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 LIBRARY OF PRINCETON 
 
 MAY 2 4 2005 
 
 THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/addressbeforezelOOconr 
 
MAR 151915 
 
 AN 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 THE ZELOSOPHIC SOCIETY 
 
 THE INIVKKSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 
 
 JANUARY 25th, 1842, 
 
 ROBERT T. CONRAD 
 
 -—~r.*t*J* m 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE ZELOSOPHIC SOCI1 . i 
 Bj J. Young, Black Horse Alley 
 
 1342. 
 
University of Pennsylvania, ~) 
 January 26//i, 1842. \ 
 Sir, 
 
 We have the honour to transmit to you the thanks of the Zelosophic 
 Society, for the Oration delivered last evening, and to request a copy 
 for publication. 
 
 Very respectfully. 
 
 We remain, yours, &c. 
 
 CHA'S GRAHAM BREWSTER,"! 
 JOHN P. BROCK, gj 
 
 ALBERT W. DUY, 
 BENNEVILLE J. ESSER, 
 ANDREW Y. LEVERING, 
 HORACE R. WIRTZ. 
 Hon. Robert T. Conrad. 
 
 Philadelphia, February 17, 1842. 
 
 Gentlemen, — In compliance with your polite request, that I should 
 furnish my address for publication, I send you herewith the manuscript. 
 With great regard, 
 
 I am yours, &c. 
 
 ROBT. T. CONRAD. 
 
 Messrs. Chas. Graham Brewster, John P. Brock, 
 Albert W. Duy, Benneville J. Esser, 
 Andrew Y. Levering, Horace R. Wirtz, 
 
 Committee. 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 Of the Zelosophic Society, 
 
 of the University of Pennsylvania : 
 
 Every season of life has its dreams, its waste of time 
 and mind in unrealities, and youth, perhaps, more than 
 any : still it may be doubted whether the earlier stages 
 of our journey are not more practical and laborious than 
 those of after life. Youth has every motive to exertion, 
 and these appeal to minds and frames which move, as 
 the spring moves near its fountain, with a sparkling 
 alacrity, unknown to the broad river of advanced life. 
 They who treat it as a season spanned only by rainbow 
 hopes, and dreamy imaginings, sacrifice to a fiction, their 
 own memory of its care and labours. It is the season of 
 practical exertion, and as such, I will endeavour to 
 consider its duties, with a simple and frank fidelity. 
 
 However much we may have done in our academic 
 hours, who reverts to them without a pang for that which 
 was left undone ? In this, as in all things, the greatest 
 prodigality accompanies the greatest wealth. The most 
 marvellous instances of early assiduity are among those 
 to whom fortune has been a step-dame, and who were 
 forced, like Prometheus, to snatch, with a furtive hand, 
 
6 
 
 the etherial and immortal fire. " Sweet are the uses of 
 adversity;" and had science wooed, from the couch of 
 affluence, those glorious spirits who, like Hercules in his 
 cradle, strangled the early influences of a hostile for- 
 tune, it may be doubted whether they would not have 
 been found indolent and ease-enamoured. Even the 
 muse finds a less ardent lover when she woos his love, 
 than when in her coyness she flies, or in her anger 
 repulses him. Most men regret the want of literary 
 leisure : yet how comparatively meagre and worthless 
 have been its fruits. The golden mass of our literature 
 has been mined from the dwelling place of truth and 
 taste, by those who wrought for bread. Leisure and ease 
 relax the mind. As a general rule, those have most 
 leisure who are most engaged : the intellect that is 
 spurred into activity by imperative duties fills up, with 
 profit, the chasms of time in its way ; while the leaden 
 and narcotic spirit of the man of leisure waits in vain for 
 the moment of inspiration and action. Caesar addressed 
 from his camp in the Gallic war his treatise on arms to 
 Tully; and Tully himself composed his works, in the 
 hurry of a life crowded with the most important events. 
 The regret which follows early opportunities neglected 
 is the regret of a life, for it is irreparable. In this country, 
 the contest of life is too hot and hurried to afford time 
 to repair the deficiencies of the past. The present hour 
 is omnipotent, and careless of the past or future, demands 
 a homage too engrossing to permit us to retrace our 
 steps to the groves of the academy. We cannot leave 
 
the field even to put on our neglected armour. But were 
 it otherwise, the efforts of age could not supply the 
 short-comings of youth. The mind is so framed that 
 youth is given for acquisition, manhood for action. The 
 youthful mind receives impressions with the rapidity, 
 and retains them with the fidelity, of the steel impressed 
 by the Daguerrotype ; but every succeeding year clouds 
 the light and dulls the steel, until at length, the mind 
 becomes almost the mirror of the passing lights and 
 shadows of life. The memories latest and liveliest in 
 the mind are those of boyhood. 
 
 It is too generally believed that a profound and com- 
 prehensive education is less necessary here than in 
 Europe ; but in no country are the objects of the intel- 
 lect so lofty as here, and in no country should its aids be 
 so ample. In Europe, most men are educated for the 
 rank in which they are born ; they aim at a defined 
 point in a defined sphere, and if they attain it, live and 
 die there. Here the strata of society are pervious ; and 
 lie who aspires must be fitted for all, and rise through 
 all. And he can do it. The deep spring of genius may 
 have mountains cast upon it : — chance will, in some in- 
 stances, direct it to the surface, and, even upon the 
 mountain top, it will bubble up, sparkling in the first 
 rays of the sun when the world below is yet darkened ; 
 or the slow 7 process of industry may perforate the super- 
 incumbent mass, until the spring of genius bursts, as the 
 water follows the earth-auger, in glittering power and 
 beauty to the day. In other lands, genius may go down 
 
8 
 
 to the church-yard unhonoured : here there is no spot 
 shaded from the sun; and if the seed and soil be genial, 
 the mind will burst, under the summer of equal freedom, 
 into greenness. 
 
