BY PRES. WHITE, D. D.,

WABASH COLLEGE, IND.

THE student will never think of keeping on his present intellectual costume. His growing stature should burst out of those garments, that fitted his early intellect and his incipient scholarship. He should never be found, like deer-herds, forever upon the same old stamping-ground. Overleaping all familiar enclosures, he will push, if he have the true spirit within him, into untraveled pathways, into uncultivated regions.

I desire to suggest a few explicit words to such as aspire to an education, in order to their best success in mental attainment; they shall be few, and I trust practical. I begin by exhorting you to study with a spirit of self-dependence.

Independence of mind does not forbid the reception from past generations, and from the present time, of all existing knowledge. It forbids receiving it passively as a hollow in a rock receiveth the rains, itself just as hard and sterile as before. It requires it to be received as the warm, mellow soil receives the showers of heaven, to be made itself more prurient of a rich vegetation. It requires it to be received as the physical frame receives the air, to imbibe from it a vital element for its whole circulation, just as the same frame receives nutritious food into its canals, to be elaborated, absorbed, assimilated into solid accretions for itself. You need not ride in man's vehicle. But in one of your own, every you may combine and use every improvement which human invention has suggested. So far as is practicable, let into your mind every light that has shone out from all previous generations. But be not content, like the insensate moon, to send back from a cold surface the same unchanged rays, which you had before received. Let them shine into and through your own spirit, and then emerge, collected, warmed, colored by the medium through which they have passed, and all ready to blaze in a focus at any chosen point. In your struggles after intellectual advancement, make no attempts at balloon ascensions, by means of borrowed gas; you will be quickly down again to the point from whence you went up. Go up, like the eagle, on your own wings. Independent-mindedness is specially important in the settlement of those permanent and practi

cal opinions, by which all the accomplishments of life are effected.

Receive nothing among your dogmas with a mask on, nothing in gold leaf and varnish. Tear off all disguises, tap heart-currents, and learn what constitutes the real nature and hidden life of what is offered to you. Hear all opinions, but construct your own faith; know the skill of all mental artists, but give temper and edge to your own armor. Admit no man's nostrum certificates. Throw all compounds that are hawked abroad into the crucible; subject them to the most searching analyses. This independent studying is altogether essential to your intellectual progress. Unless you strike ahead, and, self-depending, push your own pathway, you will spend half of life in threading out the by-ways and crossways, and backways, and crooked ways, and hedged ways of other intellects. Project, survey, grub, grade, rail-lay your own road! and then move away despite all obstructions.

The treasures of wisdom already accumulated are surpassingly rich-they are immense. Drink deep out of them, but forget not that new sources are open to you. Draw out of these. Besides picking up the coin floating upon the thoroughfares of literature, go down to the gold-beds underlaying large territories. Bring up the virgin

ore!

Study intensely. Feeble efforts of mind construct a habit of debilities, of faint, nerveless exertions, which eventually render spirit and power impracticable. A man may accustom himself to slight and gentle muscular action until the panoply of the old Roman soldier would crush him. So a man may softly, untaskingly read, and think, and compose, until, under intense and powerful intellections, his mind would hopelessly sink. Gird up the loins to bold stretches of thought, to strong invention: make ponderous strokes: utter deep under-tones, that shall shake earth and air! Count no ocean too deep to sound, no literary country too remote to penetrate! Intensely think, intensely read, intensely write. Let every plea at the Bar, every argument before the people, every sermon to a congregation, every human malady, task all your powers, receive the

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deepest attention of your minds, the application of their utmost capacity. Whatever is worth your intellectual effort at all, is worth the very best possible exertion. The rains wear away a stone, by drop after drop, through centuries and cycles of centuries. But you have not time for such a dull, slow, almost unending operation. Send your drill by daring, vigorous blows through the granite, lime rock, graywacke: explode it to fragments: lay it up into the noble temple. The meek, diffident stars may hide themselves and sleep, the moment the sun comes forth into the sky; radiate you a light intense enough to shine in the very face of the sovereign orb! By vast struggles constantly made-by high accomplishments constantly attained, not only is immense power gained, immense work done, but man's inherent efficiencies are learned so as to augment achievement ever afterward. Away with these cold, feeble, divergent intellectualities. Convergent, concentrated intensities are the demand of the times, the duty of all the professions and spheres of life. Dissociated, dispersed, imbecile mental exertions in the great scene of life before you, are but as the fine rain to turn round the pondrous wheel.

If in other periods desultory and faint mental exertions availed for the purposes of society, now the tide of human things is too high and overpowering to be governed, guided, or assisted by any but the most condensed and determined action of educated minds.

Let me also suggest, in order to your best literary advancement, that your inquiries be pursued with great interest and vivacity.

Some men inertly dream instead of studying; sit and endure a book instead of communing joyously with its thoughts; coldly speculate on truth instead of drinking it in like thirsty men, as if they could never drink enough; to a logical, luminous argument and a glorious strain of eloquence, respond with a formal phlegmatic respect, instead of being carried captive, instead of an enthusiasm, sparkling and thrilling through the whole being. Truth, in and of itself, is too beautiful and brilliant; its various manifestations in literature, art, science, and religion too elevated and valuable to be thus frigidly regarded. In all its characters and aspects, it has not only great loveliness, lustre, and importance, but these qualities are unchanging and unwaning. If it ever appear shorn, and veiled, and unimportant, it is only appearance. The eye of the observer is at fault: he looks through hazy obstructions, or discolored lenses. Provided you have a perception clear, piercing, strong, and a heart of sensibility truly appreciative, truth will unfold to you sub

lime and illustrious forms and great riches. To your researches she will freely unravel deep intricacies, open full treasures of practical wisdom, reveal profound and momentous doctrines! Let this fact, that truth, however undervalued and neglected, is still a precious pearl, and has surpassing beauty and importance, infuse into all your inquiries after knowledge a warm and irrepressible interest. It is in enchanted regions that you walk, while making your intellectual explorations. The facts, philosophies, divinities, humanities, duties, interests, destinies, revealed there, provide matter of excitement and gratification sufficient for all the finite and infinite, created and uncreated mind existing.

