No. 244.] 269 



most exaltation of man as an individual, and the cultivation of the 

 mutual honor of man for man, in proportion, not to the adventitious 

 contingencies of his birth, but to the moral and mental attainments 

 which he acquires for himself, and the benefits of which, in their 

 exercise, he bestows upon others? When Christianity condemns and 

 humbles, it addresses that in man which dishonors and destroys his 

 race; when it approves and exalts, it speaks to that which elevates, 

 adoins and enriches the human family in all its relations. Nothing 

 more distinguishes the christian system than this — its tendency to 

 elevate the condition of man — to acknowledge and honor the varied 

 powers and the individual skill which the Creator has imparted to 

 men, to encourage their exercise, to cultivate their operation, and to 

 open and prepare, in its general influence upon society, the widest 

 possible field for their honorable and successful display. It is not 

 only the fact, that all the arts and improvements of civilization fol- 

 low in its trai:i, so that its history may be WTitten in the present 

 benefits which it has conferred upon mankind; but this progress in 

 human improvement has originated from itself, and is seen in its ex- 

 hibition, just in the degree in which the principles of justice, liberty 

 and truth, which this divine system teaches, are acknowledged and 

 established among men. The whole history of the prosperity of our 

 country, whether general or sectional, will bear out to a demonstra- 

 tion, the assertion, that not to soil or climate, or sea or land, or 

 zones or temperatures, or valleys or mountains, or rivers, are we in- 

 debted for the wonderful display of genius and skill, and industry 

 and resulting wealth, by which our nation has been marked, but to 

 the elevating influence of christian education upon youthful minds, 

 and upon the society in which they have been trained, dignifying as 

 the most honorable condition of man, free labor upon a free soil; 

 making the cunning artificer a perfect equal to the eloquent orator; 

 exalting the head that has humbly bent, through many a toilsome 

 day, over the bench of industry, to preside with a dignity which 

 commands united reverence upon the bench of judgment; and lead- 

 ing the feet that have followed through many a weary furrow^ in the 

 field, to stand on a level with statesmen in the councils of the na- 

 tion. 



There is that, in all the influences and promises of this system of 

 heavenly light, which is precisely adapted to excite man to stir up 

 the gift that it in him, to make him feel that he was made to serve 

 no master but God — to call him out to the utmost eflfort, in mental 

 competition, for the improvement of his race — to make him deem 

 himself inferior to no undertaking to which the line of his manifest 



