" This occasion and its honors are due to the memory of him
whose name this institution bears; and his last will and testament is an
illustration, or rather the cause, of these prefatory remarks. As the
reasonably extended and eminently prosperous life of your wise
benefactor approached its close, he, in the principles of Old England
and of New England, ordered and directed the payment of all his just
debts; and then, secondly, expressed the wish, "if practicable, to be
buried by the side of his parents in the cemetery at Bernardston." First
justice, and then affection for parents, kindred, and home, animated the
vital, never-dying soul, as the life of the body ebbed and flowed, and
flowed and ebbed, to flow no more. For every good the ancients imagined
and named a divinity; and there is in every good something divine.
We do not deify the living nor the dead; yet such foundations and
institutions as the Lawrence Scientific School, the Peabody Institute,
the Powers Institute, will bear to a grateful posterity a knowledge of
the virtues of their respective founders, and of the exactness,
rectitude, and wisdom, of the public sentiment which religiously
consecrates the means provided to the ends proposed.
But just eulogy of the dead is the appropriate duty of those who were
the associates and friends of the founder of this school.--It will be my
purpose, in the humble part I take in the services of this honored
occasion, to point out, as I may be able, the connection between
learning and wisdom, and then, by the aid of some general remarks upon
education, to examine the fitness of this foundation, and the rules
here established, to promote human progress and virtue.
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