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 Delivered on Commencement Dav^ 
 
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 By Rei^. E. R. RallocR, D. D. « 
 
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WHAT CONSTITUTES A FINISHED- 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 Delivered ou Commencement Day, at Mills College, Cal., 
 May 27, 1896, by Rev. h. H. Hallock, D. D. 
 
 Not the end of a college course — that is justly 
 called " Commencement ; " not the end of learn- 
 ing, for no true woman or man ever ceases to 
 learn ; but what is the scope and aim of true 
 education ? 
 
 In art and music, in law and medicine, some 
 things are accounted essential, while some are 
 optional. To discriminate is important, lest one 
 expend his chief strength upon the superficial, 
 to the neglect of the radical and basic. Let us 
 master essentials first, graces and decorations, if 
 possible, afterward. That the singer stand in 
 graceful pose is desirable, but that she utter 
 true notes is imperative ; to memorize facts is 
 good, but to /earn to think is indispensable. 
 
 Education does not consist in the mere knowl- 
 edge of facts. In this ' bridging decade ' of our 
 century, over which trooping thoughts unceas- 
 ing tread, not a tithe of important facts can 
 memory retain ; but education is not in mem- 
 orized facts ; it is a quality of mind which can 
 master facts and mould mankind. 
 
 If education consisted in memorizing, what an 
 illimitable list of items stretches hopelessly be- 
 fore us ! 
 
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. .tu. literature, for instance, whose gems sparkle 
 • in' £li*e<doni€' around and above us like stars in 
 the night sky, how many, many authors, classic 
 and modern, there are whom one must know ; so 
 much art also to master, for all literature has 
 illumined itself with the artists' pencil ; so 
 much science to study, for science has threaded 
 literature through and through with her flying 
 shuttle ; language and history and commerce 
 must be understood, for they all have a litera- 
 ture of their own; and jurisprudence and the 
 great philosophies, psychology and sociology, all 
 must be somewhat familiar if we would claim 
 to have grasped the scope and richness of gen- 
 eral literature. Omit either of these, and your 
 literary education is partial. 
 
 Or, if one would become versed in the classics ; 
 the wealth of many tongues. Oriental and Occi- 
 dental, ancient and recent, displays a boundless 
 field ; so great that life is too short to explore 
 even the vestibule of the many linguistic man- 
 sions which the ages have builded — with strange 
 alphabets and foreign superstructure — until the 
 mind wearies with the endeavor, and we become 
 content at length to taste only a few tongues of 
 the earth, and let the rest wait for a world that 
 has more time in which to explore the mysteries 
 of manifold human speech. 
 
 Or, in science what awaits us ? Not only must 
 we master the old laws and principles which our 
 fathers knew, but on whirling, steam-driven 
 wheels, and along the line of winged wires, must 
 
we fly, to keep abreast of the latest iu Roentgen's 
 rays or Tesla's lights, the new surgery and 
 pathology, telescopic and microscopic achieve- 
 ments of each flitting hour. 
 
 If knowledge of facts were an essential edu- 
 cation, the scientist must be ever in pursuit of 
 the newest, lest he become a fossil, foraging over 
 ancient and forgotten fields. For we tread to-day 
 the highway of discovery, and we tread it fast. 
 Edison and his compeers keep us out of breath 
 in the chase, and make earnest haste themselves; 
 for life is short, and the far fringe only of the 
 fertile forest is yet explored. Secrets of matter 
 and of mind, and the universe of heavenly being, 
 lie all about us, and only just now have we lifted 
 a lower corner of the enshrouding veil. We 
 cannot even inventory the facts and phenomena 
 of the universe ; we can only sample them, and 
 much that we learn we soon forget. 
 
 How, then, is education possible ? It is possi- 
 ble, since education lies not in the secure posses- 
 sion of facts, but in that quality of mind which 
 can comprehend, classify and compare events 
 and principles as they develop. Disciplined 
 mind is educated mind, though multitudes of 
 facts taught in the college curriculum may have 
 been forgotten or never mastered. Education is 
 mental quality. 
 
