/6 
 
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A DISCOURSE 
 
 MORAL TENDENCIES AND RESULTS 
 
 HUMAN HISTORY, 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE 
 
 THE SOCIETY OF ALUMNI, 
 
 3u |3alc College, 
 
 On Wednesday, August 16tli, 1§43, 
 
 HORACE BUSHNELL, D. D. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 M. Y. BEACH,— NEW YORK; 
 
 T. H. PEASE,— NEW HAVEN; 
 
 J. W. JUDD,— HARTFORD. 
 
 1843. 
 
\^ 
 
 
DISCOURSE. 
 
 Gentlemen of the Alumni — 
 
 It is rather a mechanical than a classic art, that 
 seeks, by smooth preliminaries, to propitiate a favorable audi- 
 ence. Besides, if I have nothing to say worthy of your atten- 
 tion, I shall not hide the deficiency by any gloss of compli- 
 ments or apologies ; and, if I have, I can pay you no better 
 compliment, than to presume that you are ready to hear me 
 without enticement- 
 It is then a law, I will say, of humanity, in all its forms of 
 life and progress, that the physical shall precede the moral. 
 The order of nature is — what is physical first, what is moral 
 afterwards. 
 
 The child begins his career as a creature of muscles and 
 integuments, a physical being endued with sensation. Whole 
 years are expended in making acquaintance with the body he 
 lives in. By acting in and through this organ, he discovers 
 himself, begins to be a thinking and reflective creature, and 
 finally rises to a character of intelligence and moral gravity. 
 
 The world itself is first a lump of dull earth, a mere phys- 
 ical thing seen by the five senses. The animals that graze on 
 it, see it as we do. But thought, a little farther on, begins to 
 work upon it and bring out its laws. The heights are ascended, 
 the depths explored, and every star and atom is found to be so 
 cognate to thought that mind can think out and assign its 
 laws. The whole field of being thus brought into science, 
 takes an attribute of intelligence and reflects a Universal Mind. 
 Every object of knowledge and experience, too, discovers 
 moral ends and uses, and assumes a visible relation to our 
 
spiritual destin}'. Now the old physical orb, on which our live 
 senses grazed, is gone — wc cannot find it. All objects are 
 become mental objects, and matter itself is moral. 
 
 If we speak of language, this, as every scholar knows, is 
 physical every term. Words are only the names of exter- 
 nal things and objects, as seen by the eye of a child, or of the 
 unreflecting man. Next, the words, wliich are mere physical 
 terms, pass into use as figures of thought — they become 
 endued with intelligence and a moral power. Sublimed by 
 the penetration of a moral nature, they are wrought up, at 
 length, into the highest forms of literature. The physical 
 world takes a second and higher existence in tlie empire of 
 thouoht. Its objects beam out, transfigured with glory, and 
 the body of matter becomes the body of letters. The story 
 of Orpheus is now no more a fiction ; for not only do the v/oods 
 and rocks dance after this one singer, but all ])h_ysical objects, 
 in heaven and ejrth, liaving now found an intellectual as well 
 as a material power, follow after the creative agency of think- 
 hio" souls, and pour themseUes along, in troops of glory, on 
 the pages of literature. 
 
 Religion, too, is physical in its first tendencies, a thing of 
 outward doing: — a lamb, burned on an altar of turf, and 
 rolling up its smoke into the heavens — a gorgeous priesthood 
 — a temple, covered with a kingdom's gold, and shining afar 
 in barbaric splendor. Well is it if the sun and the stars of 
 heaven do not look down upon realms of prostrate worship- 
 pers. Nay, it is well if the hands do not fashion their own 
 oods, and bake them into consistency in fires of their own 
 kindling. But, in the later ages, God is a Spirit ; religion 
 takes a character of intellectual simplicity and enthrones itself 
 in the summits of the reason. It is wholly spiritual, a power 
 in the soul, reaching out into worlds beyond sense, and fixing 
 its home and rest where only hope can soar. 
 
 Civil government, also, in its first stages, classes rather 
 with the dynamic than with the moral forces. It is the law 
 of the strongest, a mere physical absolutism, without any 
 consideration of right, whether as due to enemies or subjects. 
 At length, after it has worn itself deep into the neck of nations, 
 
by long ages of arbitrary rule, the masses begin to heave 
 with surges of uneasiness. They discover the worth of their 
 being in what it suffers, and their right to be happy. They 
 reason al)out rights, they rebel, and revolutionize, they set 
 limits to power, and define its objects, till, at length, govern- 
 ment loses its physical character and seeks to rest itself on 
 moral foundations, — on the good it does, the love it wins, 
 the patriotic fire it kindles ; in a word, on the moral sentiment 
 of the governed. 
 
 You see, in this brief glance, how the motion of society is 
 ever from the physical towards the moral. Here I come for- 
 ward and undertake to show, in coincidence with this fact, 
 that it is the great problem of human history to enthrone 
 THE moral element — tliat is, the element of virtue. There 
 are before us, too, as involved in this truth, certain confines, 
 that separate the Physical from what may perhaps be 
 called the Moral Age of the world. These confines we must 
 some time pass ; and in making the transition, we enter a new 
 and better circle of history — the same if we please to indulge 
 the fancy, which gleamed so brightly, as a future golden age, 
 on the vision of the ancient sages and seers of classic days — 
 the same, with no indulgence of fancy, which wiser sages 
 and prophets more inspired, have boldly promised in the 
 name of God. 
 
 Of course it does not become me, on a subject of this nature, 
 to speak as a prophet m^-self. But if I can help you to antic- 
 ipate any so splendid result to the painful and wearisome 
 history of our race ; if I can bring to the toils of virtue in our 
 bosoms, any new confidence or hope of triumph ; if I can 
 open to learning and genius new fields of empire, and higher 
 tiers of glory to be ascended ; — I shall not speak in vain, or 
 want a justification before you. 
 
 This venerable institution exists for a moral purpose. 
 Letters are here subordinate to virtue. With the deepest 
 veneration for the classics, and for intellectual ornament of 
 every kind, its founders could 3'ct value this kind of discipline, 
 chiefly as the means to a yet higher end, and one in which, as 
 we shall see, they embraced whatsoever is good or magnifi- 
 
cent in the future history of their race. Their original design 
 has never once been forgotten. The institution still values 
 itself and is valued by its numerous body of friends, in every 
 part of our great country, as the support of virtue and the 
 ornament of religion. We ourselves cleave to it as to a virtu- 
 ous mother, whose name and remembrance is made dearer to 
 us, by the moral experience of life and the wisdom of years. 
 Possibly, if mere learning or literary splendor were its olrject, 
 it might have gained an easier celebrity, and, with less of 
 elegant learning, might have had the repute of more. But 
 virtue and truth have a long run, and it will be found, as the 
 years and ages wear away, and society ascends to its destiny 
 of splendor, that this institution, modestly ordained to be the 
 servant of virtue, ascends with it, and gains to itself the 
 highest honors of learning, by its union to the highest well 
 being and glory of the race. 
 
 My subject, then, belongs to the place and the occasion. 
 We stand here on a moral eminence, where learning unites her 
 destinies to that of virtue, we look abroad up and down the 
 track of human life, to see whither it leads, and especially, to 
 fortify our confidence of a day when all the great forces of 
 society — policy, law, power, learning, and art — shall bow to 
 the lordship of virtue, and the moral element of society shall, 
 at last, have its rightful supremacy. 
 
 What now, let us ask, is necessary to this result — by wdiat 
 means, if at all, shall it be reached ? This we shall see by a 
 glance at the nature of the moral element. 
 
