Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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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

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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.

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TIIE CRY OF YYIE SOUL. 25 ancient mythologies have passed away. ' Great Pan is dead. As Mrs. Browning tells us : Earth outgrows the mythic fancies Sung beside her in her youthg And those debonaire romances Sound but dull beside the truth. Phuebus' chariot course is run, Look up, poets, to the sun! Pan, Pan is dead. Christ has sent us down the angelsg And the whole earth and the skies Are illumed by altar candles Lit for blessed mysteries: And a Priest's Hand through creation XVaveth calm and consecration- And Pan is dead. Truth is fair: should we forego it? Can we sigh right for a wrong? God Himself is the best Poet, And the Real is His song. Sing His truth out fair and full And secure His Beautiful. Let Pan be dead. U This world-light, with its joyousness and beauty and good cheer, is for the individual soul. It is as much for you and me as it is for the races and continents which it has delivered from the terrors of demon worship and the horrors of human sacrifice. If we are blind and God-forsaken it is because we are God-for- sakers, turning ourselves away from the light. What says Whittier, O Love Divine, whose constant beam Shines on the eyes that will not see, And waits to bless us while we dream, Thou leavest us because we turn from Thee ! All souls that struggle andaspire, All hearts of prayer by thee are litg And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire On dusky tribes and twilight centuries sit. Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou know'st, Wide as our need thy favors fall: The white wings of the Holy Ghost Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the hearts of all.