, in some degree, portrayed the true repub- 
 lican man. As in a crystallization, so in the commonwealth, the 
 form of the simple particle should be the same as the form of the 
 entire aggregate. Here have you been surrounded with all the 
 elements and influences to shape the character I have imaged. Full 
 proudly sure I am, that whenever you are called to pass current, 
 your image and superscription are a noble advertisement of the mint 
 that hath coined you. The streams every where meandering, attest 
 by their crystalline current, the purity ^nd height of the fount whence 
 they flow. Forever, and in ever-increasing richness, may the foun- 
 tain stand ; perennial, and in multiplying numbers, may the stream- 
 lets flow — streamlets of living waves, pouring vitality through the 
 living world, and lo^ng at last in the ocean of life — the ocean ov 
 God, 
 
THE SCHOLASTIC AND THE FKACTICAL. 
 
 A 
 
 BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS, 
 
 DELIVERED TO 
 
 THE GRADUATING CLASS AT THE UNIVEESITY OF MICHIGAN, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT. 1847. 
 
THE SCHOLASTIC AND THE PEACTICAL. 
 
 YouNQ Gentlemen : 
 
 This hour forms a crisis in your lives. Your eollego days 
 have departed to join the centuries of the irrevocable past. 
 Once they formed, to your youthful fancies, an ideal pieture in 
 ambitious prospept ; now they stand to memory's view a receding 
 reality in sober retrospect. Listen to me, then, while I pronounce 
 a few parting syllables which must dismiss you from the little tran- 
 quil scene of our care, to the broad and untried world that, with its 
 cold welcome and doubtful vicissitudes, waits to receive you. Listen, 
 for they shall be words of kindly encouragement. Too well do "^ 
 we know the anxieties of your present transition, your doubtful scru- 
 tiny of your own powers, your tremulous interrogation of that futurity 
 which, though it now echoes back no answer, will hereafter, per- 
 haps, roll out its responses too rapidly to be welcome — too well do 
 we appreciate all these to utter one word but of encouragement and 
 hope. 
 
 Under auspices peculiarly happy do you go forth. I will not urge 
 the circumstance that, as the endowment of our Institution has sprung 
 from the beneficence of our general Legislature, you may claim to 
 be the proteges of the nation. But it certainly is a title which not 
 many graduates of our country can claim with you, to be not only 
 alumni of their college, but alumni of their State. The master ora- 
 tor of Greece informs us, that Athens provided for the bringing up of 
 the sons of all who had died in battle, and, when their education 
 
90 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 was completed, she called them to her public forum, arrayed them 
 in full panoply, and bid them go forth, the alumni of their country, 
 grateful to her for all they were, and ready to sacrifice that all for 
 her prosperity/ So, young gentlemen, does our beloved Michigan, 
 in the persons of these, her appointed curators, of this attendant 
 audience, and of us your instructors, bid you go from this rostrum, 
 arrayed in your intellectual panoply, to a noble service in the cause 
 of your State, your country, the age, and the world. Grateful 
 experience has already shown, that the kindly feelings of our penin- 
 sular public gather around the oflFspring of your Alma Mater. The 
 public eye beams with generous hopes upon them. You are going 
 to join your graduated comrades of two preceding classes, with them 
 to form the front battalion of that Grand Army, whose lines, in 
 magnificent procession, shall, we trust, through future centuries — 
 nay, to the very consummation of all things — march forth from these 
 halls into the wide world, armed and equipped for the great moral 
 battle, for your country's good and the world's renovation. 
 
 But while your State accords to you and your compeers, these high 
 hopes, she makes corresponding demands upon you. Much is given 
 — much is therefore required. Justly may she say to you, her 
 native or adopted sons, — " I have surrounded you with the means of 
 forming exalted character ; I have made the highest grade of edu-. 
 cation free as the common school itself — the accessible birthright of 
 every son of Michigan ; I have flung wide open the doors of science 
 before you ; I have a right to find in you all the tokens of the 
 highest manly character. I am authorized to expect stores of well- 
 acquired knowledge, and the strength of well-disciplined intellect. I 
 demand that in all your varied career, you stand the foremost cham- 
 pions of the public good, the diffusers of popular intelligence, the 
 examples of a pure integrity. To whom, if not to you, must I look 
 
 for my MODEL MEN ? " 
 
 But perhaps, young gentlemen, you shrink from the pressure of 
 demands like these. You are ready to reply that you feel not, within 
 yourselves, the resources to meet a tax so heavy. To such mis- 
 givings there is a reply, at once assuring and admonitory. The 
 right-minded public will not expect, as you will not claim, that your 
 
THE SCHOLASTIC AND THE PRACTlCAIi. 91 
 
 education is now complete. It is only in a very qualified sense now 
 said that you have finished your education. The judicious critic 
 now looks for the fair promise — not for the full maturity. You have 
 had the training of this, our little miniature world — ^you still need 
 the completer schooling of the broad, real world. - If with the foun- 
 dation you have here laid, you possess the firm determination to 
 raise a worthy superstructure ; if, ever conscious of present deficiency, 
 self-improvement is your constant motto ; if, too magnanimous to 
 court the favor of the depraved, you inflexibly pursue the path of 
 principle, your friends can wait, and you can wait, until time and 
 toil and trial shall work your full maturity ; you will take your 
 place among the most honored of your country's sons ; you will 
 fulfil the "highest wishes and demands made upon you, and you 
 will reflect back the most precious honor upon the institution which 
 now honors you with her credentials. 
 
 Your collegiate degree, as a testimonial of your having accom- 
 plished a long-established course of study, places you, of itself, in an 
 intellectual fraternity — a little scientific republic. Yet never in- 
 dulge a factitious pride upon your scholastic acquirements ; nor, for 
 a moment, despise the practical knowledge which the humblest arti- 
 san may possess above you. All knowledge is value. Deference 
 enough is usually paid by the general laity, to a character for scholar- 
 ship. Nay, the friends of the young scholar, and the scholar him- 
 self, entertain sometimes a factitious pride in his very ignorance of 
 the humbler facts of practical life. Sooner or later that ignorance 
 will punish that pride. Sooner or later, the young neophyte is likely 
 to learn that the world is a severe schoolmaster — a schoolmaster who 
 has no refined scruples about corporeal punishment for the wight 
 who is too dull or too proud to learn his lessons. The scholar and 
 the mechanic meet — each possesses a knowledge which the other does 
 not, and both tho§e kinds of knowledge have a value and a dignity. 
 A very few scholastics may live apart — a charmed life. They may 
 walk like ethereal genii through life — ^in the world, not of the world. 
 But the large majority of those who attempt it, will learn from the 
 round raps of experience, their own corporeity. Collision will teach 
 the amiable transcendentalist that he is not all soul. Science hcf- 
 
92 COLLEGIATE ADDKKSSES. 
 
 self, meantime, is going forth, in benign power, diffusing her magic 
 and her dignity around the operations of life. Her revered seat must 
 ever be the laboratory and recitation-room of the University ; — but 
 thence she walks forth to make the grandest displays of powers in the 
 shop of the mechanist, on the great thoroughfares that bind States in 
 union, and in the soil whence agriculture feeds the world. The 
 startled laborer pauses at her miracles ; he learns to think, to inves- 
 tigate, to philosophize. Glimpses does he catch of the mysterious 
 world of science, with recesses more wondrous than the genii grots 
 and chambers of an Arabian tale. The scholar is to his eye the 
 envied magician of that world ; he sighs to think it is too late for him 
 to master its secrets, but resolves that those whom God has given 
 him as his lineal successors, shall enjoy the privileges to bim denied. 
 Years shall pass on — and those fields which, in olden time, were 
 upturned only by the boor, shall be wrought by a race as wise in 
 head as they are healthful in heart and strong in hand. 
 
 These changes may be revolution, but they are not convulsion< 
 Happily for us, in the Northern States of this Union — ^to whom alone 
 belongs the name of Eepublio, which I will never apply to the 
 worse than feudal serfdoms of the South — the elasticity of our civil 
 institutions makes full allowance for the peaceful changes which 
 render violence unnecessary. The changes to 'which I have alluded 
 will take place, with all the calmness of some natural process'of a 
 healthful physical system. The present state, indeed, of the pro- 
 fessional world, does perhaps indicate that some inconvenience may 
 result, similar to those deprivations which laboring classes suffer by 
 great improvements in machinery. Yet on the whole, while all 
 shall be elevated, none will in reality be depressed. Hitherto it 
 has seemed almost a matter of course, that every liberally educated 
 man must become a professional man ; that no parent could permit 
 a son, whose respectability he would secure, to descend to the rank 
 of the mechanic or farmer. Most surely this state of things cannot 
 last. It is not much longer to be esteemed an anomaly, that the 
 hand that has received a diploma should hold a plough. A learned 
 blacksmith will not much longer be a prodigy. Both parents and 
 sons will soon learn that there are other ranks in life as truly respect- 
 
TUB SCHOLASTIC AND THE PRACTICAL. 93 
 
 4 
 
 able as the intellectual professions, and more healthfully happy. 
 The broadcloth dress of the professional man, unsoiled by contact 
 ■with mother earth, the sedentary position, and the apparent ozer- 
 tion of lungs alone, have impressed upon the popular mind the fancy 
 that professional life is easy and luxurious life. It is the subject 
 of mingled envy and respect to the old, and ardent aspiration to the 
 young. But who hath dyspepsies ? Who hath nervousness 1 Who 
 hath dimness of eyes, and paleness of cheek, and emaciation of form, 
 and faintness of voice, and consumption of life, but he that tarrieth 
 long at his books, and drinketh the unmixed draughts of knowledge ? 
 Place the hardy agriculturist and the slender intellectualist side by 
 side, and ask which has most violated nature's laws, and has there- 
 fore, by those inevitable laws, been the greatest sufferer. If you 
 have a doubt, let them try a muscular duetto, for really this is a 
 case in which the " trial hy battel" will bring out a just decision. 
 And if venerable toil can thus vindicate the comparative happiness 
 of her son, let intellectual worth combine in dignifying alliance with 
 her venerable sister, and the dawn of the golden age is gleaming. 
 Patriarchal China symbolizes this truth, when she requires her em- 
 peror annually to put his hand to the plough and turn the sacred turf. 
 The Mantuan bard, at the very commencement of that immortal 
 epic, in which he sang the " arms and the man," announces him- 
 self as the poet whose numbers had cheered the rustic at his toil, 
 and taught him by their precepts. So far from blushing to be the 
 farmer'' s lawreate, be preferred his rural Greorgics to his warlike 
 j^neid ; and the world will yet confirm the choice. Grand, too, is 
 the antique verse of majestic Hesiod, as his roUing hexameters, by 
 the foot of Helicon, taught his countrymen to spread fertility over 
 the old Pelasgic plains. But grander, as older, than all, is that 
 holy record which, combining the pictorial of poetry with the true of 
 history, paints that patriarchal age, when earth was young — ^when 
 the Abrahamic altar rose beneath some ancient oak, towering amid 
 plains covered by the shepherds' flocks, and waving with the tillers' 
 grain. Earth then was nearer heaven ; and there were haunts 
 from which angels in disguise had not been wholly driven. When 
 shall earth grow thus young again ? When the hearts of her sons 
 
94 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 grow young. Or rather, when to the maturer wisdom of these last 
 days, shall be added the healthful simplicity of that primal period, 
 then shall an age arise, nobler ttan either. In the years of the first 
 freedom of our country, our Washington loved more to cultivate tho 
 homestead of his own Mount Vernon, than to wield the sword or 
 the civic sceptre of his country. We had a Jefferson, who left with 
 regret and returned with joy to his own Monticello, the. home of 
 science and rural labor. And when the coarseness of party strifo 
 has passed, a spontaneous beauty will be felt in the images of the 
 hermitage, of Ashland and of Lindenwald — gentle retreats, to which 
 nature had recalled the bold adventurers of the storms of state. 
 
 A proper consciousness of the little that the best of brief college 
 courses can communicate, compared with the immense field of knowl- 
 edge before you, is indeed a fine corrective of factitious pride. But 
 the very fact that a grand beginning is made, that the key is put in 
 your hand for unlocking the remaining stores of knowledge, and the 
 recipe of self-discipline has been fairly communicated to you, is a 
 priceless advantage in your lives. You are entered now for a con- 
 spicuous career ; it is for you to complete the processes of acquisi- 
 tion and self-education, until you feel within yourselves the conscious 
 power to make some noble contributions to the existing stock of 
 human knowledge — to add some glorious deed to the series of 
 human history — to present one man more to the bright catalogue of 
 human thought. If Heaven be propitious to you, and you are true 
 to yourselves, you will possess your share of influence over the pub- 
 lic mind. Yet rejoice not if the elements of this world be subject 
 to you ; but rejoice if you ever have the power of doing great good. 
 Such an opportunity, if sought, can never be wanting. The world is 
 in that transition state in which old abuses are still standing in their 
 pride of place ; but the pathway of improvement is brightly opening 
 before us. You will not slumber, as do many, cramped within the sor- 
 did encasements of pure self-interest, your whole soul absorbed in the 
 worship of the mammon of wealth, or the moloch of ambition, while 
 the calls for laborers in the field of holy usefulness, are pealing in 
 your ear. 0, commit yourselves to some noble task of philanthropy ! 
 Is popular ignorance threatening to make our liberties the victim of 
 
THE SCHOLAfSTfC AND TUB PBACTICA1-. 95 
 
 licentiousness? Are the demagogue and the time-server cold to the 
 good cause of popular education ? Be it yours to rouse the public 
 mind and lead on the van of the enterprise of making our nation 
 intelligent. Is intemperance, in spite of every effort of philanthro- 
 py, still plunging her myriads into the abyss of ruin ? Be it yours 
 to reassure the fainting philanthropist's heart, and to rally the un- 
 faltering hosts again around the temperance banner. Does a blind 
 admiration of gunpowder glory still animate our populace with a 
 mad enthusiasm for warlike conquests, and a madder devotion for 
 military leaders ? Be it yours to utter words of sobering wisdom ; 
 to restore the ancient predominance of an unambitious republican- 
 ism, and the reign of the principles of peace. Does Anglo-Saxon 
 oppression still lay her chains and stripes upon the limbs of the 
 bleeding slave, and still intrench herself in the haughty feudalism 
 of the South, and the abject demagogism of the North ? Be yours 
 the heart of firmness and the voice of freedom, to maintain the great 
 cause of eternal justice and the inalienable rights of man. 
 
 And time would fail me to speak of those great associations of 
 Christian philanthropy, which have been formed for spreading the 
 word of God over the world — for sending the angel of the everlast- 
 ing Gospel to every child of man, and uniting the different branches 
 of Protestant Christianity into one harmonious whole. Surely, young 
 gentlemen, the departments of labor are abundant, and you have no 
 excuse for inaction. 
 
 Nor be disheartened if not one note of popular applause should 
 salute your ear. Pleasant indeed is the voice of man's approbation ; 
 sweet is the music of human sympathy. Yet cannot you be con- 
 tentedly good and quietly labor in the cause of righteousness, unless 
 some admirer shall stand by to exclaim, " What magnanimity ! " ? 
 Shall yours be that theatrical excellence which cannot exist except 
 there sit spectators to clap their hands and cry "Encore! " ? The 
 virtue that blooms in the shade has our Saviour's special benedic- 
 tion, while the piety which offers prayers for the ears of men, and 
 the benevolence that blows its own trumpet, have only the reward 
 they seek. It is glory enough to be good, and more glorious to be 
 good unhonored and unsung. He who has been obscurely excellent 
 has not failed in life. His excellence, consecrated like the vestal 
 
96 COLLEGIATE ADDBESSE3. 
 
 virgin, to God alone, is, to Grod, peculiarly acceptable. That a spot- 
 less fame is desirable, that a reputation for talent is a positive enjoy- 
 ment and value, is doubtless true. But these, as guiding motives, 
 often lead astray ; and as controlling motives, deprave the character. 
 There is certainly a convenience in finding your very name a pass- 
 port to every society, atid your person welcome to civility and imme- 
 diate respect. He who possesses wealth or fame, is enviable ; he 
 ■who cannot spare them, is pitiable. You can afford not to be a great 
 man. . To tell the truth, greatness is becoming trite. The list of 
 Fame's demi-gods is becoming so numerous that, like the worshippers 
 of that great menagerie of heaven, the myriad gods of Hindooism, 
 we might spend our life in devotion without having adored half the 
 pantheon. The upper world of renown is becoming overstocked. 
 If old Earth goes on, still multiplying her heroes and prodigies, 
 history must soon become a muster-roll of names, and it becomes a 
 serious question whether it is worth any man's ambition to be num- 
 bered in so motley a multitude. Truly, our historical professor, 
 even a short thousand years hence, will have an immense depart- 
 ment ! and in a few thousand years more, the world will be thankful 
 for an intellectual deluge, which shall wash out the countless annals 
 of the past. Caliph Omar, who has hitherto been execrated as 
 the burner of the Alexandrian library, canonized as the world's 
 benefactor, will be transformed from an incendiary to a saint. And 
 when this cancelling of the old and adoption of the new set of books 
 take place, genius will once more have a fresh field and fair play. 
 Our aspirants after originality will no longer be annoyed with the 
 preoccupancy of every inch of intellectual ground by their predeces- 
 sors, who have performed all that was performable, utterred all that 
 was utterable, and conceived all that was conceivable. Bttt whether 
 the buzzing insects of fame shall multiply, prolific and countless as 
 the animalculse of a coral continent, or whether they shall hs swept, 
 as by a breath from eternity, into the ocean of oblivion, of what 
 worth is such immortality? Immortality! Out upon the lymg 
 misnomer ! It is a bastard counterfeit of a glorious hope. Would 
 you acquire a genuine immortality — an immortality which numbers 
 cannot divide, which time cannot dim, which revolutions cannot 
 erase, go write your names, by deeds of God-like goodness, upon the 
 
TUB SCHOLASTIC AND THE PRACTICAL. 
 
 records of eternity, to beam in letters of burning light, 
 empyrean throne, beneath the ceaseless gaze of the omnii 
 
 It needs no astrology, young gentlemen, to utter som\ 
 prediction of the future, lying before you. The present see 
 sooiations, events, and feelings, will soon fade in the dreamy dis- 
 tance ; and as other and more worldly interests fill your hearts, you 
 will perhaps smile at the warmth of your early sensibilities ; and yet, 
 in the more solemn hour of retrospect, your college life will still 
 present its peculiar images, saddening you with a regret for every 
 failure, shedding a pleasure for every achievement, and attracting 
 an interest to its collections belonging to no other spot in life. As 
 you pass along your separate pathways, time will throw its dimness 
 over your mind's eye, as you would recall the image of an ancient 
 comrade ; nay, you may strangely meet, unrecognizing and unrecog- 
 nized. Or, upon a sidewalk of life's great thoroughfare, you may 
 suddenly encounter — strangely recognize — mark in each other the 
 traces of time — ask and utter each a brief biography — inquire for 
 one and another associate — then diverge, to meet no more. Now 
 and then a saddening report, or a newspaper paragraph, will inter- 
 rupt you in the hum of the world, announcing a death. A leaden 
 check lies a moment at the heart — a pensive thought — a sigh — a 
 reflective premonition of one's own destiny, pay their tribute of 
 respect to the departed class-mate, and again the current of life 
 rushes on. As your years roll on their decades, your little ranks, 
 ever thinning, will begin to feel that time spares not you ; and well 
 will it be if, as this world grows dim, the world of immortality shall 
 grow bright ; well will it be if, as the shadows grow faint on the dial 
 plate of life, the hurried task of life shall seem to have been nobly 
 done. If we have well-mastered the past, we are the better able to 
 master the present ; and if we are masters of the present, we may 
 well hope to make a happy future our own. For each moment of 
 life we must be upon the alert ; for well hath the poet sung, that 
 
 " Our hearts, though strong and brave. 
 Still, like muffled drums, are beating 
 Puneral marches to the grave." 
 9* 
 
m 
 
 COLLEGIATE ADDKESSES. 
 
