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THIRD 
 
 ANHIVEKSAEY ADDRESS 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 B¥ JEHU BIKER, 
 
 “LIFE IS EARNES T.” 
 
 ^^PRINTED BY M. NIEDNER,^^ 
 
 r?0. 75 CHESNUT STREET, 4tII FLOOH WELD BUILDING, ST. LOUIS. 
 
 % 
 
The following Address was delivered before the Platonian lit- 
 JISARY SOCIETY) on its third Anniversary occasion) AprilSlst, 1852. 
 
 At a subsequent meeting of the society the following resolution was 
 unanimously adopted. 
 
 Resolved, That the eloquent address delivered by Mr. Daeer, 
 at the last Anniversary, be published. 
 
I 
 
 YOUNG GENTLEMEN OF THE PLATONIAN SOCIETY; 
 
 \ 
 
 In the address I shall now deliver, I propose to remark in a 
 very general and discursive way, upon the great matter of Human 
 Life. There is no theme that lies nearer my heart, and none from 
 which I could so confidently hope to realize some small fraction of 
 good. 
 
 Human happiness depends upon the just harmony of all the 
 powers of our being within itself, and with the various objects of 
 the surrounding Universe. Under three heads may be ranked 
 every good that is possible to us. Looking to the Almighty Fa¬ 
 ther of our being, we discover the duties of religion ; the obliga¬ 
 tions of morality depend upon our relations wdth our fellow- 
 beings ; and a right adaptation of our faculties to the material 
 world, is highly essential to our principal enjoyments. 
 
 Here w'^e discover the natural foundation of those great de¬ 
 partments of human thought—Theology, Ethics, and Physical Sci¬ 
 ence ; and these, amplified in their various magnitude, constitute 
 nearly the sum total of our possible attainment. 
 
 Theology will embrace that, broad domain of truth which 
 spreads away beyond the limits of time and this world. It elevates 
 ~ the mind to some indistinct conception of the Almighty—it is in¬ 
 terested with the concerns of eternity, and deals with the moment- 
 C ous facts of Heaven and Hell. 
 
 Ethics is a term that carries with it a more sublunary sig- 
 -'l^nificance. It ranges over that region of our being which lies with- 
 ^in the sphere of our intercommunion in the atfairs of the present 
 life: The domestic institution—the thousand relations of busi¬ 
 
 ness—the legislation of States and the intercourse of nations, are 
 all alike subject to its controlling influence. 
 
 Physical Science embraces the entire material fabric of crea- 
 U tion, and aims to make it subservient to human uses. We here 
 learn the elemental constitution of the material world, and mount 
 upward through the boundless solitudes of space to that sublime 
 C- superstructure of worlds which surround us. 
 
 ' * 
 
 ( J ' I 
 
\ 
 
 4 THIRD ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 
 
 Thus vve are enveloped in an infinite sea of being—reacliing 
 through all time and all space—flowing out of darkness from God, 
 and moving on with sublime grandeur to meet the awards of Eter- 
 nity. 
 
 Our own being is but of yesterd^'y. The busy multitudes of 
 men tliat now tread the earth, may be compared to the flowers and 
 the green foliage of a summer’s landscape. Roru of the breatli of 
 spring as she advances from the sunny South, they rejoice in their 
 short-lived gayety, until the frost of autumn lays them cold and 
 dead upon the freezing earth. Never again shall they bloom while 
 the sun holds his course in the heavens—but oft as the seasons re¬ 
 turn, another garnishment as beautiful as they, shall decorate the 
 scene where they flourished. So with the generations of men. 
 Coming forth from tlie shades of the deep and unseen world, they 
 figure for a little season upon the stage of life, and then embark 
 upon that silent sea of death, where no sound of the boatmen is 
 ever heard, or tidings borne back of the countless millions that 
 have sailed out upon the dark and long voyage. 
 
 To any one who will think considerately, such reflections must 
 brincr a feelins: of solemn seriousness. Looking tliiis backward 
 and forward over the whole area of our mortal li e, we see the 
 diminutive span of our utmost reach, and feel how like we are to 
 the summer insect that dies with the day that gives it birth. 
 
 The very place where I now stand—this plain old College 
 building—those trees that wave over these beautiful grounds— 
 those walks and rural cottages, are all alive wilh associations that 
 can never fade from mv heart, and which at tlie same time arc 
 calculated to sustain that earnest impression of life which I am 
 presenting. 
 
