Graduating Address to the First Class of 1872 Sermon My discourse today will run in a line parallel with the first clause of the 35th verse in the 11th chapter of Matthew: "A good Man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things." This passage is an extract from one of those inimitable discourses of the Savior recorded in the Gospels. You observe that this sentence, like the one that follows, is cast in the mold of an absolute affirmation. There is no interplay of circumstances to hinder the cause from passing into the effect. There is no softening or potentiating the declaration by may, can, might, could, would, or should. There is no entrance left open by which accident, chance, luck, or fortune can step in between the invariable antecedent good treasures of the heart and the invariable consequent good things. The sentence is set squarely on its own basis as a positive assertion. Nevertheless, the world has not always credited the truth of this simple and explicit affirmation. Men have, in some sort of way, cherished some sort of belief that somehow good things in human life have some other parentage than good treasures of the heart and that good treasures of the heart do not always bring forth good things. Hence the words acci- dent, chance, fortune, &c. Among the deities of olden time, Fortune was depict- ed as a fickle Goddess who presided over human affairs and bestowed her ca- pricious favors with a total disregard to the merits of the recipients. Thus there gleams through the mist of mythology the universal belief that hon- ors, riches, wealth, comforts, luxuries &c. received a sort of haphazard distribution which neither virtue nor vice could dis- turb. So assured was the susceptible Greek that prosperity was solely the gift of Chance that he gave her a per- sonality which was divine - a su- premacy which was unquestioned. What the Greek worshiped as a divinity, the less imaginative world have gener- ally accepted as a fact. Men commonly regard every valuable acquisition made by another as a mere casual hit that anybody else might as well have made. Every language that the human tongue has ever spoken reveals in its etymology the opinion of its framers that the good things of life were dispensed by a blind allotment - that blessings were not rewards won by a struggle but prizes drawn at random. Did not our Saxon fathers declare in the subtle kin- ship of their earliest words that thrift drifted to the thrifty, that happiness happened to the happy, and that every good we gain is the creature of luck rath- er than the crown of labor? But modern advancement has van- quished these vagaries of a superstitious antiquity and put them to flight. No longer may we encourage sloth and sluggishness and want of forecast by ascribing their natural results to the fickleness of fortune. A new philos- ophy reveals an invariable sequence in the order of events throughout the realms of matter and mind. Every change from the motion of our eyelid to the making of a planet is under the do- minion of law. Accident, luck, chance, and fortune, are convenient terms which express our ignorance of the links in the chain of unexpect- ed occurrences rather than the ab- sence of such links. There are in fact but two causes for the inconceiv- able variety of events on this earth of ours. The one God's will - the great first cause and the last as well, in- finite, incessant in action, uniform in method, the cause "in which there is no variableness nor shadow of turn- ing." The other, man's will - finite, limited, inconstant, often capricious, yet all potent if put forth in harmo- ny with the will of the Infinite. Now God's will when directed to secure man's well being and well doing, is the Divine Providence, and what I affirm is that the Bible and Nature and Science and any large experience all unite in declaring that God's Prov- idence is no auxiliary to man's im- providence, that on the contrary it employs man as its agent or instru- ment, that it is none the less real be- cause its essential ingredients are human forecast, integrity, industry, and skill, that it is none the less di- vine because it withholds its gifts where these ingredients are wanting. Remember then that in the widest and truest sense "God helps those who help themselves," that there is no infallible help otherwhere, that the fruits of honest toil rightly directed, of unflinching in- tegrity applied to every transaction, of whole self sacrifice under temptation to self indulgence are God appointed rewards - the fullest and the freest at any rate of all the gifts of God's providence. Trust nothing I pray you, to chance or luck or to the hope "that something will turn up." Luck a hope will almost surely turn to ashes. No ship laden with treasures will be wafted by chance winds into your port. No field of diamonds will display its riches to your eyes. No erratic hun- ter for instances of neglected worth will strike your trail. The world will never look you up to force its honors or its trusts upon you. The world will honor you whenever you have proven that you can minister to its wants. The world will trust you where your trustworthiness is past all question. The whole tendency of idle dreams, of supine expectations, is now- a-day towards disappointment and obscurity. In the unfaltering pur- pose, the inflexible will, the un- erring judgment, the goal that is unflagging, and the grip that nev- er relaxes, lies the hope of the fu- ture. Fulfill the conditions and the hope shall be realized. We cannot grasp the system or enumerate the agencies by which the divine will works out its benevolent designs in this