The destiny of man : an oration delivered before the alumni of Lafayette college preceding commencement, in the First Presbyterian church, Easton, Pa., on ... July 26, 1853 ..

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THE

DESTINY OF MAN:

AN ORATION

Delivered in the First Presbyterian Church, Easton, Pa., on Tuesday Evening
July 26th, 1853,

IJEKURE THE

ALUMNI OF LAFAYETTE COLLEGE,

PRECEDING COMMENCEMENT.

liY THE

Rev. WILLIAM HEJSRY GREEN,

PROFESSOR IX THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEf.

PHILADELPHIA.
WILLIAM S. MARTIEN

1853.

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THE

DESTINY OF MAN:

AN ORATION

DELIVERED BEFORE THE

ALUMNI OF LAFAYETTE COLLEGE,

PRECEDING COMMENCEMENT,

IX THE FIRST PRESBTTERIAX CHCRCH, EA3TOX, PA., OX TUESDAY EYEXIXG, JULY 26, 1853.

BY THE

• Rev. WILLIAM HEXRY GREEX,

PROFESSOR IX THE THEOLOGICAL SEMIXARY, PRIXCETOX, XEW JERSEY.

PHILADELPHIA:

WILLIAM S. MAR TIEN,

1853.

Key. William H. Green:

Dear Sir — We have been appointed a Committee of the
Alumni to express to you the thanks of the Association for your
able and eloquent address of last evening, and to request a copy
for publication. The subject was one of interest, and its discus-
sion was creditable to yourself and the Society you represented.
For these reasons we hope you will see the propriety of comply-
ing with the wishes of the Association.
Yours respectfully,

E. F. Stewart, ")

Wm. "W. Cottingham, V Committee.
H. Green, J

Easton, Wednesday, July 27th, 1853.

To Messrs. E. F. Stewart, W. W. Cottingham and H. Green,
Committee of the Association of Alumni.

Gentlemen — I greatly fear that the address to which you refer
will not be found to merit the commendation expressed in your
note. Nevertheless, I feel constrained to place at the disposal of
the Association what was prepared for them and at the instance
of their kind partiality.

Truly yours,

W. Henry Green.

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in 2013

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THE DESTINY OF MAN.

Sons of Lafayette! I greet you as one of yourselves.
I revisit these scenes, once so familiar, with feelings akin to
those indulged by him who returns after years of absence
upon ancestral halls. Memories of the past are stirred;
visions flit before me of years gone by. My imagination re-
peoples with familiar forms and faces, spots which they have
long forsaken, and transports me back again to the merry
days of yore. It is the pleasing illusion of a moment which
a moment more dispels. My classmates! My College
friends! where are they? A few here perhaps: more
scattered over the wide world, contending with various suc-
cess for the prizes dispensed upon its crowded arena; some
are already gathered to the silent tomb. As I linger here,
and cherished recollections pour in upon me, I would fain
recall the past. I would that I could bid the world stand
still, or cause its ponderous wheels to traverse back the spaces
over which they have already rolled. But life flies apace.
The march of time is onward. It turns not back, nor stops.
The mighty tide, along which we are borne and a part of
which we are, is ever on the flow. It knows no ebb. The
high destinies of earth are ever accomplishing under the
bidding of the Supreme. The flood of human affairs rolls on

6

unceasingly and resistlessly, entirely beyond the control of
individual men. These can no more check its progress, or
refuse to yield themselves up to its power, than those drops
of water which in their aggregate make up the currents of
your beautiful streams can disobey the impulse which hurries
them onward to the ocean.

Is it a forced analogy to compare our academic retreat
to-day to waters in repose, to a quiet eddy formed behind the
walls of Alma Mater, into which we have escaped from the
rush of agitated waters beyond, shortly again to re-enter
them and to be hurried onward ? Let us improve the calm
of this unruffled hour to cast a hasty glance upon the broad
surface of the stream. Under what impulsion is it rushing
forward ? And whither is it sweeping with its vast living
cargo? Can we calculate the forces? Can we divine the
end? This suggests my theme, The Destiny of Man, not
the individual, but the collective race, viewed not as a child
of heaven, but as a tenant of the earth.

