Image provided by the Yale Club & Scholarship Foundation of Hartford, Inc.
About Yale Alumni Magazine | View Entire Issue (Feb. 22, 1899)
186 then, one didn’t buy any peppermint drops, the persuasive sweet of the Scotch nation. One saved his pennies and bought a little wood and some other things, and made a box, a box in which his father could keep his letters, per- haps. And he saved a little more money and got a lock and key. It took a long time. It was very hard work, and it was a particularly clumsy box. And then he put the box on his father’s table at Christmas. His father picked up the box understanding it all, and looked at it. Well, you know that it was about as badly made a box.as could be made; I don’t know but that the father doubted that it was a good place to keep his letters, as it had a very cheap lock. But he knew the love that went with the box, and the long time it took to make it, and the sacrifices that it entailed upon the boy. And he took it, and he kept his letters in it, and I declare to you that it was the very best box he had. Love made the box; love finished the box; love locked the box and love preserved the box. And then after your father is dead and you examine his possessions, you come across something like this, which you had made, and which you had given him. It is a poor thing. Ah, nothing is poor that is saturated with love. Then suppose your. father had a friend who was his associate in business and who was anxious to please your father and he made him a very hand- some case at Christmas—for reasons of his own (laughter). There was this valuable gift and there was that box. Which is the more valuable? No stand- ard of comparison can embrace the two. There is no comparison between a dead work and work done from pure mo- tives, and in a religious spirit; no com- parison between a work done for effect and gain and for a work done in the spirit of Jesus Christ. The beautiful lives are not always the successful lives, for success depends upon circumstance, and God only knows who are the suc- cessful. The beautiful lives are the lives of love, of humility; of tenderness and unselfishness, and these are the lives that are lived through the faith in Jesus Christ. TO THE NON-BELIEVER. I have spoken too long, but there are two men I would just like to say a word to before we part. There is a man here who has not believed in our Lord, who sometimes is a little superior, because he is elevated above Christian associations and above religious miat- ters. Now, my dear friends, do you think you have much reason for your superiority, and especially for your grounding your superiority on your being above faith? Do you see how it stands? You believe in every good ideal, for you are an educated and a cultured man. Accept the greatest ideal that has ever been revealed—the ideal of a religious life. You believe in good men, I have heard you say so and I do you justice. You have often said, “though I am not religious, I believe in good men.” And yet the only good man, the only perfect good man that ever lived, who has gathered up the whole goodness of the spiritual world, you have rejected, you have rejected. He came to you and said, “Will you be my disciple?” You said, “No. I believe in every good man, but not you. I trust every good man, but I don’t trust you.” You cannot feel proud about that, my friend. You cannot feel happy about that. You take the good gifts of God every day and you won’t take Jesus Christ.” : Then there is another man who says: I have believed for years.” And now, what do they say about you? What do they say about you in the University? What do they say about you in your family? What do your associates say about you? What is the use of believ- Ing in doctrine if a man is not true? What is the use in speaking about Jesus Christ if a man does not follow him? What is the use of being a member of a Christian association if you won’t take the Cross? Well, you have your lives before you and there is only one thing I envy you for.. I do not envy you that you are able, and I do not envy you that you are going to become great. But I envy you the years you have in which to serve this University first, and then your country, before which such a future lies, and. the Church of God, which more and more is wheeling into line and rising to power. I envy you ' special reports of Sunday at Yale. YALHK ALUMNI ———1-— that and I pray that you have great lives in the Master’s service. And when the sun sets for you and me, and we come home in the evening, after we have done our best (it will be a poor best), it will not be Christ’s life, for Christ’s spirit will not have such perfect play in us that we shall be able to say: “Lord, my work is all perfect, all good.” No, no. When we come in in the even- ing we shall be like good George Her- bert, the most representative saint of the English church. When he was dy- ing and a friend said to him (you know what a holy life he lived in his parish; what beautiful poems he wrote; ‘a sweet and beautiful life of charity, more than most men), when he lay dying his friend said: “Well, Mr. Herbert, you need have no fear, for no man has ever written, done more beautiful works.” And I think his friend was right per- haps. But, “Ah,” said Herbert, “they be good works if they be cleansed with the blood of Jesus Christ, not other- wise.” And that is the end of the whole matter, From the Cross, gentlemen, we start and to the Cross