destined to exert in future life. The very
cultivation of mind has frequently a tendency to impair the moral
sensibilities, to induce that pride of conscious ability and variety
of attainments, which, as they are most of all affections offensive to
God, so they become, surely, though insensibly, most pernicious in
their influence upon the individuals themselves who cherish them, and
contribute to poison those streams which ought only to carry abroad
health and blessing to the world. That spirit of emulation, also,
which is naturally excited among so many aspirants for an honorable
distinction, too often leads, on the one hand, in those who excel, to
an overweening selfishness and an insatiable ambition, which, in the
course of life, sacrifice all principle and the highest interests of
society to private gratification; and, on the other, in those whose
hopes are disappointed, to a destroying negligence and sensuality. Nor
is it to be denied, that the unsanctified literature of antiquity, and
many of the productions of our own times, which have the greatest
power of attraction over the minds of youth, cannot be assiduously
cultivated without danger of corrupting the moral sentiments, and
ministering strength to the wrong affections of the mind. Against
these evils, and others, more immediately pernicious, which are
incident to numerous associations of youth, a moral influence, pure,
constraining and habitual, requires to be exerted. It is now more than
ever demanded, and the fact is most creditable to the spirit of the
times, that a literary institution should be a safe resort, and no
other advantages will, in the common estimation, compensate for defect
and failure in this particular. The relations which every individual
student sustains to God and to eternity, call imperiously and aloud,
that the great principles of moral obligation, the everlasting
distinctions between right and wrong, the methods of the Divine
administration, and the solemnities of eternal retribution, should be
kept before him, in all their significancy, and enforced by the
constraining motives of the gospel of Jesus Christ, without which all
secondary authority and influence will be comparatively vain. The
relations also of the whole body of students to their country and the
world demand, and the admonition is sounded out from every corner of
our land, from the city, and the field, and even from the desert, that
here should be laid the foundation of