nating from us invisibly, and which, like light, will penetrate to the utmost limits of the earth, becoming both visible and tangible in the great and beneficent results produced. And this we are now doing to the nations of the Old World—teaching them a new class of truths, moral and political, which these statesmen, philosophers, bishops and popes never knew and never taught.
Where will this mighty influence, now issuing from us like ten thousand diverging rays of light from a common centre—where, I ask, will it stop? and what power can stop it? Not the power of man, and certainly not the power of God, for it is his work and his purpose. Man cannot stop it, and God will not. Call it what you may—aggression, annexation, usurpation, everything known in the vocabulary of monarchists and conservatists—the same things—Liberty heeds them not, stops not to answer them or argue with them. She has a vocabulary of her own, containing her own terms, her own ideas, and her own principles of action. She is aggressive; all truth is so, Christianity is so; and God, the author of them, is no less. Christianity is at eternal war with falsehood, impiety and superstition; nor will she lay by her panoply of war until the last territory of falsehood, superstition and impiety is reclaimed, redeemed and annexed to her pure, pacific and holy domain. Truth of every kind is aggressive, and will not cease her acts of aggression and usurpation until the whole realm of error is subdued and annexed to hers. And liberty, too, is aggressive—oh yes, most aggressive—warring and will war against oppression and wrong; nor will she cease her acts of usurpation until the last throne of despotism is thrown down, its last sceptre shivered, and its last foot of territory annexed to liberty.
And now, young gentlemen, having led you up to this point of moral elevation, from which you may survey the field around you, and in view of all that we have presented to your consideration, you cannot but feel and perceive the greatness of the responsibilities that rest upon you and upon the youth of our country. And not upon you alone, but upon all do these high and momentous responsibilities rest—on the American parent, the American father and the American mother; and no less on the literary institutions of our country. Time fails me here to go into all the
