^fT'^ <3 1 
 
 Lake Forest University. 
 
 Baccalaureate Sermon, 
 
 . BY 
 
 JAMES G. K. McCLURE, D. D., 
 
 Acting President. 
 
 JUNE 12, 1892. 
 
 LAKE FOREST, ILL. 
 
 UNWEpSiTY OP lUlW^S 
 
 AUG 1 ' 191 - 
 
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 UNIVFRSTTY OF V^m Vmr^ 
 
 f EB 2 1 1918 
 
 II THESALONIANS 2:iO. 
 
 THE LOVE OF THE TRUTH, THAT 
 THEY MIGHT BE SA VEDr 
 
 In every age and in every clime the question has been 
 asked "What is Man's Highest Good ? " Thoughtful and 
 earnest minds have wondered what the consummation of 
 human possibility might be. 
 
 The world's teachers have given widely differing 
 I answers. Buddha has said Rest, cessation from all life's 
 j labors by absorption of the individual in the Eternal 
 ^Spirit of Peace. Mohammed has said Activity, the 
 ^activity of feasting and continual ministration to the 
 desires of the flesh. Closely allied to Buddha is every 
 teacher, who proclaiming materialism makes the last pos- 
 sibility of human life extinction, and closely allied to 
 Mohammed is every teacher who announces an Elysium, 
 - a Valhalla, a Happy Hunting Ground as the ideal exist- 
 ^ ence that man may expect. 
 
 ^ Other teachers have made man's highest good some- 
 thing in the line of individual character. Confucius did, 
 as he predicted a life beyond the present in which a man's 
 own moral nature would be his joy or his sorrow. Soc- 
 rates too left the world his testimony that man had some- 
 thing within him that could not die, but would move on, 
 in a realm of its own, carrying with it its own atmosphere 
 and purposes, of good or of evil. 
 
 r< 
 
However large and inviting these wise men made the 
 possibility of human good, that good was so qualified by 
 uncertainty and by inadequate views of character that it 
 was disappointing and insufficient to those who dreamed 
 dreams of light without shadow and life without an ele- 
 ment of decay. Such minds needed another answer to 
 satisfy their ideals, an answer so great that they could 
 say, ^' We can ask no more, we have heard of the highest 
 good beyond which it is impossible for us even to dream." 
 
 There came a time when that answer was given. It 
 came to men as the breaking of day comes to the earth. 
 Slowly and out of the darkness there appeared the shim- 
 mering of an idea, an idea of faultless approach to and 
 communion with Perfection. A people set apart for this 
 very purpose shot up rays of light through Patriarch and 
 Prophet, through Tabernacle and Temple, until the idea 
 almost reached its dawn. Then, as in an instant the day 
 at last breaks and the sun is risen, there came the answer, 
 and in one single word, the word '' Salvation," spoken by 
 Jesus of Nazareth, the highest good of man was set before 
 the world. This word he declared was the final expres- 
 sion of the possibilities of man. Here was the ultimate 
 privilege, the most ennobling inspiration, the crown of 
 human life. 
 
 The teacher of Nazareth used the word salvation in a 
 full and comprehensive sense. He was on earth to save 
 men's lives. Their lives meant their whole being, their 
 complete selves, with all that they could lose or gain, in 
 time and in eternity. Their pains and their pleasures, 
 their perils and their possibilities, their losses and their 
 opportunities were all in his mind when he made the end 
 and joy of his mission to save men. 
 
Viewed simply as a matter of deliverance^ viewed neg- 
 atively, Salvation opened a vista of immense privilege. 
 
 Wherever men have thought and have expressed their 
 thought it has been evident that they recognized a two- 
 fold bondage that held them and held their fellows — a 
 bondage to ihQ penalties of wrong and to the inclinations 
 to wrong. The penalties of sin, the hurtful, self-per- 
 petuating, debasing penalties are sure and terrible. Sin is 
 to our moral nature what leprosy is to our physical 
 nature, it interpenetrates, it weakens, it poisons, it des- 
 troys. Its work cannot be described otherwise than by 
 figures of speech. The very Son of Heaven could not tell 
 men what hurt it worked out save as he spoke symbol- 
 ically of " the worm that never dieth " and ''the fire that 
 is unquenched." His whole being shrank back from any 
 such nnsuse of life as sin brought about. The havoc 
 wrought to man's possibilities was to Him terrible beyond 
 languao^e to indicate. 
 