 Years freighted wilh disappointment and care have flown by, 
 since with a liigh beating heart I bade farewell to these College 
 scenes ; and now, when I revert again to the days th.it can never 
 return—and pass in review the dim shades of those glorious hopes 
 that liere loomed up in my bosom—and call back Irom the cold 
 <rrave the familar forms of those that I here loved, it seems to me 
 that I am standing ratlicr among the tombs ot the dead, than en¬ 
 gaged in the work of a literary entertainment. 
 
 It is «ad to think of the changes that time has wrought—of 
 tlie proud hopes humbled in the dust—of the hearts that have 
 sunk lown in despair upon the journey of life,—it is sad to thiiik 
 of the brilliant premise and the mournful consummation. Yet ev- 
 
OF THE PLATON. LIT. SOCIETY 
 
 erything that I here see, carries my mind back through the sha¬ 
 dows o! the past, and rouses some spectre of ruined anticipation. 
 How many that have gone hence, wrapped in visions of glorious 
 success, are now sprawled, lamed and lost in the sloughs of this 
 lower world ! How many are becalmed on the sea oi'life—with 
 no hope to quicken their hearts, and no breeze to bear them on 
 through the solitudes of ennui and despondence ! How many have 
 closed their eyes upon these bright heavens, and laid down amid 
 the noisome vapors of the “dark and narrow' house!” 
 
 I think of one, whose eye was instinct with the fire of genius, 
 whose heart was the throne of honor, and wdio w'ent forth from 
 these scenes breathing the aspirations of a liigli and confident am¬ 
 bition. He wmn the first honors of a celebrated professional 
 school. He sow^ed the seed, but death rept the h irvest. Plis 
 humble grave now kisses the sunbeams that warm the green hills 
 of Kentucky. 
 
 And I think of another, whose lamb-like gentleness of temper 
 and fine strung intellect made him an object of universal admira¬ 
 tion and love among his Ccdlege associates. In a grove just a little 
 way to the South of this, I heard his valedictory address. It w'as 
 a beautiful summer’s evening, and I can well remember the tears 
 that trickled down the cheeks of his class-mates and preceplors, 
 as he dw^elt in terms of moving eloquence upon the sad ravages 
 that time wmuld make in their number. He said that those of them 
 W'ho died first, should yet live in the hearts of their surviving 
 friends, and that as the seasons returned, their lonely graves 
 should be decorated with the choicest floral offerings. I was 
 touched w'ith the sentiment at the time, and it is one which I have 
 always loved to cherish. There is nothing more beautiful in our 
 nature, and hardly anything more divine, than that feeling of de¬ 
 voted and’undying love, which follows its object through the sha¬ 
 dows of death to the abodes of the spirit w'orld. It shows that our 
 affections are eternal, and points to a re-union of hearts in that land, 
 where no clouds of sorrow shall darken the golden fields of light. 
 There is joy in the communion of hearts that love, and there is 
 grief w'hen such hearts must bid adieu until the morning of the Re¬ 
 surrection. Rut the fires of hojre still burn among the ashes of the 
 dead, and the affections of nature will not suffer them to leave our 
 bosoms. We delight to look again and again upon the little me¬ 
 mentoes of their love—to press their pictures to our lips and (Uir 
 hearts—to visit their graves long years alter they have died, and 
 
THIRD ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 
 
 weave festoons of flowers for them in the early spring. But I 
 find I am yielding myself to the direction of a favorite feeling. I 
 was going to say that that young speaker himself was the first 
 that fell by the hand of the destroyer. He sleeps the sleep of 
 death in the old graveyard of Lebanon.—I need ofier no apology 
 for this tribute to the memory of those dead who once trod the 
 paths of learning in this same Institution; for I know, that if any 
 of you were assured of a like untimely end, it ^would be a 
 pleasant reflection to think that you would not be entirely forgot¬ 
 ten by your companions, as soon as the clods of the valley dried 
 over your graves. But it was my design to infer a lesson of humil¬ 
 ity and earnestness from these melancholy reminiscences of the past. 
 They show how vain are the glory and ambition of human life, and 
 carry with impressive emphasis to our minds that weighty precept 
 of inspired wisdom, “work while it is called to-day, for the night 
 cometh wherein no man can work.” 
 
