From an address at Philadelphia.

THE PRESENT AGE! In these brief words what a world of thought is comprehended! what infinite movements! what joys and sorrows! what hope and despair! what faith and doubt! what silent grief and loud lament! what fierce conflicts and subtle schemes of policy! what private and public revolutions! In the period through which many of us have passed, what thrones have been shaken! what hearts have bled! what millions have been butchered by their fellow-creatures! what hopes of philanthropy have been blighted! And at the same time what magnificent enterprises have been achieved! what new provinces won to science and art! what rights and liberties secured to nations! It is a privilege to have lived in an age so stirring, so pregnant, so eventful. It is an age never to be forgotten. Its voice of warning and encouragement is never to die. Its impression on history is indelible. Amidst its events, the American Revolution, the first distinct, solemn assertion of the rights of men, and the French Revolution, that volcanic force which shook the earth to its centre, are never to pass from men’s minds. Over this age the night will indeed gather more and more as time rolls away; but in that night two forms will appear, Napoleon and Washington,—the one a lurid meteor, the other a benign, serene, and undecaying star. Another American name will live in history, your Franklin; and the kite which brought lightning from heaven will be seen sailing in the clouds by remote posterity, when the city where he dwelt may be known only by its ruins. There is, however, something greater in the age than in its greatest men; it is the appearance of a new power in the world, the appearance of the multitude of men on that stage where as yet the few have acted their parts alone. This influence is to endure to the end of time. What more of the present is to survive? Perhaps much, of which we now take no note. The glory of an age is often hidden from itself. Perhaps some word has been spoken in our day which we have not deigned to hear, but which is to grow clearer and louder through all ages. Perhaps some silent thinker whose name is to fill the earth is at work in his closet among us. Perhaps there sleeps in his cradle some reformer who is to move the church and the world, who is to open a new era in history, who is to fire the human soul with new hope and new daring. What else is to survive the age? That which the age has little thought of, but which is living in us all; I mean the soul, the immortal spirit. Of this all ages are the unfoldings, and it is greater than all. We must not feel, in the contemplation of the vast movements of our own and former times, as if we ourselves were nothing. I repeat it, we are greater than all. We are to survive our age, to comprehend it, and to pronounce its sentence. As yet, however, we are encompassed with darkness. The issues of our time how obscure! The future into which it opens who of us can foresee? To the Father of all Ages I commit this future with humble, yet courageous and unfaltering hope.