 And that grand array of your predecessors, yourselves, and your 
 successors, whose interminable procession I have already described, 
 move not merely /rom, but through these halls. From their starting 
 point in life they take these halls in their career ; and their onward 
 march, with their trampling tread, is through the world and to the 
 grave. And yet not to, but through the grave ; for that very grave 
 is but the veiled archway that leads to that spirit world, where stands 
 the very throne of an adjudging Grod. Around that throne, with 
 earth's trembling millions, those ranks shall circle and receive, for 
 life's responabilities, eternity's retribution. And 0, may He who 
 shall then be your judge, be now your protector I Rich be the 
 blessing ho may pour into your cup — safe be the guidance he may 
 shed along your path ; and may yours be a final reassemblage in the 
 land where the blest shall no more pronounce — as we must now 
 pronounce — the long Farewell. 
 
EOCENTHICITIES OP GENItTS. 
 
 AN ORATION, 
 'upon taking the MASTER'S DEGREE, 
 
 AT 
 
 HAMILTON COLLEGE, 1831. 
 
ECCENTEICITIES OF GENIUS. 
 
 There is a natural Homage which the mind delights to pay to 
 intellectual superiority. There is a natural fascination which at- 
 tends the movements of gigantic thought, which delights while it 
 enslaves, and renders the soul amhitious to bind itself to the tri- 
 umphal car of the intellectual conqueror. The despiser of heraldric 
 titles is often the admirer of nature's nobility, and the towering 
 republican who launches his anathemas against the arrogance of 
 political royalty, often pays a more than feudal homage to the 
 monarchy of mind — the despotism of genius. 
 
 What is genius? It is a term, the meaning of which is by no 
 means as evident, as its use is frequent. We possess no intellec- 
 tual microscope to analyze its etherealism ; we perceive its presence 
 only by its development iu action ; we feel the spirit only by its 
 mysterious breathings ; we detect the deity only as the army of the 
 Greek detected the presence of the sun-god, by the flash of his 
 flying arrow and the clangor of his silver bow. Aeo^ Si kMtt^ rhtf 
 iipyvpeoio pioto. According to some opinions, genius is the product of 
 external objects and events, the result of the influence of associa- 
 tions. The train of circumstances alone might have empowered the 
 most practical adept of the crucible or the blackboard, to have soared 
 on the poet's wing with a Milton's grandeur, or to have swept the 
 poet's lyre with an Ariosto's wildness. Others ascribe to genius a 
 supernatural character and ethereal origin. To them it is possessed 
 
102 COLLEGIATK ADDRBSSKS. 
 
 of an inspiration not bestowed on common minds ; its ear is charmed 
 with voices we cannot hear, and its eye dazzled with visions we 
 cannot see ; its nerve is charged with a sensibility so electric as to 
 give a flash to every point that touches it, and its every chord strung 
 to a tone so exquisite as to fling a responsive strain to every breeze 
 that sweeps it. Truth here, as often elsewhere, probably lies between 
 extremes. Much may, no doubt, be attributed to original organi- 
 zation ; much to the influence of associations, more to habits of 
 steady industry, but most of all to that without which no genius ever 
 existed, — fervent enthusiasm. Let all the powers even of a common 
 mind be concentrated into a burning enthusiasm for some single 
 excellence, let that actuate its every thought and animate its every 
 movement, that alone inspire the midnight dream, and haunt the 
 midday revery, and he needs no more ; the man is a genius. A 
 young Demosthenes wanders into the forum ; the master orator of 
 the age is up in all the omnipotence of eloquence. Athens has but 
 one soul, and that hangs upon his lips. He stands, and the majesty 
 of Apollo is throned upon his brow; he speaks, and the music of 
 Orpheus thrills his periods ; he moves, and the thunders of Jupiter 
 are flung from his arm. That form of glory and of power re-creates 
 the very soul of the youthful gazer ; that sovereign image of might 
 and majesty is enshrined forever in the sanctuary of his memory, — 
 the idol of his most, intense devotion. , One sole object, one sole 
 thought now absorbs him — away alike the deficiencies that would 
 discourage, or the engrossments that would retard him ; the enthu- 
 siasm of his soul is up — now succeed the lamp-lit cave, the sea-side 
 declamation, and the mirror-modelled elocution, and the whole train 
 of laborious expedients which the world has had by heart for centu- 
 ries. Last comes triumphant success — power that shakes thrones — 
 fame that startles nations — immortality that rolls its tones of death- 
 less thought upon the ear of distant ages. Few, indeed, are the 
 minds not endowed with the sufficient energies, did but the happy 
 fatality, accident, or what you will, concentrate them to their possible 
 intensity of enthusiasm to become, — I will not say a Demosthenes, 
 but a genius of mighty magnitude and brilliant blaze. 
 
ECCENTEICITIES Or GENIUS. 103 
 
 Never has the idolatry of talent glowed more fervently in the 
 popular mind than at the present day. The very errors of genius, 
 like the depravities of pagan mythology, are deified ; and peculiari- ' 
 ty pushed to extravagance, and eceentrieity allied to insanity, are 
 viewed, not as the spot that obscures, but as the blaze that illumines 
 the intellectual sun. No one may claim a title to genius who has 
 not renounced it to common sense, or who goes through the routine 
 of common life as if written in the scroll of common men. If, un- 
 like Newton, he really knows when he has taken his meals ; unless 
 like Byron he can quaff his wine from a human skull, or exhibit 
 some other mental aberration sufficient to entitle him to a diploma 
 from bedlam — ^let him despair ; he is formed of ordinary clay. De- 
 formities in the physical world are objects of disgust : are intellec- 
 tual monstrosities, mental incongruities, and moral anomalies nobler 
 in character? Is symmetry of mind less beautiful than fair propor- 
 tion of body ? Who does not see that this extravagant admiration 
 of the follies of the ^ise, and the littleness of the great, is as 
 disastrous in its consequences as absurd in character ? Who has 
 not seen a youthful mind dazzled by contemplations of some brilliant 
 but erratic star, fascinated into the belief that his brain too is 
 charged with the electricity of genius, and with all the arrogance of 
 mental aristocracy, despising the drudgery of mental labor, and in 
 all the indolence of intellectual quietism awaiting, like the devotees 
 of an eastern superstition, the descent of the raptures of inspiration ? 
 Who has not seen, on the other hand, an ingenuous mind sunken with 
 the thought that he has no genius, like Csesar weeping at the monu- 
 ment of Alexander, hopelessly contemplating the memorials of others' 
 achievements — but not like Caesar dashing the unmanly tear from 
 his cheek, and flinging the unmanly despondency from his soul, and 
 rising in all the energy of his character to the accomplishment of 
 deeds for the world's wonder and posterity's remembrance ? 
 
 The erratic career of gifted minds is often attributed to independ- 
 ence and originality of thought. Originality is the universal test 
 of genius, the ever-sought philosopher's stone of intellectual alchy- 
 my. Original sentiments, however, should be divided into two 
 kinds ; sentiments so profound as to have been hitherta undiscovered. 
 
104 COLLEOIAIB ADBElilSSKS. 
 
 but SO just as to be immediately acknowledged ; and sentiments so 
 extravagant as only to have danced in an eccentric's brain, and 
 whose only merit is that they are out of the common run of foolery. 
 When a sentiment of the former kind is heard, the mind is struck with 
 its novelty and benefited by its truth ; it is enthusiastically admired, 
 and perpetually remembered. When a sentiment of the latter 
 kind is heard, upon every correct taste it precisely reverses its in- 
 tended effect : its pathos produces laughter, and its merriment 
 excites our pity ; while every sound judgment is readier to award 
 its author the strait-jacket, than the laurel. 
 
 Sought for as originality often is, how often does accident laugh 
 at research, and casualty often dispense the novel thought and the 
 immortalizing discovery. The happy solution came upon Archime- 
 des in his bath, which he implored in vain in his study ; and the 
 falling apple revealed to Newton, invaluable truths which his 
 diagrams denied him. - The hieroglyphics which once enshrouded 
 the history of Egypt, defied the scrutiny of research and learning 
 for centuries, to develop, themselves at last to the eye of a lucky 
 Frenchman. Cicero so nearly invented the art of printing, that in 
 reading a certain passage of his works we are surprised that the 
 process was not applied ; but fate snatched that laurel from the 
 brow of the Koman philosopher, to bind it upon the forehead of a 
 Dutch mechanic, and the progress of improvement was retarded for 
 fifteen centuries. We are perhaps every day treading upon am- 
 bushed truths, which could wo but rouse, would startle the world 
 with their strangeness, and transform society by their power. He 
 by whose lucky foot the lurking principle is sprung, bears the palm 
 of intellect ; his apotheosis is decreed, and he takes his seat by 
 acclamation among the immortals. So fame like wealth is whirled in 
 the wheel of fortune, and the brow of dulness is often surprised at 
 finding itself bedizened with the laurels of genius. 
 
 The burning desire of immortality is another stimulant which 
 stings to brilliant madness the gifted mind. There are minds to 
 whom it seems like the agony of anticip.atcd annihilation to realize 
 that their memories must wither with the greenness of the sod that 
 shall cover them. No grave so deep as oblivion, no silence so 
 
ECCENTKICITIJSS OV GBNIDS. 105 
 
 dreary as everlasting forgottenness. Far more anxious are they to 
 write their histories high on the lofty monuments of fame for the 
 world's admiring gaze, than to inscribe their names in the book of 
 life, beneath the smile of the omniscient eye. And is there no 
 higher, holier motive to prompt to generous deeds than the hope to 
 leave the syllables of our name upon the tongues of men ? Earthly 
 indeed is the soil of that virtue and that genius which blooms only 
 in the sunshine of popular favor, and which withers in the chills of 
 silence and obscurity. Immeasurably more celestial of tone, and 
 more sublime of wing is that magnanimity which soaring far above 
 the atmosphere of popular applause, performs its benefactions only 
 from a love of good, and smiles in pity at the morbid vanity which 
 speaks only for effect, and moves only to create a sensation, which 
 appeals for interest to the ignobler of human passions, and rather 
 than fail will attract a gaze by exhibitions of the rankness of per- 
 sonal depravity, or the foibles of mental infirmity. How infinitely 
 nobler is the calm lustre that beams from the name of a Howard, to 
 the fitful meteoric flash that quivers around that of Byron! — Byron, 
 the living antithesis, the gifted and the wretched, the world's won- 
 der and the world's pity, the patriot of Greece who abjured his own 
 country, the advocate of republicanism who rioted in the excesses 
 of aristocracy, and the occasional Christian who pointed his witticisms 
 with profanity, and gilded his couplets with blasphemy. Is he not 
 indeed to be pitied whose intellectual brilliancy is but the light by 
 which his moral depravity becomes more conspicuous to the public 
 gaze, and whose very genius, like the phosphorescent blaze that 
 flickers around the midnight grave, is engendered by the corruption 
 it illumines ? Who envies the possession of such a genius, or such 
 a fame ? Where throbs the heart so madly for the convulsive ex- 
 citements of life, as to bid farewell to social peace, to approving con- 
 Bcienoe, and to smiling Heaven, to welcome the desolation of home 
 around, and of heart within, that he may eroueh in the lofty but 
 chilled atmosphere of fame, or exist like the living idol enshrined 
 in the Thibetian temple, at once the object of human worship and 
 the exile from human sympathy ? 
 10 
 
106 COLLEGIATE ADDRESSES. 
 
 Such are not the elements of the character that may claim a title 
 to the gratitude of our race. The necessities of the age demand a 
 more healthfal and practical tone of thought. The spirit of revolu- 
 tion even now is walking forth among the nations. Like the Alpine 
 genius of the storm stepping from mountain top to mountain top, 
 she startles creation with the earthquake of her tread, and shakes 
 the elements with the thunder of her voice. Bold thinkers are the 
 prophets of her approach, hardy actors the guide of her footsteps. 
 It is a time of bold innovation upon the prerogatives of hoary abuse 
 and of lofty daring in the field of philanthropic enterprise. The 
 spirit of the age calls, like Demosthenes, for action, action, action ; 
 for the iron nerve, and the sleepless spirit, for hearts whose every 
 pulsation throbs high for the summit of human excellence, and 
 for hands whose every muscle is vigorous in the cause of human 
 improvement. The age demands men capable of self-forgetfulness 
 and self-sacrifice ; men who can serve their country though their 
 reward be proscription ; men who can serve mankind in the face of 
 ingratitude and oblivion ; men who can serve their God though on 
 the savage shore or at the martyr's stake. History's voice assures 
 me that such have adorned the olden time. May Heaven grant that 
 such benefactors of our race, such ornaments of our nature, may 
 spring even in our own excited age, our own free soil, our own 
 loved Alma Mater. 
 
A TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY 
 
 OP 
 
 PRESIDENT FISK, 
 
 I>£LI7£B£D BEFORE THE 
 
 YOUNG MEN'S MISSIONAEY AND BIBLE SOCIETIES, 
 
 AT TH£ 
 
 JOHN STEEET METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NEW TOKK, 
 HAY 17, 1839. 
 
EULOGY 
 
 We are assembled this evening, my friends, to pay a tribute to 
 the. character of one dear to the hearts of many, and revered by the 
 memories of all. And if here, in this sacred temple, peculiarly 
 consecrated to the pure worship of th^ alone Jehovah, the congrega- 
 tion be convoked in memory of a dear, jet human object ; if through 
 these vaults the anthem roll its peals, and even from this sacred desk 
 the voice of eulogy pronounce its periods ; let not a scrupulous piety 
 tremble, lest we repeat the ancient error of those who deified the 
 departed hero, or who canonized the ascended saint. Rightly and 
 truly blessed be and are the memories of those whose living persons 
 were virtue's Hoblest models, whose deaths were piety's loftiest 
 triumphs, and whose tombs are vocal with syllables of the purest 
 monition that the breezes of earth ever wafted, and registered 
 with the most sacred mementos that the sun of heaven ever illumined. 
 And surely, surely, if the intense but painful interest of the world 
 has often been concentrated upon the morbid development of all the 
 splendid infirmities and brilliant madnesses that have ever fermented 
 in the brain of wayward and -misanthropic genius — ^if a depraved 
 curiosity has been wickedly attracted and disgustingly satiated with 
 the open publication of the private registries of talented profligacy 
 — ^if even history has drawn the world's eye, in raptured fascination, 
 upon the triumphant footsteps of ^ant ambition and stupendous 
 crime^-'^then, indeed, piety may pause iu contemplation of one of her 
 
 10* 
 
110 POPULAE ADDRESSES. 
 
 purest models ; science may pay her tribute to one of her noblest 
 champions ; humanity may drop a tear upon the grave of one of her 
 ' most sympathizing sons ; and all may unite in consecrating an affec- 
 tionate memento, and wreathing a sacred laurel for the memory and 
 name of Wilbur Fisk. 
 
 To give an extended detail of the events of Dr. Fisk's life forms 
 no part of my design. His biography, assigned by himself as it has 
 been to an oflBcial and amply competent hand, will, we trust, give 
 justice to the subject, and satisfaction to the public. Kich as such 
 a character must be in beautiful religious example, and fertile in 
 moral lesson, it would not be very easy, as surely as it would not be 
 very desirable, to omit those higher and holier bearings of our 
 subject; yet as the Christian and ministerial character of Dr. Fisk 
 have been made subjects of eloquent diseourse, from the pulpit and 
 through the press, by some of his ministerial brethren, who, from 
 their intimate association with him, were well qualified to make his 
 tomb preach through their voice, we mriy be permitted this evening 
 to dwell more at large upon the intellectual, scholastic, and Hterary 
 departments of his character. 
 
 Not unfrequent is the remark, that the life of the scholar and the 
 savan is necessarily and uniformly barren of spirit-strirring incident. 
 Cloistered and confined within the dozy seclusion of his four-walled 
 dormitory, the bold adventure and the blood-curdling encounter, the 
 reversing vicissitude, and the hair-breadth escape, all the sensible 
 forms of physical power and material action that strike the eye and 
 thrill the imagination, enter not into their life's drama. 
 
 No ! the scholar who consecrates himself to the classic bower and 
 the academic halls, qualified though he may have been for the loftiest 
 triumphs in life's most giant battles, must bid an unstghing adieu to 
 the thrilling peals of national applause that pour their rapture upon 
 the statesman's ear, or the stately processions that lead the con- 
 queror's triumph, as he marches home to hang his blood-stained 
 trophies in the capitol. His victories are the unostentatious victories 
 of mind ; and so unostentatious and destitute of objective pomp are 
 these, that it requires not only a chastened spirit to aspire to their 
 acqujremejat, but a purified and ennobled taste to appreciate their 
 
BUtOGr. Ill 
 
 innate yet infinite superiority. Thoy have no dazzle for tlife vulgar 
 eye. They are no idols for the reeking incense of the multitude's 
 breath. Apart and ccfesecrate-^their dignity is their worth intrinsic 
 and essential — the dignity of hfoliness, which none but the pure in 
 heart can see — the digi#ty of knowledge, which none but the 
 endowed mind can realize — the dignity of truth immutable and right 
 eternal. Hence, he who writes the biography of the intellectual hero, 
 chronicles not a series of eventful adventures, but delineates a train 
 of mental progressions ; he maps not the movements of a body, but 
 pictures the marches of a mind. To trace the faculties' development 
 — to contemplate the character's formation — to mark how some 
 electric idea, at some instant's crisis, thrilling across the thought, I 
 possesses at once the soul, impregnates the whole being, and consti- { 
 tutes forever the life's great purpose, — ^these are the elements which 
 constitute what is the history of — in the loftiest sense — the man } 
 for it is Ahe history of the mind. And what worth are the historic 
 details of sieges and assaults, of battles lost and won, nay, of em- 
 pires' rise and fall, but tis they are the tracings of onward marching 
 idea, and the developings of master principle? 
 
 Of Wilbur Fisk may it be said both that his life was the exem- 
 plification of a principle, and his history a history of mind. His 
 life was the exemplification of a principle. From the hour after the 
 youthful exordium of his life was closed, and its real action com- 
 menced — from the moment that, purifying himself from every worldly 
 purpose, he dictated his soul to his life's great work, his course was 
 onward, and upward, in an ever-ascending and never-retrograding 
 series ; rising in continuous and climacteric unity, to its final culmi- 
 nating acme. He identified himself with a cause which, feeble indeed 
 at the commencement, by a beautiful synchronism, strengthened with 
 his strength, rose aa He mounted, and triumphed in his triumph. 
 That cause — if I may pronounce it unequivocally — was New- 
 England Metliwdism. Yet, while he was the advocate of a cause, 
 he was nafe the bigot of a dogma. Just the reverse ; the, very nature 
 of hi^ eireed served to foster the original liberalities of his mind, 
 i ftat creed, unlike'inany others, we think that it may be fearlessly 
 'R:KTOecI,, that it is-ROtngr ally merely assented teas a cold speculation 
 
112 
 
 POPDLAB ADDRESSES. 
 
 of the head, but that it is embraced aa a loved sentiment by the affao- 
 tions. Both believing and feeling that Methodism was the purest 
 existent identity with New Testament Christianity, he enshrined 
 it in his heart's core ; and from that central source it filing out the 
 impulses of that heart into the widest expansions of charity most 
 sweet, of liberalities most generous, of philanthropy most unlimited. 
 Thus inspired, his character was shaped and his onward course before 
 him. He had his mission — his life's great responsibility — and he 
 pursued his calling as if he had a part to perform, which to be well 
 done, must be quick done ; and if in its beautiful and rapid contin- 
 uity, it seems to be broken with a strange abruptness ere its full 
 completion — it was not because he was not in the full and high 
 career of his commission's great perfol^mance ; but because so it 
 seemed good to his omnipotent Commissioner. Struck down, alas I 
 with his harness on, in the open field of conflict, we might sigh, 
 " How are the mighty fallen ! " but we exult as we remember, that 
 thus to fall is most triumphantly to conquer. 
 
