Besides, the happiness in view was only the indulgence of pride, or mere animal pleasure.  Neither of these can satisfy or endure.  A rational mind may be, and often is, so narrow and groveling as not to aim at any higher good, to understand its nature or to believe its existence.  Still, in its original constitution, it was formed with a capacity for intellectual and moral good, and was destined to find in this good its only satisfaction.  Hence, no inferior good will fill its capacity or its desires.  Nor can this bent of its nature ever be altered.  Whatever other enjoyment, therefore, it may attain, it will, without this, still crave and still be unhappy.

No view of the ever-varying character and success of mankind in their expectations of happiness, and their efforts to obtain it, can illustrate this doctrine more satisfactorily than that of the progress and end of a class of students in this seminary.  At their first appearance here they are all exactly on the same level.  Their character, their hopes and their destination are the same.  They are enrolled on one list; and enter upon a collegiate life with the same promise of success.  At this moment they are plants, appearing just above the ground; all equally fair and flourishing.  Within a short time, however, some begin to rise above others; indicating by a more rapid growth a structure of superior vigor, and promising both more early and more abundant fruit....

Were I to ask the youths who are before me what are their designs and expectations concerning their future life, and write down their several answers, what a vast difference would ultimately be found between those answers and the events which would actually befall them!  To how great a part of that difference would facts, over which they could have no control, give birth!  How many of them will in all probability be less prosperous, rich, and honorable than they now intend:  how many devoted to employments of which at present they do not even dream; in circumstances, of which they never entertained even a thought, behind those whom they expected to outrun, poor, sick, in sorrow or in the grave.

First.  You see here, my young friends, the most solid reasons for gratitude to your Creator.

God, only, directed that you should be born in this land, and in the midst of peace, plenty, civilization, freedom, learning and religion; and that your existence should not commence in a Tartarian forest or an African waste.  God, alone, ordered that you should be born of parents who knew and worshiped Him, the glorious and eternal Jehovah; and not of parents who bowed before the Lama or the ox, an image of brass or the stock of a tree.  In the book of His counsels, your names, so far as we are able to judge, were written in the fair lines of mercy.  It is of His overflowing goodness that you are now here; surrounded with privileges, and beset with blessings, educated to knowledge, usefulness and piety, and prepared to begin an endless course