FOR a long time the conviction has been dimly felt in the community that, without prejudice to existing institutions, the legal day of weekly rest might be employed to advantage for purposes affecting the general good.

The exercises of our meeting are to be simple and devoid of all ceremonial and formalism.

Simplicity should not be identified with bareness.

Perhaps a hundred people assembled one evening, May 15, 1876, at the time when the country was celebrating the hundredth anniversary of its political independence.

In a country of such recent civilization as ours, whose almost limitless treasures of material wealth invite the risks of capital and the industry of labor, it is but natural that material interests should absorb the attention of the people to a degree elsewhere unknown.

The family is the school of duties – founded on love.

If you desire information on some point of law, you are not likely to ponder over the ponderous tomes of legal writers in order to obtain the knowledge you seek, by your own unaided efforts.

For more than three thousand years men have quarreled concerning the formulas of their faith.

Few are there that will leave the secure seclusion of the scholar’s life, the peaceful walks of literature and learning, to stand out a target for the criticism of unkind and hostile minds.

An anxious unrest, a fierce craving desire for gain has taken possession of the commercial world, and in instances no longer rare the most precious and permanent goods of human life have been madly sacrificed in the interests of momentary enrichment.