 Virtue is twofold. It inchides an inward principle and an 
 outward conduct or manifestation. Its principle is an idea of 
 the mind or conscience — a simple, eternal, immutable idea, 
 viz. Right.* This idea, or ideal laws, runs through all con- 
 sciences, in all ages, and is the same in all. Obedience to this 
 
 * The idea of Right, like ihat of space, cause, time, and some others, is uiidefi- 
 nable because of its strict simplicity. It is yet distinguished from all others as the 
 Regent Power of the mind, that which subordinates all the powers and functions 
 of the Life, and thus becomes the highest summit of unity. It is such a power 
 that, considered as simply existing in the mind, or coming into thought, we are 
 incapable of denying its authority. 
 
law, as the general aim and desire of the life, constitutes the 
 whole substance of virtue. Or, if we consider this ideal law 
 as enforced by a divine government above us, (for that is the 
 whole object of divine government,) then a like general aim 
 and desire to obey God is the substance of virtue. The former 
 is virtue as moral only — this is religious virtue. 
 
 If, now w^e pass over to the outward conduct of life, the 
 sphere of particular action, we come into a different world. 
 It is as when we pass out of the pure mathematics, which are 
 absolute ideal truth, into the region of forms, distances, colors 
 and forces. The substance of virtue is not here, but only her 
 forms of action. Her being is constituted by obedience to the 
 immutable law of the conscience. Here she comes forth to 
 find expression, or, as we say, to act out her being. But the 
 world of outward action is made up of an infinite number and 
 variety of particulars, and these are separable by no absolute 
 distinctions, but are continually flowing towards or into each 
 other. We ask what is useful, equal, true, beautiful, in a word, 
 what forms of action are aesthetically fit to express a right spirit, 
 and so draw out our rules of conduct, just as the painter elabo- 
 rates the rules of his art.* These rules of conduct are, of 
 necessity, only proximate. They may be crude and discor- 
 dant, they may be such as even to limit, and, as a more culti- 
 vated age might judge, to corrupt the strength of virtue. Of 
 course, there is room for indefinite amplification and refine- 
 ment in this outward code, if by any means it may be accom- 
 plished. 
 
 * We have a way of speaking which attributes the approval or disapproval of 
 outward acts to the conscience. But according to the scheme of ethics here 
 adopted, this is true only in a popular sense. The conscience is our sense of the 
 authority of right, or our consciousness of receiving or rejecting this great internal 
 law. All questions of outward duty are questions of custom, revelation, judg- 
 ment, taste — they belong to the sphere of outward criticism, in which we are 
 impelled by the internal law, and seek to realize it. The conscience is no out-door 
 faculty, as the popular language supposes. That we come into being with a con- 
 science in which all possible acts, in all possible circumstances, are discriminated, 
 Avith infallible certainty, beforehand, and apart from the aid of experience and 
 judgment, is incredible. GLuite as hard for belief is it, that, if our conscience were 
 required, by itself, to settle all the questions of duty as they occur, (which perhaps 
 is the popular notion,) it would not rise up, like Mercury among the gods as Lucian 
 fancies, and protest against the infinite business of all sorts it has thrown upon it- 
 
Having in view lliis twofold nature of virtue, we perceive 
 that there are two ways in which it may possibly advance its 
 power, and only two. If the tone of the conscience, or of 
 its ideal law can be invigorated ; if also the aesthetic power, 
 that wdiich discriminates iu outward Ibrms, can be so disci- 
 plined as to perceive all that is beautiful in conduct, and pro- 
 duce a perfect outward code ; then the moral element will 
 have its two conditions of victory. 
 
 Two fields of inquiry then are opened by my subject, and 
 the whole extent of human history, its philosophy and laws 
 of motion lie confronted in it. I need not tell you that I am 
 oppressed by its vastness, or that I must seek some method 
 of limitation that will bring it within the possible range of the 
 occasion 
 
 This I shall do, by showing you first, in a general way, that 
 the moral element has a twofold law of increment in the ways 
 I have just now specified. I well then take up three distinct 
 forces which enter most vigorously into this progress, the 
 Greek, the Roman, and the Christian, show their imperishable 
 power, and trace their future action. 
 
 Is there any law, then, in human history, by whicli the 
 authority of conscience is progressivel}" invigorated ? 
 
 Leaving out of view religious causes, of which I will speak 
 in another place, consider the remarkable and ever widening 
 contrast that sul)sists, between the earliest and latest genera- 
 tions of history, in respect to a reflective habit. The childlike 
 age, whether of the individual or of the race, never reflects 
 on itself. The literature and conduct of the early generations 
 are marked by a certain primitive simplicity. The whole 
 motion of their being travels outward, as the water from 
 imdcr the hills, and no drop thinks to go back and see whence 
 it came. They act and sing right out, unconscious even in 
 their greatness, as the harp of its m.usic, or the lightning of 
 its thunder. Virtue in such an age is mainly impulsive. It 
 is such a kind of virtue as has not intellectually discovered 
 its law. If now the mind becomes reflective in its habit, if it 
 analyzes itself and discovers, among all the powers and emo- 
 
tions of the soul — some permanent, and many fugitive as the 
 winds — one great, eternal, irreversible law, towering above 
 every otlicr attribute of reason, thought, and action, and 
 asserting its royal prerogatives ; if it discovers remorse coiled 
 up as a wounded snake and hissing under the throne of the 
 mind ; if, too, it discovers the soul itself, as a spiritual nature, 
 strong with inherent immortality, and building with a perilous 
 and terrible industry here, the structure of its own future eter- 
 nity ; it cannot be that the moral tone of the conscience will 
 not be powerfully invigorated. And the transition I here 
 describe, from an unreflective to a reflective habit, is one that 
 is ever more advancing, and will be to the end of the world. 
 
 Next, as it were, to give greater verity to ideas and laws of 
 mental necessity, and so to the law of the conscience, devel- 
 oped by reflection, geometry and the exact sciences will be 
 discovered. The Pythagorean discipline began, we are told, 
 with a period of silence : and as silence, according to Lord 
 Bacon, is the fermentation of the thoughts, the disciples were 
 thus started into a habit of reflection. Next they were exercised 
 in geometr}^ to make them aware of the reality, rigidity, and 
 invincibility of ideal truth — that kind of truth which is devel- 
 oped by reflection. Then they passed into the law of virtue, 
 and through this up to God. The school of Crotona was, 
 thus, a miniature of the great world itself. The mathematics 
 are mere evolutions of necessary ideas, and the moral value 
 of a strong mathematical disciphne, has, in this view, never 
 been adequately estimated. By no other means could the 
 mind be so effectively apprised of the distinct existence, the 
 firmness, and the stern necessity of principles. Mere elegant 
 literature would leave it in a mire of outward conventional- 
 isms, a mere a?sthetic worker among the fluxing matter of 
 forms, incapable of a strong pliilosophic reflection, and quite 
 as much of those sallies into the ideal world which constitute 
 the nerve of the highest poetry. If, besides, the exact sciences 
 are found to reign, as they do, over the great realm of nature 
 and physical science, and the popular mind sees them sym- 
 bolized to view, in all visible existence, then will a new and 
 more forcible impression of what law and principle are, 
 
10 
 
 become universal. Looking up to the heavens and beholding 
 all the innumerable orbs and powers of the universe obedient 
 to ideal laws, and revolving in forms of the mind ; seeing the 
 earth crystalize into shapes of ideal exactness antl necessity, 
 and the very atoms of the globe yoke themselves under the 
 mental laws of arithmetic , seeing, in a word, the whole com- 
 pact of creation bedded in ideal truth, and yielding to the iron 
 laws of necessity — then is it impossible not to feel some new 
 impression of the rigidity of moral principle, as a law of the 
 mind — its distinct existence — its immutal^le oblioation! 
 
 Next you will observe, as if to carry on these impressions 
 and make them practical, that as society advances, public 
 law becomes a rigid science, and the rights of society are 
 subjected to the stern arbitrament of justice. Public law is 
 moral. It is the public reason, revolving about the one great 
 principle of right, and constructing a science of moral justice. 
 Executive power, with all its splendid prerogatives, is seen 
 withdrawing to make room for a hi2"her law — even rioht. 
 Tribunals of justice are erected and made independent. They 
 are to sit clothed with the sacred majesty of right. Their 
 adjudications are to be stern decrees of Nemesis — declara- 
 tions of exact, scientific justice between the parties. This at 
 least is the theory of public litigation ; and if it should happen 
 that actual justice is dispensed as seldom as the most caustic 
 satirists of the law pretend, still it is a thing of inestimable con- 
 sequence that justice should be tluis impersonated among 
 men. It is a solemn concession to the supremacy of right, 
 such as helps to impress a cultivated people with a new sense 
 of the impartial authority of reason and principle. 
 