 In a republic, at least in ours, every man is a public 
 man ; and this is not merely the theory of our society — 
 it is the fact. Almost every superior intellect is con- 
 nected directly or indirectly with the business of the 
 republic. Education should therefore be most compre- 
 hensive and complete ; and we must regret that too often 
 the aspirant instead of passing years at the Palestrae, is 
 hurried, unexercised and unmatured, into the game of 
 life. 
 
 The true object of education is lofty as the destinies 
 of man are lofty, for it controls those destinies. It is 
 not to make him a successful juggler on the stage of life, 
 to enable him to win wealth, pleasure or power ; it is 
 to gain the true prize of existence — a wise and just self- 
 approbation. This object is not sufficiently cherished. 
 In loftiness of sentiment, the ancients, though destitute 
 of the aid of Revelation, were our superiors. Ethics 
 occupied the first place in their studies. Xenophon 
 applauds Socrates for turning all his inquiries and con- 
 versation upon "what was pious, what impious; what 
 honourable, what base; what just, what unjust; what 
 wisdom, what folly." 
 
 But with youth, an admiration of moral grandeur is 
 natural. A young man destitute of that generosity of 
 sentiment would be an anomaly in nature — a dawn with- 
 
out light — a spring without verdure. Scarcely, however, 
 has he left the precincts of the college, before this 
 sentiment is checked and chilled by the world-wise 
 cautions of grave and affectionate seniors. The throb- 
 bing impulses of honour, patriotism and virtue are 
 often rebuked as unwise and unprofitable, and the 
 enthusiast is instructed that these feelings though well 
 enough in those who can afford to cherish them, are 
 to be entertained, by those who must elbow through 
 the thronged avenues of fortune and ambition, only 
 in a constructive and convenient sense. There are few 
 men without a remembrance of such counsels, shed like a 
 mildew over the healthful spring-tide of the soul. They 
 are neither wise nor just. A selfish decrepitude, it is 
 said, sometimes seeks companionship with the youthful, 
 in the belief that, mingling their breaths, they may 
 exchange their physical conditions. And thus far the 
 superstition is true ; though such communion imparts 
 no health to age and disease, it dims the eye, pales the 
 cheek, and saps the life of youth and health. In response 
 to the counsels which rebuke what is termed a romantic 
 enthusiasm, I would say : — Never fear that you can be 
 too virtuous ; but continue to clasp to your heart the first, 
 best gift of God — a generous admiration of high thoughts 
 and noble deeds. The leprosy of low and sordid thoughts 
 and feelings will come soon enough to encrust your heart 
 with that selfishness which is death to virtue. Retain, 
 then, the freshness of your morning as long as you may, 
 happy if you can bear, even to the grave, that delicate and 
 
10 
 
 ennobling sense of the pure and lofty which, in the 
 worst vicissitudes, makes life a glory and earth a heaven. 
 One of the favourite themes of misanthropy is the ste- 
 rility of gratitude and the falsehood of friendship. To 
 say that vice is without gratitude and fidelity, is no more 
 than to say that midnight is dark : but the wisest and 
 best men, those who have sought true friendships, 
 and deserved them, have not found them insubstantial 
 or transient. They who speak of gratitude and friend- 
 ship as shadows, are mostly incapable of virtue them- 
 selves — men born blind who deny that the sun shines. 
 The best economy of life is an economy of its friend- 
 ships and good feelings. For my own part, I am con- 
 vinced that there is no error more lamentable than that 
 which teaches a doubt that good is, even here, repaid 
 with good, kindness with kindness, friendship with 
 friendship, and love with love, to the uttermost. 
 
 The virtue least taught and most needed is courage. 
 It is the greatest, for it fosters and fortifies all the others. 
 Indeed nothing worth winning is won without it, for 
 
 Great things through greatest hazards are achieved, 
 And then they shine. 
 
 By courage I do not mean mere daring — brutes and 
 cowards may, at times, boast that — but the fortitude 
 which is devoted to the right, and dares all and bears all, 
 in its support. Nor is it to be confounded with a 
 querulous acerbity. Men there be, and in high places, 
 who boast courage for quarrelling without danger, as 
 
11 
 
 hares who skulk or fly all day, quarrel feebly among 
 themselves by moonshine. The wars of such heroes are 
 like the bickering of northern lights, in which the super- 
 stitious descry insubstantial armies in conflict — the 
 courage of shadows True courage is wise and well- 
 tempered. The mind is its kingdom, and its reward is a 
 consciousness over which fortune has no power. It is 
 without temptation, for it knows no triumph that is not 
 truth's; without terror, for the united world cannot 
 wrench from its bosom the pride of worth and the delight 
 of virtue. With it, the mind is a well-governed vessel, 
 guided upon its appointed voyage ; without it, a wreck, 
 under a mutiny of passion of terror, driven into new seas 
 by every blast, to sink at lasl from its own decay and 
 feebleness. It is that condition of the mind which is 
 impregnable to temptation, fear, or ungoverned hope- 
 that manliness, that fidelity to virtue, which has no word 
 in our language, but which you will recognize as the 
 virtus of the Romans, which forms a just decision of 
 character, a hatred of meanness though in high places, 
 a contempt of danger, and a fidelity to truth even amid 
 the crash of empires. And by this, or by nothing, must 
 you be upheld. With it, the just man aspires to the 
 rank of gods: without it, virtue is an easy prostitution, 
 and vice a feeble loathsomeness. 
 