 His history, we have said, is emphatically the history of a mind. 
 All that we have loved or revered in the departed had their sub- 
 stratum in the native original essence of his mind. True, that 
 substratum may have been polished by education, and sanctified by 
 religion ; but neither science nor piety annihilates the original and 
 substitutes a factitious man. Eeligion no more re-creates the sub- 
 stance of the soul, than it re-constructs the fabric of the body. In 
 Dr. Fisk's nature there was a genuine simplicity, an unafiected 
 charm, which no aflfectation can reach— which eflfectually divested 
 him of all artificial assuming, and preserved in him, in every 
 exigency, a centered propriety, and a well-poised self-possession. 
 Hence the meaning remark, " Dr. Fisk is always himself." This 
 lucid SIMPLICITY ybrmetZ the basis of his whole character ; it was at 
 the bottom of his acquirements as a scholar, his manners as a gentle- 
 man, his intellect as a thinker, of his eloquence as an orator, and of 
 his style as an author ; and we hesitate not to say, that from this 
 as the centre and starting point, we might deduce the great per- 
 vading outlines of his character, through all its varieties. He stood 
 before you, his simple, unpretending self ; and if you could have 
 
EULOQT. 113 
 
 fancied something greater, he offered no help for it; but then you 
 found quite good reason to be satisfied, just because it was self- 
 evident that he never assumed to be any thing more. You never 
 were pained at the discrepancy between the pretended and the actual 
 — between the attempt and the performance. Hence the secret of 
 his unfailing, yet unostentatious self-dependence ; and of that ever- 
 wakeful readiness that made him capable of a master effort, at a 
 minute's warning ; and hence, too, the confidence of his friends in 
 him. If in this sober self-poise there ever appeared to be any thing 
 like reserve and inapproachablencss, it arose not, certainly, from 
 coldness of sympathy. If there were about him a constant person- 
 ality that ever made you feel his, presence, it was not because he 
 imperiously demanded deference, but because you spontaneously 
 paid it. His nearest associates we know, and his undoubted equals 
 in talent and in station, we are sure, were at no moment in contem- 
 plating him unconscious of the central worth that radiated its dignity 
 fromhim, and of the noble associations of intellectual achievement 
 and moral nobleness which gathered their presence around him. 
 No earthly majesty is surely greater than the simple moral grandeur 
 of the man who, unencircied by the pomp of rank, is girt with the 
 silent thunders of his own masterly achievements. 
 
 The simple practical nature of Dr. Fisk qualified Ms character as 
 a SCHOLAE. The scholarship of Dr. Fisk was varied, well-balanced, 
 soundly fixed, and ready at his command. But it could not be 
 called profound. He was not the mere scholar; nor, were that his 
 only claim, would it have secured him a commanding eminence. 
 His scholarship was a means, and not the end ; it was his minister, 
 and not his master. He had not the ultra finish ad unguem, in 
 which the fastidious purist rejoices. There are your intellectual 
 epicures, who have a taste divine for only intellectual ambrosia ; and 
 there are your critical Sybarites, with so nice a sense of occult 
 blemish as to die of a rose, in aromatic pain : and Dr. Fisk was not 
 one of either. We would not ,speak contemptuously even of the 
 class of the literary exquisite ; they have their place, and exert a 
 refining influence no doubt over the republic of letters ; only let them 
 not be bigots as well as virtuosi ; let them not adjudge to torture, 
 
114 POPULAR ADDBES3ES. 
 
 without benefit of clergy, everjtliing that belongs not to their own 
 dainty and delicate little species, nor break every thing but their 
 own brother butterflies upon the wheel. For the anxious accuracy 
 in every ultimate particle — for the painful perfection, faultiest to a 
 faidt, in every paragraph — ^for the ceaseless torsion-balance weighing 
 of semi-syllables, and nice elaboration of clause-carving and period- 
 pointing. Dr. Eisk, however much he might have had the taste and 
 the talent, had neither the time nor the mission. 
 
 But if there be critics who are only critics, there are scholars who 
 are only, ^nd wholly, and nobly scholars — silent devotees of the 
 profpund — pure and separate dwellers apart in the deep recesses of 
 knowledge — ^home occupants of the penetralia of studentship. There 
 are thoughtful spirits, even in this age of the objective and the 
 active, who live only in the world of lore ; who have so impregnated 
 their minds with study, so impersonated science in their own beings, 
 that they stand the living oracles of knowledge. Dr. Ksk was not 
 so much the oracle in whom dwelt the response, as the hierophant 
 who expounded it. He did not so much dwell in the penetralia, 
 as stand upon the portico. He stood rather the mediator and inter- 
 preter between the inner sanctuary and the outer world, capable 
 of comprehending in his intellect the profundities of the former, and 
 of sympathizing with and making all intelligible to the capacities of 
 the latter. We mean not that he was the mere compiler from other 
 minds ; for his mind, on the contrary, was eminently creative and 
 original. We do not mean that he was not one of the class of pure 
 scholastics, who apply themselves with cloistered seclusion and 
 German patience to the sole business of research ; and that he did, 
 in addition to a hundred other subsidiary resources, avail himself, as 
 be was justly entitled, of the material which the infinite and infinites- 
 simal investigations of others afforded, to bring an effective moral 
 enginery to bear upon the public mind. He had doubtless thoroughly 
 acquired, and hia situation enabled him to retain, the usual oolle^te 
 amount of scientific and classical erudition ; but he had not run a 
 very extensive ad libitum course through the range of ancient litera- 
 ture. Of systematic theology, it is unnecessary for me to say how 
 admirably he was master ; but bis researches did not lead him far 
 
EULOGY. 115 
 
 out of the cirelo of our own language ; nor, as far as voluminous 
 reading is concerned, is there reason to suppose that he was much a 
 student of the great leading English theologians of former centuries. 
 He studied topics rather than books ; and he acquired his excellence 
 more by mastering the fewer more standard authors, and applying 
 the powers of his own mind directly upon the subject, than by 
 devoting studious days to the patient perusal of tomes and libraries. 
 His views of course were therefore in a noble sense utilitarian. AU 
 his acquisitions were made for use ; all his studies were prosecuted 
 for practical discipline ; and the powers of his mind were trained, 
 and its stores accumulated, especially in view of the cotemporary 
 aspects of the great topics that are at present drawing the attention 
 of the world. The two great problems of his life were, promptly to 
 acquire all those intellectual resources which would be most trans- 
 mutable into energetic action, and then not to leave one particle of his 
 whole operative stock undeveloped in the most effective exertion. 
 Hence every fibre of the intellectual man was trained and exercised 
 to its fullest tension ; his whole muscle was compact and athletic ; 
 the whole spirit, as if vital in every part, was elastic and alert. He 
 was the business man, — the every-day man, — ^the minute man. 
 
 But it must not for one moment be supposed, that because Prov- 
 idence shaped the destiny of Dr. Fisk to more active duties, he had 
 little relish, or a low estimate for profound and minute scholarship. 
 On the contrary, he was its unreserved and whole-souled advocate ; 
 and would himself gladly have been its most patient devotee. Had 
 he possessed the power of living two parallel lives, the one would 
 have been that of the most searching study, the other that of the 
 most ardent activity. 
 
 The simplicity we have mentioned was the basis of his manners 
 as a GENTLEMAN. If conversatiou be an art susceptible, as some 
 think, (we say not whether justly or unjustly,) of systematic and 
 improving cultivation, the unstudied spontaniety of Dr. Fisk's 
 colloquial remarks betrayed very little indeed of any such deliberate 
 elaboration. Unprepared appropriateness was its prevailing charac- 
 teristic. He affected no polished points, or quick-sprung antitheses. 
 There were no previously-adjusted plans — no conversational am- 
 
116 
 
 POPULAR ADDRESSES. 
 
 bushes — no prepared accidents, and no premeditated impromptus. 
 You carried from his intercourse an impress of interest, as if you 
 had experienced a sense of diffusive fascination ; but you retained 
 no one outstanding gem of surpassing 'brilliancy, flinging a shade 
 over the surrounding lustre, and itself endowed with a diamond in- 
 destructibleness. He seldom flung out the elastic ^/ew d' esprit, to be 
 rebounded around the circle, reverberated into publicity, and stereo- 
 typed into a proverb. He was not of the Johnsonian school, a pro- 
 fessed converser — nor needed he to borrow from the Boswell school 
 a colloquial reporter. He never found it necessary to assert his 
 social dignity, by arrogating the whole conversation : he dealt forth 
 no elbow-chair orations, as if the sound of his own voice were the 
 sweetest of music to his ear, transforming the parlor into a lecture- 
 room, the social circle into an auditory, and the dialogue into solil- 
 oquy. Bland, cordial, animate, recollected and dignified ; flexible 
 to all, the varieties of rank or character ; sympathizing with the 
 humblest, and courteous to the dignitary ; dexterous in every diflS- 
 culty, felicitous in every exigency, and self-possessed in every 
 surprise, he diffused around his daily presence and converse the 
 atmosphere of his own pure, gentle, yet high-toned spirit ; ever 
 ready with the judicious counsel, the lucid illustration, or the even- 
 handed discussion ; now brightening up the scene with a cheery, 
 yet chastened humor ; now sobering it away with the recolleotive 
 monition, checking the possibly rising impropriety by the powers of 
 severely silent rebuke ; or even when it would surge up into rebellion, 
 capable of rising into a subduing mastery over the rampant ele- 
 ments : — these are the traits which, it is conceived, should all the 
 memories qualified by near acquaintance delineate the original, 
 would be found visibft in every picture. 
 
 From the fact that Dr. Fisk did not indulge in colloquial 
 harangue, it is not to be inferred that, in assuming the public 
 SPEAKER, the transition was a transformation. On the contrary, the 
 man in public was just the unchanged man of private life, in both 
 states appropriate to the situation. As a public speaker, his style 
 was the natural and spontaneous product of his personal qualities, 
 flowing outfi-om his true individuality, and not axti&eisiMy assumed 
 
EULOGlf. 117 
 
 upon it. A more extended audience required, of course, a more 
 elevated elocution, a wider range of thought, and a loftier personal 
 bearing. He usually begijn with the clear enunciatipn of his start- 
 ing points : then ranged through a train of consecutive logic, so 
 accurate as generally to evince its own justice, yet so relieved by 
 fancy, or illustrated by analogies, or impregnated with a feeling glow, 
 as to secure the attention ; and as he passed through the process, 
 gathering fervor from its rapidity, and gathering intenser rapidity 
 from its fervor, he generally rose into flights of surpassing grandeur, 
 or wound off with periods of thrilling appeal. And this style of 
 thought was accompanied with its corresponding appropriate deliv- 
 ery. First, rising with a simple, collected, saint-like presence, 
 (preceded, however, usually by the almost convulsive cough, which 
 usually awakened, for the moment, a painful sympathy from the un- 
 accustomed part of his audience,) his manner was for the time easy 
 and equable ; but as he warmed with his subject, the feeling flowed 
 out in the natural gesture, the eye lighted up with new animation, 
 the countenance beamed with a glowing expression, the frame dilated 
 into a loftier bearing, and the whole man seemed, impregnate and 
 luminous with the subject. 
 
 The description which we have here given is of course more par- 
 ticularly applicable to the successful order of Dr. Fisk's pulpit 
 oratory. In the efforts of his latter days, especially those exhibited 
 in the chapel of the University, either from the state of his health, 
 or from views of practical usefulness, he seemed to adopt a style of 
 less highly sustained and more colloquial character. With his pu- 
 pils and associate officers around him, as if in a family coterie, he 
 seemed to indulge the privilege of a more easy and familiar style, 
 less prepared and elaborate than his more public efforts, following 
 very much the incidentally suggested transitions and trains that 
 seemed to arise in his mind. These efforts were not . particularly 
 calculated for sermonizing models ; they, of course, presented occa- 
 sional crudenesses of thought and improprieties of expression ; they 
 were somewhat irregular in their arrangement, and disproportionate 
 and digressive in their form : but still they possessed high interest, 
 as the apparently spontaneous disooursings of a superior mind ; and 
 n 
 
118 
 
 POPULAR ADDRESSES. 
 
 they abounded with many a lesson of divine wisdom, and many a 
 passage of impassioned eloquence. 
 
 The common-sense substratum whichi we have assigned as the 
 basis of Dr. Fisk's character may be pronounced preeminently the 
 basis of his mode of thought as an orator. A prominent fault, we 
 have often thought, of pulpit ministry is, that its modes of reasoning 
 and expression are too professional, and too little common-sense. 
 They are the thinking of the trained theologian, with his own vocab- 
 ulary, and his own logic; indulging which all the more freely 
 because he feels sure of his audience, and secure from audible con- 
 tradiction ; he goes along disregarding the unspoken difficulties, 
 and exulting in conventional demonstrations that prove just nothing 
 to the common-sense thinker. Dr. Fisk was the common-sense 
 preacher. He was at bottom — and without education would have 
 been — a direct, practical, clear-headed, common-sense man ; and 
 with such minds, comprehending the world's great average, ho had 
 a natural power of sympathy and self-identification. This quality 
 —his perfect self-adaptation to the popular mind — constituted one 
 great secret of his great power over it. He knew that in every 
 breast there are the germs of common sense ; that these are the 
 elementary starting points — the mental sprouts — of all sound 
 thought. Into these he transfused his own soul ; he impregnated 
 the germ with the quickening spirit ; he brought it out into new yet 
 natural developments, and he elevated it into lofty and glorious 
 expansions. And so natural and spontaneous was the process, that 
 the hearer thought the reasonings were pretty much his own. They 
 were his own sort of thoughts ; at any rate, he was sure they were 
 just what he could and should have thought : only it was thinking 
 a little harder, a little farther, a little more clearly, and a great deal 
 more nobly. And thus the worldly and the shrewd were forced to 
 feel the grapple of his mind, while they appreciated the purity of 
 his character, and to doubt whether, after all, there was not some 
 common sense in theology and religion somewhere else than in 
 books. Through his life he thus drew into his moral influence sec- 
 ular men of thought and character, and in his death presented to 
 them a not ineflfective lesson. To one of these he exclaimed, " You 
 
EULOGY. 119 
 
 behold me, sir, hovering between two worlds!" "And fit for 
 either," was the beautiful reply. 
 
 It was uncongenial with the manly simplicity of Dr. Fisk's mind 
 carefully to hoard his oratorical reputation. The arts of rhetorical 
 keeping, he knew not. When once advised, upon his assumption 
 of the college presidency, to preach seldom, and reserve himself only 
 for great occasional displays, he shrunk at the thought ! He had 
 no fear, by constant pouring forth, to exhaust the fountain ; and he 
 was not too proud to waste the most masterly exertions of his mind 
 upon the smallest and the humblest audiences. Strains of oratory, 
 that might have richly filled the city cathedral, were freely lavished 
 in the country school-house ! It was not his object to make a grand 
 oration, but to gain a more ultimate and business purpose. He 
 aimed to be the faithful Christian minister, not the splendid pulpit- 
 orator. He forgot not his subject in himself; he forgot himself in 
 his subject And when he came forth to his ministerial performance, 
 it was not after a period of solicitous, intensive, verbal, memoriter 
 premeditation. He did not then involve his plain thoughts in folds 
 of wordy gorgeousness ; nor did he invest them with that intensive 
 glare of diction which, however entraneing to the fancy, renders the 
 thought itself too dazzlingly painful to the mental gaze, to be intel- 
 ligible to the mental perception. No ; his oratory was the natui;al 
 and animate glow of the mind, effervescing with the subject; or 
 rather, it was the spontaneous effervescence of the subject itself. 
 For the subject that animated his periods, animated his soul. In 
 the days of what was his health, but what to others would have been 
 disease, he esteemed it as his high delight to preach with unremitting 
 frequency ; when the sympathy of all others for his illness would 
 have spared his service, he could not spare himself. So long as he 
 could stand in his pulpit, he proclaimed the mission of his Master ; 
 and when he could no longer stand up to proclaim it, he proclaimed 
 it still. It were a picture, worthy a nobler hand, than mine, to 
 portray this minister of Christ, as his friends watched his successive 
 yieldings to the attacks of the destroyer ; a feeble, yet resolute figure, 
 visited by the successive shocks of disease, and losing at each shock 
 that which he did not recover ; preaching^ so long as he could stand 
 
120 POPULAR ADDRESSES. 
 
 in the desk : when he was never again to stand up in that desk, 
 preaching from his seat, — in his sick and dying chamber preaching, 
 it was said, as he never preached before ; — so long as the crumbling 
 elements of his body could frame a voice, sending forth the dying 
 articulations of his faithful ministry. 
 
 There was a kind of public exercise which we must not omit to 
 mention, which, the farthest possible removed from artificial rhetoric, 
 presented, as Dr. Fisk performed it, a specimen of eloquence most 
 genuine and pure — we mean the eloquence of prayer. If eloquence 
 be the natural uttering of the simplest and most spontaneous 
 breathing of the highest and holiest sentiments of which our nature 
 is susceptible of being inspired, then were Dr. Fisk's addresses to 
 the Deity specimens of the truest eloquence. Devoid of artificial 
 pomp, devoid of affectation, and especially devoid of that most subtle 
 of all affectation, the very affectation of simplicity, they possessed a 
 real simplicity, variety, and pertinency, which we have never seen 
 equalled. They were simple, for they expressed in direct and 
 unambitious words the natural mind of the speaker ; they were 
 varied, for he had no stereotype clauses, and the persons most familiar 
 with his daily devotions, remember not his ever twice using the same 
 form of expression ; they were pertinent, suiting with happy and 
 instantaneous yet dignified applieableness, the peculiar exigencies of 
 specific circumstances and characters. Persons of intellectual charac- 
 ter of other denominations, or of worldly views, have expressed their 
 surprise and pleasure at the unstudied, extempore beauty of his 
 occasional instantaneous prayers. Among the most hallowed recol- 
 lections of our departed friend, are the soft and soothing tones of 
 Lis voice, as they melted along the current of fervid devotion, with 
 which he loved, at the close of an evening social assemblage, to 
 consecrate the hour of interview. 
 
 The thought may naturally present itself, and I know not why it 
 may not be pursued for a moment, what stand Dr. Fisk would have 
 acquired, had he, with all his intellectual and moral qualifications 
 about him, unchanged in all but ministerial profession, employed 
 his powers upon the high arena of the national legislation. We 
 cannot but picture to ouij^elves, that his great natural practical and 
 
EULOGY. 121 
 
 executive talent, would have, even there, held a mastering sway ; that 
 his genuine and manly eloquence would have thrilled the senate and 
 the nation through ; that the innate magnanimity of his soul would 
 have gathered an unbought influence around him ; and that his pure, 
 high, uncompromising principle would have enabled him to present, 
 in grandest preeminence, that character, in our days so rare — so 
 rare, indeed, that, as in the instance of a Wilberforce, it appears 
 almost unique and original — I mean the noble character of an uncom- 
 promising, commandi'^ig Christian statesman. Let those who 
 consider' that this would have been a higher destiny, carry out the 
 picture ; not so do we depreciate his high and holy calling. 
 