world, but the wider our intel- lectual horizon becomes, the more clearly do we perceive that its main instrumentality is human achieve- ment. God once wrought his pur- poses on the earth through inani- mate forces only. With the attrition and deposit of the unconscious man, through the lapse of slow ages, He built up the continents and es- tablished the boundaries of the ocean. He cooled the subterranean fires and bent their level surfaces into all the countless forms of beauty and of grandeur. As layer after layer emerged from the waste of waters He broke its silence and peopled its solitudes with the ever pro- gressive forms of animal life; until, finally, as the crowning act, He called into being, upon the completed earth, a creature who stood forth as the culmina- tion of organic nature - a union of the animal and the angel - a creature whose form was the highest specimen of divine workmanship and whose soul reflected grandly the likeness and image of its maker. Then, as the passing centuries multiplied the means of progress, as Christianity bestowed its loving and refining graces, as culture and art and science strengthened his powers and increased their range, God has made him more and still more His instrument for clothing the earth with a higher moral, in- tellectual and material beauty. It is needless to say that for the accomplishment of this beneficent purpose He selects for instruments the finest samples of excellence that the race can furnish. History, ob- servation will tell you that the men who are God's co-workers in the moral, material, or social re- generation of the world, have become such by reason of their high qualities, their earnestness, their faithfulness, their sublime devotion to truth. Their names are uttered daily by a thousand grateful tongues. Through Franklin God tamed the lightning and rendered it com- paratively harmless. Through Morse He has sent it on errands to the ends of the earth at a touch of the finger. Through Fulton He made the ocean a thoroughfare and the rivers highways. Through Garrison, Giddings, and Phillips and Lincoln and kindred spir- its He has broken the fetters of the slave and let the oppressed go free. Through Bacon He changed the entire current of human re- search and displaced a barren and sterile philosophy by pro- claiming the beneficent philos- ophy of fruits. Through Tennyson and Turner He has given more viv- id conceptions of beauty. Through Shakespeare a fuller view of the power of human passion. Through Beecher, Spurgeon and the like, a closer and clearer realiza- tion of a Saviour's love. Thank God that such men have lived. Alas! That in comparison with the multitudes that throng the earth, they are so few. Alas! That thousands whose faculties fit them for the noblest work are content with groveling and gathering straws while such golden crowns are within their reach. You who depart from these familiar walls to mingle in the more stirring scenes that await you beyond them, will choose more than at any other period of your lives whether you will be God's instruments in the pursuit of His grander objects or your own instrument in the pursuit of trifling ones. For the latter purpose you would need no high resolves, no grand conceptions of duty. The very culture you have gained here would be worse than wasted. For the former all goodness and truth without or within all knowledge of science or art or letters, all lofty incitements from earth and from heaven are your sure helpers. We can- not forecast the lesser incidents, the special results of this or that undertaking, the experiences of a day, week or month, but the wider issue and outcome of a true life, its general scope and final success, are, as knowledge advances, more and more matters of sure calcula- tion. Given certain qualities of character and certain prin- ciples of action and, in all things of larger moment, I will cast the horoscope of their possess- or. For spiritual forces are as uniform in operation and as certain in result as material ones. Sincerity, generosity, candor, and purity of heart, carried inflexibly into all our dealings with men, are as in- fallible in their effect on the world and on our own destiny im- mediate and final, as that of the sunshine and the rain or the growing crop. The achieve- ments of the hard muscle are no surer than the achievements of the iron will, and the will em- bodies in its action every other mental and moral trait. The sum total of results in every human life is to be measured by the sum total of its active internal forces. Modified, it is true, by the outer influences but nevertheless under individu- al control. No truth is more lost sight of than that good in us will sooner or later eventuate in good to us and to the world as well; for the whole field of human power and activity is covered by the declaration of Paul "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." Final words are sometimes made weighty by the occasion that calls them forth rather than the tongue that gives them utterance. The reflection that this is the last Sabbath of your college life, this the last discourse address- ed to you as a class ought to render every impression of the hour as ineffaceable as the letters cut into the solid granite. Having the burthen of such thoughts upon me and as one who pronounces a benedic- tion which his lips shall never repeat. Let me sketch for you with rapid touches, the quali- ties of soul which if they control your lives, shall make them fruitful in high results and radiant with goodness and truth and beauty. In the first-place the only true basis of a noble character, the only