 In matters of opinion— and opinion is the Baal of our 
 generation— danger is most in apprehension. Moral 
 courage is safety. Those who dare the danger attendant 
 upon right seldom tail to find it 
 
12 
 
 A dwarf dress'd up in giant's clothes, 
 That shows far off still greater than it is. 
 
 Brutus is represented as declaring in his death that 
 virtue is not a real good. He who, after the sacrifice of 
 Cresar, retired to Lanuvium to dream away the days 
 which should have saved the republic, who erected 
 shadowy theories in the place of plain duties, and wedded 
 virtue for her dower of honour only, might, even when 
 dying in her betrayed cause, complain of her want of 
 reality. Ages have extolled his courage, though his course 
 betrayed an imbecile indecision ; while Cicero, whose life 
 manifested that spirit which subdues natural infirmity 
 and dares a dreaded danger, who begged Brutus to meet 
 the battle for a world in Rome itself, and led the way 
 even while he declared his life forfeit by it, is quoted by 
 every tyro as a coward. It is a specimen of the falsehood 
 of history and the worthlessness of opinion. But to re- 
 turn from this digression, even were virtue, as Brutus 
 declared it, a false divinity, still would courage be the 
 omnipotence of humanity. Without it, the virtuous 
 may live, as the dove lives, harmless ; but it can only 
 be said, they lived. With it, even the bad rise to power 
 and honour. 
 
 It may be doubted whether our countrymen are not de- 
 ficient in this virtus. Fear is to us, especially in the 
 region of opinion, 
 
 Tristius haud illis monstrum ; nee saevior ulla 
 Pestis, et ira Deum, Stygiis sese extulit undis. 
 
13 
 
 It might he thought from our green and shrinking diffi- 
 dence, that we were still in our pupilage. Never lived a 
 people whose policy was so gorgeously crowned, never 
 lived a people so united, so prosperous, so calmly and 
 mildly free. The most limpid stream will bear in its 
 course a portion of the earth over which it flows ; and 
 the current of our politics may be tinged with the imper- 
 fections incident to humanity. But annals so pure, 
 peaceful and happy, the world has never known. Yet 
 are we distrustful of them and of ourselves. So far has 
 this want of fortitude been encouraged, that our nervous- 
 ness has become a jellied and shivering susceptibility. 
 We fear that our constitutions are not perfect — and they 
 are altered ; we fear that our pecuniary institutions are 
 not safe— and they are crushed; we fear the policy of our 
 government — and change it ; we fear the change — and 
 change again. And thus we go on, until the public 
 mind becomes a kaleidescope in which every thing is 
 varying, and each object as it is attained melts into 
 something else. "They" said Randolph, "who love 
 change, who wish to feed the cauldron and make it bub- 
 ble may vote for future changes. Give me a constitution 
 that will last for half a century — that is all I wish for r " 
 
 Nor is this fear inconsistent with rashness. No man 
 is so imprudent as the coward. Courage does not risk 
 so much as fear. The reign of the facile and feeble first 
 Charles exhibits more instances of rashness than the 
 career of Alexander or Napoleon. Impelled by distrust 
 or panic, we too often rush into unconsidered opinion or 
 
14 
 
 action. We brush away the experience of ages, as it 
 were a cobweb ; tear down institutions hoary with the 
 moss of time, yet green with the ivy of wisdom ; and sub- 
 stitute sudden innovations, glittering with the glaring 
 colours of false taste, or grotesque with the novelty of 
 ungoverned fancy. To this we may ascribe the hasty 
 innovations which deform our legal system. We are 
 now taught that, in nature, worlds are formed from 
 nebulae and moulded by the patient hand of eternity 
 into habitable and happy orbs : thus was our legal system 
 formed from tne shadows of early error ; thus, percolated 
 through centuries, and purified and organized by expe- 
 rience, did it take the shape of nature and truth, until 
 wisdom itself w r ondered at its almost mysterious accord- 
 ance with our necessities, and at the calamities which 
 ensued from the derangement even of its minutest parts. 
 To the distrust of which I have spoken, must we attri- 
 bute the innovations with which puffed-up ignorance 
 has covered that system, until its pyebald inconsisten- 
 cies mock and dismay the student at every step. To this 
 too, we may ascribe the success of that empty empiri- 
 cism which defies science and probability, and adopts 
 its thousand blundering and fatal modes of antedating 
 the maturity of our obligation to the universal creditor — 
 death; to this too, the wild philosophies w T hich give the 
 mind of a nervous child, when asleep, supernatural pow T er 
 to voyage through regions heretofore traversed by the 
 wings of angels only ; and to this the more dangerous 
 fantasies which fabricate new faiths, the profane absur- 
 
15 
 
 dity of whose creeds would have shocked the dullest 
 ignorance that preceded the light of revelation.* This 
 very boldness arises from the want of that spirit which, 
 while it inquires into all things, holds on to that which 
 is good. Inconsiderate and sudden movements of the 
 mass are seldom safe or wise. The herds of buffalos in 
 our far west, are said to be swayed by uncertain impulses 
 into a movement which becomes a panic, and the vast 
 throng presses furiously forward over the precipice or into 
 the flood, to certain destruction ; and of this character are 
 many of the unconsidered impulses of a mercurial peo- 
 ple. The distrust which relies neither on the old or new, 
 but lives always in a troubled and changing atmosphere, 
 arises not from one erroneous opinion, but from the 
 change of opinions. It assumes that 
 
 Of old tilings all are over-old, 
 
 Of good things none are good enough ; 
 
 We'll show that we can help to frame 
 A world of other stuff. 
 
