nor where to end with them. Knowledge is the faithful ally both of natural and revealed religion. Natural religion is one grand deduction made by the enlightened understanding, from a faithful study of the great book of nature; and the record of revealed religion, contained in the Bible, is not merely confirmed by the harmony which the mind delights to trace between it and the "elder Scripture writ by God's own hand;" but revelation, in all ages, has called to its aid the meditations and researches of pious and learned men; and most assuredly, at every period, for one man of learning, superficial or profound, who has turned the weapons of science against religion or morals, hundreds have consecrated their labors to their defence.

Christianity is revealed to the mind of man in a peculiar sense. To what are its hopes, its sanctions, its precepts addressed; to the physical or the intellectual portion of his nature; to the perishing or the immortal element? Is it on ignorance or on knowledge that its evidences repose? Is it by ignorance or knowledge that its sacred records are translated from the original tongues into the thousands of languages spoken in the world?—and if, by perverted knowledge, it has sometimes been attacked, is it by ignorance or knowledge that it has been, and must be, defended? What but knowledge is to prevent us, in short, from being borne down and carried away by the overwhelming tide of fanaticism and delusion, put in motion by the moon-struck impostors of the day? Before we permit ourselves to be agitated with painful doubts as to the connection of a diffusion of knowledge with religion and morals, let us remember that, in proportion to the ignorance of a community, is the ease with which their belief in truth can be shaken, and their assent obtained to the last specious delusion of the day, - till you may finally get down to a degree of ignorance, on which reason and Scripture are alike lost; which is ready to receive Joe Smith as an inspired prophet, and Matthias as— shame and horror forbid me to complete the sentence.

But

But this topic must be treated in a higher strain. The diffusion of knowledge is not merely favorable to religion and

morals, but, in the last and highest analysis, they cannot be separated from each other. In the great prototype of our feeble ideas of perfection, the wise and the good are so blended together, that the absence of one would enfeeble and impair the other. There can be no real knowledge of truth which does not tend to purify and elevate the affections. A little knowledge- much knowledge-may not, in individual cases, subdue the passions of a cold, corrupt, and selfish heart. But if knowledge will not do it, can it be done by the want of knowledge?

What is human knowledge? It is the cultivation and improvement of the spiritual principle in man. We are composed of two elements; the one, a little dust caught up from the earth, to which we shall soon return; the other, a spark of that divine intelligence, in which and through which we bear the image of the great Creator. By knowledge, the wings of the intellect are spread; by ignorance, they are closed and palsied, and the physical passions are left to gain the ascendency. Knowledge opens all the senses to the wonders of creation; ignorance seals them up, and leaves the animal propensities unbalanced by reflection, enthusiasm, and taste. To the ignorant man, the glorious pomp of day, the sparkling mysteries of night, the majestic ocean, the rushing storm, the plenty-bearing river, the salubrious breeze, the fertile field, the docile animal tribes, the broad, the various, the unexhausted domain of nature, are a mere outward pageant, poorly understood in their character and harmony, and prized only so far as they minister to the supply of sensual wants. How different the scene to the man whose mind is stored with knowledge! For him the mystery is unfolded, the veils lifted up, as one after another he turns the leaves of that great volume of creation, which is filled in every page with the characters of wisdom, power, and love; with lessons of truth the most exalted; with images of unspeakable loveliness and wonder; arguments of Providence; food for meditation; themes of praise. One noble science sends him to the barren hills, and teaches him to survey their broken precipices.