 The traits which pervaded the manners of the man, and which 
 were audible in the efforts of the speaker, were visible in the produc- 
 tions of the WRiTBK. His style through the press was indeed very 
 much the style of an orator haranguing an audience. He emphati- 
 cally addressed the public. To the imaginations of his accustomed 
 auditors, his intonations are easily recalled and audible through his 
 printed words ; and as the imagination of the professional musician 
 in the perusal of his notes associates with the visible characters, 
 voiceless bars of parallel melodies, heard by fancy's ear alone, so in 
 the perusal of the remains of our departed friend, with how sacred 
 interest may his survivors call to the ear of memory, those modular 
 tions that human ear no more shall hear ! Perhaps even to the 
 reader who had never seen the author, the natural impression is that 
 of the speaker's personal presence. The natural qualities of the 
 author's mind were so transfused into his periods that they conferred 
 upon him a sort of diffused presence, and gave a sort of personal 
 acquaintance with him to the multitudinous thousands who, in all 
 parts of this wide empire, constituted his great audience. If you 
 knew the author, you thought, and with much of truth, that you knew 
 the man. Hence it may be affirmed, that not only has Dr. Esk 
 attracted more attention from the great world beyond and without the 
 circle of his own denomination than any of his departed prede- 
 cessors, but, perhaps, scarce any one man of any section has, by 
 the mere power of his pen, so identified himself with the feelings of 
 his own range of auditors and readers, as to become not merely the 
 11* 
 
122 POPULAR ADDRESSES. 
 
 * 
 
 champion of his sect, or the expounder of their creed, but their 
 sympathizing friend and personal favorite. There is a coloring to 
 his character, and an animation to his figure, which render him 
 palpable to the mind's eye, and the object of the feelings of the 
 addressed. These circumstances arose from the fact, that his unaf- 
 fected nature prevented his adopting an artificial mode of expression ; 
 and he simply sought that phraseology, which would convey, with 
 the clearest directness, his own clear ideas. Ho pitched the tune of 
 his periods to no falsetto tones. His words were less of the Latin 
 derivation, than of the honest old Saxon stock ; his clauses were 
 uninverted, and his sentences were modelled, not to the stately 
 structure of Koman measures, but to tjie more negligent simplicity 
 of native English syntax. This he did, not so much from a con- 
 scious original intention, as from the unconscious tendencies of his 
 own mind ; for when a friendly critic once pointed out the circum- 
 stance, he recognized it as a fact to which his own attention had not 
 been very definitely directed. Nor was this so much a matter of 
 decided taste that he would have prescribed it, as a rule, for all 
 others ; for to the friend who made the suggestion we have mentioned, 
 he gave positive advice, not to change his Inore inverted and Latinized 
 mode of expression. He knew that diction was not merely the 
 product of original nature, but also the result of that second nature 
 — habit or education. It had been his life's early and late business, 
 not to address scholars almost exclusively, but to address popular 
 assemblies, and to commune with the common mind ; and it might 
 be as truly affectation for others, of difierent habits, to conform to 
 his own plainer model, as for him to cast his thoughts into their 
 formal mould. Still the habit of constant, hasty, popular address, 
 with all its simplifying benefits, and all the popular power it con- 
 ferred, produced its corresponding defects. It lowered his standard 
 of rhetorical finish. He possessed not that fastidious choiceness of 
 words, nor that chastened purity of phrase, nor that perfected burnish 
 of diction, which is requisite in a classic model. The main excel- 
 lence of his style consisted in its clear, vernacular, consecutive train 
 6f*manly thought ; truthful in all its touches, free from every sleepy 
 member and every inert excrescence, animate in every clause, and 
 
123 
 
 life-like in all ifs spirit. In his style of written thought, as in his 
 mind, the three great departments of intellect, imagination, and 
 feeling, were united in most admirable proportion ; alternating with 
 successive impulsions, mingling in one composite temperature, or 
 modifying each other with mutual counter-check. 
 
 A single glance at the mass of his published writings reveals the 
 fact, that they were mostly controversial, and perhaps all occasional. 
 His active mind never had time, had even his health permitted, to 
 abstract itself from the external and the moving, to retire into its own 
 depths, and bring out independent results upon great universal and 
 eternal truths. Perhaps every line he has ever published was more 
 or less the result of objective and immediate circumstances. True it 
 is, that some of tlie great monumental products of master intellect 
 in former days, which have enabled the world to gain one great step 
 in its march of mind, were called out by imperative occasion. The 
 immortal Analogy of Butler, for instance, sprung from the previous 
 attacks of a free-thinking age. But the questions which called Dr. 
 Fisk out were, of course, far less universal ; the doctrines he main- 
 tained, not fundamental ; the truths he developed, if they were new, 
 were not vital ; and the area upon which he acted, far more sectional 
 and provincial. Yet the powers which he displayed upon these more 
 specific questions, and in his less extended sphere, are certainly such 
 as to induce the desire that they had been drawn into concentration 
 upon some work of complete and standard nature. His tract upon 
 the Unitarian controversy has, we think, most justly been pronounced 
 a little masterpiece in its kind. His sermon upon Predestination is, 
 perhaps, his noblest controversial performance ; presenting the state- 
 ment, we think; with unrivalled compactness, embracing the most 
 forcible form of logic in just the exactest phrase. The merit of this 
 performance has been amply complimented by the eulogies of its 
 friends, but still more amply by the assaults of countless champions 
 in the ranksof orthodox militancy. The essays upon the Calvinistic 
 Controversy, by which the sermon was succeeded, although not 
 comparable with it in compact force, and although the ta-ained Ipgioian 
 may sometimes feel the absence of the forms of a rigid demonstrative 
 logic and the presence of a too popular and ad captandum process 
 
124 POPULAR ADDRESSES. 
 
 of reasoning, yet, in mucli of his train, he occupies perhaps new 
 ground in theology, and furnishes an able statement of what must, if 
 we mistake not, stand as the argument in the present position of 
 theologic questions. 
 
 As a tourist, the extenSve popularity of Dr. Fisk's Travels cer- 
 tainly assigns him a high rank. A twelve-month traveller over a 
 continent certainly does not pledge himself to all the absolute accu- 
 racy, in point of individual fact, of sworn official statistics. Eigid 
 accuracy in regard to every minute unimportant fact may exist in 
 the absence of all vraisemblance ; and individual mistake is con- 
 sistent with the spirit of the most perfect truthfulness. If in the 
 course of a year's rapid travel, recorded upon seven hundred pages, 
 a rigid hypercriticism should detect an occasional individual mistake, 
 that could be no matter of wonder, for he was fallible ; and yet the 
 talent of seeing things very much as they are, and depicting them 
 very much as he saw them, and the power of taking you with him, 
 and giving you eyes wherewith to see a little more vividly and a 
 little more truly than your own, I know not where you will find, 
 if they glow not on the pages of his Travels. 
 
 One subject there is of his active pen, ■which painful diiferenoes 
 of opinion render somewhat difficult, at the present time, to touch 
 without waking some vibration of discordant feeling ; but which 
 constituted so largely, and in the view of some so entirely the 
 amount of Dr. Fisk's public character that it can scarcely be omitted. 
 Wo approach it, however, as he would have approached it, and as 
 he would have wished it should on this occasion be approached, with 
 kindness to the maintainors of other opinions, yet with an unequiv- 
 ocally frank expression of our own. From the earliest rise of that 
 excitement which has taken so deep a hold upon the best and upon 
 the worst feelings of our nature, and which has roused a controver- 
 sy vFaged with a bitterness surpassing the bitterness of politics, the 
 eye of Dr. Fisk descried in it the elements of an impracticable, 
 self-defeating ultraism, and the seeds of discordancy calculated to 
 disorganize every thing else, did it not happily succeed in first dis- 
 organizing itself. No friend himself to the system of slavery, he 
 believed that anti-slavery measures might be urged with a most 
 
EULOGY. 125 
 
 pro-slavery effect. He feared, erroneously some may say, but 
 honestly all should concede, that the measures really adopted were 
 calculated to demolish other institutiona and sever other ties than 
 those of slavery. The truth of these opinions it is not now the 
 time to argue ; but this is the time, and peculiarly the time, to offer 
 to the public that testimony to the integrity of his views which a 
 most intimate confidential personal intercommunity with Dr. Fisk 
 on this particular subject enables us to bear. In those moments of 
 private expression when the first sentiments of the mind must de- 
 velop themselves, and tried dissimulation will drop the mask, the 
 most single-hearted and invariable desire for the prevalence of the 
 great cause of human good was most perfectly apparent. Previous 
 to sending his first publication tp the press, he brought the rough 
 draft, as he usually did his subsequent, for the purpose of compar- 
 ing views; and he asked, with that candor which ever prompted 
 him to receive any proper modification of his own views from an 
 inferior mind, whether it were best on the whole to publish it. The 
 conversation, as near as recollection serves, was in the following 
 words : — " Docto;r, it certainly ought to be well weighed ; it com- 
 mits you completely to the controversy : and from the moment you 
 publish it, you hang yourself up as a target to be shot at." " I 
 know that," he replied, "but I have ever, when called upon by 
 duty, expressed my opinions without regard to personal considera- 
 tions ; I have found it turn out best ; and I think I must do it 
 now." This simple conversation, uttered in a college study, which 
 either of us little prophesied would be published thus to a congre- 
 gate community, passed casually, with hundreds of others equally 
 characterized by the same spirit. "I hear," said he, with that 
 subdued expression of voice and feature so well known to his asso- 
 ciates, "that some of my old friends in Vermont think that I actu- 
 ally have forsaken the cause of truth and righteousness. I am 
 sorry — but there is one consolation ; as former frien.ds leave me, 
 God raises me up hosts of others to supply their place." He 
 believed that an ultra anti-slavery excitement, artificially excited, 
 would raise, in the calm sense of the community, an antagonist 
 feeling to a specific and misguided movement, which might be 
 
126 
 
 POPULAR ADDRESSES. 
 
 easily mistaken for, and even transformed into an antagonism against 
 emancipation, and a complacency to the system of slavery. "It 
 requires an effort in my own mind," he said, "in opposing their 
 ultra denunciations of the South, not to look too favorably on what 
 is really wrong ; nevertheless, the balance must be kept." Be- 
 tween the defenders and pcrpetuaters of slavery as a system, on the 
 one side, and the unexcepting excommunicators of every man who 
 holds a legal bondman, on the other ; between the tptal rejecters 
 of all sympathy with the colored race, and those who believed in an 
 organized system of northern action in their behalf, he thought there 
 was a broad and maintainable isthmus of opinion, where the public 
 mind could and would probably stand. The Colonization Society, 
 a plan founded, as he believed, and maintained, as he knew, on 
 fundamental principles of benevolence both to the African and 
 American, and uniting, as it did, all parties, sects, and sections, 
 nay, even the benevolent master of bondmen himself, into, at any 
 rate, one plan of mercy, he viewed as the only present visible pal- 
 ladium of hope. That it would quietly outstand the storm of ex- 
 citement untouched — that when the blast had died away . from all 
 but memory, it would continue its plan of enterprise — that it would 
 be the mediator and union point between north and south, and 
 probably the harbinger of any scheme which would ultimately 
 attain the great millennial step towards universal emancipation, he 
 maintained an unwavering confidence. To these opinions he early 
 and unequivocally committed himself; and from them never did he 
 for a moment falter. He maintained them in the day of his tower- 
 ing strength ; the last great public appeal to the church through 
 his pen was in their defence ; and when he could hold a pen no 
 longer, when he had bidden farewell to all earthly hopes and his 
 eyes were uplifted to the bar of his final Judge, the firm accents of 
 his voice stUl reaffirmed their dying testimony, " The cause of col- 
 onization is the cause of God." 
 
 The election of Dr. B'isk to the presidency of the Wesleyan 
 University offered him a new sphere of action, and a new prospect 
 for his future history. It presented him a high and prominent 
 pedestral, upon which he immediately became conspicuous to the 
 
EULOGY. 127 
 
 public eye ; and his reputation, which had hitherto been, although 
 brilliant, yet circumscribed and sectional, became now unequivocal 
 and national. Ho came upon the general public in the full 
 possession of meridian powers with something of surprise ; and 
 some of his master efforts of oratory, exhibited at this time on the 
 platform of those great societies which bring upon one basis the 
 members of so many different churches, produced a thrilling effect 
 that gave him at once a sudden universality of notice. Some of 
 his anniversary speeches, at this point of his history, we have heard 
 spoken of with such high admiration, by such a variety of persons, 
 that we cannot but think them the masterpieces of the orator. 
 Deeply do we regret, that the thrilling words flung by his genius 
 BO prodigally upon the universal air, no human mind can bid back 
 again to existence. Standing, as Dr. Fisk now did, upon the 
 highest station of literary eminence and the highest acme of influ- 
 ence, he flung his great, effective, versatile powers into the most 
 ardent and unsparing action. Calls came upon him from all quarters 
 of the nation for the exercise of his talents ; and thus the station, 
 which it might once have been supposed would elevate him, received 
 its recompense in the splendid reflex illustration which his talents 
 shed upon it. In his election to the two highest offices of literary 
 and ecclesiastical dignity, the college presidency and the episcopacy, 
 it was his singular destiny that the main opposition came from his 
 personal friends, whose wish it was to retain him from those more 
 extended spheres to their own more narrowed field. We say not 
 how generous a friendship it is thus to hem up an individual that 
 your own section may engross his powers. We speak not in 
 reference to the rank or honor such a course may wrest from him ; 
 but the friendship which can for life throw its falters around the 
 great powers of a responsible being, and send him into the presence 
 of his God with unexertod energies slumbering in his arm and un- 
 improved talents buried in the earth, might look very like the 
 greatest cruelty. Still, in reference to the episcopacy, the friends 
 of the president and the friends of the University could not but feel 
 that he was then standing upon that tower among the bulwarks of 
 Zion which he ought to occupy until summoned to the upper sky. 
 
128 
 
 POPULAR ADDRESSES. 
 
 They felt, and we think that he felt, that he ought to die as he had 
 been destined to live, and be to posterity as he was to us, the 
 riRsr PEEsiDENT of the Wesletan Unitershy. The University 
 was the one single object of enterprise which lay most near his heart 
 while living ; it' was among the last of his dying earthly solicitudes ; 
 it is the signal memento upon which his name must go down to pos- 
 terity. And could he by me this night present one bequest and 
 pledge to you his affectionate friends and reverers, most fit for him 
 to send, most appropriate for me to bring, what other could it bo 
 than this, the surviving monument of his talents and his toils? 
 Orphaned of him, the Wesleyan University claims a new adoption 
 into your cherishing affections, and your zeal of enterprise. It was 
 his — it is yours. By the holy name of Wesley inscribed upon her 
 entablatures — by the sacred memory of Fisk emblazoned first upon 
 her heraldry — by her past brief, but successful career, and by her 
 hopeful yet tremulous prospects for the future — by what she has 
 already done for our church, and by what she yet may do for your 
 ministry and sons — we implore that, if while his arm sustained 
 us, ye leaned too much upon its support, now ye would redouble 
 your effort and substitute your energies to supply the vacuum of its 
 withdrawal. Memorials more near to your own metropolis you 
 may erect to the memory of the departed, honorable to yourselves 
 and appropriate to him ; but his spirit would bid mo tell you, that 
 no memento could be dearer from your efforts to him than the 
 towering success of that monument to whose' existence his labors 
 contributed ; in all the elements of whose prosperity his prayers are 
 intermingled ; around whose columns his memories are entwined ; 
 and within whose hallowed precincts his ashes are reposing. 
 
 The pulpit in which I stand and the audience addressed are both 
 remembrancers, that the man whose character is commemorated was, 
 as has been already said, the champion of a cause. Dr. Fisk's 
 Methodism, uncompromising as it was, was of the most genuinely 
 liberal stamp ; for with him it was synonymous with " Christianity 
 in earnest." He knew that not only the spirit, but the very name 
 of Methodism, upon another continent, is synonymous with vital 
 religion of belief, heart, and life ; and he knew and rejoiced too 
 
£ULOQY. 129 
 
 that, even on our continent, the more fervid tone that now melta 
 through all the spirit of the American Church, not only thence 
 instrumentally received its electric spring, but was what in Europe 
 would be called, and here would thirty years agd have been called, 
 Methodistio. In the spirit that he saw transcending his sectarian 
 boundary lines, and transfusing itself through the different bodies of 
 the American Protestant Church, he saw the pervading glory of his 
 Methodism. But he was not one jot the less an unflinching champion 
 for the creed, the forms, and the institutions of central, original 
 Methodism proper. He believed her tenets the purest fac simile 
 of the New Testament original ; he contemplated her forms as the 
 best enshrinement of her creed and spirit ; and he maintained her 
 whole machinery and operations as the best attainable apparatus for 
 evangelizing the world. He knew that there was a spirit in her 
 springs, and eyes in her wheels ; and while he would rigidly and 
 purely confine her to the most energetic and decisive effort to 
 electrify the world with the gospel's power, he would sooner have 
 disjointed his arm from its socket than not have maintained her 
 utmost energy in that one, pure, holy work. Religious radicalism 
 and church anarchy found in him an opponent, uncompromising, 
 frank, and perpendicular ; for while they eyed the bishop elect as 
 assuming the air of haughty churchmanship, and drawing up the 
 reins of an upstarting prelatie, he viewed them as cutting the 
 marrow and sinew of the best-nerved evangelic arm that has ever 
 since the apostolic days held forth the gospel gift to the nations of 
 the earth. Upon this occasion, we hold ourselves no "disputant, and 
 upon any occasion no, arbiter of so great a question. Our prayef 
 and our trust are, that whatsoever may be the fate of ecclesiastic 
 institutions, the gospel's power and the Bible's truth may be 
 triumphant. 
 
 Such, my friends, was Wilbur Fisk. Such, at least he was, to 
 the fallible view, and in the hastily-expressed phrase of one whose 
 happiness it was to enjoy his friendship, and whose honor it was to 
 have been the associate of some of his earthly labors. If personal 
 feelings were likely to color the expression, still the endeavor hag 
 been to draw tho lineaments from memory, and to speak with 
 
130 POPULAK ADDRESSES. 
 
 the impartiality of history. And so speaking, we must say, that in 
 the possession of great and most beautifully balanced mental powers, 
 held in sway by the energy of predominant will, and that will aim- 
 ing at the highest Aioral purpose, he has left very few, if any, his 
 living superiors. And we must affirm, that we hold him to bo one 
 of those characters deigned in mercy to a wicked world — commis- 
 sioned messengers of almighty goodness, on ministers of grace and 
 mercy — God's visible angels of the church below. 
 
