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of the native capabilities of man, and learn how the disabilities of our race may be effectually helped, and our inherent vices eradicated. There man begins to live for man in distinction from self. It cannot be controverted, just so far as the power of experimental religion extends in reforming and moulding the nature of a man, he moves from littleness to greatness, from selfishness to beneficence; humility takes the place of pride; chastity, the place of lust; honesty, the place of fraud; love, the place of hatred; truth, the place of falsehood; industry and enterprise, the place of idleness and decay. These are all great elements of true manhood; and the growth is so visible, that a man who denies it simply condemns himself for absurdity or dulness, narrowness or falsehood.

Just as in individuals, so in nations. So far as the regeneration of human nature advances, so far the nation rises in character and moral power. For all great moral achievements of the race, sin is the infancy of a people, righteousness their manhood. Virtue begins to reveal its strength under the cross, and piety unfolds its power in the exercise of true faith,-"faith that works by love, and purifies the heart."

True manhood appears in its types. The first Adam was a man combining the powers and susceptibilities directly created by infinite perfection. His descendants were less than men by all their infidelity, disloyalty, depravity, falsehood, sorrows, groans, and dying. The second Adam was a man, — a God, it is certain, but nevertheless a man, a typal man; and as the race became less than men by receding from the first typal man, so they become men just as they approach the second. In his fullest form, the second man was the Lord from heaven; and thus the divine in union with the human becomes the highest type of manhood. Just as the human race becomes imbued with the grace and power of God under the power of the second man, who becomes to believing sinners "a quickening spirit," do they approach this highest type of manhood.

The true manhood of a nation will therefore be, first the regenerated manhood of the Fall; then, so far as the new life succeeds, the restored manhood of Eden; and thence the developed manhood of the old in the new creation.

Let it be remarked, then, as a matter of fact, that the growing greatness of the American nation is, so far as it has advanced, the progressive development of the new manhood. This is seen in the individual instances of reformation in the domestic Edens, which come of the restoration of love; the social elevation, which makes vice disgraceful, and installs virtue and piety as the dominant forces of reason; and in the grand uprising of a whole people, courting martyrdom to honor and secure a great principle.

We must reckon as the result of the regeneration, not only the persons in whom it is developed as a new life, but those in whom any divine influences have found room and liberty to begin their work. The general faith in the being of God; the public universal acknowledgment that Jesus is the Christ, that he is the only hope of the world; the condemnation of professing Christians for their improprieties and sins; and the universal homage paid to goodness, with the equally universal acknowledgment of the duty and necessity of reformation in order to perfect happiness and safety,- must be referred to the same source. These all broaden and heighten the manhood of our nation. Then comes the elevating power of science, confirming the truth and reflecting the glory of Christianity; then the spirit of the press, imbued with the life of a great regeneration, moving the world mightily God-ward; then the broad expansion of liberty, accepting and proclaiming the universal brotherhood of man; finally the uplifting of the lowest, and the consequent rising of the whole to the sphere of power which reveals the inevitable, the indestructible, the endlessly-progressive, in the national life. This era of the Great Republic dawns upon us to-day.

It would happen, of course, in the coming of generations,

under such quickening influences, that individual minds, highly susceptible and broadly formed, would grow to distinguished greatness. Hence, though not thoroughly Christian, yet reached and stimulated by Christian forces, Franklin and Webster rose in statesmanship above Mirabeau and Talleyrand. Hence Washington and Lincoln, deeply imbued with the religious spirit, were greater than Jefferson and Calhoun. Thus Williams and Edwards, Marshall and McLean, Judson and Olin, rose higher in historic renown than other men of equal mental greatness, and approached very nearly to the sublime purity and majestic strength of true manhood. But the elevation of the common mind by the power of a pervading Christian life, until justice is enthroned by the will of the people, will be a broader, greater fact. From this epoch in the nation's history, the approach to typal manhood will be more rapid and more thoroughly sustained.