 And if we enlarge the sphere of our reflections, and take in 
 the whole range of our observation and experience through life, we 
 shall find an additional confirmation of the emptiness of human 
 pride, and of the evanescent glare of this world’s choicest hopes. 
 How like the tomb-stones that whiten the distant hills in some 
 lonely solitude of nature, are the memories of those bright and 
 happy days, when heaven and earth, and all things beneath the cir¬ 
 cle of the sun, glowed with the effulgence of truth and love and 
 purity! And how like the shades of night that rest upon the con¬ 
 fines of the infernal world, are those clouds of grief—dark, por¬ 
 tentous, wild and deep—that gather round the heart as this scene 
 of fantasy disappeais ! There is a period in the spring-time of life 
 when this world is fair and beautiful as the garden of Paradise be¬ 
 fore the breath of hell blasted its flowers. The young human 
 heart bears within itself a creative power—bringing light out of 
 darkness, and clothing the arid wastes of Real Life with the groves 
 and birds of gorgeous plumage, the enchanted springs and sweet¬ 
 smelling spices which Oriental imagination referred to the region 
 of Happy Arabia. But such creations cannot endure. They fade 
 like flowers in a solitary place, and their withered leaves are 
 scattered by the winds of the desert. 
 
 —“Tears, idle tears—I know not w’hat they mean, 
 
 Rise in my heart and gather in my eyes, 
 
 In looking over the happy autumn fields. 
 
 And thinking of the days that are no more.^’ 
 
OF THE PLATON. LIT. SOCIETY. ^ 
 
 Strange that the Poet knew not the meaning of those tears. 
 They are the sobs of the child that is torn from the bosom of its 
 mother,—they are the wail of the broken-hearted maiden, as she 
 strays “by the silver-light of the moon” and weeps for the ruin of 
 betrayed and abandoned innocence,—they are the sigh of the exil¬ 
 ed patriot, who from some lonely coast or isle of the sea, looks 
 over the stormy deep toward that loved and far-off home to which 
 he shall never return,—they are the voice of Nature in the uni¬ 
 versal human heart—ceaseless as the ocean’s moan—earnest, si¬ 
 lent, deep as the fountains of life. 
 
 Nor need it be said that this view of our condition is at all 
 exaggerated. “No man can look upon the world and be glad.” 
 Think of the wild waste of the historical ages—of the seas of blood, 
 crime and woe that have deluged this earth to the mountain tops ; 
 —think of the monster vices that are laying waste the harvest of 
 life and “putting rout among the nations”—of those starving gar¬ 
 rets and chilling cellars—those underground-hells and maelstroms 
 of death and sin ;—think of those thousands of wretched men— 
 with cadaverous visages and stooped shoulders—breath noisome 
 as the vapors of the tomb—straw hats and linen pants in the dead 
 of winter—swaggering, reeling, tottering down to a despised and 
 neglected grave, where no stone shall mark the spot, and no kind 
 remembering tear of love shall ever be shed ;—think of those thou¬ 
 sands of lovely women, snared in the gins of temptation, and sent 
 forth to wander among the bleak hills of mockery and scorn—with 
 the curse of the world upon their hearts, and no relief but to cry 
 to the bending heavens for that sympathy which is so dear to the 
 human bosom ;—think of those troops of gilded villains—dazzling 
 as the basilisk—deadly as the upas-tree—loathesome as the infer¬ 
 nal sorceress of Milton—dark, deep, foul and damnable beyond 
 all power of conception—with hearts set on fire of hell—shedding 
 pestilence in their track, and blasting every flower of innocence 
 within the range of their destroying visitations;—think of that 
 stertorous groan that ascends from the great deep of the world’s 
 heart—of those tears of grief that can never be assuaged—of those 
 burning winds of remorse—sweeping over the troubled bosom of 
 guilt—scorching every green place and drying up the warm blood 
 of life. The man who will look upon such scenes with the com¬ 
 placent smile of indifference is deficient in heart—and he that ex¬ 
 ults in the sad destinction of the “laughing philosopher” is hardly 
 a more reasonable being than the wretch who can mock the mur- 
 
THIRD ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 
 
 dered dead, or dance in bacchanalian riot over a mother’s grave. 
 “But as yet struggles the twelfth hour of the night. Birds of 
 darkness are on the wing. Spectres uproar. The living dream. 
 The dead walk. Thou, Eternal Providence, wilt make the day 
 dawn!” 
 
