Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/95

SHERIDAN the sacredness of the ties which those aliens to feeling, those apostates to humanity thus divided. In such an assembly as the one before which I speak there is not an eye but must look reproof to this conduct, not a heart but must anticipate its condemnation. Filial piety! It is the primal bond of society. It is that instinctive principle, which, panting for its proper good, soothes, unbidden, each sense and sensibility of man. It now quivers on every lip. It now beams from every eye. It is that gratitude which, softening under the sense of recollected good, is eager to own the vast, countless debt it never, alas! can pay, for so many long years of unceasing solicitudes, honorable self-denials, life-preserving cares. It is that part of our practise where duty drops its awe, where reverence refines into love. It asks no aid of memory. It needs not the deductions of reason. Pre-existing, paramount over all, whether moral law or human rule, few arguments can increase and none can diminish it, It is the sacrament of our nature; not only the duty, but the indulgence of man. It is his first great privilege. It is among his last most endearing delights. It causes the bosom to glow with reverberated love. It requites the visitations of nature, and returns the blessings that have been received. It fires emotion into vital principle. It changes what was instinct into a master passion, sways all the sweetest energies of man, hangs over each vicissitude of all that must pass away; aids the 85