COLORADO COLLEGE 
 
 Addresses, 
 
 JUNE 14-17, 1891. 
 
 I. Baccalaureate Sermon by President Slocum. 
 
 II. Address before the Graduating Class of Cutler Academy, 
 by the Rev. Richard Montague, D. D. 
 
 III. Address before the Graduating Class of Colorado College, 
 by Mr. James H. Baker. 
 
 Colorado Springs, Colo. 
 
 1891. 
 
BACCALAUREATE SERMON. 
 
 By President Slocum. 
 
 June 14. 
 
 Text—E cclesiastes xi. 9: “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth.” 
 
 Every noble man desires power; power to achieve; power 
 over himself; power over others; power to think; power to 
 conceive ideals, and power to realize them in noble deeds. 
 
 The ordinary man sees things only as they appear; the 
 extraordinary one looks deeper than appearances, and into 
 the hidden meaning and possibilities of things. To the one, 
 steam is merely expanded water; to the other, it is power. 
 To the one, electricity is a strange curiosity merely; to the 
 other, it is force to which he will fasten machinery. The 
 ordinary man sees only a cluster of buildings, a group of 
 students, a company of teachers. But the other perceives 
 an institution rising, by means of the generous gifts of wise 
 men and women, to do its share in fashioning the moral and 
 intellectual life of a nation. 
 
 One man lives for . the means only by which noble ends 
 may be obtained; another uses his time, accumulates his 
 wealth, acquires knowledge, that he may use them for some 
 high purpose. 
 
 The explanation usually given of this word of the wise 
 man, which we have taken as suggesting our theme, is that 
 the joys of life belong especially to our earlier years. But 
 aside from criticising the superficiality of such an interpre¬ 
 tation, we question its truth. 
 
 If youth has its special joys, it has also, for many, its 
 sorrows and its disappointments; its thwarted ambitions, its 
 broken plans, and also its soul as yet not inured to trial. 
 Peculiar pleasures it has, but so has middle life — joys which 
 are richer and deeper. Old age, too, for noble men and 
 
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4 
 
 women, has its deep, calm delights that are its own peculiar 
 possession. What, then, is the meaning of this expression: 
 “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth”? 
 
 Did you ever stand beside a noble youth, with vigor of 
 intellect, with the eagerness of moral enthusiasm, who, brave 
 and^magnanimous, carried others to his high ideals by the 
 very force of his noble character? Did you feel a peculiar 
 joy in his strength and the possible achievements that lay in 
 his pathway? 
 
 Do you catch my meaning? Youth has special oppor¬ 
 tunities, peculiar enthusiasms, rare privileges. Youth, 
 when not wasted, perverted or misused, is beautiful and 
 rich. The wise man says: Rejoice in it because of its 
 possibilities of moral strength, because of its opportunities, 
 because of its special privileges. Let us see what some of 
 the things are that belong to youth, in which a young person 
 is to rejoice. Rejoice in thy youth, because of its enthusi¬ 
 asms. The enthusiasms of a noble youth are beautiful. 
 Truth comes with freshness to him. Traditions do not bind 
 his heart; unbelief has not frozen his soul. Opportunity is 
 real. 
 
 Do you remember that hour when life seemed something 
 larger than it had before; when your heart burned within 
 you as you listened to the voice that came and unfolded the 
 deeper meaning of the old truth; when God seemed to speak 
 to you, and a deep, serious, noble side to life began to open 
 before you? The fire was burning within your soul; you 
 thought: I, too, will make my life worthy; I will fill it with 
 noble deeds. You were full of faith, hope and courage; this 
 was enthusiasm; God was in you. Nothing is sadder than 
 to lose the inspirations of these enthusiasms; to call them 
 merely empty dreams; as the years come and go, to let them 
 lose their hold on us, and only the coldness of an empty, self¬ 
 ish, perhaps a vice-conquered life, be ours. O young man, 
 rejoice in the moral and the intellectual enthusiasms that 
 come in these younger days. 
 
 Rejoice, too, in the way in which duty often reveals itself to 
 you. We, who have come through deep and varied experiences 
 
to know that the obligations of duty have become a part of 
 our moral fibre, do not envy you the inevitable and painful 
 experiences through which most of you must pass before you 
 come to a like condition. But we know that no one can come 
 to this knowledge for you. And therefore we remember 
 with joy the freshness that youth alone knows; its happy 
 enthusiasms for right, which, kept clear and strong and con¬ 
 secrated, will bring you into all truth. And God grant that 
 they may lead you to a manhood better than any of us have 
 shown you. 
 
 Life is empty, poor, mean, worthless, unless duty com¬ 
 mands us, and rouses our better self and opens up God’s 
 ways to us. Is there anything more painful than to find 
 young men or young women who have no moral or religious 
 enthusiasm; who have no idea that God calls them through 
 their duties to the highest life? Rejoice in youth, because it 
 is the time in which the habits of life are formed. 
 
 To fix one’s character on the side of right, to establish it 
 against all that is wrong, is the true destiny of human souls. 
 But every habit has behind it thought. He who is in the 
 habit of doing noble deeds, is also in the habit of thinking 
 high thoughts. Purity of thought, honest ideas, straight¬ 
 forward consideration of questions of personal responsibility, 
 make the man of pure deeds, of veracity and dutifulness. 
 
 We must not delay over these suggestions, important as 
 they are, because I want to speak of special spheres of action, 
 in which it should be a matter of great rejoicing to every 
 young man that he can enter for noble achievements with 
 enthusiasm, with dutifulness, and with the power of strong 
 habit. 
 
 But no discussion of the fields of action is worth much 
 unless first of all and before all else there is the personal 
 consecration of each soul to God and His truth. We talk 
 and theorize, we dream our utopian dreams, or we may con¬ 
 demn and become pessimistic, but the world is ready to be 
 saved only as the individual gives himself in willing self¬ 
 surrender to God, and does His will in all things. Is it our 
 will, our theory, our opinion, or the eternal will and the eternal 
 
6 
 
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 purpose tliat we seek? All else comes back to this. As stu¬ 
 dents of Christ, as pupils of the divine Master, and as His 
 disciples too, we must go on our way. Let this thought 
 never lose its hold upon you; and whatever your field of 
 work, your life will be full of usefulness and the joy and 
 peace of God. 
 
 And now I wish to speak of three special opportunities 
 in which you are to rejoice. The first is the Christian 
 church. We have no time to study this great historic 
 institution that has had such an important place in the 
 world’s history. It has come down to us as a great power 
 out of the past, and has come for a great purpose. The 
 church represents three great ideas—worship of God, the 
 absolute standard of morality, and altruism, or service for 
 others. You will come to feel, as every earnest man and 
 woman does, that the church is far from doing its full work. 
 While its past history has much which we admire, because of 
 wdiat good and great men have achieved for it, it has also 
 much that rouses opposite feelings, because the human ele¬ 
 ment in its organization has carried also the weakness of 
 humanity into it. 
 
 It will ever be the battlefield of thought and intense dis¬ 
 cussion. This is not wholly to be regretted. The great dis¬ 
 cussions of these latter days between the so-called liberal and 
 conservative parties in the church have some marks of 
 promise in them. They indicate life and interest in the 
 greatest of human problems. 
 
 The great caldron seethes and boils, and out of all the 
 fire and smoke will come great truths more clearly appre¬ 
 hended and defined. 
 
 Let none of you be either frightened into pessimism or 
 into a too confident optimism. The worst is not near at 
 hand, nor has the best arrived. But the Christian church is 
 rising to its work and its larger destiny. Neither the nar¬ 
 rowness and the illiberality of a falsely called liberalism, nor 
 the narrowness and illiberality of a falsely called orthodoxy, 
 are the hope of the church. The church needs, as never 
 before, brave, large-hearted and calm-souled men and 
 
7 
 
 women, too magnanimous to persecute, and too wise to be 
 misled by shallow thinking. The church is not to be thrown 
 over because of its mistakes, nor is the opinion of any set of 
 men within it to be followed as infallible; but that the 
 Christian church offers an opportunity to the earnest, wise 
 young man, that should stir every enthusiasm and possibility 
 within him, there can be no doubt. 
 
 It needs wise, patient thinkers; men and women who are 
 both fearless and deeply reverent; so large-minded and large- 
 hearted that they can receive from the past its splendid 
 heritage of truth and consecration, and reject its weakness, 
 its false traditions, and its narrow dogmatism. 
 
 The young person who is thoughtful, earnest and full of 
 the eagerness of fresh ideas and the first insight into the 
 deeper meaning of lives, confronting the narrow side of the 
 church, may be tempted to throw aside all allegiance to it, to 
 think that the church has no place for him. But this is a 
 mistake. The Christian church, in spite of its wretched sec¬ 
 tarianism, in spite of that foolish spirit of persecution that 
 still survives as a legacy from medievalism, in spite of all its 
 limitations that come because it is an organization of human 
 beings, with all the weaknesses of humanity, has a great and 
 far-reaching destiny. Are you sufficiently wise, devoted, far¬ 
 sighted, patient, and consecrated to put yourself, heart and 
 soul, into sympathy with its best possibilities and do your 
 share towards making it so free that no narrow spirit of per¬ 
 secution can abide within it; such a conserving force that 
 everything that is true shall be more clearly seen, because of 
 it; so useful that through its spirit of service there shall be 
 no part of the world where the spirit and the truth of the 
 Christ shall not be carried, and no human need to which 
 the church shall not minister? 
 
 There is another sphere for the young person who wishes 
 to form habits of high thought and noble endeavor. That 
 is society. I use this word, however, in its larger sense, 
 and not with the narrow meaning usually given to it. Society 
 is the congregation of people together for some common pur¬ 
 pose. This may be in the slums as well as in the lecture hall 
 
8 
 
 or the church. There is society in the prison, in the poor- 
 house, in the jail. There is society in the business office and in 
 the crowded factory. There is society in the tenement house 
 and in the work room of the poor sewing girl. There is so¬ 
 ciety in the hall of the labor organization and the rooms of 
 the directors of great corporations; society of the rich and 
 society of the poor; society of the pure and of the impure, of 
 thieves and of honest men; society of earnest people and of 
 those that are flippant; society of all kinds, actuated by all 
 kinds of ideas and controlled by all kinds of standards. 
 This society is guided and saved by noble men and women 
 with noble ideas; it is debauched by ignoble persons with 
 ignoble ideas. 
 