 Brethren in the ministry of reconciliation, he whom we have 
 lost rejoiced to make great worldly sacrifice for the honor of being 
 your brother in your high and sacred calling. With the path of 
 human ambition full in high prospect before his ardent imagination, 
 with a heart beating with hope, and talents that most amply au- 
 gured his complete success, he sacrificed all — and his was a Metho- 
 dism and a ministry which cost him something. "When," says 
 he, in one of his private papers, " when I made up ray mind to be 
 a Methodist travelling preacher, it was an entire abandonment of 
 ease, wealth, worldly honor, and even an earthly home." Such 
 was his sacrifice ; but it was without reserve — without retraction — 
 and without regret. How beautiful and striking an assurance did 
 he give of this, in a passage (which his modesty would not allow to 
 be published, as being too personal) addressed by him in England 
 to thirty young missionaries, then ordained for the foreign, service ! 
 " When, in the new world, I gave myself to the itinerant ministry, 
 I laid my ease, my reputation, my future prospects, my all, on the 
 missionary altar ; and I have never regretted it. No, nor even for 
 oYie moment have I ever wished to take any thing back ; so good 
 has G-od been in his manifestations to me." To you, his brethren 
 in the midst of the successive deprivations she has suflfered, in the 
 quenching of her shining lights, the church turns with new and 
 increasing solicitude. What stars have, from our eartUIy orrery, 
 gone up to the high empyrean ! An Emory, a Ruter, a Merwin, a 
 risk, where are they ? Alas, our prophets^— they live not for ever ! 
 But though they to our vision be lost, all is not lost ; for the great 
 Head of the church survives, " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, 
 to-day, and for ever." 
 
EULOGY. 131 
 
 Brethren of the Young Men's Missionary and Bible Societies, 
 yours too was this great loss. From among your bulwarks a tower 
 of strength hath departed. Ye are coming to your place of annual 
 gathering, but let there be no voice of joy amolig you — for know 
 ye not that a prince and a great man hath fallen in Israel ? Ye are 
 summoning down from their towers the watchmen of Zion, to chal- 
 lenge them, " What of the night? " — but summon ye not the no- 
 blest of them all, — ^for know ye not that the beauty of Israel is slain 
 upon her high places ? I have come — ^for ye have called me — from 
 the halls of study and the abodes of science, and I tell you there 
 was a sadness and a mourning among them ; for he who was their 
 chief light was quenched and gone. His pupils look over the green 
 sward where he walked, and the prayer-room where he came, and 
 they thought to have seen him^ — and then remember they that they 
 shall see him nomore. We, the partners of his labors, gather our- 
 selves- to our place of counsel, but our little number is dimin- 
 ished ; we look for our guide and our own familiar friend — ^but he 
 comes not — he shall be there no more ! There is a widowed heart 
 that is lone and desolate — and she mourneth with a mourning that 
 may not be comforted — ^for he who was her life's life is gone, and 
 gone for ever ! 
 
 We stand by the new heaped tombless mound, where spring hath 
 spread her fresh green sod, and we muse silently over the days 
 when he, who was meek as a lamb in his mildness, and mighty as a 
 lion in his strength, with his voice of softness and his look of peace, 
 was one among us ; and we say, as we gaze upon his grave — 
 
 Shrine of tlie mighty ! can it be 
 That this is all remains of thee ? 
 
 From the field where he lies — from the scene where he fell — I 
 have come at your kindly bidding ; but I bring you not that mighty 
 heart which ye knew once beat with such heaving throbs in the 
 cause for which ye are banded ; for that heart beats no more ; — but 
 the pulsations which it felt and the vibrations which it awakened 
 shall revolve to the world's remotest bound, and their wave shall 
 never cease ! I bring you not the lofty utterings of that voice 
 
132 FOPOLAK ADDRESSES. 
 
 which once pleaded with you and for you in your own cause ; for its 
 words are gone, and its tones are suppressed in death ; and yet they 
 are not dead ; for they were sparks of immortality ; and the'^ burn 
 in many a living heart — burning hearts that shall kindle other 
 hearts — and the fire shall be undying ! I bring not that manly 
 form which once led your section of the sacramental host ; for that 
 form now moulders in the fresh spring cemetery that spreads upon 
 the sunny hill where his pupils' hands have placed it ; but moulder- 
 ing as is his dust, I hold on high before you his beaming example, 
 to guide, like a flaming pillar, your triumphant march in the cause 
 for which he lived, and for which you labor. These shall be his 
 still surviving life ; in these, even on earth, shall he be immortal. 
 But to the image that once lived and now is dead — to the speech 
 once articulate but now hushed — to the eye once beaming with 
 intelligence but now closed, wo join to bid our silent — sorrowing — 
 
 last — FAREWELL ! 
 
PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 A LYCEUM LECTURE, 
 
PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 There is a science, once possessed of more than an imperial sway 
 over the minds of men, and still venerable as age can make it, which 
 has, in modern times, been so deposed from its throne and divested 
 of its once unbounded popularity, that its devotees have been obliged, 
 in order to reinvest it with its ancient authority, to clothe it with 
 new characteristics, and to baptize it with a new name. They have 
 chosen to call it Psychology — and the nature and claims of this 
 science are the points which we propose to discuss at the present 
 time. 
 
 And when the mass of individuals, whose course of thought and 
 reading is far removed from the territories of this science, are told 
 that it is no scheme for regulating the currency, or tariff for the 
 promotion of manufactures, — that it is no plan for conducting legis- 
 lation, influencing elections, or making presidents, — that it is no 
 new application of steam-power to " locomotive mechanics, — and, in 
 fine, that it does not immediately handle matters that can be weighed 
 by avoirdupois, or measured by the foot-rule ; the reply is very likely 
 to be, " Then it is the science of nothing at all : " and when we add, 
 that it is a department of the science of Metaphysics, its death 
 sentence is pronounced — " Then it is the science of worse than 
 nothing." 
 
 Better or worse, however, psychology or mental philosophy is the 
 science of thought. While the boisterous multitude at large are 
 employing all their active sagacity in penetrating the objects and 
 
136 POPULAR ADDRESSEES. 
 
 managing the operations of the external world of men and thing*, 
 the psychologist is hushing this exterior excitement, turning his 
 mind's eye inward, and analyzing the processes which are going on 
 in the deep recesses of his own mind. And he explores the recesses 
 of his own mind, just as Bacon would have us explore the facts of 
 natural philosophy or chemistry — by observation and experiment ; 
 and by the same instrument with which Newton explored the upper 
 depths of the heavens, and attained all his discoveries — hy patient 
 thought. Thought, alone, can investigate thought. Judging all 
 things else, it can be judged only by itself. Thought is with the 
 psychologist, the agent — thought, the instrument — thought, the 
 subject. Into the essence of mind he does not presume to penetrate. 
 Out of what substance the almighty Architect has been pleased to 
 construct the intellectual machine, he cannot pronounce. Of that 
 machine, he pretends to know only the operations and the products 
 — namely, thoughts. Psychology is therefore the science q/" thought. 
 But from this humble ground, the science ascends to higher claims. 
 Having long and patiently watched the operative mind, it ascertains 
 the modes in which mind does and does not act — it then pronounces 
 upon the powers, and enunciates the laws by which those powers 
 proceed. Precisely then as the Baconian watches the processes of 
 materials around us, or as the Newtonian marks the heavenly bodies 
 and traces their azure pathways, and thus both pronounce upon the 
 laws, powers, and properties of their respective objects, so does the 
 psychologist, eying the movements of the mental being, enunciate 
 its active powers, properties, and -laws. The natural philosopher 
 knows as little of the inner essence of matter, as the mental philoso- 
 pher does of mind. But when the former has ascertained the 
 properties of matter and the laws of its movements, he claims to 
 know its nature. When the mechanist has ascertained the powers 
 and the modes of operation of a machine, he claims to know all that 
 man can know of its nature. So when the psychologist ascertains 
 the powers and operations of the mind, he humbly claims to know 
 something of its nature. As is the operation, so is the operator; as 
 is the working, so is the machine ; as a man thinketh, so is he. 
 Psychology then is the science of human nature. Others may claim 
 
PSYCHOLOGY. 137 
 
 to be sciences of externality and of matter ; — this may humbly claim 
 to be the philosophy of man — the science of humanity. 
 
 Psychology may farther claim to ascertain the certainty of all 
 our knowledge. Ascertaining the powers of the mind, it decides 
 when the mind is able to feel and pronounce a certainty ; and thus, 
 while some affirm it to be an uncertain science, it certainly is the 
 science of certainty. It thus pronounces upon and lies at the basis 
 of all our knowledge, and of all the sciences. What is certainty in 
 knowledge, but the positive and involuntary affirmation which the 
 mind finds itself obliged to make and give forth of any proposition 1 
 How do I know that three and four are seven, or that the shortest dis- 
 tance between two points is a straight line ? Because the mind, inca- ' 
 pableof denying, positively affirms these truths. How am I certain 
 that space is infinite — that beyond all bounds, and beyond all possible 
 conception, space still stretches its extension into absolute infinitude ? 
 Although I never have, by actual experiment, tried this "vast 
 obscure " of boundlessness, I know it, for the oracular power within 
 forbids denial by its own spontaneous dictates. I find these affirma- 
 tions absolute and involuntary — forced by the mind's own law upon 
 itself — and I am sure too this is not the law of my own mind merely, 
 but of all human minds, — that in these respects all mind is one and 
 the same, — and that these dictates are the spontaneous, unanimous 
 verdict of the faculties of all humanity. But then if you ask me 
 how I know that in these primary affirmations the human intelligence 
 speaks truth, and how do I know but the human faculties all deceive 
 me ? — I can only reply that if they do deceive me, there is no help 
 for it — I am shut up into their circle — they are my only dependence 
 — and in trusting to them I do the best I cafi. I cannot conceive 
 how I could possess a revelation from heaven itself, except by the 
 same approving affirmation of my faculties ; and if that affirmation 
 cannot be trusted, then I can be certain of no revelation. It is 
 useless for me to endeavor to leap out of the circle of my own faculties 
 — the boundaries of my own nature. All certainty is grounded, 
 then, in the nature of mind ; and in studying mind I learn what are 
 those primary truths which mind essentially affirms, and at which 
 doubt terminates. I settle, first, principles. I fix some starting 
 
138 POFCLAR ADDKKSSES. 
 
 points vrbich it is absurd and out of nature to deny, as it is impos- 
 sible really to doubt ; from wbiob I may issue as from a sure 
 commencement, and to -wbich I may refer as a sure test, and thence 
 taking my bearing, I make a more certain course in tho direction 
 of any science. Psychology is therefore the basis-science of all 
 sciences. 
 
 Psychology, then, includes the science of tirst principles. 
 The undisciplined mind generally entertains a thousand principles, 
 deposited by education, false reasonings, or accident, which it 
 adopts with all the confidence of frst principles, but which are 
 justly denominated prejudices. Like incrustations so gathered 
 upon some solid body as to be identified with it, these settled 
 prepossessions seem to form a part of the mind itself. Let these 
 prejudices be attacked, and the man is as much bewildered as if you 
 should attack the reality of his own personal existence. Knock 
 these false props from under him, and he feels as if all the founda- 
 tions of certainty were broken up; he reels under a sickening 
 dizziness; he "staggers to and fro like a drunken man, and is at 
 his wits' ends." On the other hand many a smattering, small 
 sophist, armed with a few of the common-place arguments of scepti- 
 cism, exults at the disturbance and puzzle he produces in the minds 
 of untaught believers, when nearly his whole art consists in boldly 
 questioning first principles and requiring proof of axioms which 
 ought to be admitted in all cases as pre-requisite conditions of all 
 reasoning. By such sophistry a fickle mind is often perverted ; a 
 mind of dogged common sense after a brief period of perturbation 
 resumes its grapple upon its instinctive principles ; while a well 
 disciplined mind immediately sees that the sophist is denying first 
 principles, and arguing in a style that uproots all certainty. These 
 sophistries, even in a perverted mind, are never brought into the 
 practical concerns of life ; for when business comes, speculation is 
 immediately gone from the mind, and the instinctive dictates of the 
 mind resume their play and rule over all the practical life. But 
 men think of morality and religion only in their speculative 
 moments, when the instinctive dictates are suppressed, and a mode 
 of logic is introduced, which in business concerns would be sheer 
 
PSYCHOLOGY. 139 
 
 moonstruck madness. Most of those sophisms with which Mr. 
 Hume seemed to menace the foundations of morality and religion, 
 were such as he in express terms declares he never used out of the 
 closet. He used them, he tells us, not as an agent, but as a phil- 
 osopher. He knew, nor did he attempt to deny, that his reason- 
 ings unsettled all natural philosophy, as well as all religion. Yet, 
 in the former, they never disturbed a moment's faith ; while in the 
 latter, they have been deemed demonstration. Against these 
 sophisms the Scotch school of mental philosophers protested and 
 appealed to common sense ; while the German school, as some 
 imagine with a profounder philosophy, refuted Mr. Hume by 
 professedly making a clearer development, and drawing forth a 
 clearer enunciation of the primary affirmations of the human 
 intellect. 
 
 The importance of grounding the mind well in first principles, 
 may clearly appear from the fact that we can scarce enter upon any 
 great topic of discussion without being brought back to them 
 whenever our opponent pleases. State an argument in any moral, 
 religious, political or scientific debate, and your opponent has only 
 to say, Sir, I do not admit the premises you assume as the basis of 
 your argument. You are then to prove your premises by assuming 
 other premises back of them, which he may again refuse to admit. 
 You -may thus retreat from premise to premise, until you come 
 to primary and axiomatical principles, the denial of which excludes 
 him from the pale of reasoning. It is thus that a discussion in 
 any department of delate may ultimately resolve itself info a 
 question of psychology. 
 
 I have said that psychology is the science of the investigation of 
 human thought. Now to most minds it is certainly true that 
 thoughts appear to be very evanescent and impalpable things. But 
 evanescent and intangible as they are, they are the controllers of all 
 human actions. Men, huge as be their frames of massy bone and 
 iron sinew, are but the moving automatons of these evanescent half- 
 nothings, called thoughts. Headstrong and impetuous though they 
 be, those robust human bulks are the pure creatures of those 
 mental fermentations in the brain. Nay, their most extravagant 
 
140 POPOJ.AU ADDRESSES. 
 
 outbursts are the most implicit obedience to some intangible, unsub- 
 stantial idea within. Investigate the laws of thought, then, and 
 you at the same time investigate the laws of action. Learn the 
 current of human thinking, and you know the career of human 
 movement. Learn how men's thoughts may be best directed, and 
 you know how men's actions may be best governed. The whole 
 science of government is therefore founded in the science of 
 man's nature. If you have any consistent theory of human polity, 
 it must be founded in your view of man as a thinking being. 
 
 Nay, more ; the sum total of all human history is worth nothing 
 except as a lesson in the science of the human mind and of human 
 nature. It is a curious, yet in some sense a plausible speculation, 
 that men are but ideas clothed with flesh and bones. They are 
 simply thoughts, cased in movable frames; and the motions of 
 their frames are but the mechanical effects of the mental force 
 within. We talk of material or physical force, but it is very dubi- 
 ous whether all force does not reside in, and issue from, mind; of 
 which matter is but the passive and inert creature. The body of 
 the great world is controlled by the infinite mind ; the body of man 
 is controlled by a finite mind. The history of the great universe, 
 then, could it be written, would be the history of the divine mind 
 operating ; and all the events of human history, physical as they 
 appear, are but the evolutions of ever-developing ideas, clothed in 
 physical and visible form. All the recorded struggles of history 
 are but the collision of different ideas, brought into hostile contact. 
 Hence, all that series of gigantic changes which has passed in such 
 grand procession across the theatre of the world, appearing like an 
 inexplicable crowd of bodily mechanisms, is, to the eye of philoso- 
 phy, but the great working of human ideas. And he is the true 
 historian, who makes the external body the transparent vehicle 
 through which the resplendent idea may beam. History then 
 ceases to be a mere schedule of corporeal and muscular motions — a 
 sort of surgical detail of anatomical movements. It is the history 
 of thinking beings ; and therefore a history, in the highest sense of 
 human nature. Instead of the putrid corpse, let the historian give 
 us the soul of history, and it will be the history of the soul. 
 
PSYCHOLOGY. 141 
 
 From a "patient study of man as thus extensively exhibited, we 
 learn what man generally and collectively is — we learn all the 
 elements that go to make up human nature — we ascertain its weakness 
 and its strength, its failures and its attainments, the dangers which 
 experience proves to beset its great law of progress, the depraved 
 elements which give countenance to the temptations to despair, and 
 the great means, whether natural or supernatural, whether civiliza- 
 tion or the gospel, by which there may be flung over the gloomy 
 scene the hopes of future renovation. For one, laying aside for 
 one moment the spirit of system, even the Christian system, and 
 contemplating man's nature as exhibited in the great historic whole, 
 I do not find in man's nature sufficient elements of good, to hope 
 for one moment that unaided, humanity can for itself work out the 
 great work of self-regeneration. Nor do I expect — indeed I smile 
 at the fantasy — that any form of self-styled philosophic Christianity 
 or any new organization of society, which places its hopes in the 
 lofty powers of human nature for a spontaneous perfectibility, ex- 
 aggerated far above any thing that history or experience hath ever 
 taught, will accomplish its bloated promises, or achieve any thing 
 but a most ignominious failure. It is vain to falsify man's history, 
 in order to flatter man's nature ; it is infatuation to build upon that 
 flattery the structure of human renovation in this world, any more 
 than of salvation in a world to come. To my ear, unregenerate 
 nature may most appropriately exclaim, in the words which an 
 apostle most beautifully puts upon her lips, " I am carnal sold 
 under sin." " Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me 
 from the body of this death ? " But, with an apostle too, we may 
 elevate our hopes to a higher source, and then, " Thanks be to God 
 — through Jesus Christ — who giveth us the victory." Thus do I 
 read human nature, in the great volume of human history, as clearly 
 as in divine revelation ; I know full well, however, that of that 
 volume there are other and various readings ; and every one is free, 
 and for all me, is welcome, for himself, to spell out his mighty 
 lesson. All that, for my present purpose, is necessary, is, the 
 clearly developed fact that history contains the, great lesson. If 
 history be not good for this purpose, it is good for nothing. And 
 
142 POPULAR ADDRESSES. 
 
 thus history is hut one form of mental science ; it is " philosophy 
 teaching by examples." It is the handmaid of Psychology. 
 But the science of mental philosophy not only endeavors to ascer- 
 tain the elements of human nature developed historically in time, 
 but to marh the limitations of our species as distinguished from 
 the merely animal species that exist on earth. It demarks off the 
 race of man as distinguished from surrounding living beings ; 
 and defines him not as merely " the noblest of animals." While 
 some naturalists from the resemblance of some brutes to man in 
 mere physical conformation, have endeavored to obliterate the line 
 of distinction which marks the point where humanity ceases and 
 brutality commences, psychology points to the transcendent expansi- 
 bility of mind, developed not merely in the human individual, 
 but in the historic advancement of the race, as the lofty character- 
 istic which infinitely distances brute nature from man's, and shows 
 that the fact that some species of animals resemble man in the mere 
 accident of fleshly shape, assimilates them no nearer to human 
 nature, than they would be if possessed of the crawling folds of 
 the serpent ; nor half as much as if they had the insect sagacity of 
 the architectural and politic bee. Psychology pronounces that if 
 man be associated as wearing the externals of this lower animated 
 creation, he is still by right of mind its sole supreme ; and possessed 
 of traits that mark him for another sphere. But while all which 
 is not man is thus excluded, all that truly is man must be completely 
 included. They mistake, who imagine that the savage state is the 
 true and only state of nature ; as if all the processes by which man 
 develops his faculties in the forms of civilization, arts, and social 
 refinement, were so many departures from human nature. On the 
 contrary, savage life, if any, is unnatural life ; and man, in the full 
 development of his faculties, is perhaps most truly man, in the 
 most complete possession of his own nature. The process and 
 progress of art, are, after all, but a complete expansion of man's 
 active nature. And they on the other hand err, too, who forget 
 that man has some permanent characteristics, and assert that cir- 
 cumstances create him all he is. There are those who view human 
 nature as a sort of fused mass, ready to be run into any mould 
 
P3Y0H0L0GY. 143 
 
 ■which education may supply. They commit what is learnedly 
 called a, 'virepov irparepov; or, in plain Anglo-Saxon, they put the 
 cart before the horse — the effect before the cause. Education does 
 not create or produce human nature, but human nature does pro- 
 duce and create education. Education is the human mind operating 
 on the human mind; and out of the innate energies of the human 
 mind does the whole process spring. Educated man is but self- 
 developed man ; he presents human nature unfolding itself by the 
 reaction of its own powers ; and however completely it is carried 
 out, it is still comprehended by psychology, as mind carried to a 
 higher perfection, yet still within the range of its own nature. 
 
