McMaster University - Marmor Yearbook (Hamilton, Ontario Canada)

Page 6 text:

THE HONCDUIQABLE ALBERT MATTHEWS, LED, a distinguished servant and benefactor of this Univer- sity, this volume is respectfully dedicated as he retires from the Board of Governors, on which he has served as a member since 1908, as Chairman from T922 to 1948, and as Honorary Chairman in T948-49.

Page 8 text:

G. P. GILMOUR, BA., B.D., MA., D.D. Chancellor Tl-lE Cl-lANCEl.LCR'S MESSAGE Leaving one's university is sorrowful in proportion to the love one bears her and the pleasure life in her society has afforded, hopeful in proportion to the state of the world and the benefits one has acquired from her training, and honourable in proportion to one's choice of a career from motives that are beyond the reproach of selfishness or cynicism. l suppose that he sorrows most deeply who has given most in unrewarded labour to his college, and to such people this book always owes its appearance. If students feel the wrench of parting, I beg to assure them that the instructors who have taught them feel it, too. One's students becomes one's friends to a re- markable degree. Responsive students are almost the greatest reward a teacher can have, the only greater reward being to have the privilege of teaching a stu- dent who is one's admitted superior, and in whose later success one can especially rejoice. The wrench of parting is always a surprise when it comes at a year's ending, leaving the instructor wondering about next year's freshmen and the new graduate wondering about next year's iob. You must not feel that you are parting with the academic tradition when you part with your academic home. That tra- dtion is an honourable one, concerned not with the pot of gold but with the rain- bow that stretches across the world. For the university gaduate the terms of ref- erence in life can never be material but spiritual. A materialistic outlook, whether it is rooted in a conviction or simply prac- tised shamefacedly as a convenience, is alien to the world of higher learning. This is seen nowhere more clearly than in the fact that such an outlook does not build or maintain great institutions, and can inspire no continuing love for such institutions as serve its ends. It may not be everywhere agreed that these spirit- ual terms of reference must be also re- ligious, but it was out of a deep con- viction concerning this that our university was born, and by that conviction she lives. You will serve her best and your- self most happily by remembering her motto and respecting its tremendous as- sertion that life only becomes fully co- herent when the centre of reference is Christ.