may yet be regarded comparatively as a dark age; compared not with the past, but with the future. For my own part, though so much enlightened compared with the past ages, I must regard the present age as dark in my anticipations of the future. lative Halls of the nation. But these are not the only offices or places of public service, of trust, or of honor. They are more than can be numbered. We yet need an immense multitude of educated men. The candidates are not here as tens to units, but as units to hundreds, or thousands compared with the wants of society. We need a hundred truly educated men for one. There are but very few upon the shelf at present; and those few that are there had, for the most part, better be placed under the ham-in part, from all unfavourable suspimer and be knocked off to the highest bidder. Then we should endeavour to get up a better article. The proportion between educated and uneducated mind is yet really alarming. I fear the responsibility of taking upon me either to estimate it or to express an opinion on the subject. I will, therefore, shield myself, at least cions, by selecting, next to our own, of course, the most enlightened nation in the world, and give you the opinion You understand me, no doubt, to of her attainments, expressed by one indicate the idea that we must have of her most popular, useful, and laself-edueated men, and that you are borious sons, very generally known to now only prepared to become your our fellow-citizens; with whom in my own tutors. You can now act, and late tour I formed a very favorable you must act, both preceptor and acquaintance, and of whom I have pupil. Collegiate education can go long cherished a very high opinion. no farther-never yet went farther Let us hear what Dr. Dick says of than to qualify a man to teach himself. his own Scotland; and, if you please, Like an apprenticed youth when he what the late Frederick, king of lifts his indentures, you have merely Prussia, said of any of the most enacquired the use of the tools of litera-lightened nations on the European ture, science, and art. To-day you continent :are enrolled amongst the Bachelors of Arts. Before your espousals with literature and science you may have a courtship of several years, and even then you will not be old bachelors. Still I confess I am in favor of early marriages, provided only they are equally and suitably consummated. Be not alarmed, gentlemen, about places. Say not that electricity and steam will rule the world and vacate the wants of society; or that no new discoveries are yet wanting to raise man to the highest niche he was ordained to fill. In my opinion, neither Galvanism nor Mesmerism, neither Owenism nor Fourierism, neither Homopathy nor Alliopathy, neither rail roads nor electric telegraphs, will regenerate the world or save mankind from ignorance and crime, from disease and poverty. The terra incognita is yet very large. This "There is, perhaps, no country in the world where the body of the people are better educated and more intelligent than in North Britain; yet we need not go far, either in the city or in the country, to be convinced that the most absurd and superstitious notions, and the grossest ignorance respecting many important subjects intimately connected with human happiness, still prevail anong the great majority of the population. Of two millions of inhabitants which consti tute the population of the northern part of our island, there are not, perhaps, twenty thousand, or the hun dredth part of the whole, whose knowledge extends to any subject of importance beyond the range of their daily avocations. With respect to the remaining 1,800,000, it may, perhaps, be said with propriety, that, of the figure and magnitude of the world they live in-of the seas and rivers, continents and islands, which diversify its surface, and of the various tribes of men and animals by which it is inhabited-of the nature and properties of the atmosphere which surrounds it -of the discoveries which have been made respecting, light, heat, electricity, and magnetism—of the general laws which regulate the economy of nature of the various combinations and effects of chemical and mechanical powers of the motions and magnitudes of the planetary and starry orbs of the principles of legitimate reasoning-of just conceptions of the attributes and moral government of the Supreme Being-of the genuine principles of moral action-of many other subjects interesting to a rational and immortal being, they are almost as entirely ignorant as the wandering Tartar or the untutored Indian. "Of eight hundred millions of human beings which people the globe we inhabit, there are not, perhaps, two millions whose minds are truly enlightened as they ought to be; who prosecute rational pursuits for their own sake, and from a pure love of science, independently of the knowledge requisite for their respective professions and employments; for we must exclude from the rank of rational inquirers after knowledge, all those who have acquired a smattering of learning with no other view than to gain a subsistence, or to appear fashionable and polite. And, if this rule be admitted, I am afraid that a goodly number even of lawyers, physicians, clergymen, teachers-nay, even some authors and professors in universities and academies, would be struck off from the list of lovers of science and rational inquirers after truth. Admitting this statement, it follows that there is not one individual out of four hundred of the human race, that passes his life as a rational intelligent being, employing his faculties in those trains of thought and active exercises which are worthy of an intellectual nature. For, in so far as the intention of mankind is, absorbed merely in making provision for animal