Alumni Oration

"Heritage and Destiny as Nation Archbishop Sherman’s Subject" The Daily Gleaner (18 May 1944): 5. (UA Case 67a, Box 2)

This address might have any one of many titles, all of them well or better known, all of them borrowed. "Looking Backward" could be one, or "All Our Yesterdays", or "Cordial for Drooping Spirits". Any such would do. But I think I will coin a more cumbersome one, viz this, - "Thoughts on Our Heritage and Destiny in this Land we love".

Out of yesterday opens the pathway to to-morrow and it is down that road to yesterday and back that I would have you travel in spirit, now; for inspiration, comfort and leading.

It is not the obvious thought today. Far from it. The dominant note to-day is of what lies ahead. We are all concerned with planning and visions of a 'brave new world'. And that fits in with the thought which for mare than a generation has been 'the badge of all our tribe'; Progress with its twin brother, Speed. As it has been expressed, "We have been chauffeurs driving fast cars on our way somewhere; but with not very much thought about the goal or end."

So I take my courage in both hands as I seek to build this solid breakwater. To change the metaphor, - for these few moments, the light is red not green. Stop! A U turn is allowable. I ask you to turn right about. Look backward, not forward. In the more picturesque language of Noel Coward’s great New Year’s toast in "Cavalcade", "Let’s couple the future with the past." A man must dig deep to bury his ancestors," runs the old Chinese proverb. Let’s look at some of ours.

"My son remember!" so runs the Biblical injunction. Let us do so. Let us pass in brief review some phases of our National Heritage that we may thereby glimpse anew some measure of our National Destiny.

Imperial Connection

Today is May 18th. I cannot forget what happened at the mouth of the Saint John River on that day 161 years ago. Nor can I ever read without a thrill that simple inscription on the bare monument that adorns the Plains of Abraham: "Here died Wolfe, victorious, Sept. 13th 1759."

Those are ancestors of imperial connection. They speak of principles, of convictions, of achievements. They are landmarks of our heritage, they are guide posts to our destiny.

Time does not stand still and life is perhaps not as simple as it once was; but amid all the complex problems that confront us in this land we love, in these latter days, amid all questions of "Whither, now?" these monuments of our past should help us find the way. When wild tongues are unloosed, when political strife is hottest, when all seems at sixes and sevens, "My son, remember."

Canadian Heritage

As I think of our Canadian ancestry and heritage I see something else; something that I always consider the very charter of our existence, something that means far more to me than even the British North America Act itself. It is the inscription, so well known, on the mural bronze in the Provincial Building as Charlottetown.

"Here on Sept. 1st, 1864, in the hearts and minds of the delegates assembled in this room was born t he Dominion of Canada." And then the reflection penned with the knowledge of a later day, "Providence being their guide they builded better than they knew."

"In hearts and winds was born the Dominion of Canada." There are our title deeds to freedom, advancement, an enduring name, and the pursuit of happiness. It was an ideal, a hope, a spiritual adventure. So little then was known concerning which we have since learned so much, - our boundless material resources. The great hinterlands had not been opened up. The great wide open spaces were but a name to all but the tiniest few. But something was born. An idea came to birth. And came I the only place where such can come, - in hearts and minds.

Registering an Idea

There is the point. There is the place to keep it. Don’t let the ideal be uprooted from the only soil in which it can be nourished and grow. They weren’t growing wheat in that room in Charlottetown. There weren’t mining gold. They were registering an idea, a vow, a vision and hammering it out in hearts and minds. Look back! Think back! Get you bearings anew. Maybe we’ve lost our way.

In the causes of foundation are to be found the principles of continuation. There’s our norm.! There’s our compass! In that great adventure of Faith lies our Charter and our Heritage. And along that road lies our Destiny. The real future of this land we love depends on hearts and minds. And out of hearts and minds blossoms freedom, and out of hearts and minds blossoms Unity. Freedom! Unity! Twin principles of continuation of our causes of foundation; of the ideas that gave us birth.

Freedom and Liberty

Freedom! Liberty! Overworked words perhaps, but ones never to be for the one moment forgotten; for it is the history of the world that where liberty has diminished civilization has declined. "Without contraries," says William Blake "there is no progression." True. And the "freedom we see evolved in Canada as we look back along that Road to Yesterday is Democratic Freedom." But the ideal must not be allowed to be dimmed. The end must be kept clear and unconfused amid all our growth and importance. And "The end of power is to make men free."