background that brings out in genuine perspective and coloring, all the other virtues, is inflexible unflinching integrity. Integrity! What val- ues beyond estimation are wrapped up in the etymology of the word. Integrity! Whole- ness of soul - perfect moral soundness - a soul without fracture fleck or flaw, A s oul whose transparency is so pure that the white rays of truth pass through it unstain- ed! A soul unswayed by power or pilf, standing forth in all the grandeur of an upright purpose! A soul that would not barter its birth- right of honest convictions for all the wealth of the Roths- childs or all the sceptres of Eu- rope! Without integrity as a foundation it is impossible to build up the superstructure of a genuine character. It is a house built on the sand to be demolished when the rains descend, and the floods come, and the winds blow. Without integrity the other virtues are spurious. Faith has no real foothold in the heart. Friend- ship is a hollow reed, broken by the slightest pressure of self interest. Love that noblest of emotions becomes mere sen suality which dies out with gratification, and religion, daughter of heaven, puts on the garb of the Pharisee and thanks God for the distinction which hypocrisy confers. If in- tegrity be utterly wanting, then education is a misnomer or rather a distortion rendered systematic by sharpening the intellect and making it the facile slave of selfish desires. If integrity be utterly wanting, if the moral sense be utterly impervious to truth, then intel- lectual culture is a curse both to the individual and the world. For it covers the baser passions with a false enamel which renders them dangerous al- lurements to the thoughtless and the weak. It multiplies the tri- umphs of its possessor in the ways of wickedness and, by lending them the gilding of apparent success, lights up his path to ultimate ruin. No! It is no extravagance but God's truth rather, to declare that edu- cation, higher or common, classi- cal or industrial which does not reveal that, in things, trifling or momentous, near or remote, termi- nating as to their consequences in this world or reaching to the next "Honesty is the best policy." Far better would it have been for society if such as Tom Paine and Edgar Poe had never crossed the threshold of a school house or darkened the doors of a college. Far better for the world if their hopeless perver- sion of the moral sense, their in- curable obliquity of moral vision had been rendered comparatively harmless by being united with the darkest and the densest igno- rance. But this perfect integrity is a diamond of the first water possessed by comparatively few. Those of second and third and fourth water are commoner gems less rare of attainment. Some are undimmed save by a single flaw that causes aberration to only a single ray. Some again with a defective transparency throughout, give to all the passing light either a slight or a deep discoloring. Then there are all sorts of paste imitations more or less ostentatiously worn and claiming to be diamonds of the highest brilliancy and the fin- est cut. But it requires no moral expertness to detect the counterfeit from the scratches and tarnish they soon take on when submit- ted to the test of actual use. Meantime, Fashion, which affects even our moral ideas, may de- cree that the false glitter of paste be accounted as genuine beauty to be generally accepted and worn, but amid all her oscilla- tions the first water diamond holds its place, by universal con- fession, as the standard of purity, while its value is even enhanced by the prevalence of spurious adornments. But let us notice how serious the ordeal that youth must pass, before it reaches the symmetrical manhood which is based on perfect integrity. The adverse currents are strong and require firm resolves stead- ily maintained, to resist them. The very atmosphere they breathe is laden with moral miasmas. From first to last they must strug- gle against the influence of pernicious examples. They must gain and maintain a strong foothold on the rock of truth from which the receding tide of popular opinion might otherwise carry them out into the darkness of a shoreless sea. Every body has indeed a good word for honesty and a de- sire to be reckoned its strenuous supporter; and yet a host of half concealed doubts are cherished as to its financial value when reduced to practice in the pursuits of life. Nay it has become almost an axiom in the popular mind that certain branches of business necessary to the public good, can- not be successfully carried on by men who are scrupulously upright. That, for instance, to a politician a sensitive con- science is an element of positive weakness. It is indeed sad to ac- knowledge that the most im- portant trusts which can be given to man, are sometimes dealt out by political jugglery, and yet it is consoling to notice, in any wide survey of the whole field of politics, that a few of the lower places only are actu- ally conferred on mere tricksters while the larger ones (such is the under current of reverence for honesty) are generally bestowed on men in whose statesmanship uprightness is a prominent feat- ure. Men do not willingly com- mit any interest whatsoever of their own to the care of one on whose moral principles they cannot rely. The very bitterness with which each political par- ty imputes corruption to the leaders on the opposite side is a recognition of the value of integrity and any wide observer cannot fail to discover that, when in politics, it is an essential element in genuine success. Here as elsewhere false dealing overreaches itself, finally secures its