Bicentenary

Sunday 16 October 1853                                                     


Virtues proper of the various states of life

The School will hold its spiritual exercises at the Parish of Saint Augustine tomorrow, at 6 o’clock in the evening.

Virtue, being a quality considered an “abstract”, that is, separated from its subject, has no existence elsewhere outside of the ideal world. We have defined and painted it here in the many conferences we have had this year. It is an indisputable truth that the assiduous practice of it must precede the notion so necessary to man as to trace up a plan on a territory before laying on it any construction or building. These theories have elevated us to a point from where we are able to contemplate. Either all virtues are ordered and simplified as one quality, or are divided. We have examined the object and action of each one of them; then, confronted with the vices by which they are attacked, we have given them an exact idea entirely in conformity with the principles of sound philosophy and Christian morality.