Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1909-06-17
IN ABLE ADDRESS.
President BruSke Of Alma College
Delivered The Annual
8ACCA[AUREATE SERM D n.
Al The Presbyterian Church Last Sunday Eve.
ning-Large Audience Present.


Bruske delivered the annual baccalaur-
cate sermon to the graduating class of
1908. The class of young men and
women attired in caps and gowns, en-
tered the church in body and after
the opening service the college president
took for his text
"Smitten down, yet not destroyed"
, Cor. 1 ..
This is the strangest text from which
a baccalaureate sermon was ever
preached. 1t sounds like a funeral
dirge at a wedding. Many years ago,
the choir startled the congregation by
singing
"Sister thou art mild and lovely
Gentle as a summers breeze,
Pleasant as the air of evening
When ii floats among the trees.
Dearest sister, thou hast left us
And thy loss we deeply feel.
But 'tis God that hath bereft us,
He can all our sorrows heal"
The congregation craned their necls
to see the funeral procession enter the
church-none came. The explanation
that the choir had decided to save
time and trouble and sing all the an
thems of the book in order, without
reference TO subject or occasion.
The Commencement season is time
of reioicing-Of eXaltation. Shall it be-
Gin by telling us that we are smitten
down? Let us see. Four years ago
college life To you, members of this
Class of 1909, was prospect. The
journey through looked like such
long one. Would you ever live to FIN
ish it? With great hesitation you were
induced to undertake it. especially since
it promised so much. You knew what
il had done for many of your friends.
They were awkward, bashful boys and
girls when you first knew them. Then
they disappeared for four years i'm col
lcge, and when you saw them again
they we're such intelligent, self-reliant,
refined ladies and gentlemen. Surely Il
college education was marvellous
thing. You felt YOU must have it. You
would rather have it than Il gold mine
in California or n diamond mine in
South Africa. Nay, what are the great
est fortunes on earth compared to "A
trained mind and cultivated spirit?
so you came. possibly against the adj
vice of father and mother, and here
YOU have toiled and studied and denied
yourself, until YOU have finished the
journey. Today you look back upon
it, and hardly realize that it is finished.
1t has been 50 short and i'm many ways
it is such a disappointment. 1t seems
to have yielded YOU so little. 'The great
sciences of which you hoped to he the
proud master-why you know not even
the names of many of them. Some of
them. upon which YOU pondered in boy
hood, YOU have not given an hours at
tention to since you have been i'm col
lcge. If you were to voice the thought
of your inmost soul tonight, you would
say. How little | know"
How little | know about myself"
| have seen him indeed-that most
W wonderful man of the Greeks-that old
heather whom all college men have
seen. He has stood before me often
and with the same foretinger pointing
straight at me. he has said, Know
tbyself" 1t was heavenly vision.
but how little have protited by 1t!
How little | understand that Divine
creature of God, my body. How much
less that image of God my mind.
How little know of the most faml-
lar objects about me. The soil beneath
my feet. Why should il be a ridge of
sand here and bank of clay yonder.
The stones of the field. Why are they
- liberally dropped onto my neigh
bors' acres. and none were dropped on
mine? The blessed birds, how little |
them Why doesn't the
bird spend the summer with
rs as the robin does? Why should the
sing from Italian willows
and never from the elms and naples
OF America? Why should Kentucio
have a monopoly of the blue grass and
Michigan have no rival In it's wealth
Of departed white pine?
Such questions will he asked this
week by the members OF the gradua-
ting classes Of the hundreds of colleges