heirs. Why does God sometimes endow a man with great intellectual power, making, now and then, a million-minded man ? Is that superiority of gift solely for the man's own sake? Shame on such a thought. It is of little value to him unless he use it for me; it is for your sake and my sake, more than for his own. He is a precious almoner of wisdom; one of the public guardians of mankind, to think for us, to help us think for ourselves; born to educate the world of feebler men. I call on such men, men of culture, men of genius, to help build up institutions for the education of the people. If they neglect this, they are false to their trust. The culture which hinders a man from sympathy with the ignorant, is a curse to both, and the genius which separates a man from his fellow-creatures, lowlier born than he, is the genius of a demon.

Men and women, practical teachers now before me, a great trust is in your hands; nine tenths of the children of the people depend on you for their early culture, for all the scholastic discipline they will ever get; their manly culture will depend on that, their prosperity thereon, all these on you. When they are men, you know what evils they will easily learn from state and church, from business and the press. It is for you to give them such a developing and such a furnishing of their powers, that they will withstand, counteract and exterminate

that evil. Teach them to love justice better than their native land, truth better than their church, humanity more than money, and fidelity to their own nature better than the public opinion of the press. As the chief thing of all, teach them to love man and God. Your characters will be the inspiration of these children; your prayers their practice, your faith their works.

The rising generation is in your hands, you can fashion them in your image, you will, you must do this. Great duties will devolve on these children when grown up to be men; you are to fit them for these duties. Since the Revolution, there has not been a question before the country, not a question of constitution or confederacy, free trade or protective tariff, sub-treasury or bank, of peace or war, freedom or slavery, the extension of liberty, or the extension of bondage- not a question of this sort has come up before Congress, or the people, which could not have been better decided by seven men, honest, intelligent, and just, who loved man and God, and looked, with a single eye, to what was right in the case. It is your business to train up such men. A representative, a senator, a governor may be made, any day, by a vote. Ballots can make a president out of almost any thing; the most ordinary material is not too cheap and vulgar for that. But all the votes of all the conventions, all the parties, are unable to make a people capable of

self-government. They cannot put intelligence and justice into the head of a single man. You are to do that. You are the "Sacred Legion," the “Theban Brothers" to repel the greatest foes that can invade the land, the only foes to be feared; you are to repel ignorance, injustice, unmanliness, and irreligion. With none else to help you, in ten years' time you can double the value of your schools; double the amount of development and instruction you annually furnish. So doing, you shall double, triple, quadruple, multiply manifold the blessings of the land. You can, if you will. I ask If you will? If your works say "Yes," then you will be the great benefactors of the land, not giving money, but a charity far nobler yet, education, the greatest charity. You will help fulfil the prophecy which noble men long since predicted of mankind, and help found the kingdom of heaven on earth; you will follow the steps of that noblest man of men, the Great Educator of the human race, whom the Christians still worship as their God. Yes, you will work with God himself; He will work with you, work for you, and bless you with everlasting life.

17*

V.

THE POLITICAL DESTINATION OF AMERICA AND THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES. — DELIVERED BEFORE SEVERAL LITERARY SOCIETIES, 1848.

EVERY nation has a peculiar character, in which it differs from all others that have been, that are, and possibly from all that are to come; for it does not yet appear that the Divine Father of the nations ever repeats himself and creates either two nations or two men exactly alike. However, as nations, like men, agree in more things than they differ, and in obvious things too, the special peculiarity of any one tribe does not always appear at first sight. But if we look through the history of some nation which has passed off from the stage of action, we find certain prevailing traits which continually reappear in the language and laws thereof; in its arts, literature, manners, inodes of religion-in short, in the whole life of the people. The most prominent thing in the history of the Hebrews is their continual trust in God, and this marks them from their first appearance to the present day. They have accordingly done little for art,

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science, philosophy, little for commerce and the useful arts of life, but much for religion; and the psalms they sung two or three thousand years ago are at this day the hymns and prayers of the whole Christian world. Three great historical forms of religion, Judaism, Christianity, and Mahometanism, all have proceeded from them.

He that looks at the Ionian Greeks finds in their story always the same prominent characteristic, a devotion to what is beautiful. This appears often to the neglect of what is true, right, and therefore holy. Hence, while they have done little for religion, their literature, architecture, sculpture, furnish us with models never surpassed, and perhaps not equalled. Yet they lack the ideal aspiration after religion that appears in the literature and art, and even language of some other people, quite inferior to the Greeks in elegance and refinement. Science, also, is most largely indebted to these beauty-loving Greeks for truth is one form of loveliness.

If we take the Romans, from Romulus their first king, to Augustulus the last of the Cæsars, the same traits of national character appear, only the complexion and dress thereof changed by circumstances. There is always the same hardness and materialism, the same skill in organizing men, the same turn for affairs and genius for legislation. Rome borrowed her theology and liturgical forms; her art, science, literature, philosophy, and eloquence; even her art