"Whatever doubts some of the would-be wise have ventured
in modern times respecting the unity in origin of the human
race, it is undeniable that mankind is morally and historically
one. The population of our globe is not a prodigious assem-
blage of individualities, related only by the loose aggregation
of the sand heap. Society — the Human Race : — there must
be some idea suggested by those sounds, and there must be
some reality correspondent to their meaning. "What do these
words imply? Not merely that there are vast numbers of
individual men, alike in physical structure and in mental con-
stitution, yet Btanding apart, each by himself. These words
awaken the conception of a unity, in which all the parts are
held together, forming one inseparable whole. They speak
of multiplied, diversified and strong relations. Society finds
not its counterpart in some crowded thoroughfare through

which men press, each holding on to his own way and busied
with his own thoughts, scarce noticing the throng around
him, except to avoid being jostled by them as they pass.
Constrained by necessities of his inward nature to put him-
self in living connection with his fellows, man is subjected in
consequence to new laws of life, to new conditions of activity.
He no more moves or acts by himself or for himself alone
than one of the planets of our solar system can wheel on-
ward in its orbit uninfluencing and uninfluenced. And as
well might the natural philosopher think to discover all that
can be known of matter in the laws which govern a single
body unacted upon from without, while neglecting those
which regulate the motions, harmonies and perturbations of
bodies acting on each other, as the student of man imagine
that he can get to the bottom of his subject by the sole study
of the isolated individual. Each man born injto the world
becomes a part of the moving mass, and is what the social
influences to which he is exposed make him. Not that he
loses his personality, his- self-acting power, and becomes an
impuissant thing, a mere creature of the forces which play
upon him with no inherent life of his own. Society is not to
be conceived of as a vast machine moved by a grand spring
of its own, and individual men as the wheels which move only
as they are propelled. The life of society is but the result-
ant of all the living forces found within its bosom. It has no
existence separate from the individuals that compose it, any
more than the gravitation of the universe exists independently
of material bodies. Each man has a living soul, with an
energy, intelligence and will, which are modified and acted
on by social position and social influences, but which are
never lost.

This whole living generation of men is a unit, bound to-
gether by reciprocal actings and influences. And yet it docs

8

not stand by itself alone. It is not to be dissevered from
the generation past, nor from the generation to come. It
finds in the former the conditions of its origin, and the solu-
tion not of its physical existence only, but of its intellectual
and moral state and of the standing which in every respect
it occupies. The succeeding generation -will stand in the
same relation to the present, as the present does to the past.
It will come in to occupy its place, to fulfil its tasks, to reap
the benefit of its labours. A great poet has compared suc-
cessive generations of men to the leaves of trees ever falling
and renewed. The figure will be adapted to our subject, if
the trunk and branches be allowed to represent society, and
individual men the leaves. It will be perceived that while
the latter fall away year after year, there is an abiding re-
sult produced, a heritage from one year accruing to the next.
The leaves fall off and perish, but the trunk remains, and
every year shoots upward and the branches extend outward
and the wood is hardened. Or if society be compared to the
surface of the ocean, the life and activities of the individual
will be as the waves which rise and sink, while yet the advan-
cing tide is setting steadily in upon the shore. So genera-
tion after generation passes away, but the race lives, and the
influence of each generation abides and leaves its impress
upon all that follow. The world is not fixed in dead stagna-
tion. The past is not dead : it lives on in the present.

In order to arrive at a comprehension of the point which
I am desirous to present, it is necessary to rise from what is
particular to what is general. We must not confine our
thoughts to the individual acts of individual men, nor even
contemplate singly the movements of a particular age or
country. We must seek out the bonds which link all in a
higher unity together. We must search for the grand moving
causef which control and shape successive eras, which scoop

9

out or determine the channel along which individual energies
shall be directed.