 If now a condition of civil liberty be achieved (and this, 
 we know, belongs to the advanced stages of history) the tone 
 of moral obligation will be strengthened in a yet higher degree. 
 Liberty imports freedom from constraint, and it must be 
 confessed that in those great upheavings and revolutions, by 
 which the shackles of unjust dominion have been burst asun- 
 der, the constraints of order, and the barriers of law, have 
 too often been utterly swept away. The Liberty worshipped 
 is License, true son of Liber, and rightly to be named, as 
 
11 
 
 some of the witty anci(3nts may have thought, from the stout 
 old god of the vine. He goes forth, over hill and dale, drawn 
 by his fatiier's Kons, brandishing the wrathful thyrsus, boast- 
 ing his new inventions, and filling the people's heads with the 
 strong wine of democracy, till sense and reason are crazed by 
 its funics. But the sober hour comes after, and then it will 
 be found that the individual has emerged from under the 
 masses in which he lay buried — a person, a distinct man, a 
 subject of law, an eternal subject of God. Discharged from 
 the constraints offeree, he is free to meet the responsibilities 
 of virtue, and he stands out sole and uncovered before the 
 smoking mount of the conscience, to receive its law. The 
 very doctrine of liberty, too, when it finds a doctrine, will be 
 that force put upon the conscience or the reason, is sacrilege. 
 Conscience, it will declare, is no other than the sacred throne 
 of God, which no power or potentate may dare to touch. 
 Mounting thus above all human prerogative to set its own 
 stern limits and hold back the strong hand of power, as in 
 these latter ages it is beginning to do, how high is the reach of 
 conscience seen to be, how mighty its grasp, how impartial its 
 reign ! 
 
 I have thus alluded, as briefly as I could, to three or four 
 stapes or incidents in the progress of history which make it 
 clear that the moral tone of the conscience must be ever 
 advancing in power and clearness. 
 
 Pass on now to the outward code of virtue, that which reg- 
 ulates her conduct and forms of action. Though there is no 
 merit or demerit, nothing right or wrong, in any outward 
 conduct as such, still the interests of virtue are deeply invol- 
 ved in the perfection of the outward code. The internal life 
 of virtue can neither propagate its power nor diffuse its bles- 
 sino's, except through the outward state. Furthermore, as 
 expression always invigorates what is expressed, and as the 
 outward reacts on the inward, by a sovereign influence, it 
 becomes a matter of the highest consequence, as regards the 
 internal health of virtue, that she should have her outward 
 code complete, and, without exception, beautiful. 
 
12 
 
 Accordinoly there is a woHc of proizressive legislation con- 
 tinually going forward, b_v which the moral cocie is perfecting 
 itself. This code, as outward, is no fixed immutable thing, 
 as many suppose. Custom is its interpreter, and it grows up 
 in the same way as the common or civil law, or tlie law mer- 
 chant, by a constant process of additions and refinements. 
 Life itself is an open court of legislation, where reasonings, 
 opinions, wants, injuries, are ever drawing men into new 
 senses of duty and extending the laws of society-, to suit the 
 demands of an advanced state of being. All art and beauty* 
 every thing that unfolds the power of outward criticism, enters 
 into this progress. .So does Christian love, wliicli is ever 
 seeking to execute its spirit, in the most perfect forms of 
 conduct. 
 
 Moral legislation, in fact, is one of the highest incidents of 
 our existence. Not that man here legislates, but Cod through 
 man ; for it is not by any will of man, that reason, experience 
 and custom are ever at work to make new laws and refine 
 upon the old — these are to God as an ever smoking Sinai 
 under his feet, and, if there be much of dissonance and seem- 
 ing confusion in the cloudy mount of custom, we may yet 
 distinguish ihe sound of the trumpet, and the tables of stone, 
 we shall see in due time, distinctly written, ;is by no human 
 finger. Laws will emerge i'rom the experience ol' life, cand get 
 power to command us. 
 
 Let us not seem, in this view, to strike at the immutability 
 of virtue. We have no such thought. The law of virtue is 
 immutable and eternal, above all expediency or self-interest, 
 all change, circumstance, power and plan, necessary as God, 
 neces?ary even to God. But the substance of virtue lies, as 
 we have said, in no outward forms of conduct, and it is only 
 these that are subject to modification. Thus there is such a 
 thing as time, and time is ever the same thing in its nature. 
 But where is time ? Not in the sun, not in the dial, not in the 
 clock or watch, or, if there, it is as much every where else. 
 Time is ideal, a thing of the mind. But, though time is no 
 where in the outward world, it has its signs and measures 
 there, and what matter is it if they are changed ? tliat does 
 
1-3 
 
 not. affect the immutable nature of time. Measured by the 
 sun, the moon, the hour-gloss, the clock or watch, the fliohtof 
 birds, or the opening of flowers, time is still the same. So it 
 is with virtue — it is the same unchanging, eternal principle, 
 though its outward code of manifestation has variety and 
 progress. 
 
 Neither let us seem to impugn the authority, of the revealed 
 law. The statutes of revealed law may be divided into tv^^o 
 classes — those which positively command, and those which 
 only permit or suffer. The former class ca,n never be repealed 
 or set aside. They will stand as roots of progress, and society 
 will do them honor, by going on to amplify them and make 
 them the basis of a perfect code. But the permissive statutes 
 are of a different order. Many of them were given because 
 of the hardness of men's hearts, and are already repealed'. 
 Others are now in debate and must clearly be discontinued, 
 as no longer sufterable in the advanced state of society. A 
 moment's reflection will teach you that a system of revealed 
 law must submit its form, in some degree, to the present 
 capacity of its subjects — and that will be the best M^hich, 
 considering all their prejudices and incapacities, will take the 
 firmest hold of them and most strengthen the internal power 
 of their virtue. Then what was plainh^ a concession to bar- 
 barism will of course be discontinued with barbarism. Noth- 
 ing is more plain, than that a barbarous people could not 
 receive a perfectly beautiful code of conduct. Is it any thing- 
 new, that if you give a clown directions how to execute a 
 beautiful painting, he could not even take the sense of the 
 directions ; or, if you should give him a full code of politeness, 
 that he could not enter into its terms ? But how vast in com- 
 pass, and multifarious in number, and complicated in form, 
 are the actions of a life, compared with the strokes of a painter's 
 art, or the items of a polite conduct ! What scope is there here 
 for criticism ; what exactness of discipline does it require, 
 only to understand what is wise, or useful, or fair, in all cases, 
 even when it is revealed. What sharpness of taste, only to 
 discriminate or conceive all beautiful actions, when expressly 
 commanded — greater, by far, than any nation as yet possesses. 
 
14 
 
 So plain is it that angelic law is possible only to angelic 
 advancement — equally plain, that the moral code, even as 
 revealed, must be limited, in a degree, by the narrowness and 
 crudity of those who are to receive it. 
 
 Neither let us wonder, it" it takes man}'' ages to clear the 
 moral code of all barbarous anomalies, and bring to it a lull 
 maturity. Experience must have a long and painful discipline, 
 philosophy must go down into the grounds of things, rights 
 must be settled, letters advanced, the beautiful arts come into 
 form ; God must wait on the creature, and conduct him on 
 through long ages of mistake and crudity, command, reason, 
 tr}^ enlighten, brood, as over chaos, I)y his quickening power, 
 and then it will be only by slow degrees that the moral taste 
 of the world will approximate to a coincidence witli the periect 
 moral taste of God. 
 
