Page images
PDF
EPUB

INTRODUCTION.

IN examining and controverting the opinions of celebrated authors, true dignity and independence of mind, call for a tone of feeling, which it is less difficult to conceive than to describe, and far less difficult to describe, than to adopt and maintain.

To treat with levity or irreverence the buried benefactors of mankind, the disembodied and immortal spirits, the tutelary and beneficent minds, to whose genius, philanthropy, and wisdom, we owe a debt immense of endless gratitude:"

To treat with levity or irreverence, the departed luminaries of the world; to utter their very names without homage; to survey the sculptured symbols of their mortality, without holy awe, and pious affection, betrays not only an inglorious and grovelling, but a mean and malignant spirit. Their very names are hallowed, their sepulchres are inviolable!

"Even in their ashes live their wonted fires."

"Vile," most vile

"Is the vengeance on the ashes cold,"

and "base," most base, is the envy,

"That barks at sleeping fame."

To the words and to the actions of the illustrious dead, we are consciously indebted for whatever gives the age in which we live a claim to superiority, and the state of sob

ciety in which we are born, a title to preference: For whatever exalts our condition above that of our progenitors or contemporaries: for whatever endears or ennobles. our existence: for whatever best asserts, or most worthily supports the dignity of human nature: for whatever enables man to maintain dominion in the world we inhabit.

But truth must not be sacrificed to admiration; justice to gratitude; nor duty to affection.

Rational beings, because they are rational, must "admire with knowledge."

Reverence for the memory of the illustrious dead, must not degenerate into idolatry; gratitude for their services into blindness to their errors; or veneration for their virtues, into an oblivion of the imperfection and corruption of fallible and fallen man.

Truth alone has a claim to our unqualified acquiescence, and the God of truth only, is entitled to our adoration.

It is only by detecting and exposing error, and the errors into which the greatest and the best of mortals have been betrayed, (because their errors are most likely to be authoritative and seductive,) that we can advance in that progressive improvement, in which man, " in sight of mortal and immortal powers," is destined" to run

"The great career of JUSTICE."

The intellectual and moral improvement of mankind, is the most precious of all sublunary things: This improvement can be advanced only: Advanced! This improvement essentially consists, in the detection of received errors; in the discovery and development of truths previously unknown to the most exalted and enlightened of our progenitors; or, in the wiser and more beneficial application of the truths, which they have immortalized their names by discovering and perpetuating.

If we conceive our ancestors, at any previous stage of intellectual improvement, to have shut the book of inquiry, and adopted with blind admiration and unreasoning reverence, the opinions of the wisest and best of mortals, who had lived before them: From that era!

Human reason in "dim eclipse," would have "shed disastrous twilight," not "o'er half," but o'er all the na

tions:

It is, as if we conceive the sun to set, to rise no more, and that we were condemned henceforth, to grope our way, through the "dim spot," then dim indeed! "which men call earth," by artificial light, and ripen its fruits by culinary fire.

"Like bubbles on the sea of matter born," " we rise, we break, and" (the best and greatest, as well as the worst and least of mortals,)" to that sea return."

The genius and the wisdom of our progenitors, resemble the beacons that guide the mariner to the haven of safety, or the buoys that warn him to shun the devouring quicksand, and the latent rock.

But truth, alone, like orbs of heaven, sheds its inextinguishable and blessed light o'er the surface, and governs the flux and reflux of that trackless, fathomless, and shoreless sea; imparts polarity to the magnet, salubrity to the atmosphere, and transibility to the ocean; cheers the despondence, revives the hope, and tempers the fortitude of the mariner, amidst every casuality of fortune, and every vicissitude of the winds and waves: under the storm of adversity, the night of ignorance, and the eclipse of super

stition.

To the intellectual, and consequently to the moral improvement of mankind, we are one and all, each according to his place, capacity, cultivation, and opportunities, bound to contribute.

This is a debt which no individual can discharge for

another, because it is due from each to all: which can never be overpaid, because the quota of contribution increases with the ability of the contributor; the payment of which can never be burdensome, because in discharging it, the individual performs his most important duties, personal as well as social; most truly consults his interest in time, and through eternity; most certainly secures happiness here and hereafter; most successfully asserts his claim to glory, present and posthumous.

Man and woman, who thus act their parts, and perform their duties, may defy, calmly defy! the united hostility of earth, and death, and hell, to invalidate their titles to a place amongst the benefactors of their species.

Science has been often likened to a hill: The allegory is in many respects, appropriate and happy. Gifted and ruling minds, in every succeeding generation, ought to ascend a step higher along that steep ascent, on whose sightless summit, things grander and more precious than suns and stars, rest their stupendous weight.

In ascending, the sphere of mental vision widens: truth sheds abroad a clearer and more unclouded light. He therefore, who occupies a higher station may see farther, with a feebler, and more distinctly, with a coarser vision, than those who occupy inferior stations.

A more enlarged horizon implies not a keener, or a clearer sight, but a more elevated position.

To the adventurous spirit, to the noble enterprise, to the indefatigable industry and perseverance of our ancestors, in ascending this "holy hill;" we are indebted for that very superiority of position, which enables us to comprehend an ampler and more diversified intellectual prospect.

In earnestly observing, and profoundly meditating, comparing and connecting the new objects that successively arrest attention, or former and even familiar objects, which are more distinctly unveiled; in detecting and exposing the

« PreviousContinue »