No man can understand history who does not recognize
its unity, who does not see that all the affairs of men con-
stitute together one vast chain ; each event is a link drawn
onward by preceding events, itself inducing those that come
after. History cannot be written — it degenerates into mere
annals, where this is not perceived and kept in view. The
lives of individual men cannot be separated from the period
in which they moved, nor can they be exhibited without
unfolding the whole state of things in which they played
their part. Who could gain any just idea of the Refor-
mation, its character or its causes, if he went no further
back than Tetzel's sale of indulgences? or who could com-
prehend the principles of the American Revolution, by
taking as his starting point the destruction of the tea in
Boston harbour?

This, then, is the object presented for your contemplation,
Man, not the man of one country nor of one age, but the
race ; and the race not considered as made up of dissevered
individualities casually jostled together, but as a vast com-
prehensive unity. Look abroad upon this mighty human
mass; survey its forces and its movements, and tell me
what it is that you behold.

To the eyes of some thus viewing it, the world seems a
disordered chaos. Forces innumerable are in operation in
bewildering confusion with every various intensity and in
every conceivable direction. The endless threads of influ-
ence present a knotted tangled mass, and defy all attempts
to trace or to unravel them. The earth appears to be a great
seething cauldron where all is wild agitation, but with no
grand definitive result. Humanity is driven, the sport of
every various influence, like the* ocean tossed by uncertain

10

winds. But what seems confused upon a narrow view of
things, is explained by making the range of vision broader
and more comprehensive. Phenomena, which superficially
considered are diverse or conflicting, may be resolved in
common into some higher law in which they find their unity.
Things which at first sight seem disconnected, will be seen
upon a more narrow inspection to bear a close relation to
each other. The ultimate laws of nature are simple when
once we have arrived at them, and they explain much that
seemed irreconcilable before.

There must then, we conclude, be some result which is
the true summation of all the forces acting upon humanity.
It is that at which we wish to arrive, for it will reveal to us
the direction of the grand movement of the race. With all
this seeming confusion of currents, eddies and counter-cur-
rents, which are busy upon the surface of the great human
ocean, there is yet a motion lying deeper than this, into
which the whole of these partial streams is ultimately
resolvable, a steady transmission of the great body of its
waters in some determinate direction. Now, it is possible,
this being the case, to conceive that these waters might flow
in a perpetual round, the race remaining stationary as a
whole, though every part is in active motion ; the general
sum of human knowledge, civilization, virtue and happiness
remaining the same while constant fluctuation is £oin£ on in
the several parts of the human family. Tims the waters of
the terrestial oceans are in incessant ilow. By the action of
the sun, the winds, the earth's rotation, there is set in
motion a gigantic Bystem of currents circling round the
earth, through which the whole of its briny contents is forced
perpetually to Ilow, and yet the ocean maintains from age
re its ancienl bed. Where the voice of Omnipotence
firsl -aid t<» it, Thufl far shall thou go and no farther, there

11

its proud waves arc still staid. Its currents return upon
each other, pressing on again and again in the same inces-
sant round. The stream which pours from east to west at
the equator is fed by others returning from the poles, and
so the circuit is kept up for ever. Is this the motion to b§
attributed to the human race, ceaseless revolutions but no
progression? In one quarter of the globe we see nations
rising from barbarism and pagan superstition, to civilization
and Christianity. During the same period in another the
lights of science and civilization have been quenched in
degradation and barbarism. Contemporaneous with the
spread of virtue and knowledge in one part is their decline
in another. If empires rise, it is upon the ruins of those
which have preceded them ; if they fall, their broken frag-
ments furnish materials for a new erection.

Is this then an adequate description of the movements of
mankind? Has there been, and is there to be nothing but
revolution, revolution, revolution, among men ? Is there no
onward march? And is it by necessity that the brightening
light of day in one of earth's hemispheres must be attend-
ed by the deepening shades of night in another? Credit
not the tale. It is thus with physical, material forces,
because they have attained their equilibrium, and beyond it
they cannot go.

