Arizona weekly journal-miner., 1900-06-20
BACCALAUREATE SERMON.
the Prescott High School on Sunday. June IT. 1900.

Below will be found a portion of the sermon delivered on Sunday evening by Rev. H. w. Peck to the graduating class Of the high school. He took his text from H. Timothy. 2:3-6. and spoke as follows:
 Il am reminded tonight. as 1 look into your faces. that 1 am about to speak to company of young people of strength. vigOr, health and high courage. as you look out in the battle field of unknown future 1 would that it were mine to tell you that into your lives would come all that makes for the best allotted to man; but not to mortal is such power given. hence while 1 most heartily hope that such will be the case yet 1 must say that l know not what awaits you upon the shores of time. Some of you doubt less will live until the winters frost of human life has Silvered your heads and come to the end of this stage of existence like a full shock of corn to the barn of the reaper; while others of you may swiftly reach the goal, and the tale of your life be exceeding iy brief. I am troubled. then. when I think that l am to speak to you on this. one of the red-letter days in your life, troubled least perchance I do not bring you that message which will prove the most suited to your case; yet I am glad that I have the oppor- tunity to bring you hearts message, as 1 hold up before you high ideal, q noble standard.
 Il have chosen as my text, that which gathers round the person of The Man Christ Jesus 1 have no hesitation in telling you that all your life as to its success or failure will de pend upon your attitude toward Him. In Him you will find all that is ideal as well as real for the nOblest of earth. He is the center and circum- ference of human possibilities. If you have not already set him up as your ideal. then let me help you tonight so to do. You will never rise higher than your ideal; hence if your ideal char acter and conception of life be low, your life will be ruined before it has really begun.
 T am reminded tonight that you are the last class to graduate from our school this century. A century remark able for many things for none more than for the great battle that has been wagered during it's rapidly gliding years around the man Christ Jesus, whose thought and life I am bring ing to your attention. It has been an age of unrest. The century began with the truth about liberty, and right ideas of mans relation to God and to man hidden in the eXtravagances and say agery of the French revolution: nor did our own land escape. The effort was made to do without the one God and Mediator spoken of in my text. but it has been a dismal failure Men have wandered far and searched deep for the truth which was to open the door to the intellectual land from which Christianity was to be forever dehIrred; but they found it not Many and rare have been the discoveries which have resulted from the diligent search. and for them all we render homage to the discoverers: but yet we thank God that the old Book has stood every test. and that our God is still supreme. One cannot look back over the century without some regrets. at the losses and the disasters that have come to our own people; the Anglo-SaXOn especially. We have produced some magnificent men and women during the century just slip ping into eternity. We are justly proud of our AggaZiS. Danas. Daw- sons. Thompsons. Argyles. Longfel- lows. TennySonS. LincOlns Glad
 of h irey. but still there is the loss which has been ours through wrong conceptions If God and the waste of life due to wrong ideas. Many a life during the century has gone out in gloom unut- terable which God did not intend so to end. My young friends. be care tul of your ideas and ideals. Choose that which has borne the test of many centuries. and think not lightly of that which man has proven true by long and continuous experience. Believe in God. and let your belief take vital hold upon your life. Live the noble. the Christ life. and then no dreary dread will haunt the pathway to the other world. Yours will be the quiet, deep peace which is the outgrowth of deep searching and deep er penetration into the fathOmless ocean of Gods love and revelation of himself to men, If you make a mis- take here it will be fatal. One can not read the bitter wall of goddess ma terialiSm without deep pity. It seems strange that in a century of so much progress. many of its brightest minds should have gone astray on this vital | point of the souls relation to it's God. i Listen to the despairing wall of ma- terialism deprived of all hope in God. | Man. born of blind force and uncOn- Scious matter. quickened by some mysterious cruelty to a consciousness ! of his own origin and a foreboding of his ineXplicable destiny, he 'drees 1 his weird between two fathOmleSs 1 abySSeS of gloom as one who is in l deed weary and heavy laden. The music with which he accompanies | his march toward the blank and dis maj bourne rolls and clashes through 1 the literature of every land with deep
 and mournful diScords. as if man had
 at last invented that strange organ { of expression which Satirist has ! called the miserophOne.
 "I am glad that it is mine tonight
 to tell you that such dismal wall
 has no terror for the follower of
 The Man Christ Jesus His well ] grounded faith and vital experience
 of the one God and Mediator has . forever stilled the wall of woe. and
 settled the question of destiny in his
 mind and to the joy of his heart
 This iS one of the results of the past century Often during it's years
 have timid Christians looked with
 fear at the portentOus gloom of the gathered clouds of doubt. which have
 darkened the horizon; but ever has our God dispelled them, and never has
 there q century closed with as many
 and as devout followers of the man Christ Jesus as the one now closing You ask me how it has all come about
 And 1 answer that it is the power of his person and the magnetism of his life which have drawn men to him