 * As by wicked incredulity many men are hurt, (so saith Wierus,) of 
 charms, spells, &c. we find in our experience many, by the same means, 
 are relieved. An empirick oftentimes, or a silly chirurgeon, doth more 
 strange cures than a rational physician. Nymannus gives a reason — 
 because the patient puts his confidence in him ; which Avicenna prefers 
 before art, precepts and all remedies whatsoever, "fis opinion alone 
 (saith Cardan) that makes or marrs physicians: and he doth the best 
 cures, according to Hippocrates, in whommost trust. So diversely doth 
 this phantasie of ours affect, turn and wind, so imperiously command 
 our bodies, which as another Proteus or Cameleon, can take all shapes, 
 and is of such force, (as Ficinus adds,) that it can work upon others 
 as well as ourselves. 
 
 Burton's Melancholy. 
 
16 
 
 Irresolute minds vary with every change of confident 
 counsellors ; they mingle the opinions successively pre- 
 sented, as the gamester shakes his dice ; and at every 
 throw a different result is produced. The man of high 
 moral fortitude, on the contrary, has that spirit of ada- 
 mant, upon which the patient and temper-tried chisel of 
 truth alone can make an impression; but once made, 
 that impression is fixed as some of the memorials graven 
 on the rocks of our land, which mock the curiosity of our 
 antiquaries : centuries, with all their storms have passed 
 over them without dimming a line or changing a cha- 
 racter. 
 
 We have, as a people, courage enough, and to spare. 
 That heroism cannot be questioned which made field 
 and flood witnesses of a superiority in daring and endu- 
 ring that wrested triumph from those who considered 
 her their slave. Nor does our national pulse beat with 
 a feebler spirit now. The slightest theme of wrong 
 ruffles the country into defiance ; and should the con- 
 test come, as come it may, it would be met with a 
 shout of welcome that would ring from the Atlantic to 
 the cottage-dotted prairies of the farthest West. And is 
 it not strange that a people thus inspired should shrink 
 before influences so inferior; and that the fear of the 
 press, the fear of cliques and factions, the fear of censure, 
 however diminutive the penny trumpet through which 
 it is sounded, should cow the better part of man in those 
 whom real danger would make heroes? The fierce 
 spirit of Macbeth could dare 
 
17 
 
 The rugged Russian bear, 
 The arm'd rhinoceros, and the hyrcan tiger ; 
 
 but became the "baby of a girl," when confronted with an 
 empty chair which his imagination had filled with spectral 
 horrors. But we cannot be blind to the truth, that mere 
 military courage, is not the highest courage, for those 
 who have boasted most of it have been, in loftier spheres, 
 irresolute and feeble. The lives of many of whom bio- 
 graphy has been proudest prove, that 
 
 " Fool is the stuff of which heaven makes a hero." 
 
 The absence of virtus, prompts in social life submission 
 to all that is considered potential. The follies of fashion 
 are the fruits of a tyranny which is feared while it is 
 despised. Some there are who nutter in its light, and 
 consider " motley the only wear," to gratify the little 
 throbbings of a childish vanity ; but the mass bow to its 
 unreasonable decrees because they fear it. In dress and 
 matters of a like character, the concession is too trifling 
 to be considered ; but there are other usurpations which 
 cannot escape our contempt : as, for instance, the ho- 
 mage paid to wealth, even when won by acts which 
 should link a shame to every dollar ; — or to rank, though 
 achieved by meannesses which render it a degradation ; 
 — or, still worse, to the pride of family, a pride which 
 cannot wander back to a grand sire without stumbling 
 over a tailor's goose, a shoemaker's stall, or a blacksmith's 
 anvil. I do not say that these pretensions, false any- 
 
18 
 
 where, but absurd here, are respected ; but I do say that 
 they are feared and cultivated, and that the unthinking 
 mass of what is termed the " higher circle" — and in this 
 country no class thinks so little — regard these claims to 
 homage with a deference not yielded abroad to the oldest 
 blood that stagnates in the herald's book. 
 
 In professional life, it assumes the shape of a domina- 
 tion of ranks, circles and cliques, who, attaining power 
 by the force of association, seek to establish a professional 
 peerage, and to frown down the young commoner, how- 
 ever gifted, who has not their seal to his aspirations. 
 How many have, under the fear thus inspired, sunk into 
 despondency — how many burning and divine spirits 
 have been extinguished, — who can tell ? But the sceptre 
 is broken. The spirit of the age has burst through the 
 barrier which surrounded the professions ; and now, he 
 who merits success may attain it. Still the ruins of 
 that barrier are to be surmounted ; and the young ad- 
 venturer, from false modesty, (a frailty too often impru- 
 dently fostered, and the real ingredients of which are 
 cowardice and vanity) often sinks at the outset, before a 
 rivalry which a brief season of exertion would teach him 
 to despise. Let not the youthful candidate for professional 
 eminence mistake the shuddering which repels him from 
 the field which he has chosen. It is oftener vanity than 
 modesty — a vanity which fears a failure to reach its 
 own over-elevated standard; — or cowardice — a cowardice 
 which shrinks from that of which it believes itself to be 
 capable; — or a sluggishness, which, though it would 
 
19 
 
 graciously accept the laurel, were it twined by other 
 hands around its drowsy brows, dares not strike or 
 struggle for it. These weaknesses generally find a self- 
 excuse. Were it not so, the clipped eagles whom we too 
 often find in the humbler circles of the professions, would 
 long since have displaced the confident and oracular 
 owls that heavily flap and flutter above them. 
 