 But I need not resort to the arts of description in order to 
 sustain the view that I am maintaining. We have the authority 
 of Jesus Christ and the Apostles—of the Prophets of Israel—of 
 the Sages and Heroes of Virtue in all ages of the world. They 
 have all represented man as reaching to heaven by some attributes 
 of iiis nature, and sinking to the shades of perdition by others,— 
 and they have represented human life as a dismal scene of conflict 
 between these opposing elements of the human heart. They have 
 represented our world as a grand theatre of disputed possession— 
 as a wild province redeemed from chaos—lying far remote from 
 either extreme, where day mingles with night, and the Truth of 
 God contends with “the power of the Spirit of the air.” And 
 they have nobly lived and died in the service of that Truth. Poor 
 in the goods of this world—^despised, scorned, and rejected— 
 driven to the wilderness and desert—the racks and dens and caves 
 of the whole earth can testify of them. Yet they departed not 
 from the work which God had put in their hearts,—but with night¬ 
 long vigils—with fasting, prayer, and mighty yearnings of spirit, 
 they have kept alive some sparks of that Promethean lire, without 
 which this world would be dark as the dungeons of the dead.—That 
 Seer of Patmos—that John with his raiment of Camel's hair—that So¬ 
 crates in the market place of Athens—that Epictetus with his iron 
 lamp—those saints and martyrs of the early Church—those heroic 
 dei'enders of the Truth in every age and country of the .world— 
 these are they who have made the earth wholesome with their toil 
 and blood—and these are they who should attend the souls of liv¬ 
 ing men ! 
 
 Where are the gormand idols of our poor sad world when 
 brought into company like this ? Where are those bloody con¬ 
 querors that the school boy is first taught to swell at the thought 
 of? Where are those merchant princes, covered all over with 
 the tinsel of the worm, and carrying whole armies of todies in 
 their train ? Where are those grovelling poets and novel mon¬ 
 gers—so loved and mighty in this great century of progress—By¬ 
 ron, Sue, Bulwer, Paul de Kock and a host of fouler name, fish¬ 
 ing in Ihe purlieus of death and sin for the current staple of popular 
 
OF THE PLATON. LIT. SOCIETY. 
 
 ®) 
 
 consumption ? Where are those leaden-hearted philosophers— 
 Hobbs, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire and such—perched like owls in 
 darkness and holding discourse of day ? Where are your singing 
 Jennys, and dancing Elslers and model Artists—than whom there 
 is no greater God among all the dark minded worshippers of Flun- 
 kydom ? Where are your swarms of crack stump orators, bel¬ 
 lowing out their vapid balderdash of speech—your mustachioed 
 libertine patriots, swviggering in all saloons, cursing the highest 
 Truth, and swaaring on the altar of liberty ? Where are your 
 party editors and brawling politicans—harnessed like beasts of the 
 field and dancing like puppets at the bidding: of a master ? Where 
 are your renowned and overshadowing statesmen, sowing for their 
 harvest in the sloughs of human depravity—grinding like Sampson 
 in the mill of the Philistines, and blind as he ? Where is your gilt 
 and powdered hypocrisy—roosting upon its velvet cushioned pews 
 among the great black walls of those mighty cities ? Where are 
 your inexorable money grubbers—true to the instincts of a swin¬ 
 ish greed, and getting the heart’s worship of those gaping bipeds 
 calling themselves men ?—none the less as God lives, tho’ remorse¬ 
 less avarice coin its gajns from the blood and tears of palefaced 
 consurnpted women, quartered in squalid sheds and making shirts 
 at five cents a piece.—Where are your gloating demons of lust— 
 todied in polite circles, and leering with fiendish eye upon the 
 garden of beauty ? Where is that hellish moloch of public opin¬ 
 ion, \enting fire upon the poor, trembling, friendless vidim^ 
 and showering choicest honors on the vidimizer ? Where are 
 cr//those thousands humbugs and atrocious damning heresies, ab¬ 
 sorbing the heart of the world, and choking out the light of Heaven? 
 See them, as they lord it over the entire earth, darkening the sun 
 with the filthiness of their abominations ! See them, and know 
 that their ultimate value under heaven is this—that they are mere 
 vulture’s meat—floating masses of putridity upon the bosom of the 
 world—to be devoured at last by the avenging fires of wrath. 
 Yea, sure as there is a God of Power and Justice in the universe, 
 every foul and false and wicked thing, tlio’ lifted to the very 
 heavens, and filling the heavens with its greatness, and cheered 
 by the millions of all centuries—shall come down from its proud 
 height in the fulness of time, and sink to that bottom where it 
 shall never again curse the light of day ! 
 