own failure, and is consigned to a merited oblivion. Thank God that it is so. Another obstacle to the development of this high quality which the young must encounter are the fascinating examples of men who are dis- tinguished for intellectual pow- er but devoid of principle. Men who are giants in intellect but pigmies in morals. But surely they will escape the danger of such fascination, if they only consider how doubly attractive such characters become when their intellectual beauty is crown- ed with moral worth - is rounded into symmetry by the added graces of the Christian. Of all samples of human excellencies, heroism is most admired and such men are the farthest possi- ble from heroes. Heroism is an unselfish devotion of power to principle - self immolation in defense of the right. Choose then for your models those only who to depth and acuteness of intellect add the strength of an honest purpose. Then, further, there often exists, in the ranks of the young themselves, the vague and lurk- ing idea that perfect moral transparency is not quite consis- tent with the full proportions of a magnanimous soul. A flawless honesty seems to some to have a certain dullness and slowness about it which to say the least are not alluring. The word fast which has lately taken on a new significance to denote reckless and thought- less self indulgence, has not sufficient reprobation of the sinful excesses it covers. The word itself betrays, in its mild reproof, a sort of respectful tenderness for the lapses of youth, if only they be attended by a vivacious intellect and dashing manners. The generosity and good fellow- ship which are so attractive to others, are not always held to strict account for any defective discern- ment of moral obligation. An indifference to the dictates of stern duty, a contempt for law and order and authority, are often regarded as the blossom- ings of noble independence, rather than the promptings of a groveling nature. An aptitude for finesse - for unscrupulous scheming and plotting, is often viewed as an enviable endowment, more promising of future suc- cess than any talent for sturdy work or for straightforward unyielding enterprise in le- gitimate channels. Such opinions held either secretly or openly by many young men of our day, are prolific sources of mischief. They blunt the moral vision of the thoughtless and the weak and hide from them the inflexible fact that genuine success lies only in the line of duty. They present only distorted views of life and conceal its true philosophy, its real values, its no- bler and higher issues. They fur- nish models for a sort of mere hovel that is bedizzened, perhaps, with tawdry ornamentation but lacks the grander proportions of moral symmetry. God give to every young man and woman who is seeking a higher educa- tion, a reach of intellect suffi- cient to discern that all tricks, evasions, artifices and perver- sions of truth whatever, gain only the semblance of a triumph; that so sure as God lives, they will find a final defeat, that good fellowship which has not moral principle at the bottom is only a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, that intellect- ual slight of hand, social vi- vacity graces of manner and personal attractions in the absence of integrity and moral worth, are mere flimsy tinselry, tinselry that loses its glitter and turns to cinders amid the fires and the storms of life. There is no real magnetism, no grandeur, no heroism in human character except in the predominance of those qualities that secure fidelity to God to ourselves and to our fellow men. "Worth makes the man, the want of it the fellow; the rest is all but leather or prunella." These facts indicate a future mission for you as cultured men and women. In whatever society you enter we are confident you will il- lustrate, in your own persons and characters, the beauty of perfect integrity, that, amid all the cares of life and all the per- plexities of business, you deal- ings shall be characterized by a punctilious rectitude. That God will help you to walk up- rightly and to show beyond all cavil that culture and learning attain their highest ex- cellence only when crowned by unswerving adherence to prin- ciple. Another element that is indispensable to the symmetry of a noble life is purity. Purity of heart is closely akin to integrity, indeed is well nigh inseparable from it: for whoever is transpar- ently honest and sincere, who- ever is true to others and true, specially, to himself, will, as seems to me, instinctively shrink from all forms of moral pol- lution. "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." Yes, thrice blessed by reas- on of the fact, that all the de- filements which darken the mind and rise like murky clouds to obstruct our moral light, are dispelled and God the infinite in purity, stands wholly revealed to the pure soul. The pure in heart shall see God by the very force of spiritual co- attraction which unites like with like. They shall see God by the spontaneous selection, as the object of thought and desire, of whatever is pure and beautiful and good which are the more immediate manifes- tations of this presence. They shall see God because purity cleanses the moral perceptions and lends its own transparency to every medium of spiritual light. And God shall see them, shall delight to make them the special objects of his divine re- gards, shall look upon them as the most lovely and loveable of all the creatures that He has made, the truest reflections of his divine image. Purity of heart is revealed in the affinity which it has for all things lovely and of good report and its