Religious Truth, Illustrated from Science, in Addresses and Sermons on Special Occasions (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1857. Excerpt: ... WASTE OF MIND. What more, or better, on the subject of female education, can be said, than has been presented by the distinguished gentlemen who have occupied this place on former anniversary occasions? This was my involuntary inquiry, when invited to address this audience to-day; and it would have decided me to decline the honor, had not another inquiry been started: Why is it necessary that these addresses should be confined to the subject of female education? Why should not the speaker be allowed the same wide field in which to choose his subject, as is given to those who address young men in our colleges, at their annual commencements? I adopt the opinion that such ought to be the case, and shall act accordingly on the present occasion, leaving it to my successors to follow my example or not, as they shall prefer. The subject which I propose to bring before you is, in its nature, of melancholy interest. Nevertheless, it is not easy to excite human sympathy deeply in respect to it, although it unfolds a wider and darker history of human wrongs than that accursed traffic in flesh and blood which has justly aroused the Christian world for its extermination. Slavery and the slave trade are, indeed, a part of my subject; yet only a small part. For I shall speak of the slavery of the immortal mind--of its subjection, whether voluntary or involuntary, to any of the thousand petty tyrants that, from the beginning, have lorded it over the human soul, and made merchandise of its lofty powers, and crushed its expanding energies. The wrongs which the human family have endured from slavery, technically so called, terrible as they have been, sink into comparative insignificance when we take this wider view of the subject, and behold, as I shall endeavor to show, no...