The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-06-19
TO Tech STUDENTS.
Rev. DR.. Gunnison's
Baccalaureate
Sermon.
REACH FOR HIGH LEVELS.
May You "Be Strong and
Show Thyself
a Man."
REACH FOR HIGH LEVELS.

The senior class occupied a section OF
seats at the right of the main aisle
and directly opposite a section was re-
served for the faculty and trustees of
the institution. DR.. Gunnison said in
part;
BE strong and show myself man..
Kings, liz.
King David had finished his course
and was to give to his successor the
sceptre which he had held for forty
years. He had loved Israel with pas
sionate idolatry and broad and deep
had laid the foundations of national
greatness. According as his successor
builded, should Israel rise in glory or
in shame.
The affection of a father was added
to the solicitude of a king, and with the
emphasis of dying words, the old king
said to his son, BE strong and show
thyself a man.
Dreams end and visions give way to
realities as life goes on, and expert
enCe teaches that wealth, power, art, is
long; that dynaSties are rooted in law,
and why did not David counsel public
largesses from this heir of wealth. The
Roman emperors bribed the le-
gions by the spoils of war, and Napo-
leon III kept Paris quiet by making
her beautiful.
The age OF Pericles is immortal be-
cause it was the age of art, and why
should not Solomon, the wiSest Of his
age, make himself and Israel great by
writing the statutes of wisdom? But
Davids wisest experience taught that
institutions, laws, art, government, are
only the heightened or lessened shad-
Df =, fI,e.
who bears the world upon his Shout
ders and the higher man is raised, the
higher the world is lifted, and so he
SAID. Show thyself a man."
The basis of all manhood and all sue
cess is strength. Long ago Humboldt
said: The nation that holds iron will
rule the world" The earths anatomy
is bound together with bones of gran
lite and ligaments of metal and it bears
uncrushed the weight of cities. Car
lyle was right when he made the strong
man the ruler of his kind. The Ro-
man mastered the earth until unholy
passion melted the iron in his blood,
and the Goth conquered because the
sap Of the northern forest was in his
veins, and the winds Of the North sea
filled his lungs.
The winners of battles, masters of
assemblies, captains Of industry, epoch
makers, have had nerves of steel and
frames of iron. The race of life is a
thing of many heats, and he wins who
! lasts, and he lasts who has his strength
rooted in that Virility which is only the
other name for manhood.
The stronger force men use, the
stronger must be the harness in which
1t works. When the wind drew men 8
ships, they yoked it with threads of
canvass; for the lightning they must
make yokes of iron Man works in
this new age with mind. In the la
boratories of thought he makes inven-
tions and incarnate them in wheel and
piston. But he feeds his furnace fires
as Pallissey the potter, heated his
ovens, with the substance of his life.
Dante shall become as ghost-like as
the spirits that he evokes in the Divina
Commedia. Milton shall burn out the
substance of his eyes in his visions of
heaven and hell-for these subtler
forces these finer Installations, which
are the motive forces of modern life,
are only the energy of the coarser body
transmitted into mind. And the
stronger, warier, wiser, subtler the en-
ergy of thought, the emery of action,
the stronger must be the body which
generates the force.
There are three major elements that
make manhood-industry truth and Wis
ion. The primal law of life was that
by the sweat of his brow man should
eat bread. The army of invasion re-
turns from Manila. The insurgent
/ forces come back to occupy the aban-
doned posts. Man cannot build bins or
grow harvests large enough to give
him more than temporary respite from
labor; the granary is empty when the
new harvest ripens.
This is the age of tools, but tools are
the instruments, not the substitutes of
toll! They are larger servants because
man has greater needs, but man never
yet has made invention that has made
| him free from the servitude of labor
It is the boast of modern engineering
that there is no feat that it cannot do
The iron rails climb the Jung Frau and
| the MatterhOrn is being pierced. Only
give wealth enough and the engineer
will bridge the sea, and run a trolley to
the moon; There is no formula of lab
ratory, nor science of constructive are
| that will make harvests come without
plowings and sowings.
There can be no manhood without
truth, not even the physical MASCULINE
ty which makes a man a man, for
truth is health, Yigor, harmony and
strength of action. The universe is
built on truth and administered with
equity, and whoevry attempts to thrust
lie into any of the economies of life
/ confronts the impact of creation.
/ States may write iniquity in statutes,
/ but truth will thrust it out, as growing
/ seeds overturn wall and tower.
France may unite in a conspiracy
! against innocence, bigotry, military
| egotism-army, judiciary, press and
| people may send to exile the. victim Of
I its wrath, but the frigate is on the
| sea and exiled innocence is coming
/ back.
And beauty is only the coming of
| truth to flower and fruit speech, fol-
| lowing the laws of truth, coming to
| eloquence in Demosthenes, art moving
| along the ways of truth until it comes
/ to it's throne a power in RaphaePs
] canvas.
| The bullet carries according to The
| powder in the rifles breech, ard a
| mans work has such valuation as his
/ manhood is worth.
! There are few elements of manhood
! comparable in value to that of vision
! The man who can see farthest leads
mankind. The poet writes the songs to
| which the world marches; the prophet
| lays out the highway in which it walks:
the statesman is the seer of the future
and he frames states-and let a man
only see a cable bows length beyond
I the vision of his fellows, and he b.
comes a leader. Invention is only find
Ing out lut SeCItlS NIOu mas nlQQent ana
the prophet, the dfscOverer, the invent
or is only the seer, the finder and in
terpreter.
1t has been the peculiar good for
tune of the young men, to whom it has
been my privilege to speak, this eve
ming, to receive instruction in an in
stitution in which insight is empha-
sized and the art of achievement is
taught to be the art of seeing; that
vision comes by climbing great noun