The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-06-28
ADVICE TO GRADUATES.



Rev. Lyman Abbott, in the Outlook.
You must understand the currents of this
age if you are to live successfully in it.
The individualism of the middle of the
nineteenth century belongs to the past.
Ruthless and unlimited competition is pass
ing away. No human forces are strong
enough to restore it. We are living in the
age of combination and cooperation. II is
equally in vain for the coal operators of
Pennsylvania to refuse recognition to the
laborers' union and for the Walters Union
in Chicago to refuse recognition to the
hotel keepers union. Capital will combine
for greater efficiency; labor will combine for
better protection. The man who endeavors
to prevent combination, whether of capital
or of labor, swims against a resistless tide.
He walks from the bow to the stern of
steamer which is steadily carrying him in
the direction opposite TO that in which he
thinks he is walking. The wise leader of
industry will neither ignore the competition
of the past nor attempt to resist the ten
dency to cooperation and combination in
the present. He will endeavor to see how
out of the competition of the past to con-
struct combination and cooperation which
will preserve the virtues and values of indi-
vidualism, and secure also the virtues and
values of true. free. cooperative fellow
ship. The tendency toward combination is
as apparent in government as it is In in
dustry. 1t is part of the great movement
toward universal brotherhood which can be
guided, but cannot be thwarted. The sep
arate and jealous provinces of Italy are
united in one Italian kingdom. The hostile
empire. Egypt, India, Australia, have be-
come parts of the great British empire. The
frantic endeavOr for the dissolution of the
American commonwealth in the interests OK
political individualism failed. In lieu of il
the American flag floats not only over all
the former American commonwealth, but,
in spite OF the protests of the timid, carries
American sovereignty across the ocean to
Hawaii and the Philippines. Commerce
beckOns American enterprise to enter the
East. thousand miles nearer our coast
than the British isles, and opportunity de-
mands of US a courage and a wisdom equal
to the exigencies of the new day which
dawns with the new century. To resist the
tendency toward what men miscall imper-
ialism is hopeless task; to guide the ten
dency so that wherever the American flag
carries with it American sovereignty it
shall also carry with 1t liberty, justice and
good will is the problem which the God of
nations calls on you to solve.
In religion the supreme and final author
ity has passed for substantially all Prot
estant denominations, from the church, and
is passing, despite the hopeless resistance
Of many, from the Bible. The minister Of
the future must learn that the secret of
authority is God in the individual con-
science, and that the authority both of the
church and of the Bible is due to the fact
that they have both interpreted that voice
J to human souls. He who would succeed in
the religious development of his age must
not live in the nineteenth century, still less
in the sixteenth. He must live in the twen-
tieth century, and must show men how to
use both the church and the Bible I'm in
terpreting that voice of God in the soul of
man which is the secret of all authority
social political and religious.