 Nor are the influences of this weakness less felt in the 
 circles of trade and business. He who by slow gains, 
 studiously hoarded, seeks to win the sufficiency that will 
 feed him in age and bury him in death, may do it 
 without courage. Avarice has often effected this, and 
 avarice is nothing but the cowardice of cupidity. But 
 he who would achieve a more liberal position, needs 
 courage and fortitude. Mere enterprise is not courage. 
 True courage weighs its designs before it adopts them, 
 and then adheres to them through every reverse ; and it 
 seldom fails. He who trembles at every rumour, and 
 changes with every change, seldom wins affluence. The 
 absence of this commercial virtue, the presence of panic, 
 distrust and change, have shed universal dismay and 
 calamity upon our city. The words of Seneca describ- 
 ing a city consumed, do not exaggerate the fate to which 
 a want of firmness and fidelity to self, has led us : " una 
 dies interest inter maximam civitatem— et nullam." 
 Perhaps there is no successful merchant living, who 
 cannot refer to a crisis in his affairs, when a want of 
 fortitude and a betrayal of his embarrassments, would 
 not have induced ruin and beo-oa ry . 
 
 oo 
 
20 
 
 In public life the necessity of that fortitude which 
 constitutes the dignity of man, is still more conspicuous. 
 Without it, no public man can be honest. The true 
 rule is, 
 
 " To thine own self be true, 
 Then wilt thou not be false to any man." 
 
 The dread of the censure of the wise and good is a 
 virtue ; but the fear of miscreated popular opinion is, in 
 all stations, inconsistent with honesty. And it is, even 
 with the politician, the party astrologer who calculates 
 his destiny, as it is ruled by the revolutions, not of the 
 heavenly, but earthy masses, equally inconsistent with 
 success. Politics is a moderated state of war, and 
 courage is there as necessary as in a campaign. The 
 want of it prompts the conciliating, instead of the crush- 
 ing, of enemies — a policy like that of Rome in her decline, 
 who weakened herself and strengthened her foes, by 
 bribes and concessions which assured her fall. It 
 induces a betrayal of friends in their time of weakness; 
 forgetful that the example must be visited upon the 
 exemplar, for no one is true to the man who is false to 
 others. It leads to expedients, which stimulate for one 
 moment, and betray to greater weakness the next; and it 
 embraces every diseased error that may woo it, false to 
 the truth which it had wedded, and which alone will be 
 true to it. The mind has no more divine attribute than 
 a love of true glory ; it has no more feeble and con- 
 temptible meanness than the pruriency of mere praise. 
 Next to the desire of a divine immortality, is the glory 
 
21 
 
 perpetuated by the memory of good deeds. Such were 
 the sentiments that led Cicero, perhaps the most perfect 
 character of olden record, to entreat his friend Lucceius 
 to write his life, avowing and glorying in his hope of 
 immortality. But between the ambition which seeks, 
 even in its setting, and after it, to leave a glow upon the 
 world which it has warmed and lighted, and the vanity 
 that claims immediate flattery, there is all the difference 
 that exists between the glow-worm that lights its little 
 blade of grass, and the sun that floods the universe with 
 radiance. The mere love of praise, deserved or not, 
 from the wise or the worthless, is a disease which infects 
 all the mind. To gain it, the readiest paths are pursued, 
 and the readiest paths are the basest. He who is content 
 to live upon huzzas, may find his food upon every 
 common. Excellence, wins its way slowly, painfully, and 
 by self denial ; vanity needs little more than a con- 
 formity to the prejudices and vices of the mob and the 
 moment. The courage of true glory, not seeking the 
 echoes of the clay, despises its censures : vanity, to 
 secure its applause or avert its condemnation, will incur 
 self scorn and the scorn of the worthy. And yet it is 
 moderate in its demands. It does not seek permanent 
 excitement ; the cup of praise which intoxicates for the 
 moment, and passes off in fume and nausea is welcomed : 
 it does not ask the praise of the good ; a shout is to it a 
 shout, come whence it may: it does not require the 
 applause of many; for its world, like its ambition, is 
 contracted. These mendicants of praise, who live upon 
 
22 
 
 small favours from small men, are unworthy to be 
 
 considered aspirants. True ambition 
 
 " Would rather wander thro' the world, a beggar, 
 Than live on sordid scraps at proud men's doors." 
 
 One of the worst results of the prevalent passion for 
 immediate praise, is the annihilation of all destinctive 
 applause. Ambition, though lit up by the loftiest 
 inspirations, must now be content to feed upon the 
 garbage that is gorged by the meanest puff-seeker. The 
 trashiest droppings of the press, are praised in terms 
 which spoken of Milton to Milton would have raised a 
 blush upon his brow — " sicklied o'er" as it was, with the 
 pale shadow of a mighty and majestic genius. The 
 wretched retailer of empty phrases, mouthed before a 
 gaping and shouting mob is praised in the stereotype 
 sentences which record the triumphs of men whose lips, 
 like those of the prophet, are touched with hallowed 
 fire. And what is the worth of such praise ? What man 
 of real merit will not disdainfully leave it to the rout, 
 who follow the press and the public, as certain fish follow 
 vessels to live upon their tributes of offal? Yet has it 
 one advantage : the praise given to any who asks it is too 
 utterly prostituted to tempt genius from its forthright of 
 honor. He who seeks glory seeks not such glory. Less 
 common, it might win him from the true object of ambition 
 — self-approval ; but thus degraded, it has no charm for 
 him whose goal is eternity, and whose prize a glory to 
 which the radiance of earthly fame is a dimness and a 
 shadow. 
 
23 
 
 To the same cause may be ascribed much of our false 
 taste. Time was, when he who communicated the most 
 truth in the fewest words, was considered wise ; but now 
 the aim seems to be to say the least in the longest time. 
 Such efforts remind us of those dim gatherings in space, 
 described by astronomers as a diffused nebulosity. — 
 Thoughts now are made for words, not words for thoughts. 
 Orators determine the merit of their efforts, as the 
 surveyor measures a tract of land, by the line ; and value 
 the acquisition by the number of acres covered. Phocion 
 studied not so much what he should say, as what he 
 should leave unsaid ; had lie lived in these times, when 
 nothing is left unsaid, he would have encountered a 
 difficulty, which in his age, was unknown. 
 