The activity of all the material agents in the universe is
expended in endless cycles. Celestial and terrestrial move-
ments are in this alike. In the graphic language of the
wise king of Israel: uThe sun ariseth and the sun goeth
down, and hasteneth to his place where he arose. The wind
goeth toward the south and turneth about unto the north ;
it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again
according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea;
yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the

12

rivers come, thither they return again." All the forces are
so nicely adjusted that they exactly balance each other, and
although in incessant action, they remain in perfect equi-
poise.

1 If now, we could believe that the race of men taken at
large occupied the highest position in which they were capa-
ble of sustaining themselves, or that their immortal powers
were on a precise balance with the physical forces of nature
that surround them, then we could believe that any advance
of the race was out of the question, and that in spite of all
the fluctuations and the hearings which take place upon the
troubled surface of humanity, its general level must remain
permanently the same. But mind is not in equipoise with
matter. The former is superior, and must vindicate that
superiority by a progressive mastery.

Besides, the protracted existence of the world would be
without any worthy end, if the race of man was stationary as
is thus supposed; if it has reached already its term of ulti-
mate advancement, beyond which progression is impossible,
and all motion is henceforth but a weary drifting round and
round. If any thing is apparent, it is that this world was
set up as a theatre for man, for the play of his spiritual
activities. Here they are to manifest themselves, here dis-
play their strength. If then, all has been long since exhib-
ited that is to be displayed, and nothing more remains, no
latent powers yet to be unfolded, no new and untried part
to 1"- acted, no onward motion, no progression, but the
same thing over and over again lor ages and ages still;
B weeping round in the same tiresome circle which lias been
swept again, again and again : where is the use of the world
remaining'.'' If We have learned what the first lesson in any
human science might teach us, that the Creator has made
nothing in vain, nothing Without a worthy end, we shall not

13

be satisfied but there are purposes yet in store for man,
waiting their full time to be revealed.

If then, the race is not stationary, if it is not hopelessly
revolving in an ever returning orbit, the movement in which
it is projected must be forward or backward, it must be
advancing or retrograding. It must, I say, be one or the
other of these. If it be said that it is advancing in some
respects, and retrograding in others, we must take again the
resultant of these two movements ; and unless they be in
exact equipoise, which would throw us again into the motion-
less, or the rotary scheme from which we have just escaped,
we shall find that there is upon the whole an advance or a
decline ; and whichever it be that is superior, we may be
assured that it will ultimately overpower and bring into its
train that which even now offers to it an ineffectual resist-
ance.

The idea of the world's retrograding is not a new one, nor
has it been confined to a few misanthropic, disappointed
minds. It was embodied in the classic fable of the golden
age successively deteriorating to one of silver, iron, lead.
It has found its way into the scheme of many a moralist,
who has thought that his own age exceeded in vices and
crimes those of any other. It is the belief of this which has
led age after age to hang in admiration of those who have
preceded them, and to fancy that the men and the deeds of
their own times fall far below those of times gone by.
Paganism never deified the heroes of the present, but always
those of ancient days. And may it not be true? May it
not be that this idea, which has wrought itself thus into the
conceptions of men so widely diverse, has its foundation in
the reality of things? May it not be, that fallen man will
be suffered to fall deeper and deeper still? He has capa-
bilities for indefinite elevation, but a moral blight has come

14

over them, and his aspirations have been checked, and his
upward tendencies have been reversed. He has an intellect
fitted to soar, and he is bringing the world beneath his mas-
tery, and chaining the elements to do his bidding. The wind
is compelled to waft his vessels, and the fire to propel his
swift- wheeled chariots, and the lightning to bear his mes-
sages. He has shown his power to conquer nature, but has
he not failed to conquer himself, and will not this prove his
ruin? Civilization may increase, and science flourish, and
wealth multiply, and proud monuments of art attest his
fame, but is there not all the while rottenness concealed
within the trunk, in spite of this appearance of vigorous
growth, premonitory of certain ruin, and remediless decay ?
Attained to this pitch of seeming greatness, is not dissolution
waiting at the doors? May not in the just judgment of hea-
ven, and to vindicate the supremacy of moral law, a depraved
race be suffered to sink lower and lower, until it shall be
made palpably apparent that all the vigour of the human
intellect can avail nothing beneath that terrible weight of
corruption which is crushing it to the earth? There are
portions and periods of human history from which this is
undoubtedly the lesson to be read. Yet, for the race at
large, we may justly entertain higher hopes than this.

