It is true, all people, all nations have acknowledged a Supreme Being. But wherever the human mind has been enthralled by ignorance, he has been acknowledged rather as a being of Terror than as a being of Benevolence. 'Tis Education that endues men's minds with a just sense of the attributes of the Supreme Being, and brings them acquainted with their own high destiny, and is in truth, as it has been defined to be, the "handmaid of Religion." Among an educated people morality and private virtue must flourish. For in the language of Lord Bacon, "learning disposeth the constitution of the mind not to be fixed in the defects thereof, but still to be susceptible of growth and improvement." The human mind is endowed with a variety of passions, implanted in it for the wisest purposes, but requiring the control of reason not to run into excesses destructive of individual happiness and the peace of society. A cultivated mind not only controls the impetuosity of those passions which hurry onward into crime and misery, but peculiarly {90} encourages the growth of those benevolent affections whose gratification rests on prospective good. In the constitution of the mind experience shows the striking fact (and it pleads forcibly in favor of the general diffusion of Education among the people) that the growth of the malevolent affections is nurtured by ignorance, and that of the benevolent by knowledge. The former are more truly the instinctive affections and generally operate under immediate stimuli. The latter may be termed the rational affections, for their stimuli are often remote and chiefly felt by the mind, which traces the relations of things and sees the intimate connexion of virtue with individual and general happiness.