 The science of government is the loftiest science, for 
 it protects and advances all others. The duty of politics 
 in this country is two fold, to represent, and to inform 
 the people. The former may be effected by every mind 
 not idiotic, as every rill, not wholly denied, may reflect 
 the clouds that pass above it. The latter demands the 
 moral courage which distinguishes the statesman from 
 the mere politician. The public man who has honesty 
 and courage will shrink from the advocacy of no sound 
 measure or opinion, because it may be unpopular. Such 
 a spirit can know no reverse. The meretricious smile of 
 the moment, has, it is true, often been turned from honesty; 
 it has been its eclipse, not its extinction; it burned 
 brighter from the contrast. But that spirit, if true, cares 
 not to shine. Its light is inward, its hopes upward, its 
 
24 
 
 reward immortal. The honest politician, I repeat, can 
 know no reverse, for truth never changes ; he may sigh 
 for his country — never for himself. 
 
 The courtier of the mass is the slave of the mass. His 
 fears prompt an homage to those who have the greatest, 
 though perhaps the basest and worst, means of control- 
 ling the event of the moment. Flattery, in all its pro- 
 tean shapes and debasements, is resorted to; and principles 
 are worn and changed like a garment, with every change 
 of the political atmosphere. And yet " corruption wins 
 not more than honesty." Political vice even in its mo- 
 ment of triumph, finds its rewards crumble, like the 
 gold paid in fabled compacts with the evil-one, into with- 
 ered leaves or scattered ashes. Its strength is a weak- 
 ness, and its triumph a dishonor. The force of associa- 
 tion is a favourite engine with the politician. The consti- 
 tution is bond enough for the true patriot; but those who 
 delight in stirring up the small eddies of political life — 
 eddies in which the corruption which has been swept 
 down by the current is stayed and revolves in dull cir- 
 cles, bloating and decomposing, until having, for its 
 time, infected the air, it sinks and is borne away — those 
 who linger around these pools, regard them with a super- 
 stition beyond that which was, of old, paid to fairy stream 
 or haunted well. The praise of these ward senates is to 
 the hour-slave, who seeks to be reflected in such a mir- 
 ror, sufficient glory ; their denunciation is political death. 
 But everything which has power has for him a fear. The 
 fear of office, of the press, of the brawler who raises 
 
25 
 
 a huzza at a meeting, or the driveller who drinks his 
 way into the heart of the tap-room — all are terrible : 
 and thus, amid the basest wishes and fears, does his soul 
 vibrate. Not such were the Statesmen, who in 1624, 
 1682 and 1776, "ascertained the sacred rights of man." 
 Those three periods may be considered the eras in which 
 human nature rose to its loftiest elevation. Each was a 
 mount Ararat, upon which rested, for the time, the ark of 
 liberty, when all around rolled the turbid and turgid 
 waves of despotism. Not such were the spirits of those 
 glorious revolutions ; and not such, let us hope, are the 
 statesmen of our own time. And even of those who haunt 
 the low paths of political life, many have capacity for 
 that which is better and loftier, and lament the necessity, 
 (as if the wide world had a necessity which should 
 prompt to dishonor,) that enforces their debasement. 
 Better were it, that those who, misled by a glimmering 
 of false ambition, toil in such scenes, should seek the 
 truer glory of cherishing an independent spirit by an 
 independent fireside. The greatest of the ancients pre- 
 ferred the first station in a frontier village to the second 
 at Rome; a loftier and purer philosophy would teach, 
 that the first place in the affections of a virtuous house- 
 hold is a more shining position than any which the 
 meanness of perverted political life can confer. For 
 what, at last, are the rewards of political life ? A few — 
 let us believe the worthy — clamber up, over every crushed 
 enjoyment, into a barren greatness, to encounter envy 
 and hatred (which Cyprian calls the serrcB animce, the 
 
26 
 
 saws of the soul,) to be the subject of calumny, ingrati- 
 tude and wrong ; and after a period spent upon the rack 
 of office, they retire, with health, intellect and fortune was- 
 ted, to a home which politics too often renders desolate. 
 But to the mass of aspirants, its crown of thorns is not 
 even surmounted by the idle feather that tells its unhap- 
 py triumph. In this country, no man is sibi nati ; every 
 good citizen is bound to participate in the duties which 
 guard the common weal; but no wise man will mingle 
 farther in the strife than patriotism demands. Perhaps 
 no man ever acted in public life without realizing the 
 justice of the remark of Demosthenes, who said that, 
 if to be a judge or be condemned, were put to his choice, 
 he would be condemned. 
 