instinctive aver- sion to that which shows the least tarnish of moral debase- ment. No degrading concep- tion can find entrance to sully its brightness. All such it rejects as surely as the surface of polished steel rejects the tran- sient breath. Contact with vice does not corrupt it. The fire of passion does not scathe it. The touch of pitch does not defile it and all men yield it an involuntary homage. The in- stances of unsullied purity in this world are not very nu- merous and yet there are some, let us hope, in every communi- ty in whose presence an un- worthy thought or idle in- nuendo seems to all who approach them to be worse than sacrilege. God grant that all who go forth as the honored sons and daught- ers of this young Alma Mater, may be shining illustrations of this crowning virtue and that, in all the coming years He shall so encircle her with the halo of His favor in this re- gard, that not one shall carry away his diploma unworthily because of the absence of so essential a component of a genuine manhood. Let us hope even that, among the thous- ands who shall gain ac- cess however transient to these halls, not one shall be found who shall thereafter put the sa- cred cause of industrial edu- cation to shame, by a person- al influence that is morally debasing. And let the young who hear my voice this day - let every one who seeks a cul- ture that will fit him not only for ordinary but for higher activities as well, shun all contact with impurity as one shrinks from the touch of the leper or the tooth of a poisonous adder. The causes of pollution are on the in- crease. Moral infection taints the very air and discolors the sunlight, and there are those who stand up before American audiences to declare, with a shameless effrontery, that the taint and the stain are even promotive of moral health. Avert the eyes and close the ears to doctrines so pernicious. Expel from the thoughts every corrupt idea. Turn the imagi- nation away from that which defiles and restrain it within the strictest limits of its God given work as creator of the images of purity and beauty and truth. Whenever and wherever you encounter the incitements of depravity reject them with the throes of a moral nausea, and let your whole sensitive nature be instinct with loathing: So shall you rise to the dignity and attain to the rewards of a pure life and in your influ- ence with men and your favor with God, be reckoned im- mediately and finally among the number of whom the Savior says "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." A third element which is essential to a sterling character and the success of an exalted life is that of a strong, ac- tive will. Whatever be the other qualities of mind they will be idle and unproductive if force of will be wanting. The intellect may be disciplined, the judgment accurate, the understanding com- prehensive, the conscience pre- dominant, in short, the whole character high toned, but it is will alone that can give them ef- fectiveness. The finest combina- tions of mental traits conceivable, the nicest balancing of instincts and appetites, feelings and faculties all under the monarchy of the moral sense, will sink into hopeless and useless torpidity if they lack the driving power. Even integrity and purity, and the higher qualities, will nigh neutralize their value if they expend themselves in mere barren contemplation and idle dreaming. The goodness that is given to perpetual slumber, is a sterile virtue worth scarcely a groat to its possessor and the world. The most highly finished engine, with all the latest improvements and attachments, without the propelling steam, is an empty show. The poorest machine put under pressure does infinitely greater execution. The final test of every power of every virtue lies in its actions, the final value in its effects. Every exalted mental qual- ity derives its very vitality from exer- tion. Lacking that it starves and dies out. Moral inertness is akin to death. If the good man out of the good treasures of his heart bring not forth good things, then there are no good treasures there for good treasures are such only by virtue of the good things they bring forth. If the barren fig tree under fertiliza- tion, fail of a crop the command is "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground." It might better have been the roughest bramble bush that produces berries which are not quite use- less. In the moral as well as in the material world, velocity must be added to weight to secure the momentum that overcomes fric- tion and resistance. Weight with- out velocity is nothing. The veriest atom when set in motion is more effective. A man of small intellect- ual calibre but intense vigor guided by a benevolent purpose, will often electrify a whole community with the marvelous results he reach- es. An inert and forceless capaci- ty however large, united with good- ness that forever hesitates, whether in college or out, is a mere cypher in comparison. Energetic villainy is more than a match for ten times its weight of sluggish honesty. You will find the fact proven on every page of the history that records the progress of successful wrong doing. How often have I seen a boy with a bad heart and an active temperament corrupt half a score of his milder classmates who with far better natures, yielded to force of a superior will. On the other hand, under reversed conditions, I have known many a boy whose heart was on fire with the intensity of a noble pur- pose, achieve far more striking tri- umphs. For truth vitalized by en- ergy of purpose, is a mightier agency than error under any leading whatever. "Thrice is