 But as yet it is “neither sea nor good dry land,” and ages unnum¬ 
 bered shall pass away before that resplendent Order, radiant with 
 
1 ® 
 
 THIRD ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 
 
 the beauty of God, sliall arise out of the fiercely combatting ele¬ 
 ments and storms of whirlwind that now shake the foundations 
 of the world. The warrior will not repose upon his laurels until 
 the victory is won ;—and now that the evil days have not finished 
 their course, and the dragons of iniquity are abroad in the earth, 
 crushing out the eternal happiness of men, it is the part of an im¬ 
 mortal soul to rise in stern war against those infernal destroyers, 
 and never to bow down before them, tho’ mocked and cursed, and 
 burnt to ashes in the fires of the contest. Protean-shaped, vora¬ 
 cious as death, terrible as the beast of the vision, wearing ten 
 thousand seducing forms, with deep lodgment in nearly all hearts, 
 they are to be met in every high place and low place, and nook 
 and corner and hole of the world,—and wherever met, they are 
 found gnawing at the vitals of life, or sitting with vampire weight 
 upon the struggling souls of men. Arm ! arm for that high ren¬ 
 counter which places all others in shaded insignificance—with a 
 brave heart and the good sword of eternal truth—attended by that 
 seven thousand who have never bowed their knees to Baal, and 
 by the shades of those immortal dead who have fought well the 
 battle of life—strike, and stand, and strike- until you have victory 
 or death! 
 
 O ! is it the hallucination of a distempered fancy ? the morbid 
 dream of fevered sensibility?—Nay, by the light of heaven and the 
 glorious ages above, it is that the men of this world have groped 
 in black night until darkness has become their element. That wide 
 expanse of spiritualism—that boundless sea of happiness which is 
 possible to the human soul—those lofty and enrapturing forms of 
 beauty, floating with angelic loveliness thro’ our minds when we 
 feel the spirit of the stars in our bosoms—that mournful grandeur 
 of life and death, coming to us from the sighing woods and silent 
 fields—those long periods of eternal duration, where floods of joy 
 gild the smiling hills of immortality—reflect from the great heights 
 of our being, a light that flares over the lorn wilds of this deep 
 sunken world! Yea, the very heavens do testify, and nature 
 speaks through all her murmuring seas and forests. From the 
 other side of that gulph where other spheres sound the march of 
 time and other suns blaze in their central orbs—from all the tongues 
 of inspired and mighty men of virtue in all time—from the raging 
 fires of anguish that burn and ever burn in our own hearts—there 
 comes a voice, proclaiming in terras not to be mistaken, that the 
 
OF THE PLATON. LIT. SOCIETY. 
 
 HH 
 
 mildew of death and hell has settled upon our globe, and that human 
 life in this world in one of terrific earnestness ! 
 
 But I could never reach the just altitude of my argument with¬ 
 out reference to that sublime Teacher whose spirit is abroad upon 
 the troubled waters of humpn life. Without trending upon the confi¬ 
 nes of exact Divinity, there is a lower and critical view which must 
 meet with universal approbation. It is that Jesus of Nazareth is 
 the collossal figure of all history, looming up like a mountain of 
 light between the dark centuries of Paganism which had gone 
 before, and the ages of strife, sin and suffering which followed 
 after and are yet to come. No historical fact that carries an im¬ 
 portance so immense, as the life of that young Being, who from 
 the rocky shores of Palestine, and in a remote and dark age of the 
 world, has sent forth an influence that still widens after the 
 lapse of eighteen centuries—breathing the fire of heaven into the 
 cold and gloomy chambers of the human heart. Pure as the Spirit 
 of God, and reaching up to the empyrean of the gods, he has 
 opened the portals of that bright and shining world, that men may 
 look aloft and see the glory of the life eternal. With heart more 
 tender than woman’s, he wept over the sad ruin of our race, and 
 far different from the unfeeling cruelty of men, he said to the poor 
 heart-broken penitent, trailing in the dust of humiliation and shame, 
 ‘‘go and sin no more.” 0 ! what a sublime example of every Vir¬ 
 tue! and how grateful does the heart feel, when borne down with 
 sorrow under the wrongs that are eating up the earth, and after 
 it has gone in vain to the wise men of every age—how grateful 
 does the heart feel, when it finds there is not one vice that is not 
 condemned, and not one virtue that is not exalted, by that Jesus 
 of Nazareth—that lone and peerless One I What fire of heaven 
 in that law of the Sexes, by him first published under the sun— 
 what heights and depths of spiritual truth in that law—laying the 
 injunction of Purity alike upon l^o/A sexes,—and without which 
 this vast human heart would be foul as the sea of Sodom and Go- 
 morroh. But the men of this world, despising the voice of their 
 own hearts, and setting their faces against heaven, have laid 
 the whole weight of the law upon the shoulders of Woman;—and 
 that sin of Incontinence, which has peopled the grave wdth more 
 victims than any other, and w^orked a more horrid depth of ruin 
 and depravity, passes the ordeal of Public opinion unscathed, 
 and wins from creeping things boasting the name of philosophy 
 
