Submission never yet set boundaries to encroachment. Upon the opening of Pandora's box, Hope was left behind. Hitherto no seed of deadly aconite has generated into pestilential poison. It was obvious that if virtue, the virtue of the people, was the foundation of republican government, the stability and duration of the government must depend upon the stability and duration of the virtue by which it is sustained. In the calm hours of self-possession, the right of a State to nullify an act of Congress is too absurd for argument, and too odious for discussion. The religion of the Bible must be taught. It must be instilled into the mind of childhood, and believed even before it is understood. But good and evil rule on earth by turns; Vice often borrows virtue's brightest hue; The radical cause of this deplorable inconsistency and of all this melancholy depravity in the history of mankind is defective education. In the progress of human improvement certain properties were observed invariably to belong to certain material substances, and by common agreement the material substance was exhibited for the property belonging to it. Hence the extension of the art of hieroglyphic writing; and I submit to your consideration a conjecture which has often occurred to me, that the account of the creation in the book of Genesis, was only a transfer to alphabetic writing, of more ancient Egyptian memorials in hieroglyphics. For we are expressly told that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and this may account for the representation of the Spirit of evil in the form of a serpent, and for that of life, and for the knowledge of good and evil, abstractions of the mind, in the shape of trees growing in the garden of Paradise. Education is the business of human life. The doctrine of immortal life is so congenial to the heart even of the unregenerate man; it is so soothing even to his selfish passions, that it is easily believed by all to whom it is taught. Ambition, therefore, virtue is, or vice; Ting'd by the object of the man's pursuit; The good supreme; of every ill the root; A demon, with the worm that never dies. The soul of one man can not by human law be made the property of another. Piety without the practice of virtue is itself a crime and the aggravation of all iniquity. Education, then, the education of children, and the art of reading, was the primary impulse to the Protestant Reformation. It (the Bible) contains a system of religion, and of morality, which we may examine on its own merits, independent of the sanction it receives from being the Word of God. In what light soever we regard it, whether with reference to revelation, to literature, to history, or to morality, it is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue. It is only as immortal beings that all mankind can in any sense be said to be born equal; and when the Declaration of Independence affirms as a self-evident truth that all men are born equal, it is precisely the same as if the affirmation had been that all men are born with immortal souls; for, take away from man his soul, the immortal spirit that is within him, and he would be a mere tamable beast of the field, and, like others of his kind, would become the property of his tamer. The Bible contains the revelation of the will of God. There are three points of doctrine, the belief of which forms the foundation of all morality. The first is, the existence of a God; the second is, the immortality of the soul; and the third is, a future state of rewards and punishments. Suppose it possible for a man to disbelieve either of these articles of faith, and that man will have no conscience, he will have no other law than that of the tiger or the shark; the laws of man may bind him in chains, or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy. It is possible to believe them all without believing that the Bible is a divine revelation. 'Tis true, the soldier's life is short; But what is life deprived of action? A universe without attraction. But for pathos of narrative; for the selection of incidents that go directly to the heart; for the picturesque of character and manner; the selection of circumstances that mark the individuality of persons; for copiousness, grandeur, and sublimity of imagery; for unanswerable cogency and closeness of reasoning; and for irresistible force of persuasion, no book in the world deserves to be so unceasingly studied, and so profoundly meditated upon as the Bible. INDEX. A ABOLITIONISTS-who were the early, Adair, Governor John-causes the Adams, John-father of J. Q. Ad- Adams, Abigail-mother of J. Q. family name and betrothal, 51- Adams, Abigail-daughter of John John Quincy Adams, goes to |