Pickering College - Voyageur Yearbook (Newmarket, Ontario Canada)

Page 24 text:

The Voyageur CHAPEL URING THE CURRENT YEAR members of the staj addressed the school at the Sunday evening services. All of them made significant contributions to the group thinking. At the request of a consider- able number of students the article which follows herewith, being the address by Mr. .lac-kson, editor, is printed so that it may thereby be available in permanent form. I would like to take this opportunity of thanking all the members of the staff who contributed during the year to our Chapel Services. J. MCCULLEY What ls Your Heritage? by B. W. JACKSON WUNC IN AMONG THE STARS and planets, there is another planet which we ' call earth. Many things grow there, flowers and trees of all kinds, weeds and bushes in variety. Four-footed creatures walk there, insects and worms creep about the earth and burrow into its soil. Some of these creatures have wings which give them temporary release for a while from the earth proper and carry them through the air. Others swim in the deep waters of the earth, spending their lives beneath the surface of the rivers and lakes and oceans. So there is an infinite variety of beings on the earth, creatures of numberless differences but all subject to the government of a great common denominator. 'lt is this, they are born, they live, they die, for a little while they partake of that intangible commonality, life, of the stuff of the earth they are made and into that same essence they disintegrate in death. Strange creatures all-but they have a fellow, stranger than they. True this being also partakes of their common fare. He is born, he lives, he dies. The stuff from which he is made is the same,-the chemical components of his body are worth no more in hard cash than are theirs, not as much as some of them. He produces no ambergris as does the whale. But he does strange things, he utters a variety of extraordinary sounds, he makes peculiar marks and hangs them up on walls. This creature has been known to starve himself for days when his body cried out for food, and food was near at hand. He has been known to build efiigies of himself and others of his kind, he has been heard to shout exhortations to his fellows to come and do likewise as he went willingly to his death, his life's end, for something he calls a faith, he has been known to pass up his chance at earthly and human pleasures for a business he calls truth, he has been known to yearn his body away to a shell for something he has named beauty, and furthermore he sets up altars and worships beings he has never seen. This creature walks on two legs and calls himself-for there is no one else to name him-man. He is you and I and every one of us and he has a history. 22

Page 23 text:

The Voyageur Sir William Dines ' E tgTS -slr p. Sir William W I ham Presents The Muloclc Dinner RECENTLY Sir William Mulock dined at the school and, on that occasion presented each of the members of Pickering College with a metal plaque on which was inscribed the following passage, attributed to Etienne de Grellet, l773'l855. sion rm 1 nu n OI' I shall pass through this World but once 5 : : any good thing therefore that I can do or any kindness that Ican show to any human being, let me do it now, let me not deter it, or neg- ' lect it, for I shall not pass this way again . .ig u un nu :nie 21 4

Page 25 text:

The Voyageur There are those among you now who would have you believe that that history has come to an end-that today's war is the final cataclysm which man has brought upon himself and which will finish him. There are others who will tell you that man's history has no significance at any rate, that his story is a cheerless welter of mistakes and that his race will pass into extinction and leave no mark. I would warn you tonight against both of these-the prophets of doom and the prophets of gloom. ln order to do this, let me point you to your heritage. I have said that man is a strange creature-that he does strange things. What is it that makes him strange-how does he differ from other animals? Here is a short story. It hasnit much plot but I hope it has a point. The scene is a wind-swept hill on a summer day. A boy and his dog have taken shelter from the hot sun beneath the shade of a lone tree on the very brow of the hill. The boy sits with his back to the tree gazing out over the Valley beneath. The dog lies by his side. It is a fine dog, strong, courageous, faithful, and intelligent, as animals go. The boy is a good-looking lad with fair hair and blue eyes. ln these eyes at the moment is a far away look. He is dreaming. The boy's brain is active, the mind of the dog is numb. The dog is contented, the boy is restless. The dog desires nothing but to sleep-the boy wants little short of the world. The boy lives in the future, his mind is alive with tremendous hopes and magnificent schemes, the dog lives for the moment, his mind conceives little beyond his bodily needs. The boy is indulging in that strange human practice of day-dreaming. The dog is indulging the purely animal need of sleep. On the first page of your chapel service sheet is printed a passage from the writings of Sir Thomas Browne. He was a physician in 17th century England. Religio Medici, the title of his book from which the passage is taken, means simply the religion of a doctor. For there were people in his day who thought that all doctors must be atheists God, they said, had made man after His image, and that was that. People should not go carving up corpses trying to find out what the nature of man was. It was a heresy to try to understand the handicraft of God. Sir Thomas wrote his book partly to refute this claim and partly to put down in writing his own tremendous curiosity about the nature of man. For he wondered with an all-consuming wonder about the matter of life and death. But he was also a good church man and profoundly religious. 'GRaking in the bowels of the deceasedfi he said in his curious way, did not turn him to atheism but rather produced in him an awe in which he contemplated the whole mystery of creation. The business of the nature of man interested him in particular. He was looking for manis soul-the attribute that set him apart from the animals-and lo, he could not find it. The corpse of a man produced essentially the same parts as that of any other animal. The dissecting knife could hnd no human part that might be the soul. So after a long harangue on this topic Sir Thomas winds up with the passage I have already pointed you to,--uThus we are man, and we know not how: there is something in us that can be without us, and will be after 23