 It would be profitable to trace the presence and results 
 of the want of spirit and independence upon our general 
 modes of thought ; especially in relation to literature, and 
 the capacity of the race for improvement. In literature, 
 it must be owned that we have not achieved what might 
 have been expected from us. We have thrown off a 
 nominal dependence upon Europe ; but the chains which 
 are heaviest and most benumbing — those which wrap the 
 mind — are still upon us. Our native land, our position, 
 history and destinies, grand and peculiar as they are, 
 should have, but have not, a literature of their own. In 
 habits of mind, taste and sentiment, we are still a province, 
 and lack the spirit even to will our independence. Our 
 authors are forced to write for English taste and English 
 approbation, to secure American applause. Until we can 
 
27 
 
 acquire the spirit which thinks and acts for and from 
 itself, we cannot expect to win or deserve great excellence 
 in anything. It is not adversity and opposition that 
 have checked the developement of American genius. 
 To true intellect, where there is a will there is a way. 
 There may be some minds like subterranean caves, 
 where the sleep of night has never been broken, which, 
 if lighted, would throw back the splendour reflected 
 from millions of virgin gems breaking, for the first time, 
 into radiance. But there are few such cases. Genius 
 and adversity, like Caesar and danger, are "lion cubs 
 littered in one day;" but genius "the elder and more 
 terrible." I have seen farmers lash the bark of young 
 trees with a thong of withes to promote their growth ; 
 and genius, thus scourged by the iron hand of adversity, 
 rises into loftier power. Affluence, prosperity and praise 
 have crushed thousands, where opposition has retarded 
 one. Difficulty and hope are the pillars of light to 
 ambition, to guide it through the desert, to its promised 
 land. Adversity, then, is not so much our foe ; the only 
 influence which we need fear, is the lack of that spirit 
 which, instead of being satisfied with an imitation which 
 is the more despicable the more it is triumphant, dares 
 to disown all masters but truth and nature ; and leaves 
 the wings of the mind free as the eagle, not taught, like 
 falcon, to quarry by rule, and obey the signal which, 
 should it soar beyond its bounds, 
 
 " Will lure the tassel — gentle back again," 
 
28 
 
 One of the inspired and inspiring lessons taught 
 in the literature of the ancients, is the innate and divine 
 aspiring for the better, the better when in ignorance, the 
 better when enlightened, the better when refined and 
 purified, and still, and still, the better. Religious freedom 
 is the foster mother of free intellect; while religious 
 bigotry and fear may be seen, in all ages, treading out 
 the rising fires of the mind. Under the influence of 
 the former spirit, we see Socrates teaching a doctrine of 
 purity, gentleness and piety — a doctrine that made the 
 heart the seat of virtue, and Diety its source, supporter 
 and reward. After ages realized the general harmony of 
 his doctrines with that system taught by the source of all 
 moral light. But it is worthy of remark, that while the 
 sperm of falsehood, the millions of errors begot by bad 
 heads upon bad hearts, die and are forgotten, there is 
 something essential and divine in truth which preserves 
 it. Though Socrates perished, there was no hemlcck 
 could destroy the truths he taught. He found in Xen- 
 ophon and Plato disciples worthy of him ; and in study- 
 ing another of his disciples, Cicero, we pause to ask, was 
 not this man a Christian ? Indeed, an eminent author 
 and divine has said of him, that he was a Christian 
 before the coming of Christ ; and certainly, there was an 
 elevation and purity in his doctrines and life, which 
 proved the native divinity of the human intellect, even 
 in the "disastrous twilight" which preceded the advent 
 of Christianity. Having alluded to that sacred era, let 
 me add that to it and the faith which then shed a moral 
 
29 
 
 day upon the earth, must we look for the source of the 
 only true virtus, the courage that sits, a monarch, upon 
 the heart, with none to make afraid. That era brought 
 and taught equal dignity, equal rights, equal hopes and 
 equal rewards, to virtue in all stations. And virtue is the 
 only freedom. The voluntary slave in a republic, whe- 
 ther bound by his vices or his subserviency, is more a 
 slave than the wretch who hates the chains in which, 
 sleeping or waking, he pines away his life. How noble 
 the sentiment of an old English poet. 
 
 "Let them fear bondage who are slaves to fear: 
 The only freedom is an honest heart." 
 
 Every duty of life, whether in the warring world or at 
 the pain-tended bed-side, duty to parents, children, friends, 
 butmostof all to The Parent — demands fortitude. Happily, 
 the time has passed when open persecution against reli- 
 gion was to be breasted; but the undernowing current 
 of opposition and prejudice exists; and he who enters into 
 active life finds, at every step, the value of that fortitude 
 which will maintain, amid neglect, association, tempta- 
 tion, sophistry, and more than all, ridicule and satire, 
 the religious principles which, in the calmer and purer 
 moments of study, he adopted. Yet, if groping without 
 the aid of revelation, the main truths of religion were 
 discovered by the glimmering light of nature, that intel- 
 lect must be feeble indeed, which, uniting classic to mod- 
 ern study, can find place for the coward doubting which 
 would defraud us of the only hope which life can boast 
 worth cherishing — death and its reversion of immortality. 
 
30 
 
 Even the earliest writers abound in sublime appeals to 
 those eternal truths which the outer darkness of their faith 
 could not wholly exclude. Thus the chorus in GEdipus, 
 lamenting the decay of virtue and religion, recognizes a 
 heaven-born code of justice. I will attempt a para- 
 phrase of the passage, giving, I trust with some fidelity, 
 the train of thought in the original. 
 
 The beamy Code ! Oh, be it mine 
 
 To tread the path the just have trod ; 
 And prove that stainless law divine, 
 
 Its birth-place, Heaven — its father, God. 
 Sprung not from man, to know decay, 
 And pass, as he must pass, away ; 
 Nor by oblivion rock'd to slumber cold : 
 'Tis instinct with a God, and never waxeth old. 
 
 Insolent pride, our country's blight, 
 
 With gilded ills o'er-pamper'd long ! 
 It dashes o'er the cliffy height, 
 
 To die the tortur'd waves among. 
 But for that spirit firm and clear, 
 To God and to our country dear, 
 Ne'er may it faint ! To it, to me, be given, 
 To know no hope, no pride, no patron, but in Heaven. 
 
 Who walk unaw'd in word and deed, 
 
 And truth and faith a scoffing make, 
 Who scorn thy sky-encircling creed, — 
 
 Their triumph evil doom o'ertake ! 
 If they who boast dishonest gain, 
 And holy thoughts and things profane, 
 Should triumph, — where's the virtue-shielded heart 
 From which will fall, repuls'd, wild passion's shatter'd dart? 
 
