the world—to calm the turbulence of the passion to give an energy to virtue—to dispel the thick mush of ignorance, superstition and error, which in a state of nature enshroud the soul of man, and to direct the understanding through the works of nature up to nature's God; these, these are the objects of science.  As the natural sun is to the vegetable and animal kingdoms, so is science to the soul.  Without it, all is darkness, weakness and decay.  With it, all is light, strength and energy. The soul which is unenlightened by science is, like the wilderness, where the rays of the sun never penetrate, where noxious poisonous weeds infest the soil, where serpents lie concealed, and where the wild beasts roam without restraint.  But science lays open the wilderness of the mind to the genial influence of the sun of truth, sweeps away the weeds of superstition and error, and represses the ferocity of the brutish passions.  What theme then can afford more enjoyment, what more interesting than the excellency of science!

            In examining the conditions of nations, we find them divided into two distinct and opposite classes, the civilized and the uncivilized. On the one hand man appears like a noble edifice in ruins. Amid the wide spread desolation we sometimes behold remains of