he armed who hath his quar- rel just." Therein lies the hope of the world. Will power gives velocity and alert- ness to every active principle within you, holds it to its allotted task until task turns habitually to triumph, keeps it upon the steady strain which en- hances its own power while it mul- tiplies its results. The culture you gain, the knowledge you gather here, will be well nigh worthless except in their outcome; and their outcome depends on the energy of will that lies behind them. There is no life of protracted ease for any of us. Perpetual ease is a perpetual soporific that blunts the intellect and deadens the heart. Genuine success, I repeat, lies in the unyielding ag- gressiveness of a purpose sanctified by honesty, sincerity and purity of heart. If you are not aggressive you are nothing; for ignorance and sto- lidity are just as good, nay even better for undisturbed repose, than the widest intelligence and the finest culture. The law by which any grand success is compiled in this world, is as fixed and cer- tain as the law of gravitation. The operation of both may be hin- dered by outside obstacles. Man has subdued chain lightning. With God's help he may subdue and handle the moral and in- tellectual forces as well. But he must master their laws and study them with incessant scrutiny or these elements more subtle than the lightning, will elude and baffle him. In God's eternal councils it is settled that throughout his domains, both spiritual and ma- terial, the struggle shall be the invariable antecedent to the conquest, that, over the wide field of human action from the strain of a muscle to the strife for heaven, the cross shall precede the crown. But the strug- gle and the cross grow softer and lighter at every step, if they be borne with a fidelity that does not flinch or falter. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty not only, but it is the price of every great treasure attainable to man on earth or in heaven. If he will not pay that price then he shall go through life from cradle to coffin treasure- less. We are destined, in this our terrestrial home to be, to do and to suffer. Mere being as a sepa- rate entity is of comparatively small account. It is the doing that, when directed by an invin- cible will, acting in harmony with the will of the Infinite, shall clothe the earth with higher beauty and serve to make it, as the centu- ries glide by, the fit home for a more refined and glorified manhood. It is the suffering that, in its reflexive effect, shall, through the All Father's love, round us out in the symmetry of per- fect men and women. For "Whom he loveth He chasteneth and scourges every son whom he receiveth." Therein consists the genuineness of the new education - the final proof of its fidelity to nature and to the wants of the human soul, that, neglecting all the an- tiquated questions of effect on being it seeks simply a complete prep- aration for the doing and the suffering. The power to do; to have attained the skill and the ef- ficiency of a master in any of the great lines of human industry; to accomplish, with ease and pleasure, tasks from which others generally shrink - to hold all the faculties so strung that every touch of the will wak- ens them into the music of har- monious action. The power to suffer - to verify, in your own character that "he who ruleth his own spir- it is better than he that taketh a city." The power to maintain a calm self possession while others are tossed on the tem- pest of passion - to bear pain without repining, scoffs and scandals without rage and great calamities without de- spair - all these and much more should be, as seems to me, the final products of the system under which your edu- cation began. Reach these products fully and you have all owned in the material the mental and the moral world both now and hereafter the ends and purposes of human airs. Gentlemen, you are the first ripened fruits of this new enter- prise, the first offerings which this industrial college makes to the state as samples of its earliest work. Our first instruct- ion was given to you - the first baccalaureate discourse is ad- dressed to you - our first de- grees will be conferred on you. Four swift years have come and gone since you en- tered these halls - years which began with the dedication and end with the diploma - years of toil, of trial, and may we not say, of triumph. For you have won your way to these collegiate honors. These years which have witnessed your early youth turn into manhood, have witnessed also your habit of fitful endeavor change into a capacity for steady, all conquering effort. All the offices of this insti- tution, all its friends, have watched your course with a peculiar interest. I express the truth with but a feeble emphasis when I say that your teachers have given you no cold and formal assis- tance. Their instructions have been animated by a pecul- iar sympathy - a sympathy which beginning in the reci- tation room, shall end only with their lives. How can I close these my last official utterances better than by urging, with a heart full of kindly feeling and a con- fidence that lays hold of the future, that you exempli- fy, in your lives, the priceless jewel of a character that unites the forces and graces of intellect with high moral principle - with integrity and purity of heart carried inflexibly into even the smallest transaction. So shall your days be radiant with affection, your culture be crowned with beauty and goodness and truth, and you become the living realizations of the declaration that "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth good things."