 Others not having Christ's conception of moral com- 
 pleteness have used his words so inadequately as to 
 belittle their force. It means nothing, absolutely nothing 
 to many minds to have the penalty of sin described by 
 physical screams and the anguish of bodily torture. A 
 promised deliverance from such makes no special appeal 
 to us. But the deliverance promised by Christ, a deliver- 
 ance from all disorder of soul, from all meanness, trickery, 
 lowness, selfishness, impurity, dishonesty, greed, hypoc- 
 risy, with their attendant evils, that — that is a deliverance 
 which is sublime. 
 
 And the deliverance from the inclination towards evil, 
 from all its relish and all its love, is likewise sublime. 
 Noble minds are distressed because of the inclination so 
 often asserting itself to be sordid, covetous, unloving. 
 
4 
 
 unholy. It was the cry of a brave, self-denying hero, 
 " Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from 
 the body of this death ? " as he felt the workings in him- 
 self of a tendency, a trend to do what was low and weak. 
 " What would I not give if I could be free from all pro- 
 pensity to wrong ! " has been the expression of men 
 whose stainless outward life was beautiful to the world's 
 eye. 
 
 Salvation then as a promise of mere rescue, a deliver- 
 ance from the effects and the tendencies of evil is such a 
 good as might well stimulate the human heart with cheer 
 and content. 
 
 But the meanins: of Salvation is merely suggested by 
 the negative idea of deliverance. Christ's power and 
 grandeur lay in his affirmations. The invalid is free from 
 disease and now he can fill his heart with laughter, the 
 prisoner is free from captivity and now he can gladden 
 home and hearth with his labors of love. ''Bird, you are 
 free," we say to the cageling whose wires are broken. 
 '* Go, soar ! Away to the sunlight, the fields, the streams, 
 the flowers. Spread, spread your wings and^z/." Salva- 
 tion is opportunity — it is possibility of growth into like- 
 ness to God Himself, it is such possibility for an eternity. 
 No one has ever conceived what the outcome of this pos- 
 sibility will be. We can today but touch the outer 
 fringes of the idea. What will it be when all the powers 
 of our life, moral and intellectual, social and spiritual, 
 have settled into perfectly harmonious movement, when 
 every part answers to its end, when every abiding element 
 of character shall be started in its path of endless pro- 
 gress, when new fields of thought, meditation, labor shall 
 open before us and every faculty shall meet the opportun- 
 ity in the freshness and vigour of eternal youth ! All 
 language grows dumb before the idea. Christ suggested 
 
no word for it but Life— Perfect Life, with no tendency 
 to weariness or decay, but rather with an immortal energy 
 that moves on as the very Purpose of God moves on, to a 
 hiorher, ever higher, wider, larger possibilit}" and develop- 
 ment. 
 
 This then is Salvation, Man's Highest Good. Have I 
 not said well, that more than this man cannot dream ? 
 
 Happy, happy the man that by sovereign Creatorship 
 is brought into a world admitting of such a consumma- 
 tion. To be born is not to be born in vain when salvation 
 can be expected. 
 
 But how is this Highest Good to be secured ? What 
 is the process, the mean's by which we come to it ? In a 
 few brief words the answer is given — through Love of 
 Truth, an answer that sums up for all men and for all 
 time the method of salvation. 
 
 Truth! What is Truth? Pihite, like many another 
 whose life is unreal has doubted if there was Truth. 
 Truth ! It has seemed to many at the best the baseless 
 fabric of a dream, a will o' the wish perhaps, that con- 
 stantly invites and constantly baffles the earnest soul. 
 How it is laughed about, how its very existence is denied! 
 
