The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-06-22


 comfort of those about us; every re-
 nunciation of personal ambition in or
 der to promote ideals which shall re- main when we have passed away;-is, | in ways often unseen, a lesson and a
 help to others to go and do likewse.
 Not in large things only, but in small
 things, is ii true that the blood of the I martyrs is the seed of the church. We ] are sometimes tempted to wonder, in
 the midst Of the. fatigues and perplexi-
 ties Of trying to do right, what all this | struggle may be worth. No man is free from these moments of doubt and weariness. Jesus himself in the garden
 of Gethsemane prayed that the cup | might pass from him. But if through ] trial and weakness man preserves his steadiness of purpose, content to leave | to others the selfish gains and visible
 results of achievement, he will often
 times fnd-perhaps as a ray Of light at | the moment, or perhaps not till years | afterward-that some one who saw his ! perplexities and discoura gements has
 been thereby>led to a new conception of duty and new ideal of life which he never could have learned by seeing him 1 in prosperity. It is harder to keep a | straight course in the night time than | in the day time, and it shows less; but l it means more.
 Gentlemen of the Graduating Class:
 You are ambitious, and justly ambi- tious, to be leaders of men. There are | two ways in which you can prove your right to exercise that leadership; by good Judgment or by herosm.
 | The opportunities for the exercise of judgment are obvious to every man.
 The development of civil liberty and in dustrial organization has made them larger than they ever were before. It | is a good thing that it should be so.
 It is a good thing that men should be
 free to seek happiness in their own
 way; and that you, if you can calculate
 more accurately where their political and industrial advantage lies, should be allowed to guide them. Just as long as your calculations are right, you may be certain that every selfish man will fol- low you with the same fidelity with which the gambler stakes his money on | the success of him whom he believes to | be the shrewdest card player. Success and fidelity of this kind are, so conspic- uous and so widely heralded that some people seem to think there is no other success or fidelity worth considering. But they are wrong. The world Is more than a game of cards. History is more than record of gambling opera tions. Fidelity is more than selfish be- lief in the accuracy of another mans
 predictions To a community which
 has no higher ideals than these, de- structlon is approaching rapidly. If it were true, as some metaphysicians tell | us, that all action is necessarily selfish the only difference being that some people admit their selfishness, others | try to conceal it from the rest of the world, and a few go so far as to con- ceal it from themselves-the whole so- Cial order would centuries ago have l gone to pieces. If it were true, as a large section of the community seems | to believe, that a mans success is ! measured by the money and the offices which he can command, orthat the test of a good education is to be found in the fact that it fits a man to make money and to get offices, the American republic would be fast approaching it's . end.
 In the face of conditions like these,
 we need to insist more than ever before l on the possibllity--nay,o on the absolute duty--of that devotion to ideals which | underlies social order and social pro-
 gress. You will have failed to learn the best lesson of your college life unless you have caught that spirit which teaches you to value money and offices and other symbols of success for the sake of the possibilities of service which
 they represent, and to despise the man who thinks of the money or offices
 rather than of the use he can make of
 them. It is this way of estimating suc- cess which makes a man a gentleman in his dealings with others, which makes him a patriot when his country calls for his services, which makes him
 Christian in his conception of life and
 his ideals of daily living. These are the
 things which count in the long run. If you value the world simply for what
 you can get out of it. be assured that
 the would will in turn estimate your
 value to 1t by what it can get out of you. A man who sets his ambition in such a narrow frame may have follow
 CTS in prosperity, but not in diversity. He can secure plenty of sycophants, but no friends. That man, on the other
 hand who values the world for what he can put into it; who deals courteously with his associates, periodically with his country, and who, under whatsoever creed or form, has that spirit of devo-
 ton to an ideal which is the essential
 thing in religion:--that man makes himself part of a world which is bound
 together by higher motives than the hope of material success. If you pur-