 These are days in which the problems of society are 
 being very earnestly studied by large-minded men and 
 women. You have had your thoughts turned during the 
 past year to the great questions that confront the student of 
 social science in modern times. You have considered the 
 work that is being done for the wretched, the ignorant, the 
 neglected classes of society; and the pauper and the criminal 
 have asked your thought. You have some knowledge of 
 their inferior standards, and you have felt the possibilities 
 of society controlled by high thinking and noble living. 
 
 You know of the men and women who, in New York, in 
 East London, in Chicago, and in other cities, are going down 
 to the poor and the outcast; wffio are seeking to transform 
 the homes of the vicious, to save the children, to break down 
 the wretched features of the tenement-house system, to drive 
 out the saloon and the gambling hell. But all this work has 
 only just commenced. There are large fields of usefulness, 
 of profound and careful study, for any one who is willing to 
 give his time and his strength to the study of the problems 
 of social science; and there never was a time when so much 
 could be done in so short a time as in these last few years. 
 Books, monographs, pamphlets innumerable, are being pub¬ 
 lished. The inductive method of studying these problems is 
 leading to most careful investigations, and the young person 
 who wishes to know the problems of modern society, and to 
 
9 
 
 give liis life to their solution, has every reason to enter with 
 enthusiasm and a feeling of profoundest interest into a life 
 devoted to these lines of thought and action. Careful consid¬ 
 eration must be given to the questions that are open between 
 the rich and the poor, the employer and the employe. All of 
 us have some relation to these problems of social life. What 
 will you do with them? It may be you will not become 
 special students of social science in any technical sense, but 
 you can either feel that these questions are vital to society; 
 that you are a part of this society, and therefore they should 
 be yours; that Christianity has the solution of them all; that 
 the application of the Christian ideal to society has in it the 
 cure of all social ills; or you can turn away from these prob¬ 
 lems and with a selfish soul live unto yourself. But you may 
 well rejoice in your youth and all that lies before you, if you 
 wish to discover your work and your lot in this matter. “It 
 seems to me,” says a keen and discerning writer of modern 
 times, “that we are living in a crisis of the world ? s history; a 
 great crisis, for it is a moral crisis.” Whether justice is merely 
 “the interest of the stronger” is the question being forced upon 
 us, and fairly and truthfully we must answer it. Is it true 
 that “there is abroad a gospel of selfishness, soothing as soft 
 flutes to those who, having fared well themselves, think that 
 everybody ought to be satisfied?” 
 
 God grant that a Victor Hugo may never have to say of 
 America, “The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of 
 the poor.” Is it true that our national conception of justice 
 is simply that of Napoleon, when he said: “With the armies 
 of France at my back, I shall be always in the right?” Re¬ 
 member, as Dr. Arnold said, “to worship force is devil 
 worship;” and whether this is found in the organization of 
 labor, or in the organization of wealth, it is all the same. Can 
 you, will you, wherever you are, stand first for right, for 
 justice, for honesty? I would we might all find our ethical 
 principle in those words of Cardinal.Newman: “Better were 
 it for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to 
 fail, and for all the weary millions who are upon it to die of 
 starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction 
 
10 
 
 goes, than that one soul should tell one willful untruth, 
 though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without 
 excuse.” 
 
 There is one other sphere of action in which there is 
 noble work awaiting our American youth. I mean the sphere 
 of politics. No one will imply that the holding of public 
 office is the only way to do good work in the field of politics; 
 although I could wish that it were the custom here, as in 
 England, for many of our young men to be specially trained 
 for public life. But no one can have studied our American 
 system of government without realizing two or three impor¬ 
 tant facts. First, the important position of the individual 
 citizen. He holds the sovereign power; he it is that makes 
 public opinion; he it is that holds the destiny of the Repub¬ 
 lic in his grasp. Another fact is that the importance of the 
 individual offers great temptation to lust for power, and 
 great temptation to corruption. This latter is especially 
 great in a government like ours, where combinations of indi¬ 
 vidual citizens are able to grasp so much power, and either 
 by fair or foul means to lay hold of the government. Another 
 fact is, that the extreme partisanship manifested in our 
 American politics needs, as its safeguard, a tremendously 
 strong hold upon ethical principles. While parties must 
 necessarily be a potent element in our government, yet there 
 is temptation to lose sight of the higher conceptions of right 
 for the lower ideas held by one’s party. To my mind, this is 
 the most dangerous element in our present political system, 
 and its fruits are seen in the dishonesty of many political 
 clubs or organizations, and the tendency among the mass of 
 petty politicians, in our American cities, to lose sight of all 
 moral ideas in their desire for so-called party success. If the 
 ward politician is to control our cities, and the cities the 
 country, then our republic, in spite of all its resources, is 
 being built upon the sand, and some day the storm will 
 surely come. 
 
 The young men are coming to the front. A generation 
 of public leaders is fast passing away. What is before us? 
 On the one hand, an opportunity for noble achievement 
 
11 
 
 never before offered to any people; on the other, the saddest 
 failure in popular government the world has ever seen. I 
 have lately been reading a book which discusses the question 
 — strange that it should need to be discussed—“Is there a 
 right and wrong in politics?” 
 
 One writer says: “Men are to be guided only by their 
 self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these, 
 and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires 
 no virtue in any quarter.” 
 
 Is politics simj)ly a game to be played, first for one’s self, 
 and then for one’s party? 
 
 I would like to ask the question of our serious-minded 
 politicians — and there are many of them — are we not often 
 losing sight of the absolute, eternal law of right in the dom¬ 
 ination of the brute force of numbers? Is it safe to accept 
 the opinions of the masses as the supreme law? 
 
 The world’s great saviors have not been with the majori¬ 
 ties. Was Goethe all wrong when he said: “Nothing is more 
 abhorrent to a reasonable man than an appeal to a majority, for 
 it consists of a few strong men who lead, of knaves who tem¬ 
 porize, of the feeble wdio are hangers-on, and of the multitude 
 who follow without the slightest idea of what they want.” 
 Our political life needs young men who love, first of all, the 
 eternal law of right; whose ethical principle is, “because 
 right is right, to follow right were wisdom, in the scorn of 
 consequence.” 
 
 The law of morality is absolute wherever it is found, and 
 for the man who is brave and true enough to live this out 
 there is most important work. I verily believe we are at a 
 great moral crisis in our political system; and that crisis can 
 be safely passed only as the young men of the country are 
 ready to cease temporizing with the eternal principles of jus¬ 
 tice and virtue and ever be ready to stand, as Jesus and Soc¬ 
 rates, as Paul and Savonarola have stood, alone, if necessary, 
 for the right. 
 
 “I write unto you, young men, because you are strong,” 
 said the beloved disciple, and how forcibly those words come 
 to us to-day in this country of ours. What cannot the strength 
 
12 
 
 of tlie youth of this generation do, if they will? Rejoice in 
 your youth — in its magnificent opportunity, in its wondrous 
 privilege. 
 
 Here, then, are three great fields of action: the church, 
 society, politics; and you have every reason for entering 
 upon them with enthusiasm, with dutifulness, and wfith 
 the habits of a noble life. Where your lines will be placed 
 we do not know. God has His work for you, and wherever 
 you turn your faces in these coming years there will be these 
 opportunities. What will you do with them? Remember that 
 every base thought, every ignoble deed, mars the usefulness of 
 your life. Keep yourselves unspotted from the world, and 
 remember always the words of the Great Teacher: “ I pray not 
 that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou 
 shouldst keep them from the evil.” In the world you are, 
 and God’s work awaits you. Will you do it? Hold, then, to 
 those eternal laws of right; never temporize with them. Lose 
 position, as the world calls it, if necessary; stand alone, if you 
 must, but be true to the eternal, never-changing ideas of 
 righteousness. 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 TO THE GRADUATING CLASS OF CUTLER ACADEMY. 
 
 By the Rey. Richard Montague, D. D. 
 
 June 16. 
 
 Perhaps the remarks which I wish to make in response 
 to your kind invitation can be summed up in one word— 
 Focus. When we wish to use a microscope, opera glass, 
 telescope or camera, we must adjust the instrument with care 
 till a clear, accurate image is printed on the retina or sensi¬ 
 tive plate. Focus is essential for just vision. 
 
 There is much discussion as to the object of education. 
 The dull practicalist makes all this discipline through which 
 the student passes a mere training for bread-winning. He 
 measures its value by houses, raiment, food. The high 
 culturist, on the other hand, views only the human faculties, 
 and in their development finds end enough for the educa¬ 
 tional cult. Is there not a mediating view which is nearer 
 the truth? We are in the world, yet we should be greater 
 than it. We need it; but we should spurn slavery to it. 
 
 I take it that the real object of education is, to see the 
 world as it is. It is a wondrous universe by which we are 
 surrounded. This cosmos of material things is full of a glory 
 by few perceived; and there is a sublimer order within to 
 which more yet are blind. To see all this, not as confusion, 
 but as order; not as chaos, but as cosmos; to discern its parts 
 in their just relations; to discriminate as to their values and 
 uses—is, to my mind, the end of what we call education. 
 
 The world loves men of “common sense.” But if such 
 sense be not uncommon, why is it so loudly praised? What 
 is “common sense?” It is the power, so rare and thus so 
 precious, of seeing things as they are. Genius is but com¬ 
 mon sense raised to the n th power. The genius is the man 
 
14 
 
 of insight. He sees farther, deeper than other men, but he 
 sees reality, not fancy; he is the man of extraordinarily pene¬ 
 trating and clear vision. 
 
