Armour Institute of Technology - Cycle Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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fortune and promise. The magnitude of the commercial enterprises allied with the Armour name was as nothing to the magnitude of love with which his steps were followed. He was shy, especially to those who were likely to make much of his kindliness, but behind the fortress he made there was the sunny and impulsively generous man whom to know was to love. The richness of the mansion whose roof sheltered with every art. his wife and boys, is not comparable to the richness of the hopes that leapt up like visions at the mention of his name. We all waited for the day when maturity would prove that what pledges he made at thirty-one. when he entered seriously into the arduous task of taking up his family’s great pro jects of business or beneficence, would l e grandly redeemed at ten and two score. The significance of the noble philanthropies which his wise and loving parents have barely inaugurated pales before the clearly defined significance of the child to whom such responsibilities were coming. That is, the man and his opportunity met in proper order; and no family, even though as loyal and true as this, ever had larger reason to think that love would have its way and hope its full and long reward, as years upon years would evolve the riches of Philip's nature and make him one of the most influential men of his time. Where then, with this dream shattered, can we turn? Where, with this grave open, shall we gaze for a gleam of assur- ance ? Where then, with our tears to magnify every blasted anticipation, shall we look to discover a vision of life and an interpretation of the universe that shall soothe and support ? We think of that beloved father and mother today so far away in the body, but so near and dear to us in the spirit. We pray for them. Was there ever another Father whose Son left our earth before the time which our limited conceptions would have appointed for His going? Ah, yes! Iajt us look to Him and pray for an understanding of that diviner philosophy of life which sets this small earth-life in its true relations, gives it only its just proportions, and grants us the immeasurable perspective of eternity. God’s perfect Son left our world with an unfinished life, as it seemed. Let us pray that the father and mother of this son may get God’s point of view. Jesus of Galilee was the embodiment of the world's hope. He was much else, but he was the world’s greatest young man. If we look at Him only from the loftiest of those mountain tops of vision to which men are permitted to ascend, we will say that His was the life most apparently- needed to be lived out in its entirety upon the earth. No business enter- prise of this world has ever apparently poised its possibilities and destiny upon any one life as did the weal of humanity upon the life of Jesus. We may reverently say that no most loving father apparently could have ever felt that the enterprise nearest his own heart so resided and throbbed in the beating heart of his child here below as did our heavenly Father, when

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One young man of genius prayed: “ With the tear-worthy four, consumption killed In youthful prime, before the nebulous mind Had its symmetric shapeliness defined, Had its transcendent destiny fulfilled— May future ages grant me gracious room, With Pollock, in the voiceless solitude finding his holiest rapture, happiest mood : Poor White for ever poring o’er the tomb; . With Keats, whose lucid fancy mounting far Saw heaven as an intenser, a more keen Re-integration of the Beauty seen And felt by all the breathers on this star ; With gentle Bruce, flinging melodious blame Upon the Future for an uncompleted name. At the age when Philip I). Armour, Jr , was called hence, the young Scotch poet, David Gray, had been in his grave seven years, and yet alwve the grasses life seemed to be singing a song that quenches the discords of death. It was a song which the | oet himself had sung in anticipation of his early death. He felt that this life is only the first chosen soil in which the seed sometimes sprouts and only the bud comes, and that God often transplants the life at the time when its petals are not unfolded as yet, in order that in another soil and in air more subtly suited to the particular nature of the plant and its history, the half open destiny have its entirety of development. “ Whom the Gods love die young” said the old Greek pagan. Shall we not believe also that love had plans for him that no earthly wealth could carry out, and that, by and by, we shall see that we did not over-estimate his possibilities? We rather under-estimated them. God, his Father, alone so truely estimated them that He was moved to take out of merely human hands and associations the guidance and development of his destiny. Therefore, above this grave where we leave the dust of our strong and hopeful young friend, we may remember that lie also felt only “ the faint beatings in the calyx of the rose, and while we realize all that friend or child, father, mother and wife found in his buoyant and prophetic career, we can place upon his gravestone what the Scotch poet wrote for a similar gravestone that now guards the little plot of ground in the old home of Mr. Armour’s ancestors: “ There is life with God, In another kingdom and a sweeter air. In Kden every flower is blown : Amen.” In a ministry of a quarter of a century, I have never known a young man into whose life and career on earth there have come a larger invest- ment of affectionate hope. We all hung our desires upon this child of

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His Son, Jesus, was making a new life for man by conquering death and sin here upon earth. Just as the thousand plans and purposes of this father’s life, Mr. Philip I). Armour’s vast philanthropies and his cherished hopes were the gift of his heart and brain to his off spring, so, if we may rise to infinite heights of thought, the philanthropies and inaugurated move- ments of God’s being were apparently embodied and manifested for their consummation in the life of His Son Jesus in this world. Hut we must be very careful to hold to that significant word apparently, “ For now we see through a glass, darkly.” The fact is that, at the very moment when Jesus seems most needed to live His life here He leaves our life. He dies with only thirty-three of our brief years as his span. “He dies,” men say, “when he is just getting hold of the reins of destiny.” Hut he dies in God’s love. Now does not this give us. in an hour like this, a better understanding of God’s method? This is not God’s only world for the education or achievements of His children. Can we not trust God as Jesus, at the age of 33, trusted God? If God has processes and methods such as justify Him in depriving the earth and leaving it bereft of its grandest young man, shall we not have confidence that this young man whom we loved is also in His care ? To this young wife whose hand my hand placed in his, and who united with me in prayer for length and happiness of days with her young hus- band, I bring today the consolation of The Divine love. Great as hers may be, God’s love is deeper as it was olden it is greater than hers. His was a busy, intense and only prophetic life. We are always believing that fondly cherished seeds of hope, which have no time for development today will blossom in harvests of joy in some near tomorrow in the providence of God. Hut Philip had no summer-time or harvest-time; he had only one and thirty of the ten and three score years allotted to man. Providence and love had unexpectedly called him to severe and taxing duties almost before his youth was done. This young man, with his brother, had l een com pelled, at an early age, to assume the almost incalculable burdens and responsibilities of a business which only superb genius could ever have initiated, and which has exacted, to the utmost, the largest powers of its great founder and his able associates. He had wonderful resiliency of mind, and that good humor which oils life’s burdened axles; and yet, he was an enormously occupied young man. As we think of the cares of this young father and husband, who was also financier and merchant on the largest scale, how sweet to wife and little l oys must appear those tender and fragrant blossoms which shly grew upon the little plots of their home life when the sunshine fell in undisturbed warmth, and when the air was peaceful as the dawn. Vet here his life was scarcely more than a group of prophecies. How many and how bright they were, even in the minds of