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Unless we are taught to use them in the right ways, our
civil and religious liberties are worthless and dangerous
boons. Liberal knowledge is a dangerous condition
precedent to the preservation of these liberties. Admit
this, and there cannot be a higher or holier purpose
than to furnish instruction to our people. "To teach
the people their duty is better than expelling the Tro-
jans."

Most deeply and profoundly impressed with this
sacred impulse, these learned and good and wise men
have traversed and searched all recorded modes and
matter of instruction, and have garnered up the en-
lightened experience of all countries. They come here
now to plant the seeds which, with the sweat and prayer
of earnestness, they have collected. How easy for us to
believe whence these seeds will be watered. They will
tell you of all the rich harvests which pious hope is
promising.

It is not my vocation to detail to you the great plan
of instruction which is to be initiated to-day. This will
be done by those who are the honored representatives
of the principles I have announced, and who have this
day come here to institutionize these principles. The
agencies of genius, learning and exalted piety are con-
centrated for the sole purpose of purifying, strengthen-
ing and preserving the people of this land, by giving
"action and use" to these principles. This, then, is
the purpose of the University of the South. Our dealing
now, is with its destiny.

What is that? Turn your eyes to the feeble current,
listen to the almost inaudible murmur of these little
rivulets, as they trickle out of the mountain side, and
behold--behold the swelling volume, bearing on its
heaving bosom the wealth of an Empire, and fertilizing
its coasts with all that the genius, the taste, the piety of
all times have earned for the admiration and joy of
man. Listen to the roar of human industry--listen to
the sweet symphonies of human prayer, and then turn
again to this rising temple--behold the light--listen to
the voices which will perpetuate and sanctify all this.
Prophetic fury cowers before the majestic picture, and
anxious hope dares only ask, whence comes it? It comes

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of that mysterious, that immortal spirit which has
borne us along the deep forest whence the Druid fled
before the Apostle, even to this mountain plain, which
overlooks an Empire, on which the wearied sun reposes
his day-worn light. It is the unchangeable, the irre-
sistible, the unwearied, the sacred genius of Christian
liberty.

The forms, the deep convictions, the very life of ages,
dissolve like fading dreams. The paths of human ener-
gy, worn deepest by the proudest civilization, are lev-
eled, overgrown, hidden, lost. Time itself is but the
graduated scale to mark the continuous, universal
change; the earth beneath us, with its forests, and
mountains, and seas, is hourly changing; the firmament
around us dawns, glows and pales with change; the
Heavens over us, with all their thronging world of
soaring fires, change; all is change; no star, no moun-
tain, nor wave, nor radiance, is the same to-day and to-
morrow. It is the sun of Christian Liberty alone which
knows no change; but onward and upward, even now,
to its brightest meridian; and we are bathing in its
eternal beams; and see how it may be for us, when the
true knowledge and exalted art shall dwell in these
pleasant places, and sweet Religion in her angel robes
shall sit upon these rising spires, and catching her rays
from God's own effluence, shed them over all the Four
Rivers of this new Eden of ours.

The design of this University is to form a standard of
learning so exalted, as to develop the highest intellectual
faculties of man, and to make this development sub-
sidiary to his moral and material advancement. It is
intended by the highest--the very highest speculative
evolutions--to make the people of this region of Ameri-
ca, consistently, firmly and irresistibly progressive in
the great purposes for which God, in his economy, has
intended man. In a word--it is meant for the thorough
culture of the heart and mind of the people--that there-
by the mind may be expanded and enriched--and the
heart made to comprehend, to regulate and to apply the
vast duties which pertain to the citizen of the slave-
holding States and the Christian. All that the energies
of the most devoted piety, guided by the widest knowl-

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