subsistence and in gratifying the sensual appetites of their nature, they can be considered as little superior in dignity to the lower orders of animated existence." The late Frederick, king of Prussia, who was a correct observer of mankind, makes a still lower estimate of the actual intelligence of the species. In a letter to D'Alembert, in 1770, he says. "Let us take any monarchy you please; let us suppose that it contains ten millions of inhabitants: from these ten millions let us discount, first, the laborers, the manufacturers, the artizans, the soldiers, and there will remain about fifty thousand persons, men and women from these let us discount twenty-five thousand for the female sex; the rest will compose the nobility and gentry, and the respectable citizens. Of these let us examine how many will be incapable of application, how many imbecile, how many pusillanimous, how many dissipated; and from this calculation it will result, that, out of what is called a civilized nation of nearly ten millions, you will hardly find a thousand well informed persons: and, even among them, what inequality with regard to genius! If eighttenths of the nation, toiling for their subsistence, never read; if another tenth are incapable of application from frivolity, or dissipation, or imbecility, it results that the small share of good sense of which our species is capable, can only reside in a small fraction of a nation.' "Such," continues Dr. Dick, was the estimate made by this philosophic monarch of the intelligence possessed by the nations of Europe sixty years ago; and although society has considerably advanced in intellectual acquisitions since that period, the great body of the people, in every nation, is still shrouded in the midst of folly and ignorance. "Such a picture of the intellectual dors of true science, learning, humanity, and religion. So long as duelling, fighting, and enslaving one another to royal and lordly masters—ecclesiastic, political, and financial, are yet in high esteem, approved, and lauded by men professing to be the sons of civil that is not beguiled by a false philosophy, can regard a people so thinking, speaking, acting, as yet fully enlightened, civilized, and evangelized by the Christian religion? I have long since and often said, that probably in one, two, or three centuries more, posterity will talk of us as we now talk of the children of the dark ages. state of mankind must, when seriously considered, excite a melancholy train of reflections in the breast both of the philanthropist and the man of science. That such a vast assemblage of beings furnished with powers capable of investigating the laws of nature-of determining the arrangement, the mo-ization and Christian morality; who, tions, and magnitudes of distant worlds of weighing the masses of the planets-of penetrating into the distant regions of the universe-of arresting the lightning in its course of exploring the pathless ocean and the region of the clouds, and of rendering the most stubborn elements of nature subservient to their designs. That beings capable of forming a sublime intercourse with the Creator himself, and of endless progression in knowledge and felicity, should have their minds almost wholly absorbed in eating and drinking, in childish and cruel sports and diversions, and in butchering one another, seems, at first view, a tacit reflection on the wisdom of the Creator in bestowing on our race such noble powers, and plainly indicates that the current of human intellect has widely deviated from its pristine course, and that strong and reiterated efforts are now requisite to restore it to its original channel. Every lover of science and of mankind must, therefore, feel in-myself. terested in endeavouring to remove obstructions which have impeded the progress of useful knowledge, and to direct the intellectual energies of his fellow-men to the prosecution of objects worthy of the high station they hold in the scale of existence." I am really sorry, gentlemen, to be constrained to say that such is my own opinion of the present condition of the human race; and so far an I from coming to the conclusion that we have yet a truly enlightened or a truly civilized nation in the world. I must regard our own age and country as merely in the twilight of Christian and philosophical illumination, rather than as basking in the meridian splen Every thing around is, indeed, in progress-rapid progress. The moral conditions of society alone are stationary or retrograding. If riches, honor, science, and learning, could make the world more virtuous, pure, and happy, we would urge the prosecution of these objects. But unfortunately the history of the world, as well as the developments of the Bible, will not allow us to expect any better fruits from their labors and their results than they have already furnished. When including science and learning with riches and honor, as not tending to improve the social or moral relations of society, I must define Science and learning, dissociated from Christian religion and morality, are very different from science and learning associated with them. In the latter case they are a great blessing in the former case, rather a curse than a blessing. What was the tendency of the science, learning, and talents of a Spinoza, a Hobbes, a Voltaire, a Gibbon, a Hume, or of a Volney, less virulent but more insinuating and dangerous on that account than they. Perhaps I may be censured for associating these men of renown with science at all. Learning they hal, but science they had not, say the modern enlightened majority. I will not, however, debate these nice points. I speak after the manner of men. Talents, learning, and science, falsely so called, they may have had, though they were neither