Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1897-06-18
MIR. Days Baccalaureate.

Luke XII, 1880: "And they shall come
from the east and the North and south and
shalt sit down in the kingdom of God.
And behold there are last which shall be
first and there are first which shall be last"
The quiet and persistent rivalry in school
life and the stimulus each mind has re-
ceved in comparison in work with others
was recognized, with a reference TO the
constant shifting of positions, the thoughts
leading up to the great permanent motive
of life-competition.
In considering "Christ's TRANSPORTATION
of the Law of Competition" Mr.. Day call
ed attention TO the remarkable modernness
of his teaching. 1t is often said that there
are three forces that work in the building
up of man. The first of these is hered-
ity, the second is environment, and the
third is personal, self-originated energy
The tendency today is TO put more and
more emphasis upon the third. In the
midst of Hebrew nation on the one hand
that made everything of Abrahamic de-
scent, and of Roman government on the
Other, that made it its business to crush
the individual in the iron jaws of environ
ment, Christ stood for the will.
The motto of the East is $50 SLOW" but
wherever the spirit of Christianity has en-
tered it has brought stimulus and energy,
sometimes misguided or cruel, or using
weapons quite inappropriate for sanity
hands, hut it has invariably broken up the
peace of lethargy, and introduced the
sworded hand of enterprise. Act, act,
cries Christ; rouse yourself; be heredity
and environment what they may, yours it
is to act; the first in the former advantage
may be the last in the final event.
Now, in the second place, Christ says
the world is growing better and grander,
and offering nobler prizes every way. His
whole spirit is that of faith and hope, and
he forever stands as protest against the
whining and lamentable voice which re-
cent prophets of degeneration utter. He
asserts the fact and gives the reason, and
the reason is that the world is His Fathers
world. Now no optimist of sense expects
that the world for long ages will be other
than the theatre of tremendous struggles,
and there will yet be set-backs and reverses
and eddies in the current, and sometimes
the eddy will seem stronger than the
stream; but yet the wiser mind will detect
the deeper movement onward, and find the
present reverse the possible storing of en-
ergy for larger good.
1t was lamented few days ago that
chloroform was lacking temporarily in the
hospital service of the Greek army. What
a revelation that holds of the advance in
surgical science, the results of which are
the essential commonplace of modern
life. We mark the movement in the sci
ence of law, criminal law for example, in
the reduction in the applications of capital
punishment to single crime, in the march
of the principles of international law and
the rise of arbitration as a substitute for
war. Consider the humane advance in be-
half of children, especially those of the
poor, rescued by Christian charity in man
fold forms of relief, placed in well-equip-
ped schools and made the subject of the
profoundest thought by advanced educators
in all enlightened countries. The liberia
ton of woman has shown steady advance
to equal respect, privilege, calling, oppor-
tunity. In fact, the whole movement for
the vindication of the rights of man on
the lines of liberty, equality, brotherhood,
whatever crude or passionate or revolution
airy forms it may have assumed, is mighty
advance in the right direction, gathering
volume and attaining wisdom with every
decade, and bursting forth with conquer
ing vitality even where most oppressed.
Where there is noisy contention on one
side of Africa for land, diamonds and
gold, there is at the same time quiet rev.
olution in the Niger region on the west side
forever banishing slavery where it has
been most tyrannous. The world is grow
ing better, and the reason is that in and
beneath all is power which is making for