 Let us now see if facts will justify our reasonings. Far 
 Ijack, in the remotest ages of deiinite histor}?-, we find one of 
 the world's patriarchs so fortunate or unfortunate as to be the 
 inventor of wine, by which he is buried in the excesses of 
 intoxication, we know not how many times, with no apparent 
 compunction. Saying nothing of abstinence, not even the law 
 of temperance had yet been reached. Another, who is called 
 the father of the faithful, has not yet so refined upon the moral 
 statute against falsehood, as to see that prevarication is to be 
 accounted a lie. Accordingly, he more than once, flatly pre- 
 varicates, with no apparent sense of wrong. A successor, in 
 equal honor for holy j^rincijile, deceives his blind father by a 
 trick of disguise, and cheats him out of his blessino-. He 
 takes advantage also of a starving brother to extort his birth- 
 right — acts which in our day would cover him with infamy. 
 These were all holy men. It was not so much sin as barba- 
 rism, that marred their history. These instances of unripe 
 morality furnish no ground of cavil against the Scriptures, but, 
 to all reasoning minds, they are the strongest evidences of 
 their real antiquity and truth. I have not time to lead you 
 through the Jewish history. The remarkable fact in it is, that, 
 with so high notions of holy principle, the outward, style of 
 virtue is 3'et so harsh, so visibly barbarous. You seem to be 
 
15 
 
 in a raw physical age, where force and sensualism and bigotry 
 of descent display their odious and unlovely presence, even 
 in men of the highest worth and dignity. As you approach 
 the later age of their literature and history, you perceive a 
 visible mitigation of its features. Christianity then appears. 
 The old outward regimen of beggarly elements is swept away 
 new precepts of benevolence and forbearance are given, the 
 Jew is lost in the man, and the man becomes a brother of his 
 race. How sublime the contrast, then, of Genesis and John ! 
 What we see, in this glance at sacred history, is quite as 
 conspicuous in the general review of humanity. The moral 
 code of a savage people has always something to distinguish 
 it as a savage people's code. So with that of a civilized. 
 The very changes and inventions of society necessitate an 
 amplification and often a revision of the moral code. Every 
 new state, office, art, and thing must have its law. The old 
 law maxim, cuUibct. in sua arte crcdendum est — every trade 
 must be suffered to make its law, is only half the truth. 
 Every trade must make its law. If bills of exchange are 
 invented, if money is coined, if banks are established, and 
 offices of insurance, if great corporate investments are intro- 
 duced into the machinery of business, it will not be long- 
 before a body of moral opinions will be generated, and take 
 the force of law over these new creations. Fire-arms, also, 
 printing, theatres, distilled spirits, cards, dice, medicine — all 
 new products and inventions must come under moral maxims, 
 and create to themselves a new moi'al jurisprudence. The 
 introduction of popular liberty makes the subject a new man, 
 lays upon him new duties, which require to be set forth in 
 new maxims of morality. Already have I shown you, in 
 these brief glances, a new world created for the dominion of 
 law. And what was said of the human body, growing up to 
 maturity, is equally true of the great social body : — 
 
 " For nature crescent, does not grow alone, 
 In thews and bulk, but as this temple waxes, 
 The inward service of the mind and heart 
 (rrows wide withal.'' 
 
16 
 
 I also liinlccl, that new arts and inventions must olten so 
 chanfi'e the relations of old things and practices, as to require 
 a revision of their law. The Jew may rightly take his iaterest 
 money now, ibr other reasons than because the Mosaic polity 
 is dissolved. He is not the same man that his fathers were. 
 He lives in a new world, and sustains new relatious. The 
 modes of business, loo, are all so changed that the merits of 
 receiving interest money are no more the same, although tlie 
 mere outward act is such as to be described iu the same 
 words. At this very moment, we have it on hand to revise 
 the moral code in reference to three very important subjects 
 — wine, slavery, and war. The real (]uestioii, on these sub- 
 jects, if we understood om-selves, is not, on one side whether 
 Ave can torture ihe Scripture so as to make it condemn all that 
 we desire to exclude ; nor, on the other, wiiether we are bound, 
 for all time, and eternity to Ijoot, to justify what the Scripture 
 gutters. But the (jueslion, piiilosophically stated, is whether 
 new c(jgnate inventions and uses, do not make old practices 
 more destructive, old vices more incurable — whether a new 
 age of the world and a capacity of better things, have not 
 so changed the relations of the practices in issue, that they arc 
 nolong(n- the same, and no longer to be justified. Physically 
 speaking it is the same act to go into a certain house, and 
 to go into it having a contagious disease — not morally. 
 Phvsically sf)eaking, it is the same act to go into it having a 
 contagious (Hsease, and to go into it when the inmates have 
 found a new medicine which is proof against the contagion — 
 not morally. The moral import of actions, physically the 
 same, is thus ever changing, and no reform is bad, because it 
 requires a revision of law ; for the change of condition, 
 wrought by time, may be so great as to render the former 
 law inapplicable. It is conceivable that even a positive 
 statute of revelation may lose its applicability, by reason 
 of a radical change in the circumstances it was designed 
 to cover. Nor can it properly be said that such a stat- 
 ute is repealed — it is only waiting for the circumstances 
 in which its virtue lay. A new rule contradictory to it in 
 words, may yet be wholly consistent with it, and bring no 
 
17 
 
 reflection on its merits. Accordingly, in what are called re- 
 forms^ the real problem more frequently is to revise or mitigate 
 law, or to legislate anew. And there is no evil in the human 
 state, nothing opposed to the general good and happiness, 
 which cannot be lawed out of existence by an adequate appeal 
 to truth and reason, which are God's highest law. Nothing, 
 1 will add, which shall not thus be lawed out of existence. 
 
 Thus it is within the memory of persons now living, that a 
 clergyman of England, specially distinguished for his piety, 
 forsook the slave trade, by compulsion of Providence, and not 
 because of any Christian scruples concerning it. Nioht and 
 morning he sent up his prayers to God, blended witli the 
 groans of his captives, and had his Christian peace, amono- 
 the lacerated limbs and the unpitied moans of as many as his 
 ship could hold. Now a law is matured against this traifick, 
 and the man is a monster who engages in it. And if \'ou 
 will see the progress of the moral code, you may take your 
 map and trace the exact countries which this new law has 
 reached, just as you may trace, from an eminence, the shad- 
 ows of the clouds, as they sail over a landscape. 
 
 If you will see the work of moral legislation on a scale yet 
 more magnificent, you have only to advert to what is called 
 the international code. I know of nothing which better marks 
 the high moral tone of modern history, tlian that this sublime 
 code of law should have come into f()rm and established its 
 authority over the civilized world within so short a time; for 
 it is now scarcely more than two hundred years since it took 
 its being. In the most polished and splendid age of Greece 
 and Grecian philosophy, piracy was a lawful and even honor- 
 able occupation. Man, upon the waters, and the shark, in 
 them, had a common right to feed on what they could subdue. 
 Nations were considered as natural enemies, and for one 
 people to plunder another, by force of arms, and to lay their 
 country waste, was no moral wrong, any more than for the 
 tiger to devour the lamb. In war, no terms of humanity were 
 binding, and the passions of the parties were mitigated by no 
 constraints of law. Captives were butchered or sold into 
 slavery at pleasure. In time of peace, it was not without great 
 
18 
 
 hazard that the citizen of one country could venture into 
 another for purposes of travel or business. 
 
