The Rev. Ebenezer Fitch
President of Williams College
September I, 1799.

Excerpt from “Useful Knowledge and Religion, Recommended to the Pursuit and Improvement of the Young" in A Discourse, Addressed to the Candidates for the Baccalaureate in Williams College.”

“Covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.”
I Corinthians XII. 31.

Useful knowledge is a gift of high importance to the Minister of Christ. In no other business or calling is it so necessary that a man should be a scholar as well as a Christian. God has been, if I may so say, at infinite trouble and expense to rescue us from misery, and procure us happiness in the coming world. We are redeemed, not by corruptible things, as silver and gold; but by the precious blood of the SON of GOD. Had all the angels of heaven died for us it would have availed nothing. Divine justice demanded an infinite ransom. The death of the great EMMANUEL alone could be accepted as an adequate atonement for the guilt of fallen man. Such was the evil of sin, and such the worth of the soul in the view of omniscience! Thro’ Christ’s’ atoning blood, pardon, peace and eternal life are tendered to guilty men. Thus the Ministers of the PRINCE of Peace need all the aids of human learning as well as the teachings of his Spirit to qualify them for their important trust. They must be able by sound doctrine to stop the mouths of gainsayers.

Shall the man, rich in knowledge, hoard his treasure as a miser does his gold? Shameful selfishness! What! Forbid it honor, patriotism, piety! Talents for usefulness should not be buried in a napkin. To whom much is given, of them much is required, both by God and their country. Men of abilities, science, and virtue, easily acquire influence. They can do much for the encouragement of learning, true patriotism and good morals.

In this day especially, when every civil and religious institution is threatened with ruin; when a spirit of Vandalism, hostile to rational liberty and to everything dear to us as men and Christians, has already devastated the fairest parts of Europe…every man of science, every friend to virtue and his country, is called upon to exert every nerve to stem the raging torrent. You cannot innocently remain idle spectators of…the prostration of all good government, and the extirpation of morality and religion from the earth. Stand, then, at your posts and die like men, rather then suffer that liberty for which our fathers bled, that government which they established with so much wisdom, and that religion which they held dearer than life, to be sacrificed at the unhallowed shrine of atheism and [French] philosophy.

While you hold the vile arts of such deceivers in abhorrence, pity even the willing victims of their sophistry and falsehood. For what do wit, genius and learning now avail Hume and Bolinbroke, Shaftsbury and Voltaire? Prostituted as these talents were by them to the infamous cause of infidelity and vice, what purpose do they now answer, but as flaming torches to light them to the lowest pit of their infernal prison, and show them, in tenfold horrors, the regions of eternal darkness? What would they now give for one cheering ray of that heavenly religion which they hooted and despised?—for one drop of His atoning blood, whom, with the rage and malice of fiends, they so often reviled and blasphemed?

God claims your best services. They are justly and unalienably his due. Think often on what you owe to yourselves, to your friends, to your country and your God. Labor more to be virtuous than to be learned—to be good than to be great. Value less the applause of men, than the testimony of a good conscience, and the approbation of your Maker. The period allotted you for active usefulness is short; but the consequences of improving or neglecting it, will run through eternity.

We commend you to the grace, protection and blessing of Almighty God. May he…crown your faithful and benevolent services here, with immortal glory and felicity in the world above!

AMEN.