Jin t how is the destiny of humanity to be decided? Is
the decision left to chance? Have we here an infant borne
along in its cradle upon unconscious waters, with no guiding
over-watching power, the plaything of casualty and accident,
and whose destiny no one can predict, whether it shall sink
hopelessly in the remorselen current or be landed at last in
a haven of Becurity? No such power exists, or holds sway
in the universe as chance. What is it? Where is it? What
has it ever done? The name is a cover for ignorance of
imperfect vision. What men ascribe to chance ia the pro-

15

duct of acting causes and the evolution of fixed laws, though
so subtile as to elude detection, or so complicated as to defy
measurement. Arc we ruled by unintelligent, inexorable
fate ? fate is a figment of men's brains. Do then the for-
tunes of humanity depend upon the fickle will of man him-
self, inconstant as the shifting breeze? Are the hopes of
the world left to the uncontrolled free-will of the actors in
life's busy scenes? I answer No, again. It is beyond the
reach of possibility, that the lights of science should be
extinguished, the fountains of virtue sealed up, and the
world go backward. This is a result not left dependent on
human caprice or accidental causes. Not more fixed is this
globe in its orbit with the certain destiny of rolling onward
around the centre of light, than the march of mankind is
surely onward in all that is good and great. Nevertheless,
we found our hopes of all this not in man, but in the gracious
purposes of his benevolent Creator. He has disclosed what
he designs. He has sketched for us the ideal of the regen-
erated earth. To that, man is to be lifted ; lifted, not by a
sudden bound, but by the slow maturing of plans laid in eter-
nal wisdom, which are steadily working out their accomplish-
ment, and which can no more fail than the mighty laws by
which external nature is propelled can prove insufficient for
their task. With this grand advance accordant with the
will of the Supreme, seeming and partial retrogrades are no
more inconsistent, than the backward motion in the lower-
most rim of your carriage-wheels proves that the whole is
not speeding forward. As the planets of our majestic sys-
tem roll round the sun, they seem to be now advancing,
now retrograding; and yet the astronomer will tell you, that
our whole system, sun, earth, and planets are every moment
urging onward with unmeasured celerity their march among
the stars. The vista is closing up behind ; suns and sys-

16

terns that we are leaving in our track are fading from view,
while the heavens are opening before us, our course is on-
ward still, and to what point far off in the unknown dis-
tance we may yet be carried, is left to vague conjecture. In
the same way, man is projected onward in his race toward
the infinite. Whereto he has attained, we see; but what
he is destined to reach we know not, except as we can
gather it from the few hasty glimpses furnished us by inspi-
ration, though these are enough to waken the largest hopes
and stimulate the most ardent desires.

Man is imperfect, but perfectible. Full perfection will
not be reached and is not to be expected in the present
state. That is reserved for a higher sphere. But it argues
extremely low ideas of what our Creator has in store for us,
or of those endowments and capacities with which he has
furnished man, to fancy that the limit of earthly perfect-
ibility has been attained or even approximated as yet.