Where ignorance beholds nothing but a rough, inorganic mass, instruction discerns the intelligible record of the primal convulsions of the world; the secrets of ages before man was; the landmarks of the elemental struggles and throes of what is now the terraqueous globe. Buried monsters, of which the races are now extinct, are dragged out of deep strata, dug out of eternal rocks, and brought almost to life, to bear witness to the power that created them.) Before the admiring student of nature has realized all the wonders of the elder world, thus, as it were, re-created by science, another delightful instructress, with her microscope in her hand, bids him sit down and learn at last to know the universe in which he lives, and contemplate the limbs, the motions, the circulations of races of animals, disporting in their tempestuous ocean, -a drop of water. Then, while his whole soul is penetrated with admiration of the power which has filled with life, and motion, and sense these all but non-existent atoms, O, then, let the divinest of the muses, let Astronomy approach, and take him by the hand; let her

"Come, but keep her wonted state,
With even step and musing gait,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Her rapt soul sitting in her eyes."

Let her lead him to the mount of vision; let her turn her heaven-piercing tube to the sparkling vault: through that let him observe the serene star of evening, and see it transformed into a cloud-encompassed orb, a world of rugged mountains and stormy deeps; or behold the pale beams of Saturn, lost to the untaught observer amidst myriads of brighter stars, and see them expand into the broad disk of a noble planet, — the seven attendant worlds, the wondrous rings,—a mighty system in itself, borne at the rate of twenty-two thousand miles an hour on its broad pathway through the heavens; and then let him reflect that our great solar system, of which Saturn and his stupendous retinue is but a small part, fills itself, in the general structure of the universe, but the space

of one fixed star; and that the power which filled the drop of water with millions of living beings, is present and active, throughout this illimitable creation! Yes, yes,

"An undevout astronomer is mad!"

But it is time to quit these sublime contemplations, and bring this address to a close. I may seem to have undertaken a superfluous labor, in pleading the cause of education. This institution, consecrated to learning and piety; these academic festivities; this favoring audience, which bestows its countenance on our literary exercises; the presence of so many young men, embarking on the ocean of life, devoted to the great interests of the rational mind and immortal soul, bear witness for me that the cause of education stands not here in need of champions. Let it be our pride, that it has never needed them among the descendants of the Pilgrims; let it be our vow, that, by the blessing of Providence, it never shall need them, so long as there is a descendant of the Pilgrims to plead its worth. Yes, let the pride of military glory belong to foreign regions; let the refined corruptions of the older world attract the traveller to its splendid capitals; let a fervid sun ripen for other states the luxuries of a tropical clime. Let it be ours to boast that we inherit a land of liberty and light; let the schoolhouse and the church continue to be the landmarks of the New England village; let the son of New England, whithersoever he may wander, leave that behind him which shall make him homesick for his native land; let freedom, and knowledge, and morals, and religion, as they are our birthright, be the birthright of our children to the end of time!

THE BATTLE OF BLOODY BROOK.*

GATHERED together in this temple not made with hands, to commemorate an important event in the early history of the country, let our first thoughts ascend to Him whose heavens are spread out as a glorious canopy above our heads. As our eyes look up to the everlasting hills which rise before us, let us remember that, in those dark and eventful days, the hand that lifted their eternal pillars to the clouds was the sole stay and support of our afflicted sires. While we contemplate the lovely scene around us, once covered with the gloomy forest and the tangled swamps through which the victims of this day pursued their unsuspecting path to the field of slaughter, let us bow in gratitude to Him, beneath whose paternal care a little one has become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation. Let us bear in thankful recollection, that at the period when the sturdy limbs of the tree which now overshadows us, hung with nature's rich and verdant tapestry, were all folded up within their seminal germ, the thousand settlements of our beloved country, teeming with life and energy, were struggling with unimagined hardships for a doubtful existence, in a score of feeble plantations scattered through the hostile wilderness. It is not alone the genial showers of the spring and the native richness of the soil which have nourished the growth of this stately The sod from which it sprung was moistened with the blood of brave men who fell for their country, and the ashes of peaceful dwellings are mingled with the consecrated earth.

tree.

Address delivered at Bloody Brook, in South Deerfield, September 30, 1835, in commemoration of the fall of the "Flower of Essex," at that spot, in King Philip's war, September 18, (O. S.,) 1675.