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Stephen Olin.

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AT home in his father's house, sick, feverish, and restless, -lies the successful candidate for the highest honour of his Alma Mater. Esteemed by his instructors, beloved by his associates, and envied, he has won the prize fairly and honestly. No one questions the righteousness of the verdict which assigns the valedictory to STEPHEN OLIN. But it is not for him, and another receives the plaudits of the assembled multitude, while he lies there taking the first slow draught from the bitter cup of disappointment, pressed so frequently to his lips in after years.

With an iron constitution, and an indomitable strength of will, he had disregarded the admonitions of those who watched over him, allowed himself little respite from his books, and, grudgingly, very short seasons of relaxation. Thus he reached the object of his ambition, while sowing insensibly the seeds of suffering. In his stalwart frame they have already taken deep root, and are not to be eradicated until that corruptible shall have put on incorruption.

One more warning for the youthful student—an additional beacon to be crowded in upon the highway of literature! It might have been otherwise? Certainly. There are maxims in the theory of education which, observed, conduce to the health of the body, and to physical strength,

no less certainly than their neglect tends to disease, and pain, and a premature grave. We can imagine him to have secured his object without the loss of health; to have poured forth in that coveted valedictory a flood of eloquence which should very nearly have satisfied himself, and more than justified the expectations of those who even then predicted for him a large share of political honours and emoluments. And what then? Truly there is no answer to that question. In any event, and under any circumstances, Stephen Olin would have been a great man; and it is possible that from that hour, wafted by the breath of popular applause, and intoxicated with its incense, his career might have been onward, until he had almost gratified that boundless ambition which, in his own words, "would have bartered a seat in heaven for a seat in Congress."

And he might have had a seat in Congress. In the language of one of his classmates, "Had he been blessed with health, few men would have been his superiors. His name would have added new lustre to the splendid catalogue of Edwards, Marshall, Dwight, Calhoun, and Webster, and would have obtained a high place in the scroll of fame." But Christ had more important work for the ambitious student, and in store for him something better and more glorious than his own hopes had pictured, or his admiring friends foretold. He was even then showing him how great things he must suffer for His name's sake; giving him there upon his sick couch to feel the vanity of his aspirations, his first lesson in that science which estimates all things at their true value, and by diligence in which the names of its disciples are written, not on the scroll of fame, but "high up" in the book of life.

At his entrance upon his collegiate course he was scep

tical on the subject of Christianity, and so he continued until near its close. He was not indeed an open and avowed infidel, nor was he guilty of gross immoralities; but he was sarcastic and keenly witty on the subject of experimental religion. He loved to laugh at the imperfections of professing Christians. His laughter was contagious, his facetiousness irresistible; and it was remarked that his was the only class that passed through college without the conversion of some one of its members. The books which he read, either as a prescribed duty, or for mental relaxation, tended to confirm his scepticism, until, in his senior year, the graceful rhetoric of Paley, and the stern logic of Butler, took captive his powerful intellect, and compelled him to admit the truth of revealed religion. But his heart was unaffected. "I knew," says he, "that I could not prove, and that nobody had proved the Bible false, or that there is no hell; but I had deliberately made up my mind that I never would trouble myself about it."

And but for that sickness, in all human probability, his mind would have continued thus "made up." There, he not only had leisure for reflection, but was compelled to think. His plans for the future were all deranged; and, although he did not share in the fears of those who watched around him that he was about to die, yet were his thoughts turned upon the grave, and the unknown realms beyond it. At length the crisis was passed; and with health somewhat restored, but with a troubled spirit, in opposition to the wishes of his father he left his home, journeyed toward a more genial clime, and took charge of a newly-established seminary in a sparse settlement in the interior of South Carolina.

"Does the new teacher open the school with prayer?"

A startling question. It was asked by the parent of one of his pupils, at a house where the teacher was boarding, and overheard by him as he sat reading in an adjoining room. To open the school with prayer! He had not thought of that as a part of the duty expected from him. How could he pray? Owing to a peculiar theory of his mother's, he had never been taught to repeat even those blessed words prescribed by the Lord Jesus. She was a woman of unquestioned piety, and a member of a Christian Church; but her creed taught that none but the regenerated might approach the throne of grace. How could he pray? And yet he felt the expectation to be reasonable and right on the part of those who had committed to his guardianship the destiny of their little ones. After a severe struggle between duty and inclination, he resolved to meet their wishes. He composed and committed to memory a form of words which, after reading a chapter from the Bible, he repeated, day after day, in the hearing of his scholars.

A more direct and more disquieting question troubled him soon afterward. He was at a little prayer-meeting in the house of a Methodist local minister, where, after others had engaged in calling upon God, it was asked in a gentle whisper, "Will the teacher please to pray with us?" Had a thunderbolt fallen at his feet it might have startled him more, but would not have affected him so powerfully, nor made so deep and lasting an impression. It was like the still small voice heard by the prophet, when the wind, and the earthquake, and the fire had passed away, "What doest thou here, Elijah?" And he, fresh from the land of the pilgrims, the educated New-Englander who had come among this simple-hearted people to train the minds of the young immortals committed trustingly to his charge,

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