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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.
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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.
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GROVER CLEVELAND
The Independence of the Executive
In this second article Mr. Cleveland draws largely from his own per-
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between the President and the Senate.
A Difficult Case
byW.D. Howells
A whimsical story of
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