 Go now with me to one of the Italian cities, and there you 
 shall see in his quiet retreat, a silent thoughtful man bending 
 his ample shoulders and more ample countenance over his 
 table, and recording with a visible earnestness something that 
 deeply concerns the world. This man has no ofiice or 
 authority to make him a lawgiver, other than what belongs to 
 the gifts of his own person — a brilliant mind, enriched by the 
 amplest stores of learning, and nerved by the highest principles 
 of moral justice and Christian piety. He is, in fact, a fugi- 
 tive, and an exile from his country, separated from all power 
 but the simple power of truth and reason. But he dares, 
 you will see, to write De Jure Belli ct Pdcls. This is the 
 man who was smuggled out of prison and out of his country, 
 by his wife, in a box that was used for much humbler purpo- 
 ses, to give law to all tlK:- nations of mankind in ail luture 
 ages. On the sea and on the hind, on all seas ami all lands, 
 he shall bear sway. In the silence of his study, he stretches 
 ibrth the scepter of law over all potentates and people, defines 
 their rights, arranges their intercourse, gives tliem terms of 
 war and terms of peace, \vhich they n^ay not disregard. In 
 the days of battle too, when kings and kingdoms are thun- 
 dering in the shock of arms, this same Hugo Grotius shall be 
 there, in all the turmoil of passion mid the smoke of ruin, as 
 a presiding throne of law, commanding above the comman- 
 ders, and, when the day is cast, prescjibing to tlie victor 
 terms of" mercy and justice which not even his hatred of the 
 Ibe, or the exultation of the hour may dare to transcend. 
 
 The system of commercial law, growing out of the exten- 
 sion of trade and conjinerce, in modern times, is another 
 triumph of moral legislation almost equally snblime with the 
 international. The science of njunicipal law, too, has not 
 been less remarkable for its |)rogress. Saying nothing of the 
 common law or law of England, which is, in a sense, the child 
 of the civil or Roman law, what mind can estimate the 
 moral value and power of this latter code, extended, as its 
 sway now is, over nine-tenths of the civilized world. 
 
19 
 
 Now all these systems of l,uv, international, commercial 
 and civil, are {bunded in the natural reasons of the moral 
 code, and are, in fact, results of moral legislation. Consid- 
 ered, too, as accumulations of moral judgment, elaborated in 
 the lapse of age.s, they constitute a body of science, when 
 taken together, compared with which every other work of 
 man is insignificant. No other has cost such infinite labor 
 and patience, none has embodied such a stupendous array of 
 talent, none has brought into contribution so much of impartial 
 reason and moral gravit3% 
 
 Under these extensions of law, the world has become an- 
 other world. Anarchy and absolute will are put aside to suffer 
 the dominion of scientific justice. The nations are become, 
 to a great extent, one empire. The citizen of one country 
 may travel and trade securely in almost every other. Wars 
 are mitigated in ferocity, and so far is the moral sentiment of 
 the world advanced in this direction, that military prepara- 
 tions begin to look formal and wear the semblance of an anti- 
 quated usage. We may almost dare to say as Pandulph to 
 Lewis, and with a much higher sense: — 
 
 '• Therefore, thy threatening colors now wind up 
 And tame the savage spirit of wild war, 
 That, like a lion fostered up at hand, 
 It may lie gently, at the foot of peace. 
 And be no further harmful than in sho'w.'' 
 
 Who shall think it incredible that this same progress of 
 moral legislation, which has gone thus far in the international 
 code, may ultimately be so fir extended as to systematize 
 and establish rules of arbitrament, by which all national dis- 
 putes shall be definitely settled, without an appeal to arms. 
 And so it shnll result that, as the moral code is one, all law 
 shall come into unity, and a kind of virtual oneness embrace 
 all nations. We shall flow together in the destruction of dis- 
 tances and become brothers in the terms of justice. And so 
 shall that sublime declaration of Cicero, in his Republic, where 
 he sets forth the theoretic unity of law, find a republic of 
 nations, where it shall have a more than theoretic verity: — 
 " Nee erit alia lex Romre, alia Athenis, alia nunc, alia posthac, 
 
20 
 
 sed et omnes gentes, et omni tempore, et sempiterna, et im- 
 morlnlis continebit, unusque erit communis quasi magister et 
 impcrator omnium Deus. Ille Icgis hujus inventor deceptator 
 lator!" 
 
 I have thus endeavored to show that, as virtue is Iwofokl, 
 so there is a twofold law of progress by which it is advanced 
 in human society — one by which the inward principle invig- 
 orates its tone, another by which its outward code is extended 
 and made to accord more nicely with the highest beauty and 
 the most perfect health of virtue. Both lines of progress 
 have been active up to this time, with results as definitely 
 marked as the ])rogress of history itself. What now is to 
 come ? By what future events and changes, shall the work 
 go on to its completion ? 
 
 That must be unknown to us, though the present momentum 
 of society is enough, by itself, to assure us in what line the 
 future motion must proceed. There are, at the same time, 
 three great forces in this motion, which we know are incapa- 
 ble of exhaustion. These must always work on together, as 
 they have done up to this lime, to assist the triumph of the 
 moral element. Other forces have entered into history, such 
 as the Gothic irruptions, the crusades, the feudal system, the 
 free cities and their commerce, which, being more nearly phys- 
 ical, lose their distinct existence, as soon as tbey are incor- 
 porate, and are manifested only by their results. Not so with 
 the three of which I am to speak. They belong to all future 
 time, and will never cease their distinct activity. These three 
 are the Greek, the Roman and the Christian. The Greek, as 
 belonging to the outward department of virtue and assisting 
 it by the high aesthetic discipline of its literature. The Roman, as 
 asseriing the ideal law of virtue and giving it a corporate em- 
 bodiment. The Christain, as descending from heaven to pour 
 itself into both, quicken their activity and bring them into 
 earnest connexion with a government above. 
 
 The first thing to be observed in the Greek character and 
 literature, is its want of a, moral lone. A mere incidental 
 
21 
 
 remark of Schlegel touches what miiT^ht rather be made the 
 staple of criticism, in the works of this wonderful people. 
 " Even in those cases," he says, "where the most open expres- 
 sion of deep feeling, morality, or conscience, might have been 
 expected, the Greek authors are apt to view the subject of 
 which they treat, as a mere appearance of the life, with a cer- 
 tain perfect, undisturbed, and elaborate equabilitA^" How 
 could it be otherwise, where an Aristotle, endowed with the 
 most gigantic and powerlul intellect ever given to man, could 
 only define \'irtue itself as the middle point between two ex- 
 tremes, and every moral evil as being either too much or too 
 little ? Socrates and his splendid disciple, it is true, had a 
 warmer and more adequate idea of virtue ; though it will 
 escape the notice of no thoughtful scholar, that they were 
 charmed with virtue, rather as the Fair than as the Right. 
 This is specially true of Plato. He draws her forth out of 
 his own intellectual beauty, as Pygmalion his ivory statue, 
 and, as this was quickened into life by the word of Venus, so 
 his notion of virtue takes ils life from him, from the charms in 
 which it is invested. Evil and vice, too, connect, in his mind, 
 rather with deformity and mortification than with remorse. 
 
 On the whole, there is almost no civilized people whose mo- 
 rality is more earthly and cold than that of the Greeks. At 
 the same time, their sense of beauty in forms, their faculty of 
 outward criticism is perfect. Their temples and statutes are 
 forms of perfect art. Their poets and philosophers chisel 
 their thoughts into groups of marble. Their religion or mythol- 
 ogy is scarcely more than a gallery of artistic shapes — 
 exquisitely sensual. They alone, of all people, in fact, have 
 a religion without a moral — gods for the zest of comedy, gay 
 divinities that go hunting, frolicking and thundering over sea 
 and land. Genius only M-orships. The chisel is the true 
 incense, to hold a place in epic machinery, the true circle of 
 Providence. Everything done or written, is subtle, etherial, 
 beautiful, and cold ; even the fire is cold — a combustion of 
 icicles. There can be no true heat, where there is no moral 
 life. They love their country, but they do not love it well 
 enough to suffer justice to be done in it, or to endure the pres- 
 
22 
 
 ence of virtue. Their braver_y is cunning their patriotism an 
 elegant selfishness. In their ostracism, they make pubhc 
 envy a public right, and faction constitutional. We look up 
 and down their history, survey their temples without a religion, 
 their streets lined with chiseled divinities, set up for ornamen- 
 tal effect, we listen to their orators, we open the shining rolls 
 of their literature, and exclaim, beautiful lust ! splendid sen- 
 suality ! elegant faction ! ornamental religion ! a nation per- 
 fect in outward criticism, but blind, as yet, to the real nature 
 and power of the moral element. 
 
