Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1913-06-19
The COLLEGE ADDRESS
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unless you have the life and have 1t
abundantly.
What OF the half century that is
before you, members of the gradual
ing class? Shall it be given over to
making life or to making a living?
What is living? The beggar has it;
the man on whose walls hangs
priceless Rubens, whose floor is COW
cred with rugs worth their weight i'll
gold, on whose shelves are manu-
scripts more precious than jewels
he has living and that is all. What
else will money buy? "A mans life
consistent not in the abundance of
the things he possesseth."
Would that time permitted to tell
what else this particular man OF
wealth has, what else his wife has.
Theirs it has been not to make liv-
ing (any one can do that, but to
make lives The world is better be-
cause they have lived. Not because
they have money, Really that has
nothing to do with it, 1t is because
they have life, and have it more
abundantly, and because they too
have come that others might have it,
They would carry to others that
priceless gift which is theirs, and so
they are making lives.
A living? Jack Johnson makes
one; the disgraced senator from Hi
nois makes one. A life? That
Princeton ball-player who lost the
game for his team when they were
playing against Yale, rather than let
mistaken decision by the umpire
stand; he will make one. That clerk
in a country store who tramped
miles after long work hours to get
the right change to customer made
one-we know him as Abraham Lin
coin A life! Those Alma graduates
who are in Syria and China and
Korea and Japan, far from friends
and home and a thousand pleasant
things, they each are making one.
So, too, are those Alma graduates
who, doing big business and getting
from it ample financial return, find
time to organize and manage mission
Sunday schools, and Fairgrounds
and cooking classes. And those
many Alma graduates who are
preaching or teaching for pittance
compared with what the same brain
energy applied in other lines would
bring-they are making lives. A liv-
ing or a life? Which do you choose?
But you can do nothing great, you
say? Read the story of the crippled
girl Of fourteen named Sophie Wright
of New Orleans, who at so tender
an age opened little school that
others might learn, and then a night
school from which grew today's mag
nihcent system of night schools in
the southern city, and then a hospital
for crippled children, and then a won
derful school for girls. Sophie
Wright, the helpless cripple, who in
the siege of yellow fever made her
school a center for supplies, manag-
ing their distribution herself Sophie
Wright, the most helpful citizen of
New Orleans, presented by the cit
liens with loving sup, with purse
of $4,000, and later given $4,000 by
lumbermen's convention because
she needed it in her work. Cannot
you with the privilege of a college
education do something?
Young men and young women of
the class OF 1913: The fraternal
orders have a question by which they
determine whether one with whom
they are unacquainted is member
of the order. We who are followers
of the Man of Galilee have a ques-
ton, which is, "Have you the life"
Marconi, when asked whether the
wireless wave passed through the
earth or air, replied, 81 don't know;
it works" Whether we attain the
life by what seems to be faith alone,
or whether we attain it by what
seems to be actions alone, we may
be sure that we have it if it works.
There are those who insist on
"credo," | believe. Is it not enough
to insist on "amo," l love? Make
your lives tick with the master clock.
Live in harmony with him who
brought the life. 1t has but one
source. A sailor tells of an Arctic
owl which flew from an iceberg in
mid-ocean, with its last remnant of
strength, to a passing ship. The ship
was its only hope. Nothing else
could give it life. Jesus is your only
hope, is our only hope, nothing else
can give the life.
Shall it be living or life? To
which will you give these years that
are just ahead of you? You go out
as leaders. Fail not to have the life.
Nothing else can give you any sue
cess.