National Unity

And Unity: National Unity! Look back long and hard at this point. Get quiet and think and make a great decision; for if we fail here we fail our Destiny utterly. We throw away our birthright. We are false to that which has been entrusted to us. We make our total Heritage of no account. But there will be no need of failure if we keep trying to think out and press home and act upon one great truth, viz this: that you don’t reach Unity by agreement, but rather the other way around, you reach agreement by Unity. And if you don’t, it doesn’t matter, so long as the basic unity is there. And that is why you can say to a friend, "All right, we’ll agree to disagree." It’s a common experience and a profound truth underlies it. You can only say it where a basic unity exists. You can’t say it to an enemy. But among friends, relatives, Yes. And that’s the National Unity we have. That is out Heritage, and that we must never lose. There will always be great differences in a country, to cross which you have to put your watch back or forward four times; with east and west and industrialist and agriculturalist and creed and creed, and race and race.

Of course! But look back! Go back over the road of yesterday.

Not only and I reminded of our Imperial Connection, our Democratic Freedom and our National Unity. I see constant, steady, signs of a growing International Concern.

When the Conference met at Quebec last summer there may have been those who forgot the earlier ones; one as long before as Lord Durham’s Day. There came the well know one of pre-Confederation days when the suggestion that our name should be the "Kingdom of Canada" was rightly ruled out in favor of the name "Dominion". And ever since, in growing ways, this land we love has become increasingly a Broad Highway of International Life. Our relations with our great neighbor to the south have grown in mutual understandings until now our Destiny demands of us, - because of our heritage of position, ideas, ideals and opportunities, - that we be the great link in a world fellowship of Anglo-Saxon blood and loyalties; and more than that, become the Highway across a continent from our ocean doorways on the east to our ocean doorways on the west. Truly we are a most favored nation. Truly are our feet set in a large room. A world destiny awaits us in the days ahead. Twice now in a generation it is being sealed in blood.

Spiritual Heritage

I have left to the lat the most important word I have to say. It is the fact and the responsibility of our spiritual heritage.

To go back over the road to yesterday is to realize and appreciate the importance of that. There has been a great Christian tradition in this land. Other men have labored and we are entered into their labors. Through their faithfulness under God’s guiding hand have been bequeathed to us our democratic institutions our centres of education, our system of justice, our unregimented free way of life. "Beware lest thou forget."

Social security in the last analysis depends on spiritual stability. "The soul of Freedom is the freedom of the soul." "The best soldier", said Oliver Cromwell, "is he who knows what he is fighting for and loves what he knows."

Look back. Make up your mind. Appreciate your Heritage. Be loyal to it. Treasure the eternal verities as you face the days ahead. "The turning point of the war", said one who had reason to form a judgment, "was when the British people in those dark days when they stood alone realized the depth of their spiritual resources."

So it has ever been in the life of men and nations. So will it ever be.

"And man stand out again, pale, resolute,

Prepared to die, which means alive at last."

There is an old legend which says that if a man go into a Churchyard in Wales where the Cathedral of St. David stands in it indefensible majesty, and taking a clod from the Churchyard stand on it and gaze out across the Atlantic waves, he will see, rising in the distance, the green island of the fairies, a land that is very far off.

Take your stand to-day upon those great truths of our Christian Heritage, the things that we see as we go down the Road to Yesterday. Stand on tem. Believe in them. Trust in them, and then,

"On to the bound of the waste,
On to the City of God."

Springboard For Future

Out of Yesterday opens the pathway to Tomorrow. I have asked you to look back, but only as a springboard for the future. It was to enable us to recapture the vision, regather our strength, nenew our hope.

So let us to our tasks, with memory and vision lined, with thoughts of Heritage and Destiny entwined.

"It is not I that belong to the past" - as the little Russian peasant girl said when she found a home in this new land, - "it is not I that belong to the past, but the past that belongs to me. Into my hands is given all her priceless heritage. Mine is the whole majestic past, and mine is the shining future."

The Challenge

So I end with a challenge; the Challenge – out of Today, into Tomorrow;

"I see the flashing of arms on the wall,
Hear the deep roar of the conflict, the thrilling call
Of the silver trumpet sounding high on the tall
Towers of God’s immortal fortress, that He made
Against the evil out of the love of men laid
At His feet, their sweat, their blood to the last drop paid.
For this is the rock that for all time man defends,
The rock of his soul against which all evil sends
Its fury in vain in the warfare that never ends.
And these the embattled walls the heroes trod
Swift – winged with flame, their feet with the Gospel shod,
For this is the house of all life, the house of God.
Lift up, lift up your constant hearts, the trumpet cries
Lift them up to the shining walls, the sun-drenched skies,
For beyond the night for ever the sun will rise."