 Experiments show that a large proportion of men are color 
 blind. Surely, untrained minds have very confusing and con¬ 
 fused mental images. Bad cooking is due to want of do¬ 
 mestic perspective. You will not have unventilated houses, 
 neglected sewerage, want of quarantine, ragged children, 
 vicious morals, business failures, speculative “ booms,” wild-cat 
 finance—mere castles in the air—where there is mental focus. 
 I would rather look at any scene with my naked eye than with 
 a glass. Experiment as I will, the lenses bring it to me 
 blurred, chromatic. Education, personal or inherited, has 
 taught me to focus the natural organ, but not the invented 
 instrument. Be it so. The point is to see. What teaches you 
 to see, that is education. What gives you vision, that is 
 training to be sought. To get the right adjustment of faculty, 
 to win poise, to become seers — focus; this is requisite for the 
 wislied-for harmony with our surroundings. We see in na¬ 
 ture, literature or life what we bring to it. An untutored, 
 prosaic mind, studying the “Angelus,” suggested to his com¬ 
 panions that these people had stopped digging potatoes, wait¬ 
 ing for the twelve o’clock whistle, so as to go home for dinner. 
 You can see his mind had never been drawn out, developed, 
 focused on the poetry, religion of life, and the image of the 
 artist was another than his own. I was in the Catskills; sit¬ 
 ting on a choice point of observation, my soul was thrilled by 
 the glorious vision. I followed a silvery thread for miles to 
 the west, till it ended in a dashing cascade, pouring over the 
 precipitous rocks and ledges that terminated there the valley’s 
 stretch. I followed that crystal stream eastward, by gentle 
 declivity falling, till it emptied its waters into the lordly 
 Hudson, with measured pace striding Atlanticward, his beau¬ 
 teous sheen flanked by the distant hills of Berkshire and 
 Litchfield. Across the valley, precisely opposite, rose a noble 
 mountain, the fragrance of whose verdure, the comeliness of 
 whose form, intoxicated my senses. I thought it all. Surely 
 it seemed enough, and I was about to go; but my friend said: 
 
15 
 
 “Wait a moment; listen.” And letting the attentive ear join 
 hand with the enchanted eye, I heard a burst of song from 
 that verdure-clad mountain, that stream-bejeweled valley, 
 that grove of observation — the notes of countless feathered 
 songsters—that made me realize, in feeble measure, how vo¬ 
 cal with His praises are all the Creator's works, and suspect 
 that Pythagoras was right after all, and sometime, somehow, 
 our ears shall be opened to “the music of the spheres.” 
 
 The best of us have but partial vision. Only a part of 
 our nature is responsive to the world of beauty, thought, life. 
 We need more breadth. We are narrow, lacking scope. We 
 are not adjusted to all our surroundings. We want focus. 
 We draw out the telescope’s barrels till lens is adjusted to 
 lens, and as a Roger Bacon, or Baptista Porta, or Galileo, or 
 Newton, we see. What is education but educing, drawing 
 out the powers of man till perception, judgment, reason, con¬ 
 science, faith, are adjusted, and as Plato, Pascal, Emerson, 
 Jesus, we see God’s world as it is? The narrow, partial, 
 obscure, the petty, ignoble, murky, it is education’s office to 
 remove. He who has the art of focus has subjective impres¬ 
 sions that are congruous with objective realities. 
 
 There are two coupjets of requirement for such focal ad¬ 
 justment that you will permit me to point out. Their mem¬ 
 bers may seem contradictory each to its companion, but they 
 are really complementary, the one defective without its ap¬ 
 parent opposite. For mental focus there is needed: 
 
 I. Intensity. Very few people have an educated eye. 
 Did you ever pass a shop window and then seek to recall the 
 objects you had seen in it? Try it every day for a week. 
 Learn from the many things you will see on Saturday how 
 few things you saw on Monday. Go out into a field and listen 
 to the insect’s hum, the bird’s song, the farmer’s cheery voice, 
 the breeze’s stir. Were you ever aware before that nature 
 was so vocal? You say the ocean is monotonous? Did you 
 ever study it? The hurried tourist stops two days at Manitou, 
 is driven over the conventional routes. Does he know our 
 mountains? How much can a man see in six weeks abroad — 
 London, Oxford, Cambridge, the Scotch Lakes, Paris, done 
 
16 
 
 in thirty clays on a Cooke ticket? No man can see the glories 
 of this world who does not open his eyes and look. I always 
 thought an earth-worm unworthy more than a passing glance, 
 and wondered that so great a man as Charles Darwin could 
 pause to write a book on so ignoble a theme. But when I 
 learned the result of the great naturalist’s studies, I had a 
 different estimate of the earth-worm’s place in the economy 
 of nature. A common bug or beetle you think a blunder of 
 creation? Put it under a microscope and see. Many men fail 
 for mere mental myopy. Want of concentration is the mark 
 of an untrained mind. John Todd was a nervous, dyspeptic, 
 consumptive preacher, but as student, author, and divine, he 
 did his best work, undisturbed by slamming doors, shouting 
 children, or chattering women. Luther sometimes became 
 so absorbed in study as to pass by one, two, three meals. It 
 was hard for his loved Katharine, but you and I, though 
 unwittingly, have profited by it. There is this advantage, 
 first of all, in the telescope: It narrows the range of vision; 
 it fixes the eye on one point, one star, in the heavens. By it 
 you can study one spot on the sun, or one mountain of the 
 moon. We are surprised at the swiftness and accuracy of 
 some men’s judgments. A Gould, a Rockefeller, a Vander¬ 
 bilt makes decisions involving millions of dollars in a 
 moment, because he has brought the intensity of his whole 
 energy to consider the problem. The captain of the victorious 
 American team at Creedmoor said that his men won as soon 
 as each man’s entire attention was given to the captain’s 
 order. The absent-minded man is the butt of many an ill- 
 advised laugh or joke, but they who are better taught know 
 that absent-mindedness is often truest present-mindedness. 
 It is undivided attention to the thing in hand. He who is 
 without it is not an educated man. He lacks the first ad¬ 
 justment to life. 
 
 II. Yet, on the other hand, for mental focus a seemingly 
 opposite adjustment is equally necessary. I mean Passivity. 
 
 Our greatest essayist has a beautiful passage in which he 
 urges the student of nature to leave his military hurry and 
 
17 
 
 adopt the quiet pace of his mistress. Her secret is patience. 
 When the naturalist goes into the woods, the birds fly before 
 him, and he finds nqne; when he goes to the river bank, the 
 fish and the reptile swim away and leave him alone. How 
 does he learn all the secrets of the forest, of plants, of birds, 
 of beasts, of reptiles, of fishes, of the rivers and the sea? 
 Why, he sits down, and sits still; he is a statue; he is a log. 
 These creatures have no value for their time, and he must 
 put as low a rate on his. By dint of obstinate sitting still, 
 reptile, fish, bird and beast, which all wish to return to their 
 haunts, begin to return. If they approach him, he is passive; 
 he sits still. They lose their fear, they become even curious 
 about him. They come swimming, creeping and flying towards 
 him. They make advance toward a biped who behaves so 
 civilly and well. Thus he knows them. 
 
 Intensity is not noise. Concentration is not bustle. Haste 
 is not hurry. Speed is not drive. You cannot, you simply 
 cannot see or hear what creation has to reveal, if you do not 
 keep still. “Touch the button and we do the rest,” is a good 
 enough motto for the amateur with his kodak. It is not a 
 motto for him who wishes clear, accurate, broad, comprehen¬ 
 sive, satisfying visions of the universe of God. Nature will 
 not be hurried. It is unwise to attempt to master four years’ 
 courses of study in thirtj^-six months, even though the presi¬ 
 dent of Harvard university advises his overseers to give an 
 A. B. to every man who will do it. Minds, like hats, that are 
 stretched unnaturally, have a painful way of shrinking back 
 again. It takes time, as well as teachers, laboratories, maps, 
 books, colleges, to make a man. Americans lose by rushing 
 so fast. It’s boyish to dig up a hill of b'eans before they are 
 grown. “All things come to the man who waits,” but he must 
 wait. The finest sign of culture, says Matthew Arnold, is 
 never to be in a hurry. For one, I always suspect the thor¬ 
 oughness of that man’s training who hasn’t a little time for 
 doing one thing more. Michael Angelo chipped the right 
 piece of marble as much because he was calm as because he 
 saw which piece to remove. It takes time to understand a 
 
18 
 
 crystal, a flower, a proposition of Euclid, a law of physics, the 
 spectroscope, Kant’s Critique, your own soul. 
 
 “ Put your ear against the earth; 
 
 Listen there how noiselessly the germ o’ the seed has birth- 
 
 flow noiselessly and gently it upheaves its little way, 
 
 Till it parts the scarcely broken ground, and the blade stands up in the day. 
 
 Be patient! O be patient! The germs of mighty thought 
 
 Must have their silent undergrowth, must underground be wrought.” 
 
 III. No soul of man can touch the soul of Being, who is 
 not possessed of Enthusiasm. The blase or cynical spirit is 
 not the spirit of scholarship. Such an one does not see. It 
 is the God-intoxicated man, as Spinoza was justly called, 
 who alone has the insight of genius into the works of God. 
 Let him who wishes focus cultivate an eager, persistent, per¬ 
 ennial quest for truth. It is a lamentable fact that many 
 men, possibly the majority of men, cease to grow after their 
 fortieth year. They become content with acquired knowl¬ 
 edge, powers, resources; what they have enables them to 
 meet the ordinary duties of their calling. The practical 
 duties of life absorb attention and energy, and they easily 
 crystallize in forms of readiest habit. Beware of that 
 “pou sto” which checks your aspiration for a loftier leverage. 
 There are heavens on heavens. A dash of infinity must 
 overspread the mind of him who is to reflect the' eternal. 
 You cannot see things as they are, if you are not supremely 
 eager to see them. You will not be eager to see them if their 
 myriad variety, beauty, skill, do not fill you with a passionate 
 conviction that they are worth the seeing. Back of all quest 
 for truth, behind all the other adjustments of discipline or 
 circumstance in the interests of the discovery of truth, lies 
 the divine assurance that nothing is so valuable as truth, the 
 passion for knowledge, the enthusiasm that will not stop, the 
 ardor that never burns out, the ambition that never is 
 satisfied. 
 
 I watched a tiny, green worm the other day. Out of 
 himself he spun a fine silken thread, one, two, three, four 
 feet long. Then he stopped, carefully pulled himself up by 
 the thread of his own making, and rolling it into a minute 
 ball within his microscopic feet, he ascended until reaching 
 his starting point he left the curious ball and went away. 
 
