Morning journal and courier., 1881-06-27
Yale Commencement.

The baccalaureate disco urse by Presloen6 Porter at Battell chapel yesterday morning | was heard with profound interest and atten- | tion by large and cultured audience. The | text was ''Seek first the Kingdom of God" President Porter began with the reflections
 that the conception of the Kingdom of God
 was original and ennobling that every age | had confronted its demands with fresh
 scrutiny and challenge and that every appar- ! ent arrest of it's progress was succeeded by
 it's further advance and triumph
 To-day the same old doubts are raised. l The same answer confronts, viz, seek first
 the kingdom. What were the reasons for
 seeking it First it proposed the noblest of l all conceivable ends, 8 perfect human char
 acter. It's instrumentalities were supernat- ural and for the restoration of man to his
 better self. It did not exempt the body from l physical infirmities nor annihilate the affec- l tions and passions which make men; nor often raise them to an ecstatic mood, to the
 third heaven of mystic insight or rapt emo- l tion, but planted it's human feet strongly | upon the vulgar earth, and disciplined and purified the soul. The secret lay in the ab- 1 negation and consecration of self to the well
 being of our fellow men through living faith. It is the supreme good. The King
 dom of God enforces the Christian ideal by
 an effective personal agency. It was more than charming and divine philosophy. It l is a religion warmed with love to a di- ! vine person and controlled by devotion to l the highest and purest object of human loy | atty and love. It is life commanded by the l God whom we worship as our Father in heaven, which is exemplifed by the Christ | by whom God commends to us his forgiving grace in life and death and breathed into our souls by the Divine Spirit.
 Faith was the one condition of attaining I this renewed manhood because 1t brings us | into loving connection with a personal God. It was a supernatural kingdom. Even hu- l man life abounded at every turn with exam l pies of the superiority of personal force. Happy was the youth or man ever finding l charmed circle of friends who are to him
 constant source of inspiration. Goodness to | such an one is all the while becoming incar- | nate, and thereby implanting itself more and | more deeply in his soul. How much | higher, greater the influence of the divine | example to the believing soul
 Belief is no arbitrary condition of saliva
 tion, but it is itself salvation, as the more earnest the belief the more will love and ad- l miration for the divine dwell in the soul. l When thus the Kingdom of God comes to us in this personal form it necessarily claims
 our first and supreme regard.
 l This view of faith was important, first because though there might be many diversi- | ties of creed and sects the object and aim of | each was identical and even the divisions and
 strife in the kingdom testified to the pres ! ence at it's center that draws all men to him. self President Porter said
 But what shall we say of those who seem
 to aspire after eternal life. without the aid of l conscious faith what of those who seem | to catch the Christian love of humanity and
 to aspire to more than the Christian self sac
 rifce but yet acknowledge no obligations to
 faith in personal Christ or even deny any
 such obligations?
 Let it suffice us to say for ourselves Others
 may dispense with a personal Christ We cannot. If others turn their backs upon his
 actual presence they cannot avoid the light
 and warmth that glows so intensely in all parts of his kingdom. Even though such persons read history symbol, it may be l to them the power of God.
 One memorable example comes to the mind
 of all, of the great female writer so recently gone, whose youth was marked by devotion ] to Christian duties in the light of devout Christian faith, who subsequently, abandoned her belief in the Christian story, but adhered
 with passionate fervor to the Christian ideal I and died with Thomas A. Kempis near to her
 heart. How much she gained never to lose l from her early faith no one can measure: how much she lost in losing that faith I is indirectly confessed by the gloomy stead fastness with which she looked and 1onged for future yet long deferred Christless king dom of God.
 Her gain and her loss should warn and ex- \ cite each one of us who knows own ] weakness and our need to seek first that 1 kingdom of God which gives us the personal Christ who disappoints no hopes; who dis pels all sadness who completely satisfies, so
 far as he fully inspires every heart that gives
 to him it's loving faith.
 Another even more conspicuous example ! we cannot forbear to notice,-the rough prophet of duty and self control, in far ! enforcing the Christian ideal. but who left \ out of that ideal it's peculiar Christian ele- ments, forgiveness, charity, pardon and hops,-self-r relying and upright indeed but expressing little sympathy with the Christ who confronted him with the strange mys- tery of his tender love and heroic patience, but for whom he could find little loving or grateful affection. It is not surprising that | he had so long forgotten even the prayer of l bic i,, whom it recognizes and worships. | Most touching is the record and the way in 1 which he recovered it again in the loneliness | of his old age, when in his tossings upon his | bed at midnight the old prayer came back to | his mind and to his lips after the disuse of | 40 years, & new revelation that he had indeed | a Father in heaven.
 In such discovery when read by any man is the revelation of Christianity religion as contrasted with Christianity as a philoso- phy.
 Science and culture re-enforce the claims of the kingdom of God as first and foremost.
 The kingdom of God can never be left be- hind by the onward march of human prog ress. The ever widening sphere of culture and development, the more it expands and the richer and fuller it becomes, the more does it require it's life giving influences and it's corrective restraints. The more a man knows and the more profoundly he thinks, the more distinctly will he recognize the va- riety of its claims, and the more sensitively will he feel the force of it's motions.
 Hence to the scholar and the man of cul- ture the command is most imperative, Seek first the kingdom of God.
 This kingdom is individual and social. It begins with the individual indeed. It can do l nothing except it transforms the springs of action within him, but it does not end with the individual. It proposes to regenerate society and so to renew both that every indi- vidual act and every social agency shall be in harmony with the original ideal of Gods.
 The kingdom of God is like leaven, which rests not till it pervades and subdues the mass unto itself When He ascended his throne he proclaimed the words of prophecy that have since been history, Behold make all things new"
 The perfected soul that is to be is wider i even than the Christian church, if we con- ceive the church as society with special ar-