 And when our science has thus comprehended the elements and 
 the limitations ef man's nature, it is then, if ever, prepared to pro- 
 nounce upon the most momentous and thrilling of all questions — 
 the purposes of Ms creation and the destiny of his being. Here 
 is the intellectual machine, and such are its operations ; tell me, for 
 what was it made 1 Is it a temporary hovel flung up for the moment, 
 or a permanent palace built for ages 1 Is it a compounded and 
 decomposable organization, or is it a simple and indestructible 
 essence ? Can the elements of eternity be analyzed as done up in 
 our composition 1 Is there the authority of a divinely planted instinct 
 in our aspirations after immoktality 1 Are these choices of ours the 
 unuecessitated, yet responsible acts of a bkee being ? la there 
 ■within us a moral nature, claiming its origin and connection with the 
 divinity, and asserting itself the harbinger of eternal retkibtjtion ? 
 Does our inmost nature authoritatively affirm the existence of an 
 infinite, absolute, supreme One? Lives there the human being 
 ■whose mind has not put to itself questionings like these, and to 
 whom these are not, above all other questions, most momentous ? 
 Happy are those in whose mind education and authority have .deposited 
 such an unfaltering trust in these great truths, as to save it from 
 ever experiencing the withering anxiety of such a doubt. It is a 
 tendency reserved for the bold and inquiring inind, who scorns 
 all authority, and claims originally to know, who feels it to be his 
 mission to institute independent investigation, and to be in himself 
 an authority, who yields faith to nothing but the assertions of his 
 
144 POPULAR ADDRESSBS. 
 
 own reason, to tempt tbe infinite hazard of snch queries, and feel tbe 
 agonies of such doubts. It is his, to put to his own mind, the 
 question of his own mind's destinies. But very much as is the phil- 
 osophy of that mind, will be its settlement of that question. For 
 a false and faithless philosophy will prodibce an infidel and 
 despairing creed. And the fact that one's philosophy lies back of, 
 and controls one's creed, is equally true, whether that philosophy be 
 formed and acquired by the mind's own original investigation, or 
 whether it be deposited by education and authority, or have floated 
 in, like flood wood hitherward drifted by every gust of accident. 
 In these different ways, does, in fact, every mind collect within its 
 depths more or less of a settled sediment at bottom, which gives 
 color and character to all the upper strata of its opinions. Pew 
 persons are there, in whose minds there is not, more or less analyzed, 
 a basis philosophy of settled opinions, which constitutes the prepos- 
 sessions with which they are previously prepared to view any newly 
 presented question ; and it is this mass of back philosophy, this 
 prepossession, which produces the very great variety and difference 
 in the views of individuals, when the same question is presented to 
 each. Each man's own previously possessed philosophy governs 
 both his mode of arguing and his ultimate decision of every new 
 question. It is therefore the settling of first principles in the mind 
 that controls the decisions and forms the character of that mind. 
 And the business of correctly forming these first controlling prin- 
 ciples belongs to Psychology. 
 
 And the remarks I have made serve to show how mistaken they 
 are who suppose that the studies of the metaphysician are merely 
 the dozy amusements of the cloistered muser, totally devoid of 
 practical power or popular utility. There are those who fancy 
 that the events of the world, the actions of collective men, are no 
 way connected with, or controlled by, the speculations of the retired, 
 noiseless, bookish thinker. Even speculative men themselves, 
 unconscious of their own real power, and the power of their own 
 thoughts, have made the same mistake. There was no point upon 
 which Mr. Hume was more clear than this, that while as reasonings 
 his statements were unanswerable, yet they would never do in action. 
 
psYCHOLoaY. 145 
 
 Between his speculations and all practical action, even his own, he 
 supposed there was an impassahle gulf. These are his words : " My 
 practice you say refutes my doubts. But you mistake the purport 
 of my question. As an agent I am quite satisfied upon the point ; 
 but a^ a philosopher, who has some share of curiosity, I will not 
 say scepticism, I want to learn the foundation of this inference." 
 " Nor need we fear," says he elsewhere, " that this philosophy 
 should ever undermine the reasonings of common life, and carry its 
 doubts so far as to destroy all action, as well as speculation. Nature 
 will always maintain her rights, and prevail in the end over any 
 abstract reasoning whatever." Without enlarging upon the hint, 
 which I have before dropped, that these reasonings of Mr. Hume, 
 which were to be no reasonings at all in practical life, were of course to 
 be authoritative in morals and religion ; and without dwelling upon 
 these clear acknowledgments, that the arguments by which he would 
 sustain scepticism in the moral world, would destroy all operation 
 in the practical world, were they not neutralized by the nature of 
 man ; what we vrould point out is, the clear demarcation which Blr. 
 Hume attempts to make between the speculatist's closet and the 
 common world. Mr. Gibbon is said, also, in a conversation once 
 over his cups, to have made remarks like the following : — " My 
 sceptical principles are like this wine, which we are drinking — were 
 you to open it by the hogshead, and let the general rabble gulp at 
 their pleasure, it would doubtless transform them into licentious 
 brutes ; while we who have discretion and self-government enough, 
 can use it with benefit. So the scepticism which would be' ruinous 
 to the world at large, can be harmless enough with us philosophers." 
 Thus the man of the closet and the man of the world agree that 
 speculation has nothing to do with practical action : the former to~ 
 destroy his responsibility for the licentious sophisms he broaches, the 
 latter to banish the imputation that he is controlled by the dreams of 
 a shrivelled pedant. Now I have no hesitation in saying that he is 
 egregiously mistaken, whether speculatist or worldling, who supposes 
 that there can be*feuch a divorce of the world of thought from the 
 world of action. Thought among collective, as well as individual 
 men, controls action ; and you might as well make the hand ma- 
 13* 
 
146 POPULAR ADDRESSES. 
 
 njpulate without tbe brain, as make the events of the world move on, 
 ■uncontrolled by the general ideas of the world. Give a principle, 
 or an idea, complete prevalence in the schools, let it assume the 
 authority of a settled philosophy, and you might as well fasten the 
 cholera with a log-chain, as to lock up this miasm from the- moral 
 atmosphere. Let it be an acknowledged and triumphant philosophy, 
 and it will be caught by the affectation of every pretender, it will be 
 paraded by the schools, it will circulate through the literature, it 
 will fly on the myriad and legionary wings of the weekly and the 
 daily press, until it travels out through every section and reaches 
 down to every stratum of society. 
 
 Am I told that such a control of the speculative over the active 
 world has never existed ? Luckless assertion ! Such a control 
 ever has, does still, and always will exist. Aristotle, if ever man 
 was, was a speculatist and a metaphysician; and he held the world 
 for centuries, spell-bound in the clamps of a syllogism. And who 
 was the great emancipator, and how was the liberation accomplished ? 
 I answer, The emancipator was Bacon ; and he performed the work 
 by introducing a new idea — a new mode of investigation — the 
 philosophy, in one word, of experiment. It was not Bacon the 
 Chancellor, for he was not quite original enough to refuse a bribe ; 
 it was not Bacon, the naturalist, for many a savan is now ten times 
 more knowing than he ; but it was Bacon, the philosopher of the 
 modes of thought; Bacon the metaphysician, who, with a new 
 philosophy, introduced to the world a new era, the glorious impulse 
 of which is now felt in every car that thunders along our railroads, 
 and every ship whose canvas whitens the bosom of the seas. The 
 demonstrations of the mathematician over his theorem, or the dis- 
 coveries of the astronomer within his observatory, have not more 
 absolutely governed the sailor boy reefing his topsails, or the 
 helmsman guiding his Tjark upon the watery deep, than have the 
 deductions of tbe closeted intellecualist laid their broad controlling 
 laws over the social and political movements of the world. 
 
 History herself testifies that mind is the impelling mover of all 
 her machinery. The most terrific page in the history of modern 
 ages, is the blood-red page of the French Kevolution. The eye. 
 
PSYCHOLOGr. 
 
 147 
 
 as it fixes it gaze, half attracted and half repelled by the tragic 
 interest upon its whirlpools of slaughter, see»little indeed in its 
 scenes and processes, but the most downright material and mechanical 
 butchery. If, however, the mental spectator of such a scene, be 
 philosopher enough to know that every such external problem has 
 its inner solution, and that every such drama upon the outer stage, 
 has some connection with inner and more intellectual causations, 
 and if he should demand who were the immediate intellectual 
 movers of this machinery of murder, the answer would doubtless 
 bo — The mob orators of Paris. And who were the instigators of 
 the rabble haranguers; and whence obtained they the themes of 
 their anarchic and atheistic rhetoric? From the philosopliers, 
 encyclopedists and Uteraieurs. And who schooled this intellectual 
 tribe in their destructive philosophy ? Had you asked them, their 
 unanimous reply, would doubtless have been, John Locke. In 
 the year 1690, (so would run the story,) Locke, a plain, but scholar- 
 like Englishman, had taken it into his head, in a spirit of simple 
 independence, to investigate the origin of all our ideas, and the 
 certainty of all our knowledge. His system, deriving all our ideas 
 originally from sense, and characterized, in some degree, perhaps, 
 by tendencies to materialism, was adopted by the sensual philosophists 
 of France. They made it the basis of the revolutionary school, 
 whose psychology was materialism; whose physiology was "death 
 an endless s?e«p ;" whose religion was atheism; whose scheme of 
 government was anarchy ; and the practical completion of whose 
 whole theory, terminated in the finishing stroke of the guillotine. 
 Thus will it ever be found, that however apparently physical 
 the external event may seem, and however lengthened the train 
 of causal steps may be, backward traced, its genesis will be developed 
 as some intellectual principle. Within his scholastic cloister the 
 master-thinker develops the energetic truth, or fabricates the 
 splendid lie, which goes invisibly forth to create events that make 
 a historic epoch. The popular mass knows not whence came the 
 power by which it is made an instrument. The spectator, intoxicated 
 at the grandeur of the event, and the immensity of the machinery, 
 is too electrified to investigate coolly, whence came the unseen, but 
 
148 
 
 POPULAR ADDRKSSHS. 
 
 well-felt momentum. The external movement seems noisy, visible 
 and palpable, -whilsttbe internal cause is silent, unseen, mysterious. 
 As the thinking principle which sends forth its volitions to order all 
 the muscular movements of our bodily frame, secretes itself in tbo 
 silent cells of the human brain, where no knife can dissect, and no 
 microscope detect, its impalpable essence, so, frequently, does the 
 linking power, which sends forth its impulses that move the huge 
 limbs of the public leviathan, dwell in the quiet study, where the 
 eclat of the popular gaze never sheds its lustre, and the voices of 
 popular huzza never deign to pour their music. 
 
 And these trains of thought will show, too, how much are they 
 mistaken, who fancy that it is of little consequence what arc the 
 prevailmg modes of thought and favorite style of philosophizing, of 
 any particular age. If thought controls actions — if principles shape 
 events — if some great transcendent idea characterizes an age, — then 
 must it be of the utmost consequence what are the leading ideas 
 which at any given age make up the great amount of public mind. 
 Tell me what is the moral and mental philosophy, if there be any, 
 of any one age, and I should have little hesitation in venturing to 
 conjecture what is the character of its events. Strange indeed 
 would be the anomaly of an age, the style of whose thinking and 
 acting were not one ! 
 
 Particular eras and particular nations have, indeed, been the 
 embodiment of. some one great idea, of which their most energetic 
 political institutions, and their most massy material structures, have 
 been, not the creators, but the creatures. Home's magnificent 
 architectures and massy bulwarks, her imperial roads, nay, her 
 Capitol itself, resplendent with the trophies of a conquered world, 
 to the outward eye, no doubt, presented an aspect of solidity, infin- 
 itely more striking than any abstract idea or bodiless principle ever 
 could present to the eye of the most vivid faith. And yet what 
 laid her walls as firm, apparently, as the earth's foundations, and 
 reared her battlements, menacing the earth with haughty suprem- 
 acy? I answer, It was one grand, all-absorbing idea, which for 
 centuries filled the heart of every Koman and of Eome, subordi- 
 nating to itself every other thought and feeling, grappling every 
 
PSYCIIOLOGY. 149 
 
 fibre, and reining up every nerve to a pitch of self-devotion and 
 enthusiasm which nothing within and nothing 'without could with- 
 stand. It formed her national faith, to which, whoever was heretic, 
 was not Koman. That idea which created all her greatness was, in 
 one word, patkiotism. And when at length the supremacy of that 
 idea was lost, and Rome sunk by her own mental and physical 
 inertness beneath the arms of the northern barbarians into the grave 
 of the dark ages, what, idea was it which reared and reorganized 
 upon the very tomb of her pagan glory, an empire at once more 
 spiritual and more despotic than ever bowed beneath the sceptre of 
 Augustus? The Gothic structures of the iron ages were massy 
 things; the cathedral domes, the frowning monasteries, the iron 
 inquisitions, were things of fearful strength. But there was one 
 immaterial idea — one mere abstract principle — one mode of thought 
 which shaped and controlled, if it did not create these masses of 
 material power, which gave to them its own apparent indestructible- 
 ness, which made them mighty while it flourished, and which, when it 
 decayed, left all their massiness to evaporate with the mists of the 
 morning. That one idea, which shaped both the civil institutions 
 and the physical structures of the middle ages, and which, reigning 
 alike in the heart of the bold baron in his feudal castle, of the trem- 
 bling, collared peasant in his rude hut, of the superstitious monarch 
 on his subservient throne, and of the crafty Jesuit, compassing with 
 his insidious path an abject world, wrought a resurrection of a more 
 than imperial Eome upon her own seven hills, — 'that idea, in a 
 word, was superstition. It was hatred of heresy as the devil, and 
 devotion to the Church as more than God. Without this idea, 
 reigning in each individual heart, it could not have inspired the 
 general mass ; and vain then would have been the exertion of any 
 power to found those mighty fabrics whose frowning yet shadowy 
 remains still solemnly remind us how changed are now all the 
 tendencies of the human soul. But it must not be forgotten, that 
 coeval with this great religious idea, was one political idea, subordi- 
 nate indeed, yet mighty and creative, which gave and still gives to 
 thrones their legitimacy, to dungeons their despotism, to armies 
 their discipline, to cabinets their diplomacy, and to kingdoms their 
 
150 
 
 POPULAR ADDKESSES. 
 
 nationality; an idea — a mere mode of thought — without which 
 thrones and Bastiles and courts and camps would be to the political 
 world but the shadow of a shade. It reigned most mightily when 
 it reared the feudal system ; it reigns most mightily now in the 
 despotisms of the East, and in the supremacy of the Northern Czar, 
 and it displayed a life ever fresh, when it placed in the hands 
 of a girl of twenty, the sceptre of that island realm upon whose 
 dominions the sun never sets. That principle, without which beat- 
 ing in the hearts of a half-civilised people, political power would be 
 impossible, and which forms the personal tie between the lowliest 
 subject and the loftiest monarch, that principle, in a single term, is 
 LOTALTT. And it was these twin ideas, cotemporary and coopera- 
 tive, superstition and loyalty-devotion to the pope and to the prince, 
 which have created most of the history, for several centuries, of the 
 social world. 
 
 But these seem now decaying ideas. Slowly and doubtfully, yet 
 more and more energetically, a new idea is rising into the ascend- 
 ant. Those old feelings which made the individual nothing, and 
 the great body politic in the person of the prince every thing, are 
 losing power ; and the gradual rise of a new idea, is announcing the 
 dawn of a new era. Starting, perhaps, at the reformation like a 
 gleam of light, streaking with more and more expanded breadth 
 adown the page of history, it now flings its commencing radiance over 
 near half the two continents. It has gathered fresh splendor from 
 every fresh growth of popular freedom ; its brightest accessions 
 have been acquired in the latest centuries ; it saw its widest tri- 
 umphs on our own soil ; and its most fearful failure in the French 
 Revolution. It is the principle of political equality. 
 
 Now these are nothing more than modes of thought, exhibited in 
 the collective community, and developed in public events. They 
 belong to the philosophy of human thought and human nature. 
 They show us the power of thought, and warn us not to think that 
 ideas are nothing. Above all, they warn us how important, above 
 all other importance, is the solemn business of forming what is 
 called A PUBLIC mind. In the public mind is contained 'all the ele- 
 ments of the public destiny for weal or woe. The pu'blic mind 
 
PSYCHOLOGY. 151 
 
 pronounces its own sentence. As a nation thinketh, so is it, in 
 character and in fate. If the principles it adopts as primary be 
 but primal falsehoods ; if its ideas are of a decayed and obsolete 
 character, public folly and national lassitude are the result. If, on 
 the other hand, its first principles and fundamental ideas be faith, 
 hope, charity ; if its first of these first principles is the inviola- 
 bleness of absolute right ; if its ideas retain all the freshness of a 
 young enthusiasm, national progress and national happiness must be 
 the result. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN'S POLITICAL DUTIES. 
 
 AN ADDRESS, 
 DELIVERED AT DIFFERENT PLACES 
 
 subikq ihe 
 POLITICAL EXCITEMBNT-OF 1840. 
 
 14 
 
THE CHEISTUN CITIZEN'S POLITICAI* DUTIES. 
 
 The exercise of the elective franchise, while it is claimed by all 
 as a matter of constitutional right, and actirely used by many as a 
 means of personal profit, is appreciated by few as a matter of dig- 
 nity, and conscientiously felt by still fewer as a matter of the most 
 sacred obligation. On the other hand, it is matter of just alarm 
 that politics are, in so large a part of the public mind, enveloped 
 with the most gross and repulsive associations. There are gentle- 
 men to whom they are so vulgar, sentimentalists to whom they are 
 so coarse, and Christians to whom they are so unholy, that it seems 
 necessary to their own dignity, refinement, and piety, to shun their 
 contact. And streaks of this kind of feeling, it is curious to observe, 
 not seldom flash across politicians themselves. Natural as is the 
 tendency in men to bring their conscience down to the level of their 
 practice, the moral sense of politicians in their reflective momenta 
 obliges them to talk of the " low intrigues," " the sordid game," 
 " the selfish strifes " of their own pursuits. They seem to realize 
 that there are others occupying a purer moral atmosphere, whose 
 purity of life and sanctity of profession keep them aloof; and who 
 cannot invade their unhallowed precincts with untainted garments. 
 Whenever a wanderer from that far-off holy ground intrudes upon 
 their premises, he is eyed with askance looks, as one who is not 
 only compromising his own character, but molesting the settled 
 domains of equivocal morality. Sanctity visiting a horse-race, or 
 
156 
 
 POPULAR ASDSESSES. 
 
 chastity ■walking into a brothel, they think as much in place, as 
 conscience dealing in politics, or piety treading the election ground. 
 
