In conclusion, allow me to repeat the thought of the beginning, that it is the nature of man to _look upward_, and he who does not look upward is untrue to his nature. But in the flesh, we can only begin to ascend the heights of God. Here we are weighed down with infirmity, with our frail, decaying bodies; but our souls long for the power of incessant, never-wearying, glorious activity, awaiting us in the upper world. One of my highest conceptions of Heaven; one that thrills me to contemplate, is a life of no more prostration from labor; no more weariness of over-wrought brain; no aching head nor pain-racked body; but incessant labor, unincumbered by frail mortality; growth, development, expanding visions of God, among pure intelligences, and amid the celestial splendor of eternal worlds. But in the flesh, I can not bathe in those fountains of celestial light. Then let me leave this frail tenement of clay, as one steps out of the vehicle that can take him no farther, and leaving it behind, ascends the lofty mountain to gaze upon the unfolding wonders of God. Let my liberated spirit not only look upward, but mount upward, as on eagles' wings, till rising above the Pleiades, and leaving the Milky-way to fade out in the receding distance, it walks with God on the ever-ascending plain, reached only by culture and Christianity. II.--SELF CULTURE. [An Address Delivered Before Columbia Christian College, June 7, 1878.] _Ladies and Gentlemen:_--I am happy in the privilege of again addressing you in the interests of the great work in which you are so nobly engaged. To-day many of you go out from under the fostering care of this institution, to engage in the ceaseless battle of life. That you have been well panoplied for the conflict is not questioned. And, if I can second, in some degree, the efforts of your faithful and worthy Faculty in directing and encouraging you to that success that should crown their efforts and yours, I shall feel that I have labored to no trifling purpose. The theme selected for your consideration is "_Self-Culture_." Man, though fallen, is in his ruins grand. His powers of development are little less than infinite. They begin with the cradle, but do not end with the grave. No other being begins so low and ascends so high. In his beginning, he is "crushed before the moth;" in the fullness of his power he shall "judge angels." In this world he scarcely begins to live. This life is too short and this world too small for the development of his God-given faculties. Here he scarcely learns the alphabet preparatory to God's grand university from which he is never to graduate. He simply begins the study of an unending book. He but gathers a few pebbles on the shores of the river of time, then sinks beneath its wave.