19 
 
 Will yon tell me that that seemingly insignificant fraction 
 of life is really of no concern? I answer, there are lessons 
 to learn from that little worm, of which our deepest philoso¬ 
 phy yet has not dreamed. We may divide and subdivide, 
 and subdivide again; we may specialize and particularize 
 till we seem to have reached the limit of partition. That 
 infinitesimal division of life, or nature, or thought, is really 
 infinite in its significance, and the veriest “ infusoria,” who 
 are born and die as we look, may be “ an epiphany of God.” 
 If the world shall grow old, it will be beause you have aged. 
 Truth is perennially young. Her devotees never age. 
 
 IV. Is the complement of this requirement its opposite? 
 Yet is it not its contradictory. It is absolutely essential for 
 true vision that the observer be filled with a spirit of com¬ 
 plete Indifference. We fail to see nature because, with 
 obtrusive personality, we make it the mirror of our preju¬ 
 dices, conceits, ambitions. I visited the cairn that covered 
 the grave of a beloved American poet. The vulgar egotism 
 of a hundred tourists had covered the pile with their visiting 
 cards. It was an act of pious homage to the dead, and of 
 indignant rebuke to the senseless living, to tear these bits of 
 paste-board into countless pieces and give them to the winds. 
 Is man God? Am I the universe? Is the finite the infinite? 
 Is the temporal the eternal? Are we afraid of truth? I pity 
 that man who makes his present attainments in truth the 
 measure of truth itself. An honorable teacher said on his 
 dying bed, some months ago: “I believe now as always I 
 have believed. In sixty years my views have not changed a 
 particle—not a particle.” He was a good, a conscientious 
 man, but I cannot hold him up as an object of imitation for 
 the studious youth of our land. A man ought to change in sixty 
 years—I cannot conceive how, if he be an eager pursuer after 
 truth, possessed of that candor which is necessary for truth’s 
 discovery, he can fail to change in sixty years. As well ex¬ 
 pect yonder majestic peak to look the same at its base as 
 twenty miles out on the plains. There need not be revolu¬ 
 tion as we progress in life; there surely ought to be evolution. 
 The trouble is, many men are timid. We fear our cause will 
 
20 
 
 fail, and our cause is, we fancy, truth. What is candor but 
 trust? What is that indifference to results and consequences 
 for which I plead, but a sublime affirmation of essential faith? 
 I see more faith in a Darwin than in the bishop that anathe¬ 
 matizes him. Give me a Schleiermacher above a Hengsten- 
 berg. Trust the intuitions of your soul. Trust the deliver¬ 
 ances of nature. Be not afraid or concerned. Go where 
 truth takes you. The arms of the Eternal are beneath you, 
 and they will not let you fall. There is no hesitancy in the 
 artist’s plate as it looks through the camera’s lens to picture 
 us as we are. We may be old or we may be young. We may 
 be ugly or we may be beautiful. It makes no difference. 
 Coated with its sensitive film the plate is adjusted to its 
 work, and it will, without prejudice, without anxiety, with 
 utter indifference, image us as we are. Is the human mind 
 to be less candid than a machine ? Shall not the observing 
 spirit be as fair as a photographer’s plate? He who would 
 see what nature has to make known should cultivate a holy 
 calm, so serene, so constant, so profound, a candor so just, 
 so pure, that amid all the eddies of transient discussion, it 
 shall buoy him up as on the mighty current, the majestic, 
 undeviating stream of truth. 
 
 Intensity, passivity; enthusiasm, indifference: concentra¬ 
 tion, patience; search, candor—these are required adjust¬ 
 ments ere our minds are focused on the world without or the 
 world within. 
 
 Some things grow out of what I have said that I wish to 
 make clear: 
 
 First —I have, I hope, said enough to show the signifi¬ 
 cance of much in a liberal training that is sometimes in 
 danger of being ignored by the student. If you will go into a 
 large observatory you will notice a good deal of machinery 
 that at first may seem needless. But when the lens is turned 
 starward, those wheels and levers come into full use. Musi¬ 
 cians need prolonged routine practice ere they can delight 
 the hearer; and when a trained orchestra meets for public per¬ 
 formance, even Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is preceded 
 by the disagreeable tuning up of preparation. You see no 
 
21 
 
 value in that tough problem of algebra or geometry? You 
 will value its discipline later on. Only patient toil can enable 
 a student to unfold the four hundred parts of a Latin verb. 
 He will appreciate the attention, exactness, powers of com¬ 
 parison developed in that toil, when life’s work is on him. 
 The symbols and formulas of chemistry have a value beyond 
 themselves. The military habits of the training field, the 
 reverence, humility, aspiration of the chapel are all processes 
 in adjustment—movements toward the focus sought. 
 
 Second —One sees the importance of a prolonged training. 
 The world stands open for our mastery as never before; but 
 this is no age for incompetents. This is no time for shorten¬ 
 ing the courses of training preparatory to the work of life. 
 Still less should the West be content with other than the 
 most thoroughly trained, the most elaborately disciplined 
 men for her leaders. Let us put the ban on pettifogging 
 lawyers, self-made doctors, short-cut preachers, boy engineers, 
 callow chemists, ranger XDoliticians, backwoods legislators— 
 quacks of every sort. We are organizing our industries, 
 developing our educational institutions, forming our habits 
 of social life, determining thje methods of our religious 
 activity. We are building for the future. A common man 
 can maintain an interest already established. It takes a 
 rarer man to found on solid bases institutions to endure. 
 W e are face to face with a new era. The extraordinary pro¬ 
 gress of invention, the unparalleled success of great explorers, 
 the steady onmarching of physical science, the breaking 
 down of venerable political institutions, the great movements 
 of immigration, the ferment of religious thought, the uneasi¬ 
 ness in industrial circles, the plea for a more truly social 
 order, the increasing sensitiveness to human misfortune, 
 these, and a score of signs beside, point to the dawn of a new 
 and, let us hope, a better age. But periods of transition, in 
 men, nations, races, humanity, are always periods of danger. 
 Then is needed the trained guide. Then is wanted the wise 
 counsellor, taught by a wide induction from the past, caught 
 by no hoary deceits posing as novelties, quick to distinguish 
 the seeming from the real, movement from progress. I exhort 
 
22 
 
 every young man or woman, eager to contribute his part 
 toward the common weal, to be content with nothing less 
 than the most he can secure of thorough, elaborate training 
 for the work of life. Do not be in a hurry to get to your 
 active work. The world can wait for you. It has waited for 
 you countless thousands of years. It can wait for you a few 
 years yet. What you do in the world is to be measured not 
 by the number of years you are at it, but by what you put into 
 those years. The disciplined man can do more and do it 
 better, in a given time, than can a crude man. Seek not so 
 much to prolong as to pack your life. 
 
 Finally —I hope I have suggested something touching 
 the relative values of the various disciplines through which 
 the student may pass. I have defined common sense as the 
 power of seeing things as they are, and said that genius is but 
 this power carried to a very high degree. You can rank the 
 geniuses of this world by this test. I cannot assign to Goethe, 
 for example, so high a place as many modern critics give him. 
 I admire his versatility, his beautiful versification, his rare 
 and even philosophic culture; but three readings of Wilhelm 
 Meister do not reveal to me the deeper wisdom which Carlyle 
 professes to discover. Can a genius of highest order, who 
 sees things as they are, give three volumes of solid matter to a 
 band of vagrant actors, as fruitfulest way of exhibiting his 
 own wisdom? Can a genius of the first order leave you in 
 doubt, as Goethe usually does leave you in doubt, as to 
 whether the world is essential moral? The supremacy of 
 ethics is, as Emerson says, writ on every atom of star dust. 
 “The high intellect is absolutely one with moral nature * * 
 * * in the voice of Genius I hear invariably the moral tone, 
 even when it is disowned in words;—health, melody and a 
 wider horizon belong to a moral sensibility. The finer the 
 sense of justice, the better poet.’ - The profoundest things of 
 life are the things of conscience and faith. He who does not 
 see that lacks focus. His sight is blurred, imperfect; in the 
 long run, valueless. The world around us exists for the spirit. 
 John Fiske has a beautiful passage to this effect: “On warm 
 June mornings, in green country lanes, with sweet pine odors 
 
wafted in the breeze which sighs through the branches, and 
 cloud-shadows flitting over far-off blue mountains, while little 
 birds sing their love-songs and golden-haired children weave 
 garlands of wild roses; or when in the solemn twilight we 
 listen to wondrous harmonies of Beethoven and Chopin, that 
 stir the heart like voices from an unseen world; at such times 
 one feels that the profoundest answer which science can give 
 to our questionings, is but a superficial answer after all. At 
 these moments, when the world seems fullest of beauty, one 
 feels most strongly that it is but the harbinger of something 
 else,— that the ceaseless play of phenomena is no mere sport 
 of Titans, but an orderly scene, with its reason for existing, its 
 
 ‘ One divine far-off event 
 To which the whole creation moves.’ ” 
 
 Young men and women, that is insight; here is a speci¬ 
 men of perspective that sees all nature tributary to man; 
 that sees man as first of all moral, and because it sees man 
 as supreme and moral, therefore sees him as immortal. 
 
 Keep in mind as you progress in your studies of prepara¬ 
 tion, or as you go out into your life duties, that you are more 
 than any life-work you may choose. Be, not seem. Do, not 
 dream. Through each of you the Soul of the universe has a 
 separate message to give the world. Find out what that mes¬ 
 sage is. Deliver it as confidently as should a commissioned 
 prophet of the Most High. Dare to think. Be afraid to stop 
 thinking. Dare to act. With the ardor of a patient, truth- 
 loving soul, dare to achieve, to be. “This above all, to thine 
 own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, 
 thou canst not then be false to any man.” 
 
 May I, as I wish you all prosperity in your future course, 
 ere I take my seat, commend to you these sweet lines of the 
 saintly George Herbert: 
 
 “ For us the winds do blow, 
 
 The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow 
 ******* 
 
 “ More servants wait on man 
 Than he’ll take notice of. In every path 
 He treads down that which doth befriend him 
 When sickness makes him pale and wan. 
 
 O, mightie love. Man is one world, and hath 
 Another to attend him. 
 
24 
 
 “ Since then, my God, thou hast 
 So brave a palace built, oh dwell in it, 
 
 That it may dwell with thee at last ! 
 
 Till then afford us so much wit 
 
 That, as the world serves us, we may serve thee 
 And both thy servants be.” 
 
 This is focus; the vision of things that are, and are to be. 
 
 t 
 
 \ 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 TO THE GRADUATING CLASS OF COLORADO COLLEGE. 
 
 By James H. Baker. 
 
 J line 1 1 . 
 
 Standpoint of the Scholar. 
 
 For a thousand years before the Teuton appeared on the 
 scene of civilization the sages had been teaching in the 
 agora of Athens and in the groves and gardens of its environs. 
 There profound subjective philosophies were imparted to 
 eager seekers for truth, and in the schools geometry, rhetoric, 
 music, and gymnastics gave to the Attic youth a culture 
 more refined than was ever possessed by any other people. 
 The Athenians were familiar with a literature which, for 
 purity and elegance of style, was never surpassed. The 
 Greeks believed with Plato, that “ rhythm and harmony find 
 their way into the secret places of the soul, on which they 
 mightily fasten, bearing grace in their movements and mak¬ 
 ing the soul graceful of him who is rightly educated.” There 
 temples rose with stately column and sculptured frieze, and 
 art fashioned marble in the images of the gods with a tran¬ 
 scendent skill that gave an enduring name to many of its 
 devotees. 
 
 Meantime our ancestors were wandering westward through 
 the forests of Europe, or were dwelling for a time in thatched 
 huts on some fertile plain, or in some inviting glade or grove. 
 But these children of the forest—almost savages—possessed 
 the genius of progress, a power that turned to its own uses 
 the civilization of the past and almost wholly determined the 
 character of modern history. They highly esteemed inde¬ 
 pendence and honor. In their estimate of woman they stood 
 above the people of antiquity, and the home was held sacred. 
 They possessed a practical and earnest spirit, an inborn dis- 
 
26 
 
 like for mere formalism, and a regard for essentials that later 
 developed in scientific discovery and independence of 
 thought. The Teuton had a nature in which ideas took a 
 firm root, and he had a profoundly religious spirit, impres¬ 
 sible by great religious truths. He listened to the rustle of 
 the oak leaves in his sacred groves, as did the Greeks at 
 Dodona, and they whispered to him of mysterious powers 
 that manifested themselves through nature. The scalds, the 
 old Teutonic poets, sang in weird runic rhymes of the 
 valorous deeds of their ancestors. 
 
 How the Teutons hurled themselves against the barriers 
 of the empire of Rome, how they overran the fields of Italy, 
 how they absorbed and assimilated to their own nature what 
 was best in the civilization of the ancients, how they formed 
 the nuclei of the modern nations, how the renaissance of the 
 ancient literature and art in Italy spread over Western Europe 
 and reached England, and later an offshoot was transplanted 
 to American soil—these and similar themes constitute some 
 of the most interesting portions of history. Not least impor¬ 
 tant is the fact that the Roman world gave the Teutons the 
 religion of Christ, that highest development of faith in 
 things not seen, which, to the mind of many a searcher in 
 rational theology, is a necessary part of a complete plan to a 
 belief in which we are led by a profoundly contemplative 
 view of nature and human life. We study the past to know 
 the present. Man finds himself only by a broad view of the 
 world and history, together with a deep insight into his own 
 being. Our present institutions are understood better when 
 viewed historically; our present opportunities and obligations 
 assume fuller significance. We choose to-day to make a gen¬ 
 eral survey of our subject, rather than to discuss in detail 
 some minor phase. 
 
 OUR HERITAGE. 
 
 So, by the mingling of two streams, one flowing from 
 the sacred founts of Greece and Rome, the other springing 
 from among the rocks and pines of the mediaeval forests, a 
 current of civilization was formed which swept onward and 
 broadened into a placid and powerful river. Let us view 
 
27 
 
 the character of the present period and learn to value what 
 has come down to us from the past—our heritage of institu¬ 
 tions and ideas, a heritage derived from the two sources, 
 Greco-Roman and Teutonic. 
 
 The independent, practical, investigating energy of the 
 Teutonic character has made this an age of scientific dis¬ 
 covery and material progress. The forces of nature are 
 turned to man’s uses. The conveniences of man’s physical 
 well-being are well-nigh fully supplied. Philosophy discovers 
 and proclaims the laws of nature’s processes, and even the 
 evolutional doctrines teach that, in view of every phenome¬ 
 non, we are in the presence of an inscrutable energy that 
 orders and sustains all nature’s manifestations. The ideas 
 of the Christian religion, universally received by the new 
 peoples, in the course of centuries have forced themselves in 
 their full meaning upon the minds of men, and they deter¬ 
 mine more than all else the altruistic spirit of the age. Altru¬ 
 ism is the soul of Christianity; it has become a forceful and . 
 practical idea, and it promises greater changes in political 
 and social conditions than the world has ever seen. The 
 religious revolt of the sixteenth century is a Teutonic inheri¬ 
 tance—a revolt which transmitted some evils, but abjured 
 formalism and based merit upon the essential, conscious atti¬ 
 tude of man. If the impulse that grew into the revolution 
 of the eighteenth century and led to political emancipation 
 was not of Teutonic origin, it was received and cherished 
 everywhere by Teutonic people, and was carried by them to 
 permanent conclusions. The modern Teuton is found in his 
 highest development in the intelligent American of to-day. 
 Times have changed with the onward flow of history. The 
 ancient Teuton caught up the torch of civilization, and in 
 the fourteen centuries since has carried it far. It is, per¬ 
 haps, a return kindly made by fate that the light of that 
 torch was for many a year a beacon to benighted Italy. The 
 modern Teuton extends to her the hand of enlightened sym¬ 
 pathy, and remembers in gratitude the great gift received 
 from her in the long past. 
 
28 
 
 And then we inherit from the ancients, those master minds 
 that were the authors of great conceptions when the world 
 was young. Greece was the Shakespeare of the ancient 
 world. It transmuted all that it had received from the na¬ 
 tions of the Orient into forms of surpassing genius, even as 
 the great master of the Elizabethan period of our era turned 
 all that he touched into precious metal. When the world 
 was crude, and no great originals were before men to imitate, it 
 meant much to create, and create so perfectly that the works 
 have ever since been the ideals for all peoples. Phidias and 
 Apelles, Pericles and Demosthenes, Homer and Euripides, 
 Herodotus and Xenophon, Aristides, Socrates and Plato and 
 Aristotle—artists, statesmen, orators, poets, historians, men 
 great and just, philosophers! Can we wonder that the glory 
 of their names increases with time? They were men whom 
 no truly independent worker ever surpassed. No wonder 
 the soil of Greece is sacred, and that men of to-day go back 
 in imagination across the chasm of ages and visit it with 
 reverential spirit. No wonder we still go to the original 
 sources for culture and inspiration. No wonder the great 
 and noble men of Greece are still among the best examples 
 for the instruction of youth. The pass at Thermopylae, 
 where perished the three hundred, the Parthenon, are hal¬ 
 lowed by sacred memories. And then the marvelous love of 
 the Greeks for nature. They saw it instinct with life, and 
 in fancy beheld some personal power moving in the zephyr, 
 or flowing with the river, or dwelling in the growing tree. 
 Their mythology has become the handmaid of literature. 
 Parnassus, Apollo and the Sacred Nine command almost a 
 belief with our reverence. If the seats on the sacred mount 
 are already filled with the great men of the past, we at least 
 can sit at their feet. The study of the humanities has a 
 peculiar value, because it develops distinctively human pos¬ 
 sibilities. Thought and language are mysteriously con¬ 
 nected. One of the most noted philologists of the age claims 
 that thought without language is impossible. The use of 
 language helps to develop concepts. Fine literature, with its 
 elevated thoughts, its beauty of expression, constructs, as it 
 
29 
 
 
 were, the best channels for original expression.. Art strives 
 for perfection, cultivates ideals, refines and ennobles. It 
 creates an understanding of all the ideals that may be in¬ 
 cluded in the categories of the True, the Beautiful, and the 
 Good; hence the interpretation of the aphorism of Goethe, 
 “ The beautiful is greater than the good, for it includes the 
 good and adds something to it.” Art gives strength to the 
 aspirations, and lends wings to the spirit. The study of 
 the humanities is a grand means of real development. 
 
 The present offers the student two sides of education—the 
 modern and the classic, the sciences and the humanities. 
 Ever since the Baconian method was given to the world the 
 interest in science has steadily increased, until now there is 
 danger of neglecting the classic side. Each kind of educa¬ 
 tion has its value; either alone makes a one-sided man; let 
 neither be neglected. 
 
 In this country to-day the student moves in the vanguard 
 of progress; he is heir to all that is best in the past, and his 
 heritage makes for him opportunities full of promise. 
 
 If the hearer has already mentally asked what connection 
 these things have with the subject, it may be answered, 
 “This is not logic, but a view, as it were a picture, from the 
 standpoint of the scholar, and those things are painted which 
 naturally fall within the line of vision. Each part will in¬ 
 sensibly contribute to the general effect intended.” 
 
 OPPORTUNITIES. 
 
 All the soul-growth of our ancestors modifies the mech¬ 
 anism of our intellectual processes, and gives us minds that 
 fall into rhythm with the march of ideas. We profit by all 
 the past has done; the active factors in this age of freedom— 
 intellectual, spiritual and political—are multiplied by mil¬ 
 lions, and each profits by the efforts of all. Golden vistas of 
 future possibilities open up. Intellectual acquirement is a 
 duty; to be ignorant is to be behind the spirit of the time. 
 There are problems yet to be solved; there are duties to our¬ 
 selves and the age. Every individual tendency, fitness and 
 inclination can be met by the diversity of occupations, 
 
30 
 
 of knowledge, and of fields of investigation. Men of moral 
 stamina are still needed to stand for all that is best. New 
 ideals are to be created that shall typify an age which yet 
 lacks poetic expression. When we consider the evolution of 
 man and of institutions, we see that we are very far from 
 perfection, and that each period of history is a period of de¬ 
 velopment. We read of the brutal traits of our ancestors, 
 their ignorance and their superstition, how they made blood¬ 
 shed and death a pastime, and we can still discover the same 
 tendencies, only more refined and better controlled. Along 
 the avenue of progress we march toward the high destiny of 
 the race. Evolution is the law both of Spencer and of Hegel. 
 Every struggle of an earnest soul gives impetus to the 
 movement. 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 A Shakespeare, reared on the steppes of Central Asia, 
 among the Tartar hordes of Genghis Khan, would have been 
 a savage—a poetic savage, perhaps, but still a savage—blood¬ 
 thirsty, restless, and wild. Born of a primitive race, in some 
 sunny clime, he would have looked dreamily upon the world 
 and life, somewhat as an animal of the forest; he would have 
 fed on the spontaneous products of nature, and have reposed 
 under the shadow of his palm tree. Shakespeare of Eng¬ 
 land, by a long process of education, gained the ideas of his 
 age and the culture of the great civilizations of the past. 
 His education and the forceful ideas of a period of thought 
 and reformation and investigation stimulated the distinct¬ 
 ively human intelligence, and awakened subjective analysis 
 and poetic fancy, and he made true pictures of human char¬ 
 acter—world types—in history, tragedy, and comedy. Educa¬ 
 tion enables man to begin real life where the previous age 
 left off. It is an inherited capital. Ideas, fancies, principles, 
 laws, discoveries, experience from failures, which were the 
 work of centuries, are furnished ready at hand as tools for 
 the intellectual workman. The present is understood in the 
 light of history; the methods of investigating nature are 
 transmitted. The growth of the race is epitomized in the 
 individual. 
 
31 
 
 Let us look at the sphere of education. Here is the world 
 of infinite variety, form, and color. The savage looks upon it 
 with superstitious wonder, and, perhaps, with a kind of sen¬ 
 suous enjoyment. He knows not how to wield nature to 
 practical ends. But the book of science is opened to him 
 through education. He learns the secrets of nature’s labora¬ 
 tory and, as with magic wand, he marshals the atoms and 
 causes new forms of matter to appear for his uses. He learns 
 the manifestations and transmutations of nature’s forces, and 
 he trains them to obey his will and do his work. He observes 
 how, under the influence of a distinct order of forces, organic 
 forms rise on the face of nature and develop into higher and 
 higher classes, and, incidentally, he learns the uses of vege¬ 
 table products. He knows the laws of number; commodities, 
 structures and forces are quantitatively estimated, and material 
 progress becomes possible. He traces the history of nations 
 and understands the problems of the present. He catches 
 the inspiration of the geniuses of literature, and he rises to a 
 level with the great minds of the earth; he becomes a creature 
 of ideas, sentiments, aspirations and ideals, instead of remain¬ 
 ing a mere animal. He learns the languages of cultured 
 peoples, and gets at their inner life; learns their concepts, 
 the polish of their expression, and becomes more enlightened 
 and refined. He studies the subjective side of man, that 
 which is a mirror of all that is objective, and he understands 
 his own powers and possibilities, and the laws of human 
 growth. He studies philosophy, and he stands face to face 
 with the ultimate conceptions of creation and gains a basis 
 for his thought and conduct. All these things are from the 
 practical point of view; they pertain to the making of a 
 useful and strong man—master over the forces of nature, able 
 to use ideas for practical ends, and capable of continuous 
 growth. 
 
 But knowledge as such, its use for manhood and happi¬ 
 ness, are often underestimated. To know the processes and 
 history of inorganic nature, to trace the growth of worlds 
 and know their movements, and number the starry hosts, to 
 study the structure and development of all organic life, to 
 
32 
 
 know the infallible laws of mathematics, to live amid the 
 deeds of men of all ages, to imbibe their richest thoughts, to 
 stand in presence of the problems of the infinite, make a 
 mere animal man almost a god. elevate him toward the real¬ 
 ization of the great possibilities of his being. Imagine a 
 man born in a desert land, and shut in by the walls of a tent 
 from the glories of nature. Imagine him to have matured in 
 body with no thought or language other than pertaining to 
 the needs of physical existence. Imagine him, since we may 
 imagine the impossible, to have a fully developed power for 
 intellectual grasp and emotional life. Then open up to him 
 the beauty of the forest, the poetry of the sea, the grandeur 
 of the mountains, and the sublimity of the starry heavens; 
 let him read the secrets of nature; present to him the writings 
 of men whose lives have been enriched by their own labor, 
 and whose faces radiate an almost divine expression born of 
 good thoughts; reveal to him the glowing concepts that find 
 expression through the chisel or brush of the artist, and give 
 him a view from the summit of philosophy. Would he not 
 look irpon nature as a marvelous temple of infinite propor¬ 
 tions, adorned with priceless gems and frescoed with master 
 hand? Would he not regard art and thought as divinely 
 inspired? And this picture is hardly overdrawn; such a 
 contrast—only less in degree—lies between the vicious, igno¬ 
 rant boor, given to animal ifieasures, and the scholar. Learn¬ 
 ing draws aside the tent-folds and reveals the wonders of the 
 temple. Man must have enjoyment; if not intellectual, then 
 it will be sensuous and degrading. Here is an enjoyment 
 that does not pall, a stimulous that does not react, a gratifi¬ 
 cation that elevates. 
 
 Moreover, education trains the powers through knowl¬ 
 edge. The power to observe accurately the world of beauty 
 and wonder; the power to recombine and modify in infinite 
 kaleidoscopic forms the percepts and images of the mind, 
 making possible all progress; the power to elaborate, verify 
 and generalize; the power to feel the greatness of truth, the 
 rhythms and harmonies of the world and the beauty of its 
 forms; the power to perceive and feel the right; the power 
 
33 
 
 to guide one’s self in pursuit of tlie best; these are worth 
 more than mere practical acquisitions and mere knowledge, 
 for they make possible all acquisition and growth and 
 enjoyment. 
 
 The thoughtless person who argues against education 
 little knows how much he and all are indebted to it. The 
 demand for general intelligence is increasing, and the capa¬ 
 bilities of the race for knowledge are greater with each 
 educated generation. Earnest men are endeavoring to make 
 a degree of culture almost universal, as witness the “Chau¬ 
 tauqua Scheme” and the plan of “University Extension.” 
 Education, too, adheres less rigidly to the old lines, and men 
 can gain a more purely English training. A course of study 
 leading to a degree has recently been established in the 
 University of Pennsylvania, which shall give scientific prep¬ 
 aration for banking and general business. These schemes 
 are useful because they tend to popularize education, and 
 they reach a class which would not be reached by the usual 
 courses of study. 
 
 But there is danger of departing from the ideal types of 
 education—education for general training and knowledge and 
 manhood. Not that traditional courses must be rigidly 
 adhered to, for a new field of learning has been opened in 
 which may be acquired a knowledge of material nature. But, 
 in the rage for the new, the modern side of education, there 
 is danger of neglecting the ancient, the classic side, the 
 humanities. Language and literature, and history and phil¬ 
 osophy and art, since they train the expression and present 
 ideal thoughts, and teach the motives of men and the nature 
 and destiny of the human race, since they deal with the 
 spiritual more than the material, since they belong exclu¬ 
 sively to man, since they stimulate the activity of divine 
 powers and instincts, since they are peculiarly useful as 
 mental gymnastics, since they are culturing and refining— 
 they still have and always will have a high value in ideal 
 education. The ancient side and the modern side should 
 fairly share the honors in a college course. 
 
34 
 
 The arguments for so-called practical education are fal¬ 
 lacious, whenever the nature, time and possibilities of the 
 pupil will enable him to develop anything more than the 
 bread-winning capabilities. When one knows the line of 
 mathematics, his knowledge can be applied in the art of 
 bookkeeping with a minimum effort. Bookkeeping is a mere 
 incident in the line of mathematical work. A year in a 
 school of general education, even to the prospective clerk or 
 merchant, should be worth ten times the year spent in prac¬ 
 tice of mechanical processes. United States history is 
 valuable to an American youth, but, while with one view 
 America is in the forefront of the march of progress, there 
 is another view in which our century of history is only 
 an eddy in the great flow of historical events. The present 
 can be understood only historically, and the grand elements 
 of our civilization should be known in the light of the world’s 
 history. 
 
 Not only should we adhere to our faith in university edu¬ 
 cation, but we can find reasons for raising the standard of a 
 part of university work. Even now, no student should receive 
 a j)rofessional degree who has not previously obtained at least 
 a complete high school education; and the time may come 
 when at least two years of college life will be required as a 
 basis for a doctor’s or a lawyer’s degree. Graduate courses 
 are becoming a prominent feature of some institutions, and 
 in time a Ph. D. may be sought as an A. B. has been in the 
 past. As the race advances, the preparation for active life 
 will necessarily enlarge. 
 
 FORCE OF IDEAS. 
 
 Many know but little of the forces that move the world. 
 Material progress does not make the spirit of the age, but the 
 spirit of the age makes material progress. The outward 
 works of man are a result of the promptings of the inner 
 spirit. It is the spirit of a nation that wins battles, the 
 spirit of a nation that makes inventions. Take away ideals 
 and the world would be inert. It is spirit that makes the 
 difference between the American soldier fighting for his lib¬ 
 erty and the Hessian hireling or the old Italian condottieri 
 
f 
 
 35 
 
 who played at war for the highest bidder. % Here is the differ¬ 
 ence between a slave and a freeman, between the oppressed 
 of old countries and the free American. 
 
 Ideas move the world. It is related that in the second 
 Messenian war the Spartans, obeying the Delphic oracle, sent 
 to Athens for a leader, and the Athenians, in contempt, sent 
 them a lame schoolmaster. But the schoolmaster had within 
 him the spirit of song, and he so inspired the Spartans that 
 they finally gained the victory. In the contests with Eng¬ 
 land, during the time of the Edwards, the national spirit of 
 Wales was aroused and sustained by the songs of her bards. 
 The “Marseillaise Hymn” helped to keep alive the fire on 
 the altar of French liberty. It is only as man has hope, 
 aspirations, courage, that he acts, and in order to progress he 
 must act toward ideals. The mind imagines higher things to 
 be attained, and endeavor follows. 
 
 Natural features of sea or forest or mountain or desert 
 have something to do with the character and ideas of a 
 people; so, also, the material wealth in lands and buildings. 
 But to understand the great movements of history, we must 
 look at the great psychical factors. Our heritage of ideas, 
 our love of liberty, our Puritan standards, our hatred of 
 tyranny, our independence of spoirit, are strong characteristics 
 that make us a distinctive and progressive people. It was 
 an idea that gave England her Magna Charta; that made us 
 a free and independent nation; that preserved our union. 
 
 A man makes a labor-saving invention, and the ease and 
 luxury of physical living are increased, and men bless the 
 inventor and proclaim that the practical man is the only man 
 who is of use to the world. Another gives to the world a 
 thought. It may be a great work of art, a song, or a 
 philosophy, and it takes possession of men and becomes an 
 incentive to noble living, and the race has truly progressed. 
 Let the spirit that possesses our people die out and all 
 material prosperity would perish. 
 
 In primitive times, when men lived in caves, and, as 
 Charles Lamb humorously says, went to bed early because 
 they had nothing else to do, and grumbled at each other, and 
 
36 
 
 in the absence of candles, were obliged to feel of their com¬ 
 rades’ faces to catch the smile of appreciation at their jokes,— 
 then, if a great man had a thought, he related it to his 
 neighbor, and his neighbor told it to a friend, and it did 
 good. Later a great man had a thought, and he wrote it out 
 laboriously on a parchment, and loaned it to his neighbor, 
 and he sent it to his friend, and many came, sometimes 
 from far, to read it, and it did more good. In our age a great 
 man had a thought and he printed it in a book, and thousands 
 read it, and it was translated into many tongues, and his 
 words became household words, and the race had taken a 
 step forward. The world advances more rapidly to-day 
 because ideas spread with such facility. 
 
 What is called, contemptuously, “ book-learning,” the 
 education of young men in the schools, helps to preserve and 
 increase, and make useful, and transmit all the discoveries 
 and the best thoughts of past generations. The student is 
 likely to be a man of ideas—of ideals—and hence he is the 
 great power of the world. 
 
 The man of affairs says to the ideal man: “There is 
 nothing of value but railroads and houses and inventions 
 and creature comforts. Of what use are your history, and 
 poetry and j)hilosophy, and stuff?” The scholar replies: 
 “Every man contributes something to the common good. I 
 am improved by your practical view and skill, and you are 
 unconsciously benefited by my ideas. You live, wfithout 
 knowing it, in an atmosphere of ideas, and the practical men 
 of to-day breathe it in and are inspired and stimulated by it. 
 Without the atmosphere of ideas, your inventions and 
 material progress would not be.” 
 
 The culture of the ancients directly encourages ideal 
 standards. It was a happy thought of the Greeks that per¬ 
 sonified principles and ideas, that created muses to preside 
 over the forms of literature. Let us deify our best ideals 
 and set up altars for their worship. 
 
 Men laugh at the nonsense of poetry and ideal standards, 
 but thinkers pity the laughers. I remember, some years 
 since, listening to a prominent lecturer in a large town. He 
 
37 
 
 began with a prelude in which, with masterly strokes, he 
 pictured the admirable location of the city, its relation to the 
 environing regions, the whole country and the world, its 
 probable growth, its material promise and its opportunity 
 for social, intellectual and moral development, and he 
 pointed to the picture as an inspiration for young men. 
 Then he entered upon his main theme, “ Proofs of Immor¬ 
 tality.” As with dramatic distinctness he made one point 
 after another, he held his vast audience breathless and spell¬ 
 bound. The next morning I took up my paper at the break¬ 
 fast table and noted the glaring headlines and details of 
 robberies and murders and domestic scandals, while, in an 
 obscure corner, expressed in a contemptuous manner, were a 
 dozen lines upon the magnificent oratory and supreme 
 themes of the evening before. Is there not room for the 
 scholar with his ideals? 
 
 THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 
 
 Rudyard Kipling, that Englishman in a strange Oriental 
 garb, visited one of the great and prosperous cities of our 
 country. He was met by a committee of citizens and shown 
 the glory of the town. They gave him the height of their 
 blocks, the cost of their palace hotels and the extent of their 
 stockyards, expecting him to express wonder and admiration; 
 he surprised them by exclaiming: “Gentlemen, are these 
 things so? Then, indeed, I am sorry for you;” and he called 
 them barbarians—savages—because they gloried in their 
 material possessions and said nothing of the morals of the 
 city, nothing of her great men, nothing of her government, 
 her charities, and her art. He called them barbarians 
 because they valued their adornments, not for the art in 
 them, but for their cost in dollars. A lecturer not long ago 
 said derisively that of all the Athenians who listened with 
 rapt attention to the orations of Demosthenes, probably not 
 one had a pin or a button for his cloak. It would be a 
 curious problem to weigh a few orations of Demosthenes 
 against pins and buttons. It is said of men of olden time 
 that they conspired to build themselves up into heaven by 
 using materials of earth, and began to erect a lofty tower, 
 
but the Almighty seeing the futility of their endeavor 
 thwarted their attempt at its inception, and thus showed 
 that men could never ascend to the heavens by any material 
 means. It is a marvelous invention, but no flying machine 
 will ever give wings to the spirit. There is a material and a 
 spiritual side to the world, and the spiritual can never be 
 enhanced by the material. The lower animals, through their 
 instincts, perform material feats often surpassing the skill of 
 man. For his purpose the beaver can build a better dam 
 than man; no skill of man can make honey for the~bee. 
 That which distinguishes man is his manhood, his thought, 
 his ideals, his spirituality. 
 
 There is a glory of the jjresent and a glory of the past. 
 The glory of the past was its literature, its art, its examples 
 of greatness. Let us retain the glory of the ancient civiliza¬ 
 tion and add to it the marvelous scientific and practical spirit 
 of the present. Then shall we have a civilization surpassing 
 any previous one. Let us not only tunnel our mountains for 
 outlets to our great trans-continental railway systems, but 
 let us also find here among these ranges, and domes, and 
 canons, some sacred grottoes. Let us not only explore our 
 peaks for gold and silver, but find here some Parnassus, 
 sacred to the Muses, whom we shall learn to invoke not in 
 vain. 
 
 THE AMERICAN STUDENT. 
 
 Shall we venture to characterize the American student of 
 the near future? He will hardly be a recluse, nor will he 
 wholly neglect the body for the culture of the mind. He will 
 be a man of the world, a man of business; on the one hand, 
 not disregarding the uses of wealth, and on the other not 
 finding material possessions and sensuous enjoyment the bet¬ 
 ter part of life. He will be an influence in politics and in 
 the solution of all social problems. His ideals will be viewed 
 somewhat in the light of their practicality. He will know 
 the laws of mental growth to use them, and will find the aven¬ 
 ues of approach to men’s motives. His religion will add 
 more of work to faith. He will secure a high growth of self 
 by regarding the welfare of others, instead of worshiping 
 
39 
 
 exclusively at the shrine of his own development. The 
 scientific knowledge of nature’s materials and forces, and the 
 skill to use them, will invite a large class of minds. In brief, 
 the coming student will take on more of the traits of the 
 ideal man of affairs. 
 
 But, while we may not expect a revival of the almost 
 romantic life of the early literary clubs of London, there will 
 be many a group devoted to the enjoyment of thought and 
 beauty in literature. If no Socrates shall walk the streets 
 proclaiming his wisdom on the corners, at imminent risk from 
 cable cars and policemen, there will be a philosophy, dissem¬ 
 inated through the press of the coming century, which will 
 still strive to reach beyond the processes of nature to the 
 unknown cause, will re-examine those conceptions of the 
 Absolute, which are thought to stand the test when applied 
 to explain the problems of human life. If no Diogenes shall 
 be found with his lantern at noontide, seeking, as it were in 
 a microscopic way, the honest man which the brilliant lumi¬ 
 nary failed to reveal, many a one, living courageously his prin¬ 
 ciples and convictions, will endeavor by precept and example 
 to make an age of honest men who will find the golden rule 
 in the necessities of human intercourse, as well as in the con¬ 
 cepts of ethics and the teachings of religion. 
 
 The student owes much to the world. The ideal scholar 
 is too intelligent to be jnejudiced, one-sided, or superstitious. 
 He should avoid the path of the political demagogue. He 
 should know the force of ideas and the value of ideals; he 
 should be too wise to fall into the slough of pure materialism. 
 
 The literature of the future will not try the bold, meta¬ 
 phorical flights of Shakespeare, but there will be a literature 
 that will show the poetry of the new ideas. Whatever 
 philosophy finally becomes the prevalent one, there are cer¬ 
 tain transcendental conceptions, from which the human mind 
 cannot escape, that will still inspire poetry. There must 
 always be men who will open their eyes to the wonders of 
 the world and human existence—who must know that any, 
 the commonest substance, is a mystery, the key to which 
 would unlock the secrets of the universe. The beauty of 
 
40 
 
 the starry heavens will ever be transcendent; every natural 
 scene and object remains a surpassing work of art; life is 
 filled with tragedy and comedy, and the possibilities of 
 human existence are as sublime as the eternal heights and 
 depths. Such conceptions beget a poetry which rises to a 
 faith above reason; that instinctively looks upon the fact 
 of creation and existence as sublime and full of promise, and 
 clings to a belief, however vague, in the ultimate grand out¬ 
 come for the individual. The right view of the world is 
 essentially poetic; and the truest poetry includes faith and 
 reverence. It is the privilege of the earnest and profound 
 scholar to know that literature refines, that philosophy 
 ennobles, that religion purifies, that ideals inspire, that the 
 spiritual elevates, and that the world can be explained in its 
 highest meaning only by a personal God. 
 
 LITERATURE OF THIS CENTURY. 
 
 Notwithstanding its practical tendencies, this century is 
 not wanting in the highest literary power. It has given us 
 the universal insight and sympathy of Goethe, whose writings 
 Carlyle describes as “A thousand-voiced Melody of Wisdom;” 
 he thus continues: “ So did Goethe catch the Music of the 
 Universe, and unfold it into clearness, and in authentic 
 celestial tones, bring it home to the hearts of men.” 
 
 This century has revealed the grandeur of metaphysical 
 thought through Hegel, and found a wonderful expounder 
 of certain views of science in Spencer. Each an exponent 
 of a great philosophy, both giants in mental grasp, they 
 greatly influence the thought of the age, and become co¬ 
 workers in the investigation of many-sided truth. 
 
 Next stands Carlyle, in the midst of this mechanical and 
 seemingly unpoetic age, and proclaims it an age of romance; 
 in inspired words teaches the beauty of the genuine, the 
 sublimity of creation, the grandeur of human life. Words¬ 
 worth, Nature’s priest, interprets her forms and moods with 
 
 * 
 
41 
 
 finest insight, and finds them expressive of divine thought. 
 He looks quite through material forms and feels 
 
 “A sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused. 
 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: 
 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought. 
 
 And rolls through all things.” 
 
 Our own Emerson, to this generation quaintly says: 
 “Hitch your wagon to a star,” and thousands strive to rise 
 superior to occupation, rank and habit into the dignity of 
 manhood—to rise above the clouds of sorrow and disappoint¬ 
 ment, and bathe in the pure sunlight. The spiritual beauty 
 of his face, the calm dignity of his life, will live in the 
 memory of men, and add to the force of his writings. 
 
 Longfellow has said: 
 
 “ Look, then, into thine heart, and write.” 
 
 Every aspiration, every care and sorrow, every mood and 
 sentiment, find in him a true sympathy; he stands foremost, 
 not as a genius of the intellect, but as a genius of the heart. 
 How often he enters our homes, sits at our firesides, touches 
 the sweetest, tenderest chords of the lyre, awakens the purest 
 aspirations of our being. 
 
 Then comes Dickens, and tells us that fiction may have 
 a high and noble mission; that it may teach love, benevo¬ 
 lence, and charity; that it may promote cheerfulness and 
 contentment;, that it may expose injustice and defend truth 
 and right. 
 
 All these, from Goethe to Dickens—each a master in his 
 field—are powerful in their influence; but beyond this fact 
 is the more significant one that they index some of the better 
 tendencies of the century. Never before were so many fields 
 of thought represented; never did any possess masters of 
 greater skill. We may hope that, even in the midst of this 
 period of material prosperity, invention and scientific re¬ 
 search, the spiritual side of man’s nature will ultimately gain 
 new strength, and thought a deeper insight. 
 
ROMANCE NOT DEAD. 
 
 With our exact thought and practical energy, is there not 
 danger of losing all the romance which clothes human 
 existence with beauty and hope? The gods are banished 
 from Olympus; Helicon is no longer sacred to the muses; 
 Egeria has dissolved into a fountain of tears; the Dryads 
 have fled from the sacred oaks; the elves no longer flit in the 
 sunbeams; Odin lies buried beneath the ruins of Walhalla; 
 “ Pan is dead.” That wealth of imagination which charac¬ 
 terized the Greek, enabled him to personify the powers that 
 rolled in the flood or sighed in the breeze, has passed away. 
 We would turn Parnassus into a stone quarry and hew the 
 homes of the Dryads into merchantable lumber. The spear 
 of chivalry is broken in the lists by the implements of the 
 mechanic, the tourney is converted into a fair. Romance is 
 for a time clouded by the smoke of manufactories. 
 
 But a seer has arisen, who finds in remotest places and in 
 humblest life the essence of romance. Carlyle is our true 
 poet, and we do well to comprehend his meaning. To his 
 mind we have but to paint the meanest object in its actual 
 truth, and the picture is a poem. Romance exists in reality. 
 “The thing that is ,—what can be so wonderful?” “In our 
 own poor Nineteenth Century * * * he has witnessed 
 
 overhead the infinite deep, with lesser and greater lights, 
 bright-rolling, silent-beaming, hurled forth by the hand of 
 God; around him and under his feet the wonderfullest earth, 
 with her winter snow storms and summer spice airs, and 
 (unaccountablest of all) himself standing there. He stood 
 in the lapse of Time; he saw eternity behind him and before 
 him.” I cannot lead you to the end of that wonderful 
 passage, but it is worth to all the devotion of solitude. 
 
 We have left the superstitions of the past, but the beauty 
 of mythology is transmuted into the glory of truth. In the 
 valley of Chamounix, Coleridge sang for us a grander hymn 
 than any ancient epic, Wordsworth has read the promise of 
 immortality in an humble flower, science reveals to us the 
 sublimity of creation. Romance has not passed away; if we 
 
43 
 
 will but look, nature becomes transparent and we see through 
 it to nature’s God. 
 
 ASPECT OF SCIENCE. 
 
 Many good men fear the results of independent thought 
 and scientific research; but such fear is the outgrowth of 
 narrow views. Every pioneer in an unexplored field should 
 be welcomed. Even the views of the Darwins and Spencers 
 are doing a grand work. Only the widest investigation can 
 possibly affirm the truth of any belief. Let men doubt 
 their instincts and go forth to seek a foundation for truth 
 Let them trace the evolution of organized being to the sim¬ 
 plest element. Let them resolve the sun and planets and all 
 the wonderful manifestations of force into nebulse and heat. 
 Let investigation seek every nook and comer penetrable by 
 human knowledge. All this will but show the wonders of 
 creation without revealing the cause or end. 
 
 The intellect of man, for a time divorced from the warm 
 instincts of his being, sent forth into chill and rayless regions 
 of discovery, having performed its mission, will return and 
 speak to the human soul in startling, welcome accents, “Far 
 and wide I have sought a basis for truth and found it not. 
 Godless evolution is a lie. Search your inner consciousness. 
 You are yourself God's highest expression of truth. You 
 see beauty in the flower, glory in the heavens. You have 
 human love and sympathy, divine aspirations. Life to you 
 is nothing without aim and hope. Trust your higher in¬ 
 stincts.” 
 
 The ancient Romans read omens in the flight of birds, 
 and ordered great events by these supposed revelations of the 
 deities. In our day, a Bryant has watched by fountain and 
 grove for the revelations of God, and has read in the flight 
 of a “Waterfowl” a deeper augury than any ancient priest, 
 for it relates not to political events, but to an eternal truth, 
 implanted in the breast and confirming the hope of man. 
 
 “There is a power whose care 
 
 Teaches thy way along that pathless coast— 
 
 The desert and illimitable air— 
 
 Lone wandering, but not lost.” 
 
44 
 
 “Thou’rt gone, the abyss of Heaven 
 
 Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet on my heart 
 Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
 
 And shall not soon depart.” 
 
 “He who, from zone to zone, 
 
 Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
 
 In the long way that I must tread alone, 
 
 Will l^ad my steps aright.” 
 
 TO THE GRADUATING CLASS. 
 
 To the class which receive their final honors from this 
 young and rapidly growing college to-day, I have but little 
 more to add. In this address I have asked you to take a view 
 with me from the height which yon have already attained, 
 and catch a glimpse here and there of the world, of history, 
 and of the meaning of human life. The fuller significance 
 of what appears to you in the fair field of learning will come 
 to you with maturer years, if you use well the advantages 
 you have received. 
 
 It is not enough for the student to enjoy selfishly his 
 knowledge and power. He should be a mediator between 
 his capabilities and the opportunities of his surroundings. 
 It is one thing to have power, another to use it. The 
 mighty engine may have within it the potency of great 
 work, but it may stand idle forever unless the proper means 
 are employed to utilize it. Convert your power into active 
 energy and study the best ways of making it tell for the 
 highest usefulness. 
 
 Education but prepares to enter the great school of life, 
 and that school should be a means of continuous development 
 toward greater power and higher character, and knowledge 
 and usefulness. Progress is the condition of life; to stand 
 still is to decay. One with a progressive spirit gains a little 
 day by day and year by year, and in the sum of years there 
 will be a large aggregate; you may thereby attain eminence 
 in one direction or another. You have studied the higher 
 mathematics and will understand this figure: Employ well 
 the differentials of time, then integrate, and what is the 
 result ? 
 
 An old and honored college instructor of mine was accus¬ 
 tomed to say, “Education is valuable, but good character is 
 
45 
 
 indispensable,” and the force of this truth grows upon me 
 with every year of experience. I well remember a sermon by 
 Henry Ward Beecher upon the theme, “ Up-building,” in 
 which he spent two hours in an earnest and eloquent appeal, 
 especially to the young, to thrust down the lower nature and 
 cultivate the nobler instincts, and thus evolve to higher 
 planes. 
 
 Happy is he who can keep the buoyancy and freshness 
 and hope of early years. The “vision splendid,” which ap¬ 
 pears to the eye of youth, too often may “fade into the light 
 of common day.” Too often Wordsworth’s lines become a 
 prophecy, but let them be to you a warning: 
 
 “Fall soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, 
 
 And custom lie upon thee with a weight, 
 
 Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.” 
 
 Age should be the time of rich fruition. Not long since the 
 Rev. William R. Alger, on his visit to Denver, after an ab¬ 
 sence of a dozen years, addressed a congregation of his old 
 friends, and among other things he spoke of his impressions 
 when he first approached our grand mountains. It was at 
 set of sun, and, as he looked away over the plains, he beheld 
 on an elevation a thousand cattle, and in the glory of the 
 departing day they seemed to him like “ golden cattle pastur¬ 
 ing in the azure and feeding on the blue.” Upon his last 
 visit he again approached these scenes at the close of day, 
 and his impressions were as vivid as in younger years; his 
 enjoyment in life was deeper, his faith was stronger, and his 
 hope brighter. There is no need to grow old in spirit; it is 
 only the dead soul that wholly loses the hope and joy of 
 youth. 
 
 There are three grand categories, not always understood 
 by those who carelessly name them—the True, the Beautiful, 
 and the Good. May the thoughts and deeds which give char¬ 
 acter to your lives be such as to fall within this trinity of 
 X^erfect ideals, and so may your future be hapx^y, and in the 
 truest sense, successful.