The aged man says: "The greater the crisis the more needful is it to unite the wisdom of the serpent with the simplicity of the dove. I therefore address you as such an one who, perhaps, will soon be engaged at the university as one of the instruments employed by God in that important period. The work of God's spirit is greater than either you or the majority can estimate. A great resurrection morning has dawned. Hundreds of youths on all sides have been awakened by the Spirit of God. Everywhere true believers are coming into closer union. Science herself is becoming again the handmaid and friend of the Crucified. Civil governments, also, though in part still hostile to this great moral revolution from a dread of its producing political commotions, are many of them favorable; and where they are not, the conflicting energy of the light is so much the stronger. Many enlightened preachers already proclaim the gospel in its power; many who are still in obscurity will come forward. I see the dawn; the day itself I shall behold not here, but from a higher place. You will live to witness it below. Despise not the words of a gray-headed old man, who would give you, with true affection, a few hints relative to this great day. "The more divine a power is, the more to be deprecated is its perversion. When those last times are spoken of in Scripture, in which the gospel shall be spread over the whole world, it is declared that the truth will not only have to contend with the proportionably more violent counterworking of the enemy, but also with a great measure of delusion and error within the kingdom of light. Such is the course of things that every truth has its shadow; and the greatest truth is attended by the greatest shadow. Above all things take care that the tempter do not introduce his craft into the congregation of the faithful. There will be those for whom the simple gospel will not suffice. When a man has experienced the forgiveness of his sins, and has for a little while enjoyed the happiness of that mercy, it not unfrequently appears to his evil and inconstant heart too humiliating a condition to be constantly receiving grace for grace. There is no other radical cure for a proud, self-willed heart than every day and every hour to repeat that act by which we first came to Christ. Pray that you may have more of that childlike spirit which regards the grace of your Lord as a perennial fountain of life. Especially avoid the error of those who seek life for the sake of light, who would make religion a mere stepping-stone to intellectual superiority. Such persons will never attain to a vital apprehension of divine things; for our God is a jealous God, and will be loved by us for his own sake. The intellectual power, the mental enlargement arising from converse with the great objects of faith is always to be regarded as a secondary and supplementary benefit to that which it is the immediate object of the gospel to bestow. Despise not