 And still it is. It is the real. It is that which actually 
 is. There may be much in our world that seems, that 
 appears to be. But back of all that seems, that appears, 
 back of the deceptive, the temporary, the evanescent, 
 there is the real and the real is the true. The truth in 
 any given matter is the reality in that matter. 
 
 Truth thus may be the very opposite oi piMic opinion 
 whether that opinion comes down to us accredited by the 
 traditions of past ages, or dazzles us as the fashionable 
 belief of the present hour. It may be at variance with 
 the sentiment of the wisest and hest individuals whom we 
 know. It may be different from our own conceptions^ 
 
6 
 
 however strong and well grounded they are — nay, it may 
 be different from our very convictions though those con- 
 victions have cost us much and are so dear to us that for 
 them and by them we would sacrifice life itself. 
 
 That man is a Truth-seeker who in any sphere of 
 investigation whether it be the sphere of physical science, 
 or political economy, or social ethics, or business enter- 
 prise, will surrender and pass by everything that seems in 
 his indomitable search for what is. 
 
 In the special sphere of religious investigation truth is 
 the actual, the real with reference to the meaning of hfe, 
 the purpose an<i the end of our being, what we are and 
 what we may become. The lo<^e of any kind of truth 
 leads us to integrity in the sphere of that truth. The love 
 of religious truth, teaching us how to live in the higher, 
 nobler elements of being, leads to integrity, wholeness, 
 completeness in the sphere of religious truth, and that 
 completeness is Salvation. 
 
 For love of truth involves (1) a desire to know truth 
 (2) a search to find truth (3) a purpose to live by truth. 
 
 A deep seated, abiding desire to know truth is in itself 
 ennobling. When once it takes possession of the heart, 
 the heart is aroused from cowardice, indolence, habit, 
 imitation. Timid minds dread to plunge into investiga- 
 tions of moral truth. Indolent minds are satisfied with 
 their own conceptions and do not wish to be disturbed in 
 opinions long held and now become a portion of them- 
 selves. There is not a nature with the least tendency to 
 what men call the conservative and the safe, that is not in 
 danger of laziness, if not of arrogance. Desire to know 
 truth keeps a man forever on the alert and makes him feel 
 that however much he may have learned, there is infinitely 
 more yet to be learned. The world stands still scientifi- 
 cally when chemists, astronomers, electricians are satis- 
 
tied with what they have heard and seen. No new ele- 
 ments are brought to light, no Copernican theory corrects 
 and overthrows the theory of Ptoloniey, no cable obliter- 
 ates time and space with the flash of its passing message. 
 And the world stands still intellectually and morally when 
 men are so content, be the reason what it may, with what 
 they now think, that they do not care to know more, 
 that they are actually willing to be ignorant of truth. 
 
 I count that man a man of heroic qualities who will 
 stand by his beliefs so long as they mean truth to him, 
 though he must die to be faithful to them, and will surren- 
 der those same beliefs the instant he is convinced they are 
 not the truth, though that surrender means the giving up 
 of the dearest theories of his life. Truth is indeed a very 
 precious thing to him who will adhere to the system that 
 expresses it, though social ostracism and ecclesiastical cal- 
 umny are ready to crush him, and who will withdraw 
 from the system that expresses falsehood and not truth, 
 though his name in an instant becomes a byword and a 
 hissing. Honest, earnest desire to know truth bespeaks a 
 purposeful soul. Those who rushing headlong into every 
 new device claim that they are actuated by desire to know 
 truth, deceive neither themselves nor others. They know 
 too well, they learn quite soon enough, that every new 
 appearance is not reality. Desire to know truth is not 
 their actuating motive. They are content with the seem- 
 ing, the unreal, the disappointing. The life that really 
 desires truth has taken into itself a seeing eye and a hear- 
 ing ear. Mere bubbles are not long beheld as solid sub- 
 stances by it, nor are Sirens voices long considered as the 
 call of duty. Such a life has lain aside dull sloth, and 
 has lain aside fearfulness, and self-sufficienc}^ too, as it 
 wishes, in its inmost heart — Oh, that I knew the truth! 
 
