of the great mass of the community, is the point towards which all efforts should be directed, and to which all institutions should tend. It is the great object, not only of human effort, but of providential power. We behold it advancing in the course of events; and in the signs of the times read the celestial promise of its accomplishment. It is a good and joyous thing to see springing up among the poor themselves, those qualified for their instructors. From that class must their instructors come; those with whom they feel sympathy, those whom they know to be acquainted with all the sad realities of their condition, and who speak to them in the strong and glowing language of personal experience. Such men as Ebenezer Elliot,-such men as many of those whose pens are employed in cheap publications, these are the men; these are the men whose voices will be heard by their fellows; these are the men who in the rise of their own intellect are raising the intellects of all their brethren, who will find their way to their minds, who will find their way to their hearts; while those who have what is called a better education, a seeming superiority and strength, but in this case the source of real weakness and inefficiency, may play about it and about it, and ever fail of accomplishing the purpose which they most earnestly desire. Thank God for raising up such! And what does Providence in raising them up? It is not merely that a poor man like Robert Burns, or Ebenezer Elliot, should gain literary renown; not merely that he should inscribe the name of the ploughman or the iron-worker upon the roll of those who are admitted into the temple of fame, and whose statues wear the everlasting bays or laurel; but for this-more effectually to raise the class to which they belong, the great class of the nation, and in that to raise the entire community eventually, another grade in the scale of being. And this is the object of all individual greatness, whether existing in our own time and country, or whether belonging to the records of history; it has all a bearing on the extended enlightenment and well being of the most numerous class, and through that of humanity. When God breathes the spirit of maritime adventure into man's bosom, and incites his mind with dreams of other regions which may lie beyond unexplored oceans; when he leads him to contemplate, and speculate upon, the distribution of earth and sea, upon the diversified surface of the globe, and acquaint him with traditions of those who in past times, blown by the winds have made, and left traces of, some rich yet unimproved discoveries, which a fortunate successor may restore or rival; and when he sends forth a Columbus to the discovery of America, it is not that his name shall be repeated with admiration from age to age; it is that by the creation, almost, of a new world, there should be an asylum for oppressed humanity in the old world; that there should be good done to all human beings; and that the great mass of the people, from generation to generation, should look back to him as one who was part of a mighty plan by which they are wiser, better, happier, and more hopeful than they could ever else have been. So when God stimulates the patriot,-when he inflames a man with that holy fire which impels him to devote all his energies, mental and bodily, and to peril or sacrifice life, for the deliverance of his country,-when he arms him with wise forethought and capacity of combination which may enable the rawest materials to conflict with mighty hosts of armed veterans; when he creates a Washington, it is not that the patriot may rear a venerated name, and that generation after generation may look to him, and imbibe from him the impulse to do something for the abolition of tyranny, and the extension of human freedom, but that through the liberty thus achieved,-that through the abasement of despotism thus foiled and baffled,that through the fair and equal institutions thus built up, the great mass of humanity may be raised higher in the scale of being and happy existence. So when a philosopher traces in the combinations of science new principles bearing in a thousand different ways on theoretical and practical truth; or when the discoverer applies those principles to works of art and to the manufacture of the necessaries of life; when by one of these agencies after another, invention is brought to such a pitch as to threaten (as has been sometimes unwisely apprehended) the expulsion of human labor—rather say the happy substitution for it, of the labor of metals, wood and of the elements; it is not merely that the name of Davy or of Watt should be given to posterity with all due applause, but it is by inventions such as theirs the amount of human good should be multiplied, and the great mass of society be conducted, by means of its increased conveniences, to the advancement of its physical enjoyments, of its mental and moral condition, and a fresh impulse be given to the progress of humanity. This is the plan of Providence, alike with individual agencies, and with the events of history, or of revelation. For this the tendencies to social union are planted in our constitutions, and conducted through their successive developements. For this men are impelled to all the forms of society; first the family and the household, then that of the city, then that of the nation and the empire. It is for this they are guided through the gradations which conduet them from the savage condition to the arts and knowledge and refinement of the highest state of civilization; it is that the state of the great mass of society may be ameliorated-that the physical, the intellectual, and the moral condition of the most numerous class may be improved indefinitely. Yea, when God gives religion to the world,-when he touches the tongue of the pleader for piety and morals with a live coal from the altar, as it were, and enables him to reach the heart and touch the feelings of those whom he addresses,— when he inspires him to unfold the truths that connect the present with futurity, and the visible with the invisible, it is not that this or that man should be canonized as a saint, nor that these feelings and emotions be rested in; but it is, that tracing all the grandeur of the prospect, and feeling all the benignity of its influence, there should be an elevation of humanity in the scale of being, by the powers of the world to come operating on the thoughts and feelings of this world; and thus something more be done, and that the last and greatest achievement, for sustaining the dignity and ensuring the eternally progressive happiness of universal humanity, beneath the smile of its Almighty Parent. |