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About Yale Alumni Magazine | View Entire Issue (July 1, 1900)
410 YALE ALUMNI WEEKLY up to their best. This is not said in extenuation of the team, nor do its mem- bers call it a reason for its defeats. But it is a fact that Yale’s failure in base- ball this year lies at the door of each member of the College who did not do everything in his power to stay the hands of the Captain and to encourage his players. WHAT THE RECORD SHOWS. As is practically invariably the case, events proved the wisdom of the deci- sions of those who knew all about the merits of the different players. The player against whom so much criticism was launched made his base every time he came to the bat in the Harvard game and did the longest hitting of the other two games of the series. He remained, to the last, the man in whom coach and captain had absolute confidence, and the one whom all the players were best satisfied to see taking the ball or coming to the plate in close quarters. The other side of the picture we do not care to dwell on. The College has, in our opin- ion, already learned its lesson. The lesson of the baseball season of 1900 must be taken to heart, if Yale is to regain the place she ought to occupy in intercollegiate athletics. - == ee ee YALE BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS. Delivered by President Hadley at Battell Chapel June 24, at the Morning Service. As each man approaches the end of his college course, he inevitably asks himself what that course has done to prepare him for the work which is to follow; what are the’ special advan- tages which he enjoys for the life that is before him, and what are. the special dangers to which he is exposed. So far as concerns the purely intel- lectual side of these questions, there is a general consensus of opinion among men of the world. You are told, and truly told, that your preparation has been one of theory rather than of prac- tice; that if you will submit your theoretical power and breadth of intel- lectual vision to the exigencies of prac- tical life, it will stand you. in good stead and enable you to become leaders in whatever lines of work you .may choose; but that if this knowledge of theory causes you to disregard the necessities of practice it will be a source of weakness instead of. strength, and will unfit you for the exercise of any useful influence on the affairs of your fellow men. All this has been said so often that it has become commonplace. But there is another and more import- ant aspect of these questions, which has been less frequently considered. What does a college course accom- plish in the way of moral preparation for success in the making of a man? What are the spiritual advantages which it gives; what are the spiritual dangers to which it lays men open? received from your friendships in col- lege and from the associations of your college with the historic past a wealth of inspiration, a constant stimulus to the formation of high ideals. “Will you be able to carry this inspiration and these ideals safe through the various exigen- cies Of life in a somewhat unspiritual world? Will you be able to give your fellow men the benefit of what you have received, in such a way as to make you a moral leader in a world which craves such leadership? or will your ideals be so remote from everyday dealing with the affairs of life that your God will become a god of the dead and not of the living? Let us consider how we are to achieve in the moral and religious life that: combination of qualities which corre- sponds to the union of theory and prac- tice in the intellectual world, and gives to the man who has achieved it the strength which can come only from such a union, Were we to choose a text for this morning’s talk, it might well be taken from the twelfth verse of the sixth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews: You have | “followers of them who through faith and patience inherited the promises.” It is the union of these two attributes of faith and patience which is the neces- sary condition of spiritual achievement. Either of these qualities without the other is undeveloped and imperfect. Patience without faith is but a nega- tive and colorless thing, barren in its practical results. Faith without patience may prove a positive evil, wrecking the efficiency of Christian life, and even the life itself; even as theory without practical sense wrecks the professional life of the doctor or lawyer or business man. Let us not misunderstand the meaning of this word patience when thus used in connection with faith. It is not the patience, akin to apathy, which takes © evils without resistance; which pas- sively endures what comes, because it it too inert to strive for anything better. Not by such patience has any man in- herited promises. The indifference - which can take things calmly because of the absence of a fixed purpose has nothing in common with that true - patience which achieves calmness in spite of disappointment. Nor is patience to be understood in the sense of mere uncomplaining physi- cal endurance. Not that I would for a moment undervalue this virtue of bearing evils without complaint. It is at once a mark of power over one’s self and a means of power over others. And yet this patient endurance of physi- cal suffering is chiefly valuable as a symbol of something higher. As _ the spirit is of more importance than the nerve fibre, so is spiritual endurance a thing of greater importance than the enduring of physical pain. Patience, in its highest sense, is this spiritual en- durance. It means quiet determination in the face of discouragement. It means the readiness to wait God’s time without doubting God’s truth. It is characteristic of this kind of - patience that it is hardest for the best and strongest men, because it seems to involve a limitation of that part of their nature which makes then) best and strongest. To the man of no faith and no fixity of purpose, moral disappoint- ments are nothing... To the man burn- ing with zeal for God, they are a darken- ing of the heavens. It was not the half-hearted. Aaron who dashed the tables of the law in pieces when he saw his people worshipping the golden calf, but Moses, the man of God. The same fire and tmspiration which made Moses a leader, put him, and puts every man like him, under a temptation to jeop- ardize the success of his leadership by a self-centered haste. “If thou be the Christ, cast thyself down from the pin- nacle of the temple.” This was a temp- tation to which Jesus was accessible, because of his consciousness of the power to achieve sudden and dazzling results; and one which he resisted in virtue of that yet higher power to sub- ordinate his personal ability and personal glory to the permanent service of the world. ; But why must that man who sees further than his fellow men, and is conscious of possessing more power, be under this injunction to exercise patience? Why shall he not use his insight and his ability to gain quick re- sults instead of slow ones? Why do we bid him wait, instead of entrusting his spiritual fortunes to a hazard whose issue he believes himself able to foretell ? In the first place—to put the matter on the lowest ground—we insist on the virtue of patience because no living man is likely to be wise enough or brilliant enough to dispense with the necessity of using it. No matter how unbroken a chain of successes he may enjoy, unforeseen sources of failure are bound to arise at some time; and