 The love of truth necessitates a search to find it. It 
 
never has lain so clear before any man's feet that he did 
 not have to hunt for it. Bread is intended for all men, 
 but it is bread to be discovered in the kernel of the wheat 
 and thence evolved by processes which stimulate human 
 industry and skill. Truth is meant for all men, but men's 
 minds are to be invigorated and their whole being aroused 
 into energy by the search for it, the effort to comprehend 
 it. It takes penetration to see the loaf of bread in the 
 kernel of wheat: it takes penetration to see the true 
 meaning of things. 
 
 Besides, the truth of to-day is never quite the same 
 truth in all its proportions and in all its relations, to-mor- 
 row. Mount Blanc is always the same — and still it is 
 never the same to the traveller who sees it to-day from 
 the north and to-morrow from the south, at one hour at its 
 base and at another hour from the distance. We grow 
 older, we move on into new circumstances and into new 
 experiences, our horizon changes, our view-point alters, 
 we cannot see truth as it actually is in any new day unless 
 we search for it as it is in that day. The great God is the 
 same for ever and ever — but He is never the same to the 
 man who searches for Him. He is never meant to be the 
 same. He is meant to be an ever new revelation, and 
 unless he is an ever new revelation. He fades away from 
 vision altogether. 
 
 Men, therefore, are to be kept always on the march in 
 searching for truth. There is a sense in which no truth is 
 settled once and forever for any man excepting the essen- 
 tial axioms of duty. There is another sense in which 
 truths are settled sufficiently for progress so that we rest 
 upon what we have found up to date, as when crossing a 
 stream we plant our feet on different stones as far as we 
 have come and so have something under us, but we press 
 on and must press on, for we have not reached the end 
 
9 
 
 yet. This is not our Rest; we must move forward. 
 
 To some tlie necessity of this unremitting search for 
 truth is a fascination. Men have said that they enjoyed 
 the searching for it more than the finding of it. It was 
 their mistake to say this. That was to make the excite- 
 ment of running for the physician more than the health 
 obtained by finding the physician. 
 
 But to most of us there is a shrinking from this con- 
 stant inquiry and this unceasing movement of mind. We 
 want to stand still, and not think and not question. It is 
 enough, we say, that we have learned what we have; the 
 vision satisfies us; let us stay in the land of the Lotus 
 eaters and be quiet and restful. 
 
 And still how much better it is that as yet the best 
 and brightest of us know but in part, that there is undis- 
 covered country still ahead of us, that limitless expanses 
 of fact still await our footsteps and that truth secured is 
 only an earnest of abundant truth still to be gained. 
 Who that has found truth and has obtained ideas of life 
 which correspond with the reality of things does not 
 rejoice that the search .is not over, that all is not founds, 
 but that every day there shall be a new advance, a new 
 conquest and a new joy, to him Avho follows whitherso- 
 ever truth leads! 
 
 And the love of truth includes also o. purpose to live 
 by it. Truth is an end as well as a means. As a means 
 it calls us, attracts us; as an end it desires to become a 
 very portion of ourselves. When it is taken into our life 
 so that it moulds and controls our views and conduct, it 
 puts within us the elements of genuineness. To love 
 truth for truth's sake is not to love truth for truth's end. 
 Truth is not satisfied when the drunkard knows the worth 
 and praises the beauty of sobriety while he himself is 
 intemperate. Truth calls no one her lover who believes 
 
10 
 
 it well to appear as an angel of light, but who still holds 
 fast to a dark, a satanic heart. Truth is very jealous of her 
 own mission to man's character. She will have man true 
 to truth, else man shall be incapacitated for finding truth 
 at all. She will not be sported with. She will not stay 
 with him who does not live what he has so far recoo^nized 
 as true. Right thinking will stop as soon as right living 
 stops. To know more truth than we endeavor to fulfill is 
 to dim our vision to the beholding of further truth: nay 
 more, it is to become blind to the very truth we once rec- 
 ognized. We cannot feel its force, we cannot long: recosf- 
 nize its worth and be sensitive to its beauty. 
 
