The main object, then, is to establish a school of learning for children, beginning with them at a very tender age, and retaining them (namely, from six years to eighteen) till they are on the verge of manhood, when they will have expended more than one third part of the average duration of human life.  For if the college takes them at six, and keeps them till they are eighteen, a period of twelve years will be passed within its walls; more than a third part of the average of human life.  These children, then, are to be taken almost before they learn their alphabet, and be discharged about the time that men enter on the active business of life.  At six, many do not know their alphabet.  John Wesley did not know a letter till after he was six years old, and his mother then took him on her lap, and taught him his alphabet at a single lesson.  There are many parents who think that any attempt to instil the rudiments of education into the mind of a child at an earlier age, is little better than labor thrown away.

The great object, then, which Mr. Girard seemed to have in view, was to take these orphans at this very tender age, and to keep them within his walls until they were entering manhood.  And this object I pray your honors steadily to bear in mind.

I never, in the whole course of my life, listened to any thing with more sincere delight, than to the remarks of my learned friend who opened this cause, on the nature and character of true charity.  I agree with every word he said on that subject.  I almost envy him his power of expressing so happily what his mind conceives so clearly and correctly.  He is right when he speaks of it as an emanation from the Christian religion.  He is right when he says that it has its origin in the word of God.  He is right when he says that it was unknown throughout all the world till the first dawn of Christianity.  He is right, pre-eminently right, in all this, as he was pre-eminently happy in his power of clothing his thoughts and feelings in appropriate forms of speech.  And I maintain, that, in any institution for the instruction of youth, where the authority of God is disowned, and the duties of Christianity derided and despised, and its ministers shut out from all participation in its proceedings, there can no more be charity, true charity, found to exist, than evil can spring out of the Bible, error out of truth, or hatred and animosity come forth from the bosom of perfect love.  No, Sir!  No, Sir!  If charity denies its birth and parentage, if it turns infidel to the great doctrines of the Christian religion, if it turns unbeliever, it is no longer charity!  There is no longer charity, either in a Christian sense or in the sense of jurisprudence; for it separates itself from the fountain of its own creation.