It is not necessary to assume that the race is advancing
in natural endowments, intellectual, moral or physical.
This probably is not the case. But each generation stands
upon the shoulders of its predecessor; and unless it lives in
vain, contributes something to the advantage of its successor
greater than itself enjoyed. It is by successive courses laid
by the patient painstaking of age after age that the great
structure of human progress is carried forward. If each
generation were dissevered from its predecessor, then must
tin; world stand still. The men of each age would be pre-
cisely where their fathers were, with the same fruitless
labour to renew, of rolling up the weary hill the ever-return-
ing stone of Sisyphus. There could then be no permanent
acquisition; no tasks accomplished, nor lessons learned, to
end urc for all future time. Progress would be impossible.
The unity of fche human race would be broken. There

IT

would in strictness be no human race, nothing but human
individuals. But as it is, every age contributes its share
to the increasing store of human wealth. The thoughts, the
ideas of former periods, their skill, their knowledge, refine-
ment, cultivation, are the common stock of this. This con-
stitutes the capital with which we are furnished at the out-
set, descending to us by legitimate inheritance, and which
we are not only to treasure up, but to increase, that it may
descend enlarged to them that shall follow us. And thus
the wealth of mankind grows by successive accumulations,
and the law of progress is in an ever advancing ratio.

The two great functions to be regarded in the onward
progress of mankind, are the natural powers and capabilities
of man and the directing hand of God. Both co-operate in
determining the result, and neither may be forgotten in the
estimate we form. Man is made capable of better things,
and is adapted to a loftier position than he at present occu-
pies. He finds in himself restless longings after unattained
good. His anticipations of the future are gilded with hope
and spanned by the rainbow of promise. His wishes are
always expanding beyond his present lot, and his concep-
tions of what may be gained invariably outrun what he has
actually acquired. Hence he is ever reaching and striving
after something which lies beyond him, ever sighing after
some improvement in his condition. Real or imaginary
evils urge him to seek their removal. Actual or fancied
good impels him to endeavour its attainment. And thus
the human mass is swayed by impulses, which forbid a quiet
acquiescence in the present. It is ever on the move, some-
times flowing gently in a placid stream, and anon heaving
in mad tempestuous surges lashed to fury by pent up pas-
sions suddenly finding vent. These movements may often
be wild, erratic and misguided. It is not strange that they
3

18

should be, when we contemplate merely their human source.
But all are under the conduct of a controlling Providence,
who directs and overrules all to the destined end of human
welfare. And no limit can be set to man's advancement,
but that which is fixed by the possible unfolding of his
powers in this his mortal state.

The progress of the human race is the grand resultant of
all the forces operating in its midst, both those which are
natural and those which are supernatural. And this im-
parts to it a character of universality, preserving it from
becoming partial and one-sided. No one man, no commu-
nity, no nation even, nor age, contains within itself all the
elements from which a symmetrical development of human-
ity must proceed. One will extend its efforts and establish
its triumphs in one direction, another in another; but no
one in all at once. All are necessary parts to the com-
pletion of the whole; all join in the general onward march.
And it is by the combination of all that the ultimate result
is to be attained. There is always something defective,
something one-sided and incomplete in the various onward
movements of distinct portions of mankind. The questions
and the struggles which arise, have something about them
that is partial and local ; and the results must bear the same
partial character. Repeated trials with varying elements
and under varying conditions are needed to apply the requi-
site correction. Just and enlarged ideas arc of slow growth,
and demand an expanded theatre for their production.
Take, for example, the problem of civil liberty ; or that no
important and difficult of religious toleration and the
rights of conscience. AVho can write a just account of the
birth of these great Ideas, and their expansion to their pre-
sent shape and dimension! before the eve of enlightened
humanity, without drawing his materials from the whole his-