THIRD ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 
 
 llie kindly epilliet of “amiable foible^'” — even while putrid 
 death, staring from its leaden sockets, answers back—“it is a 
 Lie!” And so of «//the evil that jesters in the world’s heart. 
 Faintly seen, il’seen at all by the dim light of philosophical wis¬ 
 dom, it lies sprawling in all its huge deformity, when dragged 
 into open day by that mightiest Teacher. And thus he stands, 
 speaking over the dark waste of human life, clothing that life with 
 Eternal significance, invoking the Authority of Heaven, and speak¬ 
 ing with a voice that will reach the last age of the world. Such 
 in a historical view is that son of Joseph the carpenter. 
 
 Here then is the great Ideal, the living reality, and more than 
 that, of the soul’s highest conceptions of A irtue and V isdom—in 
 all the wide sea of time the only one. He therefore is the last 
 hope of humanity,—for the heart will not be virtuous without carry¬ 
 ing in its own recesses a noble ideal of A'irtue ; and here is the 
 outward Exemplar of that ideal, rising like a })illar of light to the 
 heavens—lair and beautiful in all its proportions. Nor should it 
 be said that I am invading the province of Divinity in a secular 
 lecture. It would be as absurd to discourse upon the great gene¬ 
 ralities of liuman life without notice of Jesus Clirist, as it would 
 be to undertake a history of natural science and astronomy without 
 reference to the discoveries of Cuvier or Newton The s])irit of 
 that Teacher is upon the world : it is blended with all the heights 
 and depths of the human heart, and you can no more regard the 
 one without the other, than you can remove the law of gravita¬ 
 tion from the earth, or separate the grand movements of the uni¬ 
 verse from the sustaining power oj God. 
 
 Rut the point I am gaining, is the authority of that wonderful 
 Teacher; his autliority as a rule of opinion and life; sustained as it 
 is, by every authority worthy of the name in the Universe. He 
 has brouf»-ht in to our world a torch that shines over the wide ocean of 
 
 o 
 
 Eternity, and illuminates the whole of that immense void between 
 the throne of God and the lowest deep of the infernal waste. And 
 by that ereat light, and through that vast medium, we are enabled 
 to gather an impression of the overwhelming importance and earn¬ 
 estness of human life. AVe leel the spirit of Immensity upon our 
 hearts, and rise above that cumbrous load of lies, sins, and fleeting 
 follies that would weigh us down to the earth. AVc read the sig- 
 
 • Gibbon, in various parts of his history of the Decline and Fall of the 
 Roman Empire, remarks to this effect. 
 
OF THE PLATON. LIT. SOCIETY 
 
 nificance of vice in the mutilation of its victims around us, and see 
 it o-ather fresh lioirors when reflected back from its native seats 
 of darkness. We feel an obligation to advance forward to the line 
 of Duty—assured that, if we halt, stagger or retreat from the 
 ranks, we shall have the weight of the Universe upon our shoul¬ 
 ders at last. 
 
