Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

Page 25 text:

TIIE CRY OF Tllli SOUL. 23 :ate, uttermost surrender to the overself, acceptance of a higher will, appropriation of a higher energy. Only let desperation work its perfect work and it shall lead the despairing into ecsta- cies of perfect victory. A year ago last month, in one of the great cities of the Old World, I joined in solemn services commemorative of the Hfteen hundredth anniversary of a world-historic event. What was it? What event could possibly be worthy to move a mighty multitude to acts of public praise and gratulation after a thousand and half a thousand years had passed away? The worshipper of mindless law could never guess it. .Some of you could sooner solve the question. You have learned that the highest of God's mir- acles are his miracles in man, and that the new-born man is ever the mightiest of contributions towards the needful regeneration of humanity. The event we celebrated was the new birth of a blind-born son of Africa, the illustrious Augus- tine of Hippo. In the magnificent Church of San Agostino in Rome, amid immortal pictures and adornments by such hands as Raphael's, in the midst of sacred illuminations seldom if ever equalled even in Italy, hard by the hallowed shrine where rests the body of holy Monica, we commemorated the spiritual trans- formation of a man who once floundered in all the abysmal ex- periences of a baffied and defeated spirit-a man who in his bit- terness could also say, When I seek Strength from the cross, it drives me mad To feel that I have no more claim Than Cain for mercy- a man who in the language of his own immortal Confessions, bore about a shattered and bleeding soul -- yet a man who through these throes of agony came to peace, and came to be so great and precious a teacher of the way of peace, that at the remembrance of the transformation, a mighty multitude, represent- ing all earth's continents, were moved to public prayer and praise and gratulation even after a thousand and half a thousand years had passed away. Here is an instance where self-despair, culmi- nating in self-surrender, wrought its perfect work, and where it turned to world-transforming strength and light and gladness.

Page 24 text:

i 22 BOSTON UA'lI'Eli'Sl7'l' l E.-Ui' HOOK. -On this point rollicking Robert Burns is as unflattering as john Knox : O wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us. But sight, of any kind, depends not solely on the seer. The -eye indeed is human, but the light which brings it vision is cer- tainly not human. Wise and beautiful, therefore, are the words of a nobler poet, who sang: Since Nature fails us in no needful thing, Why lack I means my inward self to see? Which sight the knowledge of myself might bring, Which to true knowledge is the first degree. But as the sharpest eye diseerneth naught Except the sunheams in the air do shine, So the best soul with her reflecting thought Sees not herself without some light divine, -Sir Yohn 1Jrw1?':. Happily this light divine is ever shining. It irradiates the divine nature as marvellously as it does the human. It compasses our infant feet to show us pathway and goal. Our birthright blind- ness, therefore, is no just reason why our young souls should walk in darkness. Rather is it best of reasons why in the first glimmering dawn of spiritual consciousness, in the first faint real- ization of our native helplessness and bewilderment, we should lift our groping hands and murmur, Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom Lead Thou me ong The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead Thou me on. Whoever in sincerity does this, walks a path which is as the .shining light that shinetli more and more unto the perfect day. But our theme of meditation suggests a further ground for gloom and fear. And certainly nothing can he more true to nature and to life than is our poet's pitiful picture of his fruitless struggle to transform his nature. Nevertheless, defeat is not the normal issue of this struggle in the life of man. To stop in this despair, to lie down in the Slough of Despond and die, is to miss the whole purpose and profit of that life-and-death contention. Out of the depths of this despair of self should spring a desper-

Page 26 text:

24 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. Finally, nothing can be more true to nature than is the revolt of the soul of our poet from the thought of nothingness. Even while he invokes and almost blasphemously challenges annihilation he falters and stammers out a possible altemative. Nothing- ness, or peace. Though he cannot understand how any way of peace can be possible, he has heard of it, and he has a blind and groping faith that such a thing may be. Here is the only ray of light in all this wretched threnody. Here light is possible and hope is possible, because unconscious faith half triumphs over the old habitual assumption that an understanding of spiritual experiences and of their factors must precede the experiences themselves. Such a half-gleam of the higher knowledge of the Spirit and of the Spirit's mysteries gives space and ground for hope. Whoever has so much as half a sigh for peace, for peace transcending human understanding, is a soul not yet in total alienation from the realm and reach of grace. And since there is this one small opening for the light of grace and for the healing and life-giving energies of grace, let us read this child of despair a poem in a new-found key and ask him if in its pleadings he cannot discover something of the sweetness, something of the yearning and the promise of the Nameless Voice : ' Gracious soul, to whom are given Holy hungerings after heaven, Restless breathings, earliest moans, Deep, unutterable groans, Turn again to God, thy rest, - jesus hath pronounced thee blestg Touched with sympathizing care, Thee hc in His arms shall bear, Bless with late but lasting peace, Fill with all His righteousness. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Graduating Classes :-The lessons of this theme and hour are many. Three only will we pause to notice. The first respects the life individual, the second the life academic, the third the life universal. First then, and foremost, let us never forget that whatsoever darkness of mind and soul may have rested upon early gener- ations, light has come into our world. The nightmare dreams of