The Highest Use of Learning; An Address Delivered at His Inauguration to the Presidency of Amherst College (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.1845 Excerpt: ... clcs of creation. And thus is all presumption against the miracles of revelation done away: --and also all objections against special Providence and special answers to prayer. This science too, opens to us views into the arcana of past duration, as deep and illimitable as astronomy does into the arcana of space; and there is made to pass before us a splendid panorama of the vast and varied plans of Jehovah; while chemical change is disclosed to us as the great conservative and controlling principle of the universe, superior even to the laws of gravitation. The unity of the Divine plans, is, also, exhibited to us by the records of this science, on a far wider scale than the existing economy of nature can show. And finally, it brings before us a great number of new and peculiar proofs of Divine Benevolence, that throw new glory over this attribute of the Deity; derived, as they are, from facts heretofore supposed to prove Divine malevolence, or at least vindictive justice. We have now taken a glance at the entire and vast circle of human learning. And is not every mind forced irresistibly to the conclusion, that every branch was originally linked by a golden chain to the throne of God: and that the noblest use to which they can be consecrated, and for which they were destined, is to illustrate his perfections and to display his glory.--If so, let me conclude my too protracted remarks, by a few inferences. In the first place, what a monstrous perversion and misapprehension of learning it is, to consider it as hostile to religion. It is not difficult to explain how a Christian, who is very ignorant, and who learns that literary men are often sceptical, should distrust the influence of learning upon religion: nor how a mere smatterer in science, himself sceptical..