we return. i . THE QRANGE DINNER, Prof. Schwab on the Bi-Centennial— An Association’s Character. The sixteenth annual dinner of the Yale Alumni Association of Essex County was held in Upper Music Hall, Orange, N. J., Friday evening, Febru- ary 17. The attendance, the enthusiasm and the whole spirit of the meeting were quite in accord with the tradi- tions of this Association, which is known as one of the livest of all the Yale group. To no banquet is an invitation more prized. than to the ban- quet of the Yale Alumni Association of Essex County. The dinner has usually an embarras- sing wealth of material for an account. It is especially embarrassing this year, as the WEEKLy’s decks had to be pretty well cleared Monday, which is the last day of composition, for the The time at which was possible to secure a complete report from the Orange ban- quet, was later than at first hoped for. The material is of a kind that a paper © desires to put in print at once instead of holding over, and so this issue gives what it can, and regrets only that it cannot give more. The meeting had a good representation from both Harvard and Princeton. The feeling, shown between the colleges was quite in accord with the more liberal spirit of these latter days. < Mr. Emile Schultze, Jr., ’85, who continues to preside with conspicuous success over the Essex County Asso- ciation, opened the evening with a speech which he described as intro- duced only for the purpose of making “conversation,” on the plan of Mrs. Flynn’s classic passage with Mrs. O’Reilly. President Schultze reminded his hearers that the idea of a Yale-Har- vard night at New York, was taken bodily and without credit from the in- variable practice of the Essex County Association, which had always had at its dinners the complete representation of Harvard in Orange—one alumnus. He added that the Brooklyn alumni even went so far as to copy a menu card. Mr. Schultze called the past an “all blue year” for Yale. But as a sign of a reawakening in athletics, he instanced the victory of the basketball team over the Seventh Company of Rough Riders of Hartford, and said, “I am also as- sured that with the exception of the piccolo player, the Yale orchester is now able to play ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever’ without skipping a bar.” Re- ferring to the joke of President Cowles of the Chicago Association, that the Crew was like an angry cat, in that it was stroked the wrong way he said: “To many it might seem that the Crew would have been better off if they had been more like a bag full of angry. cats and had humped their backs more. However, our generous Yale spirit gladly offers the heartiest congratula- tions to all victors over us, and if we cant celebrate any victories in the past year or two, we have plenty of them WH hK LY stored away in the cellar for just such cold weather. In all branches of sport too, and all glorious enough to keep us pretty warm.” After paying a very warm tribute to President Dwight, he asked in the name of the Orange Association, that the representative of Yale who was pres- ent, would go as a special delegate to tell President Dwight the feelings of re- gret of the men of Orange on his with- drawal. Professor John C. Schwab’s toast was “Yale.” The sentiment was: * * * Stronger than the trowel builds, Deep-laid by toiling scholar-guilds, Her corner-stone’s free-masonry As broad as this broad century, Our new regenerate Yale shall be— Our Yankee university. BEERS. Professor Schwab spoke in part as follows: Speech of Professor Schwab. “An occasion like this one empha- sizes once more the solidarity of Yale alumni; .we are standing together to further a common cause, just as we formerly and in a much smaller way learned to stand together for our Class. At the two hundredth anniversary of our University’s foundation, now draw- ing near, this solidarity of her sons will assert itself. On that festival oc- casion we shall in retrospect recall what ~ Yale has accomplished for our Nation by honoring the scholar-patriot Nathan Hale and the long line of distinguished men whom our alma mater has fitted for their leadership in American man- hood, American scholarship, and Amer- ican culture. : | “But the celebration in 1901 will not confine itself to reflections on the past; it will also concern itself with answer- ing the question: How is Yale fulfilling her mission? But especially will it con- cern itself with the prospect of the new conditions which the twentieth cen- tury. has in store, and will put, and we hope answer, the question: How does Yale propose to meet those conditions, and how is she to remain true to her past traditions as the teacher of the leaders of men and thought in this country? “The text of the anniversary exercises will be the motto of the University, Lux et Veritas. We shall emphasize that the first object of the University’s existence is to learn the Truth. As we look ahead into the distant centuries, our buildings may crumble away, our students may desert us for inland uni- versities, the intellectual and educational center gravity of the country may have moved from New England for ever, but Yale will still be remembered for what she has contributed to the advancement of the Truth. To-day her widest repu- tation throughout the world is not primarily based on the number of her students, not on the size of her build- ings, not on her athletic or debating victories, but on the