Graduation Address

"The Address to the Graduating Class" University Monthly 32, 8 (June 1913): 322-325. (UA Case 67, Box 1)

May it please Your Honor; Mr. Chancellor, Mr. President and Members of the Senate, Mr. President and Members of the Associated Alumni, Ladies and Gentlemen:—

Those of us who were present at last year's encoenial exercises had the pleasure of listening to the remarks of a learned and eloquent prelate, who spoke a parting word to the members of the class then graduated, and whose address must have proved an inspiration to those for whom it was intended. Truthfully I can say that I wish some one better fitted than myself, had been selected to perform a similar duty at this encoenia. For I must confess that outside of those places where my duties oblige me to speak now and then, I am little used to speaking in public places. And there is a reason for that. There are those, as you know, an important part of whose business in life consists in making public speeches. Except that we may disagree with what they say, these people are to be subjected to no hostile criticism. But where one belongs to a class of public servants who, upon most questions are expected to maintain a golden silence, it will be seen that his case is different. There is a wise old saying which it is always well to bear in one's mind, because in times of perplexity or doubt it offers a safe refuge: Whilst you are silent, no one has any business with you; but when you speak, you must be ready with the proof.

It is only right perhaps, that I should at once relieve any anxiety or uneasiness which you may feel in regard to the probable length of these remarks, by stating that I have been given a time limit, beyond which I cannot encroach. So that in a sense, I am compelled to make them short, and am therefore entitled to no particular credit for their brevity. After the four years spent in these college halls, you, members of the graduating class, are now going out, well equipped, I have no doubt, for the battle of life. Up to this period of your lives everything has been but a preparation. What then, shall I say to you upon your graduation day, in order to encourage you, even in a small measure, for the work upon which you are entering? It is this. Be not afraid. Courageously face the world, and in any part you have to play in the affairs of life, no matter what your role may be, endeavor to live up to the high ideals which have been here inculcated, and strive to do your duty. And what is duty? "Stern daughter of the voice of God," Wordsworth calls it. Duty, the philosophers tell us, is a debt owed to the rational nature of which the spokesman and representative is conscience, which emphatically calls for the satisfaction of the claim. The path of activity proper and congenial to every being is fixed and dictated by the nature which the being possesses. The Gospel vindicates the Divine origin of duty, and declares that its fulfilment constitutes the very essence of religion. "Duty" says Holmes, "draw the great circle which includes all else within it."

Passing over the paramount duty which we owe to our Creator, and the duty toward ourselves, and speaking only of the duties we owe to others—to the organized civil society in which we live, these last may be summed up in the Christian precept "Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself." If we search other systems of doctrine and belief which leave out altogether the outstanding central fact of Christianity, we shall find that the Christian idea of duty is nevertheless strongly emphasized and insisted on. In illustration of this we need but point to the Chinese, who claim to be an eminently practical people. The teaching of Confucius is said to suit their views exactly, because they say that they are not sure of what is to take place after death, and Confucianism has nothing whatever to do with the question of a future life. The sole aim of Confucius teaching is to make men desirable members of society. In order to become such they have to do good to others by performing the duties of their position, and at the same time lead good lives themselves by practising the virtues of benevolence, righteousness, propriety and truthfulness.

The Christian idea of duty also will be found to pervade the Mahometan system of belief. In his estimate of the prophet whose word has been for twelve centuries the life guide of a fifth part of the whole kindred of mankind, but whose sensual paradise is such as shocks all spiritual feeling in us. Thomas Carlyle, speaking of the Mahometan conception of rewards and punishments, says that "however gross and material they may be, they are an emblem of an everlasting truth, not al-ways so well remembered elsewhere. The gross, sensual paradise of Mahomet; the great, enormous day of judgment he perpetually insists on; what is all this but a rude shadow, in the rude Bedouin imagination, of that grand spiritual facts, and the "beginning of facts, which it is ill for us, too, if we do not all know and feel; the Infinite nature of Duty?"

If we view the subject from the standpoint of patriotism solely, we shall find it to be just as true when considered in relation to the arts of peace, as it is when considered in connection with the arts of war, equally true spoken amid these peaceful surroundings, as it was when spoken from the quarter deck of the frigate VICTORY, more than one hundred years ago, that every man is expected to do his duty. The sovereignty, which we call the state, expects today, and has a right to expect, nay, has a right to insist, that every man and every woman too, shall perform the duties incident to their position in the life of the state, and give at least a portion of their time and of their abilities towards the betterment and uplifting of the society of which they form part.