 The educated mind sees a bone bleaching on 
 the prairie, and builds the extinct animal that 
 owned it ; watches an eclipse, and knows that 
 laws of planetary motion produce it ; finds a bit 
 
of quartz, scents a La France rose, sees the flying 
 cloud, and from each deducts the proximity of 
 gold, the evolution of the flower, the law of the 
 dew-point and air current. Education is never 
 surprised into superstition, never loses balance, 
 for it apprehends the controlling law. While 
 there is much that the educated man knows not, 
 the key to all knowledge dangles from his wrist, 
 and he can discourse more wisely about the new- 
 est discovery than he who never learned to think 
 can upon familiar themes. This educated quality 
 is attainable. It is the power to think. And 
 that is truest education which teaches power of 
 thought rather than that which crams the mind 
 with masses of slippery things called facts. A 
 mind may become enc3'clopedic in its possessions, 
 but be neither resourceful nor efflcient in shap- 
 ing the course of human progress. 
 
 Now, there are certain vast areas of thought, 
 of varying altitudes, which the mind should 
 learn to travel intelligently. If either of these 
 be omitted, education is partial and one-sided. If 
 either is omitted, the student, for lack of it, 
 may be left wholly at sea in some vital depart- 
 ment of his being, and disaster inevitably follow. 
 
 When stormy seas are to be traversed, the sea- 
 man must know all the laws of navigation; wind 
 and sails, placing the cargo and location of the 
 ports, the compass and currents and the log, — 
 all must be familiar unto him who is to com- 
 mand the merchant marine on treacherous main. 
 
And since man is composite, and he, too, sails a 
 perilous sea, from port to port, lie who will make 
 the voyage in safety should know the whole na- 
 ture of man and his destiny, lest he be surprised, 
 and so wrecked upon uncharted rocks or driven 
 upon disastrous breakers. 
 
 I plead to-day for this all-round educa- 
 tion. The world clamors for liberalism; so do 
 I. The world would have men broad; so would 
 I. But it is sometimes forgotten that greatness 
 demands height as well as breadth. A phrenolo- 
 gist once examined the skull of a friend, and 
 said : "You have a broad brain and if you only 
 had half an inch more elevation you would be a 
 genius." 
 
 There is much education to-day which seems 
 broad and liberal, but because it reaches not unto 
 the side toward God, is partial and perilous. 
 How can that soul be well-defined and safe whose 
 side that faces its Creator and King has not even 
 been surveyed ! 
 
 In our plea for the highest education, we are 
 not asking for anything narrow or eccentric, but 
 we take our stand with the modern critic in his 
 demand for breadth and liberalism, only we go a 
 step further; we demand that education be suffi- 
 ciently broad to study the entire man, not a seg- 
 ment of his being; that it embrace soul as well 
 as intellect, and eternity as well as time. If we 
 study Nature, we do not limit ourselves to the 
 mineral and vegetable kingdom, learning of 
 rocks and rivers, grass and herbs alone,-^but 
 
we rise quickly to the animal, and spend our 
 strength upon the fleet horse, the succulent mut- 
 ton, the racy game and the laws of production 
 and improvement. And so, if we would study 
 man, God's masterpiece for whom all else ex- 
 ists, we must study not only his body and mind, 
 but his soul also. If we would know man in the 
 far reach of his princely being, surely we cannot 
 leave unlearned that part which alone is immor- 
 tal, and which chiefly differentiates him from the 
 beasts that perish. 
 
 * 
 
 Education practically begins with the study of 
 simple phenomena, with the physical and mer- 
 cantile, matters of food and clothing. Witness 
 a carpet weaver of Glasgow who knows all about 
 the art of her loom, and can evolve its finest 
 fruit. She is educated in a somewhat low and 
 and limited sphere; her education is practical 
 and commercial, and enables her to earn her liv- 
 ing. So is that man educated who can pitch the 
 latest curve in baseball, or organize the most re- 
 sistless wedge in football. Neither department 
 is the noblest possible, yet each is the product 
 of training, each requires courage, self-control 
 and some brain. The physical is always impor- 
 tant, but the plane is comparatively low and the 
 orbit of revolution narrow. 
 
 Next, we rise to matters of classification; to 
 botany and geology, biology and physics; we 
 move upward into the science of government, and 
 to questions sociological, international, political. 
 
to literature and fine art; and thus, with magnif- 
 icent sweep, the horizon has broadened, and we 
 now look upon a world above the common, out 
 into the realm of genius and statesmanship. We 
 have climbed the pyramid, from the drifting hot 
 sands about its desert base, to where the air 
 moves in fresher currents and the outlook wid- 
 ens ; here is a broad plateau, and the State now 
 provides for the education of its sons and daugh- 
 ters in this vast field which vitally touches the 
 welfare of society. The State may have been 
 slow in meeting this demand for higher educa- 
 tion, but she has grandly provided for it now, 
 and the day which is dawning is an auspicious 
 one for our Republic. 
 
