Again: "Le compass de Newton, mesurant l'univers, Lève enfui ce grand voile, et les cieux sontouvest."† Thus did the young Europeans triumph in the youth of Europe. America is young, and her day has dawned. She must be true to her destiny. Expectation, like the mariner's bride standing on the tall cliff, praying for the sail that brings the lord of her affections to emerge from the horizon, waits on the birth of American genius. I congratulate my auditory upon the proud fact that Joseph Ray was an American. I believe in a christianity which overleaps all earthly boundaries, regardless of mountain or vale, ocean or island, nation or family, caste or complexion-not leveling to our destruction like the grave, but exalting to our redemption and spirituality, by the revelation of the Humane, Divine Restorer; but at the same time, I also believe in an exalted and exalting patriotism-a noble bond of union for a noble race, and consequently a race of nobles. And why can not we Americans outstrip the Greeks, who outstripped the world, by being Greeks, and nothing but Greeks? Their achievement was "what they could." Their speaking marbles, their burning eloquence, their semper virent poesy, achieved the victory of the world in ages of darkness and barbarity, and made poetic, yet effeminating myths. But Columbia appears on the historic page after the mirage of mythology had been dissipated by the world's progress, and the rock of truth. was disclosed, unharmed by the waves of tumultuous power beneath, or fickle tempests of error above. "All truth is from the scriptural source of light divine. The only amaranthine flower on earth Is virtue: the only lasting treasure, truth." Bathed in the radiance of Christianity, with a free mind and an unshackeled arm, our countrymen should aim at the achievement of a character that neither the taste of Greece, nor the prowess of Rome, could illustrate. This be thy honor, my country! Leave the empty logomachy of etymologists to those who like a war of words, but let us content ourselves that we are neither Celts, nor Saxons, nor AngloSaxons-but Americans. No old race has the destiny of empire; nor can all races rule; but a new race, itself a fusion of races and a realization of possibilities, named par excellence, from the land of mightiest mountain ranges and mightiest rivers, richest savannahs and most grow †The compass of Newton measuring the universe, lifts at length this great vail, and the Heav ens are disclosed. ing people. The prestige of such a destiny never irradiated the pathway of another people, since the day that the fiery, cloudy ensign o Jehovah led the careering hosts of Israel. "I am an American," will hereafter more effectually stifle the impotent choler of tyranny, than the name of "Roman." I repeat it, I rejoice that our departed brother was of the new composite race, and that his honors are ours. It is not enough that our canvass has whitened every Sea, out-tonning and out-sailing, eagle-like; not enough, that our expeditions of exploration have enriched the treasuries of science-that our steam ship is the wonder of the world, and our telegraphic wire its sympathetic nerve, cheating father Time of his wings, publishing the history in the west in advance of the fact in the east, by the clock, ominous of the route of empire. It is not enough that the American volunteer, of world-wide respect, has shamed the system of standing armies, by which absoluteism has ever robbed agriculture of its honorable labors, and art and science, and domestic happiness, of their votaries. The last triumph of civilization must be achieved here: the man, God's work and God's image, irrespective of caste or human will, but by the will of God, should be exalted to the right of his intelligent, independent and pious service, by becoming, in that right guaranteed by the State, all that education and religion can make him. In other countries genius has sometimes its reward, as genius will have; and the son of the peasant has worn crown and mitre ; but it has been a well developed seed, adventitiously dropped into the hot-bed. Humanity demands, and America concedes to man, manhood-to labor, success-to talent, and goodness, and genius, distinction. Such a country, and only such a country, fully illustrates the capacious meaning of field, laborer, fruit. Dr. Ray's career in Cincinnati is so well known as to relieve me from detail. He never ceased to be a student. Labors crowded upon him. He became a teacher in the department of Mathematics in the Ohio Mechanics' Institute. In December, 1845, he received the chair of mathematics in Woodward High School, shortly after that time exalted to a College. In '37, Ray's first Arithmetic was published; and in '43 the third part of his Arithmetic. In '47, he com. menced his Algebra, part first, which, in due time, was followed by part second. When, in 1851, the College was merged into the city schools, and became one of the two Cincinnati High Schools, Dr. Ray was made the Principal, in which post he continued till he dictated and signed his resignation, the day before his death. As a teacher, he was thorough; as a disciplinarian, impartial, strict, but considerate, dignified, but mild; as a friend, faithful and constant, rather than ardent, yet securing the esteem of his colleagues. Joseph Ray was a working man. If this is not already sufficiently apparent, it is only necessary to refer to the records of the school board, to the thousand teachers he examined, to the Board of Trustees of the House of Refuge, over which he presided, to the Cholera Visitation committee of 1849, of which he was a member, etc., etc. All this time he was writing books-not merely those which were published, but his Geometry, and others higher in the series, which he was preparing for publication. He was a remarkable economist of time, as well as an admirable manager of the valuable endowment fund of "Old Woodward." With him not a moment was to be lost. He had his watch so constantly in his left hand-it was his characteristic gesture-that those not well acquainted with his habits, were sometimes annoyed by it. He rose early and studied late. For many years I was his pastor. He was an intelligent professor