only the man who has schooled himself to keep his vision steady and his faith unshaken in the midst of such failure can recover the lost ground. He who has trained his nerves solely for the stimulus of success, has placed himself in a position where a single failure may wreck his whole life and life work. If ever there was a man who by mental endowment and fortunate cir- cumstances seemed able to dispense with the necessity of patience, it was Na- poleon. Unrivalled as a general in his day, and perhaps in any other day, he had a faith in his star which carried him triumphantly through fifteen years of victory. But to that faith he did not add patience; and three years of defeat sufficed to cast to the winds all that fifteen years had won. The indi- vidual successes had been many, the individual failures few; but the net re- sult was ruin. Contrast with his career the career of Frederick the Great a half century earlier. Less eminent as a general, surrounded by a more formid- able and persistent coalition of foes, defeated almost as often as he was victorious, he yet preserved his tenacity of purpose. Once, on the evening after the battle of Kunnersdorf, his endur- ance was stretched to the very limit. The whole continent was fighting against him. Through his own fault of judg- ment, he had lost a field that was nearly won, and lost it so completely that scarce three thousand men were left about his standard. If ever a man might despair, Frederick might well have done so then. His endurance which remained undaunted in this ad- versity was a quality which in the final result counted for more than any mili- tary genius, however brilliant. The lesser general succeeded where the greater general failed, because the one had that divine patience which the other had not. Take an instance yet nobler— nobler because it involves the character not of one man, but of a whole people— that of Rome after the battle of Cannae. An army representing the whole strength | of the republic had been sent into the field for what seemed a final struggle against Hannibal. Through the use of ignoble arts of the politician, the com- mand of this army had been secured by a man whose skill in military affairs was far from being commensurate with his skill in politics. So fatally had he mismanaged his battle that there was left scarce a family in Rome that was not mourning the loss of its best blood. The younger officers among the handful that escaped with their lives proposed that they should flee to foreign parts; but the unfortunate general showed that, whatever might be said of his political and his military career, he possessed the divine spark of patience. -Without excuses for failure, he led his broken handful back to Rome; and the mem- bers of the senate, though they had been his opponents in politics, and though they had suffered losses of brothers and sons through his misconduct, met him with no reproach, but with thanks “be- cause he had not despaired of the republic.” It was on that day that Rome showed her right to conquer the world. Against such patience no obstacle was powerful enough to stand. But the injunction to exercise spiritual patience is based on-other and higher reasons than those of worldly wisdom. Not only is patience a surer means of attaining sticcess amid the imperfections of human knowledge and the uncertain- ties of human fate than intellectual bril- liancy ever can be, but the successes which are won through its exercise are of a higher character. The achieve- ment which comes through trial and failure is nobler in quality than that which seems to come of itself. With- out patience we may have individual deeds of great splendor, but they stand . as something separate from the doer. With patience, the deeds become so in- wrought into the character of the man that his success or failure in externals is a small thing, as compared with that success which he has achieved in him- self. He is a leader to be loved and trusted, as well as to be admired and followed. Back to the days of the “much-enduring divine Ulysses,” this truth has been recognized: that the man who can endure has that element in his life which makes him at once a prince and a god—a leader of men, and a sharer of the divine attributes. He has won a glory which is independent of changes of fortune. This superior importance of character over achievement has been expressed in a hundred different ways. Goethe puts in into concrete language when he says that to do something is the ideal of the Philistine, and to be something the ideal of the noble. St. Paul puts it into theological language when he speaks of the need of justifica- tion by faith, as something transcend- ing justification by works. Jesus Christ puts it into the mystical language which is the most complete and truest expres- - sion of the whole, when he says that the kingdom of God is in our hearts. The success which is thus wrought into a man’s character has this further element of greatness, that it is a means of help and inspiration to all those about him. It attracts them instead of repelling them. Mere briliancy or in- tellectual attainment by an individual rarely has any uplifting effect upon the people as a whole. On the contrary, the success which results from power without patience tends to place a man apart from his fellow men. He has achieved it in isolation; in isolation he enjoys it while it lasts. That brilliancy which is the exclusive privilege of the few leads the many to meet its results with distrust; and this distrust on the part of the people is met with disdain on the part of the leader. The people fear a brilliant man because they cannot follow him; the brilliant man despises the people for the same reason. Such a man-can hardly escape_the fate of Paracelsus, who “gazed on power till he grew blind.” Overwhelmed with the importance of his scientific discoveries,- he desired to see the world at once regenerated by his own efforts. When men refused to accept the quick regen- eration which he proposed, his first state was one of intolerance; his second was one of discouragement and of failure. The success which he.coveted was to do good to the people in spite of them- selves, by a sudden miracle of power,— ‘a miracle which was not forthcoming, and which will never be forthcoming to him who knows not the middle ground between the impatience of intolerance and the impatience of discouragement. It is not a man of this kind who can lead the people. It is rather the man who is content to win his success through failure and trial—a man of the type of William the Silent, of Washing- ton, or of Lincoln. Defeated in detail, these men rise from each defeat stronger in themselves, and stronger in a mutual understanding between themselves and their followers. The success of such men is not an individual possession, but one which is shared with their fellow men. It is sttccess of the kind whose highest exemplification is in the New Testament story of Him who died for all, and through whom all are redeemed. The ATLANTIC. tor 40% _ _Ex-President GROVER CLEVELAND The Independence of the Executive In this second article Mr. Cleveland draws largely from his own per- sonal experience, and throws much light upon the now famous contest between the President and the Senate. A Difficult Case byW.D. Howells A whimsical story of New England village life Some Prejudices About Life Assurance by J. W. Alexander President of the Eguitable -Life Assurance Society. 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