19

tory of man ? They are not the products of one age or
people, nor of any single set of influences. It is by the
concatenating together of all the influences which operate
broadly over the whole world and down the whole course of
time, that the needful correction is applied, and that the pro-
gress of man becomes just, uniform and symmetrical. And
the more intimate and thorough this concatenation can be
made, the more the influences which are at work lose their
contracted local character and diffuse themselves widely, the
less will there be that is irregular and sporadic in the move-
ments of the race. To this the intercommunication of the
age is largely contributing. Let a despotic blow be struck
in Hungary, or persecution be waked in Tuscany, and the
reverberations will rouse a sentiment of indignation over the
world that will make even tyrants tremble. Mankind are
coming to resemble a body through which the pulsations of
life are transmitted rapidly and surely to every part. And
from this is to be augured only good. True it is, that evil
is invested by it with tremendous power; and that by such
aid it appears with a malignity and spreads with a virulence
before unknown. But all that is good too, is arming itself
with similar weapons for the encounter. Let the battle be
joined between light and darkness, between good and evil.
Let them have a fair struggle, and have no fears for the
issue. To indulge in gloomy apprehensions for the result, is
to doubt the inherent superiority of truth, as well as the
gracious providence of God above. When the Most High
in the person of his Son introduced the gospel among men,
he brought in that which would operate as a corrective of
every disorder, a remedy for every ill, and the fruitful
source of every heaven-born blessing. With that gospel
given to the world, and God's Spirit attending it, let there
be no fears as to what the end shall be. The cause of

human advancement and human amelioration rests on too
secure a basis for the enemies of man's welfare seriously to
disturb it; its march is too majestic to be easily impeded.
This heavenly boon belongs not to one nation, nor to a few
nations, but to mankind. It shall come everywhere as a
purifier, everywhere infuse a new spirit. As it advances, it
shall do its work of purging out the evil from the hearts of
men, and from the institutions under which they live. And
as that weight which hangs like a heavy clog upon the
wheels, retarding the progress of man's upward destiny, is
shaken off or worn away, the world shall advance with
accelerating speed.

Those narrow views which are too frequently entertained,
must vanish before a conception of this subject in its length
and breadth. AVhen histories shall be written starting from
this which is their only legitimate point of departure, the
bearing of the events recorded upon human welfare, when
they shall with faithful pen write down on every page in
what relation each fact narrated stood to man's advancement
or the improvement of his condition, then the past will be
viewed with other eyes and with a juster appreciation of its
real worth than it is at present. In fact, what is the true
function of history rightly understood but just this — to tell
the onward progress of the great human tide, to mark its
epochs and the varieties of its flow ? And when this shall
be done, and truly done, it will force from all the acknow-
ledgment that an almighty Providence was everywhere, and
everywhere working good for men : that from the most un-
likely causes and the most untoward instruments, and even
out of events seemingly the most disastrous, good WBfl
brought and the cause of human weal gained fresh triumphs.

That bigotry and illil.crality whieli se< - every thing through

thr coloured glasses of a narrow Bystem, and traces all g I

21

to the handful of its own party, may learn a lesson from this
grand scheme in which a race co-operates: and from the fact
that they who isolate themselves instead of rising to a supe-
rior cultivation, sink to barbarism : and that the first dawn
of progress, the first step of an incipient civilization follows
upon intercourse and interchange and intercommunication.
Even as regards the physical structure of men, segregation
invariably gives rise to deformity and deterioration.

Thus this magnificent scheme moves on. The actors in it
are frail men, perishing almost as soon as they appear upon
the stage, the good, the bad — the great ones and the common
herd alike. Yet its steady onward progress is not inter-
rupted from age to age. And this, while kingdoms rise,
accomplish their end, then fall. Races of men with their
special endowments and characteristics have each their par-
ticular work, which accomplished, they sink away and are
supplanted by others, having again their several tasks bear-
ing on the final destiny of man. Or it may be, we narrow
down the scheme too much when we speak of man and make
the occurrences of earth to terminate on him. Man may be
linked in with the whole chain of being ; and his destiny enter
but as one of the elements concurring to make up a vaster
plan. In the grand universal scheme, worlds may be but as
individual men to the scheme conducted on the earth, mere
waves rising and sinking on the ocean of eternity, while the
grand tide flows on, the tide of universal being, drawn up-
ward and onward by the centre of omnipotent attraction.
Worlds may be born and die, pass their brief life-time, a
life-time of ages in the calculus of man, but brief — a fleeting
shadow — the merest point contrasted with the life of God,
wThile yet they arc working out an ever enduring, ever ad-
vancing scheme. Each may have its task; each its impulse
to contribute to the moving mass: and the grand resultant

22

of the whole be a universal and unending progress of the entire
intelligent creation in knowledge, in goodness, and in like-
ness to the great Supreme.

