New-York tribune., 1910-06-06
.BACCAlAUREATE At N.Y.U.
Imperious Claim OF Conscience
Is Urged by Dr.. McAfee.
GREAT MORAL REVEALS ON
Important Questions To Be Met
by Men Now Entering Social
and Political Life.

Commencement exercises marking the
seventy-eighth anniversary of the found
ing of New York University were con-
tinued yesterday with the bacca1aureate
sermon in the auditorium on University
Heights After religious exercises in the
chapel the Rev. Or. C1eland B. McAfee,
of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian
Church, of Brooklyn. preached. choosing
for his theme The Claim of Conscience
from l Timothy. i, 10, Holding faith and
a good conscience"
He said, in part
mo system of society, not socialism, not
communism. will prevent what We see
every day-young men with every oppor-
tunity, with full powers, with all induce
ments to nanliness. who will not be man
~. The Bowery crowd the bread lines, the
assernblag ges of the down and out are not
made up of men who had no chance, of
men who were cramped in their oppor-
tunities. You find college mon among
them. Last winter visitor who had
passed through the same experience himself
found that . per cent of the men who
made up one bread line we're college men
He found thirty college men Of his own
acquaintance in one small section.
Another investigator found four hun
dred college bred men in the Bowery crowd
one evening There you find sons of re-
spectacle, prosperous families. The slums
produce many failures. but the avenues
produce enough to teach us clearly that
society has to take account of the indi-
vidual, and, what means more, that the
individual must take account of himself.
The only basis for self-respect which can
not be lost is a definite, implicit recogni-
ton of the right of mans conscience in
his life. That at least. never brought a
man TO the Bowery bread line.
"Tt IS an aphorism of one of our own
writer's that all government originates in
conscience, and all good government has
its primal support in conscience. 1t makes
a citizenship to which evil is no jest,
which is hurt by the exploiting Of the
poor, which cannot endure trifing with the
laws, nor bargaining in politics, Chi
canery anywhere; 1t is that citizenship
which is cryingly needed here and now
Men talk to us Of practical politics.
God knows We have suffered our share
from practical politics Ideal politics
could not be worse. At its worst 1t is the
work of conscience without brains. and
that is better than practical politics, whose
work is that of brains without conscience.
men be in power who have little intellect
and sensitive conscience than men who
have great intellect and no conscience. but
best Of all when men are in power whose
intellect is under control of their con-
science.
Men who are entering our social and
economical and political life to-day have
come in at a time when certain great
moral nd urida
that they nothing short of revivals of
religion One may miss them. may go his
way unconscious of them. The greatest
facts of life may touch his very fingers
and he never know that they are there
Men who are entering citizenship to-
day can take part in movements TO answer
questions like these: Can a new racial
type be formed by sudden blending in large
proportions Of the people of all the earth?
VIII democracy work in large way? Can
the nation be held together until the blend
ing takes place? What is the limit of
safety in individual wealth in a democ-
racy? How shall nation be saved from
materalism in its period Of acquiring
wealth? No nation has yet been so saved.
What can we make peculiar in our own
nation to save it7
The answers to these questions lie in
the assertion in individual life, and so in
public life, of the old-fashioned and i'm
perious claims of conscience. And it IS a
hopeful plane in which to work. There is
in this country an hereditary strain of
moral seriousness. The laws on the stat
ute books of New York move on a higher
moral level than our daily lives"
Chancellor MacCracken pronounced the
benediction. To-day the Sandman orator.
ical contest takes place at p. III. while
tomorrow viii witness the cIassday exer-
cises. Wednesday will usher in the COM
mencement proper