There is another charm attending the progress in search of knowledge, which ought to excite a great enthusiasm.

All truth lies enfolded in a system; is a grand scheme of affiliations; instead of being a congeries of isolations, is a vast complexure and whole, constituted of innumerable integrals attracted, arranged, bound together. Every part is involv ed inseparably with every other part. Whatever ti uth you have reached in any portion of your researches, is within the immense series. It was not a few pebbles which Newton had picked up on the shore of knowledge dropped, as that remark was, by the great Philosopher himself. Not a few pebbles was it which he had gathered! He had broken within the immense circumference, where, like the material universe, all knowledge is found in the form of systematized systems, and had traversed a few of its contiguous segments. He had followed truth through a few of her affinities and associations, and struck and partially illustrated some of the great permeating principles which create those affinities and associations.

Human knowledge, being thus regarded as an immense complication of truths correllated, involved, harmonized, dependent, influenced, influential, no one department of inquiry, no one item of knowledge on which you may fall, should be deemed insignificant. Its connections and dependencies may give it importance unmeasurable! That thought, which seemed to you so incidental, so trivial, is to all other thoughts allied. It may be but a few steps distant from one of those splendid conceptions, which discover new worlds, mark eras, awake the civilization of ages and hemispheres. There is many an every-day truth, which so runs through philosophies, and religions, and governments, and human enterprises, as eventually to change the face of all human society. Thus linked, related, telegraphic, great is truth, the matter of your study, the il

lumination of your way, the instrument of your power. Enter joyously, vivaciously, with the intensest interest, upon all your intellectual inquiries. Study, if you study at all, as if conscious you were walking amid gems and pearls; gems and pearls too brilliant and precious to be any of them left ungathered.

I have said much of the highly intellectual character of the spheres of life now opened before you. These same spheres of life have another interest-I refer to the eminent moral qualities, which they also demand and may be made to cultivate.

In respect to a pure, sound heart as a qualification for the services of life, I cannot speak too earnestly. In addition to intellectual, all the best moral qualities are indispensable to the highest accomplishment in every sphere of human action, physical or mental, secular or religious. Indispensable are they in order with the best success to drive the wheels of industry, to hoist the sails of enterprise, to hasten the car of improvement, to hold the balances of justice, to battle for the rights of humanity, to pour abroad the irrigations of benevolence, to stop the tide of sin, to push the advances of knowledge, to multiply the victories of truth, to augment the fruits of righteousness.

God has no scene of action for a man of unsound heart. Society, therefore, should have none. In all human occupations, incorruptible integrity augments mental ability; secures its right application; reconciles to difficulty; overcomes obstacles; inspires enterprise; invigorates resolves; begets confidence; cleanses intention; exalts motive; consecrates cxample; pleases Heaven.

Be it so that corrupt men are often successful and gain admiration; so does the sycamore

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on our low river banks for a time shoot out boughs and foliage upon a thin shell over a vast hollowness; so does the oak vine entwine and thicken itself upon a dry, dead trunk, until it appear a beautiful shaft of luxuriant green.

Value that healthy success, and that human and heavenly approval, which are based upon a good heart and crystal intentions. When inspired by a true veneration for all righteousness, when filled with a sincere love of all truth, when prompted to all practicable service by a hearty wish for the good of every fellow-man, it is a glorious thing to live! As there is no optimism here in our world; as everything is to be better; as for man and society there is a higher condition; as now the tide is grandly upward, it is blessed and great to consecrate and contribute yourselves to this vast upheaving of all human things! O! it is Godlike to image your own spirit large and sanctified in the spirit of other men; to send pure and lofty aspirations breathing and warm out of your own heart to beat and thrill in the heart of a contemporary generation. He has been called a benefactor of his race, who has made two spires of grass to grow, where but one grew before. How much nobler a thing will it be for you in the moral vineyard of the world to rear out of the soil new and numerous, and fruitful plants of righteousness!

He would be counted worthy of all praise, . who, to save fleets of vessels from destruction, should hang out an ever-lighted transparency over some recently elevated rocks lying right in the pathway of the world's commerce. It is a loftier and holier vocation to hang out lights to the wayfarers of the world, to save them from being engulfed in waves, and depths, and destructions infinite and eternal.

THERE is a joy in outward things,
That comes not near the heart;
There is a pleasant smile in which
The spirit takes no part.
Bring not to me that surface joy;
I care not for that brilliant smile;
Thou must not cheat me to be gay,
And thou be sad the while.

Canst thou be sad while love is ours,

And faith points out the way
To regions where all earthly clouds
Are lost in perfect day!

Thou didst not take me for thy love
Through happy days alone.

Are we not wed for weal or woe?
Am I not all thine own?
Then let me share each new-found grief;
Bring all thy pains, thy sins, to me;
They are my heritage, and come
By right of love for thee.

By right of love I claim from thee
My portion of thy pain;

And love's transmitting power shall turn
Darkness to light again.