 This great hight, young gentlemen, rising far above the base 
 level cf current opinion and sentiment, it should be the labor of 
 your lives to reach and maintain; and unless you reach it, your ideas 
 of human life will be as worthless as the speculations of a mole upon 
 the geography of the earth. When you shall go hence into the 
 world, the only hope of your value depends upon your carrying 
 with you that noble grandeur of thought and feeling, that deep and 
 earnest devotion to virtue, wliich will enable you to stand up, 
 though solitary and alone, and breast the waves of falsehood and 
 corruption that are sweeping over the earth in proud and defiant 
 strength. As scholars, you will see how incompatible with this 
 moving earnestness, are all tiie airs and ccmplaicent conceits of 
 pedantry. Let not your language be ol‘ Latium and Ilion, of 
 Helicon and Parnassus; stop not to sport with the muses in the 
 groves of Arcadia, or to weave garlands of taste in the schools cl 
 heathen philosophy; but rather, with the fire of the New Revelaticui 
 in your hearts, with an awful sense of your position in the Uni¬ 
 verse, with the eternal ages before you and behind you,with heaven 
 over your heads and hell beneath your feet, go out among the mil¬ 
 lions that lie weltering in the stygean seas of life, and speak with 
 a speech that will not shame the high and terrible import of the 
 scene. Call with a voice that will reach the ears of the dead, 
 and break the nightmare of the sleeper! Oh, there is no 
 time for piping the songs of peace when the blasts of war are 
 howling in the heavens ! There is no time lor the timbrel and harp, 
 no time for repose in the bowers of ease, when the rage and fury 
 of battle tliicken over the face ot the world!—None the less a 
 battle, O Cod ! none the less a battle, because every land under 
 lieaven is the scene of the conflict; because the artillery of hell and 
 the swift-winged legions of darkness dispute the field ; because 
 those who are cloven down in the strife, leave not their blood to 
 fatten the soil, nor their bodies to feed the fowls of the air! There 
 is a death that sinks deeper than the grave; and there is a murder 
 that is more dreadful than the carnage of a tliousand fields. It is 
 the death which puts out every light of tlie immortal soul! It is 
 
THIRD ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 
 
 ri4 
 
 tlie murder which turns the heavens into iron, and the heart into 
 ashes ! I have seen the ravages of that death and that murder; and 
 O ! by all that is terrible intlie wild and throbbing depths of human 
 woe, I have marvelled at the maniac laugh and stolid indifference 
 with which men have regarded them. And the agencies producing 
 that ruin are in the full tide of vigorous action. Like flax 
 before the flames of a devouring fire, the virtue and happiness of 
 our race are being swept down beneath that all-deluging flood of 
 iniquity, which, for some inscrutable reason, has been permitted to 
 escape from the prison doors of darkness and death. And in view 
 of this tremendous fact, as compared with the frivolous shallowness 
 of the great mass of mankind, and their stupid insensibility to right 
 and wrong, we are forced to the melancholy conclusion, that they 
 are hardly such at all, but rather a description of apes, not knowing 
 what manner of world tliey inhabit. 
 
 Fortified with these great thoughts and deep feelings, you will 
 carry an atmosphere of spiritual sublimity round your hearts, which 
 will constitute you a foreign element in the world. For you will 
 feel in all your being, a necessity to divide between the eternal 
 True and the eternal False, and to rest your soul’s destiny upon 
 the former ; knowing that the minority in which you shall stand, 
 deplorable as it may be, is yet the seven thousand of every age ; 
 and always content with the reflection, that, however matters may 
 go for the present, you will be sustained by the power of Almighty 
 God in the end. 
 
 You will find that the pleasures and honors you now anticipate 
 so confidently, will turn out like the forbidden joys in the myth of 
 Tantalus; and you will find that that beautiful ideal of purity which 
 YOU now carry in your bosoms, can never meet with its realization 
 among the fogs and moorlands ot this dark rolling earth. But you 
 will see, nevertheless, that it has the noblest of uses, for it is a 
 glowing emblem of the higher life, holy and spiritual in the happy 
 fields of eternal day. It is a monitor from God, ever speak¬ 
 ing in your hearts, and telling you the end for wliich you were 
 made. But according to the current and approved wisdom of the 
 times, it is a deadly heresy to listen to that sublime and seraphic 
 voice, and public opinion, huge,ill-shapen monster, thunders against 
 it with her tliousand tongues. You will hear the doctrine of con¬ 
 formity to the world proclaimed in every rank of society ; and you 
 will see it bolstered into a towering popularity, by such as arc as 
 ready with a kiss for the feet of baseness, as they are with a sneer 
 
OF THE PLATON. LIT. SOCIETY. 
 
 of contempt for the noblest truths of God. Yet if you would not 
 sink pernicious depths below the moral level you now occupy, 
 abandon not the ideal of your hearts; nor humble yourselves before 
 the lies and sorceries that have grown great by the blind adulation 
 of mankind. Your personal dignity, your eternal happiness, your 
 allegiance to the Maker of your souls, forbid the idolatry ! And 
 these are weightier considerations than the authority of a thousand 
 myriads of rooting things, and the shells to be gained by rooting. 
 
