this hour, that your teachers have
faithfully labored to bring you. Without this in view, you will miss
the grand purpose of your education thus far.

Doubtless many of us know men and women who have not grown an inch
since the day that they went out from these or other halls of learning.
They may have promised much at the beginning. On their success high
hopes were built. Loving hands were impatient to wreathe their brows
with the garlands of victory. But, alas! those hopes have been blighted
and those garlands have withered. We see them in the pulpit, at the
bar, and in all the other vocations of life. They are failures, not for
want of mind, but for want of application. They have not followed up
their victories, and their victories have turned to defeat. They have
been resting on the honor of faded laurels, that in their freshness so
become you to-day. To gather these was the _ne plus ultra_ of their
efforts, and hence the end of their success. Therefore, if any of you
to-day look upon your graduation as the consummation of your literary
struggles, let me exhort you to change your motto, and, like the
Spaniards, on the birth of the new world, discard the idea of a
possessed _ultimatum_, and imprint upon your banner _plus ultra_--more
beyond.

As most of the graduating class are ladies, I feel the necessity of
speaking especially of their hopes and prospects. Till recently, the
hindrances of woman's education and literary position have been great
and discouraging. But, thanks to the religion of Jesus, her
disabilities have in Christian lands been removed. Woman was the
crowning workmanship of God, and she has received the crowning
blessings of Christianity. By the blessing of Christianity, the
intellectual and spiritual powers of woman are encouraged. The world is
often dazzled by her genius, astonished at her resources, and subdued
by her spirit. She has stood in the halls of learning, walked in the
groves of science, and gathered laurels on the mountains of fame. She
has stimulated the world's genius, soothed its passion, and strewed her
pathway through it with the sweetest flowers. Women have ever been the
world's brightest angels of mercy--

"Whose company has harmonized mankind,
Soften'd the rude and calmed the boisterous mind."

There are positions in the world for which woman was not made. The
finishing touches of creation's wondrous works were too delicate to fit
her for the political arena, the c