practise virtue, though they seem not to have known in what true virtue consisted. Their wise man, was their virtuous man, and their virtuous man, was their happy man. This same man whom they would style a Sage, they represented as perfect, unmoved by the calamities of life, void of sympathy, pity and compassion. In short he was destitute of every quality which constitutes a really good man. Their scheme, like that of the Epicureans, was pregnant with ruin. The first, destroyed nature by too much severity; the last, by too much indulgence. Man in his present fallen state unassisted by revelation, is ignorant of the supreme good. Of course he is guided by no fixed principle, and is carried forward to no determinate end. He wanders like a bewildered traveller amidst a thousand objects which allure and dissappoint him. Mistaking the means for the end, he grasps with avidity the small portions of good attached to sensible objects, and bounds all his happiness by the limits of the present world. How surprising it is, that men even in the present day should assert the sufficiency of the light of nature, though experience has always evinced it to be insufficient! How surprising that reason should be held up as an unerring guide, when it has left the wisest of mortals in utter uncertainty, as to the true God, and the highest happiness of man! That may be defined the supreme good, on which all other good depends. Of course man's highest happiness is no where to be found but in God; in a resemblance and participation of the divine nature. For the mode in which men are enriched with these blessings, I must refer you to the sacred pages. You will there behold the divine life, assuming the empire of the heart; fixing it on God; controlling and puryfying its affections; filling it with celestial tranquility; inspiring it with the animating hope of deliverance from evil; and finally instating it in the mansions of eternal beatitude. Divine revelation presents to the soul, an object in every respect adequate to its most ardent desires after happiness. Infinite amiableness, worth and excellence forever inhere in the supreme God; and when properly viewed, acknowledged and loved; fire the heart with a rapture which neither the mifortunes of life, nor the terrors of death can extinguish. Suffer me, Young gentlemen, in the close of this address to solicit your attention to the sacred scriptures, remembering that they alone reveal to you the true God, and prescribe the only mode, in which you can' rationally expect eternal felicity. Let it not be to you "condemnation that light has come into the world," but gratefully receive it and follow its brightness. It will present to you a most intimate and interesting connexion between the present and future world. It will guide your feet in the paths of peace; it will teach you to derive all the importance of time from eternity; it will dart its effulgence through the gloomy vale of death and display to your astonished view, the celestial Paradise blooming and brightening under the smiles of infinite love. While you look forward to that glorious state, be careful to make the precepts of the christian religion, the rules of your conduct. You will then travel on through life without guilt, and through death without fear. It is safe to trust in a religion which has triumphed as christianity has, over the most violent and powerful enemies. The arrows of infidelity and the swords of despotic power have been blunted against her adamantine shield. The sinews which hurled the former and wielded the latter have been crumbled; and the wounds they inflicted have called down the vengeance of Heaven. Remember then, that you trust to a religion, which has sustained thousands, in the greatest dangers, in the darkest scenes of adversity; and has borne them in triumph from the most tremendous conflicts. I must now, Gentlemen, part with you. Be assured that I shall always reflect with pleasure on the honorable manner, in which you have acquitted yourselves in this College; and I cannot but persuade myself that you will continue to cherish and respect the principles and science of morality and religion, which you have here imbibed. With a heart filled with parental affection, I request you to accept my most ardent wishes for your prosperity. Nothing will give me more real satisfaction, than to see you rise and shine among the brightest stars in the firmament. May you be favored with health, with peace and plenty; may you obtain honor, reputation, fame, solid glory and immortal renown. May your lives be a catalogue of patri otic, beneficent, generous, magnanimous actions; may you increase in knowledge, in virtue; in benevolence to man and in piety to God; till you are prepared for the splendors of immortality; till you are assured "that your names are written in heaven," and can behold them brightening in the margin of Eternity-Actuated with these sentiments, Gentlemen, I now bid you Farewell. |