 Thus wealth is increased as well as brain. 
 The educated person no longer stands aghast 
 before the mountain, but proceeds to tunnel it 
 for his railroad or sink a shaft to find its gold. 
 The forest is no longer a wilderness unto him, 
 but a nest of treasures which he proceeds to un- 
 cover for mills and masts, houses and ships. 
 The sea is no longer a wild, wide thing, the re- 
 lentless, mysterious shrine of the mermaid and 
 the sceptered Neptune, but a grand highway of 
 commerce, plowed with the keels of many a 
 golden argosy, dotted with white wing of sail, or 
 churned to foam by the triple screw of his ocean 
 greyhound. Great problems of capital and of 
 labor open to his master key, and the educated 
 man or woman finds no gate locked which leads 
 to fortune and to statecraft. To learn to think 
 
in all these departmeuts and traverse intelli- 
 gently these many rich fields of knowledge is to 
 be educated far beyond the necessities of a mea- 
 gre, physical existence. 
 
 It is not long, however, before the student who 
 has gone thus far in the study of social and po- 
 litical econoni}'', discovers that laws of matter 
 and of might are not sufficient to solve some 
 problems that are rife in our seething communi- 
 ties. 
 
 Adjustments between man and man, or nation 
 and tribe, king and subject, labor and capital, 
 involve another element which the finger of force 
 and of mere philosophy is too short to reach. 
 Something in man rises higher than the stretch 
 of his stature, and education adequate for the 
 hour must strike into the region of morals and 
 eternal rectitude. Not broadly educated, there- 
 fore, is any man until he has acquired some just 
 criterion of judgment concerning the claims of 
 the human conscience touching character and 
 personal righteousness. So the State teaches 
 morals, and offers men a potent solvent for many 
 a high problem in ethics which the lower educa- 
 tion could not furnish. This is an essential 
 part of the higher education, and deeply concerns 
 the health of the body politic. The State wisely 
 provides for this, since it is vital to its welfare, 
 and an important element in its honorable self- 
 perpetuation. But the highest plane of human 
 life and need is not yet reached. Mind and 
 morals do not exhaust the man. 
 
Beyoud the palaces of kings, and the outlying 
 homes of toil; beyond and above the galleries of 
 art and castles of the knights; beyond the region 
 of chivalry and gallantry, the commerce of mer- 
 chants and rights of sovereigns, and all the 
 vexed questions of human life and society, be- 
 hold a world of temples ! Listen to the unending 
 echoes of worshipful music encircling the globe ; 
 witness a conscious immortality, — a longing 
 look beyond the westward hills and the sunset, 
 where stands the throne of the living God; — a 
 wondering what is for us in that vast unknown. 
 Yes, above the reach of the mercantile and the 
 aesthetic is a lofty plateau of human thought 
 and life, unto which many often aspire and all 
 sometimes glance, — a region that lies open unto 
 the face of God, silent but great, — the region of 
 the soul ; and we cannot deal adequately with 
 problems that vex the race until we have studied 
 there the religious and spiritual nature of man, 
 and have looked honestly into his relation unto 
 his Maker and his future. 
 
 That person is therefore only partially edu- 
 cated who has never explored the realm of re- 
 ligion; not narrow, sectarian religion, but relig- 
 ion broad and eternal — the relation of man to 
 God, which is at the very heart centre of all 
 lesser and human intercourse. The State does 
 not educate its students in religion ; probably it 
 cannot ; yet the necessity exists, and somehow, 
 somewhere, this vital, vast field of study must be 
 invaded. How, for instance, can one really ap- 
 
lO 
 
 prehend the throes of early Christian story, the 
 revolutions of pagan Rome, the peopling of the 
 Catacombs, and the transformations of ancient 
 empire that has no conception of the Christ ! 
 
 How can one fully comprehend the ecclesiasti- 
 cism of medieval ages who has no experience of 
 the power of religious conviction to master the 
 soul beyond all other motive ! Who can analyze 
 the crusades ! 
 
 Who can understand the mystery of the May- 
 flower, — cradle of our civil and religious liberty, 
 — if he have never entered the domain of the 
 spiritual or ever felt that power profounder than 
 patriotism, tenderer than home ties, more lasting 
 than love of life, which was able to make men ob- 
 livious to all these in supreme devotion to the 
 God they loved ! 
 