 The consequence of this tone of feeling is, that whole classes of 
 men, in a greater or less degree, seek the place of retreat. Some 
 abandon the caucus, convention, and committee-room, as no place 
 for them ; but retain the poor privileges of expressing themselves 
 implicitly in defence of the party in which they are embodied, and 
 the candidates whom they find imposed upon them, by the managers 
 to whom they have given the reins. Others retreat a little farther ; 
 both abandoning all the management to the party leaders, and yet, re- 
 jecting any subserviency or subordination to either side, they retain the 
 right to discuss the merits of either, and vote as reason may dictate. 
 Others, farther still, shrink from the noise and clamor that fill the 
 political atmosphere ; but unwilling to lose all their rights, persist 
 in giving a silent vote. A last class, possessed of a moral con- 
 sciousness more sensitive still, or a spirit of quietism more settled, find 
 themselves wholly repelled from the very ballot-box. Galled by the 
 pressure of that law, which depravity in the ascendant has passed, 
 that they are too pious for politics, they retire, save on some extra- 
 ordinary occasions .perhaps, brow-beaten and crest-fallen from the 
 contest. As another after another retreats, the law becomes more 
 imperative and prescriptive, until the boldest turns craven and 
 slinks away disfranchised and dumb. Thus subdued and tamed, in 
 due time he becomes so abject as to ratify the rightfulness of that 
 very ostracism which pronounces him too good for any thing. Kc- 
 duced to a cipher, he rejoices in his own nonentity, and ejaculates 
 upon himself the benediction, " Blessed be nothing, for I am 
 reduced to it." He learns to say, " Politics are a low and sordid 
 business, unfit for a gentleman, a scholar, a Christian." 
 
 This melancholy efiect reacts to increase the melancholy cause 
 that produces it. Politics affirm that they are too bad. to be 
 touched, and piety affirms that she is too good to touch them. The 
 ground is thus, by equal consent, surrendered ; and the political 
 citadel, at least, if not the outworks, is assigned, in fee simple, to 
 the intriguer and political gambler. Politics then become, like the 
 magdalcn's hospital, an asylum for which prostitution is the essen- 
 
THE CHBISTIAN CITIZEn'b POLITICAL SIIIIES. 157 
 
 tial qualification. The poet Dante feigns tbat npon the archway of 
 pandemonium is inscribed, "Leave hope behind;" so we might 
 fancy that over the archway of the political sanctum, is written, 
 " Drop conscience at the entrance." 
 
 Politics thus begin to be marked off as a distinct profession. 
 Not that most politicians have not some other visible means of live- 
 lihood, as a break weight; for so precarious is the political game, 
 BO like fortune's frolics are the people's favors, that few dare trust 
 to such unsubstantial humors for substantial bread. Yet so rich 
 are the prizes displayed before the aspirant's eye, so probable the 
 chances of his period of success, that while a few find permanent 
 employment in political engagements, with others it forms much the 
 larger, though not the entire purpose of life ; while vrith others still, 
 it is a mere episode in their history. A class of men, at any rate, 
 there is, that graciously take the business of the people at large into 
 their own possession ; and while to the uninitiated their motto is 
 Hands off, they condescend to make the management of the nation, 
 and the pocketing of salaries, their own profession. They are 
 versed in all the profound arts of planning measures and managing 
 men ; of creating and destroying at a breath (or at least with a few 
 puffs) a political reputation. Like the demon in Bunyan, who 
 swore so closely in Pilgrim's car that Pilgrim thought himself the 
 swearer, they manufacture public opinion for us so skilfully, that 
 we imagine ourselves the original thinker. They are masters in the 
 art of compromise, and adjustment, and all those exquisite arrange- 
 ments by which each receives his satisfactory dividend of the com- 
 mon stock. And then, of all the wonders of mechanism in our day, 
 amid all the scientific miracles of engineries, batteries, and magnetic 
 telegraphs, no prodigy can surpass the perfection of modern political 
 machinery. Talk of Mr. Morse's invention by which events may 
 be known a thousand miles as soon as they happen ! Politicians 
 know, at any distance, things before they happen. And then talk 
 of panoramas, electrical machines, and galvanic batteries ! I know 
 a living panorama, as large as the nation, along vfhose wire streams 
 a more than electric power, and every man that breathes feels its 
 thrilling touch. Lot its master manager but touch a central spring, 
 
158 POPULAR ADDRESSES. 
 
 and the vibration is felt to the nation's remotest verge. In the 
 grand system of party police, which modern democracy has brought 
 to so high a perfection, no power is so high as not to bo brought 
 under control, and no object so small as not to be brought under its 
 espionage. The quiet, silent individual voter, who has taken no 
 pains to look into the mighty automaton which is handling him for 
 its tool, is likely to be surprised at the vigilance with which his 
 movements are traced, his omissions and absences from the ballot- 
 box noted, and the most respectful pains taken to secure his vote 
 from being lost. He may have imagined himself free, in all the 
 unwatched independence of nature ; but he is taken care of, with 
 the most active guardianship, by those who know his value as an 
 available article of property in the political market, liut if such 
 be the fetters upon the limbs of those who hang most loosely, what 
 must be the chains which bind together the component part of the 
 partisan body 1 
 
 Few laws are more despotic in their application than the law of 
 party union. It has its list of heresies and crimes ; its code of pre- 
 scriptions, rewards, and punishments. To venture to transgress its 
 prescribed line of duty, to decline receiving the complete equipment 
 of party principles, like a complete suit of clothes, to allow some 
 local question to draw one from his invariable vote with his own 
 great presidential party, to prefer an opposite candidate from moral 
 considerations, and to perpetrate a split ticket, — these are iniquities 
 that have blasted the honors and emoluments of many a hopeful 
 candidate. On the contrary, an implicit faith in the infallibility of 
 our political church, whatever side it may take of any question 
 however new ; an implicit self-surrender and adherence to its com- 
 pact, amidst all its fluctuations of principle and viscissitudes of 
 fortune ; a staunch readiness to make liberal sacrifices of purse, and 
 still more liberal sacrifices of character and moral scruples ; and more 
 than all, an adventurous firmness, when the party good requires, to 
 brave the thunders of the people's voice, and even trample on the 
 people's rights, in simple faith that the silly people will soon forget 
 to punish, while the sagacious party will never forget to reward, — 
 these are merits that have crowned many an empty head with the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN'S POLITICAL DUTIES. 159 
 
 proudest oflScial laurels, and filled still emptier pockets with thousandB 
 of treasury dollars. By these means party government secures the 
 highest state of discipline ; straggling dissenters are soon embodied 
 into the firm and solid phalanx ; a spirit of bold venture and daring 
 aggression is inspired, and a fierce emulation burns in every heart 
 to distinguish one's self by ultraism in party doctrine Sind heroism 
 in party service. The political world is thus divided into two great 
 societies, organized each with its own laws and government, both 
 struggling for the ascendency, and often prepared to sacrifice the 
 public good to party expediency. Offences against the real good of 
 the nation are venial and unnoticed, offences against the majesty of 
 party are unpardonable and sealed over to retribution. Between 
 these two great armies, encamped upon the national battle plain, the 
 people have the (rather worthless) privilege of making their choice ; 
 but woe to the chainless stragglers that venture to hover around the 
 army skirts, or the middle men that dare to stand within the two : 
 the former are likely to be hung as spies, detecting the villanies of 
 either party ; while the latter are likely t' be shot down by the 
 concentrating musketry of both. 
 
 A party interest 'thus established, distii -tly from the publio 
 interest, susttuned by means in which a large ody of the q^iet and 
 conscientious community, as they look on, c i take no approving 
 share, it becomes a common object with both parties, to put such 
 uncomfortable spectators at the greatest possible distance. And 
 such a distance, they are themselves but too much inclined to assume. 
 If either party, indeed, could embody them soundly into its ranks, 
 it would rejoice in its increase of numbers. But they make bad 
 party soldiers.^. They presume to think for themselves, whether the 
 commander's orders are just, and the cause he fights for righteous. 
 They most absurdly expect politicians to be saints ; they are ever 
 proposing measures of puritanical reform ; they are not fond of the 
 noise and profligacy of the camp ; and, on the whole, it is far 
 preferable to drive them to an indefinite distance, than to be 
 embarrasgcd in the freedom of tactical raovenienta by the presencp 
 of such criticising and impracticable adherents. 
 
 Of the various' modes by which the nipro reflective part of coip- 
 
160 FOPULAB ADSBBS9ES. 
 
 munity are induced to withdraw from the contest, I eball mention 
 but two, namely, the pretended danger of a union of church and 
 state ; and the established maxim that immorality of personal conduct 
 is no objection against a political character. 
 
 A few years since, the political welkin resounded with the hue 
 and cry, that our liberties were in danger from a national union of 
 church and state. This pitiful fiction, never sincerely believed by 
 those whose lungs most loudly reechoed, and least of all, by those 
 who fabricated it, served, indeed, as a tocsin to rally the foes and 
 scatter the friends of a purer tone of public sentiment. Never was 
 a clamor more empty of decent common sense ; yet never was falsity 
 more effective. It disheartened the efforts of the good ; it paralyzed 
 the moral energy of the nation ; it silenced the voice of moral rebuke ; 
 it depraved the tone of public sentiment ; it gave a sure and com- 
 plete ascendency to boisterous clamor and reckless profligacy. 
 
 So little respect, and so little fear have I, as an individual, for 
 this demagogue cant, that I am greatly predisposed to believe any 
 thing it denies, and to suspect any thing it favors. Could I find 
 just reasons for approving a union of church and state, no regard for 
 such clamor would silence my utterance. And thus much I find 
 historically certain, that the time has been in the world's history, 
 when the union of church and state was a blessing to the world ; 
 and where evil has been produced, the church has been the first and 
 greatest sufferer. When Constantine introduced the church into 
 power, he brought a conservative principle into the structure of 
 the empire. That conservative principle could not, indeed, arrest 
 the downfall of the empire, nor prevent its crash into a thousand 
 fragments ; but like an angel of rescue, from the very elements of 
 ruin, the church proceeded to remodel a fair and goodly creation.. 
 The church, swaying a mighty temporal influence, tamed the rude 
 horde of barbarian invaders ; developed the different states of the 
 continent from their chaotic elements; inspired them with all of holy- 
 and spiritual sentiments they were capable of receiving ; organized 
 Europe into a great sacred republic, and laid the broad and deep 
 foundations of modem civilization. But where the carcass Is, thither 
 win the eagles gather — where power exists, thfthp; will politicians 
 
rUE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN 3 POLITICAL DUTIES 
 
 fun. They found, in the middle ages, that the true place of power 
 was in a churchman's gown or beneath a cardinal's hat, and soon 
 assuming and masquerading in these habiliments, they "played such 
 fantastic tricks before high heaven as make even angels weep." 
 And when deliverance came from the oppressive dynasty of these 
 politicians of the cowl and the tiara, the apostle of spiritual emanci- 
 pation was neither a statesman nor a layman — but a Christian 
 preacher. " Modern liberty," says Mackintosh, " took its rise in a 
 discussion about justification by faith " — ■ and its champion, we may 
 add, was Martin Luther. When, in the feuds of diplomatists and 
 warriors, the doctrine of toleration was subsequently lost, its revivers 
 and first propagators, if I mistake not, will be found in the United 
 States of Holland, and among the followers of that accomplished 
 scholar, profound divine and holy man. Jambs Aeminius. And 
 when in that most Protestant part of the British isles, Scotland, the 
 spirit of both civil and religious liberty rose in opposition to ancient 
 oppression, who was the living impersonation of that spirit ? In 
 honor of that illustrious man^ — without any sanction of the peculiar 
 dogmas of his creed — we may answer, John Knox. And we rejoice 
 to say, that after years of slumber, the inheritors of his creed have 
 awaked to the possession of his spirit. The sublime movement of 
 the free church of Scotland, shows that when the pure spirit of 
 religion lives or revives in a church, she repels the foul embrace 
 of state policy, and goes forth, glorious in her humility, mighty in 
 her weakness, the very emblem at once of faith and freedom. 
 
 A large part of community thus distanced or silenced by the 
 church-and-state outcry, it is a very easy matter for the authors of 
 that panic to establish the second maxim, that in the nomination 
 and selection of a political candidate, moral character is no le^ti- 
 mate subject of consideration. 
 
 The professional politicians, being in the unmolested possession of 
 the caucus — that power behind the sovereign people's throne, greater 
 than the throne itself — require that the candidate they put up 
 shall be free from any political heresies, and from any of those 
 meannesses which sink him below the code of honor adopted by 
 his peers. If he be a coward, a perjurer, or bribed, it is a diequal- 
 
162 POPDLAB ASBKESSES. 
 
 ification ; but if he have killed his man in a duel, if he be fiagitious* 
 Ij licentious, if he disregard the rules of morality specificallj Chris* 
 tian, trampling upon the Sabbath, and uttering profanity, these are 
 more honorable and manly vices, vrhich might prevent his nomi- 
 nation in a conventicle of puritans, but never in a caucus of politi- 
 cians. True it is, that when the case comes to a public and news- 
 paper contest, party editors will use them as matters of assault 
 agunst an opponent ; not because the said editor or his party have 
 any dislike to them, but because a few of the opposite party may ; 
 and thus a few votes may be subtracted from the rival's candidate. 
 
 All these gentlemanly and congressional vices are no preventive 
 to the nomination, or to the avtdlability of a candidate, just because 
 the caucus managers know that the puritans and quietists, at least a 
 great share of them, will not vote ; that one half of them who do vote, 
 are so far partisan that they would not perpetrate the crime of a 
 split ticket ; and the other half have imbibed the sound political 
 doctrine that moral objections have nothing to do vrith politics ; and 
 both halves are quite convinced that not to support the regular can- 
 didate, is to throw away their vote. 
 
 It may indeed be said, that private immorality is perfectly con- 
 sistent with public integrity ; and that both are often combined in 
 the same person. The principle of honor in the absence of consci- 
 entious principle, is a perfectly ample basis for a firm structure of 
 public virtues ; and as official functions are a mere agency which 
 the incumbent is delegated to perform, his private immorality has 
 nothing to do with his fitness for their performance. 
 
 But can we forget that popular suffrage places its &vorite at the 
 summit of human elevation, and invests him with a commanding 
 influence over the tone of public morality ? Can we forget the 
 baneful influence which exalted rank and eminent talent confer 
 upon the loosest sentiments and most depraved conduct ? As are 
 the gods, such are the worshippers ; as the leaders, so the followers. 
 One example of talented profliga^, displayed on high, as the fa- 
 vorite of the nation, the idol of the old, and the model of the 
 young, is a preacher of wickedness quite sufficient to neutralize a 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CIUZEN's FOUTICAL DUTIES. 163 
 
 hundred sermons eloquently thundered from all the pulpits in the 
 land. 
 
 Of this latitudinarian principle that personal profligacy is to di- 
 minish no man's claim to public station, our public men have taken 
 a most ample advantage. To what other cause shall we attribute the 
 increase among our men in high station, and especially in our legisla- 
 tive and congressional halls, of a spirit of unparalleled Vandalism ? 
 What mean that outrage in language and that buUyism in conduct, 
 that have transformed our high councils of state into a dub of pugil- 
 ists, where every other la;w is postponed' to the law of fisticu%7 
 Shall we be told, these are but temporary ebullitioos of passion, 
 from which we are to draw no inferences against the permanent 
 character? But what means this continuity of outbursts, from ses- 
 sion to session, during the last twelve years, if it be not a demon- 
 stration of a permanent spirit of ruffianism ? Shall we be told 
 that these are, nevertheless, ^he turbulence of a few, not attributa- 
 ble to the gr6at quiet majority? But what means that easy tone of 
 conceded impunity, by which, not a majority, but a unanimity seems 
 to say, in audible wordsi our character is sunk to the bear-gardea 
 level, and our dignity is not worth an attempt at vindication? 
 Who, of all the heroes of our Congress tows, have been made a 
 proper example of severity? What ruffian has ever been expelled ? 
 But we may be answered, that this great body is no indication of 
 the real character of the people— ^the sound-hearted, the incorrupti- 
 ble people — ^that fountain of purity, sajlctity, &c., &c. 
 
 But when did a public ftay ever prevent a congress bully from a 
 reelection ? It was repeated popular elections that sent our Henry 
 A. Wises, and our Dr. Duncans to these annual exhibitions of na- 
 tional disgrace. It is at the ballot-box, then, that lies the fountain 
 of corruption j it is in the rottenness of the people's heart. And 
 when I say the people, I mean the politician's people ; the people 
 of the ballot-box ; whose character is most in&llibly decided by its 
 decisions. I meaiij in fine, the Jieree moiacralic, who have origi- 
 nated the principle that recklessness of personal character and con- 
 duct shall deprive no candidate of a sufirage, and who have brow- 
 beaten the rest of commtinity into a concession of this maxim. 
 
16-4 POPULUl ADDKKSSES. 
 
 It seems to me to tie not only the right, but the duty, of every 
 man irho has a conscience and a Toice, to utter his reprobation, deep, 
 strong and unceasing, upon these national outrages upon decency 
 and civilization, by the people's representatives within the people's 
 council halls. It is not merely that the national reputation is de- 
 graded in the eyes of the civilized world ; though in sober sadness, 
 this is most plentifully the fact. It is not merely that the national 
 cha):acter becomes deeply corrupted and depraved ; though the 
 amount of that result is appalling. It is that the very foundations 
 of our free institutions are receiving an irreparable shock ; that the 
 very vital principles of republicanism are receiving their extin- 
 guisher. Wisely was it said, some years ago, by an orator within 
 that house, " that no military chieftain could lay low the republican 
 institutions of this country, until upon that floor, republicanism had 
 been rendered odious and contemptible in the eyes of the people." 
 That within the last few years a reign.of terror has prevailed in our 
 House of Beprssentativos, that our Congress has become a by- 
 word for turbulence, and a synonym for legislative mob, that this 
 character ia increasing and permanent, and fast tending to the ulti- 
 matum when senators must legislate with pistols in their pockets 
 and bowie knives at their sides, is just as certain, as that such must 
 be the case, while the moral sense of the country is dormant, and 
 every other sense so active and energetic. 
 
 The political field being cleared, by the means I have described, 
 of all moral interference, the evils that ensue when its place is 
 usurped by self-interest, intrigue, and turbulence, are far more 
 easy, and perhaps far more useful, than it is agreeable to trace. 
 
 The field, then, being free, the campaign has now to be planned, 
 and the battle to be fought. It is not mine to lift the veil, and 
 reveal the secret springs of power, in the conclaves and juntos at 
 the fountain head, from whom starts the very first impulse of move- 
 ment. But the perfection to which the hidden machinery has ar- 
 rived ia fully attested by the increased power of its action, and the 
 increased volume, beyond all ratio, of its effect. 
 
 In tracing the steps of those mighty quadriennial convulsions, that 
 sweep, like a revolution, over our country, the graat purpose of which 
 
THE CHBISIIAK CITIZEN'S FOLITIOAIi DUTIES. 165 
 
 is to decide upon the possessor of the nation^ we find, of course, the 
 central spring at Washington. And here the first great evil presents 
 itself, in the form of congressional interference in the great business 
 of president-making. The purpose for which our national repre- 
 sentatives are chosen is national legislation, and not presidential 
 caucusing. The real business of the nation is neglected, while 
 business with which these gentlemen have nothing do, engrosses 
 their minds and time. Questions of the greatest interest are de- 
 cided, not on their own merits, but with a view to political effect. 
 Hence a tardy and neglected legislation through the earlier months 
 of the session, and a most hasty and doubly negligent legislation 
 at the close. And this evil is aggravated by the days after 
 days expended in political harangues, in a style quite below the 
 average level of our village newspapers. The immense expendi- 
 ture of public money thus annually lavished, is a consideration 
 which would long since have aroused our mighty doUar-and-cent 
 nation to rebellion, were it not the interest of politicians, of both 
 parties, to soothe, rather than rouse such an agitation. It is even 
 amusing to see how abuses, in which both parties of professional and 
 salaried managers, as well as all who hope such a portion, have an 
 equal interest, are perfectly invisible to the keen eyes of that mighty 
 beast of burden, the mass of tax-paying unofficials. We have, I 
 suppose, regular arithmeticians, to cipher out for us the sum total 
 which our paupers at home cost us ; but no informant is careful to 
 tell us the terrible annual cost of the public pensionaries, who 
 lounge and sport in our national inirmary of incvurables. Never 
 was a nation pretending to be free, more severely taxed for a more 
 useless purpose, than the subjects of King Caucus, when obliged to 
 foot the bill which our Congress is annually pleased irresponsibly to 
 run up. Whether this taxation is not as irremovable as it is proit- 
 less, depends upon the questions whether human Ingenuity can 
 contrive a plan of relief ; and whether the people can ever awake 
 to a reform of an evil, which both political partisanships are inter- 
 ested in preventing. 
 
