9-23-37 PRESIDENT ALEXANDER CAMPBELL. : The knell has tolled! The quiet village of Bethany has sat down in sack cloth; and a million mourn, around our land, in sad sympathy for a great man hath fallen in Israel! True, since then the bare forests and the blackened hills have been clad in green; the sun has photographed his varied hues on the maiden cheek of the fair corolla; the beauty of the bloom has begun to redden into fruitfulness; the harvester is watching the golden bronze as it creeps o'er the green of the gladdened fields, and soon you'll hear his merry song as the yellow ranks fall before his victorious scythe. The storm must lull, and the leaden wave of grief must mingle with the purer water of joyous life. The sorrows of to-day must yield to the alleviating power of the scenes of tomorrow, and the mingled emotions which crest every wave of the tide of life. The shock that thrilled the social heart when AlexTM ander Campbell died, has subsided; and gentle grief and sad remembrances have filled the bosoms lately convulsed. The green sod arching the narrow abode of his manly form, speaks the freshness of the perennial life, in a fairer clime. Like the bow of God, "it sweetly bent over the gloom, Like love o'er a death-couch or hope o'er the tomb.” * How beneficent the law that the cloudy sorrows of the night should melt into the light of life, and the winter of our woe brighten into the tranquil joy of vernal bloom! The pulpit and the press have spoken one tone of admiration for the recent living, and of sorrow and respect for the more recent dead. Even the growlings of discontent, abashed, have hushed into silence. Friend and foe have spoken, but the child of Mr. Campbell's manhood, the pride of his life and the hope of his old age-Bethany College-is yet to speak, and to-day is speaking. What more worthy this institution than a fitting recognition of the life, character and services of its founder, and for *The poet Campbell. a quarter century its President and patron, and whose blood and bones might be said to be built in its walls? It is not probable that a superb mausoleum will ever raise its proud form over his clay-built house, or that a holy Mecca will tell weary pilgrims where he was buried. Rather let this splendid pile, with its oriels and its towering spire, be visited as one of the scenes of his more recent labors in literature and religion. Let every good student be his epistle, written in his immortalized heart, known and read of all men who can appreciate sound learning and religious training; for he wrought not in marble, nor did he care to have the marble work for him; for he wished every young man of the college and every hearer of his public preachings and private discoursings, "manifestly declared to be the epistles of Christ, ministered by him, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart.' Genius has the historic honor of originating what is permanent. The pyramids of Gizeh and Cheops, the ruins of the Carnac and Luxor, of Babylon and Nineveh, of Persepolis and Palmyra, of Greece and Rome, whether statuary, architecture or road ways, all stand in the estimation of historians and of the literary world, upon the sole foundation of Genius. Which do you prefer to contemplate, Respected Auditors, the bust of Demosthenes or his orations? Cicero in marble or Cicero in his matchless Latin? the broad-fronted Plato in sculpture or in broad and deep-flowing thoughts and mellifluent Greek? Much honor to Phidias, Alcamenes, Myron, and Praxitiles; but more to those who wrought upon thoughts and thinkers; the highest honor to those who have winged the fancy, balanced the imagination, and cultured and invigorated the reason; and double superlative gratitude to him who has guided erring feet to the high places of God, and has plumed weak faith, like the king of birds, to 'dash through the cloudy pavilion of the Father of Lights, and fold its pinions in adoration among cherubs and seraphs, while gazing upon the beatific vision ! The venerable President of this institution wrought in the quarry of mind, for, in this marble, he saw men-men of whom are made poets, orators, historians, editors, critics, teachers, harbingers of Christ in lands where there is no light and pastorpreachers who shall imitate the good Shepherd-the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. In the rough rock of stormy emotion, perverted affections, undeveloped intellect and almost indistin 2 Cor. iii. 3. |