 Yes, if you would not wholly abandon the idea of being any ac¬ 
 count at all, you must divide from the great mass of the world, as 
 oil divides from water. You must realize that the work which 
 God has put upon jou, is simply the attainment and practice of 
 virtue, and not the pursuit of ambitious and selfish objects, such as 
 fame, wealth and power. And you must have a standard of Truth, 
 which will serve as a criterion of judgment tor all disputed issues 
 —and that standard must be Jesus Christ and the Nature of Things; 
 —not the voice of the world in God’s name, though it speak 
 with authority and in tones of thunder ; — not the ocean 
 of books that have come down to us in the great drag-net 
 of time — confused and vast medley of crudities and opinions, 
 mixed up in the mire of falsehood and vice;—not the authority 
 of that cloud of modern critics, who have darkened the face 
 of literature, morality and religion with heathen fulminations in a 
 Christian age,;—not the authority of the Church, as we now see it 
 in the earth, covered over and festering to its heart’s core with cor¬ 
 ruptions as it is; not either or all of these together—but simply 
 Jesus Christ and the Nature of Things. 
 
 And when jou have risen to an ample conception of this world, 
 with its immense and real significance, as compired with the small 
 and miserable notions that prevail, you will be fortified with an 
 earnestness that will lift you above the babbling of censure, and 
 urge you on in the service of Truth, however despised and insult¬ 
 ed. And your hearts will glow with that honest love lor all 
 your fellow beings, which will make it impossible for you to look 
 with indifference upon anything that invades their rights, or tends 
 to degrade their character and injure their happiness. This all- 
 boasted civilization of the day, you will see struggling beneath the 
 incubus of an overshadowing materialism, praised and deiended by 
 a philosophy tliat finds the highest realization of human greatness 
 in railroads, ocean steamers, lightning telegraphs, and cotton 
 gins. You will stop, therefore, and consider awhile before you 
 
"WWUCAL 
 
 THIRD ANN. ADD. OF THE PLAT. LIT. SOC’Y. 
 
 raise your voices in bombastic adulation to' the “age of progress.” 
 You will see luxury, t'oul corrupter of every virtue, growing upon 
 our country; and you will find dwarf heads and dwarf hearts, made 
 for ignoble uses only, scattered thick as the IVogs of Egypt. You 
 will see our great Eastern cities sitting like huge baboons on the 
 Atlantic coast aping the follies of Europe ; and you will see the,. 
 intermediate populations dancing in chorus to tlie banks of the 
 Mississippi. You will see puny-visaged and brainless aristocra¬ 
 cy curling its nose at that Atlas of civilization—him with the hard 
 hand and sunburnt face, carrying on his shoulders the whole w'eight 
 and superstructure of civil society, and without whom the W'orld 
 W’ould go back to savageism at once. You will see your poor sister 
 woman, delicate and tender as she is, made to bear the sins ot 
 the whole world. 
 
 These and multitudes of like absurdities and vices, you will find 
 lording it triumphantly in every quarter. But yet you must stand 
 up against them—by the eternal value of 3'our manhood, by your 
 love of heaven, and your fear of hell, you must stand up against 
 them! 
 
 Every thing we see around usis passing away. Even the so called 
 eternal outlines of nature bear the impress of mutation and decay. 
 Yet a little while, and you will lie down in the silence of death ; 
 and then the wild grass shall grow, and the shows of winter shall 
 whiten, and the loud winds of heaven shall beat over your forgot¬ 
 ten graves. Virtue alone has treasure that will outlive the wreck 
 of this temporal world. Oh then let that be one absorbing motive 
 of your hearts ! A motive that will not perish like the fleeting hour 
 as it passes, but stand, and be sanctified by an approving con¬ 
 science, when this earth and these heavens shall fly away before 
 the face of God.