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THE

HARVARD GRADUATES' MAGAZINE.

VOL. IV. DECEMBER, 1895.- No. 14.

THREE CHARACTERISTICS OF HARVARD.1

THERE are three great characteristics of the life of Harvard University in this generation, upon each one of which I should like to say a word. The first is the non-sectarian type of Christianity, the inclusive type which prevails under the present administration of the religious interests of the University. It would be disastrous to the largest and best power of Christianity if the peculiarities of any one sect should acquire predominance here. To-day the strength of all the great religious bodies, their manifest excellences, without any of their defects, are admitted to full influence in the formation of belief. Under the present system it is realized how great are the identities among the preachers of Christianity, and how much variety and breadth each denomination may bring to another; at the same time the great name of the University as the unfettered servant of truth is saved from the indignity of identification with any form of sectarian opinion. Religion as the bond of life between student and student, as the universal interest that creates a meeting place for a hundred different, otherwise crippled specialists; religion as the homage of man to the Infinite, and his tribute, through inspired service to mankind, is brought into organic, inseparable, and beneficent union with the total interests of the University. It is their deepest ground, their highest consummation, their final justification and transfiguration.

The second grand characteristic of the University over which we rejoice is that it stands for the nation. Students come to it from all parts of the country; they come with their local preju1 Spoken at the Commencement Dinner of the Alumni.

dices, jealousies, and with those germinal misunderstandings and antipathies that mean for the future the alienation of one division of this great nation from another. The magnitude of the country makes these prophetic antagonisms an immense, not to say an alarming obstacle in the way of vital popular union. Thus do these elect youth come to this seat of learning. They here meet each other, form enduring friendships, interchange opinions, lift the whole instinctive prepossession of given localities to the high level of rational consideration and debate, and at the end of the college course they return to their several homes with a new sense of the grandeur of the American nation, with a fresh pride in the variety of her greatness, and with a deeper tolerance for the dif ferences that may exist within the bounds of a common patriotic devotion. In working out a new national consciousness which shall be strong enough to overcome all sectional selfishness, and to hold the country to its great manifest destiny, Harvard University is doing a supreme service.

The third great trait to which I should like to call attention is that the policy and spirit of the University answer to the character of the government under which we live. Harvard is a democracy, in all that concerns incentive for talent, and opportunity for worth, the completest democracy known to me. Inherited privilege, high birth, large and powerful social connections and wealth, apart from intellectual power and moral worth, have often carried their possessor into undeserved success. That has been one of the supreme scandals of university life. Now what I have to say is this, that there is no place on the globe where inherited privilege, distinguished birth, social power and wealth, apart from talent and high character, count for less than at Harvard University. There is no spot on this earth where average ability, honest work, exalted ideals, and high devotion are surer of swift, constant, and inspiring recognition than at this seat of learning. A student may come here an alien, a stranger, poor and without friends, and he may further be embarrassed by an irregular relation to the University, and yet if he be a man of average ability, high purpose, and honest industry, he will here find such recognition and inspiration as shall be at one and the same moment both judgment and inspiration. Harvard College is the poor man's college, the college consecrated to the discovery of

power and worth of every kind; the eager and exhaustless helper of every man who deserves help, the best representative of the democratic spirit of the great Republic that she serves. It is with these three achievements in view, her noble ambition in religion, her intelligent and intense nationalism, and her magnificent administrative democracy,- that one would call upon the University, in the most sacred words, " Arise, shine, thy light being come, and the glory of the Lord having risen upon thee." George A. Gordon, '81.

THE SOLDIER'S FAITH.1

ANY day in Washington Street, when the throng is greatest and busiest, you may see a blind man playing a flute. I suppose that some one hears him. Perhaps, also, my pipe may reach the heart of some passer in the crowd.

I once heard a man say, "Where Vanderbilt sits, there is the head of the table. I teach my son to be rich." He said what many think. For although the generation born about 1840, and now governing the world, has fought two at least of the greatest wars in history, and has witnessed others, war is out of fashion, and the man who commands the attention of his fellows is the man of wealth. Commerce is the great power. The aspirations of the world are those of commerce. Moralists and philosophers, following its lead, declare that war is wicked, foolish, and soon to disappear.

