THE OBLIGATIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF EDUCATED MEN IN THE USE OF THE TONGUE AND OF THE PEN. AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, JULY 22, 1852. In rising, Mr. President and brethren, to perform the distinguished part in the services of this morning, which has been assigned me by your executive committee, it is a real relief to me to reflect, how little, after all, the success of this occasion will depend on the character of the entertainment which may be afforded you, during the brief hour which I may be at liberty to occupy, by any thing of formal or ceremonious discourse. It is not by words of wisdom or of dulness, it is not by arguments forcible or feeble, it is not by appeals animated or vapid, it is not by pathos or by bathos, that an occasion like this is to be made or marred. Cer The occasion itself is its own best and surest success. tainly, it is its own best and most effective orator. The presence of this vast concourse of the sons of Harvard, drawn together by a common interest in the prosperity and welfare of their Alma Mater, and bound to each other by a common desire and a common determination to uphold and advance her ancient character and renown, is enough to make this occasion for ever memorable in her annals, and to secure for it a better, a more brilliant, and a far more enduring success, than any which could result from the most glowing display of individual eloquence. And, indeed, what could any one attempt at such a moment but to give expression- a faint and imperfect expression at the best to the sentiments and emotions which have already been awakened in all our hearts by the scene and the circumstances before us? emotions and sentiments too deep and serious, I am persuaded, to be satisfied with any mere ambitious rhetoric or jubilant oratory. We are assembled around the altars at which we were dedicated in our youth to the pursuit and attainment of a sound, liberal, Christian education, and from which we went forth in our early manhood to the duties and responsibilities of our respective professions and callings. We are here after many and various experiences of success and of failure, of joy and of sadness, of wealth and of want, in our subsequent career. We come, some of us, after but a brief trial of the stern realities of life, with the world all before us, and our relations to it still to be determined; some of us in the middle stage of our earthly course, in the full enjoyment of whatever faculties we possess, and of whatever position we have acquired; and some of us bending beneath the weight of years and of cares, with little more to hope or to fear for ourselves on this side the grave. How many thoughts are stirred within us all, as we look back, over a longer or a shorter interval, to the days when we first approached these classic halls! How many reflections crowd in upon each one of us, as to what we might have done, and what we did, then, -as to what we might have been, and what we are now! How many blighted hopes and disappointed expectations of others or of ourselves are revived in our remembrance! How many familiar forms of cherished friends, of beloved companions, of revered preceptors, long since parted from us, start up at our side, and seem almost to wait for our embrace! "Rapt in celestial transport they, They send of tender sympathy To bless the place, where on their opening soul And we, too, brethren, are here "to bless the place" of our earliest and best opportunities. We come, one and all, to bear our united testimony to the value of this venerated institution. We come to bring whatever laurels we have acquired, whatever treasures we have accumulated, to adorn its hallowed shrines. We come to pay fresh homage to the memory of our fathers for having founded and reared it. We come to renew our tribute of gratitude to its earlier and its later benefactors. We come to thank God for having prospered and blessed it. And we come, above all, to acknowledge our own personal indebtedness to it, and to make public recognition of the manifold obligations and responsibilities, to God and to man, which rest upon us all, by reason of the opportunities and advantages which we have here enjoyed. We are here, I need not say, in no spirit of vainglorious boastfulness or empty self-congratulation. We are here to arfogate nothing to ourselves in the way of distinction or privilege. We are here to set up no claim to peculiar consideration or honor on account of the titular dignities or parchment prerogatives which have been conferred upon us from yonder antique chair. We are not blind to the fact, that there are those around us, who have enjoyed none of our academic opportunities, and who have yet outstripped not a few of us in the practical pursuits of literature and of life. We do not forget that there are some of them who have surpassed us all in the highest walks of art, of science, and of patriotic statesmanship. Honor, honor this day from this assembled multitude of scholars, to the self-made, self-educated, men who have adorned and are still adorning our country's history! Honor to the common schools of our land, from which such men have derived all which they have not owed to their own industry, their own energy, their own God-given genius! Bowditch, Fulton, Franklin, Washington, - to name no others among the dead or among the living, when will any American University be able to point to names upon its catalogue of Alumni which may be likened to these names, for the originality and profoundness of the researches, for the practical importance of the accomplishments, for the grandeur and sublimity of the inventions and discoveries, or for the noble achievements and glorious institutions, with which they are indissolubly associated! Well may we say, as we proudly inscribe their names upon our honorary rolls, "They were wanting to our glory; we were not wanting to theirs." Nor are we here, Mr. President and brethren, to indulge in any invidious comparisons between our own University and other universities and colleges in the State or in the nation. It is pardonable, to say the least, to love one's own mother better than other people's mothers. It is natural that we should — "" Be to her faults a little blind, Indeed, as we run our eyes over the long list of her children, and see what a goodly fellowship of prophets, what a glorious company of apostles, she has sent forth into every field of Christian service; as we turn back to that first Commencement, on the fifth day of October in the year 1642, when "nine bachelors commenced at Cambridge, young men of good hope, and performed their acts, so as gave good proof of their proficiency in the tongues and arts,"*- and thence follow her along her starry way for more than two centuries, we might be almost pardoned for forgetting that she has or ever had any faults. And could we but see something of a higher moral discipline, something of a deeper religious sentiment, something of a stronger spiritual influence, mingling with the sound scholarship which pervades her halls, and giving something of a fresher and fuller significance to her ancient motto, "Christo et Ecclesiæ;" could we but see a little more of that state of things here, which Thomas Arnold contemplated, when he nobly declared at Rugby, "It is not necessary that this should be a school of three hundred or of one hundred, or of fifty, but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen," there would be little or nothing more to be desired in her condition. I pretend not to know how this common want of almost all seminaries of instruction is to be supplied. But, oh! let us be careful that the indulgence of sectarian jealousies do not result in a downright divorce between education and religion. Let us be watchful, lest our disposition to do away all color for the idea of a State religion, shall terminate in banishing religion from * Winthrop's New England, Savage's ed., vol. ii. p. 87. our republican schools. Better, a thousand-fold better, that a seminary like this should be under the steady, effective, aye, or even exclusive influence, of any one religious sect, than that it should be without the influence of some sort of vital Christianity. Let us if we can, and as far as we can, so blend the rays which are reflected from every different view of the Bible, that they shall form one harmonious beam of holy light, streaming in at every door and window and loophole of our halls and chapels, and casting golden glories upon every pinnacle, and buttress, and tower. But let us be cautious, that in attempting to shut out any one particular ray which may be imagined to predominate in our academic atmosphere, we take no risk of shutting out the glorious sunshine of the Gospel, and of leaving the institution, in this hour of its highest intellectual advantages, in a condition of spiritual darkness, But whatever degree of affectionate interest and concern we may cherish towards this oldest of our American colleges, and however proud we may be to hail her this day as our own great parent, we are not assembled in any spirit of hostility or indifference to the success and welfare of others. We do not forget how many of the most brilliant luminaries of our land, how many even of the bright, particular stars of our own immediate sphere, have drawn their light from other fountains. Amherst and Williams, Columbia and Union, William and Mary, Hampden and Sidney, South Carolina and New Jersey, Maryland, Middlebury, Brown, Yale, Bowdoin, and Dartmouth; all these, and many more than these, I need not say, have sent forth sons to adorn and bless their native land, and the Alumni of Harvard rejoice this day in the progress and prosperity of them all, and offer to their children the right hand of a cordial, fraternal fellowship. Nor do we forget, in the good wishes of the occasion, those renowned and reverend universities of Old England, from one of which our own was named, in one of which the founder of our |