 History cannot be read intelligently without 
 knowledge of religion; for religion is the golden 
 thread shot through the fabric which gives it 
 meaning and life. And God himself is the key 
 of history; to discern God's plans will solve 
 countless combinations otherwise inexplicable. 
 
 Education, therefore, is not complete until it 
 has carefully studied not only the facts but the 
 basic principles of the religious nature, and 
 Christ the crown and glory of humanity, the 
 sole supreme solvent of the stupendous problems 
 still rife and unsettled in human society. 
 
 Hence the necessity for the Christian college. 
 If the State cannot teach religion in its broad 
 and eternal verities, private benevolence must. 
 
II 
 
 For without this, the key of the highest human 
 situation is still lost ; the mind without this has 
 still a fallow field, and the worst of it is, it is the 
 home lot, nearest God; and until this fallow 
 ground is broken up and these home acres tilled 
 around the spot of our birth and the hearthstone 
 of our God, finest fruits cannot appear and the 
 vast bulk of our yet unexpended life still lies in 
 black and solemn shadow. Without religion the 
 rocket only flashes a little more brilliantly for a 
 moment, but goes out into a darkness the more 
 dreadful by contrast. 
 
 * * 
 
 Even the present economy of this world can- 
 not be fully understood without a knowledge of 
 God and redemption. As well stand amid the 
 whirr of the spindles in the spinning-room and 
 expect to iinderstand the mill from that alone, 
 as aim to apprehend creation by standing on the 
 periphery of the planet and seeing the phenom- 
 ena there. You must step up to the office to 
 know the mill ; approach the throne to under- 
 stand the world. 
 
 No education is adequate, however fine, which 
 stops short of Christ. The pivotal point in hu- 
 man history is Calvary ; and who can under- 
 stand the world with Calvary left out ? The turn- 
 ing upward of humanity begins at the cross, and 
 they who omit the study of the Redeemer from 
 their curriculum, have only viewed the complex 
 factory from a subordinate room ; they have 
 seen the train whizz past them in the night, but 
 
12 
 
 have not stood in the engineer's cab and seen 
 him manipulate the throttle and set the air- 
 brakes as he rounds perilous curves with his 
 precious human freight. They have examined 
 phenomena carefully but not from the Gover- 
 nor's throne; nor have they discovered God's 
 ultimate motive in the creation of immortal souls. 
 
 The conqueror of the world is to be Christian- 
 ity, but "Christianity will not conquer the world 
 until it leads its thought." That day is already 
 dawning ; there is a distinctly marked reaction 
 toward the recognition of an intelligent, personal 
 Creator and the need of a knowledge of him. 
 
 Science finds that she cannot solve her equation 
 and ignore this unknown quantity, God, and 
 the leaders of the world's scientific thinking are 
 beginning to admit this. Witness the latest 
 utterances of Darwin and Huxley and many 
 others. 
 
 You must look at man from God's standpoint 
 or you are not fully educated. I would rather 
 m}^ daughter be graduated from a truly Christian 
 college whence she had fully imbibed the spirit 
 of the Christ, than from the highest secular uni- 
 versity on the globe ; for thus she will have at- 
 tained a rounder, truer, more complete education. 
 Breadth is not the only desirable dimension. 
 The Christian scholar sees a horizon utterly un- 
 attainable to him of secularities only. The sec- 
 ular student sees as best he can, but he is near 
 the earth, where atmospheric aberration and the 
 curvature of the surface fatally handicap his 
 
13 
 
 vision, but he who learns to sit with God on his 
 throne, to see with God's eyes, and rise to the 
 height of the sermon on the mount, above the 
 mercenary and the sordid, to measure man with 
 the measuring rod of the Redeemer, he alone is 
 truly educated. Our culture may better lack 
 detail than to lack breadth ; but it may far bet- 
 ter lack breadth even than to lack altitude! 
 
 Education therefore is not finished, — I had 
 almost said is not truly begun, — until it has led 
 the soul to reckon with its King. 
 
 The cheek may blush with beauty, the brain 
 display its brilliant bloom, genius sparkle from 
 every finger-tip, but if there be no vital spark of 
 God within the soul, no divine cultus looking 
 toward the Eternities, — we shall have blossomed 
 but to fade. 
 
 True education is essentially and always 
 Christian education! 
 
 " Let knowledge grow from more to more. 
 But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
 That mind and soul, according well. 
 May make one music as before, 
 
 But vaster." — Tennyson, In Memoriam. 
 