 And yet this people have done a work, in their wa}', which 
 is even essential to the ti'iumph of virtue. Their sense of 
 beauty, their nice discriminations of art and poetic genius, are 
 contributions made to the outward life and law of virtue. A 
 barbarous people, like the wild African or Indian, 3^ou will 
 observe, have no sense of firm, and tlieir moral code will, for 
 that reason, be a crude and shapeless barbarism. To mature 
 the code of action, therefore, and finish its perfect adaptation 
 to the expression of virtue and the ornament of life, requires 
 a power of form, or of outward criticism in full development. 
 Considered in this view, it is impossible to overrate the value 
 of the Greek art. A whole department of human capacity, 
 the power of forms or of outward criticism and expression, 
 must be the disciple of Greece to the end of the world. This 
 same Greek beauty, which can never perish, will go into the 
 Roman life, and assist in that process of legal criticism by 
 which the civil law shall be matured. Then it will go into the 
 wild Gothic liberty that is thundering, as yet, along the Baltic 
 and through the plains of Scythia, to humanize it, and make 
 the element of liberty an element of order and virtue. It will 
 breathe a spirit of beauty into every language and literature 
 of every civilized people ; and their intellectual and moral life 
 will crystallize into the forms of beauty thus evolved, lose 
 iheir opacity, and become transparent to the light of reason 
 and law. The Christian faith, too, whose prerogative it is to 
 make all the works both of man and of God subservient to its 
 honor, will take to itself all the beauty of all the Greeks and 
 make it the beauty of holiness- 
 
We come now to the Romans, a people of as high original- 
 ity as the Greeks, though not so regarded by the critics, 
 because their originality did not run into the Ibrms of litera- 
 ture. The ideal of the Greeks was beauty, that of the Romans 
 law and scientific justice. We need not suffer the common 
 wonder, therefore, that all the ambition of the Roman scholars, 
 aided by hordes of emigrant rhetoricians, could not reproduce 
 the Grecian classic spirit in that people ; for whatsoever 
 power of outward criticism was awakened followed after the 
 Roman ideal, going to construct the moral rigors of the Stoic 
 philosophy and fashion the sublime structure of civil jurispru- 
 dence. And Greece was as incapable of the Roman law, as 
 Rome of the Grecian literature. Which of the two has made 
 the greatest and most original gift to the future ages, it will 
 ever be impossible to judge. 
 
 It was a distinction of the Roman people, that they had 
 a strong sense of moral principle. They could feel the 
 authority of what some call an abstraction, and suffer its rigid 
 sway. Their conscience had the tone of a trumpet in their 
 bosoms. This was owing in part, we may believe to their 
 martial discipline; lor it is a peculiarity of this, that it bends 
 to nothing in the individual, his interest, comfort, or safety. 
 It is as destitute of feeling as an abstraction, and accommo- 
 dates the soldier to the absolute sway of rigid law. Accus- 
 tomed to the stiff harness of discipline, to be moved by the 
 unbending laws of mechanism up to the enemy's face and the 
 bristling points of defence, there to live or <lie, as it ma}'' 
 happen, without any right to consider which; a nation of 
 soldiers learns how to suffer an absolute rule, and, if the other 
 and more corrupt influences of war do not prevent, is pre- 
 pared, with greater facility, to acknowledge the stern ideal 
 law of virtue. 
 
 The Romans, too, had a religion, a serious and powerful 
 faith, gods that kept their integrity and held a relation to the 
 conscience. Even INIars himself, their tutelary deity, in so far 
 as he was a Roman and not a Greek, was, on the whole, a much 
 better Christian than some who have presided in Rome, with 
 
24 
 
 quite other pretensions.* It was also a beautiiul distinction of 
 the religious character ol" this people, that they alone, of all 
 heathen nations, erected temples to the mere ideals of virtue 
 — Faith, Concord, Modesty, Peace. 
 
 The Romans, also, were an agricultural people, naming 
 their noljle families after the hcan, the yeo, the Icnfile, vetches, 
 and other plants ; retaining the sobriety, frugality, and all tlie 
 rigid virtues of a life in the fields. These are the people to 
 suiler a censorshij"), in which every licentious, and effeminate 
 h;ihit shall expose the subject to a public degradation — the 
 only people, I will add, that has ever existed, capable of such 
 a discipline. 
 
 Pass out with me, now, into the Tusculan country, and I 
 will show you one of these old Puritans. A simple rustic 
 house is before you, the house of a small country farmer. 
 A man with red hair, and a pair of grey eyes twinkling under 
 his licry eyebrows, a muscular, iron-faced man meets you at 
 the gate. This man w'lW boast his dinner as a triumph of 
 economy — bread baked by his wile, and turnips boiled by 
 liim.sclf Of pleasure he is ignorant. He keeps a few slaves, 
 Avhom he turns away when they become old ; for it is his way 
 to make a rigid abstraction even of the principle of economy. 
 In the morning he rises early, and goes ibrth into the neigh- 
 boring towns to plead causes. He returns, in the afternoon, 
 puts on his frock, and goes out to work among the slaves. 
 He is a man of wit, and is to be called the Roman Demos- 
 thenes. He is to ])e a great commander, and a part of his 
 prowess will be that he spends nothing on himself and makes 
 the army pay its way by its victories. He will reap the 
 honors of a triumph, he \yill be consul, he will be censor. 
 And whenCato is censor, woe to the man who has defrauded 
 the treasury! every man than gets over the line of sober 
 drink ! every high liver ! every dandy ! Then, to crown all, 
 
 * This will scarcely be thought extravagant by the scholar, who duly consid- 
 ers, with what reverence they guarded the sacred ancile let fall from heaven to 
 be the pledge of their safety; or compares the processions of the Salii, with 
 others of a more recent date and of a different name. 
 
2o 
 
 this man shall say — tor he loves to cany out a principle — 
 that " he had rather his good actions should go unrewarded, 
 than his bad ones unpunished." Inexorable, in whatever 
 relates to public justice, inflexibly rigid in the execution of his 
 orders, he will make history confess, that the Roman govern- 
 ment had never before appeared, either so awful or so amiable. 
 Roman virtue, therefore, became a proverb, to denote that 
 strength of principle, which can bend to no outward obstacle 
 or seduction. And the pitch of public virtue displayed by 
 this people, especially in the days of"* the ancient republic, is 
 one of the greatest moral phenomena of history. Always 
 warlike in their habit, inured to scenes of devastation and 
 and blood, ambitious for their city and ignorant of any right 
 in the world, but the imperial right of Rome, they were, at 
 the same time, careless of pleasure and of wealth, stoics in 
 iortitude and self-denial, immovable in conjugal fidelity, reve- 
 lent to parents, incapable of treachery to their country or dis- 
 obedience to the laws, exact and even superstitious in the 
 rites of piety. Unjust to every other, people, they were yet 
 the firm adherents of ^law and ^justice among themselves. 
 They went to war with religious preliminaries. The military 
 oath was their sacrament, in which they engaged for a real 
 jjfcscnce ; and though it was to be a presence in veritable 
 blood, it was yet so religiously fulfilled as to be a bond 
 of virtue. They, at first, sent forth their legions to make war 
 more, it would seem, because they loved the discipline, than 
 because they wanted the plunder. The tramp of their victo- 
 rious legions was heard, resounding at the gates of cities and 
 across the borders of nations; their leaders were returning, 
 every few months, with triumphal entries into the city, that a 
 most just people might enjoy and glory in the spectacle of 
 their own public wrongs ; till at last debauched by the plun- 
 der of their victories, they may be said to have conquered, 
 on the same day, both the world and their own virtue together. 
 Nor is even this exactly true; lor it is remarkable, that they 
 gave Ixick to the subject nations the justice denied them in 
 their conquest, and set up the tribunals of Roman law on the 
 fields of Roman lawlessness ! Equally remarkable is it that 
 in the most dissolute age of the empire, the power of scientific 
 law could not be eradicated from the hearts of this wonderful 
 
26 
 
 people. While the monster Commodus sits upon the throne, 
 Papinian and Ulpian occupy the bench, adding to the civil 
 code the richest contributions of legal science ! And even the 
 signatures of Caracalla and his ministers will be found, not 
 seldom, inscribed on the purest materials of the Pandects! 
 
