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If in your intercourse with men you receive injurious treatment, prudence, as well as the principles of Christianity, requires that you neither overrate the injury, nor return it with severity,While you are viewed as a sufferer, others will take an interest in your favor. But, if you take ample revenge, exaggerate, or blazon the offence which you have received, the public will feel little compassion, but will suffer yourself and your adversary to settle the affair at your leisure.

Whatever profession you may respectively pursue, you will not cease to be members of the State. As such you are bound to feel for the public prosperity, and to cherish an ardent affection for that free constitution, under which we have the happiness to live. The difference between a free and an absolute government, does not consist in this, that there is more restraint in the one, than in the other; but in this rather, that, in the latter case, restraint is created by fear and physical force-in the former, by reason and enlightened morality. In proportion, therefore, as you aid the interests of sound learning, virtue, and piety, you strengthen the only foundation, on which a republic can be supported.

But, young gentlemen, you are not only members of civil society, but of a Christian nation. Something, therefore, you well know, is at hazard, more valuable than your own temporal interest, or even than that of the community. Whether you are sedate or volatile, pious or profane, one fact is well established a revelation has been made from the immutable God; a revelation, which, under the sanction of eternal consequences, requires every man to be a Christian, and every Christian more nearly to resemble his Master: Because God hath appointed a day, in which he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead. This revelation with all its features, whether of mildness or severity, I do most affectionately entreat you to receive, revere, and obey; in the full persuasion, that he was divinely inspired, who said: I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord.

Among the fascinating scenes of this day, it has not, I hope, escaped your recollection, that one of those, who took part in the exercises of the last commencement, survived that occasion but a few months. The fatal disorder, it now appears, had, at that time, without exciting alarm, commenced the attack, which ended in victory. A conquest of the same kind must, when God pleases, be obtained over us. Remember that nothing in life is so interesting, or certain, as the close of it. Let your anticipations and purposes be of great extent and comprehension. Let them reach to all the successions of eternity. Let them embrace all that is glorious in the Christian salvation.

* Dudley Norris,

ADDRESS,

DELIVERED AT THE COMMENCEMENT IN 1818.

Young Gentlemen,

As power and obligation are correlative terms, to know the measure of our duty, it is requisite to examine our abilities, and the extent, to which they may be brought into beneficent action. Our obligations are commensurate, not merely with our powers, (whether physical or intellectual); but with these in connexion with opportunities of exerting them for the promotion of virtue and human enjoyment.

It will not, therefore, be foreign to the present occasion, to contemplate the influence, which persons, liberally educated, have in society; and the importance, which is by consequence attached to their characters.

A large portion of those, who receive a collegial education, enter on what are denominated the learned professions. To estimate their importance in society, it is, therefore, necessary to consider the nature and influence of these professions, together with the proportion and standing of those, who, in each of them, were previously instructed in some of our public seminaries.

I well know, that there are those, to whom a college catalogue gives their only distinction. There are others too, and those in no inconsiderable number, who, by a vigor of intellect, which no circumstances can repress, and an ardor of application, which no difficulties can discourage, make ample amends for

the want of literary advantages in early life, and justly claim the notice, confidence, and gratitude of the public.

This obvious fact notwithstanding, it is still true, that the influence, exerted in the community, by those, whose intellectual habits were first formed in our public institutions, has an intimate connexion with individual happiness and national character.

We begin with counsellors at law. In the large number of those, who, from the first settlement of New England, have arrived at eminence in this profession, imagine the non-existence of all, whose youth was consecrated to literature, and who were prepared by public education for professional studies; there will doubtless still remain characters of much distinction and great merit. But, who does not perceive the chasm of hideous extent, implied in the supposition, which has now been made?

In all the momentous discussions concerning the principles of government, and the establishment of civil constitutions, which the state of political science, and the condition of our infant country, have rendered numerous ;-in questions, relative to the greatest degree of freedom, compatible with established authority; or the least individual restraint, that is consistent with public security;-in legislative assemblies, where boundaries, provisions and exceptions, are necessarily attached to every act of legislation;—but especially, in expounding the law, and administering public justice; in maintaining the dignity of civil tribunals, and securing confidence to their decisions :-in all these respects, how extensive and salutary has been the influence of the legal profession, and of that class of professional men to which we allude.

But these subjects, you perceive, comprehend all that is implied in the civil state. They relate to life, property, and morals; to every thing, indeed, for which man consents to relinquish the freedom of nature. There is no family, however obscure, there is no member of the community, whose happiness and safety are not dependent on the constitution, under which be lives, the statutes, that are enacted, and the impartiality and promptness, with which justice is administered.

Our dependence on the medical profession is too obvious and

too sensibly felt, to require proof.

While frailty, disease, and

death, remain, the assiduous and well informed physician can never cease to occupy a conspicuous place in public estimation. The proportion of those, who have not accomplished the prescribed course of college studies, is, perhaps, somewhat greater in this profession, than in either of the other two.

But, if the number of physicians publicly educated were small, such has not been their influence in the medical fraternity :such has not been their usefulness to the public. They have been among the first to project and organize medical establishments; to check empiricism and unprincipled temerity,-to encourage laborious study;-to bring into repute that candid, open, and philosophical practice, and that readiness to admit into the healing art the happy discoveries of modern science, which have raised the medical profession to its present high degree of respectability.

Reckoning from the earliest periods in our history, the preachers of religion have, with few exceptions, been educated at public institutions. This has resulted from the learning, judgment, and piety, for which so many among the venerated fathers of New England, whether of the clergy or laity, rendered themselves distinguished. The establishment of Harvard College, at so early a period; when the country in general was a vast wilderness; when wealth was almost unknown; when dangers were forever impending; and the tenure of life peculiarly frail; evinces a generosity of spirit, intellectual comprehension, enlargement of views, and boldness of design, which their descendants should never contemplate, without gratitude and admiration. Their object was to have a State, free, virtuous, enlightened, and well governed;-a church, exemplary and evangelical: a ministry, learned, pious, and venerable.

For many reasons, the influence of a Christian teacher depends much, under God, on the soundness of his mind and the solidity of his knowledge. It will readily be perceived, that he cannot, without great disadvantage, be unacquainted with subVOL. II.

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