of the Christian religion for twenty-five years-well read in the sacred Scriptures: for several years an officer of the church, and accustomed to take part in the exercises of social meetings. His pupils will long remember his prayers in the College and High School. In common with his brethren, he assumed the Bible to be his sole guide to truththe exclusive directory of ecclesiastial, social and personal duties, and the measure of Christian privilege. He had arrived at a commanding position; his usefulness was increasing; the old Woodward, warehouse-like edifice, was razed to the ground, and the new structure, more costly than any other scholastic building in the Queen city of the West, was rapidly approaching the top-stone; his own dwelling was being supplanted by a lordly mansion; his Mathematical series, already the school course of the west, was growing, under his pen, into a system; his only son, and only child, was being settled in life; all his dreams and anticipations were approaching realization-when his friends were compelled to sound the alarm in his reluctant ears. Pulmonary consumption, the foe of his family, was already entrenched behind his vital powers, and it is decreed that he must fall in the moment of his victory. It was difficult to persuade him that the drop-curtain of the last act of life, was about falling. By a perfectly perpendicular adjustment of the vertebra, he continued to sit up, when his muscular strength had almost departed, flattering him self that he was not mortally diseased. The energy of his will seemed to defy death; yet on Lord's Day evening, some twelve hours before his departure, at his own suggestion, in company with his family and one of our elders, he took from my hands the emblems of the great sacrifice on which is built the hope of the world. "Now," said he, "I feel refreshed and composed." Speaking no more upon that subject, and but little upon any other, he died, early the next morning, after taking leave of his family. In asking this address, the teachers of Ohio not only sympathise with the whole profession in Cincinnati, in a high estimate of Dr. Ray's character, and in their unlimited confidence in him as a man of probity and earnestness, but they signalize him as an exemplar. As such, it is a pleasure to me to hold him up to both the pupils and the teachers of this land. Seldom has a teacher more enjoyed the confidence of his compeers, or more the confidence of his pupils, than Dr. Ray; and seldom has that confidence been as well deserved. How admirable such a reputation! How admirable the "patient continuance in welldoing" through youth and through manhood, that secures it! And, if possible, how much more admirable the succeeding generation of teachers that can emulate such an example, and figure their character after such a model of moral beauty! How munificent the dying man, who bequeaths to the youth such a legacy! How rich the surviving admirers who make good the heritage, by proving themselves to be of the same moral stock! It is a remarkable providence that in one year, Woodward should lose the master spirits of her board of Trustees and her faculty. We carried Joseph Ray to the vault of Samuel Lewis, but recently built, and then occupied by its proprietor. Dr. Ray fell in the embrace of death along side the friend of his youth and companion of his after years. The principal of the trustees and the principal of the faculty, slept sweetly together, after an unusual life of toil. The orbits of their cycles were different, but in their ascending roads they cut the equator of usefulness at the same point. The minister, the philanthropist, and the patron of education, found his point of contact with the teacher whose character we this evening contemplate, in his selection of him, while a young physician, to be a tutor in Woodward School. Lewis, having obtained the endowment from the aged Mr. Woodward, founded the school, and fostered it with paternal interest. Dr. Ray realized his plans, and exceeded his expectations. As to Dr. Ray's domestic history, we have a most instructive and most melancholy commentary in the lamentable end of his much respected relict. Aware that her devotion to him, partaking of the filial as well as the conjugal character, was too strong to admit of a sudden separation, some ten days before his departure, while as yet neither he nor his friends seemed aware of the furtive, but near approach of dissolution, I committed to her keeping my forebodings, and urged her to prepare her mind for the worst, however she might be inclined to hope for the best. Then the stroke was overwhelming; but how terrible was the final separation may be argued from the results. A sense of the proprieties of the occasion, the supports of religion and medical appliances, bore her past the day of sepulture in partial composure. The requiem sung in strains of hope, we fondly indulged anticipations of a settled serenity. But she was in the valley of the shadow of death, and chilled through her whole nature-withered like a blighted flower. The bloom faded, and the leaf rustled in the zephyr. "It is sad To see the light of beauty wane away, Know eyes are dimming, bosoms shriveling, feet Thus doomed, she turned away from the future, and fixed her full and absorbing gaze upon the past-thinking, speaking only of the loved and lost. The happy home, the green old age, wealth and honor, were buried in the tomb, where slept the husband of her youth. Every day of the eight weeks which ensued, she spoke of quickly joining him, until the hour she returned to the deserted homestead-when the sight of familiar objects, the recollection of bygone days and cherished hopes, sent reason reeling from her throne, and she, in the maddened moment, precipitated herself to the earth from the third story window, and never spoke again! "O love! thou sternly dost thy power maintain, An attachment, thought by some to be too exclusive, overcame all other attractions, and now they lie side by side, where the weary are at rest," inviting the spirit-touching dirge of David at the death of Saul and Jonathan: "They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided." "Death loves a shining mark-a signal blow; |