ASYLUMS FOR THE DEAF AND DUMB.

Works of humanity follow promptly the development of true manhood under the benevolent influence of Christianity. The best Christian minds of all countries, from mere love of the race, inquire anxiously after the welfare of the suffering and unfortunate. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" is the second great commandment of our beneficent Christianity; and the law of action toward the needy is distinctly announced by our Saviour,-"All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." Not merely the authority of these commands, but the actual feeling of regenerated natures, and the longing desires of enlightened good men in the spirit of a religion of love, move them to make efforts to relieve distress, to exalt character, and enlarge the sphere and amount of positive enjoyment and usefulness. Hence it is that institutions for the education of the deaf and dumb, the blind, the insane, the

intemperate, and the idiot, arise in Christian countries, and are not found in heathen lands.

As is usual in all great developments of civilization, the first efforts made for the deaf and dumb were crude and unsatisfactory, - a kind of feeling around in the dark after facts and agencies which only revealed their dim outlines. The code of Justinian held deaf-mutes incapable of the legal management of their affairs; and the wisest philosophers regarded the calamities of these unfortunates irremediable. In the middle ages, they were debarred from the rights of feudal succession.

To Pedro Ponce, a Benedictine monk of Spain, belongs the honor of one of the first recorded attempts to educate the deaf and dumb. He died in 1504. Bouet followed, a halfcentury later. The Germans claim the precedence of a full century for efforts attended with success recorded by Rodolph Agricola, and thus make the successful endeavors of Parch, a clergyman of Brandenburg, to educate his deaf-mutę daughter by pictures, contemporary with those of Ponce. In the seventeenth century, small advance is asserted in this humane endeavor. The great error, however, was in attempting to educate by articulation; and it was reserved for the Abbé de l'Épée of France to originate the great movement which resulted in the use of signs, the natural language of deafmutes, and to found the first institution for their education. From this went out suggestions and teachers which founded schools in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and Spain. "It was only from this time" (1755 to 1760) " that the duty of educating them began to take hold of the public conscience." About the same time, the efforts of Thomas Braidwood in Scotland, and Samuel Heinecke in Saxony, came to public notice.

Our own system was brought from the school of De l'Épée, in 1816, by our distinguished citizen, Thomas H. Gallaudet, whose equally distinguished son has done so much to perfect. and extend the system in America.

As late as 1850, there were only a hundred and eighty institutions for the deaf and dumb in the world, numbering about six thousand pupils. There were about eighty small schools in Germany, forty-five in France, and twenty-two in the British Isles.

Our highly-valued pioneer institution in Hartford was opened in 1817. The next began in New York, in the same year; and the next in Pennsylvania, in 1820. Kentucky followed in 1823, Ohio in 1829, and Virginia in 1839. In 1834, we had six institutions, thirty-four teachers, and four hundred and sixty-six pupils; in 1860, twenty-two institutions, a hundred and thirty teachers, and two thousand pupils. It is easy to see that the work must be largely extended, as, in 1860, the number of deaf-mutes had reached fifteen thousand and seventy-seven.

These institutions cost the several States about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars annually; while over a million and a half has been invested in buildings, grounds, &c. The Columbia Institution in Washington is an advance movement designed further to perfect the system, and extend to these unfortunates the benefits of a college-course.

ASYLUMS FOR THE BLIND.

The appeal of the blind to our sympathies and humanity is perhaps still more touching. Shut out as they are from the world of external beauty; denied the pleasure of looking upon the landscape with its hill and dale, its flowers and fruit; not permitted to see the countenances of those they love, nor read a line of all the world of literature so accessible to us, it would be really strange if Christian beneficence should make no efforts to improve their condition.

"L'Hôpital Impérial des Quinze Vingts was founded by St. Louis in 1260, and still exists. It, however, makes no efforts to instruct its three hundred inmates. Valentine Haüy, receiving his hints from the success of the Abbé de