success of the men she has selected and trained to extend our knowledge of the mysteries of nature and man. Yale’s fame in the past rested on the world-wide scholar- ship of a Woolsey, a Silliman, a New- ton and a Dana; and the present strength of Yale rests primarily on the efforts of their successors who are striv- ing to learn the laws of nature, of the human body as well as of the social body. In 1g9o1 it is planned to honor those of past times who have thus con- tributed to Yale’s glory; and also to show by a series of publications on scientific subjects that the scholarly traditions of the past are still alive, and that we of to-day have at least the same ideals before us that those giants of old were aiming at. PRESERVING THE TRUTH. “Next to the University’s object to learn the Truth, stands its aim to preserve the Truth. At immense cost the accumulated knowledge of the past has been preserved in museums and libraries: for the guidance of future generations of truth-seekers. For all time will they be indebted to the skill and unselfish devotion of such men as Professor Marsh, whose collections, recently so generously presented to Yale, stand unrivalled in the world. Our library too will stand for all time a monument to the skill of our librarians. te. “This most vital part of our institu- tion must be strengthened at any cost. No part of our plant needs more care- ful guarding and more generous endow- ment. It is proposed to draw on OUF museums and other stores of knowledg© in 1901, and prepare exhibitions of 27 educational and historical character, 17 which the collection of Trumbull paiztt- ings-will figure prominently. as due tO the University’s position of custodian of the leading pictures of that famous American artist. We, moreover, feel ourselves to be the custodians and pre- servers of the best traditions of Amer— ican manhood, which we deem synony- mous with Yale democracy, and take a pride in assuming the responsibility of that office. TEACHING THE TRUTH. “But not only does the University accumulate and preserve the knowledge and traditions of the past. It must, to be true to itself, teach the Truth. The graduates of our institution did not know by sight even many of its officers whose researches are winning fame for Yale; nor had they as a rule any inti- mate acquaintance with the University Library and its officers; but they do remember the officers of the University who met them in the class-room as teachers. To most of the graduates Yale is a teaching institution and little else. And quite naturally so. For the living force we felt in our student days and the recollections of those years are grouped about the men—scholars as well as teachers—who taught us geometry, or physics, or the laws of human society. When we alumni gather in 1901 in the new Alumni Hall to do honor to our common teacher, we shall have in mind the same lesson, taught in different ways, by different men, at different times, the same lesson of the true inwardness of the human heart and mind. THE QUESTIONS OF THE FUTURE. “And from recollections of the past we Shall turn to the problems of the opening century, and ask ourselves how the University is to attract the proper men to lives of scholarly research and away from the more remunerative pro- fessions. We shall certainly never be rich enough to offer a sufficient money inducement. Must we then rely upon offering the attractions of a quiet life spent in study, the satisfaction of help- ing in the solution of the problems of the future, or applying science to poli- tics, business, and the professions? “This question the future alone can answer. Another question will suggest itself: Will Yale continue to be a Na- tional University? She has succeeded in wiping out sectional lines; will she be equally successful in amalgamating the various nationalities that will be increasingly represented among her students. Fifteen years ago German- American names were rare in the University catalogue; now they are quite numerous. Irish names are grow- ing in number. Students of Scan- dinavian, Polish, Italian and Russian ancestry present themselves in increas- ing numbers. For my part, I foresee only a successful amalgamation of these new elements, and a broadening of our usefulness. I am almost equally san- guine in believing that the University can fulfill her mission, however large the number of her students. But the cost—there is the question that causes us alarm as we look into the next century, and compare our scanty re- sources with our immense needs in the way of endowments and buildings, with- out which we must yield our proud position in the educational world. — “But even these material resources count for little without the codperation of the body of the alumni. If they lose confidence in the University, if they withdraw their moral support, all is lost. Fortunately that moral support is strongly in evidence in some of the University’s activity. Would that it were more evenly distributed, and that some of the enthusiasm which follows an eleven to the field or a debating team on the platform, were so directed as to encourage those that are guiding the broader and deeper interests of the institution. The selection of a recent graduate to supervise the training of the Crew was very properly received with enthusiastic approbation. The ap- pointment of the same gentleman to a position on the Faculty some years ago was hardly noticed at the time, but