The society for which many philanthropists, labor reformers, and men of fashion unite in longing is one in which they may be comfortable and may shine without much trouble or any danger. The unfortunate growing hatred of the poor for the rich seems to me to rest on the belief that money is the main thing (a belief in which the poor have been encouraged by the rich), more than on any grievance. Most of my hearers would rather that their daughters or their sisters should marry a son of one of the great

1 An address delivered on Memorial Day, May 30, 1895, at a meeting called by the graduating class of Harvard University. Copyright, 1895, by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

rich families than a regular army officer, were he as beautiful, brave, and gifted as Sir William Napier. I have heard the question asked, whether our war was worth fighting, after all. There are many, poor and rich, who think that love of country is an old wife's tale, to be replaced by interest in a labor union, or, under the name of cosmopolitanism, by a rootless self-seeking search for a place where the most enjoyment may be had at the least cost.

Meantime, we have learned the doctrine that evil means pain, and the revolt against pain in all its forms has grown more and more marked. From societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals up to socialism, we express in numberless ways the notion that suffering is a wrong which can be and ought to be prevented, and a whole literature of sympathy has sprung into being which points out in story and in verse how hard it is to be wounded in the battle of life, how terrible, how unjust it is that any one should fail.

Even science has had its part in the tendencies which we observe. It has shaken established religion in the minds of very many. It has pursued analysis until, at last, this thrilling world of colors and sounds and passions has seemed fatally to resolve itself into one vast network of vibrations endlessly weaving an aimless web, and the rainbow flush of cathedral windows, which once to enraptured eyes appeared the very smile of God, fades slowly out into the pale irony of the void.

And yet from vast orchestras still comes the music of mighty symphonies. Our painters even now are spreading along the walls of our Library glowing symbols of mysteries still real, and the hardly silenced cannon of the East proclaim once more that combat and pain still are the portion of man. For my own part, I believe that the struggle for life is the order of the world, at which it is vain to repine. I can imagine the burden changed in the way in which it is to be borne, but I cannot imagine that it ever will be lifted from men's backs. I can imagine a future in which science shall have passed from the combative to the dogmatic stage, and shall have gained such catholic acceptance that it shall take control of life, and condemn at once with instant execution what now is left for nature to destroy. But we are far from such a future, and we cannot stop to amuse or to terrify ourselves with dreams. Now, at least, and perhaps

as long as man dwells upon the globe, his destiny is battle, and he has to take the chances of war. If it is our business to fight, the book for the army is a war-song, not a hospital-sketch. It is not well for soldiers to think much about wounds. Sooner or later we shall fall; but, meantime, it is for us to fix our eyes upon the point to be stormed, and to get there if we can.

Behind every scheme to make the world over lies the question, What kind of a world do you want? The ideals of the past for men have been drawn from war, as those for women have been drawn from motherhood. For all our prophecies, I doubt if we are ready to give up our inheritance. Who is there who would not like to be thought a gentleman ? gentleman? Yet what has that name been built on but the soldier's choice of honor rather than life? To be a soldier or descended from soldiers, in time of peace to be ready to give one's life rather than to suffer disgrace, that is what the word has meant; and if we try to claim it at less cost than a splendid carelessness for life, we are trying to steal the good-will without the responsibilities of the place. We will not dispute about tastes. The man of the future may want something different. But who of us could endure a world, although cut up into five-acre lots and having no man upon it who was not well fed and well housed, without the divine folly of honor, without the senseless passion for knowledge outreaching the flaming bounds of the possible, without ideals the essence of which is that they never can be achieved? I do not know what is true. I do not know the meaning of the universe. But in the midst of doubt, in the collapse of creeds, there is one thing I do not doubt, that no man who lives in the same world with most of us can doubt, and that is, that the faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a cause which he little understands, in a plan of campaign of which he has no notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use.

Most men who know battle know the cynic force with which the thoughts of common-sense will assail them in times of stress; but they know that in their greatest moments faith has trampled those thoughts under foot. If you have been in line, suppose on Tremont Street Mall, ordered simply to wait and to do nothing, and have watched the enemy bring their guns to bear upon you

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