mies shall fall under his feet. The bondage of corruption will then be dissolved, and man delivered from vanity, will rise into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. He shall no longer behold the earth withering under the blast of death, but fanned with the gales and watered with the streams of Paradise. He shall no longer tremble at the flaming cherubimic sword, but shall put forth his hand, and eat of the Tree of life, and live forever!

AN

ADDRESS,

DELIVERED TO THE GRADUATES

OF

RHODE ISLAND COLLEGE,

AT

COMMENCEMENT,

SEPTEMBER 3, 1794.

38

AN ADDRESS.

You, Gentlemen, are now stepping into the great world, where you must soon act for yourselves. The eyes and the hearts of your friends are fixed upon you. Consider, therefore attentively, the difficulties to which you may be exposed; that if they arrive you may surmount them with courage, or bear them with resignation. The passions of youth spread a thousand unreal charms over the objects of sense and the prospects of fancy: Hence we are liable to numberless deceptions. As we behold the world decorated in ornaments, the splendid dress of imagination, we are inconsiderately hurried through a vast field of objects, in pursuit of new pleasures, which serve no other purpose than to fascinate and perplex, to allure and disappoint. Such is the ardency of our passions, such is their tendency to excess, that a reiterated succession of disgust and mortification cannot, but for a short interval, rob the objects of our pursuit of their deceitful charms, and teach us to place our affections on that alone in which true happiness is to be found. Hence appears the necessity of cultivating our reason, and of subjecting our passions to its control. The capacity of improvement forms a principal distinction between man and the