Holding the opinion, then, that a fixed religious belief is the legitimate result of a thorough cultivation of the mental and moral endowments, and that their united and co-equal development constitutes education, you will permit me to impress upon your attention the importance of securing all the aid afforded by the best lights vouchsafed to us, in the search after Truth. Conscience is a blind guide, until assisted by discriminating teaching, and honest, persevering endeavors at self-enlightenment. For myself, my experience, in this respect, has afforded me no assistance so reliable and efficient as that to be gathered from the Life of Jesus Christ, as recorded by his various biographers, and collected in the New Testament. I commend its study, renewedly, to you, not in search of a substantiation of human doctrines, not to determine the accuracy of particular creeds, but to possess yourself of simple, intelligible, practicable directions for the wise regulation of your daily life, and those ceaseless efforts at self-advancement which should be the highest purpose of
"A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A creature between life and death!"
Accustomed to the standard established by Him who said, "Be ye, therefore, perfect, even as I am perfect," we will not be deterred from the steadfast pursuit of right by the imperfect exhibitions, so frequently made, of its efficacy, in the lives of the professed followers of the wonderful Nazarine. Conscious of the difficulties, the temptations and the discomfitures that we ourselves encounter, we will learn, not only to discriminate between the imperfections of the disciple and the perfection of the Master, but to exercise that charity toward others, of which self-examination teaches us the need, in our own case. Thus, the Golden Rule, which so inclusively epitomizes the moral code of the Great Teacher, will come to be our guide in determining the path of practical duty, and the course of self-culture, most essential to the security of present happiness, and as a preparative for that eternal state of existence, of which this is but the embryo.
Thus, making God and conscience—which is the voice of God speaking within us—the arbiter between our better nature and the impulses excited by the grosser faculties, we shall be less tempted by outward influences to lower the abstract standard we originally establish, or to reconcile ourselves to an imperfect conformity to its requisitions. Far less, will we permit ourselves to indulge the delusion that we are not, each of us, personally obligated, by our moral responsibilities, to develop all the powers with which we are endowed, to their utmost capacity:—
"They build too low who build below the skies!"
The most perfect of human beings was also the most humble and self-sacrificing, so that they who endeavor to follow his example will not only be devoid of self-righteous assumption, but actively
devoted to the good of their fellow-creatures, and, like Him, pityingly sensible of the wants and the woes of humanity.
That reverence for the spiritual nature of man, as a direct emanation from Deity, which all should cherish, is, also, to be regarded as a part of judicious self-culture. Cultivate an habitual recognition of your celestial attributes, and strive to elevate your whole being into congenial association with the divinity within you:—this do for the benefit of others,
"Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping, but never dead,
Will rise, in majesty, to meet thine own!"
With so exalted an aim as I have proposed for your adoption, you will be slow to tolerate peccadilloes, as of little moment, either in a metaphysical or ethical point of view. Dread such tolerance, as sapping the foundations of principle; learn to detect the insidious poison lurking in Burke's celebrated aphorism, and in the infidel philosophy that assumes the brightest semblances that genius can invent, the more readily to deceive. Establish fixed principles of benevolence, justice, truthfulness, religious belief, and adhere steadfastly to them, despite the allurements of the world, the temptings of ambition, or weariness of self-conflict.