The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-12-06

some great Somewhat, and you may
 as well, until the swelling abates, bid
 goodbye to all hope of growth in gen.
 uine scholarly ambition and its attain | ments.
 | But once more consider the goal and prize of Christian ambition. This, put
 into terms whose value and significance
 anyone can estimate as supreme. with
 out insuperable difficulty. is the am-
 bition to be perfect man. To be more
 and more of a man, to realize more
 and more fully-with all the individual
 limitations indeed, which can never be
 escaped-one's own ideal of manhood
 this is the noblest goal of ambition
 that the youth can fix In his minds
 eye. But it Is Jesus, the perfect man,
 the perfectly manly among all men.
 whose likeness is held as the end of
 his running before the man who presses forward In the race.
 | And the object of Christian ambition
 regarded as q prize Is the being more
 and more of such a man,among other | Chrlstian-like men. Or to speak the
 truth In a fine social way; the prize of his ambition Is the blessedness of
 being a member of Christ's perfected
 kingdom. For there Is a sort of
 World Prize" if l may say, which
 is the end toward which all souls that
 are fired with noble and worthy am
 bition are constantly pressing forward
 most strenuousy. And this Is nothing
 of the selfish kind, not even selfish
 endeavor to be truly Christian man. For a selfish Christian man, a man
 selfishly ambitious to be like Christ, Is
 not simply failure complete from the
 point of starting; but an absurdity. | To be "a man among men" is set be-
 fore the youth, not infrequently, as the prize for his most earnest endeavor. To run the Christian race so as to move forward toward the prize of all souls, the coming in us and through us, of | the kingdom of God-this is the noblest | and highest allurement which can stir | any genuinely manly soul.
 Young gentlemen, fellow students, you have of late been stirred uncom-
 monly with what is, in many respects at least, fine and manly ambition.
 It is in its way a right manly thing to endure hardship, submit to disci- pline, encounter danger, and strive | earnestly-if also fairly and generously for the prize of success in a bodily
 contest. In some sort I hold this thing
 to be consecrated as right manly" by the very frequent and deliberate and 1 obviously sympathetic use of these | figures of speech by the Apostle Paul. | D,,t I,1o y,it in1nnI if | ambition for manliness-whether per-
 sonal or belonging to the institution | were fettered by all this, or even in any way limited to such relatively low sphere. Rising above this, and
 speaking to the same impulses in hu- man nature are the desires and activi- ties of imagination and thought, which l administer the ambition to be manly
 in intellect, in social and moral in | fuence over ones fellow, men.
 But supreme over all-or rather, as | including all-is the ambition to be a | truly Christian-like man. The condi- | tions for it's efficacy are the same as | those which belong to any of the lower forms of ambition. Do we want to be that, really and ardently long to attain increased perfection in this
 kind of manhood? Will we set the
 mind, the imagination and the thought, upon this attainment; studying the
 rules of the art, as it were, and prac- ticing them early and late, if so be, that
 we reach this goal and attain this prize? | Will we put out of memory-forget-all | temptations to pride and sloth that
 arise from thought as to what we are,
 or have been; and bend out energies
 with strenuous, untiring devotion to the becoming-ever more and more in
 the future, becoming like the perfect
 man, who is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
 | Would, indeed, that in our hearts and | throughout this university there might
 henceforth burn and reign this lofty, inspiring and redeeming Christian am-
 bition.