be your first and grand object to possess the christian temper, to feel the power of evangelical principles. Let the lives, which you live in the flesh, be influenced and cultivated by your faith in the Son of God. If you embrace genuine christianity, whatever profession you pursue, it will make you more happy, more useful, more consistent, and uniform. It places before you the noblest objects, it requires you to act from the most elevated motives; it promises to the obedient, thrones and kingdoms, which can never be removed.

Next to the great concern of securing peace with God, I would recommend it to you, to have some profession, at least, some object, some pursuit distinctly in view. This will give stability, and tend to concentrate your intellectual efforts. While you pursue, with unremitting resolution, some important object, and rigidly adhere to whatever you believe to be the will of your Maker, cultivate suavity of temper, urbanity of manners, and, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. There is not an individual, belonging to our species, whose convenience and feelings are to be wholly disregarded.

Finally, let me remind you of the great number of those, who will, with lively interest, witness your deportment. The patrons of this institution deplore

the irregularity, and

who pertain to it.

rejoice in the virtues, of all, The immediate Government

unite with yours, their own happiness and honour. Your parents feel an anxiety, which can neither be expressed by them, nor repaid by you. Individual benefactors, and a generous legislature, will examine the fruit of a tree, planted by their care, nourished and refreshed by their repeated acts of liberality.

But there is a witness, whose attention you cannot for a moment avoid. His approbation or censure will be expressed to you, not only before the individuals, who compose this assembly, but, before an assembled universe. For "I saw," said the exile of Patmos, "I" saw the dead, both small and great, stand before "God; and the books were opened, and the dead "judged out of the things written in the books."

ADDRESS,

DELIVERED AT THE COMMENCEMENT IN 1809.

Young Gentlemen,

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IN your character of members of this seminary, I now address you for the last time: nor, considering the frailty and casualties of human life, is it unreasonable to reflect, that even your small number may never return to this place. If it should, I am not unmindful of another event, which may render communications from me equally impossible.

Το possess intellectual natures is your privilege, and perhaps your pride. But, there is no privilege, which does not imply corresponding obligation. Your rational powers have already been a source both of pleasure and of pain. You have had enjoyments and sufferings, the very existence of which

implied intelligence. This rational nature, whether it continue ten years, or ten thousand, will be uniform in rendering its possessor susceptible of happiness or misery.

Man sees a difference in moral actions. He sees, that a certain course ought to be pursued, and that deviations from such a course ought to be condemned. It is impossible that perception of right should not produce uneasiness in him, who is conscious of being wrong. Nor is it less impossible, that self approbation and joy should not arise in the heart, when duty and moral character are perceived to be coincident.

If the difference between right and wrong be clearly discerned by intelligent creatures; much more is it discerned by Him, who is the source of intelligence. Nor can it be conceived, that while this difference is clearly in the view of our Creator, there should not be a corresponding difference in the treatment, received from him by his rational offspring. Nothing, but the want of power, can prevent a being of moral rectitude from manifesting his affection for virtue, and his opposition to vice. A man of real virtue has assurance, therefore, that his Maker views him with complacency: the transgressor, must on the same ground, adopt, in regard to himself, a contrary conclusion Nor