 What then if Pome did not excel in literature ? Had she not 
 another talent in her bosom quite as rich and powerful — i\m 
 sublime talent of law. In her civil code, she has erected the 
 mightiest monument of reason and of moral power that has ever 
 yet been raised by human genius. The honest pride of Cicero 
 was not misplaced, wlien lie said: "How admirable is the 
 wisdom of our ancestors! We alone are masters of civil pru- 
 dence, and our sup(?riority is the more conspicuous, if we deign 
 to cast our eyes on the rude and almost ritficulous jurisprudence 
 of Draco, Solon and Ivvcurgus." Little however did he 
 understand, when he thus spake, what gift his country was 
 here j^reparing for the human race. Could he have pierced 
 the magnificent future, when this same Roman law shoutd 
 have its full scientific embodiment ; could he have seen, at the 
 distance of twenty centuries, the barbarians of northern and 
 western Eui'ope compacted into great civilized nations, and, 
 after having van(|uished the Roman arms and empire, all 
 quietly sheltered under the Roman jurisprudence ; a new 
 continent rising to view, beyond the lost Atlantis, to be fos- 
 tered in its bosom ; a spirit of law infused into the whole 
 realm of civilized mind and revealing its energy now in the 
 common law of England, now in the commercial code, and, 
 last of all, in the international — all matured in the pervading 
 light and warmth of the lloman; liberty secured by the secu- 
 rity of justice ; the fire of the old Roman virtue burning still 
 in the bosom of legal science and imparting a character ot 
 intellectual and moral gravity to the literature, opinions and 
 life of all cultivated nations; and then, to crown the whole, 
 the visible certainty that the Roman law has only just begun 
 its career, that it must enter more and more widely into the 
 fortunes of the race and extend its benign sway wherever law- 
 extends, till the globe, with all its peoples, becomes a second 
 Roman empire, and time itself the only date of its sove- 
 reignty ; — seeing all this, the great orator must have con- 
 fessed, that every conception he had before entertained of the 
 
27 
 
 majesty and grandeur of the Roman jurisprudence, was weak 
 and even null. Our minds, even now, can but faintly con- 
 ceive the same. 
 
 Such is the moral value of the Greek art and literature, 
 such of the Roman law — one as a contribution to the outward 
 form of virtue, the other to the authority and power of the 
 moral sentiment itself These are gifts wroudit out from 
 below — extorted, as we may say, from society. It remains 
 to speak of a third power, descending from above, to bring 
 the Divine Life into history and hasten that moral age, 
 towards which its lines are ever converging. Hitherto, we 
 have spoken of causes developed by the mere laws of society, 
 Avhich laws however, when deeply sounded, are but another 
 name for God, conducting history to its ends, by a presence of 
 latent force. In religion, in Christianity, we are to view him 
 as coming into mental contemplation, as objective to the intel- 
 lect and heart, and operating thus as a moral cause. Here 
 lie shows, above us, an external government of laws and 
 retributions, connected with the internal law of the con- 
 science ; opens worlds of glory and pain beyond this life; 
 presents himself as an object of contemplation, fear, love and 
 desire ; reveals his own infinite excellence and beauty, and, 
 withal, his tenderness and persuasive goodness ; and so pours 
 the Divine Life into the dark and soured bosom of sin. 
 
 But you will perceive that a certain degree of intellectual 
 refinement and moral advancement was necessary to make 
 the approach of so great excellence and beauty intelligible. 
 A race of beings immersed in the wild superstitions of feti- 
 chism could not receive the divine. And, therefore, it was 
 not till the Greek letters and the Roman sovereignty were 
 extended through the world, that Jesus Christ made his 
 appearance. He is, at once, the Perfect Beauty and the 
 Eternal Rule of God — the Life of God manifested under the 
 conditions of humanity — by sufferings, expressing the Love 
 of God, by love attracting man to his breast. Now there 
 enters into human history a divine force which is not latent. 
 The law from within meets the objective reality and beauty of 
 God from without — conscience links with a government 
 above, and morality is taken up into the bosom of religion. 
 
28 
 
 I will not trace the historical action of Christianity, or show 
 how it has subordinated and wrought in all other causes, 
 such as I have named. Everyone knows that this new reli- 
 gion, sprung of so humble a beginning, has had force enough, 
 somehow, to take the rule of human society for the last eigh- 
 teen hundred years. x\ncient learning, ancient customs and 
 rehgions, emigrations, wars and diplomacies, all the founda- 
 tions of thrones and the bulwarks of empire have floated, as 
 straws on this|flood. And now it is much to say, that where 
 we are, thither Christianity has borne us, and what we arc 
 in art, literature, commerce, law and liberty, Christianity has 
 made us. 
 
 I will only point you, beside, to a single symptpm of lh(^ 
 times, which shows you whither human history is going, h 
 is a remarkable distinction of the present era, that we iirc 
 deriving rules of common life and obligation from considera- 
 tions of BENEFICENCE. We perccivc that the internal law of 
 the conscience includes not only justice but love. The spirit 
 of Christianity, as revealed in the life of Jesus, has so far 
 infused itself into human bosoms, that we feel bound to act, 
 not as fellow men but as brothers to the race. We propose 
 what is useful, we reason of what is beneficent. Government, 
 we claim, is a trust for the equal benefit of subjects. As indi- 
 viduals we are concluded, in all matters, by the necessities of 
 public virtue and happiness. All the old rules ot" morality, 
 which hung upon the colder principle of justice, are suffering 
 a revision to execute the principle of love, and every thing in 
 public law and private duty is coming to the one test of benefi- 
 cence. 
 
 Here I will rest my argument. I undertook to show you 
 that human history ascends from the physical to the moral, 
 and must ultimately issue in a moral age. I first exhibited 
 the fact of a twofold progress in past history, accordant with 
 the twofold nature of the moral element. What stupendous 
 events and overturnings arc, hereafter, to come pouring their 
 floods into the currents of human history, we cannot know or 
 conjecture-; but I have brought into view three great moral 
 forces, of whose future operation, as of whose past, we may 
 
29 
 
 well be confident — th^, Greek Art, the Roman Law, and the 
 Christian Faith. Th^l^ three being indestructible, incapable 
 of death, must roll on, down the whole future of man, and 
 work their effects in his history. And, if we are sure of this, 
 we are scarcely less sure of a moral age, or of the final ascen- 
 dency of the intellectual and moral life of the race. 
 
 I anticipate no perfect state, such as fills the overheated 
 fancy of certain dreamers. The perfectibility of man is for- 
 ever excluded, here by the tenor of his existence. He is here 
 in a flood of successive generations, to make experiment of 
 evil, to learn the worth of virtue in the loss of it, and by such 
 knowledge be at last confirmed in it. As long, therefore, as 
 he is here, evil will be, and life will be a contest with it. 
 
 But a day will come, when the dominion of ignorance and 
 jAysical force, when distinctions of blood and the accidents oi' 
 fortune will cease to rule the \\orld. Beaut}^ reason, science, 
 personal worth and religion will come into their rightful 
 supremacy, and moral forces will preside over physical as 
 mind over the body. Liberty and equality will be so far estab- 
 lished that every man will have a right to his existence, and, 
 if he- can make it so, to an honorable, powerful and happv 
 existence. Policy will cease to be the same as cunning, and 
 become a study of equity and reason. It is impossible that 
 wars should not be discontinued, if not by the progress of the 
 international code, as we have hinted, yet by the progress of 
 liberty and intelhgence ; for the masses who have hitherto 
 composed the soldiery, must sometime discover the folly of 
 dying, as an ignoble herd, to serve the passions of a few reck- 
 less politicians, or to give a name for prowess to leaders whose 
 bravery consists in marching them into danger. The arbitra- 
 ment of arms is not a whit less absurd than the old English 
 trial by battle, and before the world has done rolling, they will 
 both be classed together. Habits of temperance must result 
 in a gradual improvement of the physical stature and intellec- 
 tual capacity of the race. The enormous expenditures of 
 war and vice being discontinued, and invention, aided by 
 science, having got the mastery of nature, so as to make pro- 
 duction more copious and easy, the laboring classes will be 
 able to live in comparatively leisure and elegance, and find 
 ample time for self-improvement. 
 
