12 



Franklin tamed the lightnings of heaven, what conception had he 

 of the glorious functions it was to execute for the benefit of man-? 

 How little do even we yet know of the capabilities of this mysterious 

 agency? What we call thought is the product of the mysterious 

 working of the human intellect, invisible, intangible, incomprehen- 

 sible and useless, save only to their possessor, until clothed in lan- 

 guage or embodied in substantial forms. In man's capacity for 

 thought and expression of thought, lies his chief claim to superiority, 

 and through its instrumentality must he fulfill his divinely appointed 

 mission to subdue and have dominion over the earth. Every step 

 he has taken, every advance he has made toward the accomplish- 

 ment of this high purpose, has been the result of the exercise of this 

 God given and God-like power, and its embodiment in one form of 

 expression and another, forms the record of his achievements and 

 constitutes the criterion of his success. It matters not whether these 

 thoughts have found expression in the complicated machine, the 

 lofty dome or glittering minnaret, whether they speak from the 

 canvass, the living page, or the chiseled marble, they measure alike 

 the progress of a people and the civilization of an age. We desig- 

 nate an age as Golden or Brazen, as Speculative or Utilitarian, 

 according to the predominant thoughts and characteristics of each 

 as they have come down to us through the medium of their different 

 forms and modes of expression. 



Ours has been denominated the Utilitarian, the Practical, the 

 Material age. It is indeed not only one, but all of these. The pre- 

 vailing currents of human thought and human activity are the 

 practical, the useful, the material. Their multitudinous forms of 

 expression are found graven upon the solid earth and coursing in 

 the air we breathe, in the physical comforts and conveniences which 

 surround us, and in the general uplifting of the people to a higher 

 plane of social, moral and intellectual existence. No age has even, 

 equalled ours in the grandeur of its intellectual achievements and 

 the magnitude of its material development. Go where you will, 

 enter whatsoever domain of thought and knowledge you please, and 

 everywhere you will behold the most unceasing mental activity 

 crowned with the most astonishing results; results, too, in the main 

 conducive to the benefit, the improvement, and the elevation of man. 

 Truly ours is the utilitarian age the age which is practically exempli- 

 fying the doctrine " that the greatest happiness of the greatest num- 

 ber should be the end and aim of all social and political institutions." 



Yoiii'.g gentlemen, these are some of the characteristics of the age 

 in which we live, in which you are to act your several parts, in 



