37 



there shall be a triumph of truth and justice ! Continue 

 then, not only to encourage hopes of high stations in 

 these moral and intellectual casts, but to deserve them. 

 Explore, industriously, the mines of knowledge to 

 which your studies here introduce you; and dispense 

 their treasures with patient and generous labors to 

 your fellow men. 



Gentlemen, I would leave an important part of my 

 task undone, were 1 to close without reminding you, 

 that however valuable may be the knowledge we have 

 been conriidering, integrity is the best of its fruits. — 

 Your pursuits have made you acquainted with many 

 eminent men of ancient and modern times. Among 

 them all we see a kw looming out from the darkness 

 of ages of ignorance and crime, whose memories, men 

 regard with most pious reverence. Are they war- 

 riors, stained with the blood of many conquests; poli' 

 ticians, famous for Machiavellian falsehood and treach- 

 ery ; are they orators who have prostituted eloq^aence 

 to purposes of oppression and injustice; judges who 

 have sold the highest attribute of virtue ; priests, who 

 have cheated religion of its vestments to mask the 

 w^orst practices 1 Not so — they are those, who, like the 

 pious and humble Stilling, have gone about, active in 

 the business of devoting their talents to the good of 

 men, physically and morally ; fearless in doing right, 

 crying Jehovah Jireh — Like Socrates, justly called 

 the most religious, the most virtuous, the most happy 

 of men. I pity the man who can rise from the con- 

 templation of this noble character, and not wish he 

 w^ere a better man. Condemned, as you remember, on 

 the falsehood of Melitus, he left the court for his prison, 

 manifesting no alteration in his countenance or gait. 