 The legend of the Holy Grail is in point here. The 
 cup that the Hero of the Ages held, and from which he 
 drank before he passed to the scene of his triumph and 
 coronation on Calvary, could not be found save by him 
 who was pure and holy. Let the knight who would 
 obtain the Grail be spotless. It was folly for the unchaste 
 to seek the Grail. It would never allow itself to be even 
 touched by his hand. And let the life that would ^/zc? the 
 tmth be a true life and the life that would heep the truth 
 be a true life also, for truth does not believe that any soul 
 cares for her who does not take her to his heart and hold 
 her in his heart. 
 
 To love truth is to desire, to seek, to live truth. 
 
 Consider now the attitude of mind into which love of 
 truth puts one. How eager it is for light upon life, how 
 it inquires what is best and surest, how it appropriates, 
 as the body appropriates food, every principle that 
 appeals to sense of right! Will that soul make no mis- 
 take ? It may make many and great mistakes. It may 
 be led into what you and I call egregious error. This 
 condition of mind may send the fakir of India a thousand 
 miles which he measures day after day by the leno^th of 
 
11 
 
 his prostrate body on the ground until he can reach the 
 sacred Ganges and bathe therein to be clean from sin. It 
 may make a man shout the shout of the dervish until he 
 sinks from exhaustion and becomes the comfirmed para- 
 lytic. It may lead him to be the inquisitor who will drive 
 women and children to a death of disgrace and torment. 
 It may cause him to sacrifice his every physical virtue as 
 he endeavors to be true to what he understands to be the 
 truth. But whatever it leads him to, there is something 
 noble, grand, heroic in his truth to truth for character's 
 sake — and he, rag-covered and dirt-besmirched if you 
 please, puts to shame the elegant idler, the careless trifler, 
 be he spotless in robes and gold, because he so infinitely 
 transcends him in moral purpose. And we may be sure 
 that beside him such an idler is the merest chafi' in the 
 unerring judgment of the omniscent and almighty God. 
 
 Given such an attitude of mind and then let the same 
 opportunity be granted to see and hear and feel the Christ 
 that Paul had, and it will be inevitable (if the time be 
 suflicient) that the soul will receive and rejoice in Christ. 
 There will be a correspondence between such a love of 
 truth and Christ himself. As the needle veers to the pole, 
 the lover of Truth will veer toward Christ. Christ's 
 words will be seen to show forth principles, ideas, facts as 
 they are. His teachings will be found to be basal 
 teachings, lying at the very foundation of things, 
 a support on which any life, any institution, any 
 society may build with absolute assurance of stability. 
 His example will approve itself as showing forth the ideal 
 manner of life, an example that followed must secure in- 
 tegrity, beauty, peace, strength and holiness. In a word 
 the lover of Truth will see in Christ the true Teacher, the 
 true Master, the true Redeemer, the true Friend. Christ 
 will become to him the embodiment, the expression of the 
 
12 
 
 truth that he loves. He will put himself at His feet to be 
 taught of Him. 
 
 But even then the quest for truth will not be over. It 
 will simply have its direction shaped. In the ways and 
 words of Christ there will be something new to be learned 
 unceasingly. Each year, each month new phases of His 
 truth will open. He will continue to grow larger, and 
 ever there will be a greater Christ and ever there will be a 
 greater soul, and this will always be so long as the Infi- 
 nite is to be studied and the soul of man grows with the 
 advancing comprehension of the Infinite. 
 
 The chaos of human life largely disappears in view of 
 Man's Highest Good and the method of attaining it 
 through Love of Truth. Life ceases to be enveloped in 
 mystery. The rightness, the fulhiess, the opportunity of 
 life assume form. The problem of finding the complete 
 and exact truth does not cease to be most great, but 
 the value of living faithful to what truth we have discov- 
 ered assumes new proportions. The search for all truth is 
 never to stop. Forever and forever man is to travel on 
 in the realms of the new, the fresh, the exhilirating as he 
 advances in his search of all truth. He is never to be 
 satisfied with what he has found. The future will ever 
 beckon him on and hope and purpose with all their attend- 
 ant joys will always abide with him. Eternal life means 
 eternal energy, eternal development, eternal delight, in 
 this search for Truth. No man can over estimate the re- 
 ward that awaits the soul surrendered to the love of all 
 truth. 
 