Jules Simon, the French publicist, says it is a mistake to consider oneself an honest man when he has merely earned the right to say, in the words of the popular proverb, that be bas never harmed a fellow creature. The moral law obliges us not only to do no harm to our fellow men, it obliges us to aid them. It is not enough that we do not destroy them, we must help them to live; nor to respect their property, we should share ours with them. In a word, we owe them in equal measure, justice and help.

The civil law which is so minute and precise in what it forbids, is timorous and incomplete in what it Prescribes. The more timid the written law should be when a question of aid arises, so much the more should we insist on the duties prescribed by the moral law. The educated man who might enlighten his fellow man, but who through indifference or pride, locks up within himself his learning, is not fulfilling his rightful destiny. Of what avail are men of genius if this genius is allowed to be silent, to become as naught? Or of what use are the preachers, the teachers of the people, if no warning from the dangers from which religion is meant to protect us is heard from the pulpits. Of what benefit is an Edison if all his wonderful discoveries in the domain of electrical science are kept closeted within his own fertile brain? Or of what use is a Friedmann, if the result of his patient investigations in the field of medicine in an endeavor to find a cure for tuberculosis, is withheld from the hundreds of thousands who suffer from the Great White Plague? "A beggar must die at the baker's door without touching the bread: which does not belong to him; such is the right of ownership in all its terrible rigor. The written law sanctions it in this form and does not oblige the rich to give to a dying man; but the moral law obliges him imperiously to do so. If he enjoys his superfluity in the presence of a dying man, he is responsible for his death. Christian morality teaches us eloquently that the rich are only the treasurers of the poor; a truly Divine saying, and enough in itself, if engraved on every heart, to prove the salvation of society."

Speaking to the students of Harvard University a few years ago, Professor Van. Dyke told them that there is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher. There is a nobler character than that which is merely incorruptible. It is the character which acts as an antidote and preventative of corruption. Peerlessly to speak the words which bear witness to righteousness, truth and purity; patiently to do the deeds which strengthen virtue and kindle hope in your fellow men; generously to lend a hand to those who are trying to climb upward; faithfully to give your support and your personal help to the efforts which are making to elevate and purify the social life of the world-that is the way to make your lives interesting, savory and powerful.

Today you become partners in a splendid heritage; and sharers in the potentialities, the prestige and the traditions of a university which has done much for the life of the province, and for the life of Canada. With pride you can point to the many of its graduates who have found their way into the public, the educational and the professional life of the country; men who are taking no inconsiderable part in the making of the country's history. It is not to be expected of course, that all of you, or even a considerable number of you, should emulate the example or follow in the footsteps of those who have chosen public careers; but all of you can, if you will, sï mould your lives as to bring no reproach upon your university. Wherever your future careers may be found; whether in seats of learning or legislative halls, in the learned professions or in the counting houses of the marts of commerce; in the workshop, the forest or the field; remember your obligations will be measured according to your opportunities and your worthiness according to your obligations. "To live is to act; to fight at one's post the battle of life; leader or soldier, it matters little, so long as one does one's duty valiantly. The strength which God has given you, be it great or small, is a gift truly divine. You should neither let it perish nor profane it by unworthy uses." As expressed in one of your classics, "To be nameless in worthy deeds, exceeds an infamous history." The men that have been happiest and the men that are best remembered are the men that have done good in the world. So also it is true, that it is not the good that we have done for ourselves, but the good that we have done for others, around which our pleasantest thoughts centre.

A few years ago there passed away a sovereign of the mightiest empire the world has ever seen. That his influence upon the world during his all too short reign, was wholly good is attested by the fact that already his name has gone down into history as Edward the Peacemaker. We all can remember his last words, simple, but pregnant with a wealth of meaning, which reechoed round the world: "I think I have done my duty."

In wishing you God speed in the work which awaits you, let me assure you that the senate of the university, if I may be permitted to speak in its behalf, shall always follow your careers with a lively and a kindly interest. And let me, in conclusion express the hope that in your after lives you may recall the years spent here as the most profitable of your whole existence, and that when the evening comes, which comes to all alike, in glancing back in retrospect over well spent lives, you, too, may be able truthfully to say in the words of England's King, that you have done your duty.