Thus ended that busy life, which began in poverty, and which had yielded its possessor a fortune of ten millions of dollars.  Surely, if wealth and the power it wields be the real crown of life, Stephen Girard must be accorded high rank among the mighty men who win magnificent victories over the adverse circumstances of an obscure birth.  He sought riches, not as a miser who gloats with low delight over his glittering gold, but as a man ambitious to make his name imperishable.  His ambition was satisfied.  His ten millions, invested as directed in his will, which is itself a marvel of worldly wisdom, is accomplishing his life-long desire.  So far as human foresight can perceive, Girard College will keep the name of this wonderful man before the eyes of men through the coming ages.

Nevertheless, we count this victor over the mighty obstacles which stand between a penniless cabin-boy and the ownership of millions a vanquished man.  Bringing his life into the “light of the glory of God which shines from the face of Jesus Christ,” we are compelled to pronounce it a miserable failure.  We do not find either Christian faith or Christian morality in it.  As to faith, he had none; for he was an atheist, and gloried in his disbelief of all revealed truth.  As to morality, his biographer informs us that he was an unchaste, profane, passionate, arbitrary, ungenerous, unloving man.  His apparent philanthropy was so veined with selfishness that it was rarely ever exhibited except under conditions which secured publicity.  And even the college which perpetuates his name proclaims, by its prohibition of religious instruction, his hatred of “the only name given under heaven among men whereby we can be saved.”  It is true that his will enjoins instruction in morals; but it is heathen, not Christian, morality that he intended; and, if the letter and spirit of his remarkable will were strictly carried out, the graduates of Girard College would leave its walls as ill instructed in the principles of genuine morality as were the disciples of Socrates or the followers of Confucius.  The only roots on which pure morals can grow are faith in our heavenly Father and his divine Son, and love which is born of that precious faith.  That faith is forbidden to be taught, and its divinely ordained teachers are prohibited entrance within the walls his unsanctified ambition built.  Happily for the orphan boys who congregate there, the spirit of that antichristian will can not be executed in this Christian country.  Its letter is no doubt respected; but the ethics of the institution are not those of Voltaire, Rousseau, or Confucius, but of Jesus, whose life is the only “light of men.”  Hence, while his college may perpetuate his name, it will never cause mankind to love his character, nor to hope that he is one of that exalted host which ascended to heaven through much tribulation, and after washing their robes in the blood of the Lamb.—­DR. WISE, in “Victors Vanquished,” Cranston & Stowe, Cincinnati.