 There is one other feature of a true education 
 which must be achieved before it can be consid- 
 ered ideal. It must rise into the domain of 
 motive : it must exist not for itself alone, but to 
 lift society. It must be unselfish, magnani- 
 mous, charitable, beneficent. It must not only 
 know God, but join hands with God to accom- 
 plish the high and holy purpose which He 
 reveals and inspires. 
 
^4 
 
 Make the most of yourselves, young ladies, 
 seeking education and refinement that you may 
 thus become worthy specimens of the Creator's 
 art, and thus glorify the Artist ; but there is 
 another aim which must not be omitted. Even 
 God does not live solely to be good: He was 
 good before He created anything, and would 
 have been forever good without creation: but 
 having created, as we study His evolutionary 
 processes, we find Him leading His people, by 
 hint and premium and prophecy, into an ever 
 finer type, an ever clearer likeness unto Him- 
 self. That is, God exists not only to be good 
 but to do good ; by His love and life to lift men 
 unto His throne. And the truly educated soul 
 must have caught this conception and have 
 adopted for himself this high ideal. " Non no- 
 bis solum ^ sed bono publico!'^ Be good that you 
 may also be useful : multiply your talents that 
 by expending them without stint you may better 
 humanity by all that has bettered you. This is 
 the grand closing chapter of our educational 
 text book : " Not to be ministered unto, but to 
 minister." 
 
 The great mountain which all admire, rising 
 from the rosy-blue waters of Puget Sound, was 
 called by the Indians " Tacoma," " nourishing 
 breast." For that Mt. Tacoma, with her snowy 
 heights gleaming, blushing, incarnadined with 
 many a crimson sunset, glistening under the 
 noon-day glare, or chill and ghostly on moon- 
 light nights, crowned at 14,000 feet with the eter- 
 
15 
 
 nal solitude of its own sublimity, was not content 
 to be merely grand and majestic among mount- 
 ains, admired and adored of men — but because 
 it was supremely higli and uncommon broad, it 
 sent down from every shining flank and gleam- 
 ing glacier-bank a river into every valley at its 
 feet, — a river to feed the people, — from its rip- 
 ples with sweetest fish, and from its banks with 
 fruit and berry, enriching man with lofty timber 
 and feasting him with the deer that feed among 
 the lily- pads. " Nourishing breast '' they named 
 the unspeakable mountain, for it ministers unto 
 men, even though through all its existing days 
 it might have sung : 
 
 " Eternal snows for ages past have crowned my hoary head, 
 And vernal flowers for aeons past have wreathed my emerald bed; 
 Centuries' storms have beat my breast, and tempests cleft my side 
 Until my wounds by thousands are increased and multiplied ; 
 Yet, whether day its gladness brings or night the earth enshrouds 
 Still I, in silent grandeur stand, and calmly kiss the clouds." 
 
 But if the most memorable characteristic of 
 God's grandest mountain, immortalized in its 
 native name, is giving^ — even the wear and tear 
 of the tempest contributing to enrich the savage 
 at its feet, as Christ the sinning world, — surely 
 the educated soul, truly knowing God and 
 climbing high into His eternal counsels, must 
 take the final step of true education and become, 
 like Him, beneficent! 
 
 With that lesson learned, education is a fin- 
 ished thing ; not ended, never ended, but round- 
 ed and rare, ready to take high place among 
 God's efficient forces to make men better. 
 
i6 
 
 Young ladies of the graduating class : it has 
 been your privilege, rare among women, to re- 
 ceive from your Alma Mater an education both 
 broad and high. 
 
 You have been taught " Mens sana in corpore 
 sano^"* but you have also learned that the soul is 
 ignorant until it learns the secret of trust in 
 God. Be loyal to the Christian teaching im- 
 parted here, and you shall command the respect 
 of the world's Redeemer, of the world itself, and 
 of your own soul forever. 
 
 Thus, like Mt. Tacoma, crowned with the sun, 
 clothed in perpetual ermine, fertile valleys ever 
 fruitful at its feet, you shall stand among 
 mankind a benediction, " blessing and being 
 blessed," hastening on the time when all shad- 
 ows shall flee away and the dawn of eternal 
 righteousness shine clear above the eastern hill- 
 tops ; then shall human life be bright and 
 beautiful, because Christian, and true education 
 become universal, when all shall know the truth, 
 and '' the truth shall make men free." 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY