A LIBER__ 
 
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 CHARLES-F-T 
 
 
 
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THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
A Liberal Educatiph 
 and a Liberal Faith 
 
 A SERIES OF 
 
 Baccalaureate Addresses 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES FRANKLIN THWING, D. D., LL.D. 
 \ i 
 
 PRESIDENT OF 
 
 WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY AND 
 ADELBERT COLLEGE 
 
 NEW YORK: THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO. 
 33-37 EAST SEVENTEENTH ST., UNION SQ., NORTH 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO. 
 
 Published September, 1903. 
 
 GIF! 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 These sermons were written and delivered 
 as Baccalaureate addresses. The first two 
 were spoken to men alone; the third was 
 spoken to women alone; the others were 
 spoken to both men and women. All of them 
 are endeavors to interpret the relations ot 
 education and religion, with the purpose of 
 making education more nobly religious, re- 
 ligion more wise, and both more liberal. 
 
 The order of the arrangement of the ad- 
 dresses is chronological, the first having been 
 given in 1891, and the last in June of the pres- 
 ent year. 
 
 C. F. T. 
 
 WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY, 
 
 Adelbert College, 
 
 Cleveland. 
 
 September \ 
 
 iii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. THE HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE DIVINE 
 
 KINGDOM, i 
 
 II. GOING INTO THE WORLD, . . .15 
 
 III. GREAT FORCES IN THE EDUCATION AND 
 
 LIFE OF WOMEN, 28 
 
 IV. LOVE : CHRIST AND HUMANITY, . . 40 
 V. THE YOUTH'S DREAM OF LIFE, . . 55 
 
 VI. THE EVOLUTION OF CHARACTER, . . 72 
 VII. THE WORTH OF PERSONALITY, . . 90 
 VIII. MAN'S OWNERSHIP UNIVERSAL AND CON- 
 DITIONAL, 108 
 
 IX. HIGHEST POWERS FOR HIGHEST PURPOSES, 125 
 X. THE PRESENCE OF GOD IN His WORLD 
 
 IMMEDIATE AND PERSONAL, . . .141 
 
 XI. GOD is HUMAN: MAN DIVINE, . . 158 
 XII. THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF THE EDUCATED 
 
 MAN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, . 175 
 
 XIII. EDUCATION THE PERFECTION OF MAN, . 197 
 
 XIV. THE BEST WORK, 215 
 
A LIBERAL EDUCATION AND 
 A LIBERAL FAITH 
 
 THE HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE 
 DIVINE KINGDOM. 
 
 " And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the 
 Egyptians." Acts vii. 22. 
 
 MOSES was the servant of God. He 
 was also the pupil of the Egyptian 
 teachers. He set forth the Ten 
 Commandments, but he knew the laws of men. 
 Moses was in Egypt in order to leave Egypt. 
 He did not fear that pagan learning would un- 
 fit him to emancipate a holy people. He may 
 have believed that pagan learning would help 
 him to emancipate a holy people. It is not rash 
 to infer that the education of Moses did aid 
 him in the deliverance and the progress of the 
 nation of Israel. The text, therefore, suggests 
 my subject: "The Higher Education Pro- 
 motes the Progress of God's Kingdom/' 
 
5 . *A- ^EBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 ; .-: W.s .acknowledge that some minds assent to 
 r i'his.pr4)positim-y/ith hesitation. God's king- 
 dom is built on faith, it is said. And the 
 higher education, it is also said, is antagonistic 
 to faith. Thought is the mother of doubt, 
 philosophy the parent of atheism, reasoning 
 fosters agnosticism. The gospel of science is 
 not a gospel of Christianity. And yet, we 
 know that truth must be consistent with itself. 
 The gospel of the rocks, properly interpreted, 
 is one with the gospel of the Bible properly in- 
 terpreted. Strange, if thought about God 
 should result in a disbelief in the very being 
 of God. Strange, if the more of light men 
 receive the less they should know Him who 
 is light. No; the higher education is a part 
 of the progress of the divine kingdom. The 
 higher education and that kingdom cannot be 
 enemies. The two are one in origin God. 
 The two are one in aim the incarnation of 
 divinity. The two are one in material to be 
 worked upon human character. The two are 
 one in method truth in life, and life in truth. 
 The two are one in motive divine inspiration. 
 There is an education antagonistic to the 
 progress of God's kingdom, but it is not the 
 higher, but the lower education. It is the 
 education which is materialistic in philosophy, 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 3 
 
 agnostic in result, narrow in outlook, super- 
 ficial, without breadth, content to study mat- 
 ter without looking through and beyond the 
 material, content to observe law without a sug- 
 gestion of a lawmaker, content to detect de- 
 sign, without reflecting upon the designer. 
 Such education retards the progress of God's 
 kingdom, but such an education is not the 
 higher; it is the lower. Its members are 
 members neither of the School at Athens, nor 
 of the School at Jerusalem. 
 
 The particular part of my subject to which 
 I ask your attention is the ways in which the 
 higher education promotes the progress of 
 God's kingdom. 
 
 First: The higher education promotes the 
 progress of God's kingdom by giving guid- 
 ance to the forces of this kingdom. The 
 higher education belongs to the intellect. 
 The intellect is that part of man's com- 
 plex being which it first touches and embraces. 
 The intellect is the directing force in man. 
 The intellect indicates; measures values; an- 
 alyzes results; points out methods; discrimi- 
 nates, reasons, judges. The higher education 
 is concerned with truths, and not with truths 
 only, but with the truth of truths. The lower 
 education has to do with individual facts; the 
 
4 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 higher with the relation of facts. The prog- 
 ress of the divine kingdom must be in ac- 
 cordance with the laws which represent the 
 relations of truth. If the kingdom of God, 
 when guided by the human mind, should be 
 in ways antagonistic to those laws, its move- 
 ments are not a progress, but a regress. If 
 the kingdom of God is guided by these laws, 
 its progress is in unfolding the divine will 
 among men. Where can we look for such 
 directing control except to the best training 
 of the schools? I confess the power of Al- 
 mighty God; I confess the divine inspiring 
 presence; I confess obedience to the will of 
 divinity; but, I also know that God has com- 
 mitted the progress of his kingdom to human 
 minds and hearts and hands. I remember the 
 command, Go ye into all the world and 
 preach. Go, with your mind clear and strong; 
 go, with your heart clean. It is, therefore, 
 no blasphemy to say, that the mind of man, il- 
 lumined, disciplined, comprehensive to grasp, 
 keen to distinguish, is to direct the progress 
 of this kingdom. Commerce has gone down 
 into the oceans of the world as a diver, to 
 bring up the precious pearl for its own enrich- 
 ment and adornment. Education has gone 
 down into the same ocean as a rescuer of a 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 5 
 
 drowning man, to lift up and to train a human 
 spirit. Education teaches that a soul has more 
 value than a jewel, as a seed has more possi- 
 bilities than a diamond. Why did the Christ 
 call Paul to be the great apostle? Why were 
 not Peter, or James, or John thus honored? 
 Why do scholarship and piety unite in the 
 study of the writings of Paul? Paul's was a 
 noble mind, nobly trained. It is not Peter 
 the Hermit, who preaches the Crusades 
 Crusades which wasted the best blood of the 
 best part of the world for hundreds of years, 
 who is called to the highest place, but it is 
 Luther, who, with keen eye, detects, and with 
 mighty robustness urges the great doctrines of 
 faith. It is not John Brown, bold, true, ag- 
 gressive, enthusiastic soul, but it is Charles 
 Sumner that determines the course of na- 
 tions. 
 
 Great movements are created in the atmos- 
 phere of intelligence, whether they be created 
 and guided by Abraham Lincoln or George 
 Washington. The men who have controlled 
 the destinies of England in the last hundred 
 years have been men of profound intellectual 
 penetration, large foresight, comprehensive- 
 ness of vision, accuracy of reasoning. When 
 God wants a great work done he wants a 
 
6 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 great man; and a great man is a man great in 
 his power of comprehending truths; great in 
 his power to infer from these truths duties; 
 great in his capacity to be inspired for doing. 
 And where shall God look with hopefulness 
 such men to find? Where, unless among those 
 whose minds are well trained? When God 
 wants foreign missions to be planted he goes 
 to the college. When God wants foreign mis- 
 sions to be carried on he goes to the colleges. 
 Some men graduate at college who are fools. 
 Some men have the best results of a college 
 training who never saw a college; but the his- 
 tory of all aggressive Christian service proves 
 that the best guidance of it has been by those 
 who were trained in and by the higher educa- 
 tion. This is in accordance with the nature 
 of things. Miracles have ceased. Progress is 
 made under obedience to laws. These laws 
 are in part intellectual. These laws respect 
 facts. They recognize the verities. These 
 laws are judgment, clearness of vision, power 
 of weighing evidence, allegiance to truth. 
 These laws are the direct and necessary result 
 of the higher education. God does not break 
 laws to save foreign missions. God gives 
 every missionary, every man, a brain. Pious 
 fools are as bad as foolish pietists. Practical 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 7 
 
 faith rests on reason as philosophical reason 
 rests on faith. To hope for the highest prog- 
 ress in divine affairs in the world, without the 
 keen discipline of fine education, is like hoping 
 for a swift voyage across the Atlantic in a 
 steamer having valves loose and piston rods 
 bent. The better trained the reason and 
 the heart through education the nearer the 
 reason that the heart approach to that 
 condition in which man was when God 
 breathed into his dust the breath of life. 
 The best education is to be taught to think. 
 The best education has as its cause and as its 
 result, to think. And to think is the chief 
 human method for promoting the divine king- 
 dom through wise direction. 
 
 Second: Higher education aids the prog- 
 ress of the divine kingdom by giving compre- 
 hensiveness to our thought of this kingdom. 
 Education broadens. Narrowness of vision, 
 plus ferocity of will, makes the bigot. Educa- 
 tion puts an end to bigotry through making 
 the vision broad and through the train- 
 ing of the will. Mental training is the prod- 
 uct of wide knowledge, and wide knowledge 
 is the fruit of mental training. If the acquir- 
 ing of knowledge is a sharp chisel to carve the 
 mind into a fitting power, the mind thus 
 
8 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 carved becomes a reaper to gather truth's 
 golden harvest. 
 
 The human mind thus disciplined, broad- 
 ened, is able to interpret the divine kingdom 
 in its wide relations. This kingdom is no less 
 narrow than the divine omnipresence. This 
 kingdom is no less profound than the depths 
 of infinity. This kingdom is no less high than 
 the exaltation of omnipotence. If beings 
 dwell on planets other than the earth, they in 
 this kingdom have a share. If unseen spir- 
 itual existences move about us, they of this 
 kingdom are citizens. The spirits of the re- 
 deemed are within its realms, and the souls of 
 the lost are lost far more to themselves than 
 they are to Him who is still the father of 
 prodigal sons. This kingdom knows no limi- 
 tations. Upon all that is worthy it lays its 
 scepter, and says, " This is mine." The ships 
 of commerce are the swift shuttles which 
 weave splendid tapestries for the coming of 
 its king. The laws of trade are the expres- 
 sion of its eternal principles. The discoveries 
 of nature's forces are a revelation of the 
 agencies which it commands; all applications 
 and adjustments of these forces are simply 
 thinking God's thoughts after him. The 
 fundamental principles of the human heart are 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 9 
 
 not foreign to it, for this kingdom has as its 
 supreme power, love. Education aids the hu- 
 man mind to attain such conceptions, wide 
 and deep. Education makes the mind as a 
 dome, lofty, symmetrical, comprehensive, rest- 
 ing on the eternal pillars of the universe. 
 Education makes the mind, as the eagle, to 
 soar, and as the lion before peril, a dove in 
 life's disaster, to bring back the olive branch 
 of promise. Education helps man to live in an 
 atmosphere of truth, which is at once a breath 
 and a vision; to make every day a microscope 
 for studying the infinite profundities lying in 
 a drop of water or in a grain of sand; and to 
 make every night a telescope for bringing the 
 worlds of great truths close by. The least 
 educated man of the disciples of Christ held 
 the longest to the shell of Jewish narrowness. 
 The best educated man of the apostles was the 
 apostle to the Gentiles. 
 
 Such a conception hastens the coming of 
 the divine kingdom. Such a conception 
 makes the progress of this kingdom coter- 
 minous and contemporaneous with the prog- 
 ress of the noblest of present doing. Such a 
 conception at once brings the divine kingdom 
 down to the earth and lifts the earth to the 
 divine kingdom. Such a conception makes 
 
10 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 the secular sacred without making the sacred 
 secular. Every existence comes to bear rela- 
 tion to the Supreme. The pebble which a 
 child's hand lifts changes the center of grav- 
 ity of the universe. Every act and event comes 
 to be embraced within the all-embracing di- 
 vine rule. 
 
 Third: Education promotes the coming of 
 the divine kingdom by giving a richness to 
 our thought of this kingdom. If the king of 
 this kingdom was born in a manger, the throne 
 of this king is of pure gold, the walls of his 
 city are built of precious stones, and the gates 
 of these walls of pearls. If the rallying cry 
 of the progress of this kingdom is self-sacri- 
 fice, this self-sacrifice is such an emptying of 
 self that self may become not an emptiness, 
 but rather an embodying of all. The self- 
 sacrifice of Christianity is the self-sacrifice of 
 the lover, who loses self and gains what he 
 thinks is worth far more than self. The 
 higher education calls every noble power into 
 the service and rule of this divine kingdom. 
 It demands, and it receives the noblest con- 
 tributions for the progress of this kingdom. 
 It abominates the meretricious. It despises 
 tinsel and sham. It condemns the unworthy 
 and the mean. It glories in the true, the good, 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 11 
 
 the beautiful. It gives its truth for the en- 
 lightenment of earth's dark places; it bestows 
 its goodness for the betterment of man; it 
 discloses its beauty for the adornment of the 
 beautiful. It is indeed true that in dungeons 
 of darkness and helpless misery have human 
 souls met their God, and there found the pres- 
 ence and the comfort of their God blessed. It 
 is true that in purity of heart and not simply in 
 the clearness of intellectual comprehension lies 
 the divine vision. It is true that the pathway 
 from earth to heaven does lie outside as well 
 as within cathedral walls, but it is also true 
 that the larger and the richer love of human- 
 ity into which comes the kingdom of God has 
 for an instructive and constructive force the 
 noble training of the mind. This training gave 
 to the eye of man to see in void space the 
 cathedral, and gave to the mind of man the 
 skill to devise and to the arm of man the power 
 to lift flying buttress and groined roof. This 
 training gave to the heart and lip the Chris- 
 tian hymn and the oratorio, which are as the 
 preludes to angels' songs. This training gave 
 to the painter the skill to present on unfading 
 canvas the infinite love of God in the face of 
 the mother of Christ, and also the infinite 
 strength of man in the face of Jesus Christ, 
 
12 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 his son. Take from human thought and hu- 
 man life the rich works of noble men inspired 
 by rich and noble purpose, and the divine 
 kingdom still is, but it is, compared to its 
 present state, as the bare cabin of the savage 
 is to the Christian home. Take from human 
 thought and life the rich works of noble men, 
 inspired by rich and noble purpose, and the 
 divine kingdom still lives, but compared to 
 its present rate of large and swift and magnifi- 
 cent progress, it moves as the caravan moves 
 across the desert. As for hundreds of years 
 the best thought of Europe was built into the 
 stones in the Gothic cathedral, and the cathe- 
 dral gave beauty and glory to the stones, so 
 the higher education is now giving a nobility 
 of character without coldness, and a beauty of 
 spirit free from selfishness, and a richness of 
 life devoid of luxuriousness. Thus is pro- 
 moted the coming of this kingdom in the 
 hearts and haunts of men. 
 
 Members of the graduating class : This col- 
 lege has failed in its opportunity to you, its 
 sixty-fifth class, if it have failed to impress upon 
 you the truth that there is a kingdom of God, 
 and that this kingdom is daily coming. It has 
 also failed in its duty, if it have failed to im- 
 press upon you the truth that your education 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 13 
 
 is to promote the coming of this kingdom. 
 What I have tried to say, therefore, to-night, 
 is simply a swift sketch of the chief work 
 of this college. I am persuaded that you 
 know somewhat of the nature of this king- 
 dom, and I see in your faces symbols of your 
 power to aid this progress. You are fitted 
 above most to guide and to control its onward 
 movement. You are fitted above most to 
 show how wide is its inclusive thought; how 
 embracing the arms of its endeavor. You are 
 fitted above most to make beautiful and rich 
 and noble men's conceptions of this kingdom. 
 Your opportunities will be great as great as 
 the world. Your responsibilities will be great 
 as great as duty itself. Your powers will 
 be great as great as God and as yourselves 
 can make them. Go forth; illustrate in your 
 living that the noblest culture is an angel 
 sent by God to men. Prove that high schol- 
 arship and high faith are the two foci whence 
 are drawn the ellipse of perfect character. Will 
 you live for God? With your mind love God 
 no less than with your soul and your heart? 
 Be a Moses. Choose suffering with God and 
 with God's people before transient triumphing 
 with wickedness and weakness. Be a Moses. 
 Go up into the mountain peaks of loneliness 
 
14 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 to be with your God; to receive from his di- 
 vine hand divine commandments. Be a Moses. 
 Let the ocean of impassable difficulties divide, 
 and provide a swift and glorious progress for 
 your feet. Be a Moses. May the wand of 
 your influence, moved by God, cause the rocks 
 of circumstances to gush forth with the satis- 
 fying waters of contentment. Be a Moses. And 
 when at last you approach the land of prom- 
 ise, toward which the God of Moses and your 
 God has been guiding you, may you ascend 
 some lonely Nebo, and may God grant to 
 you a vision of the prospect toward which 
 you have helped men, and, there, after life's 
 long journey, may you fall asleep in that place 
 of rest which God gives to every beloved and 
 faithful servant. That grave men may know 
 and may bring the offerings of their love and 
 veneration to it. That grave men may not 
 know, but it is enough if God knows it and if 
 his peace abides upon it. 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 15 
 
 II 
 
 GOING INTO THE WORLD 
 
 These twelve Jesus sent forth." Matthew x. 5. 
 
 THE college is apostolic. Its members 
 are sent forth. The missionary ele- 
 ment is as conspicuous in the college 
 as it was among the twelve or the seventy of 
 Christ's followers. Men come to college from 
 what we call the " world " in order to go from 
 college back into the world. The college re- 
 ceives in order to give forth. The college re- 
 ceives boys of eighteen in order to graduate 
 men. This college, founded for Christ and 
 the church, is sending you forth, O men of 
 1892. Our text describes the scene: "These 
 twelve Jesus sent forth." The college sends 
 you forth you who have spent four years 
 within these college walls. 
 
 And what have these years in college been 
 to you or done for you? What has the col- 
 lege done, that it may be said to send you 
 forth? What is the type of manhood which 
 
16 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 this college and every other worthy college 
 is seeking to train and to train in apostolic mo- 
 tives? This college desires to train in you 
 largeness of personality. It wants to make 
 you strong. It aims to make you great. It 
 desires to discipline individuality. It seeks to 
 make you yourselves into larger and better 
 selves. 
 
 You are to be yourself the largest and 
 most perfect self. The college is supposed to 
 train by pruning. The knife is its symbol. 
 The college does cut off the superfluous 
 branches of the vine of character, in order to 
 strengthen the vital forces of the vine itself. 
 It loses to save. It lops off leaf to get fruit. 
 The college does lessen the size of the dia- 
 mond of manhood, in order to gain greater 
 purity and a more splendid brilliance and a 
 larger value. The running track is the sym- 
 bol of the college. The college is converting 
 fatty tissue of large ambition into laborious 
 muscle. It creates compactness to get force. 
 The symbol of the college is a book. The col- 
 lege teaches you knowledge, but it is your 
 knowledge, and in that same teaching each 
 scholar learns a different lesson. The col- 
 lege teaches you to think, but the method of 
 thinking is your own. The college teaches 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 17 
 
 you to compare, reason, judge; but each act 
 of comparison, reasoning, judgment, is your 
 own act. Your best intellectual self the col- 
 lege has been trying to train. Your best 
 ethical self the college has been trying to train. 
 A knowledge of the laws of the moral uni- 
 verse the college endeavors to teach. Obedi- 
 ence to these laws it seeks to inspire. It tries 
 to make the right a principle of being, and the 
 good an object of attainment. 
 
 It endeavors to restrain the impulse of appe- 
 tite, to crush the unworthy desire, to guide the 
 worthy wish, to purify affection, but it never 
 forgets that the appetite, desire, and affection 
 of each man are his own, a part of his in- 
 dividual, personal being. It holds aloft moral 
 ideals, but it urges each man to run on his 
 own feet toward them, and by his own hand 
 to grasp the waiting prize. Mr. Lowell has 
 said that the more general purpose of the col- 
 lege " is to set free, to supple, and to train 
 the faculties in such wise as shall make them 
 most effective for whatever task life may af- 
 terwards set them ; for the duties of life rather 
 than for its business, and to open windows on 
 every side of the mind, where thickness of wall 
 does not make it impossible." " Let it be our 
 hope/' says Mr. Lowell, speaking also before a 
 
18 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 college audience, " to make a gentleman of 
 every youth who is put under our charge; not a 
 conventional gentleman, but a man of culture, 
 a man of intellectual resource, a man of public 
 spirit, a man of refinement, with that good 
 taste which is the conscience of the mind, and 
 that conscience which is the good taste of the 
 soul." Nobly spoken are these words by Mr. 
 Lowell, but he would also say that each man's 
 faculties and powers are to be trained in ac- 
 cordance with their foreordained tendency and 
 inclination, and also that each man each 
 gentleman, was to keep his own individuality, 
 to develop that individuality into the largest 
 and best manhood. 
 
 This large personality is a development 
 from within, outward. The college is to aid 
 in this development. The college is not to 
 supplant the individuality of the student by 
 its own corporate individuality. Some col- 
 leges do thus seem to be supplanters; but the 
 college is to summon all its powers to draw 
 out the forces of the student himself. This is 
 education. I would not have you known as 
 Adelbert men, or Western Reserve men, ex- 
 cept as Adelbert and Western Reserve stand 
 for the highest, purest, strongest, largest per- 
 sonality. The college is not to grind out its 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 19 
 
 annual grist, in which every kernel is like 
 every other kernel, a machine-made prod- 
 uct in which each individual is like every 
 other, but rather this college should graduate 
 men who are hand-made, mind-made, heart- 
 made, soul-made: a result in which mind has 
 been fed by mind, heart by heart, soul by soul; 
 individuality always respected, individuality 
 always developed. 
 
 Individuality is never to become eccentric- 
 ity. Personality is never to stand for oddity. 
 A strong personality is to be as a mountain 
 range, composed of the same material as the 
 plain, yet, rising above the plain; lifting the 
 plain skyward, its highest peaks hidden in the 
 cloud of mystery, its slopes resting firmly on 
 the solid earth. A strong personality is a part 
 of humanity, but it seems to be more and 
 higher than humanity, lifting humanity itself 
 above its low-lying plains of being. 
 
 Into this humanity you are sent forth. Sent 
 into the same world into which Christ sent his 
 apostles, sent into the same world into which 
 the Christ came. From this world you can- 
 not escape, any more than Mont Blanc can es- 
 cape from the earth. From this world you 
 should not wish to escape. I know that you 
 stand for scholarship, and scholarship is sup- 
 
20 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 posed to be esoteric and monastic. I know 
 that you stand for culture, and culture is sup- 
 posed to be dainty. As if limitation were su- 
 perior to breadth. As if confinement were 
 better than freedom. As if daintiness were 
 nobler than strength. You can make your 
 life monastic, and its monasticism will be 
 the loneliness of the grave. Ah, yes, you 
 can make your life a series of petty, dainty 
 prettinesses, or of dainty, pretty pettiness. Ah, 
 no, you cannot; your will rebels against such 
 an inane fate. No, you are of the world, and 
 in the world you must be. This world of 
 yours is a very good world, too. The best 
 you have ever known. The best you will 
 know, I hope, for three score years. It is not 
 a bad world, as some say. You are not to be 
 a Christian pessimist, and to hide yourself in 
 the monastery of your selfhood against a 
 world whose temptations you cannot meet. 
 Do not be a St. Anthony. You are not to be 
 a philosophic pessimist, and to write books 
 against the world. Do not be a Schopen- 
 hauer. It is a world of badness and of good- 
 ness strangely intermingled; of weakness and 
 of might; of poverty and of riches; of sin and 
 of purity. It is like the image of gold 
 and of clay, of brass and of iron. It is a self- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 21 
 
 ish world, anxious for glory and fame, place 
 and power. It is a self-sacrificing world, hold- 
 ing truth better than fame, duty than dollars, 
 character than place. It is a self-satisfied 
 world, folding its arms in its dainty strength. 
 It is a needy world, stretching forth empty 
 palms. It is a far-sighted world, seeing the 
 golden argosies sailing the remote seas of its 
 worthy endeavors. It is a blind world, like 
 some Polyphemus clutching the rocks in its 
 power to hurl at innocent foes. It is an in- 
 dolent world, content with itself and its be- 
 longings. It is an ambitious world, moving 
 forward as some great engine, with the force 
 and the swiftness of the lightning. Of this 
 world you are a part. Into it you must go 
 and stay. You are to make up your mind and 
 your heart what you will do to and for this 
 world, and what relation to it you will bear. 
 Will you add an ounce of selfishness to its 
 tons of self-hood? or will you lay the stone of 
 truth in its temple, and make a sacrifice on 
 its altar of prayer and of song? Will you 
 stand cold as stone and silent as a statue in 
 mild disdain of the struggling masses, or into 
 some empty palm will you lay your own right 
 hand? Will you make its blindness more 
 blind, and its madness more mad, or will you 
 
22 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 with broad wisdom and noble courage en- 
 deavor to see clearly, to guide rightly, to do 
 well? This world needs you, my friends. This 
 world has waited thousands of years for you. 
 The world" wants you to hold truth better than 
 name, duty than dollars, character than place. 
 The world wants you to lay some stone of 
 truth in its temple. The world wants you to 
 be, in the new fields of its endeavors, not a 
 Ulysses, but rather the world wants you to 
 be as someone else, also named in the 
 Odyssey. Do you know who is the hero of 
 the Odyssey? Is it he who has sailed 
 many a tempest-vexed sea and vanquished 
 many a wily, mighty foe? Is it he who 
 escaped from Circe's cheats, and was deaf 
 to the Sirens' honeyed songs? Is it he who 
 bent his mighty bow to slay his would-be 
 supplanters? Is it he who, in the teeth of 
 every charm, remained true to his own Penel- 
 ope? Ah, no, the hero of the Odyssey is not 
 Ulysses. The hero of this poem is one whose 
 name you hardly will recognize Eumaeus. 
 And who is Eumaeus? Eumaeus is the swine- 
 herd. The " noble swineherd," as he is called, 
 who guards with care the estate of Ulysses, 
 and whom Ulysses, returning, finds in his 
 place doing his humble duties. A hero yes 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 23 
 
 a hero, you desire to be. But faithfulness to 
 simple duty is the heroism to which the world 
 calls you. 
 
 In the Western Reserve, and in associ- 
 ation with this college, there lived, some 
 years ago, a man to whom the president of 
 the college of which he was a graduate, ad- 
 dressed a letter. It bore date, " Williams Col- 
 lege, June 10, 1880: The hour has struck 
 sooner than I thought. You know I thought 
 it would come, and now .that it is come I 
 rejoice with you. I congratulate you, not only 
 on your nomination, but on the manner of it, 
 and the enthusiasm with which it is received. 
 The students here are wild over it, and I care 
 not how wild, if they will but learn the lesson 
 there is in it. It is one reason of my joy that 
 there is a lesson in it. How well I remem- 
 ber those early struggles, and your manly 
 bearing under them, the confidence you at 
 once gave your instructors and received from 
 them, and the combination, so apparently easy, 
 and yet so rare among students, of a genial 
 spirit with pure habits and high aims uni- 
 formly pursued. That was the beginning of a 
 course in which you have not faltered, and the 
 lesson therefore is, that this honor is the result 
 of no accident, but of achievement by steady 
 
24 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 work in scholarship and statesmanship, so that 
 when the nation called, the man was there." 
 
 Thus Mark Hopkins wrote James A. Gar- 
 field. Crises are always striking, and crises 
 will at no distant day strike in your life. When 
 a crisis does strike, the result of its striking 
 depends upon whether you are a man. 
 
 But, as you go forth into this world, neither 
 you nor I can forget that you are going forth 
 into a world more the world of God than of 
 man. The world has universal relations. 
 Into these relations you come. You cannot 
 put them off. You would not put them off. 
 But your chief relation is to him whom we 
 call God : God, who was before time : God, 
 who shall be when time is not: God, who 
 was, is in all places : God, who shall be when 
 the heavens are rolled up as a scroll: God, 
 our creator, our preserver, our benefactor: 
 God, whose being we dimly shadow forth to 
 ourselves in the names of Father, Son, and 
 Holy Ghost: God, who is in all and God in 
 whom is all. This God has defined himself 
 as Love. He is above the world; inspire 
 yourself with his might. He is in the world; 
 with him commune. He is compassion; wrap 
 your soul around with strength of his consola- 
 tions. A revelation he has made to the world, 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 25 
 
 and he is the author in a sense other than 
 that in which he is the author of other vol- 
 umes of what we call the Bible. The book 
 is inspired, for it inspires men. It is a human 
 book, for its writers were men. It is a divine 
 book, for its author was God. It was given to 
 man, not for its scientific teaching, not for 
 its secular history, but as a history, as a 
 prophecy of God's endeavors to bless and to 
 redeem man. This book thus receive and use. 
 Obey its commands, remember its precepts, 
 follow its suggestions, live the life it com- 
 mends. 
 
 But also, in this world of God and of man 
 you find what is called " the church." Some 
 of you are its formal members. I wish you all 
 were. The church: it is the church of the 
 Son of God. Its origin is the principle of 
 divine love. Its history is the history of hu- 
 man redemption. It is the church of the Son 
 of Man. It embraces all those who accept the 
 principle of Divine Love and endeavor to obey 
 the duties which this love reveals. " It in- 
 cludes all those who are predestinated," says 
 Wiclif. " It embraces all those who hold the 
 divine word, and observe the sacraments," 
 says Luther. " It is the visible organization 
 where pure doctrine is taught," says Me- 
 
26 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 lancthon. " It is the society in which every 
 newborn soul is a component part," says 
 Schleiermacher. This church is worthy of 
 your love, is worthy of the service of your de- 
 votion, and of the devotion of your service. I 
 recognize its limitations. I am well aware 
 of its imperfections, but never will you find 
 in this world of God and of man an agent 
 more worthy of your co-operation than the 
 church, and never will you find aim more 
 worthy of your working for than the aim 
 which the church sets before itself. It is 
 anointed with the blood of martyrs. The 
 wisdom of the Prophets and the songs of the 
 Angels are its triumph. Of this church be- 
 come a member. Thus, into the world of 
 God, with the Bible of God in one hand, and 
 the church of God in your heart, go forth. 
 
 You, my friends, members of the Class of 
 1892, by the simple fact of your graduation 
 are sent forth. You are sent forth from and 
 by this college. You are sent forth into the 
 world: the world at once of man and of 
 God. There is a sadness in these parting 
 hours, yet for these parting hours you came 
 to the college and the college received you. 
 Here you stand together. After these 
 three days you will never stand together as 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 27 
 
 now. These days are the point whence you 
 will go forth on the divine purpose into the 
 waiting world. Your pathways will more 
 and more widely separate as the days increase. 
 But, also, as the days increase your path- 
 ways will gradually converge, and at some 
 point of time in the future you will again come 
 together at one and the same point in space. 
 From this world, in the nearer parts of 
 which to-night you linger, may you 
 come forth to its farther borders, into that 
 Eternal World, with the same courage, 
 strength, hope, and triumph with which you 
 leave this college, only with a courage more 
 brave, a strength more strong, a hope more 
 vigorous, a triumph more victorious. Thus, 
 may the words of the Christ, which to-night 
 I speak to you : " These twelve Jesus sent 
 forth," be at last translated into the invitation : 
 " Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the 
 Kingdom prepared for you from the founda- 
 tion of the world." 
 
28 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 III. 
 
 GREAT FORCES IN THE EDUCATION 
 AND LIFE OF WOMEN 
 
 ' And he took his staff in his hand, and chose 
 him five smooth stones out of the brook, and put 
 them in a shepherd's bag which he had, even in a 
 scrip ; and his sling was in his hand; and he drew 
 near to the Philistine." i Samuel xvii. 40. 
 
 SCENE conspicuous, though common, 
 this; scene of youth, inexperience, weak- 
 ness, innocence, going forth the first time 
 to meet age, experience, strength, evil. David 
 is facing Goliath. Every life has its youth, its 
 inexperience, its innocence, its weakness. Every 
 life has also its hour when it first stands facing 
 what we call the world. Its youth faces the 
 world's age, its inexperience the world's ex- 
 perience, its innocence the world's evil, its 
 feebleness the world's might. Such an hour 
 is this: the hour when a woman turns her back 
 upon her college, and turns her face towards 
 humanity's great life. When thus she ad- 
 vances and stands, what is her need? What 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 29 
 
 should she have to overcome this giant of the 
 world? The answer is not remote. Let her 
 equip herself as David was equipped. The 
 question and the answer are simply a part of 
 that universal question and answer belonging 
 to all life, and also to all literature: The ques- 
 tion of individual personality in its first rela- 
 tions to corporate personality. 
 
 But to the specific answer: David took five 
 smooth stones. The stone represents com- 
 pact force. Force diffused is of worth. The 
 air represents such force. But force diffused 
 is rather a condition than an agency, and 
 conditions never do anything. Compactness, 
 condensation promotes power. Crowd Lake 
 Erie between narrow banks and you have 
 Niagara. Put electricity into one bolt, and, 
 descending, it smites with the swiftness of 
 light, with power resistless. Compel it to 
 go along certain ordained ways, and electric- 
 ity has an ear, a tongue, an eye. The tempta- 
 tion of modern life is the dissipation 
 of force. The temptation of American life 
 is the dissipation of force. The temp- 
 tation of the American woman is the dissi- 
 pation of force. Modern American life de- 
 mands much of woman. Of home she is the 
 creator; in church the laborer; of society the 
 
30 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 pillar; in social reforms the chief speaker. 
 The American woman of 1892 will do more 
 things well than any other member of the hu- 
 man family, but for this simple reason we sel- 
 dom find women doing certain things best. 
 She is rather content with second-rate attain- 
 ments in many fields than with first-rate in a 
 few. The college is made to create personal 
 force. The college is also, and more, made to 
 adjust forces, to transmute scattering forces 
 into compact force. The college is not set to 
 give us women who can do more things well, 
 but rather women who can do fewer things 
 better best. Education makes forces com- 
 pact, and projects and directs them toward 
 specific ends. In a sense, education, in- 
 stead of broadening what we call woman's 
 sphere narrows it. Woman's sphere is now 
 altogether too broad. Woman's sphere, like 
 man's, better be a hemisphere. In the 
 lower social realm, woman's sphere is the 
 broadest. There she serves at once as ox, 
 farm laborer, housekeeper, and mother. In 
 the highest realm, woman's sphere is the 
 smallest; but that sphere is of much greater 
 worth, as the globe of silver is more precious 
 than the ball of iron. The work of the world, 
 we are told, is done by experts. The ex- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 31 
 
 pert is one who has twisted the strands 
 of many forces into the coil of one force. 
 Education unites woman's forces into force. 
 Education does this through that power which 
 we call the power of thinking of thinking 
 clearly, profoundly, comprehensively, swiftly, 
 truly. Education facilitates transmuting 
 forces into force through the power of choos- 
 ing of choosing in accordance with the wis- 
 dom of thought. Here, let me say, lies the 
 chief difference between the old education and 
 the new for women. The old education 
 taught the multa, but did not teach the multum. 
 It crowded the many and not the much into 
 one poor brain. And how did the old educa- 
 tion teach? It taught in the same methods 
 by which one goes through Europe in six 
 months. And what was the result of the old 
 education? Knowing a bit more than noth- 
 ing about everything, and knowing what was 
 hardly worth knowing about anything. The 
 new education does not try to teach multa to 
 each woman, but does try to teach multum. 
 It converts knowledge into character into 
 force. It is not much in name, but it does 
 propose to make character as firm as the 
 mountain of rock, and the forces of character 
 like the forces of nature. 
 
32 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 But force, it may be said, is not beauty, 
 grace; and woman is the minister to life's 
 beauty, life's grace. Therefore, let me ask 
 you to bear in mind that David chose not only 
 stones, but he chose smooth stones. I am will- 
 ing to grant all that may be claimed as to the 
 importance of the beautiful. I recognize its 
 ministry and exult in the Fine Arts its ser- 
 vants and agents; but I also know that force 
 is no more antagonistic to the beautiful than 
 the swiftness of the flight of the stars is op- 
 posed to their shining, or the strength of the 
 elms is opposed to the festoons of their 
 branches, or that the mighty powers of the 
 earth and sky are opposed to the majesties 
 of the changing seasons. Aye, rather, 
 it is force compact, fittingly used, forceful, 
 that creates the beautiful. Force dissipated, 
 superficial, void, is the slow-moving that cre- 
 ates the ugly. Force is not angular. The 
 planetary and stellar bodies move in curves of 
 beauty. When human force is properly 
 trained and used, its very use carries along 
 with it beauty. The more swiftly turns the 
 wheel of the bicycle, the more graceful and 
 steady are its onward goings. 
 
 And yet, David did not choose smooth stones 
 because of their beauty. Rather he chose 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 33 
 
 smooth stones, for smooth stones are the more 
 sure of hitting the mark. Of course you are 
 to have an aim, but you are to choose those 
 qualities which will cause you to gain your 
 aim. Adjust means to ends, choose means 
 which are the surest of gaining ends. Apply- 
 ing all wisdom you will fail to hit often 
 enough. At this point lies the argument for 
 a college education for both the girl and the 
 boy. 
 
 The college is not an end, but an agent. 
 Among the ends of life are the proper doing 
 of one's work, increased facilities for doing 
 the world's work, a broadening of vision, a 
 purer purity, the easier ease of self-control, 
 the securing of a richer enrichment of one's 
 being, the gaining a nobler character. And 
 shall not the college be an agency for aiding 
 man or woman to secure these aims? Ap- 
 plication, economy in the use of force, com- 
 prehensiveness and delicacy of thought, the 
 power of receiving knowledge, discipline, 
 force: do not these aid each woman toward 
 greater breadth of vision, purity, self-control, 
 enrichment of character? The college may 
 make one a better housekeeper, but it does 
 more. It makes a larger and nobler woman 
 in the housekeeper. The college makes every 
 
34 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 boy entering a commercial life a better mer- 
 chant, but, what is more, it helps the world 
 and himself to find a nobler, larger man in the 
 merchant. The college is for the kitchen and 
 the parlor; for the office and the forge; for the 
 factory and the shop; but it is more for simple 
 humanity. The humanities of the college 
 course are for the humanity of life itself. 
 The college thus creates and adjusts great 
 forces to the greatest aims. 
 
 David had only one giant to kill, and one 
 stone properly used would do the killing; but 
 David took five stones. Four he put in his 
 shepherd's bag. The first fling might miss. 
 He had forces in reserve. Force is to be put 
 forth, and to be forth-putting, but force 
 enough is to be held back to serve the forth- 
 coming demands. This force is not to be 
 great knowledge. Knowledge is no, or slight, 
 power. Force lies in the man in the woman. 
 Force is faculty trained to facility. The brain 
 is not to be a granary, but a grist mill ; not to 
 be a steam boiler, but a steam engine. Woman 
 is to hold herself for service at the eleventh 
 hour, as well as the first. Woman is to do, 
 and is to do constantly. The college is to give 
 staying power. The fool's bolt is soon shot. 
 College women are most remote from fools. 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 35 
 
 Goliaths are not single giants. Any week may 
 be a Philistia, out of which some Goliath may 
 swagger forth. What perils may come to your 
 individual life, I know not. They may be, or 
 may not be, organized hardness of heart, hy- 
 pocrisy, jealousy, narrowness of nature, disin- 
 tegration of noble powers, but if these are the 
 perils, you are to have force as a taut spring 
 to project the missile which shall put an end 
 to these perils. There, too, are dangers 
 dangers of the body social. The ravages of 
 sin, the blight of nipping poverty, the petrify- 
 ing of social distinctions these are, and these 
 represent evils against which you should have 
 your sling in your hand. The training of 
 these years, close, accurate thinking, broad 
 scholarship are to give to you a force suffi- 
 cient and efficient for putting down these per- 
 ils. Your intellect is to be an instrument 
 for weighing evidence; like scales to detect 
 the finest variation; like scales, to receive and 
 indicate the worth of the largest offerings. 
 Your heart is to be of tender and strong feel- 
 ing. Guided by the wisdom of your intel- 
 lect, your conscience is to have the keenest, 
 swiftest moral intuitions. Your will is to have 
 persistence. It is to hold on, to hold up, to 
 hold back, to hold out, and to hold down. A 
 
36 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 woman who is thus endowed will be ready for 
 life's crises. 
 
 David took his sling: tool simple, tool 
 which he knew how to use. The helmet of 
 brass, the coat of mail which Saul tried to 
 put on him were impediments: heavy, for- 
 eign; he thrust them off. Your lives are 
 flung into an age of elaborate living: elabor- 
 ateness has its worth, but remember that sim- 
 plicity has larger worth and larger relations. 
 It is more akin to the character of the laws 
 of nature. Your lives are flung into an arti- 
 ficial age: cultivate sincerity. Insincerity will 
 harm others somewhat; it will harm yourself 
 more. Your lives are flung into an age of 
 self-seeking: maintain a delicate sense of 
 honor. In an age of materialism, cultivate 
 the imagination: be idealists in ethics and 
 practice. Purity, gentleness, graciousness, 
 love, faith these are the simple tools which 
 you are to know. Neither good manners nor 
 good ethics patents its rights. The sling is 
 the child's plaything or instrument: keep 
 yourself in directness, not adroitness; frank- 
 ness, not concealment; enthusiasm, not indif- 
 ference these are the simple things which are 
 also best. 
 
 But I do not forget that our forth-going 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 37 
 
 hero took not only his sling and his stones, 
 but also his staff. The staff may have been 
 for either offense or defense, but it was 
 for help in his going forth. One cannot 
 fail to recall that in the Twenty-third Psalm, 
 more closely associated with the crises of life 
 than any other poem, D'avid himself says, 
 " Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." 
 It is no undue interpretation, if I say the staff 
 stands for the help of God given to you. For 
 my present purpose, I care not whether it 
 seems to you that God governs the world by 
 general laws, or whether it seems to you that 
 he governs the world by his personal pres- 
 ence; but I do care and I care much whether 
 you believe that God is your friend and your 
 helper. I am confident that this is in fact your 
 belief. Therefore, you are to think of Him, 
 your God, as your radiant Sun, enlightening 
 the mind; as your protecting Shield, guarding 
 you; as your Refuge in the storm; as one 
 whose everlasting arms are beneath you; 
 whose love is your fortress for defense and 
 whose commendation is your motive. Let 
 His truth be your study, his power your trust, 
 his love your everlasting heritage. With him 
 as your helper you can run and not be weary, 
 you can walk and not faint. With faith in 
 
38 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 him, you are to face perils. With him you 
 are to go into and come forth from flaming 
 furnaces without the smell of fire on your 
 garments. Without him Heaven would not 
 be, and with him, Hell could not be. What- 
 ever weapons you may carry for overcoming 
 the giants of life, you are ever to take the staff 
 of God's personal help. 
 
 I see the fair face of David again, standing 
 to-night in many a college church, preparing 
 to meet the hard-faced Goliath of life. I 
 know that you, young women, members of 
 this graduating class, appreciate at this mo- 
 ment in the beginning of this Commencement 
 time, at once how little and how much this 
 College has been to you in fitting you to con- 
 quer the opposing giants of the world. You 
 now know, as not before, how great the 
 change is that is coming to you. You would 
 longer linger to secure equipment more 
 thorough, yet, you would go forth into the 
 inviting and larger unknown. With reluctant 
 feet, yet eager, you stand where the brook of 
 the college and the river of life meet. Yet, 
 this college, as you thus stand, sends you 
 forth, its second class. It sends you forth 
 assured that you are strong in yourselves, with 
 a force which is at once beauty and strength 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 39 
 
 sufficient for the storm and the stress, and 
 fitted for the sunshine and the calm. The 
 college is confident that the God of David is 
 your God. Let the sling and the stone of 
 your own power ever conquer for the right 
 and truth. Let the staff of the divine bless- 
 ing be your help all the way of your pilgrim- 
 age. And when you approach the end, may 
 your voice be heard singing, " Yea, though I 
 walk through the valley of the shadow of 
 death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; 
 thy rod and thy staff they comfort me/' 
 
40 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 IV 
 LOVE: CHRIST AND HUMANITY 
 
 " A new commandment I give unto you, that ye 
 love one another." John xiii. 34. 
 
 " Love is the fulfilling of the law. Romans xiii. 
 10." 
 
 THE moral and religious wealth of the 
 world when Christ came into it was 
 not small. It was indeed a very re- 
 ligious world. Its gods were in multitude 
 as the stars and in character as diverse as the 
 forms of the clouds. It was a rich world too 
 in systems of ethics. Confucius had told his 
 dream. Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, had each 
 formed his theories of righteousness. Moral 
 precepts beginning with the golden rule of 
 the Chinese sage were many, wholesome, in- 
 spiring. It was a world, further, not without 
 noblest examples of righteous living. If one 
 turn to the drama as embodying the ideals of 
 humanity, one finds Antigone; if one turn to 
 historical annals, the names of a dozen heroes 
 spring to the lip. It was a world in which the 
 family as the source and rule of social order 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 41 
 
 had obtained a secure place. But it was, after 
 all, a world of poverty in that treasure which 
 is richest and supreme. It was a world without 
 love. Its life was a loveless life. Its self-love 
 was selfishness. Its springs of action were 
 intellectual, not of the affections. Its works 
 were splendid but frigid. Its heart was iron. 
 Its hand was gloved in works of charity as 
 cold as ice and as hard as steel. 
 
 The Christ who came, came as love. He 
 spoke no eulogies so eloquent as Paul. Such 
 eulogy was needless; he was love. Love was 
 the spring of his coming; love the parable of 
 his wisdom ; love the miracle of his work ; love 
 the life he lived; love the death he died. He 
 was both the message and the messenger of 
 love. It has indeed often been asked what 
 contribution Christ gave to the world, what 
 new force added, what new motive applied, 
 what new truths discovered. The force he con- 
 tributed, the motive applied, the truth he dis- 
 covered was love. Love he ^ave to the world 
 as the essence of the divine nature, the prin- 
 ciple of love as the principle of divine conduct, 
 the principle of love as the principle of hu- 
 man righteousness. Love was the com- 
 prehensive contribution which the Christ of 
 Christianity has made the world. 
 
42 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 This love was not simply an emotion. It 
 was not a transient fancy. It had in it noth- 
 ing of animal passion. It was a principle. 
 It embodied conduct. It stood for the great 
 permanent choice of the individual and of 
 humanity. It did indeed have an intellectual 
 part, but it was more than intellectual. It did 
 indeed have an emotional part, but it was 
 more than emotional. It did indeed have a 
 power of the will, but it was more than voli- 
 tion. It was sympathy, it was self-sacrifice. 
 It had in itself all that was noblest and largest 
 and best of humanty and of divinity. It was 
 LOVE. 
 
 This principle of love coming into relation- 
 ship with human life worked very important 
 results. To these results I ask your thought. 
 
 The love which Christ brought, gave a 
 sense of humanity. Before Christ came there 
 was no adequate sense of humanity. There 
 was, indeed, a sense of national life. This the 
 Greek had; above all, the Jew. But there was 
 no sense of the race, the whole race; there was 
 no conception of the value of humanity as 
 humanity. There was nothing of what we 
 now call enthusiasm for humanity. It is true 
 we find occasional instances of the concep- 
 tion of human brotherhood. "The whole 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 43 
 
 world," says Cicero in the Laws, " is to be re- 
 garded as the common city of gods and 
 men." Neither do we forget the familiar 
 lines of Terence, borrowed from Menander, 
 that nothing human is foreign. But the usual 
 conception, both among the Greek and the 
 Roman, was the Jewish. The idea of the com- 
 munity of nations was remote and vague. 
 The idea of the family was indeed fixed, but 
 between the idea of the family and the idea of 
 the state was no middle ground, no connect- 
 ing link. The temples, even the Jewish, were 
 not for the people; they were for the priests. 
 The old world had no worthy place for that 
 worthy bit of humanity, the child. The old 
 world had no worthy place for woman. The 
 old world had no place for the poor, the 
 weak, the weary. The conception of the na- 
 tion was one people, one in origin and destiny ; 
 the conception of the state was one people 
 under one controlling force ; the conception of 
 the commonwealth was one people in condition 
 and interest, each conception was strong. But 
 to the idea of all nations composing one sim- 
 ple humanity the world had not come. This 
 idea entered the world with Christ. His na- 
 ture and condition fitted him to originate such 
 an idea. He was a Jew, yet he had a strain 
 
44 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 of Gentile blood. Wise men from the East 
 and shepherds from the field were worshipers 
 at his altar-cradle. Though born in Palestine 
 in the country of his great ancestor, he spent a 
 part of his babyhood in a land where his fa- 
 thers had served as slaves. He was brought 
 up in an inland town, yet one which was a 
 metropolis. His message was spoken to the 
 lost sheep of the house of Israel, but he also 
 said " other sheep I have which are not of this 
 fold; them also I must bring." In the last 
 week of his life Greeks sought wisdom from 
 his lips. His invitations were as broad as 
 " whosoever will." The symbols which he 
 used to type his universal relationships were 
 bread and water. The declaration inscribed 
 over his cross was written in Latin the lan- 
 guage of universal empire, in Greek the 
 language of universal culture, in Hebrew 
 the language of universal holiness. The chief 
 wonder following his death was the wonder of 
 the gift of tongues a Babel which was not a 
 Babel, for each speaking understood the other. 
 Those on whom his power rested were out of 
 every kindred and tongue and nation. The 
 visions of the Apocalypse indicate not only 
 the happiness of his subjects, but the inclusive- 
 ness of his realm. The Apostle indicates that 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 45 
 
 Jesus Christ is the chief corner-stone, and that 
 on this foundation rests the household of God 
 in which strangers and foreigners become citi- 
 zens and sons. To us, in this nineteenth cen- 
 tury, in this democratic nation, all this seems 
 commonplace. For to-day we have a sense 
 of humanity universal in its comprehensive- 
 ness, compact in its individualism, intense in 
 its affection. Combination, co-operation, con- 
 solidation, union are the rallying cries of 
 society, of commerce, of government. We to- 
 day write not men, but man, on our wide- 
 spreading banners. The idea that has thus 
 come to the world entered the world 
 with him, who called himself the son of man, 
 and who was Love. 
 
 This principle of love gave not only a sense 
 of humanity, it also gave a sense of the worth 
 of the individual. The heathen world had 
 wisdom. The heathen world had also will. 
 But the heathen world had no worthy affec- 
 tions. The old world had a brain, it lacked a 
 heart. It had a place for the hero, it had no 
 niche for him who was not heroic. Most peo- 
 ple in ordinary relations are not heroic. The 
 love of the Christ was, however, a love for the 
 individual of whatever sort. For Christ came 
 seeking the lost, saving that which might not 
 
46 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 seem worthy of saving. He came to rest the 
 weary, to lift the heavy laden, to give an easy 
 yoke for yoke bearers. He declared that one 
 doing his will became to him as a mother. He 
 spoke assurances which we call beatitudes, 
 blessings promised for moral qualities, quali- 
 ties which may belong to each, and not bless- 
 ings for intellectual qualities which may be 
 denied to many. The pearl of all the necklace 
 of his parables is the one in which one hero 
 stands for love, for love given, and in which 
 one hero stands also for love, love accepted. 
 The parable which is a vision of the last day 
 suggests that in the unlikely and the unlovely 
 may be seen himself. He calls himself the 
 way, but it is a way in which the wayfaring 
 man may walk. He calls himself the truth, 
 but it is the truth which each man may know. 
 He calls himself the life, but it is the life 
 which each man may share. 
 
 In the love which he offered, the Christ, fur- 
 ther, gave to men an adequate conception of 
 God as love. The old world did not lack gods. 
 Paganism was and is polytheistic. One of the 
 first charges which the early Christians had to 
 repel was the charge of being atheists. The 
 finest embodiment of the gods of the finest 
 paganism was Athena. Athena to the Athen- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 47 
 
 ian was supreme wisdom. She was also pur- 
 ity. Her beauty was severe and strong. She 
 was the presiding spirit of the noblest city of 
 the noblest nation in its noblest age. The 
 finest thought which the most discriminating 
 mind of antiquity could realize as to the ob- 
 ject of its supreme worship was wisdom, 
 beauty, purity qualities indeed magnificent 
 and entrancing. But the Christ came to show 
 that in the God were not only wisdom, purity, 
 and beauty, but also was love. " God is love," 
 says the inspired writer; love is God, we in- 
 terpret his meaning. The Oriental brought 
 his gods to the level and condition of nature; 
 his was, indeed, an attempt to realize the im- 
 manence of the divinity, and his gods were 
 fierce and terrible or calm and tender, as are 
 the moods of nature herself. The Roman at 
 first materialized his god into the chief of the 
 state. Later he deified the emperor. But the 
 Christ himself preached that love was God. 
 Let me now say that we need to return to the 
 early conception. Can anyone think to-day, 
 as men once have thought, that God created 
 men to damn them? No wonder when the 
 assurance prevailed that the heart of the eter- 
 nal is not gall, nor the heart of the universe 
 poison,, the morning stars sang together, or 
 
48 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 the evening stars shouted for joy. No won- 
 der the early Christians called their sacrament 
 of worship, to a God of love, a love feast and 
 made a kiss their salutation. No wonder the 
 universe ceased to the early Christians to be a 
 prison-house and became a father's house, that 
 it ceased to be a machine shop of impersonal 
 forces and became a flower garden, a land of 
 Beulah. No wonder the avenging furies 
 ceased to torment men's fancy and men came 
 to believe in the ministry of angels. No won- 
 der the world ceased to be inhabited by fiends 
 and became suggestive of loving providences 
 and symbolic of the divine beneficence and 
 love. No wonder the world rejoiced when it 
 was told by the Apostle of love that God so 
 loved the world that he gave his only son unto 
 it. 
 
 'Let me also say that to-day this principle of 
 love is the fundamental truth in every doctrine 
 of Christian theology. Love is the truth of 
 the Godhead : God is love. Love is the truth 
 of Christ. Love is the great cardinal fact on 
 which swings wide and high the door of the 
 Atonement. Love is the atmosphere, warm 
 and clear, in which the Holy Spirit labors to 
 make men better. Man's capacity to receive 
 and to give forth love is the chief truth re- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 49 
 
 specting the human element of salvation. 
 Love is the corner-stone of the church. The 
 doctrine of love gives authority to the Scrip- 
 tures ; without this fact it would be difficult to 
 prove inspiration. Love is the truth on which 
 all theories of future rewards proceed. It is 
 the truth on which all theories of future pun- 
 ishment proceed. If the God who condemns 
 failed to love those whom he condemns, he 
 would be, not a God, but the Devil. Wrong in 
 logic, false in idea, is that man if he live 
 who thinks of God as other than a God of 
 love: he is a heathen. Wrong in logic, false 
 in idea, is the church if it be which thinks 
 of God as other than a God of love: it is 
 heathendom. Right and true and sound are 
 the man and the church who test all doctrines 
 by the doctrine of love: the love of God for 
 man, the love of man for God, the love of man 
 for man. 
 
 The love which the Christ bore provided a 
 new motive for all life. It added power to life; 
 it gave to life a buoyancy, a spring, a move- 
 ment. It is difficult to discriminate how love 
 did this. Love gave a new life. Love gave a 
 divine life. Love gave a new light. The 
 heart clarified the intellect. Love preached 
 a gospel of universal brotherhood without 
 
50 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 preaching communism. Love preached a 
 gospel of self-sacrifice without preaching an- 
 nihilation. Love preached optimism, the gos- 
 pel of hope. Love never whispered a syllable 
 of pessimism, the gospel of despair. Love as- 
 sured men that God dwells in them, about 
 them; love convinced them that this world is 
 God's, not the devil's world; love whispered 
 that the eternal spirit is working in and for 
 man, that humanity represents the constant 
 striving of God toward the reincarnation; love 
 proved that conscience and reason in each 
 man are to be united, and that the revelations 
 of conscience and reason in man are the 
 revelations of God's truth; love declared that 
 the human need of forgiveness is filled by the 
 divine pardon, that all worthy sacrifice con- 
 sists in the yielding of the human will to the 
 divine, and that perfect freedom is perfect 
 obedience to perfect law. It was thus that a 
 new motive came to humanity through the 
 new love. I read Epictetus noblest flower 
 of pagan plant self-understanding how pro- 
 found, humility how Christian, counsel how 
 sage, wisdom how precise, ideals how exalted, 
 self-reliance how strong, self-restraint how 
 calm a Socrates without pettiness, a Plato 
 without remoteness from life. But how cold 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 51 
 
 he is! As I read these noble paragraphs I 
 feel myself walking through halls of marble, 
 ornate, splendid, but frigid, whose atmosphere 
 is of the tomb. As I read the gospel of St. 
 John I find, indeed, less of the ornate, less of 
 the splendid, but I find life. I read the medi- 
 tations of Marcus Aurelius how simple yet 
 how profound, how broad yet how deep, how 
 learned yet how wise, how exalted yet how 
 humble, how wide in knowledge yet how full 
 of self-understanding as I read these medita- 
 tions of that noble man, who was by destiny a 
 philosopher, by chance an emperor, I am re- 
 minded of the story of a king, the king who 
 gave audience to his court. The king re- 
 clines in his kingly chair, on his brow rests the 
 crown, his lily fingers grasp the scepter, over 
 his heart flash insignia. The marble halls 
 sing in entrancing music, the polished floors 
 are happy in the tread of dancing feet, lords 
 and ladies approach and pay obeisance. The 
 courtiers with one voice exclaim, " Long live 
 the king, long live the king." The king has 
 all, all but life. I read the meditations of this 
 great man, Marcus Aurelius; he has all but 
 life. I read the gospels of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ and he has life. His life is love. 
 That love is God and that God is love we 
 
52 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 are coming the better to understand. Phi- 
 losophy has for more than two thousand years 
 been searching for its god. Plato found it in 
 his supreme ideal. This century has been 
 searching for it as never before has any age 
 searched for a god. Fichte found his god in 
 the " ego." Schelling found his god in his 
 system of correspondence. Hegel found his 
 god in pure being. Schopenhauer found his 
 god in the absolute will. Von Hartmann 
 found his god in the unconscious. And 
 each of these found, indeed, one side of God. 
 God is the ideal, the perfect. God is the uni- 
 versal " ego." God does make himself known 
 in the orders and gradations of existence. 
 God is indeed a pure being. God is indeed a 
 force, a will. God we may consider the un- 
 conscious in certain relations. But this God 
 who is all these is also and more the God of 
 love. Love is the supreme ideal, love is per- 
 sonal, love is comprehensive, love is force, love 
 is energy, ever so going out into other lives 
 that it may be said to be forgetful of itself. 
 Love is the absolute. Love is the God. 
 
 These are truths which college men need to 
 learn. The trained intellect is a tremendous 
 power. Intellectual culture is a very precious 
 thing to have or to bestow. A character disci- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 53 
 
 plined, equipped, enriched is a possession 
 worthy of consuming struggle. When God 
 wants a great work done he calls a well-trained 
 mind as St. Paul. But a well-trained mind 
 without love is a Frankenstein. Intellectual 
 culture without love is moral suicide. God 
 summons every man to know with the reason, 
 but he also summons every man to love. If 
 college train the intellect, as it does, let col- 
 lege not dry up the fountains of the heart. If 
 college teach one to think, as it does, let it 
 not dwarf the affections. Let love and 
 thought be the twin stars in the one constella- 
 tion of perfected character. 
 
 This world of which we are a part and into 
 which we go is not a world of love. Love has 
 not yet fully possessed this world. But you 
 are ordained to make this world a world of 
 love. Therefore you are to love it. If the 
 world admire or honor you, love it. If the 
 world be indifferent to you, love it. If the 
 world hate you, love it. If the world 
 despise and spurn you, still love the 
 world. Give yourself or your treasure or 
 withhold yourself or your treasure, but love 
 the world. Pray or labor for the world 
 or do not pray or labor, but love the 
 world. Love the world as God loves it, who 
 
64 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 gave his son for it. Love the world as Christ 
 loves it, who died for it. Love the world as 
 the Holy Ghost loves it, who lives in it and for 
 it. May it truly be said of you that 
 
 " Love took up the harp of life and smote on all the 
 
 chords with might; 
 
 Smote the chord of Self, that trembling, passed in 
 music out of sight." 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 65 
 
 V 
 
 THE YOUTH'S DREAM OF LIFE 
 "And he dreamed. "Gen. xxviii. 12. 
 
 JACOB has left his boyhood's home. He 
 is starting out in his life's work. The 
 first night after his departure he dreams 
 a dream which the words that have been read 
 describe. The week, of which this is the first 
 service, is called Commencement Week. It 
 is not, according to an early use of the term, 
 the beginning of the college year. It is rather 
 the beginning, the commencement of life. I 
 may therefore for us interpret Jacob's dream 
 as the Youth's Dream of Life. 
 
 For to every youth, as to Jacob, the first 
 approach to life is through dream-land. In 
 every youth imagination is stronger than will. 
 As he faces this very vague but very real con- 
 dition which we call life, each young man or 
 woman is filled with a sense of wonder, 
 strangeness, and inquiry. What life is to be 
 he knows not. Even what he wants life to be 
 he is not quite sure. He is in the mood of 
 
66 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 reverie, not of work; of interrogation, not of 
 assertion. He sees visions. He hears many 
 voices and mingled calling to him out of the 
 future. He is dreaming the dream of the life 
 that is to be. Therefore, the youth's dream 
 of life, or, more definitely, what are the char- 
 acteristics of this dream as it is represented in 
 Jacob's dream at Bethel, is my theme. 
 
 Jacob's dream was optimistic. Ministering 
 angels were its characters. 'Its environment 
 was as the house of God and the gate of 
 Heaven. The youth's dream of life is optimis- 
 tic. Its rainbow of promise is braided of 
 skyey hopes and splendid ideals. The youth 
 is a youth so long as he is an optimist. Op- 
 timism is the fabled elixir. For we are to re- 
 member that optimism is not only an idea, but 
 also is good feeling; not good feeling only, it 
 is also happy choice. Not only is it these 
 states of mind, but it is also a sound constitu- 
 tion, and joyous conditions, and worthiest 
 aims. Optimism, let us not forget, is at once 
 a belief and an atmosphere. 
 
 It is well that the youth's dream of life is 
 optimistic. Life has in itself much that is not 
 best or good. No one can look out from some 
 great observatory on human life without feel- 
 ing himself pierced by its agonies and shames, 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 67 
 
 sympathizing with its sorrows, and moved by 
 its woes. The pessimist is not without argu- 
 ment from observation and experience. But 
 pessimism arises from seeing a part and not 
 the whole. For optimism is the lasting key- 
 note to which all the variations of life's music 
 are constantly attuned, from which they take 
 their departure, and to which they return. The 
 optimism of the age of ten is not the optimism 
 of the age of twenty, nor the optimism of 
 twenty that of sixty. The optimism of mere 
 pleasure gives way to the optimism of a high 
 purpose, of work nobly planned and nobly 
 wrought, and the optimism of work itself 
 makes way to the optimism of triumphs 
 achieved, and the optimism of triumphs 
 achieved in turn makes room for the optimism 
 of a blessed memory and of hopes which await 
 a fulfillment beyond the clouds. For we are 
 ever to believe that the world at its center is 
 good, and at its circumference far from being 
 bad. We are to believe that evil is an inci- 
 dental and not an essential part of the present 
 moral system. We are to believe that this 
 world is the best of all possible worlds, for its 
 conditions. Every Christian is an optimist, 
 and every optimist cannot well avoid being a 
 Christian. The first article of the universal 
 
58 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 creed : " I believe in God the Father Al- 
 mighty/' is also the first article in the creed of 
 the optimist. Optimism is not born of blind- 
 ness to evil conditions. It knows that there 
 are waves of pain, and suffering and agony, 
 tossing on and tearing up the shore of this 
 great human ocean. But it also knows that 
 the great undertow and the gulf streams are 
 of beneficence and peace. 
 
 The one thing to be said to the young soul 
 in its dreams is this : optimism is strength. To 
 believe that things are for the best helps to 
 make things best. Great men are always op- 
 timists. They are not optimists so much be- 
 cause they are great, as they are great because 
 they are optimists. The world's great books 
 are optimistic. The close of the Odyssey 
 brings to a close the hero's wanderings. The 
 Paradiso of the Italian poet follows the In- 
 ferno and the Purgatorio, as the Paradise Re- 
 gained of the English singer follows Paradise 
 Lost. Goethe's final word in his masterpiece 
 is "upward and on." One of the great mes- 
 sages which the robust Browning gives to the 
 world is : 
 
 "All service ranks the same with God 
 With God, whose puppets, best and worst, 
 Are we; there is no last nor first." 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 59 
 
 The best interpreter of our times closes his 
 great poem singing: 
 
 " For all we thought, and loved, and did, 
 And hoped, and suffered, is but seed 
 Of what in them is flower and fruit." 
 
 Even on the reasoning of Schopenhauer, it 
 seems to me, pessimism contains the seed of 
 optimism. For if the will is never satisfied, 
 and if man therefore is always to be unhappy, 
 it is still true that the lack of satisfaction 
 prompts to struggle, and struggle is the pre- 
 requisite of strength. 
 
 " 'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay, 
 But the high faith that failed not by the way." 
 
 Optimism is strength. One can hardly 
 forbear thinking of a worthy representative 
 of our time, whose inner life has lately 
 been unfolded through his own letters, 
 as an optimist. As the years increased, in- 
 creased his assurance of the goodness of man. 
 It was in early life that he put a revolver to his 
 head. It was in mature life he wrote : " I take 
 great comfort in God. I think He is consider- 
 ably amused with us sometimes, but that He 
 likes us, on the whole, and would not let us get 
 at the match-box so carelessly as He does, un- 
 less He knew that the frame of His universe 
 
60 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 was fire-proof." His greatest ode, though 
 sung to commemorate fallen heroes, is a hymn 
 of exultation for the republic. Life became to 
 him a treasure richer, a privilege greater, an 
 opportunity the more magnificent with each 
 passing decade. Over the sea there dwells one, 
 who, fifty years ago, flashed on the world with 
 the name of " Graduate of Oxford." He had 
 " views " and he exhibited them. He wrote 
 with the brilliancy of De Quincey, with the 
 freshness of Scott, with the force of Macaulay, 
 with the correctness of Addison. He was a 
 philosopher, a painter, an historian, a critic, a 
 teacher. In each of these callings he had in- 
 dustry and energy. He made and unmade 
 reputations. His judgments reversed the judg- 
 ments of centuries. He helped men to see. 
 He appealed to reason; he honored justice, 
 law, order. He loved God and man. Under 
 his touch the stones of Venice took on a new 
 beauty, and the splendors of Florence a new 
 glory. If with the ceasing of youth he ceased 
 to tell men of the glories of art, he began 
 to tell men of the glories of life, of the duties of 
 helpfulness, and of the magnificence of self- 
 sacrifice. Messages entrancing he gave. To- 
 day he lives, an old man, seldom speaking to 
 the world. And, alas, when he does speak, 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 61 
 
 the voice is not that of an Isaiah prohesying 
 a nobler time yet to be, but the voice of a Jere- 
 miah in lamenting. James Russell Lowell, in 
 the sunset of his day, was strong in himself, 
 strong through his influence over two worlds, 
 strong in his virile, robust optimism. John 
 Ruskin, in the sunset of his day, is a vanishing 
 influence through his drear and dread pessi- 
 mism. Carlyle, too, was majestic and mighty so 
 long as he was an optimist. Carlyle became 
 weak, trivial, not a voice, not a scream, not 
 a scream, but echoes of a scream, as he be- 
 came pessimistic. Optimism is strength. 
 Strength is optimism. Which is cause, which 
 result, I need not now discuss. Each is cause, 
 each is result. Therefore to you I say, let your 
 dream of life be optimistic. Believe in yourself 
 as good. Believe in your fellows as better. 
 Believe in your God as best. Accept of life as 
 privilege most precious ; live your life as duty 
 most sacred ; exult in life as glory and inspira- 
 tion most exalted. 
 
 Jacob's dream has, too, the element of 
 righteousness. Chicanery lies in the past of 
 the son of Rebecca. Duplicity is to mark 
 parts of his future. But, in his dream and in 
 his consequent pledge are only simplicity, sin- 
 cerity, honesty, righteousness. The youth's 
 
62 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 dream of life has in itself the comprehensive, 
 vital virtue of righteousness. The promise of 
 the future is contained in fitting obedience to 
 fitting law. Let us never forget the omni- 
 presence, the omnipotence of law. Let us 
 never forget that, if in respect to the nature of 
 His being, God is love, that in respect to the 
 relations of His being, God is law. The one 
 comprehensive law is righteousness, or, writ 
 short, is right. This simple law man is simply 
 to obey. Sin is, as the Greek word indicates, 
 lawlessness. Lawlessness is discord, disunion, 
 disintegration, degradation, destruction, dam- 
 nation. The universe is conditioned by law. 
 There is no place for sin in a well-ordered uni- 
 verse. There is no place for the sinner in a 
 beneficent universe. The sinner is an outlaw. 
 An act of sin introduced into the human con- 
 stitution works a disorder in that constitution 
 akin to that which a misplaced star would 
 work in the celestial system. Cosmos becomes 
 chaos. Sin obscures the intellectual vision. 
 Sin depraves the affections. Sin hardens the 
 conscience. Sin outrages the will. Sin de- 
 stroys the poise of the faculties. Sin does this. 
 Sin also causes the sinner to feel that he is an 
 outlaw, a rebel in a realm of righteous order. 
 Sin is the mother of self-consciousness and of 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 63 
 
 shame. Sin awakes Adam and Eve to the fact 
 of their nakedness. Daniel Webster pictures 
 in lightning the self-consciousness of the mur- 
 derer of Captain White. Hawthorne tells of 
 the awakening power of sin in the illicit loves 
 of Arthur Dimmesdale, and in the transforma- 
 tion which comes over the Fawn through his 
 silent and dreadful murder. Lady Macbeth, 
 murdering Duncan, murders sleep. Yea, un- 
 righteousness is a power which makes for de- 
 struction. Righteousness is a power which 
 makes for preservation, development, life. 
 Righteousness is salvation. Idolatry, adultery, 
 murder are not wrong because the ten com- 
 mandments forbid them. The ten command- 
 ments forbid them because they are wrong. 
 Law is not arbitrary. Law is in accordance 
 with the nature of things. Law, law, law, 
 everywhere law. Law takes on cubical rela- 
 tions. Law is as eternal as eternity. Obedi- 
 ence to law means obedience to the eternal 
 and the infinite. Living in accordance with 
 law is living in accordance with the divine. 
 The man who is to keep his youth's dream is 
 thus to live. He has one line and one line 
 only to walk. It is the straight line, which is a 
 right line. If the dream is dreamed in youth's 
 innocence, the youth can project the vision 
 
64 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 only by transmuting youth's innocence into 
 manhood's purity. If the dream is dreamed in 
 solitude, he can maintain its power over him- 
 self in a throng by holding fast and firm simple 
 righteousness. If the vision is dreamed in the 
 darkness, he can keep its individuality of in- 
 fluence in the dissipation of the day only by 
 demanding of himself that he be inspired by 
 its mighty right. If the blessing of youth's 
 hope is to be transmuted into the blessing of 
 manhood's memory, righteousness must be the 
 foundation of the hope. If the blessing of 
 work to be done is to be transmuted into the 
 blessing of work done, righteousness must be 
 the companion in the service. If the blessing 
 of youth's exultation is to be transmuted into 
 the blessing of manhood's peace, righteousness 
 must be the breastplate of the chivalric soul in 
 both youth and age. If the blessing of youth's 
 dream is to be transmuted into the blessing of 
 manhood's realities, righteousness is the en- 
 ergy which works the blessed transformation. 
 The skyward aspirations of your youth are to 
 be in and of simple righteousness. 
 
 The name of one man trembles on my lips 
 as I think of righteousness as an element in the 
 dream of life. It is the name of one who for 
 many years stood in the place where now I 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 65 
 
 stand a Baccalaureate preacher. It is the name 
 of one who, for almost three decades was a 
 mighty power in the building up of strong and 
 right character in the students of this college. 
 Carroll Cutler stood for simple, sheer, per- 
 pendicular righteousness. Mightier than any 
 visible triumphs, more worthy than happiness, 
 more satisfying than scholarship, was to him 
 righteousness. If I may slightly change words 
 which he wrote and apply them in a way 
 which he would never have suffered himself 
 to apply them, I may say that Carroll Cutler 
 made it his supreme choice and purpose to 
 learn and do all his duties towards God and 
 men in all the relations of life. What higher 
 moral encomium can be given to any soul? It 
 is this simple duty of simple righteousness 
 which the college has tried to teach to you, 
 and it is this same duty which I, among these 
 last words, would endeavor to impress upon 
 you. Be or be not severe, but be square. Be 
 or be not gracious, but be straight. Be or be 
 not pleasing in manner, but be always right. 
 
 Jacob's dream was a dream of faith. It 
 indicated faith in God. It also indicated that 
 the dreamer had faith in himself. I may also 
 add that it indicated that God had faith in the 
 dreamer. The youth's dream of life is to be a 
 
66 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 dream of faith. It is to be a dream of faith in 
 one's self. In neither arrogance nor humilia- 
 tion, in neither self-conceit nor self-distrust, but 
 in a clear knowledge of one's self, with a con- 
 sciousness of unselfishness of motive, of a purity 
 of heart, of height of aim, one is to have faith 
 in one's self. College life develops this worthy 
 faith. If college life pulls certain bright feath- 
 ers out of juvenile pinions, it yet gives strength 
 to the hidden muscle which lifts and bears. 
 The competitions of college life should give 
 you confidence in yourself as you enter upon 
 the competitions of active life. Your associa- 
 tions with scholars and thinkers should give 
 you confidence in yourself as you enter into 
 associations with other scholars and thinkers, 
 or with men of all sorts and conditions. Have 
 faith also in humanity, in humanity's goodness 
 and in the splendid goal of perfection which 
 humanity will at last reach. Believe that hu- 
 manity cannot, will not, shall not fail. Its prog- 
 ress seems often to be only circular. It goes 
 in one ceaseless round. But the circle is in a 
 spiral, and ever as the circle goes round it goes 
 up. Higher attainment springs from present 
 attainment. Let us never forget that youth is 
 humanity's fin'al hope. The candle of human 
 expectation is lighted at the altar of youth. 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 67 
 
 The Western sky of humanity may never be so 
 black but that the morning star is burning a 
 promise over the flushing Eastern hills. 
 Humanity may crucify, but have faith in it; it 
 shall yet bless. Humanity may prefer error, 
 but have faith in it; it shall yet know and love 
 truth. Humanity may turn its traitors into 
 heroes and its heroes into martyrs, but have 
 faith in it; it shall yet crown the kingly king. 
 Humanity may be brutal and cowardly, in 
 ways, satanic, but have faith in it : 
 
 " For Humanity sweeps onward; where to-day the 
 
 martyr stands, 
 On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his 
 
 hands ; 
 Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling 
 
 fagots burn, 
 While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe 
 
 return 
 To glean up the scattered ashes into History's 
 
 golden urn." 
 
 Have faith also in God. Have faith in a power 
 which makes for righteousness; that is much. 
 Have faith also in a person who is righteous ; 
 that is more. Have faith in a power which 
 makes for omnipotence; that is much. Have 
 faith also in a person who is omnipotent; that 
 is more. Have faith in a power that makes for 
 
68 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 beneficence; that is much. Have faith also in 
 a person who is love; that is most. Such a 
 faith does not promote length of creeds, but 
 such a faith is the essence of every creed. 
 Such a faith is an anchor to the soul, in its 
 storm and stress. Such a faith is a bridge to 
 bear one across the hissing streams of sorrow, 
 disappointment, failure. Such a faith may be 
 to you what a star may be to a boat crew on a 
 wide, wide sea, without compass or bread. I 
 know the temptations which life bears of los- 
 ing faith in God. I hear the old and new story 
 which the book of Job is ever telling. I hear 
 the blasphemy, " Curse God and die." But let 
 each soul know that however hard its lot, bitter 
 its condition, sad its fate, God is and God 
 loves. Let me also say, do you be such a man 
 that God can have faith in you. Make your 
 youth such that God can trust you for your 
 early prime. Make your early prime such that 
 God can trust you for your maturity. In intel- 
 lectual questioning, in the hesitation of your 
 heart, in the indecision of your will have faith. 
 Have faith in God, but be such that God can 
 have faith in you: 
 
 " Perish folly and cunning! 
 
 Perish all that fears the light! 
 Whether winning, whether losing, 
 ' Trust in God and do the right.' " 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 69 
 
 Every Commencement brings anew to the 
 mind and heart the immortality of the college 
 and the mortality of the men who make the 
 college. No work of man is so lasting as the 
 college. But the men who are or were its 
 students, the men who teach in its halls and 
 govern its doings are as fast passing ships. 
 Falls the hand, but the torch of truth never. 
 As one hand goes down another seizes the 
 flame, holds it aloft and bears it on, a signal 
 and a symbol. Ely and Baldwin and Gregory 
 die. Benediction to their memory, beneficence 
 to their work. Others accept the task which 
 they laid down and carry these tasks on to 
 their completion. Yet what matters the swift- 
 ness of human lives if only their living help 
 toward the realization of the bright dreams of 
 youth, toward the incarnation of the right, and 
 toward the supremacy of a sublime faith. For 
 no one of us can wish for himself long life ex- 
 cept as length of days teach these truths 
 that the world is made for goodness and for 
 happiness, that the rule of right is the only rule 
 of conduct, and that faith in the divine is man's 
 supreme human power. 
 
 The members of the graduating classes: 
 You have come to the beginning of the last 
 hours of your college life. Youth is vanish- 
 
70 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 ing; vanishing is also the dream. "And 
 Jacob awaked out of his sleep." "And 
 Jacob vowed a vow saying: If God will be 
 with me, and will keep me in this way that I 
 go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment 
 to put on, so that I come again to my father's 
 house in peace, then shall the Lord be my 
 God." God was with Jacob. God kept him. 
 God ministered unto him. God gave to him 
 a better and a nobler life than he even dared 
 to ask for. I pray that God will keep you. I 
 pray that he may be better to you than your 
 most darling wish can suggest. I pray that 
 God may bring you back to this place in recur- 
 ring anniversaries bearing richest blessings. 
 I am sure that it will be thus. For life should 
 grow richer with each passing year. Length- 
 ening life should have larger treasure in itself 
 and larger treasure in other lives. Life should 
 be in its onward progress as a river. The river 
 loses the swiftness and the roar of its mountain 
 origin. It loses the narrowness of its first 
 channels. But it gains in breadth. Its depths 
 become more deep and more calm. It comes 
 into relations with the great ocean and it bears 
 the commerce of the world on its bosom. 
 Your life, as onward it goes, may lose some- 
 what of its swiftness of action, its impetuous- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 71 
 
 ness of feeling-, its rushing influences and ten- 
 dencies. But if it lose these, it gains in a 
 widening of relationships, in the deepening of 
 its profound meanings, and it bears in itself an 
 increasing treasury of the best things of in- 
 finite space and of endless time. It may have, 
 as it goes on, more of the shadows of earth, but 
 it also will have more of the images of heaven. 
 For the life that begins in the dream of the 
 best things is the life that holds out the bright- 
 est promise of being the best life. The life 
 that begins in the dream, of righteousness has 
 the promise of the reality of righteousness; and 
 the life that begins in the dream of faith has 
 the holiest assurance of being a life of faith in 
 man and God. Such a life is at once human 
 and divine. Such a life I know your dream 
 promises. Such a life may the eternal God 
 help you to live. 
 
72 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 VI 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF CHARACTER 
 
 " Within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, 
 to go in to possess the land which the Lord your 
 God giveth you to possess it." Joshua i. n. 
 
 THESE words are a picture of the fin- 
 ishing of one experience of life and 
 the passing on to another experience. 
 The experience is finished; it opens to another 
 experience. It is complete and conservative, 
 yet it is also progressive. Because conserva- 
 tive, it is progressive. It goes back into the 
 past in order to go forward into the future. 
 The Hebrew is passing his boundary. The 
 captivity of the Hebrew is ended. He has 
 seen the Egyptians dead on the seashore. 
 Past, too, the forty years of wandering; van- 
 ished the guidance of pillar of cloud and pillar 
 of fire; ceased the falling of manna from be- 
 neficent skies, the gushing of springs from 
 flinty rocks. Behind him lies a land of sla- 
 very and of wandering; before him lies the 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 73 
 
 land of promise. Pharaoh, the task-master, is 
 dead; Moses, the schoolmaster, is buried; 
 Joshua, the man of self-mastery, lives and 
 leads. 
 
 These words, therefore, are a picture of 
 what I may call the evolution of character. 
 
 Life has three stages, more or less clearly 
 distinguished. Life begins in subjection. The 
 first the child knows of the exterior world is 
 its resistance to himself. This resistance he 
 tries to resist, and the result is that he comes 
 to himself. He is also subject to mother and 
 to father. Their commands he is to obey, 
 and to obey without reason. If he is submis- 
 sive, he is contented and happy; if he is not 
 submissive, he is discontented and unhappy; 
 but obey he must. Obedience is the first ele- 
 ment in life in either human or animal. Will is 
 strong in the first days of the child, and in- 
 tellect is weak. Will is the last to die in the 
 last days of the old man. Intellect follows will 
 in the disciplines of infancy. Intellect pre- 
 cedes will in the declines of senility. But 
 the will which is first in life is a will in sub- 
 jection. Subjection to law is the first stage 
 in the development of character. It is a stage 
 in which law reigns; impersonal, universal, 
 necessary law. 
 
74 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 The second stage is the stage which I 
 shall call personality. It is the stage of the 
 enlarging, quickening, fructifying life of the 
 intellect. Reason is able to receive reasons. 
 Knowledge is gained. The will becomes en- 
 lightened as well as strengthened. Self-guid- 
 ance emerges. The relations of the man, of 
 the child, to the exterior world become more 
 sympathetic. The schoolhouse opens its door, 
 the book its pages, the friend his heart. Ex- 
 perience becomes a minister. Life is trans- 
 muted into a story book in which each day is 
 a page. Liberty enlarges. One's own will 
 unites in fitting forms with other wills. 
 Gradually confinement vanishes. Gradually 
 the value of personal relationship emerges. 
 Sympathy, love, helpfulness, watchfulness, are 
 given and are received. Personality enlarges 
 in the man himself, and his own personality 
 twines itself around other personalities, and 
 is in turn itself enwrapped by these same per- 
 sonalities. Each life comes to interpret to 
 itself what the great Browning is trying to in- 
 terpret to us blind readers of his books: the 
 power of personality brought into relation 
 with other personalities. Thus closes the sec- 
 ond stage in the development of life and of 
 character. 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 75 
 
 The third stage grows out of the two that 
 have gone before. Now dawns the age of 
 self-mastery. The man comes to himself. The 
 intellect sees for itself. The judgment weighs 
 evidence for itself. The appetites are con- 
 trolled through and in selfhood. The affec- 
 tions recognize their place and function. The 
 will comes to its own autonomy. It calls no 
 man master. " I am my own man," says the 
 man to himself. 
 
 These three stages I have pictured as suc- 
 cessive, but they are not always successive. 
 Sometimes they are almost contemporaneous, 
 and always some parts of them overlap parts 
 of the others. Sometimes the period we call 
 subjection goes over into the period of inde- 
 pendence. Independence often goes back to 
 and gets firm roots in the period we call sub- 
 jection. The period we call personality 
 reaches out and touches on one side the period 
 of confinement, and on the other the age of 
 self-mastery. And yet we do recognize that 
 these three periods are seen in the human lives 
 that we know. 
 
 These three stages belong in a sense to 
 the life of the scholar as well as to the life 
 of a man as a man. At first the scholar is a 
 subject. He learns what he is told to learn. 
 
76 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 The value of his learning he knows not. Its 
 significance he perceives not. He is ruled by 
 rules or by rulers. But presently out of this 
 subjection he comes to feel the presence of 
 personal love and helpfulness and inspiration. 
 He is watched and supervised. Principles take 
 the place of specific rules. His own learning 
 comes to be adjusted to the learning of others 
 who are friends and companions and guides. 
 Soon he reaches the third stage. He chooses 
 his own path of knowledge. In this path he 
 walks fast or slow, far or near, as he sees fit. 
 Subjection, supervision, mastery, that is the 
 order of life in the scholar. 
 
 I might go on to say that in a general way 
 this threefold development has taken place in 
 the growth of the American college. The 
 early college was one of minute prescription 
 of detail for each hour. Penalties severe were 
 exacted for any infraction of these rules. The 
 old colonial college was a college of this type. 
 The college that followed represented a close 
 supervision of and by personalities. The col- 
 lege was the master of the boy at every step 
 of his way. The college was a school of 
 pupils and of masters. The successor of the 
 college of the second type is the college of 
 to-day. The college of to-day is largely a col- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 77 
 
 lection of men, each of whom is his own 
 master. The teacher is one of years more, of 
 truth richer, of character stronger than are 
 possessed by those whom he teaches; but after 
 all he is simply a guide, an inspiring force, an 
 instructor, a constructive power for the lives 
 and the characters with which he is called into 
 association. To-day the college is inclined to 
 say to the student who is not worthy to be his 
 own master, that he had better go to his home 
 or go back to the fitting school. I do not fail 
 to recognize that this system in college has 
 many perils. Liberty is always perilous. But 
 liberty is God's method in training men. It 
 is the method of the college of to-day. All 
 of the objections to the liberty of God's 
 method can be applied to the liberty of the 
 college method. And many of the arguments 
 in favor of the method of the liberty of God 
 can be applied as arguments in favor of the 
 liberty of the college. 
 
 It would not be difficult also to show that 
 these three stages of subjection, supervision, 
 and mastery represent three stages in the 
 growth of a nation. It would be easy, I think, 
 to distinguish these periods in the history of 
 Old England. It would be easy, also, to dis- 
 tinguish these periods in the history of New 
 
78 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 England and in the life that has grown out of 
 the early colonies. 
 
 It sometimes happens, it must be confessed, 
 that this proper order becomes reversed. The 
 child, instead of being the subject, becomes 
 his own master. The parent, instead of giv- 
 ing commands, gives only counsel. And the 
 counsel is unheeded, as the command would 
 be disobeyed. Or, the child may grow to 
 man's estate and may still be a child in will. 
 He is still the slave of others; he has not be- 
 come the master of himself. When a child 
 tries to be a man, though still a child, we are 
 filled with laughter and contempt. When the 
 man, though a man, is still a child, we are 
 filled with pity. 
 
 The college man or woman has passed the 
 first two stages, and has entered well into the 
 third. The home is still a home, but it is no 
 longer the home of obedience to rules and of 
 minute supervision. The college of super- 
 vision, of rules and of commands has for- 
 ever gone. Already into the home and the 
 college has come the sense of self, growing 
 with growth, and developing with development. 
 And now at the close of the college, this sense 
 of self-mastery becomes significant and su- 
 preme. For better or for worse, for richer 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 79 
 
 or for poorer, for happiness or for sorrow, you 
 are your own master. 
 
 This self-mastery, this last and highest 
 stage in the development of character, has in 
 itself at least three elements. 
 
 One of these elements is egoism. By ego- 
 ism I mean confidence in self. By egoism I 
 mean a just, worthy and proper confidence in 
 self. Great men always are egoistic. Egoism is 
 the condition of aggressiveness. Without ag- 
 gressiveness, no man proves himself to be 
 great. Take Emerson's representative men: 
 Plato, the philosopher, is the man of egoism; 
 Swedenborg, the mystic, is the man of egoism ; 
 Montaigne, the skeptic, is the man of egoism; 
 Shakespeare, the poet, is the man of egoism; 
 Napoleon, the man of the world, is the man 
 of egoism; Goethe, the writer, is the man of 
 egoism. Each of these great men is a man of 
 egoism. Each of them has trust in himself. 
 It is not cockeyism, it is not pride blown out 
 so big that it has become thin, and is in peril of 
 collapsing from its very big thinness. Trust 
 rests upon the calm weighing of the evidence 
 presented by one's self for doing great things. 
 
 Some college men have too much trust in 
 themselves. They are inclined to trust in 
 themselves because they are college men. This 
 
80 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 is foolish while one is in college; it is more 
 than foolish when one has gone forth from col- 
 lege. Folks will soon forget whether you are 
 college bred. They do not forget what you 
 are or what you can do. To them the process 
 of getting power is a zero. To them the re- 
 sults are, the power itself, is supremely signifi- 
 cant. Trust yourself exactly and only for 
 what you are and for what you can do. 
 On the evening of the day in which I 
 was inaugurated an officer of this Uni- 
 versity, I asked a member of our Board 
 of Trustees, President Hayes, if he knew Mr. 
 Lincoln. He said he had met Mr. Lincoln 
 once or twice. I asked him what im- 
 pression Mr. Lincoln gave to him as to 
 his conception of his own power. Presi- 
 dent Hayes replied: " Mr. Lincoln impressed 
 me as knowing that he himself was a stronger 
 man than any man whom he had ever met." 
 Lincoln was worthy of such self-confidence, 
 of course; and such self-confidence produced 
 in Lincoln, not vanity, not weakness of pride, 
 but a mighty seriousness and solemnity of re- 
 sponsibility. A proper self-interpretation will 
 always produce seriousness in any man. It 
 will also give to each man a sense of mastery 
 in and of himself. And this mastery of him- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 81 
 
 self will also give to himself a proper inter- 
 pretation of himself. Egoism, not egotism; 
 self-respect, not self-conceit; self-love, not 
 selfishness, is an element in self-mastery. 
 
 Self-mastery also has in itself the element 
 of work. The master of himself is a man of 
 work. Work is both a cause and a result of 
 self-mastery. Work is an expression of the 
 worker. In expression man finds a larger 
 self. Work is his alter ego, and also it may be 
 a magnified ego. The piece of work done is a 
 convex mirror of the worker. The expres- 
 sion of self in work reacts on the man and 
 makes him larger. The humblest work gives 
 dignity to the worker who has put himself 
 into it. Such an architect as the great Rich- 
 ardson, of our own time, must have felt this 
 enlarged selfhood as he saw his ideas soaring 
 skyward, like birds on wings of stone. Such 
 a poet as our own Lowell must have felt this 
 enlarged selfhood as he wrote the " Com- 
 memoration Ode," or the " Cathedral/' Such 
 a romancer as our own Hawthorne must have 
 felt this magnified power of himself, as he 
 created the immortals. 
 
 It seems to me that this is somewhat the 
 meaning of the words written at the very be- 
 ginning of the Bible, in which it is said: " God 
 
82 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 saw everything that he had made, and behold, 
 it was very good." This self-satisfaction of 
 God with his own work helps to prove how 
 good and great he himself was. He was in. 
 a sense more of a master of himself and more 
 conscious of his mastery when he had finished 
 the creation and looked upon it than he was 
 before creation began. Necessity carries along 
 with itself beneficences. The necessity of 
 work carries along with itself enlargement 
 of selfhood. And this enlarged selfhood 
 means a larger humanity, and if a larger hu- 
 manity, a better and stronger one. Work mag- 
 nifies. Ignorance minimizes. The person of 
 the worker becomes so great that his own 
 personality goes out into other personalities. 
 He masters them by his own enlarging self- 
 mastery. Work is thus both a cause and a re- 
 sult in this self-mastery of man. O, my 
 friends, thank God that you are called to be 
 workers! If man had never fallen, there 
 might have been no need of work, but when 
 man had fallen the good God sent the good 
 angel Toil to lead man back to himself along 
 the pathway of service. Thank God that you 
 are put in a world of work ! Thank God that 
 you are put in an age that calls for work ! As 
 you love your own self and wish to have for 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 83 
 
 yourself the largest selfhood, ever and every- 
 where be a worker. 
 
 Self-mastery also has in itself the element 
 of loyalty to the highest principle and the 
 highest being. Self-mastery implies respect 
 for all facts and truths. The freedom of self- 
 mastery is born of perfect obedience to per- 
 fect law. The man master of self has sufficient 
 intellectual acumen to see that there are per- 
 sonalities more wise than himself. The man 
 master of himself has sufficient heart to feel 
 the presence of personalities more present and 
 more pervasive than his own. The man mas- 
 ter of himself has sufficient will to recognize 
 the fitness of his will being ruled by wills more 
 puissant. The man master of himself has suffi- 
 cient conscience to accept the universal law 
 of Right. Men have long discussed whether 
 God exists; and if He exists at all, how? For 
 us such discussion in the college is ended. 
 But more important than the mere principle 
 of theism held by a man is the relation which 
 the man holds to the God who is embodied 
 in this principle. A mighty mental concep- 
 tion of the theistic fact may have slight influ- 
 ence over life, for the conception is purely 
 mental; the conception is never translated 
 into a personal principle of belief. 
 
84 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 A slight mental conception of God may 
 have great power over life, for this feeble con- 
 ception has been translated into a personal 
 principle. The power of God in a life is a 
 product made up of the multiplicand of the 
 mental conception and of the multiplier of the 
 personal grasp which the man has on this con- 
 ception. For one, I should prefer a feeble in- 
 tellectual conception and a mighty volition 
 grappling this belief to one's being, before I 
 should prefer a well-ordered intellectual be- 
 lief and only a feeble volition to make this 
 belief personal. But when to a mighty intel- 
 lectual conception of the God is joined a 
 mighty volition which makes this idea a part 
 of one's character, the whole person of the 
 man comes into the largest, the noblest, the 
 deepest and the highest relationship to the 
 profoundest principle, to the highest being. 
 The man thus comes into a self-mastery; a self- 
 mastery which is born of loyalty to the high- 
 est; a self-mastery which results in loyalty to 
 the highest. He has a self-mastery which 
 comes from perfect obedience to perfect law. 
 He is master of himself because he has found 
 himself in this Master and Maker of us all, 
 God. 
 
 This self-mastery, as seen in trust in one's 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 85 
 
 self, gives egoism. This self-mastery, as seen 
 in work, gives altruism, and a larger egoism. 
 This self-mastery, as seen in loyalty to the 
 highest, gives us religion. 
 
 This self-mastery never exists for itself. A 
 part of the being of the individual man, it also 
 holds relations to other individual men. It 
 may be called a complex of self-masteries. All 
 these self-masteries are to be adjusted each to 
 the other. Each exists for all and all exist for 
 each. Every grain of Stardust has relation to 
 all the worlds. Move one, and you change the 
 center of gravity of the universe. All the 
 worlds have relation to the grain of Stardust. 
 The worlds preserve it in its place and rela- 
 tions. Thus, the universe, with its myriad 
 stars, having infinite space to wander in, rolls 
 on in perfect order, keeping time with the 
 centuries and with the seconds. Each man as 
 he comes to his large selfhood, as he becomes 
 master, has relations with humanity and 
 divinity, and divinity and humanity have re- 
 lations with him. He exists for all and 
 all exist for him. All of the component parts 
 of humanity should move through the death- 
 less ages in perfect harmony, in larger devel- 
 opments, in higher attainments of being. Is- 
 rael, with whom our sermon began, came to 
 
86 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 his splendid zenith in Solomon, and then fell 
 into the night of darkness and exile. 
 
 But humanity in God should come in the 
 progress of the ages to a zenith from which 
 it should never decline, but whence it should 
 seek a still higher and higher zenith of which 
 the limitations are to be found only in the in- 
 finite Godhead. Such I do believe is the 
 destiny of humanity and of every worthy mem- 
 ber of it. For this glorious consummation, 
 " the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in 
 pain." Through all these struggles and trials 
 and masteries, the creation is reaching up- 
 ward and onward to this glorious, infinite ful- 
 fillment. Such a consummation is the result 
 of the adoption of sons into the love of God, 
 is the recognition of the divine fatherhood of 
 the human spirit, is the making of all of love 
 into law, and is the transmutation of all of law 
 into love. All the disciplines of training, all the 
 learning of scholarship, all the refinements of 
 culture are for the sublimation and extending 
 of this self-mastery unto God and into human- 
 ity. 
 
 I cannot forget that such was the life of the 
 Christ. He was subject to his parents. In 
 his subjection he grew, growing in favor with 
 God and man. As he grew, he was the one 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 87 
 
 whom his mother ever observed, pondering 
 his words. Out of this period of oversight, 
 he came to that day when his mother directed 
 that his command should be obeyed. Master 
 of himself, Christ has infinite confidence in 
 himself. He knows he can summon legions 
 of angels to his service. He knows that he 
 has power to lay down his life and that he has 
 power to take it again. Master of himself, he 
 is the supreme worker. " My father worketh 
 hitherto and I work." Master of himself, he 
 is loyal to God. Into his hands he commits 
 his willing spirit. Subjection, supervision, 
 mastery, these are the three stages in that di- 
 vine and human life. Self-confidence, work, 
 loyalty to God are the three stages in that self- 
 mastery which is supreme. And how this self- 
 mastery of the Christ goes out into men's be- 
 ing to help them to be masters of themselves ! 
 The members of the graduating classes: 
 You were born into homes. Your help- 
 lessness found care. You were held in obedi- 
 ence. You came to the college. Tuition and 
 tutelage have been yours. You stand at the 
 end of the period of tuition. Three days hence 
 you are to pass over the Jordan to go in to 
 possess the land which the Lord your God 
 giveth you to possess it. You stand upon the 
 
88 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 border of the promised land of self-mastery. 
 You have come thus far, not for the sake of 
 the coming, but for the sake of the crossing. 
 
 You have come out and up from the home 
 and the college to go out to possess the land 
 which we call Life. It is a very good land. 
 Its soil is fertile, its fruits are rich, its skies a 
 tender blue, its rewards great. It was never 
 so good as it is at this very hour. It never 
 seemed so good to you, I am sure, as now 
 it seems. It has, it must be confessed, giants 
 and walled towns. Its precipices are steep, 
 and some of its waters are as a Dead Sea. But 
 this land that we call Life is worth taking. 
 Its giants are not so terrible as they may seem. 
 Its precipices are not so high or so steep but 
 that you can scale them. The land is worth tak- 
 ing. The life that opens before you is worth 
 living. No life should be so worth living as 
 the life of a man or the woman who 
 enters into life with a college training in 
 these last years of this nineteenth century. 
 Never did the century call for the largest 
 power of self-mastery as now it calls for it. 
 Never did the world call with a voice more 
 commanding or more exultant than now it 
 calls for men and women who are masters 
 of themselves. Therefore, I rejoice as I point 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 89 
 
 out to you this land. Happy for you am I 
 because you can make your life of such 
 abounding worth, and happy for the world and 
 the age am I because you are coming to the 
 help of the world and of the age. Go forward, 
 go upward. Cross your Jordan. Possess the 
 land of Life. For the Lord your God giveth 
 it to you to possess it. 
 
90 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 VII 
 THE WORTH OF PERSONALITY 
 
 " Follow me." i John i. 43. 
 
 IT is the beginning. Christ is doing His 
 first work, calling His first disciples, 
 speaking His first command. That com- 
 mand might fittingly have been based upon 
 hope, prophetic of the sublime future; that 
 command might fittingly have been based 
 upon general truth, intimating how many are 
 the meanings and relations of that realm in 
 which He was Master; but that command was 
 simple and absolute : Follow Me ! That com- 
 mand grew out of the significance of His own 
 personality. For the personality of the Christ 
 is the most significant. His work you may 
 call miraculous; His words may be described 
 as such as never man spake ; but more wonder- 
 ful than work, more unique than speech, is His 
 personality. Son of Man, he stands as the 
 type of humanity; Son of God, He emerges 
 as the revelation of the Godhead. To John 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 91 
 
 He appears as the Lamb of God; to those 
 meeting Him, He seems worthy of being ad- 
 dressed as Master. His first command, as His 
 last, was: Follow Me! 
 
 My topic, therefore, is " The Worth of Per- 
 sonality." A general topic, I know, but as we 
 go on together, I hope it may become suffi- 
 ciently specific. 
 
 Personality is what one is. Personality is 
 one's entire being. Personality is reason and 
 feeling and conscience and will. Personality 
 stands apart from its attributes; it is distinct 
 from activities and from the results of activity. 
 Its strength is the strength of its elements. Its. 
 strength is the strength of reason. Its power 
 consists in its mighty grasp on truth. Its 
 might is the might of the sense of reality. Its 
 strength is the strength of the heart. Great 
 lovers are great personalities. Great person- 
 alities are great lovers or great haters. Its 
 might is the might of the conscience, the in- 
 sight into moral relations, the impulse to do 
 the right and to avoid the wrong, the approval 
 of right done, the remorse for wrong com- 
 mitted. Insight, impulse, approval are mighty 
 in a great personality. Its strength is the 
 strength of the will. Given a choice large, 
 strong, persistent, and a personality strong, 
 
92 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 large, lasting is declared. Justice, temperance, 
 courage, reverence, are its marks. Such is 
 what I call personality. 
 
 Personality is the greatest power in life and 
 in being. On general grounds one would ex- 
 pect that personality would be a great power 
 in life and in being. For personality 
 represents the splendid and magnificent crown 
 of all the creative, preservative, and develop- 
 ing processes. It stands last in the period of 
 Genesis; it gives name to all the preceding 
 creations. It represents God in the earth. 
 
 We discuss communism and socialism and 
 other methods for the improvement of society. 
 The need of discussion and reflection we 
 deeply feel. The woes of society are terrible. 
 But at once we lay down the great truth that 
 no new system of sociology, that no new social 
 birth shall rob us of the supreme advantage, 
 the crown of the struggles of a thousand years, 
 the infinite worth of personality. For these 
 thousands of years, through processes con- 
 scious and unconscious, nature has been try- 
 ing to make men, individuals, persons, and to 
 make them of the highest type, of the richest 
 fullness. Let us not be willing to undo her 
 work or to render its continued doing more 
 difficult. 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 93 
 
 The power of personality receives special 
 illustration in the life which humanity attrib- 
 utes to nature. Nature seems willing to adopt 
 a personal relation to us. The places and 
 conditions where we have lived, suffered, re- 
 joiced, become a part of ourselves. The 
 grounds, the buildings of the colleges are to- 
 day quite unlike what they were when you, 
 to whom I speak, entered. The mason and 
 the carpenter and the landscape gardener may 
 or may not have plied their vocations; the 
 stone and the timber may or may not be the 
 same that they were four years ago, but the 
 ground and the buildings are quite different 
 to you from what they then were. There, over 
 yonder in the park, you walked one afternoon, 
 and, with nature as a witness, you pledged 
 yourself to brave doings and nobler living; 
 here is the room in which you sat when a 
 revelation of capacity in yourself, for which 
 you had been blindly hoping, was made mag- 
 nificently and gloriously clear; in yonder hall 
 is the room in which you suffered the keenest 
 pang of your life, or within which burst upon 
 you the deepest and most exultant joy. That 
 park, that room, are no longer stone or timber, 
 but rather they are become filled with the per- 
 sonality of your being, made sacred, made 
 
94 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 vital, by your own personal experiences. Al- 
 ways, everywhere, nature becomes something 
 different because man has wrought, or suf- 
 fered, or rejoiced. We fill our Gettysburg 
 acres with monuments to the men who dared 
 and died, and we visit the Lake Country, not 
 because of " mighty Hellvellyn," or Grasmere, 
 or Windermere, but because Wordsworth here 
 sung, because Coleridge here mused, and Har- 
 riet Martineau here wrote, and the Arnolds 
 here had a home. Personality enriches nature, 
 and nature gives herself back to man as much 
 richer as she has been able to receive from his 
 personality. 
 
 But the hour presses upon us the very defin- 
 ite question of method. How is one to de- 
 velop a worthy personality in himself? 
 
 Personality is developed through person- 
 ality. Association with one who is a great 
 personality develops personality. 
 
 Socrates left no writings, he left a Plato; 
 Christ left no writings, he left a Saint John. 
 Like makes like. We are closing the nine- 
 teenth century. It has been a great century. 
 Call over the roll of its great men ; in law and 
 jurisprudence, Marshall and Jay and David 
 Dudley Field; in government, Lincoln; in 
 romance, Hawthorne and Cooper; in poetry, 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 95 
 
 Lowell and Longfellow; in preaching, Brooks 
 and Beecher; in statesmanship, Webster; in 
 finance, Gallatin and Chase; in history, Pres- 
 cott and Parkman and Motley and Bancroft; 
 in science, Agassiz and Gray and Henry and 
 Dana; in diplomacy, the Adamses and Jeffer- 
 son; in architecture, Richardson; in painting, 
 Hunt and Copley and Inness; in journalism, 
 Greeley; in reformation, Garrison and his 
 associates; and abroad it is the century of Bis- 
 marck and Cavour and Gladstone, of Words- 
 worth and Tennyson, of Darwin and of 
 Spencer. And these are great personalities. 
 Beneath and before and above the artist, the 
 statesman and the scholar, is the man. Great 
 personalities make great personalities. The 
 power of one personality in leading to the best 
 life is simply magnificent. The two men who 
 have most deeply moved modern Oxford are 
 Benjamin Jowett and T. H. Green. Greater 
 scholars than either there have been, but not 
 greater personalities. The regard for the one 
 has become a cult, and the worship of the 
 other almost a religion. The American col- 
 lege is a power in scholarship; it establishes 
 great libraries; it equips noble laboratories; 
 it enrolls great scholars. But the American 
 college is also a power in forming great per- 
 
96 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 sonalities. It, therefore, must have great per- 
 sonalities as its members. If one were obliged 
 to choose between, on the one hand, the great 
 scholar and the small personality, and, on the 
 other hand, between the great personality and 
 the unworthy scholar, of course the decision 
 would be in favor of the great man. But this 
 narrowness of choice is seldom or never im- 
 posed, for, of course, great personality tends 
 to create a great scholar, and great scholarship 
 tends to creat a great personality. And one 
 does find circumspice great scholarship 
 united with great personality, and large per- 
 sonality enriched and ennobled by great schol- 
 arship. 
 
 In the galaxy of American college men, 
 one delights to recall such names as those 
 of Longfellow, and Lowell, and Woolsey, and 
 McCosh, and Dana, and Whitney, and Agas- 
 siz, and Gray men in whom are joined to- 
 gether broad and high and noble learning, 
 with sweetness of life and purity of heart; in 
 whom fine and firm mental health is united 
 with sound scholarship and with a faith de- 
 vout, and all in a manner that is divine. The 
 teachings of the college you have largely for- 
 gotten; the teachers you will never forget. 
 The teachings have had their influence, but 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 97 
 
 the great personalities have had a greater in- 
 fluence. Like makes like. 
 
 Yet an influence as strong and vital as the 
 personality of the teacher is embodied in the 
 personality of the students. No companion- 
 ship is so close, no friendship so lasting, as 
 are the companionships^ the friendships of the 
 college. The equality of circumstances, the 
 pursuit of similar aims, the control of like 
 duties, the doing of common tasks, the like- 
 ness of all conditions, make the personalities 
 of college life constant and mighty. College 
 is a gathering together of men for the sake of 
 blessing each other and of being blessed. Call 
 the college not a monastery, where men 
 dwell alone in cells; call it rather a convent 
 where students gather together in happy com- 
 panionship. Happy that college that is en- 
 riched from year to year by throngs of noble 
 youth flocking to its halls in order to be with 
 each other! Fruitful in results as well as happy 
 in memory are those years in which you have 
 thought, felt, spoken, and lived with those 
 whom you call classmates! 
 
 As I have been speaking I have not for- 
 gotten that in Him, the Incomparable One, 
 are embodied the forces of supreme help- 
 fulness in the forming of a mighty personality. 
 
98 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 The words He spoke represent the profound- 
 est utterances upon the profoundest subjects. 
 His memorabilia make up the great books. 
 Association with Him in thought and feel- 
 ing, co-operation with Him in service, tend 
 to make a great personality. His point 
 of view was the truth. His heart was 
 attuned to love. As one is with the Christ, 
 one finds himself true to truth, loving of 
 love, and also true to love and loving of 
 truth. As one looks upon Him he sees the 
 divine man made human. No desertion, no 
 denial, no betrayal, no crucifixion, can cause 
 him to lose foothold on the solid ground of 
 love and of truth. The great personality of 
 the Christ makes a great personality. 
 
 As a second power in forming personality 
 I name the book. In this creative process the 
 book has tremendous power. Books that are 
 written by great personalities, books that deal 
 with great personalities, tend to make great 
 personalities. Some months ago, I asked 
 certain members of one of the classes to write 
 out for me the names of the three books which 
 have had the strongest influence in the forma- 
 tion of their characters. As I run over the list 
 these are among the titles: David Copper- 
 field., The Man Without a Country, Life of 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 99 
 
 Lincoln, Longfellow's poems, Ben Hur, Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin, Shakespeare, The House of the 
 Seven Gables, Pilgrim's Progress, The New- 
 comes, Evangeline, Imitation of Christ, Phi- 
 losophy of the Plan of Salvation, Life of Web- 
 ster, Les Miserables, Tale of Two Cities, Se- 
 same and Lilies, Ivanhoe, Romola, and Rob- 
 inson Crusoe. On the whole these are great 
 books. They are personal books, and they 
 represent, they embody, great characters. In 
 mature life books should control, guide, and 
 inspire. One should put himself under the 
 power of those books which are worthy to con- 
 trol, guide, and arouse. The books that you 
 will read in the future will probably be few in- 
 number, but let them be great in personality. 
 I care not of what type they may be, of phi- 
 losophy, of history, of biography, of poetry, but 
 of whatever sort, let them be vital, be vital! 
 Let each book be the life-blood of a master 
 spirit ! Of that blood drink and make yourself 
 a master spirit! 
 
 The greatest of books is the greatest be- 
 cause it is from the greatest of beings. It 
 is the Book of God. The power of the Book 
 is not based upon its being a book of science, 
 or a book of history, or a book of poetry, but 
 the power of the Book lies in this, that it is the 
 
100 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 Book of God, and is given to man. Some- 
 times we fear lest the Bible has lost its power 
 over society. We cry : " The critics are tear- 
 ing out its pages ! " But let us remember 
 that the Bible is not primarily a book of his- 
 tory. The Bible is first a book about God 
 as well as a book from God. I, for one, re- 
 joice in the work of the critic. Even if this 
 work does give us a smaller Bible, it gives 
 us a Bible yet more divine. We may well 
 spare the Songs of Solomon, only provided 
 that we have the Song of the Lamb. We can 
 well lose the genealogies, only provided we 
 secure a divine life more vital and more per- 
 sonal to our being. The Bible has its chief 
 worth in giving us God. Let it be used as 
 God's book. Let it become a power of divine 
 personality in the development of person- 
 ality. 
 
 The fine arts, too, ought to create a great and 
 fine personality. The ministry of melody and 
 harmony in time, the ministry of beauty in 
 space, embodied in painting or in sculpture, 
 is holy; and yet neither music nor painting 
 nor sculpture seems to make great characters. 
 Of course the reason is that the music is not 
 great, nor the painting great; yet a reason 
 more fundamental may be that the fine arts are 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 
 
 designed to give pleasure. What is designed 
 to give pleasure has a motive less moving than 
 what is designed to create greatness and 
 power. As Schiller says: " Life is serious, 
 art is joyous." Other things are mightier than 
 pleasure. Right is mightier, duty is mightier. 
 Yet everyone may well put before himself the 
 end of making the fine arts so strong and so 
 fine that the pleasure they bestow shall become 
 akin to the very peace of God. It is not with- 
 out significance that the language of heaven 
 is referred to as music and song. A great- 
 work it is indeed for you to aid in making 
 the fine arts of worthy power in the develop- 
 ment of the worthiest personality. 
 
 My third suggestion as to the method for 
 forming a worthy personality refers more to 
 condition than to method. In the develop- 
 ment of the greatest personality power largely 
 comes from certain conditions. These con- 
 ditions relate to the attitude which the per- 
 sonality holds to humanity. They relate to 
 the point of view which you will occupy in 
 looking at men and men's affairs. This atti- 
 tude, which is best fitted to develop a great 
 personality, let me at once say, is the attitude 
 of truth, of duty, and of love. If you stand 
 at the point of truth, and if your attitude as 
 
1C2 .-A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 you view humanity is one of truthfulness, you 
 will find that your own being will become 
 great in its truthfulness. Accustom yourself 
 to see truth clearly, largely, proportionately. 
 Accustom yourself to feel truth profoundly. 
 Accustom yourself to choose truth mightily. 
 The man of truth is the man of power. The 
 false man is the weak man. The man of truth 
 is the brave man. The false man is the cow- 
 ard. The man of truth is the leader; the false 
 man is the straggler and the deserter. Truth 
 magnifies the man searching for, finding, hold- 
 ing, expressing it. The false minimizes the 
 man that treasures it. It is significant that 
 God is called Omniscience and the Devil the 
 Father of Lies. Moreover, no one knows the 
 limitations for our knowing truth as he who 
 knows truth the most clearly. Further, let 
 me say, in the formation of personality, take 
 your station by the side of duty. For its own 
 sake, for the sake of results, do what you 
 ought. Let the majesty of " I ought " inspire 
 without oppressing. As says the noble Amiel : 
 " Keep close to duty. Never mind the future 
 if only you have peace of conscience. Be 
 what you ought to be ; the rest is God's affair. 
 Supposing that there were no good and holy 
 God, nothing but universal being, the law of 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 103 
 
 the all, duty would still be the key of the 
 enigma, the pole-star of a wandering human- 
 ity." Duty considered, duty willed, duty 
 done, will make one Godlike. Yet there is 
 another attitude, as important as the attitude 
 of truth and of duty, for the development of 
 great personality. It is the attitude described 
 in the word " love/' Be a great lover, be a 
 great lover! If you will, look out upon hu- 
 manity as a ship sailing from the harbor on a 
 summer's morning, mirth abounding, music 
 filling the air, yet love humanity and be happy 
 in its happiness. If you will, look out upon 
 humanity as a ship whose crew are absorbed 
 in their purpose, be that purpose a quest of 
 any form of power or of pleasure, yet love it. 
 If you will, look out upon humanity as a ship 
 whose crew are drunken men drunken in and 
 because of peril yet love it, rescue it, if you 
 can. If you will, look out upon humanity 
 as a ship there on the lake, beating itself 
 against the crags and tearing itself to pieces 
 in the waves yet love it, love it, save it, love 
 it! Never, never, never, stand by the sands 
 cursing the happy, despising the blessed, 
 and hardened against the lost Be rich 
 or be poor yourself, but love the rich and 
 the poor; triumph or fail yourself, but 
 
104 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 love those who succeed and those who 
 fail; be sad or be glad yourself, but love 
 both the glad and the sad. Form college 
 settlements or do not form college settle- 
 ments; be a missionary or do not be a mis- 
 sionary, but ever and everywhere be a lover! 
 The occupying of such a point of truth and 
 duty arid love will make you a personality, 
 which shall be like a cathedral, strong with 
 the strength of buttressed principles, beautiful 
 with the memory of holy deeds, and, seen 
 from afar, as the symbol of the presence of 
 God. 
 
 One man there is above all others who filled 
 those opportunities of looking at life in truth, 
 duty, and with love. His life also illustrates 
 much else than I have been trying to say. 
 Jesus Christ is the supreme personality! He 
 is the Son of Man. Some have called Him a 
 teacher, but more majestic than His teachings; 
 some have called Him a Miracle- Worker, but 
 more wonderful than His miracles; some have 
 called Him a poet, but more inspiring than His 
 poetry, was His personality. He spoke the 
 truth; He said: " I am the Truth." He spoke 
 of life; He called Himself Life; His great dis- 
 ciple declared that His life was Light. His 
 commandment was " Love " ; and He was 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 105 
 
 Himself its supreme embodiment. He spoke 
 of law, and His declaration was that He was 
 the Law's fulfillment. The authority for His 
 work was " Verily, verily, I say " ; His assur- 
 ance of safety was " It is I " ; His ground of 
 hope for the lost man was, " To-day shalt 
 thou be with Me"; His first command and 
 His last was, " Follow Me." 
 
 In this growth of personality you are to 
 learn that centurial virtue patience. You 
 can build a house out of stone in a summer, 
 but to make the stone endless centuries are 
 needed. Learn not simply to labor, learn also 
 to wait. Make your own the words of the 
 poet who died in Cleveland less than ten years 
 ago: 
 
 "Haste! Haste! O laggard, leave thy drowsy 
 
 dreams ! 
 Cram all thy brain with knowledge ; clutch and 
 
 cram ! 
 
 The earth is wide, the universe is vast 
 Thou hast infinity to learn O haste ! 
 
 " Haste not, haste not, my soul. Infinity? 
 Thou hast eternity to learn it in. 
 Thy boundless lesson through the endless years 
 Hath boundless leisure. Run not like a slave 
 Sit like a king, and see the ranks of worlds 
 Wheel in their cycles onward to thy feet." 
 
106 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 Members of the graduating classes : 
 Your college course is ended. The last 
 lecture is heard, the last book is read. The 
 lectures and the books seem to play a con- 
 spicuous part in the college course, but a 
 part yet more conspicuous is personality. For 
 the lecture and the book are simply designed 
 to develop the student into the noblest and 
 strongest and highest character. Behind book 
 and lecture is the teacher. For the book, the 
 lecture, the library, the laboratory, the college 
 cares not except as a means of enriching the 
 personality of the student. For these privi- 
 leges of blessing and of being blessed in these 
 happy years, through our common personali- 
 ties, we all now rejoice together. The college 
 now seems to take upon itself a personality, 
 fine and gracious and noble. Upon you she 
 lifts her hands in blessing. She would, as 
 she blesses you, say, with a change of phrase, 
 as said Hector of his sons : " O God, grant 
 that these, my children, may do good and bear 
 noble rule. May their mother be glad at 
 heart." The college would also make as her 
 own benediction the blessing of the Hebrew 
 saint and say to you: "The Lord bless you 
 and keep you; the Lord make His face to shine 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 107 
 
 upon you, and be gracious unto you ; the Lord 
 lift up His countenance upon you, and give 
 you peace." These blessings shall be yours as 
 you heed the command of the Christ : " Fol- 
 low Me." 
 
108 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 VIII 
 
 MAN'S OWNERSHIP UNIVERSAL AND 
 CONDITIONAL 
 
 "All are yours, and ye are Christ's and Christ 
 is God's." i Cor. iii. 22, 23, 
 
 Ware passing out of the age of re- 
 cession. We are passing into the 
 age of indulgence. The Puritan 
 lives rather in memory than in activity. 
 The negative command : " Thou shalt not " 
 has become less common than the per- 
 missive command: "Thou mayst." Before 
 the great opportunity which we call Life our 
 fathers stood and each asked " What is my 
 duty?" Before the same great opportunity 
 we, their sons, stand, and ask : " What are 
 our rights?" The monastic condition which 
 glorified abstinence, abasement, limitation, 
 which was inclined to identify piety and pov- 
 erty, which measures sanctities by crucifix- 
 ions, has given place to a condition in which 
 largeness, fullness, enrichment, represent the 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 109 
 
 supreme purposes and the commanding meth- 
 ods. 
 
 To the making of this great change many 
 elements have contributed. The swinging of 
 the pendulum, human and personal, has had 
 influence : clearer understanding of the nature 
 of man has promoted the movement. But in 
 particular the greatest contribution has been 
 made by the increasing wealth which man has 
 made. To the savage nature i$ a foe, cruel, 
 fickle, mysterious ; in civilization nature is 
 man's minister. A lump of coal has opened 
 more treasures than ever the Indies possessed. 
 This being that we call the World has al- 
 lowed humanity to become richer than once 
 was dreamed. 
 
 The words, therefore, which Paul wrote to 
 the Corinthians become significant to us in 
 this century of the new world. "All are 
 yours : " you are owners universal and ab- 
 solute. All things that move in space and in 
 time, all things that you have made and all 
 things that God has made, belong to you: 
 " All are yours." In this fact one seems to 
 find support for the modern principle and 
 method of indulgence. The words appear to 
 be a declaration that abstinence is wrong, 
 and abundance is right. But at once large 
 
110 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 questions present themselves. What are the 
 elements of this ownership, its conditions, its 
 limitations? Is this ownership right? What 
 duties does it involve? To what results does 
 it lead? 
 
 These questions all may be summed up in 
 the proposition : " Man's ownership is Uni- 
 versal and also Conditional." This proposi- 
 tition, therefore, represents our subject. 
 
 Is it too much to say that there is strong 
 reason for believing that God has made man 
 the crown of the whole creative process? Has 
 He not put man into a beautiful world and 
 told him to dress and keep it? Are not the 
 speeches of the day messages for his hearing, 
 and the showing forth of the knowledges of 
 the night truth for his learning? If man can- 
 not bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, 
 he can at least receive and transmute these 
 influences into elements of his own character; 
 if he cannot loose the bands of Orion he can 
 at least discover the times and seasons that 
 belong to the stars and planets; if he is not 
 able to govern the sun and the moon, he is 
 able at least to co-operate with both the ce- 
 lestial and terrestrial forces in the securing of 
 his highest purposes. Without any undue as- 
 sertions as to the central place which man 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 111 
 
 fills in the whole Universe, one may in the 
 language of feeling, if not in the language of 
 intellect, affirm that man is master and 
 owner. For him before he was the centuries 
 toiled. For him in each passing century 
 come forth a larger life, a greater opportunity, 
 a richer reward. For him the whole creation 
 seems to groan and travail in pain unto the 
 present. He is the splendid outcome of all 
 the creative process. From the time when he 
 gave names to the animals in the Garden of 
 Eden to the present time when he discovers 
 and gives name to the forces of Nature and 
 causes them to pass before him, he has been 
 the master of increasing power, of an enlarg- 
 ing realm. 
 
 One and only one condition is attached to 
 this mastery and ownership. It is a mastery 
 and ownership under a superior. It is a mas- 
 tery and ownership having an ownership of 
 man in and by the Christ. "All are yours, 
 and ye are Christ's and Christ is God's." All 
 are yours, if ye are the Christ's; and all are 
 yours as ye are the Christ's. It is as a father 
 going with his son into a beautiful park, say- 
 ing to his son: " All this is yours, to use, to 
 enjoy, to keep, so long as you are mine. Do 
 with it all as you see fit. I only ask that you 
 
112 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 shall love me more than you love these things, 
 and that never will you use them in any way 
 which you judge I should not like." It is thus 
 that God seems to give everything to man. 
 " This world is yours/' he says, " its shining 
 sun, its manifold forces of air, its glories and 
 wealths, its laws and its powers, all are yours 
 to do with as you see fit. I have only to ask 
 that never will you forget you belong to me, 
 that me will you love more than you love 
 them, that you will acknowledge my will as 
 right, and recognize that in carrying out my 
 wishes your ownership is to become more 
 complete/' Man owns all so far as man knows 
 that God is his owner. Just so far as man be- 
 longs to Christ, just so far as Christ belongs 
 to God, just so far all things belong to man 
 himself. The Christ has all, the Christ has 
 you ; so far as you belong to Christ, Christ be- 
 longs to you; so far as Christ belongs to you, 
 so far all things that belong to Christ belong 
 to you. Your ownership is absolute and uni- 
 versal. This ownership is absolute and uni- 
 versal under the simple condition of man's 
 ownership in the Christ and of Christ's 
 ownership in and mastery over man him- 
 self. 
 This principle of ownership becomes more 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 113 
 
 clear, I think, when applied to one or two 
 of the fields in which man works. 
 
 One of the fields in which man is always 
 working and which has special significance 
 on such an occasion as this is the field of 
 scholarship. For scholarship represents the 
 domain of the college. Out of scholarship 
 springs the college, and the college in turn 
 ministers to scholarship. It is the field in 
 which absolute ownership and absolute free- 
 dom should prevail. There is no field in which 
 limitations of any kind are more unreason- 
 able. I can conceive of no command so un- 
 worthy for a large man to give or so hard for a 
 large man to receive as the command not to 
 search. Truth, truth, truth, should mean to 
 man what the heart of Bruce flung into the 
 midst of the foe meant to his soldiers. All 
 the world is spread out before the in- 
 quisitive mind. The infinite spaces of the 
 universe and the infinitesimal elements of life 
 represent objects of interrogation. Man, too, 
 studies himself. He is a self-study. As the 
 great scientist said to his student : " Look at 
 your fish; look at your fish," so ever says the 
 Omniscient One to the scholar: " Know, 
 know, know." Do you recall that little poem 
 of Schiller in which the youth was eager to 
 
114 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 lift the veil which hid the image? The guard- 
 ian tried to persuade him not to lift it, but 
 eagerly he pleaded. At last he raised the cov- 
 ering; he looked; he saw. What he saw the 
 poet intimates not, but the vision made him 
 a different man. It is not thus in God's great 
 school. God hangs no veil over the face of 
 knowledge. Man's own eagerness to know is 
 met by God's eagerness that man shall know. 
 The infinite domain of omniscience is the do- 
 main also of the all-learning spirit. Man is 
 to know all. He is the master in the field of 
 scholarship. 
 
 I am glad to say that this ownership and 
 this freedom of scholarship should be applied 
 to the book which we call the Book of books, 
 the Bible. Idols that men have long wor- 
 shiped demand reverence. Beliefs of man, 
 long entertained, merit respect. Moods and 
 atmospheres in which men have long moved 
 should be esteemed in fitting regard. But 
 moods should demand no regard, beliefs 
 should merit no respect, idols should com- 
 mand no reverence so complete as the regard, 
 the respect, and the reverence which truth 
 demands. Therefore, the Bible, its language, 
 its literature, its principles and facts, its de- 
 clarations and its instructions, should be ob- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 115 
 
 jects of the most intense, constant, prolonged 
 examination. We can, furthermore, believe 
 that the author and inspirer of the Book of 
 books demands that man shall study it. It 
 is in my judgment the height of folly in both 
 religion and morals for any man to oppose 
 the most thorough examination of the Scrip- 
 tures. If any book is truer than the Bible, 
 let us, as discoverers and apostles of the truth, 
 let us have it, the truer Bible. If any book is 
 more worthy to be loved than the book which 
 begins with Genesis and ends with Revela- 
 tion, I am sure that the very teachings of the 
 so-called Bible demand that we shall possess 
 and love it. It is not faith to accept without 
 examination what we ought to examine, it is 
 credulity. It is not piety to worship God 
 without asking what God is, it is worse than 
 pietism. It is not the Christian religion to 
 shut the eye and stop the ear, it is mysticism 
 or heathenism, or both. But the man who en- 
 ters into this great field of knowledge of the 
 Scripture is to enter it possessed with Christ's 
 spirit. He is to enter it, knowing that he be- 
 longs to Christ who called himself the Truth. 
 To change the epithet applied to Spinoza, I 
 may say that the man free to investigate, ab- 
 solute in ownership, is to be Christ-filled. I 
 
116 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 have no fear of heresy nor of false doctrine, 
 nor have I any dread of the results of deal- 
 ing with the Truth so long as man follows 
 Him who is at once the Life of the world and 
 the Light of the world. Absolute truth, in 
 scholarship, in knowledge is to be the rule in 
 college, and to be the law of all being. Ab- 
 solute freedom in truth, in scholarship, in 
 knowledge, absolute freedom in the college, 
 is to be the law of being under the great law 
 of obedience to Christ. So long as one be- 
 longs to Christ and so long as Christ belongs 
 to one, so long can one be free to study the 
 infinite life of the world and of God. So long 
 as man belongs to man and Christ belongs to 
 man, so long can he feel free to subject his 
 Book of books to examinations of the might- 
 iest severity. He can be assured that the re- 
 sults will be in accordance with the very truth 
 of Omniscience. 
 
 The same principles apply to the study 
 of nature as well as to the study of the Scrip- 
 tures. Does it not now seem simply and per- 
 fectly absurd that the time ever was when the 
 Church commanded that man should not in- 
 vestigate the truth of the natural world? It is 
 difficult to trust one's eyes and reason when 
 one reads certain prohibitions made by the 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 117 
 
 Church against the study of nature. For if 
 there be any error in our Christianity, we, as 
 Christians, ought to be more eager than any- 
 one else to find that error and that error to 
 remove. We have heard a great deal about 
 the reconciliation of science and religion; 
 rather we should change the phrase into the 
 reconciliation of certain notions in science and 
 certain notions in religion with each other. 
 These notions have come and may come into 
 conflict; but the reason is because certain no- 
 tions were false and were opposed to other 
 false notions, or that certain notions were false, 
 and were opposed to other notions that were 
 true. The antagonism between science and 
 religion is no more antagonistic than the an- 
 tagonism between heat and light. Science and 
 religion are unlike, but they are harmonious. 
 The college should be most eager to make 
 manifest their harmonies. Trust the scholar; 
 free him from limitations; give him a large 
 field, provide him with every tool, leave him 
 to think with himself, before the object of his 
 study and with his God. Be thankful that, in 
 the new world where men seek for gold, 
 are men who are unwilling to seek for gold, 
 and who are eager to discover and to tell the 
 laws by which God made that gold. Give 
 
118 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 them gold that they may get that which is 
 far more golden than gold. Make money for 
 the wise man, O you, who have time and stuff 
 to make it, that he may transmute your money 
 into interpretations of the very thoughts of 
 God. Trust absolutely the man whose busi- 
 ness it is to discover and examine the truth. 
 Commend him to his God; command him 
 never. Trust him as he is loyal to his God. 
 Pray God that the time may never come again 
 when the scholar can be condemned for trying 
 to find out what kind of a world this is which 
 God has made and in which we, His children, 
 live. 
 
 This great principle of ownership, this great 
 law of freedom, this great law of indulgence, 
 become yet more evident when applied to the 
 entire field of human work. Is there any work 
 which any man or woman should not do? Is 
 there any form of work into which any man or 
 woman cannot enter with perfect fitness? Is 
 there property of any kind which a self-re- 
 specting person should not own? When I hear 
 one say: "I cannot enter the profession of 
 the law because I should have to defend that 
 which I know to be false ; " when I hear one 
 say: " I cannot be a minister because I should 
 have to pretend to believe what I cannot be- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 119 
 
 lieve; " when I hear one say: " I cannot be a 
 doctor, for I should have to act a part; " when 
 I hear one say: " I cannot be a merchant, for I 
 should have to do as the trade does;" when I 
 hear one say: " I cannot go into society, for it 
 is so false and so selfish; " I am filled with pity 
 at once for the man or the woman and for the 
 profession, the trade, or society, but I am also 
 filled with greater pity for the man than I am 
 for the condition. For the mood of the man 
 or the woman proves that, though he has in- 
 sight, he lacks strength. Although he has 
 the eye to see the peril, he has not the arm to 
 strike the peril down. Let the world know 
 that the law is a great calling in the application 
 of the results of human struggles to present 
 problems. Let the world know that the min- 
 istry is a great calling in the teaching of men 
 what life is, and in the helping to make their 
 own life and the life of all good and true. Let 
 the world know that medicine is a great call- 
 ing in the giving to men of physical salvation. 
 Let the world know that commerce is a great 
 calling in the continuing of the work of the 
 first man in dressing and keeping the earth. 
 Let all men know that society is a great move- 
 ment and a great condition composed of all 
 the diverse and manifold forces of the world. 
 
120 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 Let all of us know that the great associations 
 of the people cannot be false. If they were 
 false they would cease. Humanity cannot live 
 on lies. Truth is man's food. Let each man 
 feel that to enter into any one of these great 
 works demands his strongest strength, his 
 keenest insight, his highest self. If a man 
 enter into any one of these great callings with 
 the thought that concealment or wrong is 
 necessary to triumph, let him know that he 
 sides with the devil and with those who vote 
 that this is the devil's world. No, no, no; 
 uprightness, honor, justice, integrity, virtue, 
 and the virtues, character, are the brain and 
 the heart of the whole life whenever and wher- 
 ever lived. 
 
 A lie means in the world of man what a 
 star out of place means in the world of 
 nature, disorder, disintegration, destruction. 
 Therefore I say to you, men and women, select 
 any calling, do any work, enter into any as- 
 sociation, such as the learners of the Christ, 
 can select, can do, can enter into. Where the 
 Christ sits there is the throne, where the 
 Christ is there you may go, what the Christ 
 approves you can do, and the methods which 
 the Christ commends you can adopt. Into all 
 this world, go; into any part of this world, 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 121 
 
 go; into any condition of this world, go. 
 Know that your work may be in all parts, 
 under any condition. Know that you are the 
 masters so long as you belong to Christ and 
 Christ belongs to you. " All are yours, and 
 ye are Christ's and Christ is God's." 
 
 But you at once ask how can I know that 
 any particular kind of service is what the 
 Christ does approve? May I not mistake? 
 May I not interpret my own wishes as being 
 his will? Of course you may mistake, you 
 may misinterpret. It is a part of human life 
 to err, not only in will, but in intellect. But 
 you can have no guide more true than your- 
 self; only provided that self be your best self, 
 yourself instructed, calm in mood, strong to 
 do the right, yourself reflective, reverential, 
 yourself pure, loving, loyal that is the self 
 which I would and do trust. Such a self 
 transmutes the passions of the body into self- 
 acting choices. Such a self takes up all knowl- 
 edge and makes it over into wisdom. Such 
 a self joins together the promptings of the 
 Holy Spirit and the wishes of its own heart, 
 and welds them all together into a mighty will. 
 The law of such a self is the law of God, per- 
 fect, converting the soul. Such a self receives 
 the testimony of the Lord, and that testimony 
 
122 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 makes that soul wise. To such a soul the 
 statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the 
 heart. To such a soul the commandments 
 of the Lord are pure and the eyes are en- 
 lightened. To such a self the judgments of 
 the Lord are true and righteous altogether, 
 and such a soul finds in the keeping of them 
 great reward. Such a soul becomes not only 
 the voice of God, but God himself, so far as 
 God can incarnate himself in man whom he 
 has made in his own image. Such a soul to a 
 degree repeats the miracle of Bethlehem. Over 
 the coming of such a soul into the world 
 the morning stars sing together. The prog- 
 ress of such a soul is a progress in the happy 
 life of the sons of men. Trust yourself. The 
 guidance of your best self is the guidance 
 of God. To give you such a self, to promote 
 such a self-mastery and such a mastery of all 
 things, is the supreme purpose of college life. 
 Therefore, at the close of this life the college 
 stands ready to give to you her message of 
 confidence. The college believes in you; the 
 college asks you to believe in yourself. Such 
 a self leads to self-trust without arrogance, 
 such a self gives self-guidance without will- 
 fulness. Such guidance is divine guidance, 
 for the man has become Christ's son as Christ 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 123 
 
 is God's. You loving God, God working in 
 you, shall not err. 
 
 To you, members of the classes about 
 to graduate, I repeat the words of the Apos- 
 tle: "All are yours." To-night the words 
 seem to you true. All are yours, to work for, 
 to struggle after, to receive, to enjoy, to profit 
 by, to transmute, to transmit. But of an early 
 to-morrow you will find yourself saying to 
 yourself: "All are not mine. Nothing is 
 mine. Even a place to work is not mine." 
 From the universal ownership of to-night will 
 come the thought of the absolute poverty of 
 to-morrow. Let me assure you that though 
 speaking to-night I am not speaking for to- 
 night merely. I am speaking for your whole 
 life and being. Life will itself bear to you all 
 things that you need or wish as your life is 
 hidden in Christ and in God. If you find, 
 and you will find, that you cannot have what 
 you wish, then do you wish for what you can 
 have. If you cannot enhance the value of 
 life's fraction by increasing the numerator of 
 having, then enhance it by diminishing the de- 
 nominator of wishing. Keep yourself in God, 
 and God will keep himself in you. All values 
 are to be transmuted into highest worths. If 
 you have God and if God have you, you have 
 
124 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 all. The longer life is lived the less precious 
 become the mere things of living and the 
 more precious becomes life itself. Man's life 
 does not consist in the abundance of things 
 which one hath. When at last you give up 
 life itself to Him who gave it to you, and 
 when you and God are together and alone, 
 then will become more true than ever before 
 the thought of this night " All are yours/' 
 For God will at that time have become to you 
 all in all. God you will have in all the fullness 
 of your being as he has you now in the fullness 
 of his love. Toward that glad day of revela- 
 tion and of strength you are to go, having 
 more and more because you are becoming 
 more and more. The larger becoming is the 
 prophecy of a richer having, and a richer hav- 
 ing is a promise of a finer becoming. Until 
 dawns that day, which is a commencement, 
 that is also a conclusion, live your life, able to 
 wait, strong to do, patient to bear, eager to 
 know, being true to truth and faithful to God. 
 Know that all are yours so long as you are 
 Christ's and Christ is God's. 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 125 
 
 IX 
 
 HIGHEST POWERS FOR HIGHEST 
 PURPOSES 
 
 And when the tempter came to him, he said, if 
 thou be the Son of God, command that these stones 
 be made bread. But he answered and said, It is 
 written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by 
 every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of 
 God. St. Matthew iv. 3, 4, 
 
 AGAIN we stand at the beginning of 
 /"^ our annual academic ceremonial. Again 
 ^ we come to the close of the academic 
 year of men and of women and to the com- 
 mencement of what is called for them the 
 larger life. The hour is one both of grati- 
 tude and of hopefulness. To interpret the sig- 
 nificance of the occasion I go to one of the 
 first experiences in the public ministry of 
 Jesus Christ: to His temptation. And I turn 
 to the first of the three temptations which He 
 met. The messenger of the Evil One comes 
 to Christ and asks that He make stones into 
 bread. The command is reasonable; the 
 Christ is soon to turn water into wine and to 
 
126 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 multiply the loaves. The answer is that man 
 shall not live by bread alone, but on God. 
 Bread is good, but not the best. Man shall 
 not use his power for purposes lower than 
 the highest or in ways less worthy than the 
 worthiest. To-night you hear the command 
 spoken by the voice of conscience and by the 
 voice of experience : " Use your powers." Let 
 me speak a command, and it is one of the last 
 messages that it can be my privilege to offer: 
 " Use your powers to win the highest aims. 
 Use your powers to do the best work." There- 
 fore, the thought of my sermon is that you 
 should use your highest powers to secure the 
 highest purposes. The proposition is so true 
 that it becomes a truism. You can and there- 
 fore you ought. You feel you can, and there- 
 fore you ought. 
 
 The use of highest powers for highest pur- 
 poses is the best for the man using these 
 forces. To use highest powers for less than 
 highest purposes results in the deterioration, 
 the disintegration, the destruction of these 
 powers. Such use is putting Samson to grind 
 the mills of the Philistines. To use weakest 
 powers for highest purposes results in ineffi- 
 ciency and loss. It is using the child's bow 
 and arrow to beat down the stone wall. The 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 127 
 
 bow is strained, the arrow broken. The man 
 who gives his best self to the best work finds 
 himself enlarged, ennobled, enriched. The 
 work into which he puts his best self becomes 
 a sacred minister unto himself. If he objecti- 
 fies his best self in the work, the work itself 
 comes back to strengthen him, the worker. 
 Those who knew Dr. Raymond, the first presi- 
 dent of Vassar College, recall with what pru- 
 dence he planned, with what energy he served, 
 and with what mingled doubt and hope he 
 looked forward to the first days and years of 
 that college. It is also remembered that in 
 those first years he grew with the college. He 
 helped to make the college, putting his wis- 
 dom and energy into its administration, and 
 then the college seemed to turn to him, and to 
 help to make him, adding to his worth, en- 
 larging his power and beneficence. To give 
 best self unto best service is best for the one 
 serving. 
 
 To give this best self unto the securing of 
 highest ends is also best for humanity. The 
 method represents the progressive method. 
 Civilization is the best men ruling. The ab- 
 sence of civilization is the best men not giving 
 their best selves unto the best things. What 
 contributed to the prevalence of those ideas 
 
328 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 which we describe by the phrase " New Eng- 
 land " in American life? Those who came to 
 the shores of Massachusetts Bay in the first 
 century were only a few thousands of people, 
 and yet for almost three hundred years the 
 followers of Bradford and Carver and Stand- 
 ish, of Higginson and Endicott and Winthrop 
 have been moving across the continent build- 
 ing churches, establishing colleges, advancing 
 civilized society. The reason lies very largely 
 in that these men gave their best selves unto 
 the best of humanity. Wisdom, courage, faith, 
 industry, strength, honesty, justice, learning, 
 they made the virtues on which move the 
 highest interests of this great country. The 
 decline of civilization is marked by the re- 
 tirement of the best men from human relation- 
 ships or by the debasing of noble men into 
 ignoble. The progress of any society is 
 marked by the presence of its noblest men and 
 women in all relations. If America is to be 
 New England, if America is to be civilized, 
 if America is to become more civilized, the 
 best men must give themselves to the holiest 
 interests of America. It therefore is inevit- 
 able that for the best interests of the individual 
 and of society, every man should use the high- 
 est powers in securing the best results. 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 129 
 
 To this use of highest powers the college 
 graduate makes a significant contribution. 
 And what is the significance of this contribu- 
 tion? What does the college man or woman 
 offer to humanity which the man or woman 
 not college bred does not offer? What is this 
 significant element? Matthew Arnold was 
 fond of saying that the powers which con- 
 tribute to build up civilization are the power 
 of conduct, the power of intellect and knowl- 
 edge, the power of beauty, and the power of 
 social life and manners. Does the college 
 graduate embody conduct finer, an intellect 
 richer, a beauty nobler, a social life more re- 
 fined and manners more gentle than other 
 men and women? The master of Balliol com- 
 plained that greater academic results had not 
 been obtained from the undergraduates of 
 Christ Church. It is a matter of common re- 
 gret that the intellectual results of Oxford and 
 Cambridge life have not been adequate to the 
 great power and prestige of those ancient and 
 honorable foundations. You may say or you 
 may not say that the power of conduct is 
 greater, the power of intellect and knowledge 
 larger, the power of beauty more entrancing, 
 and the power of social life and manners more 
 engaging, as embodied in the college gradu- 
 
130 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 ate; but whatever answer one gives to these 
 considerations, one result at least should be 
 declared and manifested as a comprehensive 
 contribution which the college graduate 
 should make to human affairs, and this one 
 comprehensive contribution which the college 
 graduate should make for the betterment of 
 humanity is the element which I shall call 
 judgment. Wisdom you may call it, if you 
 wish to define wisdom as the application 
 of knowledge to public affairs. Judgment, 
 I should venture to prefer to call this ap- 
 plication. By judgment I mean the applica- 
 tion of the trained intellect to human life. It 
 is the power to see, to appreciate, and to use 
 the truth in improving the condition of man- 
 kind. This element is, in my thinking, the 
 great contribution made by the college gradu- 
 ate to human life. Judgment embodies large- 
 ness, a proper estimate of values, the power 
 to see units, and out of units to construct 
 unities. It embraces every scientific appli- 
 cation of observation and every philosophi- 
 cal application of inference. It is a 
 judgment deliberate and deliberative, sane, 
 large, as remote from being influenced 
 by the idols of the market place, of the forum 
 and of the voting booth as it is remote from 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 131 
 
 the smallness of dilettanteism. It works with 
 the accuracy of instruments of precision. It 
 moves in inductions that are no> less than 
 transcendental. It unites faith and rational- 
 ism, making faith reasonable and rationalism 
 ethical. It extracts the truth of optimism 
 without relieving us of the sense of responsi- 
 bility, and it draws out the truth of pessimism 
 without urging on to the pessimist's fate. It 
 is a judgment which helps one to see the prin- 
 cipal as principal and the subordinate as 
 subordinate. It is a judgment which gives 
 contentment and inspiration, humility, and 
 the sense of strength. It is a judgment 
 which results in adjustment, making one 
 a citizen of the world without making 
 one less a patriot. It is a judgment, 
 too, which means self-understanding and the 
 understanding of all. It is a judgment pri- 
 marily intellectual, and yet it is not simply in- 
 tellectual. It is a judgment in which the 
 emotions have a proper play and place, and 
 yet it is not simply emotional. It is a judg- 
 ment resulting in action, yet it is something 
 more by far than mere volition. It is a judg- 
 ment in which conscience has a supreme part, 
 but it represents more than a dictate of con- 
 science narrowly interpreted. Such judgment 
 
132 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 a college graduate above other members of 
 the community is fitted to offer and to use. 
 Each study of a college makes an offering to 
 its enrichment. Language gives to it dis- 
 crimination, freedom, and amplitude; science 
 gives to it the sense of order and a respect for 
 law; philosophy gives to it self-confidence, 
 breadth of vision, toleration. The old college 
 trained men of judgment. Sometimes we ask 
 the difference between the college man of to- 
 day and the college man of fifty years ago. 
 The graduate of to-day is possessed of scholar- 
 ship more ample, more varied, of manners 
 more gracious, but it is an open question 
 whether the old college did not train men in 
 judgment quite as efficiently as the modern 
 college. It, this power of judgment, is more 
 useful than the appreciation of beauty. It is 
 the basis of social life and of good manners. 
 It is the soul of conduct. It is the crown of 
 intellectual manhood and womanhood. It is 
 an essential element in indivdual character. 
 It is the queen in and of civilized society. 
 
 American life offers rich and unique condi- 
 tions for the use of this supreme power of 
 judgment. For this American life is a life 
 vast in its material relations. Lay out a map 
 of the Roman world at its greatest extent upon 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 133 
 
 the map of the United States and the modern 
 nation has territory lying far out beyond the 
 ancient. In fact the territory of our land is 
 twice as great as that of the Roman Empire. 
 It is a land vast, vast in its material resources. 
 It is a life of infinite variety in its origin, 
 language, religion, education, and general 
 conditions. It is a life free in giving room for 
 play and by-play of all human faculties, func- 
 tions, and facilities. It is a life united in love 
 for America. It is a life new. An old people 
 coming to a new land becomes a new people. 
 In less than three hundred years the whole 
 continent has been peopled and civilized. 
 Three lives of not extraordinary length would 
 cover our entire existence. Other great na- 
 tions have lived a thousand and two thousand 
 years on the soil that they now occupy. This 
 large movement of population has occurred 
 not in three hundred years, but in less than 
 one hundred. It is covered in the lifetime of 
 some of us. We are a new people. A people 
 thus placed, having an immense territory, pos- 
 sessed of vast resources, of many tongues, of 
 diverse origins, represents a new and most 
 significant condition. Furthermore, when to 
 these more material elements are added such 
 personal qualities as fearlessness, good nature, 
 
134 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 capacity of being easily led, capacity of "getting 
 on," excitability of the emotional nature, 
 self-love easily becoming boastfulness and 
 vanity, and a too high regard for material 
 prosperity, one has an idea what America 
 is, and what an opportunity it presents for the 
 application of the superb element of judgment. 
 All these elements constitute a condition 
 out of which should be created a humanity 
 larger, fairer, finer, more divine than the hu- 
 man eye has ever seen or the human heart ap- 
 preciated. This condition constitutes a de- 
 mand. The demand is not that America shall 
 rule the world, Western or Eastern, in Pacific 
 seas or Atlantic Ocean, by having the greatest 
 armies or navies or the largest number of rich 
 men or the biggest flour mills or the longest 
 railroads. This condition constitutes no de- 
 mand for a simply great material civilization. 
 Mightier than the demand that provincialism 
 shall give way to imperialism; mightier than 
 the demand that the United States of America 
 shall become the United States of the World, 
 is the demand that America shall give to the 
 world and give to humanity the best men, the 
 highest, finest type of a magnificent and glori- 
 fied humanity. This condition constitutes a 
 demand that in America humanity shall 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 135 
 
 come to its finest flower, to its golden harvest, 
 to its heavenly supremacy. It is not enough 
 that the good man shall rule. As the bad is 
 the enemy of the good, as the good is the 
 enemy of the better, and as the better is the 
 enemy of the best, so also there should be no 
 contentment with America simply offering to 
 civilization and to humanity a type of good- 
 ness, but the demand is that America should 
 offer to civilization and to humanity the high- 
 est type of the best. Let our Americanism be 
 intense, eager, patriotic, but let it be human. 
 Let our humanitarianism be American, but let 
 it be more than American, let it be human. 
 Let our colleges be American colleges, but 
 American rather in their geography than in 
 their humanity. Better for them to be Ameri- 
 can than European indeed. One professor in 
 an American college writing of another col- 
 lege of which he is a graduate, says : " It 
 must not be forgotten that of late years this 
 college has thrown its influence on the side of 
 Europe rather than of American methods of 
 thought and modes of feeling. To her comes 
 many a country boy with plain clothes and 
 plain habits, with simple ideals and straight- 
 forward bearing, and is transformed for a time 
 into a dilettante, who takes a perverse delight 
 
136 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 in despising homespun literature and learning 
 and in seeing beauty and wisdom only in what 
 comes to us from the lands which his youthful 
 imagination surrounds with an unnatural 
 glamour." Let the charge be false. Let our 
 colleges be neither Asiatic, nor American, nor 
 European. Let them be human. It is a great 
 thing to be an American. It is a greater thing 
 to be a man. 
 
 To promote this magnificent and all com- 
 prehending result the college man and woman 
 are set in their places. Diverse as these places 
 are, the one element which the collegian em- 
 bodies is of common worth, and it is priceless; 
 the one element of judgment is needed always, 
 everywhere, and needed urgently. You, O 
 graduates, can use this element more than 
 most others. Others have energy as great as 
 yours. Others have manners as fine as yours. 
 Others have aims as high as yours. Others 
 show a conduct as upright as yours. But no 
 one should excel you in having a judgment 
 sound and sane, exact and large. You should 
 shed the finest and the clearest light upon all 
 human and all American problems. You 
 should offer a leading more worthy than any 
 other guide. In order that government may 
 govern without ruling, so wise is the govern" 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 137 
 
 ment, so gentle the governed; in order that 
 education may mean at once culture and ser- 
 vice; in order that the home may become the 
 promise and the pledge of heaven; in order 
 that literature may become the interpreter of 
 the best; in order that commerce may become 
 the minister of righteousness; in order that 
 journalism may be the guide of truth and the 
 inspirer of duty; in order that wealth may be 
 less a value and more a minister of values; 
 in order that individualism may not become 
 autocratic nor communism of too common- 
 place a character; in order that Christianity 
 may have for its principal adjective " Chris- 
 tian," and not a denominational epithet; in 
 order to achieve these highest things in mind 
 and character, judgment, judgment, JUDG- 
 MENT, is the one common and mighty power 
 which the college through its graduates should 
 offer to American life and to human destiny. 
 
 It is with confidence that I point out this 
 duty, this privilege, this right. We in America 
 are to be in a constant crisis. Archbishop 
 Tait said, near the close of his life, that from 
 his early boyhood he had been hearing that the 
 Church of England was passing through a 
 crisis. The remark is as true of everything 
 in America as it is true of the English Church. 
 
138 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 Every day is critical ; every day is a judgment 
 day ; every hour is a pivot on which move the 
 eternities. In this perennial crisis, formed of 
 these conditions, I know that you are to stand 
 and to stand for wise beneficence. In '61 the 
 college men stood firm and wise as well as 
 heroic. The history of the college men in the 
 Civil War forever puts to flight the charge 
 which Wendell Phillips made in his Phi Beta 
 Kappa address against the college men as 
 being timid, selfish, and unheroic. One of 
 these college men said as he fell : " Let me 
 die here on the field. 'Tis more glorious to 
 die on the field of battle." Another wrote to 
 his wife just after leaving home : " Surely the 
 right will prevail. If I live we shall rejoice 
 over our country's success. If I die, remem- 
 ber that you have given your husband a sacri- 
 fice to the most righteous cause that ever wid- 
 owed woman." Another, as he fell a mere 
 boy he was, not out of his teens moving on 
 to the attack on Fort Wagner, said to the sol- 
 diers who offered to carry him off: " Do not 
 touch me; move on, men. Follow your col- 
 ors." Such was the bravery of the college 
 men in '61. I summon you not to the life of 
 martial bravery, but I summon you to a life 
 of sound and sane judgment in all human af- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 139 
 
 fairs. This sound and sane judgment at home 
 and abroad for the betterment of humanity 
 represents the use of highest powers for high- 
 est purposes. 
 
 Members of the Graduating Classes: I be- 
 gan with the scene of the temptation, the 
 Evil One standing before the Good One al- 
 luring him to evil. I close with the scene of 
 the Christ standing before you, no longer sub- 
 ject to temptation, but presenting opportunity. 
 By the open door of life he stands and points 
 you to what is beyond. He points you to 
 the opportunity of service, not of service only, 
 but of service highest, widest, largest. A great 
 college president once said : " I believe that a 
 great deal more is to be done to improve the 
 condition of mankind and that the great com- 
 fort for each of us is that he has done and is 
 doing something toward it." When at last 
 you stand at the closed door of life and the 
 Christ who now bids you Go and Do, asks on 
 your return what you have done, it will be a 
 supreme comfort to you if you can say that 
 you have helped somewhat. It will be of 
 comfort yet more comforting to you if you 
 can say at that time that you have helped to 
 the very utmost. The Christ will require 
 
140 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 of you not one talent nor two, but five. Be 
 able to say in all humility: " I have done the 
 best that I could do. I have been the best 
 that I could be. I give back my best self 
 which Thou gavest me, O Christ, made the 
 best that I, through Thy grace, could make 
 it." 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 141 
 
 X 
 
 THE PRESENCE OF GOD IN HIS 
 WORLD IMMEDIATE AND PER- 
 SONAL 
 
 11 For in Him we live and move and have our 
 being." Acts xvii. 28. 
 
 GOD is within the soul: in Him it lives. 
 God is without the soul: in Him it 
 moves. God is over all; God is be- 
 neath all; God is around all: in Him the soul 
 has its being. " One God, one law, one ele- 
 ment." The one God is all, the one law is 
 divine, the one element is divine. God fills all 
 time, past, present, future, and eternal, but 
 God is more than time. God fills all space, 
 here, there, everywhere, universal, but God is 
 more than space. 
 
 Therefore the proposition to which I ask 
 your thought is that God's presence in His 
 world is immediate and personal. 
 
 The proposition is the old doctrine of the 
 omnipresence of God. It is also the new doc- 
 trine of the immanence of God. It is the 
 
142 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 scientific doctrine that all we know of the 
 world is that it is force, combined with the 
 philosophical doctrine that this force is per- 
 sonal. It is the song of the poet as well as 
 the teaching of the philosopher. 
 
 " I have felt 
 
 . . . . 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 the mind of man ; 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 This doctrine is beset by two limitations. 
 The one is pantheism. God is in all and God 
 is all. But all is not God. All the eye sees 
 or the hand touches is not God. God is all 
 and more than all; to the all there must be a 
 plus. The doctrine may be called a doctrine 
 of a personal pantheism. The soul fills and 
 rules the body, but the body is not the soul, 
 nor is the soul the body. God fills and rules 
 space and force, but neither space nor force is 
 God, nor is God merely space and force. 
 Matter He fills and the world He rules, but 
 matter may vanish and the world cease, but 
 God is still God. This doctrine is also sub- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 143 
 
 ject to a second limitation. It must not be 
 interpreted to interfere with the freedom of 
 man. That the will of man is free must still 
 obtain. One may adopt Dr. Johnson's short 
 method and say: "the will is free and that 
 is all there is about it," or one may reason that 
 the human will cannot be destroyed by divine 
 fore-knowledge, and that it is not opposed by 
 divine predestination. One may speak of the 
 freedom of the will as a gift to man out of 
 divine grace, or one may call it an essential 
 part of manhood itself, but whatever form of 
 reasoning or of interpretation be adopted, that 
 man is free to will must be asserted as a pri- 
 mary truth. If the revelations of self-con- 
 sciousness be at all sound, we are more con- 
 vinced that the human will is free than that 
 God exists. 
 
 It is not, however, to an interpretation of 
 this doctrine that the presence of God in His 
 world is immediate and personal, nor is it to 
 the defense of this doctrine, that I am to ask 
 your attention. But rather my simple pur- 
 pose is to point out, so far as the hour allows, 
 certain results which belong to the realm of 
 character consequent upon the holding of this 
 doctrine. 
 
 The doctrine that the presence of God in his 
 
144 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 world is immediate and personal gives large- 
 ness to the conception of the present life. For 
 it unites this life with the life of God. It 
 gives to this life the qualities and elements of 
 God's being. In point of time the doctrine 
 takes up the temporal life and flings it with 
 its limitations and narrowness into the depth 
 and breadth and height of God's eternal life. 
 In point of space the doctrine takes up this 
 life, so limited and narrow, and puts it into 
 relation with the divine immensities. It 
 makes the present world one with all worlds. 
 As says the psalmist: 
 
 " If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I 
 make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I 
 take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the 
 uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand 
 lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me." 
 
 Said a young college man on the day of his 
 death, writing to his devoted wife thousands 
 of miles away, " I live in the ever present con- 
 sciousness of my God, so near, so loving and so 
 great." The life that is cribbed, cabined and 
 confined finds itself re-constituted, enlarged, 
 enriched, heightened, deepened, and widened. 
 The thought of God's immediate presence is 
 a great thought with which the soul lifts itself. 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 145 
 
 The great thought becomes a great decision 
 by which the soul awakens itself, and 
 the great decision becomes a great pur- 
 pose to which the soul moves, as stars and 
 planets move around the central sun. God 
 does not so much come into the soul and there 
 incarnate himself, as the soul goes out to God 
 and spiritualizes itself in all the divine being. 
 The miracle of the incarnation is not repeated, 
 but the miracle of the spiritualization of the 
 soul is done. Life becomes large. It takes 
 on cubical relations. Its length becomes as 
 long as God's eternity, its breadth as wide as 
 God's being, its height as great as God's char- 
 acter. 
 
 Be it also said that the sense of the omni- 
 presence of God gives to one's work the high- 
 est motives and the noblest enthusiasm. Work 
 in humanity's humdrum day tends to become 
 weariness, labor becomes laboriousness, ser- 
 vice loses its wings and becomes weighted. 
 Men fail to appreciate and men do not forget 
 to scorn. Failure crowns endeavor. The 
 course of the ordinary man in the ordinary 
 work under the ordinary conditions is like the 
 course of the French peasant, which the mod- 
 ern French artist delights to paint: heaviness, 
 Weight, weariness, embodied in the bending 
 
146 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 shoulder and in the slowly moving body. But 
 the fact that God is, and that He is in His 
 world in His own day, gives to each working 
 man spring and buoyancy. Work ceases 
 to be merely human, and becomes divine ser- 
 vice. The smile of ridicule or the smile of 
 pity no longer weigh. The presence of God 
 gives calmness without giving stagnation, in- 
 tensity without boisterousness, courage with- 
 out boldness, perseverance without hardness, 
 hopefulness without rashness, and vision with- 
 out visionariness. 
 
 Of that great English schoolmaster, Edward 
 Thring, it is said, that " From the time he came 
 to Uppingham a young and perhaps over-con- 
 fident enthusiast, through years of work and 
 weariness, of mingled success and disappoint- 
 ment, to the day thirty-four years later, when, 
 suddenly stricken, he turned away a dying 
 man from the altar of his noble chapel with 
 the words of the communion service upon his 
 lips, this thought that he was doing the work 
 for God, and under His immediate eye, never 
 forsook him. In every crisis of an anxious 
 life it was the central and sustaining thought 
 which gave new courage." Upon every worker 
 the presence of God may have a similar influ- 
 ence. Such an influence rested upon Milton 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 147 
 
 laboring in his great task-master's eye. Such 
 an influence rested upon Lincoln in reuniting 
 the nation. Such an influence must rest upon 
 every worker who hopes to secure the highest 
 results under the best conditions. 
 
 This idea of the immediate divine presence 
 gives fearlessness to the individual life. In 
 the last fifty years three doctrines have been 
 of peculiar significance: the doctrine of his- 
 torical criticism applied to all truth and espe- 
 cially to the Holy Scriptures, the doctrine of 
 evolution, and the new teachings of socialism. 
 Strauss published his first Life of Christ in 
 1835 and his second Life in 1864. Seelye is- 
 sued his Ecce Homo in 1864. Charles Darwin 
 published the Origin of Species in 1859 and 
 the Descent of Man in 1871. When Strauss 
 published his life of Christ it was said by some 
 that " Christianity has vanished. It has in- 
 deed become a myth." When Darwin pub- 
 lished his great book it was said that " Genesis 
 and Revelation have become as valueless as 
 the last romance." Strauss is dead, his 
 mythical theory is indeed a myth, and the 
 teachings of Charles Darwin are now believed 
 to be in thorough accord with the first chapter 
 of Genesis and the last chapter of Revelation. 
 Nay, it is by some believed that the develop- 
 
148 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 ment hypothesis of the first of Genesis is sim- 
 ply the poetical expression for the scientific 
 record read by Darwin, and that the song of 
 the angels in Revelation represents the highest 
 development of the purified spirit of man. In 
 all these movements God is present, over them 
 all he is supreme. The whole creation, not 
 only material, but also intellectual, groaneth 
 and travaileth in pain, but in it all God is, and 
 out of it cometh forth the birth of a thought 
 fuller and fresher and mightier of God him- 
 self. Not only can one say to the fearful, 
 " Fear not the boat carries Caesar," but one 
 can also say " fear not, for not only does the 
 boat carry the Divine One, but the boat is 
 divine, the ocean is divine, and the sky over 
 all is divine/' No harm, lasting or ultimate, 
 can come to the soul that lives in God and for 
 God and by God. For one's self and for the 
 race one can have no fear. For God is pres- 
 ent. " The eternal God is thy refuge and 
 underneath are the everlasting arms." 
 
 This doctrine gives added sacredness to life. 
 This life becomes more holy and sacred be- 
 cause God is in it as beginning and as ending 
 and as a constant and continuing force. If 
 the figure be not too bold, let me say that the 
 hand of God rests on all life and the voice of 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 149 
 
 God affirms that all life is His. Not upon 
 Handel composing his Messiah, not upon the 
 builder of St. Peter's nor of the temple at 
 Cologne or at Canterbury, not upon the 
 painter of the Divine Child and His mother, 
 does the divine hand rest or is the inspiring 
 thought alone given, but to every builder of a 
 humble home where God dwells, to every 
 toiler who labors in honesty and faithfulness 
 and with high aim, and to every worker who is 
 seeking to re-create the earth into an Eden 
 without the serpent, to every man who strives 
 to know the true and to teach the true, who 
 loves the good and arouses other souls to the 
 same divine thoughts, and who does the right, 
 to them each and all does life become divine 
 and sacred. A distinguished preacher has 
 lately said, " We need to ethicize life." The 
 saying is true. But may we not say that we 
 need to make life not only goodly, but also 
 Godly? We need to relate life more to God 
 than to men. The human relation conies 
 forth from the divine. We need first to love 
 God with all our power and then we cannot help 
 loving men not only as well as, but better, 
 than ourselves. One man says that we need 
 to make life free. Yes, we do. But freedom 
 is not an aim, it is a condition. Freedom is 
 
160 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 the atmosphere in which the bird flies and is 
 valuable only as a minister to life, as the air 
 supports the bird in its flight. Let life be 
 free in order to make life sacred, but let life not 
 be sacred in order to make it free. It is also 
 said that life should be made strong, and so it 
 should be made. Let Carlyle's Strong Man 
 prevail, but let life be sacred in the sacredness 
 of God and it will have all the strength which 
 the omnipotence of a holy God can bestow. 
 " He had the strength of ten because his heart 
 was pure." 
 
 This teaching, too, that the presence of God 
 is immediate and personal helps one into a 
 better conception of the simplicity of living. 
 It is the one principle which may help one to 
 a proper simplicity. For, what a complex life 
 is! What a perplex to coin a word life is! 
 How manifold the relations which meet in one 
 person! How principles fail to adjust them- 
 selves in practice! How opposite intellect 
 and heart! How antagonistic feeling and 
 choice ! Not to untie all its knots, not to un- 
 ravel all its snarled tangles, can any principle 
 or method prove sufficient; but the principle 
 that God is here and that God is here now, is 
 less insufficient than any other. Two ques- 
 tions have ever perplexed man, and ever will, 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 151 
 
 and to-day they are no less perplexing than 
 they were in the time of Job and Plato, of 
 Seneca and Paul. The one question is, 
 " Does man live after dying," and the other is, 
 " What is my duty to my neighbor ? " To 
 the first is made answer clear and strong by our 
 doctrine. God declares, " So long as I am 
 and so long as you are in me, so long you 
 are to live. You can cease to live only by 
 ceasing to be in me." The soul in God is as 
 deathless as God himself. Can God die? No 
 more can you, being in God. And to the sec- 
 ond question is made answer, your duty to 
 your neighbor is the duty of God himself, to 
 help and to bless. " So long as I am in you 
 and you in me," says God, " and so long as I 
 give to you all, so long you are to give to him 
 who is near to you in any relation whatever." 
 In all the social and socialistic questions that 
 confront us I know of only one principle 
 which will help men to see straight and to 
 think clear, and that is the principle that God 
 is here and now. The man who feels himself 
 in God and who knows that he is a part of God 
 is the man who will do, according to his 
 vision, all that his neighbor can rightfully de- 
 mand. In the strainings and struggles, in 
 the frettings and fearings of this time of great 
 
152 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 social quakings, the preaching of the just and 
 loving God, who is the father of all men and 
 who, therefore, constitutes all men brethren, 
 will help each man to find in every other 
 man's good the rule of his conduct, and in 
 every man's character the inspiration for his 
 own well being and well doing. 
 
 Be it said, too, that this doctrine gives to life 
 a sense of unity. The increasing unity of all 
 life characterizes the fast dying century. In 
 government we have United Germany, one 
 Fatherland, made from more than a score of 
 states of a hundred years ago; United Italy, 
 composed of half a score of states of a hun- 
 dred years ago; and the United States of 
 America, more united by far than a hundred 
 years ago. The federation of all the Anglo- 
 Saxon people is the rallying cry of the last 
 years of this great age, and already we hear 
 the suggestion made regarding the organiza- 
 tion of the world for the world's betterment 
 and supreme contentment. One humanity, as 
 there is one God! As in government, so in 
 the sciences. The one force studied in one 
 law and relationship becomes the science of 
 Physics. The same force studied in respect to 
 its constitution and elements becomes the 
 science of Chemistry. The same force studied 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 153 
 
 in respect to its vital relations becomes the 
 science of Biology. The same force studied 
 in one relation becomes Geology, in another 
 Astronomy, and so on through the long and 
 ever lengthening line. But more constant 
 than the increasing oneness of matter, more 
 constant than the increasing oneness of 
 nations, more constant than the increasing 
 oneness of man, is the assurance that God is in 
 all and over all and through all, and also the 
 assurance that as God is over all and through 
 all and in all, so all that God is in and all that 
 God is over, is one. The soul that lives in such 
 a God finds itself not a fraction, but a unit. It 
 itself is whole and complete. The oneness of 
 life in God is the one theme to which life's 
 music returns from all the sad and glad varia- 
 tions of the Miserere or the Gloria in Excelsis. 
 Yet while life is one, it is not sameness. The 
 unity of life is the unity of the curve ;not of the 
 curve, but rather of the ascending spiral. 
 For as life turns upon itself it turns into a 
 higher plane. As life turns around, life goes 
 upward. The doctrine of the evolutionary 
 sciences is the doctrine of the theologian. Man 
 is in God and therefore he is to become more 
 and more like God, and becoming more and 
 more like God, he becomes more godly. " It 
 
154 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 doth not yet appear what we shall be," but we 
 shall be like Him. Birth is your first coming 
 into God's being; life is your constant coming 
 more and more into God's being; death is the 
 second coming, and fuller, into that being. 
 The infinite progress of your character be- 
 longs to you as living and loving and having 
 your being in God. All that the prophets 
 have foreseen you are to behold. All that the 
 philosopher has dreamed you are to find real. 
 All that the poet has sung you are to enjoy. 
 All that the priest has promised you are to re- 
 ceive. In ever richer realization of the life 
 of God you are to live, so long as life is life 
 and so long as God is God. 
 
 When we fling these great conceptions of 
 largeness, of high motives, of fearlessness, of 
 sacredness, of simplicity, of unity and of prog- 
 ress over against the yet larger canvas of the 
 life of the Christ, one sees how the life of God 
 in Christ made His own life all that it was. 
 It was a large life, was the life of Christ. 
 Large in time : " Before Abraham was, I am," 
 he cries. Large in space: He could summon 
 heaven's hosts to help. Large in relations: 
 " All power is given unto me in heaven and in 
 earth." It was a fearless life: His peace He 
 gives unto His trembling disciples. Of course 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 155 
 
 it was a holy life: for he declares " My Father 
 and I are one." It was a simple life: " Let not 
 your heart be troubled ye believe in God, be- 
 lieve also in Me." It was a life of oneness and 
 of progress: the miracle of the birth was one 
 with the miracle of the resurrection, and the 
 miracle of the resurrection was one with the 
 miracle of the ascension. Christ is all this, 
 and supremely, because He is the God-man. 
 As each man is filled with God and knows that 
 he dwells in the world in which every bush is 
 aflame with God, does his life become large 
 and true, holy and simple, complete and noble. 
 Such also is the life of humanity. As man 
 has had his hold on God strong and firm, as 
 God has filled the soul of man, so has been 
 great and brave and holy and devoted and in- 
 finite the life of man himself. Wherever man 
 has not had God, there has man become his 
 lowest and meanest, his narrowest and smallest 
 self. That is a noble sentence of Bacon : " It 
 is a heaven upon earth when a man's mind 
 rests on Providence, moves in charity and turns 
 upon the poles of truth." And, be it said, 
 when a man's mind does rest upon Providence, 
 it must move in charity and it cannot but turn 
 on the poles of truth. As man rests in God 
 and God rests in man, all the blessings of life 
 
156 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 and of power and of truth become his treasure 
 and his agent. 
 
 " Ring in the valiant man and free. 
 The eager heart, the kindlier hand; 
 Ring out the darkness of the land, 
 Ring in the Christ that is to be!" 
 
 Yes, and as one rings in the Christ that is to 
 be, he does ring in the valiant man and free; 
 and as one rings in the Christ that is to be, he 
 does ring in the eager heart, the kindlier 
 hand; and as one rings in the Christ, the 
 Light of the Word, he rings out the darkness 
 of the land. Humanity becomes large and 
 fearless, holy and simple, complete and in- 
 finite, as God is known and felt and loved in 
 and of this world of ours. 
 
 The Members of the Graduating Classes: 
 And now has come the hour of parting. We 
 must say " farewell." But we will not say 
 " good-by." For we need not say " God be 
 with you/' for God is with you. For you are 
 with God. Only your own will can put God 
 away from you and yourself away from God. 
 In all the hours of all these years there has 
 been no hour when you were more eager to 
 receive God and to dwell in Him than in this 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 157 
 
 present. In all the hours and years you are to 
 live, into all experiences you will bear some- 
 what of the feeling and faith of this night. 
 God is here ; God is present. May this feeling 
 and this faith give largeness to all your future 
 May this conviction make purpose higher and 
 enthusiasm finer. May this assurance make 
 you fearless without making you bold. May 
 this belief make all your hopes and relations 
 holy and divine. May this truth aid you in 
 finding and holding the talisman which shall 
 keep your life simple and plain; and may this 
 thought bless you by giving to your life holi- 
 ness, completeness, and a sense of the infinite. 
 And at the close of life's day may the truth 
 that in God you are, give you faith to believe 
 that as your sun sets, it sets only to rise upon 
 a new and infinite world where you are to 
 dwell in ever-enlarging life with the same God 
 forever. 
 
158 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 XI 
 
 GOD IS HUMAN: MAN DIVINE 
 
 " God created man in His own image." Genesis 
 i. 27. 
 
 " The Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
 world." Revelation xiii. 8. 
 
 THESE two records, the one found in 
 the first book of the Bible and the 
 other in the last, the one suggestive of 
 the prehistoric time and the other of the 
 apocalyptic vision, set forth a single truth in 
 opposite ways. " The Lamb slain from the 
 foundation of the world " means that the god- 
 head has and has ever had in itself a human 
 part. " God made man in his own image " 
 means that man has in his own being a 
 divine element. " The Lamb slain from the 
 foundation of the world " : the humanity of 
 God. " God made man in His own image": 
 the divinity of humanity. Humanity is di- 
 vine; divinity is human. This is not to say 
 that man is equal to God as man is equal to 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 159 
 
 man. This is not to say that God is equal to 
 man as God is equal to God. But this is to 
 say that man and God are alike in certain 
 essential elements and parts of their being. 
 
 God is human. For what is humanity? 
 Humanity is to see, to reason, to think, to 
 judge, to will. Humanity is to exult in the 
 delight of the choice of the right; to shiver 
 and to shrink under the tooth of remorse for 
 the choice of the wrong. Humanity is to be 
 free. It is to be conscious of power. It is to 
 know that one is alive and that one is touch- 
 ing mind to mind, heart to heart, soul to 
 soul. It is to desire, to sacrifice, to love. Hu- 
 manity is not simply matter, as is the material 
 world. Humanity is not simply growth, as 
 is the world of plants. Humanity is mind, is 
 reason, conscience, and a free will. 
 
 And what is God? Is not God reason? 
 Does not God think and know? Is not God 
 of a moral nature? Does not all Scripture 
 describe Him primarily as a being of right- 
 eousness? Is not God possessed of creative, 
 self-directing power? Has He not a heart? 
 Does He not love? 
 
 Is it not therefore clear that we can say that 
 God is human? 
 
 Man is divine. For what is divinity? The 
 
160 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 theologians draw their definition and say that 
 God is a person endowed with every excellence : 
 His knowledge is omniscience, His power 
 omnipotence, and His presence omnipresence. 
 He is the sustainer of the universe and the 
 power that makes everywhere and always for 
 righteousness. He is, as says Kant, " the 
 supreme being who is author of all things by 
 free and understanding action/' 
 
 Is man such? Yes, man has knowledge al- 
 though his knowledge is not omniscience; a 
 man has power though his power is not omni- 
 potence; and man also is free as God Himself 
 is free. 
 
 Is it not therefore clear that we can say 
 man is divine? 
 
 Therefore if God is human and if man is 
 divine, we may affirm that God and man are 
 alike in essential parts and elements. 
 
 We have thus simply reached a most signifi- 
 cant truth : the likeness of God and man. It is 
 a truth which is akin to one of the great scien- 
 tific inductions of our century, namely, the 
 unity of all matter. We have learned that 
 planet and star are made of physical matter 
 and that this matter is the same with the ma- 
 terials which constitute the earth. This simple 
 truth is also akin to another scientific indue- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 161 
 
 I 
 
 tion of our century: that one law, as well as 
 one element, rules the law of evolution 
 which obtains throughout all the orders of 
 being. God is God, and godlikeness is still 
 godlikeness, whether found in God or in man. 
 Man is man, and love and reason are still love 
 and reason whether found in man or in God. 
 We need have no fear of the anthropomorphic 
 or of the theanthropic. We shall not degrade 
 the Divine by picturing Him under the forms 
 of humanity, if only that humanity be the best. 
 Neither shall we unduly exalt man. We shall 
 not picture man under the divine image 
 simply. Let us be afraid neither of lifting 
 man up to the height of God, nor of sinking 
 God down to the level of man. For God is 
 human and man is divine. Truth in man is 
 truth in God, and truth in God is truth in man. 
 Right in man is right in God, and right in 
 God is right in man. Love in man is love in 
 God, and love in God is love in man. There 
 cannot be one standard for the verities and the 
 virtues in the realm of divinity, and another 
 standard for the verities and the virtues in the 
 domain of humanity. We need not fear de- 
 pressing Him who gave His only begotten 
 Son because of His love for the world. We 
 need not fear exalting him who was made in 
 
162 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 the divine image, and who partakes of the di- 
 vine nature. " God geometrizes," says Plato, 
 and "The true Sahekinah is man," says 
 Chrysostom. Wherever in history God has 
 been thought of as a great personality, there 
 man has been lifted and dignified, and wher- 
 ever God has been degraded, there also has 
 been degraded man; a great God makes man 
 great, and a great manhood demands a great 
 divinity. 
 
 This truth that man is divine and that God 
 is human I now wish to apply to three great 
 departments of our common life. For it sheds 
 light, I think, upon the field of formal Chris- 
 tian doctrine, upon the field of education, and 
 also upon the domain of life itself as an op- 
 portunity of noblest service. 
 
 The central doctrine of Christianity is the 
 doctrine of the being of God. An element of 
 this doctrine is the conception which the hu- 
 man mind forms of God Himself. In one re- 
 spect the human mind declines to make a pic- 
 ture of God. God is infinite, eternal, change- 
 less, absolute, transcending the human under- 
 standing. Of such a being the mind can make 
 no picture; and yet the reflective mind is so 
 made that it is obliged to form some concep- 
 tion of God. The royal conception is the more 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 163 
 
 constant and significant. The oriental mind 
 has taken that image, the image of a sovereign, 
 which is remote from itself and most splendid, 
 and has clothed that image with divine at- 
 tributes and perfections. God may be a king, 
 but He is also something far other than a 
 sovereign. That " other " includes all that is 
 noblest and finest and greatest in humanity. 
 The paternal conception is also consistent and 
 significant. God is the father, the mother. 
 He creates, He forms, He constitutes. He 
 cares for, He loves, He blesses. But neither 
 the kingly nor the paternal conception is com- 
 plete. God is infinite, but He is personal. He 
 is eternal, but He enters into time. He is 
 everywhere and He is therefore here. He is 
 sufficient unto Himself; but He delights in 
 His creatures. " God wills/' it is said, yet 
 God's willing is not Fate, but the personal act 
 of a personal being; " God ordains," it is said, 
 yet the ordaining of God is not chance, but 
 the outgoing of a heart of love ; " God fills 
 all," it is said, yet the person of God is not the 
 poet's divine atmosphere, but all the being of a 
 God in all parts at one and the same moment. 
 Let every aspiration of man which has become 
 achievement, and every aspiration which has 
 flung itself so far into the sky that it could 
 
164 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 not come back, every wish which has been ful- 
 filled, every hope which has been realized, 
 every wish and hope which await consumma- 
 tion, all loves which have poured themselves 
 out, and all powers which have been nobly 
 used, let them all be gathered up together, 
 and all put into the greatest personality, let 
 all this be regarded as God, and one has a 
 slight conception of godhead which, however 
 remote it may be from reality is yet the near- 
 est approach we can make to understanding 
 the godhead, until we come to see face to face 
 and to know even as we are known. Every 
 mother to the devout child is an intimation 
 of divinity. But, be it observed that this con- 
 ception is purely and simply human. It is 
 gathering up all that is noblest and highest 
 and grandest and greatest in human service 
 and relations and transferring them into the 
 divine personality. I do not fail, I hope, to 
 recognize difficulties and objections ; yet this is 
 the wisest method. From knowing man we 
 are able to know God. In every conception 
 of God there must be something anthropomor- 
 phic. 
 
 But our thought also sheds light upon the 
 doctrine of Christ's person. The orthodox 
 church declares that Christ had two natures 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 165 
 
 joined in one person. " Christ was both God 
 and man," affirms the believer. The endeavor 
 to explain this union and this difference has 
 usually resulted in an appeal to the principles 
 of Christian agnosticism. That Christ was 
 God the theologian has tried to prove out of 
 the New Testament. That Christ was man 
 the theologian has tried to prove both out of 
 the New Testament and out of experi- 
 ence. How Christ was both of God and 
 man the theologian has usually refrained from 
 telling. Does not the humanity of God and 
 the divinity of man help us to read the riddle? 
 Christ was both God and man. Because 
 He was God, He must be man; and because 
 He was man largest, and noblest, He must 
 be God. He could not be or become the one 
 without being also the other. " The Lamb 
 was slain from the foundation of the world." 
 If there came a time when the arms of the 
 Cross were stretched out over the world from 
 Calvary's mountain, there never was a time 
 when the arms of the Eternal were not put 
 underneath the world, hugging the world 
 close and tight. The heart of the Eternal 
 has always been manifest in human lives. The 
 miracles of the Incarnation and of Olivet 
 stand for the eternal truth. They are tern- 
 
166 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 poral explanations of everlasting verities. 
 The Christ of Nazareth and of Jerusalem was 
 divine. He was so godlike that He could not 
 but be human. He was so human that He 
 could not but be divine. 
 
 We are also able to receive aid concerning 
 our doctrine of heaven. The question " where 
 is heaven " has given place to the question 
 " what is heaven? " And what is heaven? The 
 answer comes back to us: " Heaven is God." 
 Again : " What is heaven ? " and the answer 
 comes back: "where one's friends are; their 
 presence constitutes blessedness." Each an- 
 swer, we know, is true. Each answer repre- 
 sents the divine nature, and the human, that 
 vision and state which each heart expects. 
 Heaven is where God is. God is there. And 
 also because God is there all that is fairest 
 and loveliest and worthiest in human relations 
 is there, and because all that is fairest and 
 loveliest and worthiest is there, God is there 
 also. Heaven is the noblest man himself, di- 
 vine and human, dwelling in conditions which 
 are both human and divine. 
 
 Let us pass from the realm of doctrine to 
 the realm of education. For our main propo- 
 sition gives light upon two points in the edu- 
 cation of our time. What is the worth of 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 167 
 
 education? we ask. One answer is that edu- 
 cation is of some worth through its making 
 the man educated able to do. One answer 
 is that education is of some worth because the 
 man educated has become a larger man. An- 
 other answer is that education is of some 
 worth because the man educated is made more 
 like God. " Education/' says Professor Whe- 
 well, " is the process by which man is admitted 
 from the sphere of his narrow individuality 
 into the great sphere of humanity." John Mil- 
 ton, in fine and familiar phrase, says " a com- 
 plete and general education is that which fits a 
 man to perform justly, skillfully and mag- 
 nanimously all the offices, both private and 
 public, of peace and of war." That education 
 is good which fits a man to do great things, 
 but that education is better which fits a man 
 to be a great man. Training is better than 
 equipment. And the great man is the man 
 who is free from provincialism, who is a con- 
 stituent part of the race. That education is 
 best, therefore, which makes a man largely 
 human. The man educated ceases to be a 
 German or a Frenchman or an Englishman, 
 and he becomes something better than either 
 a man. Being a large man, he is to be of 
 larger worth to the world. Service arises 
 
168 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 from character, rather than character from ser- 
 vice. The demand is for a practical educa- 
 tion, and the practical education we are in- 
 clined to interpret as a material education. But 
 what is the most practical, the most useful 
 thing in the world? A hand? It can do 
 much. A tongue? It can inspire much. But 
 the hand without a trained brain to direct is 
 the hand of a bungler. The voice without a 
 brain to give thought is not a voice, but an 
 echo. A great manhood is the most useful 
 thing in the world. Education makes the 
 great manhood. Education, making the large 
 man, makes the useful man. Education, mak- 
 ing the large and useful man, makes a man 
 in the type of Him who knows what is in 
 man and who also works the works of His 
 Father. 
 
 We also receive confirmation of our com- 
 mon belief respecting the method of the 
 higher education. That method must still be 
 the human method. We build laboratories; 
 we increase libraries; we multiply apparatus. 
 We cannot build too many nor increase too 
 much, but after that is done, man is the chief 
 power and the constant educating force. The 
 great historian of the universities of Europe in 
 the middle ages, Rashdall, writes of the di- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 169 
 
 versified type of the mediaeval university: " It 
 is a common idea that a university must have 
 all faculties. There were very famous uni- 
 versities in the Middle Ages which were noth- 
 ing of the kind. It has been said that the 
 collegiate condition is peculiar to England, 
 but it is true that colleges were founded in 
 nearly all the universities. It has been said 
 that the course in arts was looked upon as a 
 course preparatory to the higher faculties, but 
 we know that in the universities of northern 
 Europe many students never entered a higher 
 faculty at all. The mediaeval system was ver- 
 satile, but there was one respect in which all 
 universities, of England and of the Continent, 
 of the north and of the south of Europe, were 
 alike, and that is that they brought together 
 in living intercourse teacher and teacher, 
 teacher and student, and student and student." 
 So writes the historian. Reason must kindle 
 reason, heart must warm heart, will must 
 quicken will, and character must move char- 
 acter. The human powers are still the great- 
 est powers in education. The scholasticism of 
 the mediaeval time gives way to the classicism 
 of the renaissance and the classicism of the re- 
 naissance gives way to all modern studies. But 
 better, far better, than the discrimination and 
 
170 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 the disquisition of the Middle Ages, far better 
 than all the new baptism of the renaissance, 
 are the Abelards and the new Aristotles who 
 gave themselves to their students. In method, 
 in purpose, and in result, education is simply 
 the making of a great soul. Great souls are 
 not made by laws, although they are made un- 
 der laws. They may come under environ- 
 ment, contributive or corrupting. But the 
 essential thing is that great souls are created 
 by great souls. Therefore if we wish students 
 human and divine and great, let us have great 
 teachers. Let us have great souls as leaders, 
 inspirers, builders, makers, creators. 
 
 We can also find help in the main proposi- 
 tion of our discourse in making the choice of 
 life's work and possibly, too, aid in doing 
 life's work. All life is good ; all work is good. 
 The comment which the Creator made upon 
 each part of His work we may still make. But 
 some life is better than other life, and some 
 work superior to other work. What is the 
 best life for one to live? What is the best 
 work for one to choose as his life's calling? 
 The life and the work which are the most hu- 
 man and the most divine. And what are most 
 human and most divine? Simply that life and 
 that work into which reason enters the most 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 171 
 
 fully, into which the moral laws of our being 
 meet the noblest obedience, and in which the 
 will of man may move with the largest free- 
 dom, greatest power, in fullest efficiency. The 
 work most worth the doing is the work into 
 which enters the largest freedom, the most 
 rigorous conscience, and the strongest will. 
 The work which is the least worth doing is the 
 work which demands the least thought, the 
 least feeling, and the least love. The more 
 you can put yourself into a calling, the more 
 worthy that calling is of you. The less you 
 can put yourself in a calling, the less worthy 
 is that calling for you. The college, I trust, 
 has enlarged and enriched and ennobled you. 
 It has given you at once training and equip- 
 ment. It has transmuted sentiments into 
 principles of character, and rules into uncon- 
 scious conduct. It has enlarged the field of 
 activity for your mind, and strengthened your 
 will. It has broadened the domain of feeling 
 and made feeling finer and nobler. You, 
 therefore, are demanding for yourself a work 
 and a life unlike the work and the life you 
 would have chosen a few years ago. You, 
 therefore, demand conditions into which you 
 can put your finest self, your noblest self, your 
 largest self. With no other conditions will 
 
172 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 you be content. With no other conditions can 
 you be content. With such conditions you 
 should be, and you will be, content. Let your 
 work in life make the severest demands upon 
 your highest powers and fullest resources; 
 and let your powers be so high and so strong 
 and your resources so ample that the greatest 
 demands may be met. That calling is to be 
 your calling which calls for the largest in you, 
 and that life is to be your life in which you 
 live your largest self, and that largest self is 
 the divine and the human being which you 
 are. You will, therefore, never be satisfied 
 with making a living. You must live a life 
 that is human in its content and divine in its 
 relations. 
 
 The last year of the century is a year for the 
 Anglo-Saxon race unlike any other year for 
 many decades. It is a year of war against in- 
 ferior races. In the present degree of civ- 
 ilization, war is inevitable. War makes laws 
 silent. War uses reason to deceive, con- 
 science to debase, and will to destroy. War 
 reverses the highest and the lowest. What 
 civilization puts up, war puts down. What 
 war puts up, civilization puts down. It is 
 not because man has not found the human and 
 the divine in himself, and in his brother, but it 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 173 
 
 is because man has found the inhuman and 
 the unhuman and the devilish in himself and 
 in his brother that he fights and slays. You 
 are to live your life and to do your work in 
 the first half of the new century. May that 
 century be a century of peace! For in such 
 peace, that reason in you, which is the tran- 
 script of the divine reason, shall have the widest 
 field of understanding; in such peace, that 
 conscience which is the voice of God in your 
 bosom, shall speak the most wisely and per- 
 suasively; in such peace, your will shall have 
 noblest opportunity for giving the best service 
 for the re-creating of the second Eden, which 
 shall be the service of God. 
 The members of the graduating classes: 
 My Friends: That book of the Bible 
 whence is taken my first text, describes the 
 paradise in which were placed man and 
 woman, their temptation, their fall, and their 
 expulsion in sorrow and pain and shame. 
 That book of the Bible whence is taken my 
 second text describes the second paradise in 
 which are the men and women who are no 
 longer tempted, who no longer fail or fall, 
 from whose eyes are washed the tears and 
 whose songs are hosannas. At some place 
 and time between these two paradises your 
 
174 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 lives are placed, but nearer at this present 
 time to the paradise which is to be regained 
 than to the paradise which has been lost. Year 
 by year, day by day, are your lives to ap- 
 proach yet nearer the second paradise. For 
 reason, enlightened by truth, shall lead you 
 thither by ever quickening but never hurrying 
 footsteps; the divine name shall be on your 
 foreheads ; the call of conscience shall in fullest 
 revelation find God within as well as without, 
 for the Lord God shall give light; the will 
 shall be taught in the obedience of perfect 
 law and of perfect freedom ; the divine statutes 
 shall be sung in the house of pilgrimage; the 
 divine in you shall become more divine, be- 
 cause it has become more human; and the hu- 
 man shall become more human, because it has 
 become more divine. At last shall you find 
 yourself coming to your full being in His like- 
 ness, and then shall you be satisfied. Until 
 the dawn of that day, whether near or remote, 
 may God keep you and bless you; may God 
 make His face to shine upon you and be 
 gracious unto you ; may God lift up His coun- 
 tenance upon you and give you peace. 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 175 
 
 XII 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF THE 
 EDUCATED MAN OF THE TWEN- 
 TIETH CENTURY 
 
 Text : " Now the end of the commandment is 
 charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, 
 and of faith unfeigned." i Timothy i. 5. 
 
 is the theologian of the early 
 church ; John its mystic ; Peter and James 
 its executives. Yet the theologian 
 writes the mystical and practical words of my 
 text. These words are mystical and practical. 
 They are also theological. They are com- 
 prehensive and inclusive of the end, content, 
 and method of Christianity. They could be 
 made the basis of sermons on many topics. I 
 desire, however, to make them the basis of 
 this theme: the theology of the educated man 
 or woman in the twentieth century. 
 
 Every man has a theology. The man who 
 thinks at all thinks of his relation to a su- 
 preme being. What am I? Whence do I 
 come? Where am I? Whither am I going? 
 
176 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 These are question which each man asks, to 
 which the answers, if found at all, are found 
 in theology. The revelations of the past, the 
 intimations of the future, the duties of the 
 present demand that one who thinks at all 
 shall think of his relation to his God. Above 
 all others the college man and woman must 
 think on these problems. Of all problems they 
 are the most profound: they arouse think- 
 ing. Of all problems they are the most com- 
 plex: they demand analysis. Of all problems 
 they are the most comprehensive: they 
 quicken the highest elements of being. Man 
 may be an agnostic in positive knowledge; he 
 cannot be an agnostic in thought upon these 
 ultimate questions. 
 
 What shall be the theology of the educated 
 man of the new century, what shall he believe, 
 what shall he not believe, what may he be- 
 lieve, what must he believe to deserve the 
 name of Christian? 
 
 The two points of the ellipse of theological 
 truth are, of course, God and man. 
 
 Regarding God, man will believe that God 
 is: he will not be an atheist. He will believe 
 that God is one: he will not be a polytheist. 
 He will believe that God is a person, not a 
 force: he will not be a deist. He will believe 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 177 
 
 that God is the being behind all : the Creator. 
 He will believe that God is the being in all: 
 a Providence. He will believe that God is 
 the being before and after all: eternal destiny. 
 He will believe in spirit controlling matter: 
 he will not be a materialist. He will believe 
 in the separation of spirit and matter: he will 
 not be a pantheist. 
 
 He will also believe that God has mani- 
 fested himself. This manifestation of God 
 may be found in a book or may be found 
 in a person. If found in a person, he will 
 believe that this manifestation is found 
 in Jesus Christ. He may or he may not be 
 willing to accept certain doctrines which have 
 long been taught, but he will believe that the 
 coming of Christ is the " one far off divine 
 event " toward which humanity moves and 
 by which it still moves. Without discussing 
 the mysteries of the two natures in one per- 
 sonality, he will believe that in Christ is seen 
 the perfect man, the ideal of the race, toward 
 which the race is ever progressing. His cradle 
 is the Bethlehem where are born eternal 
 hopes; his cross is the altar on which are 
 worthily laid humanity's choicest offerings in 
 love and gratitude. If the superhuman con- 
 ception be not accepted, his sinless perfection 
 
178 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 is gratefully recognized. Christ is heard as 
 humanity's prophet, who tells and foretells all 
 that humanity may become in perfection. 
 Christ is humanity's high priest, who dies 
 himself for those for whom he prays. Christ 
 is humanity's king, to whom humanity exults 
 to be in subjection. 
 
 The educated man of the new century will 
 believe that God is good, that He loves man. 
 He will believe that God is of all power, that 
 He can help man. He will believe that man 
 can and ought to love God. He is compelled 
 to believe that some men do not love God. 
 He must also believe that disobedience to the 
 laws of God works damage to himself. He 
 further believes that obedience to the laws of 
 God results in betterment to himself and to all. 
 He believes that nature and God strive with 
 man in order to persuade man to live for and 
 to love the best. He also believes that man's 
 own conscience urges him to live for and to 
 love the best. These processes may be called 
 conversion or regeneration. 
 
 The educated man will also find his the- 
 ology in a book as well as in a person. The 
 Bible remains as the great book of religion 
 and of theology. Much debate about the Bible 
 has arisen from trying to find in the Bible 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 179 
 
 what is not in it and what was never designed 
 to be found in it. It is not a text-book in 
 geology or astronomy. It is not a text-book 
 in history. It is a book of religion and of 
 ethics. It bears its own authority in its own 
 utterances. It bears witness of its own in- 
 spirations in the uniqueness of its teachings. 
 Questions of method of inspiration, questions 
 of lower and of higher criticism do not touch 
 the essential integrity of the volume as the one 
 book of the world in religion and ethics. 
 
 Such will be the simple content of the theol- 
 ogy of the educated man in the new century. 
 It will be a very simple theology. It will re- 
 late to the fundamental doctrines of God's 
 character and of man's nature and of the rela- 
 tion existing between God and man. All of 
 truth will minister to its enrichment. Biol- 
 ogy, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, 
 will offer their contribution, but when each 
 science has done its utmost for the enrichment 
 of theology the theology itself will still remain 
 very simple. 
 
 More important than the content of the be- 
 lief, however, is the method or condition, 
 or mood, of holding it. 
 
 The educated man of the new century will 
 hold his beliefs on the ground of the evidence 
 
180 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 presented for them. This evidence will make 
 its appeal to the reason. The appeal thus 
 made will be conclusive and supreme. Alto- 
 gether too long and too much have Chris- 
 tianity and theology been afraid of the reason. 
 The reason, what does it do? The rea- 
 son, rather, what does it not do? It 
 is the supreme product of nature in the king- 
 dom of the intellect. It is the supreme prod- 
 uct ^of omnipotence in the realm of the intel- 
 lect. The chief struggle of life has been to 
 create a brain. The development has pro- 
 ceeded from the physical to the cerebral. As 
 the development has continued the signifi- 
 cance of the cerebral function has increased. 
 The reason searches for the truth, and, hav- 
 ing found what seems to be the truth, it offers 
 its prize to the heart to be loved, to the will 
 to be chosen, to the conscience to be accepted 
 or obeyed. The reason searches for the truth, 
 and if in the search it finds what seems to be 
 the false it discards it and discards it because 
 it is false. The apparent conflict between rea- 
 son and revelation is one of the saddest of con- 
 flicts. Saddest because it is absolutely un- 
 necessary, and saddest also because of the de- 
 vastation wrought. What shall decide, who 
 shall decide, whether what offers itself as a 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 181 
 
 revelation be a revelation from God, or a rev- 
 elation from the false prophet? What shall 
 decide, who shall decide, whether the revela- 
 tion of the Koran or the revelation of the 
 Bible be true? What determines the genuine 
 and what the counterfeit? What decides 
 whether an assumption be valid or invalid? 
 Every prophet declares himself to be inspired. 
 Who shall say upon whose lips rests the divine 
 fire? The answer to be given, the one and only 
 answer to be given, is in the reason of man. 
 Reason, you never can have too much of it. 
 Reason, you can never use it too constantly, 
 too profoundly, too carefully, too accurately, 
 too reverently. In one of his notebooks Phil- 
 lips Brooks said : " The Mohammedans have 
 the golden gate into the mosque of Omar 
 heavily walled up. There is a tradition that if 
 ever they are driven out of possession it will 
 be by Jews or Christians entering by that 
 gate. Like this is the way in which many 
 Christians, feeling that attacks upon religion 
 are likeliest to come upon the side of reason, 
 instead of simply arming themselves on that 
 side and keeping watch that the gateway be 
 used only for its proper passers, wall it up 
 altogether and refuse to reason at all about 
 their faith." 
 
182 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 Reason demands the respect which truth, 
 goodness, righteousness demand. Rational- 
 ism is not an excess of reason, not an " ism " 
 of reason, but rationalism is an irrational use 
 of reason, an irrational application of its own 
 forces. 
 
 In your use of reason in theology you will 
 differentiate the values in beliefs and also 
 the evidences for beliefs. The belief, for in- 
 stance in the personality of God, is more pre- 
 cious than the belief touching His government 
 of the world. The evidence that He is a person 
 is stronger than the evidence of His providence. 
 The truth that man owes to God certain duties 
 and the evidence for this truth are more im- 
 portant than the truth that man was created 
 with a nature having evil appetites. The truth 
 that man is a sinner, and the evidence for this 
 truth, are more clear than any theory of future 
 retribution. Truths in theology do not lie as 
 lies the sod of the prairie, as a level, either 
 dead or living, but truths in theology lie as 
 the American continent, great ranges of di- 
 vine teachings, lifting their mighty forces and 
 hiding themselves in the unknown, between 
 which rest the broad prairies of simple truths, 
 bearing hope, strength, life unto all. 
 
 But though the reason originates, declares, 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 183 
 
 and holds beliefs, I should also say that many 
 beliefs have a distinct relation to the heart. 
 Beliefs are not always clear, orderly, articu- 
 late; like the sun, they have a penumbra. 
 Their cradle often is found in the heart, rather 
 than in the intellect. They begin rather as 
 feelings than as assurances. They come from 
 some unknown source, like the daylight, long 
 before the rising of the sun. The heart has 
 its reasons, says Pascal, of which the reason 
 knows not. They are vague, shadowy forms, 
 flitting about on the horizon of the emotions 
 and understanding. They are akin to those 
 instinctive senses which animals often possess 
 in the presence of dangers which are unseen 
 and unheard but not unfelt. They are akin to 
 those intimations of wrong which Scott, in 
 Peveril of the Peak, describes as belonging to 
 his heroine. Such beliefs are rather trailing 
 clouds which may be of glory or not, but they 
 are certainly not sunlight. Such beliefs 
 cradled in the feelings one is to cherish. One 
 is not to make haste to state them in the terms 
 of the intellect, or in the terms of the will, or 
 in the terms of the conscience. Lying in the 
 heart for a time, they come to possess a capac- 
 ity for growth and for development. Beliefs 
 that pass early into the intellectual realm are 
 
184 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 in peril of becoming fixed, stratified, petrified. 
 That acute political philosopher, Sir Henry 
 Sumner Maine, says: "When primitive law 
 has once been embodied in a code, there is an 
 end to what may be called its spontaneous de- 
 velopment." As long as one can keep his 
 belief in his heart, as long as he can hold 
 his beliefs not as beliefs, but as hypotheses, 
 not as hypotheses, but as fancies, without 
 being fanciful, as long as one can hold 
 his beliefs as sentiments without being senti- 
 mental, so long are these beliefs nourished 
 into a life, fair, large, developing. Not too 
 long, however, are these beliefs to be tended 
 and watched in the cradle of the heart. At 
 last they are to be turned over from the nurse 
 of the heart to the trainer of the reason. He, 
 the disciplinarian of the judgment, shall give 
 to them orderliness, form, relationship, com- 
 pleteness. 
 
 One is also ever to hold his beliefs in tolera- 
 tion for the beliefs of other men. Political 
 toleration we have learned ; theological tolera- 
 tion we are learning. The secret of toleration 
 is not indifference; the secret of toleration is 
 recognition and appreciation. The eagerness 
 that each man shall have a belief, the recogni- 
 tion of the right of each man to hold his be- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 186 
 
 lief, and the appreciation of the worthiness of 
 his beliefs, these represent toleration. I go 
 to India, where Jacob Chamberlain and Jones, 
 and other sons of the college, have labored 
 many years in noblest service. I go to India 
 to tell this ancient people about what seems to 
 me to be the best life, and about the wisest 
 methods for living the best life. I find among 
 this people beliefs long held which seem to 
 me to be false. What shall I do? Shall I at 
 once say: " Your truths are lies. Your theol- 
 ogies are false. Your ethics is base." Rather 
 shall I not say : " It is well for you to believe, 
 but the truth only is worthy of your belief. 
 Is what you believe the truth? Is it the whole 
 truth? Is it a partial truth? If it be a partial 
 truth, the partial error discard, the partial 
 truth accept. Let me tell you what seems to 
 be a truth, holier, richer, more truthful truth 
 than what you accept." Such a holding and 
 such a declaring of your truth, such a vision 
 and such a message, represent a toleration in 
 which your truth and you who hold it are to 
 live. 
 
 You are also to hold your simple theology 
 in the mood of expectancy. Your theology 
 is not a product manufactured, finished; it is 
 rather a plant, rooting itself in the ground of 
 
186 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 your convictions, putting forth new branches 
 of aspirations, bearing blossoms and fruit of 
 which once you had no intimation. Your be- 
 lief is to find its type, not in the Greek temple, 
 orderly, regular, complete, neither too much 
 nor too little, in which each stone is fitted for 
 every other, wherein roof and foundation and 
 all that rests between could not be anything 
 else than it is. Your belief is rather to find 
 its type in the Gothic cathedral, in which arch 
 and spire and vaulted roof, bay and buttress, 
 spring up and out into the light and the shade, 
 the openness and the blindness of the forest, 
 giving assurances of progress and of advance- 
 ment of which you have never dreamed. Of 
 course, new truth is to break forth from God's 
 word and from God's world. The son of a 
 distinguished American, himself conspicuous 
 and able, said to me that among his father's 
 papers he found a slip on which were written 
 these words: "The Old Testament is the 
 revelation of God the Father. The New Testa- 
 ment is the revelation of God the Son. Will 
 there be a revelation of God the Holy Ghost? " 
 No third book may descend from the sky, but 
 man's spirit, giving itself to books already 
 written, man's mind interpreting the phe- 
 nomena of life, is a revelation of God the Holy 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 187 
 
 Ghost. God is made a being more real and 
 more vital to every man by reason of the 
 discoveries of natural science. Man, there- 
 fore, is still to keep his face toward the East. 
 New risings of old suns of truth are to be, 
 new risings of new suns of truth are to be 
 expected and hoped for. Even in your nights 
 and because of your nights new stars of reve- 
 lation are to roll within the circle of your 
 vision. 
 
 Beliefs thus held in reason, in heart, in toler- 
 ance and expectancy come to take a normal 
 and natural place in your character and life. 
 They are, like the color of your eyes, char- 
 acteristic. They, like your face and form, be- 
 long to you. In them is nothing foreign, ex- 
 traneous, unnatural. They are like the food 
 you eat, nourishing; they are like the gym- 
 nastics you take, strengthening; they are like 
 the clothes you wear, fitness. In them you 
 live, for them you are willing to die, for with- 
 out them you could not live at all. 
 
 What shall be the effect of such a theology 
 thus held on the individual and on the com- 
 munity? 
 
 A definite system of theology strongly held 
 tends to make a strong people. Both as cause 
 and result a system of theology strongly held 
 
188 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 makes a strong people. The 21,000 persons 
 who came to what we now call New England 
 before the year 1640 were a race distinguished 
 by their intellectual power and their moral 
 earnestness. In them was found as large a 
 proportion of college-bred men as could be 
 found in a population of similar size in the 
 world. " The ashes of a hard student, a good 
 scholar and a great Christian/' was the epi- 
 taph written on the tombstone of a young 
 preacher, dead at the age of nineteen. " If 
 God make thee a good Christian and a good 
 scholar, thou hast all that thy mother ever 
 asked for thee," said a high-spirited New 
 England woman to her child. Politics, edu- 
 cation, all work, all life, were touched with 
 the spirit of earnestness and of piety. As has 
 said a great scholar, himself dead this year: 
 " For the first time, it may be, in the history 
 of the world, these people brought together 
 the subtle brain of the metaphysician and the 
 glowing heart of the fanatic; and they flung 
 both vehemently into the service of religion. 
 Never were men more logical or self-con- 
 sistent, in theory and in practice. Religion, 
 they said, was the chief thing; they meant it; 
 they acted upon it. They did not attempt to 
 combine the sacred and the secular; they sim- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 189 
 
 ply abolished the secular, and left only the 
 sacred. The state became the church; the 
 king, a priest; politics, a department of theol- 
 ogy; citizenship, the privilege of those only 
 who had received baptism and the Lord's sup- 
 per." 
 
 Can a system of religious belief which has 
 no map of the divine mind, which argues 
 about the reality of Providence, and which 
 may declare that the chief value of prayer is 
 subjective, can a system of religious beliefs 
 which holds firmly and simply a few great 
 principles have an effect equally impressive, 
 formative, inspiring, as the Puritan theology 
 of New England of two hundred and fifty 
 years ago? At once let me say I do believe 
 that a theology simple, fundamental, com- 
 posed of a few great principles, may have an 
 effect equally impressive, equally significant, 
 and more enduring. 
 
 Two results, at least, a simple theology 
 should work among men. One is, an in- 
 crease of the sense of human brotherhood. 
 Simple beliefs represent the elements in which 
 all are able to unite. Simple beliefs are like 
 the air, which all breathe, the earth on which 
 all walk, the sun whence all draw light and 
 warmth. These elemental beliefs are the great 
 
190 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 rock foundation of humanity. Beneath the 
 changing of seasons and of climate and of soil, 
 of different intellectual relations, they bind 
 the world of man together into a single 
 brotherhood. Such a sense of simple and 
 of single brotherhood is the great need of hu- 
 manity. This need is rilled by loyalty to 
 these simple standards. Such a need is also 
 in part being filled by the great industrial 
 organizations of society. These organizations 
 are uniting and not disintegrating forces. They 
 are not setting capital against labor or labor 
 against capital; they are uniting capital with 
 capital; labor with labor, and also labor and 
 capital with each other. Reinforcement of the 
 uniting principle of a simple theology is found 
 in the unifying method of modern industrial 
 expansion. 
 
 To this industrial age Christianity comes 
 offering a simple faith, speaking an in- 
 spiring message, and giving a clear com- 
 mand of love. To an age in which the world 
 daily becomes smaller and more compact 
 Christianity comes and offers a creed written 
 in principles and not in methods. To an age 
 eager for results Christianity comes and offers 
 means open to all for winning the finest char- 
 acter. To an age whose chief characteristic 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 191 
 
 is force, the creating and conveying of force, 
 whose symbol is an electric spark, Christian- 
 ity comes and preaches a gospel of service for 
 and through all. The simple beliefs of this 
 age make for the unity of man, making for 
 the unity of man they make for the strength, 
 wisdom, triumph of manhood. 
 
 A simple belief, moreover, makes a mightier 
 impression on the individual. If it unite all 
 into one brotherhood, it tends to unite all the 
 parts of one's individual being into an organ 
 of power more powerful. A simple belief can 
 be more easily grasped; it, therefore, more 
 easily grasps and controls man. A simple 
 belief the heart more easily appreciates; there- 
 fore, it can more easily qualify and impress the 
 heart. 
 
 A simple belief is a clear call to the 
 will; therefore, the will accepts a simple belief 
 the more promptly. The divorce between 
 morals and religion a simple belief bridges 
 over. For the belief is real and vital ; it carries 
 the reality of ethics into religion, it carries 
 the power of religion into ethics. A simple 
 belief gives to labor for man, for man fallen, 
 for man fallen in the dark, a motive born not 
 simply of the dreadfulness of the fate which 
 awaits him, but also a motive born of the ab- 
 
192 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 solute needs of the believer's and laborer's own 
 condition and character. " The belief that 
 means so much to me," he cries, " I must give 
 unto others also." 
 
 A theology, therefore, which unites all men 
 and which impresses each man with its power 
 and worth must be a theology which will make 
 for the betterment of the race. In the three 
 hundred years following the ascension of 
 Christ the Roman empire became a Christian 
 empire. The remark of Julian, uttered in the 
 bitterness of his broken heart, " Galileean, 
 thou hast conquered," was the absolute truth. 
 One reason of the swift conquest of the Ro- 
 man world lies in the simplicity of the faith of 
 the conquerors. A simple faith is again to 
 conquer the world. It shall transmute so- 
 ciety into a redeemed community, as it has 
 transformed the individual. It shall make the 
 corporation the greatest power for righteous- 
 ness, as it has blessed the individual merchant 
 and mechanic. It shall drive out the still vices, 
 which are the worst, from the race, as it has 
 restrained disorder, protected property and 
 shielded life. It shall make the obligation of 
 the officer, or of the community, no less bind- 
 ing than the obligations of the private cit- 
 izen. 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 193 
 
 In a largeness of endeavor for society which 
 shall not neglect the individual, in an intensity 
 of service for the individual which shall not al- 
 low society to suffer, in a height of purpose so 
 high that its ends can be accomplished only in 
 infinite ages, in an immediateness of duty 
 which neglects no detail, man shall take up 
 his work, with a simple faith in his God and a 
 simple faith in himself. The doing of such 
 work demands, among many other virtues, the 
 virtue of patience. God works and man should 
 be content to work as if he had a whole eter- 
 nity to work in. Through this work a divine 
 humanity is to be; as sure as the sun shines 
 and the tides flow, so sure is humanity again 
 to become divine. The Christ may or may 
 not reappear in his single person, but the 
 Christ is to come back in the person of a 
 divine and glorified humanity. You may say, 
 in Locksley Hall: 
 
 " Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, for- 
 ward let us range. 
 
 Let the great world spin forever down the ringing 
 grooves of change. 
 
 " Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the 
 
 younger day; 
 Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay, 
 
194 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 44 Mother Age (for mine I know not) help me as when 
 life begun; 
 
 Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the light- 
 nings, weigh the sun " 
 
 Or you may say in Locksley Hall, Sixty 
 Years After : 
 
 " Felt within us as ourselves, the powers of good, the 
 
 powers of ill, 
 Strowing balm, or shedding poison in the fountains 
 
 of the will. 
 
 " Follow you the star that lights a desert pathway, 
 
 yours or mine. 
 Forward, till you see the highest human nature is 
 
 divine. 
 
 " Follow light, and do the right for man can half 
 
 control his doom 
 Till you find the deathless angel seated in the vacant 
 
 tomb. 
 
 44 Forward, let the stormy moment fly and mingle 
 
 with the past. 
 I that loathed, have come to love him. 
 
 Love will conquer at the last." 
 
 Members of the graduating classes : As you 
 rise and stand it is not one before whom you 
 stand; it is not one who speaks to you; it is 
 the scores of teachers and officers to whom 
 you have held relations these years before 
 whom you stand, and it is for them that one 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 195 
 
 voice speaks. No wish have we had, no at- 
 tempt have we made, to give you beliefs. No 
 wish have we had, no attempt have we made, 
 to put certain shibboleths upon your lips; 
 rather both our wish and our endeavor have 
 been so to enrich, so to inspire, so to guide, 
 so to help that you would be able and eager 
 to form and to hold right beliefs for yourself, 
 so that you would be able and eager to affirm 
 and to sing your own rallying cries and clear 
 calls of duty. Life, though related to belief, 
 is far more than belief. Our wish has been 
 to help you to live well, as well as to believe 
 truthfully. 
 
 Therefore, with confidence in the reason, 
 with faith in the heart of man, in tolerance 
 for all, in patient and exultant expectancy, 
 I ask you to believe and to live. Your simple 
 belief thus believed, your simple life thus lived, 
 will give to you breadth without thinness and 
 depth without narrowness. You shall thus go 
 on toward a greatness which is not bigness, in 
 a strength which shall be gentle because it is 
 so strong, and unto a triumph of character so 
 triumphant that it shall be unconscious of its 
 victories. 
 
 Life may or may not withhold its prizes ; my 
 care is small, but let not life withhold itself 
 
196 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 from you, let not you withhold yourselves 
 from life. Thus shall life become to you like 
 the seventy-five years of the old college, a sign 
 not of the age of age, but a sign of the youth 
 of age, which, as it lengthens, shall broaden, 
 deepen, heighten, and which shall, in the prog- 
 ress of time, become and be eternal youth. 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 197 
 
 XIII 
 
 EDUCATION THE PERFECTION OF 
 
 MAN 
 
 " For instruction in righteousness : That the man 
 of God may be perfect/' 2 Timothy iii. 16, 17. 
 
 THE family, the church, the government, 
 the book, the newspaper, society, and 
 the university these are the forms in 
 which humanity organizes itself. Certain of 
 these forms have lost, certain of these forms 
 have gained, in influence in the last decade and 
 years. But whichever of them have lost or 
 whichever of them have gained, it is clear, that 
 in the last decades the university has gained. 
 In no year has the gain of the higher educa- 
 tion been so great as in the year now clos- 
 ing. Not to speak of the numberless small sums 
 given to education, the confirmation of the 
 Stanford foundation, the donation of $10,000,- 
 ooo for research made by Mr. Carnegie, and 
 the bequest of Cecil Rhodes represents more 
 than $50,000,000 given for the higher educa- 
 tion in a twelve-month. Such giving the world 
 
198 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 has never seen. When fifty years ago Joshua 
 Bates gave $50,000 for the Boston Public 
 Library, the endowment was heralded far more 
 than the giving of fifty $50,000 libraries by 
 Andrew Carnegie. When Mr. Lawrence gave 
 $50,000 to endow a scientific school bearing his 
 name, it was said to be the largest sum ever 
 given at one time by any man for the higher 
 education. But the academic year now clos- 
 ing has seen gifts of more than $50,000,000 
 from only three individuals, and as many more 
 millions from many individuals, all for the 
 higher education. These gifts are for the 
 present purpose mainly significant as signs, 
 rather than as causes or as results, of the ad- 
 vancing force which education and espe- 
 cially the higher education holds among 
 the progressive powers of civilization. Is it 
 too much to say that education has become 
 the most dominant force in human affairs? 
 Is it not true that the university represents 
 the whole educational process by which hu- 
 manity is lifting itself into nobler domains and 
 wider relationships? For the university has 
 come to stand in the modern life for what the 
 sense of beauty signified in Greece, what force 
 signified in Rome, for what holiness signified 
 in Jerusalem, and for what liberty signified 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 199 
 
 in the Anglo-Saxon capital. Education has 
 become regnant and supreme. 
 
 If this interpretation be just, the conclusion 
 is inevitable that education should be pre- 
 pared to assume a worthy and great leader- 
 ship. Therefore the question emerges what 
 kind of an education should an education which 
 takes to itself great leadership be? What are 
 its marks, its elements, its qualities, its char- 
 acteristics? In the answer to this question I 
 shall, through your permission, use the time 
 that we are together to-night. 
 
 (i) An education which is capable of being 
 the leading force in human society should be 
 broad. It should be a whole education. It 
 should touch every part of the individual. To 
 the five-fold being of every man it should 
 address itself. 
 
 An education which is capable of being 
 the leading force in society will contain as its 
 primary element the intellectual. To the 
 intellect it will first appeal. Education is 
 to teach the individual to see the truth clearly, 
 to value truth accurately, and to infer new 
 truth from old truth with justice. Education 
 is to open the judgment, to enlarge the under- 
 standing, to ennoble the reason. Education is 
 to transmute knowledge into thought and 
 
200 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 thought into wisdom. Primary in point of 
 time, and not less primary in point of impor- 
 tance, is the place of the intellect. But the 
 university will not, of course, be content with 
 the training of the intellect. Man is or has 
 a heart. The appetite, the desires, the affec- 
 tions, have a place in the training of the whole 
 man. The university will not decline to con- 
 sider the heart as an essential part of man's 
 being. The central and comprehensive ele- 
 ment of the heart is what is called love. 
 This principle, from which springs the 
 greatest poems, is the principle which edu- 
 cation should consider. Dante's heaven is 
 love, Dante's hell is hate. The height of 
 Goethe's drama is reached when the trans- 
 mutation of animal passion into pure affection 
 is complete. " All's love, all's law, all's love," 
 sings Browning. The finest lines which 
 Tennyson believed he ever sung are those 
 which interpret love as life's supreme force. 
 
 The heart whose power and place are tp 
 give love and to receive love that is so com- 
 prehensive, so vital, so infinite, is to be trained, 
 enriched, strengthened by the worthiest educa- 
 tion. 
 
 In the breadth of training which an educa- 
 tion worthy of leadership is to give, the will of 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 201 
 
 the individual is to receive discipline. Leader- 
 ship represents power, and power is a function 
 of the will, and will is the faculty of power. 
 Our first ideas of power may be derived from 
 the exercise of the will. The will is the real 
 executive, the genuine administrator, the cre- 
 ative master. To the making of such a char- 
 acter the university is to give itself. The uni- 
 versity is not to give itself simply to the mak- 
 ing of college dons. Take up Dean Burgon's 
 " Lives of Twelve Good Men," and you read 
 of Routh, "the learned divine;" of Rose, the 
 " restorer of the old paths; " of Mariott, " the 
 man of saintly life ; " of Cotton, " the humble 
 Christian;" of Greswell, "the faithful stew- 
 ard ; " of Higgins, " the good layman," 
 and others. It is well to be a learned 
 divine, a restorer of the old paths, a man 
 of saintly life, a humble Christian, a faith- 
 ful steward, a good layman, but men of 
 these types are not the men of master- 
 ful, dominant will. This age is an age of men 
 of will. Its great men are the men who do. 
 Its most conspicuous representatives are the 
 executives. Its most popular poet is the poet 
 of power. The university is to train the func- 
 tion of power the will. 
 In the training of the whole man education 
 
202 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 is not to neglect what is called by an awkward 
 phrase, the aesthetic faculty. This faculty is to 
 cause the individual to appreciate the beautiful, 
 the grand, the sublime, the majestic. The Ro- 
 man arch ever bends over us in the sky, the 
 Gothic arch is pictured in every leaf, but the 
 eye and the mind look at each without seeing 
 or appreciating either the significance of the 
 infinite, or the oneness of creation. The 
 spaces of the air, the reaches of the ocean, the 
 silence of time, the action or interaction of 
 forces signify great principles. But it is only 
 the heart that is open, the mind that is re- 
 ceptive which can receive the great lessons 
 of these existences. The university in order 
 to give a worthy education must teach an 
 appreciation of the beautiful. 
 
 But education also is to make its appeal to 
 the conscience. Moral phenomena are life's 
 real phenomena. If the intellect is concerned 
 with the true, the will with the good, the 
 aesthetic faculty with the beautiful, the con- 
 science is concerned with the right. It is sig- 
 nificant that the two most conspicuous edu- 
 cators of the middle part of the last century 
 in the English-speaking world laid particular 
 emphasis upon the moral element of education. 
 Dr. Arnold once said it was not necessary that 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 203 
 
 Rugby should be a school of a certain num- 
 ber of students, but it was necessary that it 
 should be a school of gentlemen. Horace 
 Mann caused to be put into the diplomas 
 which were given to the graduates of Antioch 
 College the phrases, " In consideration of the 
 proficiency you have made in the liberal arts 
 and sciences; in further consideration also of 
 the reputable character you have here main- 
 tained, and the exemplary life you have here 
 led." The wish is expressed that you " may so 
 comport yourselves on the great mission of life 
 on which you are now about to enter, that you 
 may be ornaments to your country, blessings 
 to mankind, and faithful servants of Almighty 
 God." The Hebrew idea of education as holi- 
 ness is still regnant. The Greek idea of moral 
 excellence is still insistent. The Roman idea 
 of duty, ofikium, is still emphatic. Our litera- 
 ture is great because it is a literature that 
 emphasizes duty and righteousness. No 
 literature in all the world embodies moral ex- 
 cellence as does our own. Education to be- 
 come a worthy leader must use the moral veri- 
 ties. 
 
 Therefore I say that if education is to be 
 a worthy force dominating human affairs, it 
 must be a broad education. It is to train the 
 
204 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 intellect to think truly, the heart to feel power- 
 fully, the will to choose justly, the aesthetic 
 faculty to appreciate fittingly, and the con- 
 science to do rightly. It is to train the whole 
 man. It is to take upon itself a love which 
 dominates, an art which symbolizes, a re- 
 ligion which the church enriches and ennobles, 
 a knowledge which the book represents, a hu- 
 man relation with the government types, and 
 a culture which society promotes. It is in- 
 deed to be a broad education. 
 
 (2) But an education which is designed 
 to lead humanity is to be a social education. 
 It is to be concerned, not only with all there is 
 in man, but also to be concerned with all men. 
 It is to be missionary in motive and outlook. 
 What is called secondary education has be- 
 come compulsory. Each child in the State 
 shall go to school so many weeks in each year. 
 The university should become compulsory, not 
 so made by the State, but by its might, large- 
 ness, helping and blessing all men. The old 
 church of the New England hill-top stood forth 
 in the midst of winter, triumphant, cold, self- 
 contained; in summer heat it stood forth bold, 
 bare, bald. Such is not the condition of the 
 modern university as a human force. It is 
 rather to be like the summer, shedding forth 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 205 
 
 light and heat into every part. It is to be like 
 gravitation, pervasive. Of course, it is not to 
 be assumed that every man will wish to be 
 educated. No heathen nation ever wishes to 
 be a Christian nation. The work of the mis- 
 sionary is to create a wish, to cause a need. 
 One of the works of the university is to create 
 a desire for education. Its work is to make 
 boys and girls wish to come to college. The 
 Oxford of Gibbon has forever passed away. 
 You recall his description. " I spent four- 
 teen months at Magdalen College; they proved 
 the fourteen months the most idle and un- 
 profitable of my whole life." The colleges of 
 Oxford and Cambridge were founded in an 
 age of darkness and of barbarous sciences, and 
 they are still tainted with the conditions of 
 their origin. The college is to give itself with 
 zeal and earnestness and enthusiasm to the edu- 
 cating of men. It must call men unto itself, it 
 must go unto men. The university must be ex- 
 tension. You recall what Bradford says of 
 the motive of the Pilgrims. Among the last 
 reasons which he gives for the coming of the 
 Mayflower band, and not the least, was the 
 great hope and inward zeal that they had for 
 laying some great foundation, or, at least, mak- 
 ing some way thereunto for propagating and 
 
206 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 advancing the kingdom of Christ in these re- 
 mote parts of the world. In the university 
 the pilgrim motive must dominate. The uni- 
 versity is to be the Mayflower bearing seeds of 
 the new life to the old world. 
 
 (3) The university to become a worthy 
 leader of civilzation is not simply to bear in 
 mind a conception of education touching the 
 individual and touching all men. The uni- 
 versity is also to know that its power lies in 
 men of power. The library is sometimes 
 called the laboratory of laboratories. And the 
 laboratory is sometimes called the most im- 
 portant material element of the university. 
 But do not forget that Athens had no library 
 until the time of Hadrian, and do not forget 
 that Athens had her Plato and Aristotle and 
 Demosthenes, and Pericles. Athens also had 
 her Sophists, and Mr. Grote says that the 
 Sophists had nothing to commend them ex- 
 cept their superior knowledge and intellectual 
 fame combined with an imposing personality. 
 I do not forget that Oxford had no library un- 
 til recent years, the Bodleian is soon to ob- 
 serve its ter-centenary, and none to-day that 
 is worthy. But Oxford has had great voices 
 and great souls. "What is your greatest 
 work," was once asked of the elder Agassiz. 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 207 
 
 " The training of three men/' was his answer. 
 " What is your greatest discovery/' was asked 
 of Sir Humphry Davy. " Faraday ," was the 
 answer. The call for great men in the college 
 and in the university is the unceasing call. 
 Commerce cries out for men great in power 
 of organization. The university demands 
 men great in thought, for the intellect; mighty 
 in love, for the heart; absolute in the right, 
 for the conscience; beautiful in character and 
 omnipotent in a righteous will. The college 
 wants and must have great men. An Ameri- 
 can founding Robert College on the Bos- 
 porus, writing of his own college on the day of 
 graduation, exclaims : " Farewell, Bowdoin 
 College, farewell beloved classmates of 1834. 
 Professors Cleveland, Upham, Newman, 
 Smythe, Packard, and Longfellow, every name 
 excites emotions of gratitude, admiration, and 
 love." Matthew Arnold in his poem Rugby 
 Chapel, sings: 
 
 But souls tempered with fire, 
 Fervent, heroic and good, 
 Helpers and friends of mankind. 
 
 Ye, like angels, appear, 
 Radiant with ardor divine! 
 
208 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 Beacons of hope, ye appear! 
 Languor is not in your heart, 
 Weakness is not in your word, 
 Weariness not on your brow. 
 Ye alight in our van! at your voice 
 Panic, despair flee away, 
 Ye move through the ranks, recall 
 The stragglers, refresh the outworn, 
 Praise, reinspire the brave! 
 Order, courage, return. 
 Eyes rekindling, and prayers, 
 Follow your steps as you go. 
 Ye fill up the gaps in our files, 
 Strengthen the wavering line, 
 Stablish, continue our march, 
 On, to the bound of the waste, 
 On, to the City of God." 
 
 (4) The higher education to be a worthy 
 force in civilization must also be religious. It 
 is to have relation to him whom we call God. 
 It is to be concerned with infinite reality. 
 Shall the university have a right to know the 
 work in which the human spirit has been em- 
 bodying itself, poetry, essay, history, and 
 not have a right to reflect on him whose pres- 
 ence inspires, and whose wisdom guides each? 
 Shall the higher education have a right to ob- 
 serve phenomena of the visible creation and to 
 know the relations and inter-relations of these 
 phenomena, and not have a right to think of 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 209 
 
 Him whose law is our light? Shall the higher 
 education have a right to study human affairs 
 in the vast domain of man's progress and re- 
 gress, of his sufferings and exultations, and 
 not have a right to seek to know Him in whom 
 we live and move and have our being, who is 
 the Lord of lords, and obedience to whom is 
 perfect freedom? Ah, we can never forget 
 that the theistic conception is the conception 
 on which the university is founded. To God 
 the university bears a relation. This relation 
 it could not abdicate or negate if it would, 
 and it would not if it could. Not as Protes- 
 tant, not as Romanist, not as Hebrew, but as 
 Catholic should every university man see that 
 all knowledge is to be related to omniscience. 
 By what method or means the university is 
 to seek these relations represents a field of 
 discussion not proper for the present hour, but 
 it may be suffered to be said that the method 
 consists not so much in any direct means or 
 way, nor in reiterated declarations, as it does 
 consist in large relations to great thinkers and 
 in pervasive atmospheres. As has been said by 
 one who has been the president of a great uni- 
 versity, and who is now a professor in a New 
 England college, though changed in phrase, 
 truth is but a guarantee of the ultimate truth 
 
210 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 of a spiritual universe. Man is to have fellow- 
 ship with man in personal, economical, civic 
 righteousness. And all things are to be 
 gathered into the Kingdom of God. The uni- 
 versity is not so much to have a religion as 
 it is to be religious. It is not so much to make 
 certain declarations about God as it is to be in 
 fellowship with and in the stewardship of God. 
 Holiness for the individual, breadth for the 
 race, great personalities, religion, are the four 
 elements which the university is to represent 
 and to embody in order to be a force worthy 
 to dominate human society. These four ele- 
 ments are to be held and to be held together 
 in fitting proportions. Education is to be 
 broad. It is to be concerned with the whole 
 of the individual. It is not to be self-centered. 
 It is also to be social, missionary. It is to be 
 thinking in order to be thoughtful. It is to be 
 strong in order to be helpful, righteous in 
 order to teach rectitude. It is to possess 
 mighty personalities in order to train mighty 
 personalities. Although the university thus 
 relates itself to divinity, and although putting 
 itself into relationship with divinity, it is ever 
 to regard itself as human. It is to adjust the 
 greatest strength unto self-sacrifice and self- 
 sacrifice unto the greatest strength. It is to 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 211 
 
 adjust the human to the divine in the individ- 
 ual. The university is to be as John Henry 
 Newman says in a page seldom read, but 
 which cannot be repeated too often : " It is the 
 place to which a thousand schools make con- 
 tributions; in which the intellect may safely 
 range and speculate, sure to find its equal in 
 some antagonist activity, and its judge in the 
 tribunal of truth. It is a place where inquiry 
 is pushed forward, and discoveries verified 
 and perfected, and rashness rendered innocu- 
 ous and error exposed, by the collision of 
 mind with mind, and knowledge with knowl- 
 edge. It is the place where the professor 
 becomes eloquent, and is a missionary and a 
 preacher, displaying his science in its most 
 complete and most winning form, pouring it 
 forth with the zeal of enthusiasm, and lighting 
 up his own love of it in the breasts of his hear- 
 ers. It is a place where the catechist makes 
 go'od his ground as he goes, treading the truth 
 day by day into the ready memory, and wedg- 
 ing and tightening it into the expanding rea- 
 son. It is a place which wins the admiration 
 of the young by its celebrity, kindles the affec- 
 tions of the middle-aged by its beauty, and 
 rivets the fidelity of the old by its associations. 
 It is a seat of wisdom., a light of the world, 
 
212 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 a minister of the faith, an Alma Mater of the 
 rising generation/' 
 
 The university is to strengthen itself might- 
 ily for its dominance in human affairs. The 
 family has been and is a mighty force in civil- 
 ization. It is based on the exclusive love of 
 two persons. The university also is to 
 have mighty personalities. The church for a 
 thousand years controlled the world. The uni- 
 versity is not so much to control the world as 
 it is to fit the world to control itself in the love 
 and fear of God. The book has for four hun- 
 dred years been a mighty power. The uni- 
 versity takes the book as its basis. The 
 formal government has in the civilized state 
 mightily influenced the people. The univer- 
 sity is to create governors, and law-makers, 
 law-interpreters, and executives in every 
 state. Ah, the magnificence of the priv- 
 ilege, the greatness of the duty, the majesty 
 of the commission of the university in the new 
 century and in the new world. 
 
 Members of the Graduating Classes: The 
 university is for you, the university is through 
 you for all. The university does its work 
 in the progress of civilization through 
 the men and women whom it trains. The 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 213 
 
 university, rejoicing, sends you forth. Christ 
 chose twelve men and appointed them apostles. 
 He wrote no books ; he trained men. The uni- 
 versity has been apostolic for these four years. 
 The university has sought to give you a better 
 and a best self. It has sought to inspire you 
 with the social motive. It has tried to prove 
 through its teachers that life is more than liv- 
 ing, that personality is better than equipment. 
 It has tried to teach in reasonableness and 
 fitness the beauty of religion. To-night it de- 
 clares that its work is done. For better or for 
 worse, but always for the better we hope, for 
 enriched or for enfeebled power, but always 
 for enriched we believe, the university has now 
 completed her formal service. But at once on 
 the completion of the formal service she adopts 
 you into sonship. You become her child. 
 You bear her name, you receive her inherit- 
 ance. You carry forth her honors. You are 
 to occupy high places. To you who stand here, 
 more than fourscore, the largest class which 
 ever here stood, to you who represent others, 
 almost two hundred in number, who will stand 
 here next Thursday, the University commits 
 her work for the betterment of man. As you 
 are ever large in mind, great in heart, right in 
 conscience, mighty in will, as you are mission- 
 
214 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 ary in motive, as you are great in soul, and as 
 you are in touch with eternal and mighty 
 omnipotence, so you will do much and most 
 for answering that prayer daily offered in all 
 your college days, "Thy kingdom come." 
 May you prove yourselves to be worthy sons 
 and daughters of Alma Mater. 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 215 
 
 XIV 
 
 THE BEST WORK 
 
 " And He saith unto them, follow me, and I wil 
 make you fishers of men. 
 
 "And they straightway left their nets, and fol- 
 lowed Him." Matt. iv. 19, 20. 
 
 THE call thus made and obeyed is a 
 call to neither leisure nor rest. It is 
 a call to work. The call is a call to a 
 work of the same kind with that which those 
 called have done. The call is a call to a work 
 of a nobler degree than that which those who 
 are called have done. It is a call still to be 
 fishers. It is a call to become fishers of men. 
 
 The principal thought, therefore, to which I 
 invite your attention is the question, What is 
 the best work to which men are called? 
 
 The question itself has a peculiar signifi- 
 cance. One of its central parts is the sim- 
 ple word Work. How that word rings out 
 through all human history! Hardly had the 
 first man and woman, and the earth, been 
 
216 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 created before this man and woman are com- 
 manded to dress and to keep the earth. When 
 from their beautiful garden they are driven 
 out, the command is that they are to become 
 hard workers. Throughout all the centuries 
 whenever man has lived and throughout 
 all lands wherever man has gone, that first 
 command has been repeated. As man has 
 sought for the noblest and aspired for the 
 highest, has he found himself to be a worker. 
 In cursing or in blessing is each obliged to toil. 
 As humanity has risen, as civilization has be- 
 come finer, has the cursing of work become 
 transmuted into the beneficence of service. 
 Caryle's beatitude has at last become true in 
 other than in the first sense in which he meant 
 it: "Blessed be the man who has found his 
 work;" most blessed, thrice blessed be that 
 man who has found the best work. 
 
 To the question, therefore, what is the best 
 work, I wish to give four answers : 
 
 First : The best work is a human work. It 
 is a work of which the ideal is devotion to man. 
 It is a work of which the condition is service 
 among men. It is a work of which the 
 method is association with men. It is a work 
 of which the motive lies in love for man. 
 Work human includes a human ideal, a human 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 217 
 
 condition, a human method and a human mo- 
 tive. The human ideal represents humanity 
 in its highest state. It represents the reign of 
 the human reason, the reason, not of one 
 member, but of all members of the race. 
 Truth is made to prevail, not for one, but for 
 all. Reason exists as an agency, a treasure for 
 all reasons. It represents a progress equiv- 
 alent to the progress which Comte pro- 
 claimed. The human ideal also represents 
 the will of the race, willing the best. 
 It represents democracy in its most force- 
 ful relation. It is a social will, willing the 
 highest. The human ideal also embodies the 
 social heart. The social heart is a heart great 
 in love. The human ideal also includes the 
 social conscience. Humanity has now 
 reached the stage in which there is the con- 
 science of the whole community. It embraces 
 a sense of obligation toward itself, toward 
 other communities and toward individuals, 
 who compose them. The human ideal, there- 
 fore, embraces a like-mindedness, a like-will- 
 ness, a like-heartedness and a like-con- 
 scientiousness. A work, which is human, em- 
 braces a human ideal of reason, will, heart, 
 conscience, raised to its highest power. 
 Every work, which is human, must have this 
 
218 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 supreme, consummate purpose. Labor is 
 done in order to realize such an ideal. 
 
 But human work also includes what I shall 
 call a social condition. It represents the re- 
 lation of man to man. This relation is one 
 of knowledge. Man is to know man. Man 
 is to be known by man. No work can be 
 called at all human which forbids such human 
 knowledge. Such knowledge is to be gained 
 through the intellect and also through the 
 heart. 
 
 Work, which is human, also represents a 
 human method. This method represents the 
 social method of association. It embodies the 
 oneness of men with men. There is a mightily 
 increasing sense of the unity of men. Men 
 have become man; the lessening size of the 
 world, the increasing unity of all created 
 classes, have together resulted in a more vivid 
 sense of the oneness of the race. The cry 
 Liberty, equality, fraternity, has given way to 
 the cry Liberty, unity, fraternity. Unity is a 
 more important symbol than equality. 
 
 But a work, which is human, is also a work 
 inspired by the human motive. The supreme 
 human motive is embodied in the great 
 monosyllable Love. Human work is a work 
 done in love for man. God so loved the world 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 219 
 
 that He gave. Man so loves the world that 
 he works for the world. 
 
 Therefore, a work, which is human, contains 
 the human ideal which embraces the human 
 reason, the human will, the human conscience 
 and the human heart lifted to their richest and 
 fullest power. Work, which is human, also 
 includes a work which is done in a knowledge 
 of man, of man's strength and weaknesses, 
 failures and ambitions, hopes and memories. 
 Work which is human also includes a work 
 that is done in the human method of intimate 
 association of men, of oneness with men. A 
 work, also, which is human represents work 
 inspired with the motive of love for men. Such 
 a work cannot be other than the best. Can 
 the human mind conceive of any nobler task 
 or worthier duty? 
 
 These remarks receive their illustration in 
 certain significant movements occurring in 
 the last academic year. What makes that 
 which will be known as "the great coal 
 strike" significant? Is it the fact that 
 coal was not mined and transported? 
 Is it that " wages ceased? Is it that the 
 industries of many a city and town were 
 interrupted? Rather is it not the fact that 
 men to the number of one hundred and fifty 
 
220 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 thousand had made a certain covenant? Is it 
 not rather that other laborers of a larger num- 
 ber had made a promise to give aid and comfort 
 to the coal strikers? Does not the impressive- 
 ness arise from the fact that millions of other 
 people were suffering from the failure of min- 
 ers in Pennsylvania to work? The human 
 element made the strike significant. The 
 method, too, of settlement was significant be- 
 cause of its human relationship. The method 
 was a method to, for, of, and by men. The 
 President, as a person, was devoted to men. 
 The conditions of settlement were found 
 among men. The method of settlement ex- 
 isted with men, and the motive lay among 
 men themselves. 
 
 The human character of the best work re- 
 ceives illustration also in what may be called 
 the whole industrial movement. This move- 
 ment is called industrial. Is it a human move- 
 ment also? Is it a movement for, among, 
 with men and in men? Does it tend to make 
 the human ideal of the reason, the will, the 
 heart, the conscience of man attainable? Is it 
 a movement which aids men in mutual under- 
 standing and appreciation? Is it beneficent 
 in bringing men into closeness of association 
 and intimacy of relationship? Does it inspire 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 221 
 
 and promote the development of the principle 
 of Love? Is it, in a word, human? By some 
 the present industrial condition is declared to 
 be a state of war, a state, therefore, in which 
 deception is free from moral shame, in which 
 guile is guiltless and murder only homicide. 
 If this interpretation be at all true, then it be- 
 comes all good men to devote themselves to 
 the transmuting of the industrial movement 
 into a human movement. Do lessened hours 
 of toil mean a larger manhood? D'oes in- 
 crease of wage mean an elimination of personal 
 meanness and smallness? Does high environ- 
 ment mean a larger choice of and for character? 
 Whatever answer may be given to these ques- 
 tions this night or this year, it cannot for one 
 moment be doubted that out of this industrial 
 and social storm and stress, the human world 
 is to come forth at last finer and fairer, into a 
 calm calmer, into an activity better ordered, 
 into a life more human and more divine. Ser- 
 vice that helps the dawn of such a June morn- 
 ing is the noblest work that God gives to 
 man. 
 
 Second : The noblest work to which man is 
 called is not only human, it is also humane. 
 One of the great characteristics of Shake- 
 speare, says one of his worthiest interpreters, 
 
222 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 is his humaneness. The great poet himself 
 speaks through Portia when she says : 
 
 '" The quality of mercy is not strain'd; 
 It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
 Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd; 
 It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes: 
 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes 
 The throned monarch better than his crown; 
 His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, 
 The attribute to awe and majesty, 
 Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; 
 But mercy is above this sceptred sway; 
 It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, 
 It is an attribute to God himself; 
 And earthly power doth then show likest God's 
 When mercy seasons justice." 
 
 The peril of humaneness is that it becomes 
 a defying of the law of progress. It tends to 
 put the undeserving where the deserving alone 
 have a right to be. It is liable to substitute 
 graciousness for righteousness. It is in dan- 
 ger of distributing its favors to the ill-deserv- 
 ing more liberally than to the undeserving and 
 to the undeserving more liberally than to the 
 deserving. It seems to increase 2, plus 2 to 5 
 and to make 4 minus 2 equal to 3. Such are 
 some of the perils which humaneness may in- 
 cur, but these perils need not be incurred. 
 Humaneness is at once a negative and a posi- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 223 
 
 tive virtue. As a negative excellence it pre- 
 serves one from acts and habits which will in- 
 jure another person and impair his undertak- 
 ings. The strenuousness of modern work and 
 the success of modern labors often seem to 
 blind the worker and the triumphant one to 
 the duties and rights of humaneness. The 
 crushing of rivals is an evil forgotten in the 
 splendor of one's own triumph. The trickery 
 of business is concealed by the power of 
 business successes. The method of nature in 
 bringing forth a million of blossoms that it 
 may produce a thousand pieces of fruit is used 
 as an illustration of the method prevailing in 
 the commercial world in behalf of the absorp- 
 tion of the many and the weak into the few and 
 the strong. Nature may be indeed bloody, but 
 for that very reason humanity is not to spill or 
 to absorb human blood. The claw belongs to 
 the brute, the hand to man, therefore processes 
 in the modern industrial world are not the 
 best, are not human, which represent the blot- 
 ting out of the individual or the lessening or 
 impairing of individualism. The modern in- 
 dustrial condition needs to have read to itself 
 an old parable from a book older than Plato's 
 Dialogues, which is: 
 
 "And the Lord sent Nathan unto David. 
 
224: A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 And he came unto him, and said unto him, 
 There were two men in one city ; the one rich, 
 and the other poor. 
 
 " The rich man had exceeding many flocks 
 and herds : 
 
 " But the poor man had nothing, save one 
 little ewe lamb, which he had bought and 
 nourished up: and it grew up together with 
 him, and with his children; it did eat of his 
 own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay 
 in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter. 
 
 " And there came a traveler unto the rich 
 man, and he spared to take of his own flock 
 and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfar- 
 ing man that was come unto him ; but took the 
 poor man's lamb, and dressed it for the man 
 that was come to him." Is not the parable 
 true of any great industry, which, against the 
 will of the smaller industry, absorbs it under 
 compulsion of destruction? Does not the 
 modern man still answer in the angry words 
 of David : 
 
 " And David's anger was greatly kindled 
 against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the 
 Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing 
 shall surely die: 
 
 "And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, 
 because he did this thing, and because he had 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 225 
 
 no pity." And shall the preacher adopt the 
 words of Nathan and say: "Thou art the 
 man " ? 
 
 Humaneness has a positive, as well as a 
 negative reference. It seeks not only not to 
 hurt, it seeks to help and to promote. The 
 work which you are to do should be graciously 
 humane, and in the equality of other things, 
 the more graciously humane any work is the 
 nobler it is. Let that work which you 
 choose be a work that tends to give a 
 gentleness remote from weakness, a kindness 
 which is not unmeaning softness, a self-suffi- 
 ciency which is not self-satisfaction, a radiancy 
 of good will free from self-consciousness, and 
 a self-knowledge, a self-reverence and a self- 
 control which shall be a love and a beneficence 
 for humanity. 
 
 Third: The best work, too, to which God 
 calls men should contain elements of the di- 
 vine. It should bear relations to the plan of 
 God for his world. It should aid in the 
 achievement of this plan. One's work is 
 often named a calling. Significant the term, 
 as if God Himself summoned man to his 
 work : a vocation as if the voice of the eternal 
 spoke in him or spoke to him impelling com- 
 mand. 
 
226 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 There is one calling which has been specific- 
 ally named divine, to which men were supposed 
 to be summoned with a peculiar and particular 
 summons. Its service was, and is, supposed 
 to bear a most intimate and constructive re- 
 lation to the progress of the divine kingdom. 
 Every man whose supreme purpose was t 
 serve God and to enjoy Him forever was sup- 
 posed to become one of its members. This 
 calling, this vocation was and is the minis- 
 try. Great is the change in popular mind re- 
 specting its elements. It is no longer usually 
 supposed that men are summoned to it with a 
 peculiar and particular command. Its services 
 are no longer presumed to bear a more inti- 
 mate and constructive relation to the prog- 
 ress of the divine kingdom than are services 
 in any other calling. Its servants, of supreme 
 idealism, find other servants of the same divine 
 Master, of an idealism no less commanding, 
 outside its altar rails. One of the ablest of col- 
 lege presidents, himself a clergyman of piety, 
 devotion, and distinction, is said to advise his 
 graduates not to enter the calling of Richard 
 Salter Storrs, of Bishop Simpson, and of 
 Horace Bushnell. 
 
 What is the place and function of the min- 
 istry to-day? Has it a peculiarly divine sane- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 227 
 
 tion? It might of course be said of the min- 
 istry, as of other professions, that it 
 promotes the intellectual breadth and the in- 
 tellectual depth of the one following it. It 
 also unites in a singular way the intellectual 
 and the practical character. It might also be 
 affirmed that it represents a mighty public in- 
 fluence A and that its relation to literature, 
 as a condition and an opportuuity, is of singu- 
 lar significance. It might also be declared 
 that for the service of the ministry all that is 
 in a man can be most easily and directly used. 
 If he be an average man, all there is in him can 
 be employed. If he be a great citizen, the com- 
 munity will call upon him for accordingly 
 great service. If he be a thinker and a scholar, 
 his natural resources can be poured out with- 
 out limit. If he be distinguished for gracious- 
 ness, humanity in its need will summon the 
 best of this comprehensive and supreme qual- 
 ity. Every hour of his working day can be 
 used to advantage and every day of his work- 
 ing week may represent a positive increment 
 for the betterment of man, and every week of 
 his church year may embody a mighty con- 
 dition of human helpfulness, and every year 
 in his whole career may show a community 
 higher in power, abler in condition and richer 
 
228 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 in all that constitutes highest wealth. But 
 also, and more, the ministry does represent ap- 
 parently an essential force in the progress of 
 Christianity. If the ministry were abolished, 
 Christianity would advance, but if leaders are 
 important to any undertaking, the minister is 
 important for the progress of Christianity. As 
 Daniel Webster said in the Girard College 
 case : " And where was Christianity ever re- 
 ceived, where were its truths ever poured into 
 the human heart, where did its waters spring- 
 ing up into everlasting life ever burst forth 
 except in the track of the Christian ministry? 
 Did we ever hear of an instance, does history 
 record an instance of any part of the globe 
 Christianity by lay preachers or lay teachers? " 
 Therefore I stand here to appeal to you, 
 and through you to others, that the ministry, 
 which has, for the time being, fallen in a cer- 
 tain degree of esteem, represents a mighty call- 
 ing for the betterment of man. I am not say- 
 ing but that other works are also divine, I am 
 not saying but that other works may have in 
 themselves that degree of divineness which you 
 have in yourself and which you may put into 
 these works, but I do want to say that, with 
 a special significance, for certain men in this 
 age of ours, the ministry is the best work, be- 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 229 
 
 cause it is so divine. In the_year 1877, speak- 
 ing to the students of the Yale Divinity 
 School, Phillips Brooks said: " I cannot help 
 bearing witness to the joy of the life which you 
 anticipate. There is no career that can compare 
 with it for a moment in the rich and satisfying 
 relations into which it brings a man with his 
 fellow-men, in the deep and interesting insight 
 which it gives him into human nature, and in 
 the chance of the best culture for his own char- 
 acter. Its delight never grows old, its interest 
 never wanes, its stimulus is never exhausted." 
 And nine years after, speaking to the students 
 of Harvard College, he said: " I must tell you 
 that it is the noblest and most glorious calling 
 to which man can give himself." 
 
 Fourth: The best work, too, to which man 
 can be called is a work which represents obedi- 
 ence to the highest. It is told in the text that 
 the disciples followed Christ. To them Christ 
 was the noblest personality they could follow. 
 His command was indeed a categorical impera- 
 tive. Obedience to the highest may or may 
 not represent the calling of the minister or the 
 calling of the teacher. A priest of the Church 
 of England, a distinguished historian, wrote of 
 his ordination : " I gladly and thankfully ac- 
 cepted the position of a minister of the Church 
 
230 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 of England, which seemed to hold out to me 
 the prospect of an honorable and useful career 
 in life, while it was favored by the opportuni- 
 ties which were opening to me. I indulged 
 my own taste while I gratified my father's 
 wishes, and satisfied him that he had not done 
 ill in directing my course to the University. 
 I anticipated a residence of several years as 
 tutor at my college, and hoped to occupy the 
 time with congenial associates and studies 
 while waiting for the college living which was 
 in due time to set me at liberty. I longed for 
 literary leisure, and I proposed to utilize it in 
 the line of my accepted calling." 
 
 Such are the words of Dean Merivale 
 printed in his autobiography. They are not 
 worthy of the historian of the Roman Empire. 
 Rather let me say that words that are less un- 
 worthy, words that are worthy in expressing 
 obedience to the highest were written by one 
 who was supposed to be the enemy of the 
 Church, of the ministry and of Christianity. 
 Huxley met a great temptation. As says his 
 son : " Why not clip the wings of Pegasus, and 
 descend to the sober, everyday jog-trot after 
 plain bread and cheese like other plain peo- 
 ple? " Yet to such a temptation he proved in- 
 vincible. He declares that he will not sell 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 231 
 
 his birthright for a mess of pottage. " I will 
 make myself a name and a position as well as 
 an income by some kind of pursuit connected 
 with science/' Such obedience to the highest 
 moved, too, a friend of Huxley's, Charles 
 Kingsley, who writes of an evening in June, 
 just sixty-two years ago-: 
 
 " My birth-night. I have been for the last 
 hour on the seashore, not dreaming, but think- 
 ing deeply and strongly, and forming deter- 
 minations which are to affect my destiny 
 through time and through eternity. Before 
 the sleeping earth and the sleepless sea and 
 stars I have devoted myself to God; a vow 
 never (if He gives me the faith I pray for) to 
 be recalled." 
 
 A work which represents your obedience to 
 the highest will be, first, a work which allures 
 and invites the development of all your powers, 
 your individual greatness, and, second, a 
 work through which you can make the richest 
 contribution to human betterment, noblest 
 altruistic service. Such is the best work. This 
 service is to be the largest possible in 
 content, the highest possible in quality, the 
 longest possible in duration, the widest 
 possible in extent, the best possible in 
 significance and the greatest possible in influ- 
 
232 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 
 
 ence. Such obedience will prevent your mak- 
 ing grievous mistakes in life's supreme choice. 
 Such obedience will save you from making the 
 amassing of wealth a professional aim. Such 
 obedience will prevent you from thinking of 
 your home as a nest in whose soft warmths 
 and tender enchantments you are forever to 
 cuddle. But rather such obedience to the 
 highest will represent a most forceful and 
 graceful quality and movement of character. 
 
 Obedience to the highest will give you a 
 calling, which shall be a condition that 
 shall be as Heaven. Obedience to the highest 
 will give you a work that shall have the power 
 of the cardinal virtues and the fundamental 
 verities. Obedience to the highest will em- 
 body for you an outer ego, which shall at once 
 minister to yourself and to others in noblest 
 enlargement and finest enrichment. Thus, 
 shall danger not overcome nor luxury con- 
 sume. Thus, your inspiration shall have pas- 
 sion, your aspiration power, and your divine- 
 ness reality. 
 
 Members of the Graduating Classes : " Fol- 
 low me and I will make you fishers of men: 
 and they straightway left their nets and fol- 
 lowed him." Again Christ stands, and again 
 
AND A LIBERAL FAITH 233 
 
 the Christ speaks. Before you He stands and 
 to you He speaks. The old command He 
 gives and the old promise He makes. To His 
 command your heart responds in exultation, 
 and to His promise your will gives glorious 
 assent. You would follow Him, for He is the 
 worthiest leader. His promise you would em- 
 brace with joy, for His work is the richest and 
 best. For work you are eager, and as the 
 work becomes the more human and humane, 
 the more divine and more appealing to the 
 highest in you, the more eager for that work 
 do you become. For the doing of such work 
 the college career has, I hope, given you a de- 
 gree of fitness. If you and the college have 
 worthily worked together through these years, 
 surely your powers are greater than are the 
 powers given to most. The power to think 
 largely and accurately, the power to will 
 strongly and righteously, the power to love 
 greatly, the power to appreciate justly, these 
 are powers which at once represent the aims 
 of the college and which are the powers that 
 qualify and inspire you to do the best work. 
 Equipped by these forces, go forth from 
 the shore of this your collegiate Galileean sea, 
 eager and strong to do in this great world the 
 best work to which God summons you. 
 
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