Southern Christian Advocate

Ministers.
Diligence in Study.
From Professor Read's Address to the Students of the Ohio University, at the opening of the Session, May, 1839.

You have various objects in view in after life: but whatever you undertake you will feel the need of thoroughly disciplined minds, of great knowledge, of deep research, and a perfect command of your powers. Some of you may be called to barbarous tribes as Christian missionaries and civilizers of men. Your first step would be, to reduce a language merely spoken and unwritten to the written form; to make an alphabet of sounds, to your ears strange and dissonant; to reduce to system peculiarities that are without analogy in other languages; and, unaided, to make spelling-books, grammars and dictionaries, and then translations of the Bible and standard works of European literature.-- Will this work require learning? Whom of your number shall we appoint to it? Whom, I say, shall we send? Shall it be the young man who fags over a sentence of Latin or Greek; who will not take pains to understand the power and nature of language where he has every help? No, we must have better stuff for this noble undertaking.

We want men for the field of science, to make abstruse mathematical and philosophical investigations, to take observations in various parts of the earth, and to go as savans upon the expeditions of scientific exploration, which the spirit of the age is sending forth. Whom of your number shall we assign to this work? Shall it be the student who falters at the black board, or stands mute and motionless, or whose quod erat demonstrandum is, I can't do it?

We want men in our courts of law, who shall investigate long, perplexed and intricate questions of right, requiring patient, intense, incumbent attention for days, and sometimes for weeks. Whom shall we set apart for this work? Shall it be the so-called genius, who is all things by turns, and nothing long? No, young gentlemen, we must have different materials. We want you, but you must gird yourself up--you must prepare yourselves, some for one department, and some for another, but all for usefulness, all for eminence. Away with that timidity of spirit which attempts little, and of course accomplishes less.

As a means of keeping yourselves in that course of conduct which you mark out for yourselves, let me recommend to you the practice of the Pythagoreans, of reviewing at night the transactions of each day. Call yourselves to a strict account. Let no day pass at the close of which you may not with a good conscience say--I have this day made some advancement in moral and intellectual improvement--I am wiser and better by having lived another day.-- Pursue this course, and you will not fail to become both wise and good men. You will stand as far in advance of the great mass of men as your opportunities are before those of others. But if at the close of each day you might well use the words of Titus upon a different occasion, Perdidi diem, and still feel no remorse, there is of you little hope. A tabular diary, something like that of Franklin, which briefly note your success and your deficiencies, would be of excellent use.

As to the method of study. time will not allow me to say but one or two thoughts. The first is, while you study, study your might. When you open your book, shut the door in and concentrate all the powers of your mind upon it, and let them be brought with intensity to bear upon the subject before you. Mere dalliance with books, is an idle and a most pernicious habit. How can you accomplish any thing to purpose, if you study with a wandering and divided attention!

Study with accuracy. Let there be no medium in your minds between scholarship and no scholarship. Let the ideas of doing a thing and doing it well, be identified. Let the doing a thing by halves be in your estimation equivalent with not doing it at all. It is true, this exact and accurate knowledge cannot be attained without painful labor. The subject must pass and repass in your minds until it is perfectly familiar. There must be review and re-review, until it is perfectly understood--until it is arranged and set aside for future use. There are some subjects hard and difficult to be understood, at least to the young student, upon the first perusal. Of these, I would adopt the language of Sir Edward Coke in the preface to his Institutes, a work which is considered the touchstone of the legal student's powers of discrimination. "Albeit," says this quaint sage of the law, "the student shall not any one day, do what he can, to reach to the full meaning of all that is here laid down, yet, let him no way discourage himself, but proceed: for, on some other day, in some other place, (or perhaps upon a second perusal of the same,) his doubts will be probably removed." So, I would say to you, if you meet with apparent difficulties, you should no way discourage yourselves, but proceed. Mark the difficulty, and recur to it until your doubts are removed.

Do your very best at each successive recitation. Let each lesson, if possible, be better than its predecessor. Lay a strong necessity upon yourselves to do a thing, and you will do it. If you accustom yourselves to the best mode of performance, you will be ashamed of any other mode than the best. Study, too, not only with a view of knowing, but also of communicating what you know. To know, and to be able to communicate your knowledge, are equally important to your usefulness.

Study in this way, and you will never complain of a want of interest in your studies. You will love them--you will prize them--you will be an enthusiast in them. They will be to you as your meat and your drink. But you cannot feel an interest in a study of which your notions are faint, confused and obscure. This is the reason the student seldom is interested in a study which he is just commencing. Study in this way, and you will secure valuable knowledge, discipline of mind, and sound intellectual habits.