CVI. "LET THERE BE LIGHT." From her earliest colonial history, the policy of Massachusetts has been to develop the minds of all her people, and to imbue them with the principles of duty, To do this work most effectually, she has begun with the young. If she would continue to mount higher and higher towards the summit of prosperity, she must continue the means by which her present elevation has been gained. In doing this, she will not only exercise the noblest prerogative of government, but will coöperate with the Almighty in one of his sublimest works. The Greek rhetorician, Longinus, quotes from the Mosaic account of the creation what he calls the sublimest passage ever uttered: "God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." From the centre of black immensity effulgence burst forth. Above, beneath, on every side, its radiance streamed out, silent, yet making each spot in the vast concave brighter than the line which the lightning pencils upon the midnight cloud. Darkness fled as the swift beams spread onward and outward, in an unending circumfusion of splendor. Onward and outwards still they move to this day, glorifying, through wider and wider regions of space, the infinite Author from whose power and beneficence they sprang. But not only in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, did he say, "Let there be light." Whenever a human soul is born into the world, its Creator stands over it, and again pronounces the same sublime words, "Let there be light."