 In the first place, how shall a strong public sentiment be created, 
 more powerful than law, pronouncing in the ears of our national 
 
 15 
 
166 
 
 POPDLIB AI>DR£SSC8. 
 
 legislators that they have no husinesi loith politics i How novd 
 tbe paradox! and yet what more plainly true? By politics, I 
 mean the active agitation of, and the nsurping interference with, the 
 great question, who is to be our President ; and consequently, who 
 are to be our entire set of officials, down frequently to our very stieet 
 cleaner. With this question. Congress has no more right to inter- 
 fere than our Supreme Court j and it would be a blessing to the 
 nation, did public O]nnioa impose upon them the eante di^iified 
 leserve. If a political harangue from the bench would be extra- 
 judicial, a political harangue m the House of BepreeentatiTes ought 
 to be eztra-eoDgressional. While the present system continues, 
 however, Washington will be the theafarc, and congress-men .tlie 
 actors, in the first scene of the pditical drama. 
 
 In the second place, how shall reform not (mly confine the national 
 legislature to its own business, but stay the propensity to Toluminous 
 speechifying and interminable sessions? We answer, let our 
 Washington legislators indulge in this amusement at their own 
 expense, and their game is up. Brother Jonathan is proverbially 
 shrewd at a bargain ; how was he ever noodled into the folly of 
 allowing a set of spendthrift servants of bis fix theii own wages? 
 It is a perfect burlesque on his knack at driving a trade. No other 
 class of official men, I believe, hare the li^ht to po<&«t ad libitum 
 up to their estimate oS. their own value. It may be asked, how then 
 should they be priced? I answer, lot no animal in the market, at 
 any rate, fix his own price. If no w^r flan can be adopted, let 
 the vote of every district fix the price they will pay die work- 
 men they select to do their job. To limit the long sesnons (if I 
 may propose an ^pedient which will need no patent to secure my 
 right of invention) let them be paid more than handsomely tjiefiist 
 four weeks ; and after that period, for each eucceseive week, let the 
 price be eat down one-half; until by successive halvings they dis- 
 solve for want of pay, or else stay to \xj the infinite divisibility of 
 matter. 
 
 But whatever may be the plan which more practkidl refacners 
 than myself could invent, my mun purpose is to develop unflmch- 
 ingly tbe evil. Cra^as tv, at the present time> a great central 
 
THE CnEISTIAN CITUES's POLITICAL DDTMS. 167 
 
 planning and electioneering committee ; supported by public money, 
 whose ostensible but subordinate purpose is to make laws, but whose 
 real and predominant business is to make presidents. 
 
 Under such auspices the candidates having been arrayed, and th« 
 plan of the campaign having been laid; the agitators take the field 
 and the surges of excitement begin to heave. All the apparatus of 
 disturbance is set into opetatba to rouse the popular mass into 
 wild and high commotion. Affiliated clubs, associations, and cen- 
 tral committees, the machineries of commotion, start into being ; 
 the press groaningly flings off ifs daily and weekly, regular and 
 extra papers, pamphlets, squibs and essays. Stump oratory of all 
 magnitudes, qualities,- and quantities, pours forth its eatara«t»-~from 
 the young maiden spouter, to the crack spokesman of the clique, 
 and even up to the itinerant honorable or right honorable^ who 
 humbles his senatorial dignity to pour upon a ragged miscellany of 
 humanity, the thunder of his big guns, to reverberate through the 
 nation. Around these njoisy nuclei gather in wild clamor all the 
 excitability of the country. The more select caucus, the pompous 
 convention, the mid-day street meeting, the evening rally, the over- 
 whelming mass gathering, rolling out the countless population of 
 almost whole States at onCe, sweep over the nation their heaving 
 billows of agitation. Amid these scenes, the floating banner flares 
 upon the eyesight ; the notes of martial music intoxicate the senses ; 
 peals of artillery stun the reason, while the reeling majesty of 
 Prince Mob is quickening its genius, or drowning its cares, in flow- 
 ing oceans of hard cider. The muse of democracy, official laureate 
 of his drunken majesty, mounts her spavined Pegasus, and with 
 voice cracked in the eflfort, pours forth countless ballads in doggerel 
 that defy metre, and jingle on names that defy rhyme. And thus 
 amidst the madness of his own revelries, and the roars of his own 
 hurrahs, does the rabble-monarch, in his log-cabin council chamber, 
 with his hickory-pole sceptre, sway the government and decide the 
 destinies of a great nation. 
 
 WeU may the reflective spectator of such a scene, observing how 
 great has been the increase of unthinking excitement in our political 
 world for the last ten years, calculate that this is to be a great ruling 
 
168 <«. POPULAR ADSKESSB3. 
 
 cause to produce a radical cbange for the worse, of national cbaracter. 
 As the immense increase of the means of rapid locomotion keeps up 
 a perpetual commingling and agitation of elements ; and the lightning 
 speed of communicating intelligence increases, beyond all measure- 
 ments, the transmission of excitement, the public mind is acquiring 
 the habit that demands and lives upon it. The national activity is 
 becoming more intense ; the national nerve is growing more spas- 
 modic ; the national mind is becoming more thirsty for excitement. 
 The great political cauldron, ever boiling with the commotion of its 
 heterogeneous elements, is ready to burst with its " bubble bubble 
 toil and trouble." Lost to reflection and calmness, the very creature 
 of excitement, the whole nation is becoming as one great city — one 
 tremendous Paris. 
 
 A reflective observer will detect the skill with which the master 
 managers are changing from their appeals to the reason and the moral 
 sense, and substituting artful impulses upon the passions and imagi- 
 nation. These are the days of cant- words and mottos, of doggerel 
 couplets and cantering ballards. A good rhyme is better than a 
 thousand reasons ; and a well-raised hurrah, sent from one end of 
 the nation to the other, is better than a library of arguments. 
 
 Such an observer will also remark, that when the question is really 
 brought to the mass, the military candidate is very sure of the highest 
 favor. The minds of our voting population have not yet risen above 
 the vulgar admiration of corporeal courage and gunpowder glory. 
 Happy the candidate who has a rhymable name ; but to incur a 
 homely nickname, associated with military exploits. Old Hickory, 
 Old Tip, or Old Ironsides, is worth more to the possessor than the 
 statesmanship of a Cecil, the diplomacy of a Talleyrand, or the 
 oratory of a Chatham. Prince Mob has a pair of lengthy ears, that 
 hugely relish the braying of arms and battles, but have as little per- 
 ception of intellectual glory, as of the music of the spheres. When- 
 ever our ultra heroic politicians shall have made our republican 
 legislation sufficiently contemptible, when the restless turbulence of 
 our mobocraoy has rendered popular elections a weariness, when a 
 war, foreign or civil, has surrounded some chieftain with military 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CITrZEU's POLITICAL DnilES. 169 
 
 power and glory, then will this blind military mania bring on the 
 consummation. The populace will gladly exchange the stale' 
 tumults of their own gatherings for the more splendid parade of 
 military and imperial galas ; and the calm thinkers will joyfully 
 dismiss the turbulence of the myriad-headed tyrant, for the quiet 
 sway of a single-handed despot. 
 
 But these, I may be told, are the sombre pictures and fearful 
 forebodings of an alarmist. It may be so. But who will be so 
 sanguine as to deny that there is likeness enough in the picture to 
 justify, if not the loudest alarm, certainly the most serious inquiry 
 after a reuedt for present evils and prospective dangers ? 
 
 I. And the first remedy is in the conservatire power of sober 
 public opinion. It is not by silent acquiescence, or a hasty under- 
 rating of evils and dangers, that we can escape them. The very 
 silence of moral rebuke gives license and boldness to the evil. 
 There are thousands who are thoughtlessly swelling the amount of 
 the evil, from very unconseiousness of its nature and magnitude. 
 There are thousands who act upon the principle, that while they are 
 to be strictly conscientious in other things, the election ground lies 
 out of the territory of responsibility. There are thousands of con- 
 scientious men, who are aiding in giving overwhelming power to 
 party organizations, and banishing moral considerations ; ready 
 perhaps to join the paltry cry of church and state, and in driving 
 from the contest those who are more rigid than themselves in carrying 
 conscience into politics. These act under the influence of a pre- 
 vailing low sense of political morality, which they, in turn, assist in 
 creating. And yet they might easily, under a better influence, rise 
 to a higher and healthier moral tone. Lot, then, every organ of the 
 moral sense apeak. Let every conscientious press speak ; without 
 treading upon party grounds, let the pulpit and the church speak. 
 Let every sober, conscientious man speak. No doubt opposition 
 enough will present itself, designed to overawe and suppress such 
 expression, and secure the dominion of old silence. Let it come, 
 in any form it pleases ; and meet it with a breast that shrinks not, 
 and a tonorue that falters not. 
 
170 POPULAR ASDKESSB3. 
 
 Jli In the second place, it may be most seriously doubted whether 
 the magnitude of the pecuniary rewards of political success, is not 
 one great cause of the violence of political contests. Were not the 
 official salaries of our national gOTernment so large, office seekers 
 would be fewer, their pecuniary expenditures would be less lavish, 
 and the contest would become less selfish and mercenary, and more 
 a matter of moral principle. It ic with the funds drawn in the form 
 of salaries from the public pocket, that our elections are rendered 
 currupt and violent. Men can afford to expend largely, and fight 
 fiercely, when they expect to be paid richly. The people pay the 
 expense of heating the iron poker which is thrust into their own 
 vitals. 
 
 I know that our political brethren, of both parties, will bring the 
 most strenuous argumentation against a proposition so fatal to their 
 independent vocation. Large salaries in our general government, we 
 are told, are necessary to command the talent of the country, to 
 support the dignity of official station, and to prevent the rich from 
 engrossing offices of which they alone could bear the expense. But 
 we are far from believing, that the present mercenary principle 
 procures any special superiority of either talent or probity for the 
 political profession. When we compare the talent of the political 
 with the ministerial and literary professions, for instance, the amount 
 of talent in the latter may be fairly pronounced quite equal, and, of 
 moral purity, far superior. Yet large salaries, according to the 
 political standard, were not necessary to call a Mason, a Eeecher, a 
 Channing, a Bascora, into their profession ; men who may fearlessly 
 be compared with the tallest political intellects of our country. 
 There are some postmasters who, without any great value of natural or 
 acquired qualifications, receive higher salaries than the occupants of 
 our highest literary stations, namely, our College Presidents ; yet 
 these ill-paid stations could command their Dwights, their Waylands, 
 and their Fisks ; and even our professorships, their Sillimans, their 
 Anthons, and their Stuarts. 
 
 The pretended necessity of large salaries to support the dignity of 
 official station in our general government, is a sdf-Qr«ated difficulty, 
 The disproportionate amount of political compensation has created 
 
THE CnRISTIAN CITIZEN'S POLITICAL DUTIES. 171 
 
 that standard of expensiTeness which has rendered great salaries 
 requisite. Bj this means our national capital, Washington, 
 especially, has been rendejfed the centre of national extravagance, 
 the annual rendezvous for national dissipation ; where courtly vice 
 has played pranks of dissolute folly, quite rivalling the licentious 
 capitals of Europe. In consequence, the standard of demanded style 
 in the country is raised ; and every other profession is forced, in 
 self-defence, to heighten its level. If our national salaries had been 
 ten times greater, the standard would have been ten times more 
 prodigal, and the necessity ten times more pressing. Bring the 
 political down to the ordinary standard of intellectual professions, and 
 you take away a large share of the selfish turbulence of politics. 
 You destroy in a great degree that bane of our country, a separate 
 political trade; you melt it hack into the mass of the country; and 
 every man becomes, as he should he, politician enough for his 
 country's good. Office-seekers will not invest much in politics, 
 when even success will pay poorly; and the control of our elections 
 would not be engrossed by the sordid and mercenary few, but would 
 become the common quiet business upon principle of the whole 
 people. And thus, if I have spoken with some unceremonious dis- 
 respect of the politician's be-praised and be-worshipped people, when 
 the real interests of the genuine ^eqpZe come in question, I may be 
 found a little too democratic for modern democracy itself. 
 
 m. In the third place, there should be a unanimous protest against 
 the bestowment and withdrawal of civil offices, as rewards for political 
 adherence, and punishment for political heresy. Proscription for 
 opinion's sake is most violently denounced by politicians in all others, 
 but practised by none so unblushingly as by themselves. It is the 
 open and avowed rule of action. The founders of our glorious con- 
 stitution could not have dreamed, that the whole amount of executive 
 patronage, increased incalculably, and still increasing, by the vast 
 enlargements of our Union, could, in so short a time, be regularly 
 transformed into a great system for the control and suppression of 
 free opinion. The general public silence upon this subject, and the 
 easy acquiesgence of the reflecting community, are but another proof 
 
172 POPDtAR ADDRESSES. 
 
 of the mrghty power of the political profession. Trae, indeed, each 
 party ean pour forth strains of exquisite pathos, when it becomes the 
 victim of proscription ; but the tragedy becomes all farce when the 
 spectator knows that the victim only wants power to become the 
 executioner. True, also, now and then some tame paragraphs upon 
 political violence are published ; but these sound much like the trite 
 moralities uttered upon intemperance before the bold and earnest 
 appeals of the temperance reformation went forth. Where is the 
 reformer who, with trumpet peals, can wake a nation's heart upon 
 this subject? Violent, of course, must be our national elections 
 when it is known that the selection of our President decides, more 
 or less directly, the possession of tens of thousands of official stations 
 and salaries, civil, military, naval, and ecclesiastical, high and low, 
 fivm the secretaryship of the state down to the sweepership of our 
 streets. These countless salaries are one immense fund for the 
 formation of political legionaries, and the payment of political service. 
 The fund which once existed in England for the purpose of bribing 
 political partisans, advancing public morality has abolished ; but it 
 may be doubted whether posts and salaries, conferred as a quid pro 
 quo for political adherence, are not as true a bribe as the money 
 without the office. It ought to brand any administration or oppo. 
 sition with infamy, that it can make an unblushing appeal, not to the 
 pure, unbought republican sense of the people, but to -the ambition 
 and cupidity, the fear and the interest, the pride and the pockets. 
 And not merely does this system subsidize its myriads of office 
 holder*, but the ten times ten thousand hosts of office expectants, 
 who are thus arrayed in one vast standing army, bound, by ties of 
 moneyed interest, to sustain any measures of their party or adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 rV. In the fourth place, every honest man who has a right to vote, 
 has no right to withhold his vote. If there be any excuse for those 
 immense national agitations, so systematically pursued, it is that.it 
 is impossible to call out every class, and every individual of every 
 class, vrithout shaking every part of the social system. Each party, 
 to gain the splendid prize, must exert every nerve to fix the wavering, 
 
THE CHBI8TIAN CITIZEN'S POLITICAL DUTIES. 173 
 
 to rouse the slnggisb, to find the concealed, to discipline the scat- 
 tered, and to suborn the corrupt. Above all, there is a large reserve 
 class of men, who love not our politics, who are too refined for their 
 grossness or too pious for their dissoluteness. Such men, in ordinary 
 contests, are sure to stay at home ; and it is not until they can be 
 £iirly drowned out with the deluge of enthusiasm, that they can bo 
 brought to action. Hence these very quietists are, in a great degree, 
 responsible for the very turbulenoe they condemn. There are 
 thousands of conscientious men, who suppose that the elective fran- 
 chise is indeed a noble right, but its exercise a mere matter of option. 
 Others esteem it a matter of mere convenience, and will condescend 
 to take the trouble only when a sent carriage brings them to the 
 polls, a vote is put into their hands, and they only required to hold 
 it between thumb and finger. Others there are who hold it a moral 
 merit to omit to vote. " I have as little to do," says such a one, 
 "as any other man, with politics or politicians; I leave them to 
 settle their own dirty intrigues in their own way : " and he looks as 
 righteous as if he had performed a work of great merit, instead of 
 committing a breach of duty against himself, his country, and his 
 God. 
 
 And what is this vile business called politics ? It is the deciding 
 upon the government and destiny of our country ; the settling the 
 question frequently of war and peace, of freedom and oppression, of 
 religion and irreligion ; the fixing whether our lives and property 
 shall be secure, and our very homes sacred. It is useless to reply 
 that it is not at every election that questions so momentous as these 
 are decided. Many are the elections, since my remembrance, in 
 which questions like these have been involved. And those very 
 elections at which these vital questions are directly decided, are 
 frequently indirectly controlled by the previous contest. So that 
 every great election will, more or less, involve, in the long run, the 
 most sacred interests of the whole country. 
 
 It is therefore every man's duty to vote, and to vote on every 
 general occasion. Solon made it penal in Athens for any freeman 
 to neglect to vote, for he knew the tendency of political power to 
 be -engrossed by the turbulent and bad. I have no scruple to say 
 
174 POFni.&R ADSBESSBS. 
 
 that tt ongbi to be the law in our owa country, that the man vho 
 doea not vote should be penally treated. I would at least donble 
 his taxes ; so that if he refused to serve his country in one way, he 
 should do it in another. 
 
 Every honest man has a cldm upon the vote of every other honest 
 man. Every honest voter owes to me the duty of giving his vote ; 
 and I have a right to say to such a many--" Pay me what thoa 
 owest. Your vote, tai, is my Might, as it is my safety ; it is my only 
 protection against the usurpers that are engrossing the possession of 
 the country. It is your omission: and negligence which combine 
 with the intrigue and turbulence of others to overwhelm all we hold 
 dear, in ruin. Buin yourself, if you will, but you have no right to 
 ruin me." 
 
 Nor is it that quiet, honest man's duty to fling in a silent vote for 
 the candidate imposed, by the political profession, upon him. It ia 
 his duty, in the spirit of holy calmness, to make his assuaging influ- 
 ence felt in the nogiinations. Would the great body of the now 
 retired and secluded absentees but come forth and possess the ground, 
 it may not yet be too late to make politics cease to be a special pro- 
 fession ; would they carry thither the spirit of unyielding sobriety 
 and purity, the increasing recklessness of partisan immorality may 
 be checked, and the ballot-box may be a great instrument wherewith 
 a great people shall regenerate itself; if they will but vote regularly 
 and conscientiously, not by impulse but by principle, those great 
 convulsions that sweep like a revolution over the country, will become 
 unnecessary for the purpose of bringing out the moral strength of 
 the country. Then will our great elections be as they should be, 
 the solemn, majestic act of a mighty people, in the presence of the 
 God of nations, discharging the highest responaibilities of self- 
 government, the holiest rite Of freedom. 
 
 riNis. 
 
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 onn,an? ^^24 031 451 622 
 
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