Your philosophy and metaphysics, will draw you irresistibly to a great first cause--the supreme, beneficent, ever bounteous Author of all the objects of our senses, of all the powers and conceptions of our understandings; and will indelibly stamp upon your hearts the sentiments of adoration, love and obedience, as the only proper tribute you could pay to a Being, who, so far as we can comprehend his works, hath made them all subservient, either directly or indirectly, to our own happiness, both in time and eternity. These sciences will bring home to your bosoms and business the vital truth that you have minds of vast powers of comprehension--faculties capable of undefinable expansion; and souls of such godlike energies, aspirations and capacities of enjoyment, as nothing less than a God of all power, wisdom and love, could either have created or bestowed. In a word, whatever path you may pursue within the whole circle of scientific and literary research, it will lead you, if under the constant guidance of moral and religious principles, to the possession of the chief good here on earth, and to "that house above, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." There are indeed no circumstances nor situations in which you can anticipate even the possibility of being placed, unless bereft of all consciousness or sanity of mind, that can exempt you from the obligation of making these principles the chart and compass as it were, by which you are to steer your earthly course. Let us imagine a few of such as most commonly occur in our progress through life--such as are matters of choice rather than necessity--and we shall then more clearly see the indispensable use of such a chart and compass to direct us safely and happily in our unavoidable passage to realms of eternal duration.