From this conception of the scheme of the world and the
position held by its various parts, arise new views of the
earnestness and the consequence of individual life. While
there are those who would lose the individual in the general
mass, I would rather increase his sense of responsibility and
prompt him to an activity more zealous and unremitting. It
gives new consequence to the actings of individual men to
show them how they terminate not upon themselves, but pro-
duce results which enter into the great stream of humanity
and contribute to modify its flow in all coming time. The
age in which we live has its functions to perform, as all ages
past had theirs. It has its contributions to make to the
great cause of human weal which cannot be withheld with-
out guilt to us and detriment to it. There are earnest ques-
tions in the present age — questions in the church, questions
in the state, questions in social organization, in science, in
morals. These must be guided to right solutions, not for
the present emergencies merely, nor for our sakes alone who
are the immediate actors in them, but for mankind and for
all time to come. The thorough radical and the iron con-
servative stand alike upon extremes, opposite but equally
mischievous and preposterous. The former would reject the
present and sweep away the fruit of all past ages, bury the
lessons of experience, ignore all that has been acquired and
all that has been done for the cause of man by the earnest
toils and struggles and thoughts of times gone by. The very
foundations must lie unsettled, every thing destroyed, that he
may reconstruct by fancies of his own, and bring upon the
Btage some splendid Utopia which he has been hatching in
his single brain. This is a folly and a criminality. As

23

though the world would be enriched by casting away its
wealth! or progress made by breaking the links which join
us to the past, and rendering all true progression impos-
sible !

And, on the other hand, to him who takes large and manly
views of things, is it less a folly and less a criminality to
attempt to force stagnation on these busy scenes of life, to
harden the present covering with which humanity has envel-
oped itself into an unyielding shell which shall press the life
out of its expanding body — to lock the wheels of human ad-
vancement where they at present are, and bring all to a
stand-still, and claim that the ultimatum is now reached and
man may proceed no farther — and to represent it as a sacri-
legious war upon things sacred when strokes are dealt at
venerated abuses, or the cry is lifted to the congregated hosts
of men, which God and nature bid us raise — March on!
March on !

There is needed on the part of the men of the present age
an intelligent conception of the work before them ; that they
be not blindly led as dupes of the designing, nor, on the
other hand, stand doggedly in the way of that which they
should labour to promote. We want neither that servile de-
pendence on antiquity and authority, which is inconsistent
with independence of thought and manly freedom of action ;
nor that unbridled lust of innovation which cannot brook to
walk in good old paths simply because others have walked
therein before. It is a time demanding enlarged and com-
prehensive, as well as sound and sober views. It is time
that narrow-mindedness and bigotry were banished both
from Church and State. What is good is no less good from
having made its appearance in an unpromising quarter.
What is evil is no less evil for being found in company with
that which we admire and revere. Instead of standing

24

proudly aloof and asking, Can any good thing come out of
Nazareth ? it is wiser and better to come inquiringly and see.
That blind attachment to party and to sect which will fight
obstinately for the wrong when held by our own side, rather
than yield to the right propounded by an adversary, is un-
worthy of men of sincere and upright, not to say liberal and
cultivated minds. It is hard to find embodied in real life
unmixed error or unmixed truth, absolute good or absolute
evil. Every where there is a call not only for charity and
forbearance, but for a wise discrimination, to refuse the evil
and to choose the good. And be it by all remembered, that
they who by word or deed or earnest thought add aught to
the world's wealth, contribute thereby a permanent addition
to the heritage of mankind.

Destiny has been made the watchword of spoliation. The
strong have trampled on the weak and called that destiny
which was the outgrowth of their own unhallowed passions.
The destiny of man shall be our watchword too ; but it shall
be one beckoning onward and upward, and to be attained
not by violence, oppression and bloodshed, but by a peaceful
and wise devotion to the truest interests of our race.

THE END.