30 
 
 Now beo^ins ihn era of genius ; for all the mind there is, 
 being brought into action, and that \n0he best conditions of 
 intellectual heahh, it must result that the eminent minds will 
 tower as much higher, as the level whence tliey rise is more 
 elevated. The old leaden atmosphere of a physical age will 
 be displaced by nn intellectual atmosphere, quickening to the 
 breath and full of the music of new thoughts. .Society being 
 delivered of all that is low, and raised to a general ccnidition 
 of comfort and beauty, will, become a new and more inspir- 
 ing element. The general peace of nations and the nobler 
 peace of virtue, will make the reflective faculty as a clear 
 sounding bell in a calm day — every depth of nature will be 
 sounded and l)rought into the clear light of philosophy. The 
 imagination will be purified I)}' the subjection of the passions, 
 and fired by the vigor of a fiiih that sees, in all things visible, 
 vehicles of the invisible — and every thing finite eloquent of 
 infinity. 
 
 But, what is the greatest pre-eminence, it shall come to pass, 
 that, as the ideal of the Greeks was beauty, and that of the 
 Romans law, so this new age shall embrace an ideal more 
 comprehensive, as it is higher than all, namely, Love. 'I'lie 
 magnificent genius of Plato attained to some indistinct con- 
 ception of this same thing, in that intellectual love, so much 
 extolled by him, as being the power of all that is divine in 
 virtue — the love of kindred souls thirsting after truth, and 
 tracing back tlieir way to that bright essence, whose image 
 they dimly remember, and which, having cast its shadow on 
 them in some previous state, made them forever kindred to 
 each other and to it. But the love of which I speak is this 
 and more — a lo\e to souls not kindred, a love of action and 
 of power, as well as of sentiment and of mutual affinity. 
 This love is no partial ideal, as every other must be; it is uni- 
 versal, it embraces all that is beneficent, pure, true, beautiful 
 — God, man — eternity, time. To build up, to adorn, to 
 increase enjoyment ; to receive the whispers of that Original 
 Love which inhabits all the heights and depths ; to sing out 
 the rhythm and eternal harmony of that music wherewith it 
 fills, not the stars only, but all the recesses of being ; to go up 
 into the heights of reason after its plan, and lay the head of 
 philosophy on its bosom ; to weep, rejoice and tremble before 
 
3i 
 
 it, every where present, every where warm and luminous ; 
 palpitating in all that lives, blushing into all that is beautiful, 
 bursting out as afire, in all that is terrible — thus employed^ 
 filled with this love, as by a storm falling out of heaven, lifted 
 and celestially empowered by it, the new moral nge must 
 needs unfold a regenerated capacity and construct a literature, 
 more nearly divine, than has yet been conceived. All that is 
 great in action, disinterested in sufiering, strong in the abhor- 
 rence of evil, beautiful in art, wise in judgment, deep in 
 science — the keen, the soft, the wrathful and piercing, as 
 w^ell as the gentle and patient — ever}- side and. capacity of 
 mind will display itself, and as the talent of the Creator unfolds 
 its gradeur in love, so by love, the talent of his creature will 
 roll out into that full toned harmony of act and power which 
 c(jnstitutes the distinction of genius. 
 
 Brothehs in lrtters, — I may not close without some refer- 
 ence more personal to ourselves and closer to the occasion. We 
 are here, once more, in the classic shades where our youthful be- 
 ginnings were nurtured. We most filially, venerate and love the 
 place. No where else does memory drop the element of tense 
 and become experience as here. Our youtli returns upon us — 
 its day-dreams even are here, as we left them, floating on the air 
 and resting, in the trees. As now our hearts are open to ingenu- 
 ous feeling, let us take to ourselves one more lesson before we 
 part, and resolve to wed ourselves unchangeably to the good of 
 mankind and the final triumph of virtue. 
 
 First of all let us, as scholars, have faith in tbe future. No 
 man was ever inspired through his memory. The eye of Genius 
 is not behind. Nor was there ever a truly great man, whose ideal 
 was in the past. The oftal of history is good enough for worms 
 and monks, but it will not feed a living man. Power moves in 
 the direction of hope. If we cannot hope, if we see nothing so 
 good for history as to reverse it, we shrink from the destiny of 
 our race, and the curse of all impotence is on us. Legions of 
 men, who dare not set tlieir face the way that time is going, are 
 powerless — you may push them back with a straw. They have 
 lost their virility, their soul is gone out. They are owls flying 
 towards the dawn and screaming, with bedizened eyes, that light 
 should invade their prescriptive and congenial darkness. 
 
 ^very scholar should be so far imbued with the philosophic 
 spirtt, as to remember that ways and manners, which stands well 
 
 \ 
 
3:i 
 
 ".vith prescription, do not always stand well with reason, and tliat 
 respectable practice is often most respectably assaulted. Suffer 
 no effeminate disgusts ; neither always be repelled, when a good 
 object is maintained by criiid and even pernicious arguments. 
 Men are often wiser in their ends than in their reasons, and, if we 
 see them staggering after the light, our duty is not to mock tiiem, 
 hut to lead them. Consider how God has stood by man?s history 
 and labored with him in his crudest follies, and even by means of 
 these contrived to help him on. 
 
 We have a country where the legislation of virtue is free as it 
 never was before in any other. Every thing true, just, pure, good, 
 great, can here unfold itself without obstruction. To say that 
 we are all called to be a nation of lawgivers, in the public consti- 
 tution, is not all — we are called to be lawgivers in a higher and 
 more sacred capacity. Political law, as supported by force, is 
 here weak, that it may be strong as supported by reason. Our 
 institutions postulate, in every thing, a condition of virtue, and 
 Their destiny is to be magnificent as it is a moral destiny. 
 
 Be it then our part, as sclmlars, to be lawgivers, bringing fortli 
 to men the determinations of reason, and assisting them to con- 
 struct the science of goodness. And consider that it is sound 
 opinion, not multitudinous opinion, that takes the force of law. 
 Have faith in truth, never in numbers. The great surge of num- 
 bers rolls up noisily and imposingly, but flats out on the shore, and 
 slides back iiito the mud of oblivion. But a true opinion is the 
 ocean itself, calm in its rest, eternal in its power. The storms 
 and tumultuous thunders of popular rage and bigoted wrong Avill 
 sometime pause, in their travel round the sphere, and listen to its 
 powerful voice. And if the night comes down to veil it for a 
 time, it is still there, beating on with the same victorious pulse 
 and waiting for the day. A right o])inion cannot die, for its life 
 is in the moral element, which is the life of God. Have patience, 
 and it shall come to pass in due time, that what you rested in the 
 tranquillity of reason, has been crowned with the majesty of law. 
 
 Here then, we come as scholars to embrace the destiny of vir- 
 tue. The classic discipline received in these consecrated shades, 
 we consent to hold as a trust for the Moral Age of man. We 
 will think our talents mosthonored, by a devotion to what is the 
 most magnificent of human hopes. We will regard it as the 
 highest i)oint of dignity, in our several professions, that they are 
 penetrated with a moral purpose, and suffer a natural connection 
 with the highest ends of history. Contradiction shall not move 
 us, sacrifices shall not deter us. Our temper shall partake the 
 grander of our objects. And as we are most assimilated, in our 
 ends, to that Great Being who rules in all ends, so shall we most 
 partake the tranquillity of his wisdom, and the conscious benefi- 
 cence that feeds his joy. 
 
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