 Never again the choral voice 
 
 On wronf o'er thrown would pour the strain; 
 Never again thy shrines rejoice, 
 
 Thy hapless sons ne'er smile again, 
 
31 
 
 Did not th' eternal system prove, 
 
 Thy justice, purity and love ; 
 
 And leave the doom'd, in guilty ruin hurl'd, 
 
 The scorner now the scorn' d — the bye-word of a world ! 
 
 It is the policy of those who dread the improvement 
 of man, those who would have the world ever as it is, to 
 doubt the capacity of the race for progessive improvement. 
 In this country, to doubt it is a faint-hearted treason to 
 the destinies of our people. Has not the history of the 
 race been the history of progression? The ancient 
 powers in mechanics are now so familiar that we forget 
 the centuries which produced their discovery and perfec- 
 tion. The very origin of much of the truth now possessed 
 is unknown : but how much do we owe to those who strug- 
 led in that misty and unrecorded past — the intellects 
 which started the advance of the mind, an advance which 
 time has only accellerated, which opposition has only 
 checked to accumulate its power for renewed and irresis- 
 tible progression, and which, under heaven, will go on— 
 o-o on, until earth is made, if not a heaven itself, at least 
 the vestibule of heaven ! And let those who mock at these 
 hopes, remember that they mock the religion which has 
 promised a millenium. What man will say that he has 
 reached a point beyond which he cannot improve and 
 elevate his nature ? And if no man has seen or known 
 a barrier to human improvement, why should he libel 
 the scheme of the universe by conjecturing one? What 
 we are, we know ; but what we may be, no man (unless 
 he has been and done his best, and who has?) can pre- 
 
32 
 
 sume to say. The native instinct of the mind, undegrad- 
 ed by sensual passions, is to soar, not grovel ; and where 
 pure intellect is, there is virtue. No man is at liberty 
 to ascribe the debasement of his nature to necessity. He 
 is his own master, and controls his own fate. It is the 
 merest folly to imagine that fate sends men into the 
 world hood-winked, to stumble over predestined ills and 
 vices. 
 
 " The weak, low spirit, fortune makes her slave, 
 But she's a drudge when hector'd by the brave ; 
 If fate weave common thread, he'll change the doom, 
 And with new purple spread a nobler loom." 
 
 And the real triumphs of such intellects are not the mere 
 embellishments of life ; but the improvement of the 
 moral and physical condition of the race. Already, has 
 the intellect effected that which renders civilized man, 
 in the eyes of those who still linger about the post from 
 which civilization started, a God — controlling the elements, 
 over-coming nature, and looking down upon conquered 
 impossibilities. In reviewing the parturient centuries 
 that have borne these truths, we cannot but be struck 
 with the fact, that the divinity of truth is proven by the 
 immortality of its triumphs. Through all time, amid 
 all the revolutions that have shaken the earth, truth has 
 lived on. We glory, too, in the regular progression 
 of the intellectual nature of man. What has been, in all 
 walks of the mind, is inferior to what is. Even now, the 
 soul of the age is swaying the world, 
 
 " Like a strong spirit charm'd into a tree, 
 That leaps and sways the wood without a wind." 
 
33 
 
 The amount of acquisition is greater; and the intellect 
 is swelled into loftier dimensions by the truths upon 
 which it is fed, Nor do I doubt, that hereditary im- 
 provement is thus induced ; and that one of the great 
 objects of life is the elevation of the race, by a rising 
 succession of examples of moral and mental excellence. 
 But the most kindling conciousness which the student 
 can cherish is, as I have said, that truth is indestructible ; 
 that he who has unveiled it may pass away, but the truth 
 will never. We read that vegetable seeds buried by 
 convulsions of nature under mountains, and remaining 
 thus for centuries, will if uncovered — as was the 
 case in the resurrection of Pompei — germinate with 
 ready vigor into verdure and beauty ; and truth thus, 
 though covered with mountains, will, in its own good 
 time, spring forth again, bright with its unconquerable 
 immortality. For ages cannot tire out the foot of 
 truth; error, calumny and persecution cannot quench 
 her spirit; she can sleep, as she has slept, through 
 the midnight of centuries, and arise as from a refreshing 
 slumber, to go upon her way. She has, as an archangel, 
 a hierarchy higher than time, or chance, or change. The 
 memorials of the intellect in the cause of truth, are 
 deposited in the archives of heaven, an imperishable 
 inheritance for those who win them. Wealth and power 
 and rank and rule are lost at the grave ; but truth goes 
 with us to that country, not "undiscovered," beyond the 
 tomb, to be there our glory and our exceeding great 
 reward. 
 
34 
 
 The spirit of improvement is, even now, heaving the 
 world with its stragglings, though we, in the strife of life, 
 see it not. The combatants at Cannae, in the din of the 
 battle storm, amid clashing shields, braying trumpets, 
 shouts and groans and horror, knew not that, at that very 
 moment, the hills around them were rocking and waving 
 to and fro with the heaving of an earthquake. Thus has 
 the conflict of life blinded us to the vast organic commo- 
 tions prevailing around us. Nor can the spirit which is 
 straggling into life be smothered. It cannot be stifled, as 
 the Corybantes drowned the cries of the infant Jove, with 
 the clash and din of the warfare of society. Against 
 every obstacle, it has advanced, and will advance, until 
 the dignity and destiny of man are vindicated. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
3B3nzr 2H 
 
 05-12-05 32180 MS 
 
LB2325.L77 
 
 Obituary addresses delivered on the 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
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