Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1889-07-05
A NEEDED ELEMENT
OF CHARACTER.
PRESIDENT BRAlNERD's BAocALAuRE
ATE LAST SUNDAY.

not as near to us as it was to our fathers.
Our notions of divine providence are
loose and vague as compared with theirs.
Christian worship is getting to be regard
ed somewhat in the light of an esthetic
performance rather than the act of SOL
emn praise and homage to God. In our
current philosophy we notice DISPOSE
ton to ignore the great mysteries of life,
and to consider only those things that lie
within the domain of positive knowledge.
The hold of religious truth upon the
present age has been weakened as an in
cidental result of the scientific warfare
against superstition. Superstitous fan
ces have naturally associated themselves
with religious beliefs and in roofing up
the tares men have rooted up the wheat
also. Some even go so far as to reject
all supernatural truth, all belief in per-
sonal God, all hope of future life, as part
and parcel of the groundess fancies-
the ghost-stories-th have tyrannized
over the human mind; Just as in their
revolt against the mistakes and abuses
committed by the older school of physi-
clans, some men haye lost faith altogeth-
er in the value of medicine.
Scientific methods have enfeebled our
spirit of reverence in another way, by
fixing our attention upon natural laws
rather than upon the Divine Power
which lies back of all law. The beauty
and order and intelligence and progress
seen in the material world are the eman-
ations of divine mind-not who created
ages go self-developing fre-mist and
may have long since forgotten it, but
who is the ever-present reality back of
all appearances. a deeper philosophy
will bring back a full and complete be-
lief in the providence of God, though it
be a God whose thoughts are not as our
thoughts and whose ways are not as our
ways. And just as we admire the beauty
of the rainbow, even after optics has eX-
planned how its colors are produced, so
we shall see the glory of God in the
heavens after we have learned all the les
sons of astronomy, and behold his good
ness in the sweet return of seed-time and
of harvest.
The spirit of reverence is quenched by
the excessive attention given to intellect
ual effort. The life of the business man,
or of the professional man, is today a
life of intense. prolonged mental strain.
There is but little time and energy left
for the aesthetic and spiritual side of our
nature. A severe intellectuaism paral-
Yves emotion. 1t deadens our spiritual
faculties and enfeebleS our apprehension
of the grand ideas and practical truths
which form the basis of religion. Those
powers of mind or body which long re-
main uneXercised pass into state of
weakness and decadence. The hand of
Of the musician who wholly neglects his
art for many years loses its cunning.
Our appreciation of what is grand and
beautiful in literature passes away from
Us unless habtually fostered. And in
like manner our God-ward capacities for
faith and reverence and worship become
extinct through disuse.
Gentlemen Qfthe GraduattRg CiosS:-
You are going out into the strife and
whrl of active life. The claims of pro-
fessional duty will make greater and
greater demands upon your energies.
lou will feel the necessity of straining
every nerve to secure the prizes of ambi-
ton that glitter before you. You will be
tempted to neglect those matters that
contribute to broad culture of mind
and heart. The grand books that have
stimulated your best thought in the leis-
ure hours of college life may be permit
ted to lie in dust on their shelves. You
may have no longer time or inclination
for the solitary walk in the starlight, in
which fervid thoughts crowd into the
brain and the will gives birth to high re-
solve. But let me assure you that these
are privileges that you can i'll afford to
surrender. They are the breathing
places of the soul, when it shakes of the
dust of daily toll aud finds rest and
strength and inspiration to renew its
labors.
Remember that the heart is of more
consequence than the head. Keep the
upper windows of the soul ever open to
let in the pure light and air of heaven.
Acquire habits of reverence for all thai
is pure and good, reverence for woman
reverence for law-reverence for wise
and brave men of all times-reverence
for all those holy mysteries in which our
human life is enshrouded. | do not need
to be more explicit and to use the trte
words of religious exhortation; for
know that if the soul reaches out in all
humility and earnestness for that which
is above it, it will find God to be the
dearest object of its faith, and will lay
hold of the gracious hopes and ministries
to be found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The laying of an ocean cable from