an everlasting Gospel to the moral nature of man. He that looks on him reads duty in more intelligible characters than were ever graven upon tables of stone, or written in the lifeless pages of a book, and he who sits at his feet feels himself strengthened to do, to dare, and to suffer, more than by the lessons of all the philosophy of man's device. Such are the influences, which springing from the moral nature of man, react upon society, and are ever at work to purify, elevate and refine it. Legislation, Public Opinion and Religion; Laws, Literature and the Pulpit, these are the sources to which we are to look for the gradual improvement of the human condition. Their power is becoming every year more developed, and at present we can see no bounds to the good they may effect. They have in this country ampler scope than they have ever had before. Here the masses think, they have the materials of thought. Mind here governs, not habit or prescription. Every school house that is built, every church that is erected, every press that is established does something to enthrone Reason, the Moral Sense, and Religion in the government of mankind, and to supersede the coarser machinery of armies, the police and the prison. The course of lectures which has occupied us so long, is now brought to a close. I hope we may all look back to the excursion we have made together, not without pleasing recollections. Our general topic has been the human condition, that ever interesting, never exhausted subject. We were long detained by the sphere and duties of the gentler sex. In woman we recognized heaven's last best gift. We saw that though she was often destined to a thorny path, yet was it her office to strew ours with roses. We concluded that though confined to an apparently narrower sphere, yet having the control of our earliest years, her influence is paramount in determining the character and fortunes of mankind. We visited for a short time the elevated and delightful regions of poetry and song, where sit exalted in the reverence of mankind the bards of other days, the early prophets of the future advancement of the race. In them we recognized some of our greatest benefactors, the solace of our solitary hours, the ministers of our most refined and innocent pleasures, the teachers of piety and wisdom. I finally conducted you to the more sombre and shadowy domains of Ethics and Metaphysical Science, man's moral nature and constitution. After a rapid survey of these elements of our nature, we came to the cheering conclusion, that their gradual development secures to mankind a perpetual and interminable advancement in wisdom, virtue, and happiness. If I have been the means to any of you of redeeming any hour from vacuity, or less useful pursuits, of awakening any emotion of innocent pleasure, of giving you clearer views of truth and duty, I shall feel that I have gathered some of the richest fruits of a life devoted to literary toil. The past winter has commenced, I trust a new era in the annals of our city. There is evidently a spirit of improvement awakening among us unknown. before. The zeal with which the different courses of lectures have been attended demonstrates that there is wanting neither the talent nor the taste to provide and to appreciate the means of literary culture. |