Bacons nor Newtons, neither Lockes nor Stewarts, not one of them a Benjamin Franklin or a Sir Humphrey Davy. Still they had learning and influence to contaminate depraved millions, while a few good and great men can seldom raise and ennoble a few hundreds or thousands of their race. Still, to redeem one of our race, is a greater, nobler, and more divine work and aspiration than to damn a million. But I have already transcended my prescribed limits, and will only add, that, to work on the moral constitution of man, to raise, reform, and ennoble him, is, in my opinion, the most desirable, useful, honorable, and godlike employment on earth. The agriculturist, the manufacturer, the mechanic, are all useful men. I mean their calling is useful and honorable. They are so in the aggregate: they are so in the detail. Who could dispense with the hatter, the tailor, or the cordwainer? While the hatter takes the heads of men, and the cordwainer their feet under his special care and protection--and the tailor, still more benevolent, the whole body-none of these is either so indispensable, or so useful to society, consequently not so honorable as the schoolmaster. There is a true scale by which we truly appreciate men's standing in society, as well as a false one. "Act well your part-there all the honor lies," is, indeed, a good maxim from a polished poet, who smoothly says "Fortune in me has some small difference made: This being conceded and who doubts it ? we only ask, do you not, young gentlemen, aspire to usefulness and happiness to the luxury of doing good? Whatever, then, be your calling whether you cultivate the soil or direct the state-whether you spend your days in the profession of science or of some useful art—you must, in all the social relations of life, give all your influence and example in favor of an enlightened understanding, a good conscience, and a pure heart. But we may advance one step farther, and say, Should any of you, attracted by a celestial magnet and guided by a light from above, ambitiously look into the distance of ages to come, far beyond the limits of earth and time, to a holier and a happier clime, panting after an object full of glory, honor, and immortality, commensurate with the dimensions of your nature and with the grandeur, riches, and glory of the universe; then, and in that case, we say, seize with a firm and unwavering grasp the telescope of faith, and place before your mental vision the grand circles of a blissful eternity-triumphing in the fullness of joy, participating in all the rapturous transports of eternal pleasure, yourself invested with unfading youth, beauty, and loveliness; and then, I doubt not, you will set about forming a class of humble though aspiring candidates for these eternal honors and rewards. If you cannot find them amongst the higher castes of fallen humanity, I know you will seek them wherever you may find them, if not in the palaces of the great and noble of this world, you will find them amongst the fallen outcasts and downtrodden of humanity, even in the sordid huts of cheerless poverty-you will stoop to conquer, and ransomed men will be your prize! This is sound wisdom and unfading honor. Success in this enterprize is eternal wealth and blessedness. If, then, you have faith, courage, and a holy ambition, an ample field lies before you-Apostles, prophets, martyrs, are your fellow-laborers. If with them you encounter the perils and endure the toils, with them you HOW SHALL I ACT MY PART? Shall I be foremost on the field, And there the gleaming falchion wield, The mourner's ranks to fill. Or if I at Go I's altar stand To breathe a faithless prayer, If I do stand in lordly state And lift my voice in high debate Will God look down in kindest love Or with the proud physician's part THE Westminster Assembly's Catechism states, that "God having out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace to deliver them out of an estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer." This is, indeed, respect of persons—a flat and palpable contradiction of the testimony "that there is no respect of persons with God." Let God be true, though every Assembly be a liar. To get rid of the plain testimony of God in our motto, it is said that here it is meant that there is no respect of Jews more than Gentiles with God. But mark the divine testimony it refers to PERSONS; as also in Acts x. 34, "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. The doctrine of personal election receives a death-blow from these two quotations, for there cannot be greater respect of persons than arbitrarily to choose some to heaven, and leave others to sink into woe. Those who are unable to argue down all the passages which are adduced in favor of the doctrine that God is partial, will find Rom. ii. 11, and Acts x. 34, to be an axe which cuts by the roots limited atonement, personal election, and special influences of the Spirit in order to conversion. The principles on which the world shall be judged are distinctly stated in Rom. ii. 1-16, Mat. xxv. 31-46. Let us all read and consider. Though Calvinism is thus demolished, we shall comment upon a few of the passages most frequently quoted in support of it. Mat. xxii. 14, "Many are called, but few chosen." EKLEKETOS is the word rendered chosen it is defined-1st, chosen, elect; 2nd, favored, chosen to "We love God because he first loved us, and gave peculiar privileges or blessings; 3rd, In serving whom I will; And thus I send my name abroad How will it plead my cause with God? O, let me stand as Jesus stood "GOD IS LOVE." his only begotten Son to be the propitiation for our sins." There is no respect of persons with God."ROM. ii. 11. - : accepted, approved, excellent. The scope of the passage distinctly proves |