 And no man can over-estimate the reward that attends 
 him who is consecrated to the living of any truth and of 
 every truth already found. He may think that he has 
 found but very little. It may seem to him that the truth 
 he knows is but a mere nothing. But let him cling to it, 
 
IB 
 
 cherish it, keep it — living that truth — if it be no more 
 than the truth of kindness and honesty and reverence — 
 and he will find that that truth in enough to lead on to the 
 purification of his soul, enough to work changes in his 
 character that have the promise and the potency of end- 
 less good. 
 
 In this world of ours there is one thing that cannot be 
 shaken or injured. No man, no devil can hurt Truth, 
 because Truth is the Real, and the Real is the ever abid- 
 ing is. He that is on the side of Truth is on the side of 
 the unconquerable, the indestructible. Truth cannot die. 
 It is idle, it is foolish to attempt to defend the truth with 
 indig^nant feelinofs and bitter words. Truth will stand 
 unmoved, and it is ours to take our tone from Truth's 
 immobility and be calm whatever assaults are made upon 
 Truth. Happy the man that realizes that as no one can save 
 truth no one can destroy truth, and realizing this, sees to 
 it that as he hopes to live a successful life he makes Truth 
 his friend and ally. How would the rampant words of 
 those who hate truth die away if their speakers were only 
 wise and understood ! And how would every individual 
 forsake all artificies, all insincerities, hypocricies, decep- 
 tions, and cry out for truth in the inward parts and truth 
 in ever fibre of his life, if he were only wise ! How, too, 
 would everyone who had one feeling of responsiveness to 
 truth, one emotion stirred, one pity aroused, one high 
 sentiment evoked, transmute that feeling into immediate 
 action and make that truth his own forever, make himself 
 Truth, if he were wise ! Men are ruined by falsehood ; 
 they are saved by Truth — and saved to a salvation which 
 in the gracious love of Heaven means Deliverance from 
 every bondage of wrong, and Opportunity, full, boundless 
 and eternal for growth into the very mind and joy and 
 nature of the ever Blessed God. 
 
14 
 
 Members of the Graduating Classes: As I look into 
 your faces and understand the import of this hour I am 
 moved with a great tenderness of Spirit. For you and I 
 are not strangers but friends. Many a time we have 
 touched hands and many a time we have touched hearts. 
 I have for you individually great regard and great affec- 
 tion. Wherever 3^ou may go in the future, you will al- 
 ways have the invisible but the actual presence of my fond 
 wish beside you. I have watched your course of study 
 here with unceasing and eager interest. I have lifted 
 many a prayer to Heaven for each one of you. I have 
 asked God to lead you and keep you and use you as shall 
 be best for your highest welfare and for the world's wid- 
 est good. May He answer my many prayers abundantly 
 above all that I have hoped. 
 
 Today the message of Life's greatest Possibility has 
 been set before you. May the vision of this Highest Good 
 never be absent from your thought. Live for this noblest 
 and grandest of possibilities. Never be discouraged or 
 depressed because the fulfilment of the vision* tarries. 
 Never be enticed from it by the allurements of the unreal. 
 Keep the eye upon the vision and press forward. If 3^ou 
 love truth love it so that your thoughts, your feelings, 
 3'our words, your deeds are true, so that you are true. 
 Then you will be honest, earnest, meek, brave, pure and 
 kindly. You will be drawn closer and closer to Christ. 
 He will be your Pattern, your Inspiration, your Hope. 
 May this be! And then sometime may there come a con- 
 verging of your earthpaths and mine until at last we find 
 ourselves together once again, and we are forever in the 
 Presence of the Living and the True God. 
 
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