Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

Page 29 text:

THE CRY OF THE SOUL. 27 all else the soul--the soul's supreme affinities, necessities, possi- bilities-in like proportion will it come to power. Such an institution can never be content merely to serve the transient and local convenience of a few passing generations 3 it views itself as part, and potent part, of an eternal world of working forces in and through which eternal processes are rounded to divinest con- summation. Its teachers and its learners are working under mo- tives deep as duty, as high as holy aspiration, as broad as the do- minions of God. 'Its scholarship measures itself, not by the standards of self-complacent human attainment, but by the un- attainable hights of an absolute knowledge. It cannot rest satis- fied when one of its foster children, capriciously electing, has sipped its little fill of nectar at this or that small blossom of the tree of knowledge. Never! It yearns for children with a taste for all good learning, with powers and motives to create new sciences and arts, and with a capacity for truth which ages of truth-seeking and truth-finding can never sate. Such a university is that in whose outer courts you have been trained, and into whose inner courts you are to-morrow to be ad- mitted. It believes in things seen, but it more believes in things not seen. It believes in mind, and in the mind-born masteries and mysteries of which the matter world is but the revelation. It aims to itcilitate industrial processes, to widen science, to refine the arts already fine 5 to give skilled care to men diseased 5 to help defend imperiled innocence, to do its part in all man's strug- gle to triangulate and conquer his environment--but in all, and over all, and by means of all, it means to help throttle sin, abolish wrong, pessimism, gloom, despair-to bring mankind into the purity and light and blessedness procured for us by Him, who was, and is, and ever more shall be, Son of God and Lord of men. And this is a purpose, this a doing, in which the noblest of human souls have ever gloried 3 it is a purpose, and a doing, which in their secret hearts all sane men honor and admire. On you, young friends, we count to help. To help by taking on the fullest strength and beauty of the life in God. To help by per- sonally teaching to the poets and preachers of despair and dark- ness the ringing pecans of the conquering Spirit.

Page 28 text:

26 BOSTOA7 UAYVERSITY YEAR BOOK. ' Shine light df God! make broad thy scope To all who sin and sufferg-more And better than we dare to hope With Heavcn's compassions make our longings poor. What though in their turn griefs and affiictions fall to our lot? They need not darken life. Has not Holmes taught us a song for the night of pain? Will we not with him sing, O Love Divine, that stooped to share Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear! On thee we cast each earth-born carey XVe smile at pain while thou art near. Though long the weary way we tread, And sorrow crown each lingering year, No path we shun, no darkness dread, Our hearts still whispering, Thou art near! It may fall to us to be homeless Wanderers in the earth, but if we only possess the inner harmonies of Madame Guyon we shall often catch ourselves singing snatches from her sweet minstrelsy : My Lord, how full of sweet content, I pass my years of banishment ! lVhcre'cr I dwell, I dwell with Thee, In heaven, in earth, or on the sea, To me remains nor place nor timeg My country is in every clinic: 'I can be calm and free from care On any shore, since God is there. Believing in such a life- consciously sharing it-yet seeing the poisoned life of sinful men so full of gloom, and torturing self-reproach, and weltering weakness-remembering his own but recent escape out of a like condition of blindness and bitter blasphemy against self and God, and even God's mercy-how natural it was that St. Bernard of Clairvaux should sing, and in his singing pray: Oh, Jesus, ever with us stayg Make all our moments calm and brightg Chase the dark night of sin away, Shed o'er the world Thy holy light ! Our second lesson respects the life academic. It is that, other things being equal, in proportion as auniversity recognizes before

Page 30 text:

28 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. Finally, far out beyond the limitations of our individual life, far out beyond the boundary lines of all academic knowledge, there stands another mount of vision. Thither this hour takes us for its closing lesson. It points out to us the boundless universe, and cries, Take it, O soul of man l Take it-its Orion, and Pleiades, and Algol-all its worlds and galaxies, its living creatures, creep- ing and angelic, its beauty, its order, its history and mystery, its God and thy God. Naught less can ever satisfy thee. With this alone thou art thyself. At first we are bewildered by so staggering a summons. It is not easy to obey. We are afraid of powers so strange, so over- mastering. We are perplexed to see world-processes in which deliberate purposes seem perpetually, and with like deliberation, thwarted. We feel lost in the empty spaces of infinity. But by and by, as our eyes begin slowly to focalize themselves to univer- sal distances, to map out the immensity, to follow the rhythmic integration and disintegration of the zeons, to see in all apparent discord hidden harmony, in all perfectings mediation, in all ap- parent emptiness most real and personal Pleroma- the soul within suddenly upleaps and cries in exultation, Oh World, World-life, World-heart, in thee and of thee and through thee I am that I am. Without me thou, too, wert other than thou art. For me thou hast thy being. Let me close by reading an utterance which possibly may help some soul to recognize its place in the Home of souls, and cause it to hear more than spheral music in the punctual stars. Through ceaseless cycles whirled and whirled, The worlds have come to be: . But in their swirling play is furlecl A finer mystery. The towering seas the cloucllands lash With billows tall and grim, Yet, all the while, they nc'er o'erda:h T heir qfingiv level brim. Earth-bursting mines beneath detone, Fair lands to desolate, Bu! ne'cr onejlash has fume loo soon, And rze'cr one crash loo lale.