SELECTIONS. ADDRESS, DELIVERED AT THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION OF THE METROPOLITAN ASSOCIATION, MARCH 29, 1841. Ir has long been customary for associations, having for their object some permanent good, to celebrate, from year to year, the day on which they were formed into bodies, that they may thus bring before them a livelier remembrance of their first object, and of the benefits resulting from it. These anniversaries are beneficial, inasmuch as it is ever well to contemplate that which is good. At those periods, the mind recurs to the past, traces its events and circumstances, and more naturally ponders over them, than at any other time; for, then rise up and present themselves to the view, the various scenes that have called forth the energies of the mind, displayed the disposition, and drawn testimonials that serve to endear us to our companions in the warmest ties of friendship and grateful remembrance. Thus is it that we, believing the object of our associ ating together a good and important one, have assembled here this evening, to celebrate the anniversary of our formation into a society; to revive our recollections of the events that form its history during the past year; and to gather from them new energies, with which to mark our course for the future. It is well, I have said, to contemplate that which is good. What greater benefit than that which tends to enlarge the conceptions of the mind, and cultivate the intellectual faculties ? The passions implanted in man are moderated or strengthened by education, which gives to him clearer perceptions of those habits which are baneful in their influence; sets in a clearer light their pernicious effects; softens the asperities of his nature; and renders virtue only truly attractive. Knowledge gives to him who possesses it, a superiority over the uneducated, not to be acquired by any other quality; power may command the bodily faculties, but can have little influence over the mind; for one is the gift of men, the other an emanation from the Supreme Being; and to none but him will it bow, or the brighter qualities of that same emanation will it reverence. When we contemplate man's capacities, we are filled with wonder and astonishment at their seeming boundlessness, and we cannot but feel that there are higher duties imposed upon him than those that merely bid him gain a subsistence and live; that there are social qualities to be cultivated, moral obligations to be performed, independent of these. Were we confined, in our enjoyment of life, to passions strictly sensual, we had need to have been endowed, by the universal Creator, with but comparatively few of the qualities we now possess, to be enabled to enjoy it to its full extent; we had then, no need of the higher and holier impulses of our nature; we had then, no need of those noble sentiments,those pure aspirations, which now form so great a part of the character of man. These would have been of but little use. The mind, then, if indeed man could be said to possess mind, had need to be but little above the instinct of the brute-its object scarce superior · to satiate its passions. It need have no higher range than to tell its possessor when the storm approached, bid him shelter himself from its beatings, or winter's piercing cold, without telling him also, that in that storm, there is something more than the mere howling of winds, and the falling of rain drops; that there is something more in winter than its snows and chills. His object would have been accomplished in avoiding its fury, and further than that he need not go; there need |