ADDRESS,

DELIVERED AT THE COMMENCEMENT IN 1814.

Young Gentlemen,

In the composition of human beings, we distinguish the body, the intellect, and the heart. The cultivation of these, demands our attention in proportion to their respective importance. Of bodily powers, agility and physical strength are the principal, if not the only, constituents. By the intellect we perceive, compare, abstract, and form conclusions. Their province extends to moral, not less than to other relations. Moral ideas, together with their relations, are as truly objects of intellect, as are ideas of number or quantity. Perceiving these relations, we discern the reality of duty and the fitness of actions. But though the obligations of virtue are discerned by the understanding, the understanding is not the seat of moral virtue. There is no conceivable state of the intellect, of which we can predicate either virtue or vice. Moral dispositions or affections, are distinct from the understanding; and in these consist whatever, in accountable beings, is worthy of praise or blame.

On this distinction are grounded those few remarks, which the present interesting occasion gives me an opportunity of addressing to you, relative to that union, which ought ever to be maintained between piety and good morals on the one hand, and literature and science on the other. Mind, however capacious, if perverted, does not raise its possessor so much above brute animals, as it leaves him inferior to the man of moral goodness

So long as the moral character is debased, I know not whether it is desirable, that the intellect should be improved. Knowledge gives power, which is injurious or beneficent, according to the manner in which it is used. Physical strength will be dangerous, if guided by brute impulse; but infinitely more so, if under the direction of perverted intellect. Give to the tiger human sagacity, and after having desolated the forest, he will invade the habitations of men, and form a wilderness for himself in the midst of rich plantations or populous cities. Give to the leviathan intellect proportionate to his bodily powers, and navies will no longer dare to traverse the ocean.

But you may ask, whether reason does not applaud virtue; and whether the latter will not be cherished, in proportion as the former is improved? I answer, that reason does unquestionably applaud virtue; and, the more the science of ethics is studied, and the relations of man examined, the more clearly will appear the reality and strength of those obligations, which bind man to the Author of his being. But particular subjects may be neglected, while the intellectual powers in general are highly cultivated. The use made of the intellect, will depend on the moral character. If that be corrupt, there will probably be a disinclination to those subjects, which lead to conclusions unfolding either the turpitude or the consequences of vice. In the character of a man of study, it is no more implied, that he is versed in the theory of morals, than that he is an adept in botany, mathematics, or political economy. Gross ignorance of moral truths is sometimes betrayed by those, who, in many of the walks of science, have left ordinary men far behind; and the obligations and duties of life are not only better discharged, but as well understood by the unlettered cottager, as by some, whose time has been assiduously devoted to study. With the former, morality may have been the only subject of investigation. With the other, it may be among the few which have been overlooked.

But, with whatever attention or success the science of virtue may have been explored, the reality is a distinct object; and

between the two there is no necessary or invariable connexion. Most evidently, therefore, you must not take it for granted, that the heart is meliorating, because the memory may be strengthened, the powers of discernment rendered more acute, and the imagination enlivened. The Greeks and Romans gave to the human intellect, perhaps, as high a polish as it is capable of receiving. But if we inquire for a pure morality, we are referred to the Scythians, or back to the time when Saturn himself had not assumed the visage of manhood. Those very periods, in which literary taste was refined even to fastidiousness, were distinguished by moral insensibility, and by multiplied acts of atrocious cruelty, not less than by licentiousness, the most unlimited, and the most disgusting. Many among the celebrated relics of antiquity, it is well known, are monuments at once of the cultivated talents, and moral degradation of their authors and their age. Even philosophical studies, which, more than all others, might be expected to subdue the passions and reclaim the irregularities of the heart, have been found inadequate to the object. You will not learn temperance of Arcesilaus or Lacidas, nor the contempt of pleasure from Aristippus.

It being certain, that the cultivation of the intellectual powers does not necessarily imply virtue, either in principle or practice, I request you to look attentively at the different effects on civil society, produced by literature and science, as they are combined or not with sentiments of religion. To whom is the cause of social order and human happiness most indebted to such philosophers as Boulanger, Condorcet, and Dupuis, or to Locke, Newton, and Sir William Jones? None of these distinguished characters lived without effect. The influence of their example and writings has been discovered in families-it has been felt in deliberative assemblies, by nations, and by the whole civilized world. In regard to the latter, their wonderful powers were employed either directly or indirectly to establish those great principles, which lie at the foundation of religion, both natural and revealed. Whether they investigated the laws of mind or of matter, they considered them as originating with an Vo L. II.

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intelligent Lawgiver, of whose existence and agency they discovered new evidence, in proportion as they passed beyond the boundaries, by which human knowledge had been previously circumscribed. In the victories which they gained over ignorance and error, they dedicated their richest spoils to the Author of nature, "the knowledge and veneration of whom," says Mr. Locke, "is the chief end of all our thoughts, and the proper business of all our understandings."

It is surprising, with what facility we make almost every subject tributary to that, with which our minds are most deeply impressed. Who would expect to find the truths of revelation corroborated by the study of heathen mythology, or by researches into the history of the modern Orientals? Yet I need not repeat the name of that illustrious scholar and statesman, who, through such a medium, "saw the star of Christ in the East, and fell down to worship him."

But atheistic philosophers have been even more assiduous in propagating infidelity, than Christian philosophers to establish and diffuse religion. "They who do not love religion," says Mr. Burke," hate it. The rebels to God perfectly abhor the Author of their being. He never presents himself to their thoughts, but to menace and alarm them. They cannot strike the sun out of heaven; but they are able to raise a smouldering smoke, that obscures him from their own eyes." With these feelings, their opposition to Christianity can hardly be expected to restrain itself, whatever be the subject on which they write. Whether their literary labors are directed to metaphysics, history, or natural philosophy, occasions are dexterously improved, of infusing doubts into the reader, or of diminishing his practical sense of the value of revelation. For this purpose, both the surface and the bowels of the earth have been explored-the very regularity of celestial motion has been adduced to prove it the result of no designing agent; and impious men have endeavored to persuade us, that even in the path of the Zodiac, there is a shining host, ready marshalled to contend with the Almighty.

If you have any doubts of the effects resulting from talents and science, unconnected with moral sentiments and feelings, consider what has rendered the European continent, for the last twenty years, a scene of misery, revolution, and war. Men of depraved character, possessing that influence, which strong powers, science, and an enterprising, restless temper seldom fail to bestow, diffused over Europe that spirit of atheism and misrule, which has strewed with mighty ruins the fairest part of the globe. The four winds have, indeed, striven on the great deep and though the tempest is hushed; and the surges are now subsiding, we behold, on a widely extended ocean, the fragments of scattered navies, and many human beings struggling between life and death.

Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto

Arma virum, tabulæq; et Troïa gaza per undas.

The same effects, in a proportionate degree, will be produced wherever the understanding is cultivated, and the fruits of the heart are permitted to shoot up in the wildness of nature. What infidels of uncommon powers have accomplished in the courts of princes, or in the mass of a nation, others of ordinary growth, may achieve in their own vicinity or village.

I have been led to make these remarks, for the sake of placing in a strong light, the importance of combining literary with moral improvement; and from no apprehension that any to whom I speak, are inclined to speculative infidelity. But the standing, which your education will give you in society, will place it in your power to aid the interests of virtue or vice, in other methods, than by either directly defending or opposing the Christian religion. These interests will be affected by the greater or less solemnity, with which you treat the subjects of religion in general-the regard which you manifest for its institutions the attention, or neglect, with which you treat its professors and advocates-but especially by your sensibility to those moral restraints, which it imposes on human conduct.

There is another point of view, in which the importance of