Alumni Oration

"The Alumni Oration. Rev. G. Colborne Heine" University Monthly 20, 8. (May 1901): 208-215 (UA Case 67a, Box 1)

Permit me to express my appreciation of the honor conferred on an old alumnus of this University in being asked to address so distinguished a company of professors and graduates and friends of higher education on the occasion of the first encoenia of the new century. It is a fact worthy of note that this corresponds with the beginning of a new century in the life and history of this University, the first undenominational institution in all Canada which has the distinction of having passed the century milestone. It may be called, therefore, the grave and reverend senior of all the universities of Canada, fitly marching at the head of the procession of splendid educational institutions of the Dominion. It is to me a most agreeable duty, that of extending my congratulations to the Academic Faculty and the friends of the venerable College on its present condition and prospects, on the vitality and vigor which characterize its operations, on the heroic effort it has so recently made to enhance its usefulness and attract the youth of our province.

This could hardly have been accomplished without the generous and hearty cooperation of its Alumni, who are every the best friends of their Alma Mater, as indeed they should be. That University will be the most prosperous, which inspires every one of its graduates with an affectionate loyalty for its worth and work, so that on leaving its halls they become, as it were, recruiting officers encouraging our young people to study here and enlisting the practical sympathy of wealthy men, with a view to provide the best equipment possible, to enlarge the staff, and increase its efficiency.

It is a pleasure, also, to offer my felicitations to the graduating class whose great privilege it is to be the first graduates of this University in the new century and in the reign of our new sovereign, King Edward VII. It would be a high and desirable aim if they would set the pace, so to speak, for those who follow them, in devotion to the interests of the University and the advancement of true culture. The weal of a University is in the hands of its graduates. They are its fruits. The people will judge the institution by the kind of men it honors and sends forth. They can commend it in two ways, viz., by their character and by their ability and thus add to its numbers and influence.

It is cause for deep regret that in this Province there should be two Universities, where there is but room for one. Under the circumstances, however, there is but one thing to do, and that is for the Alumni of this University to join hands and work with might and main in its behalf with a view to add to its appliances, its emoluments and its staff, that it may offer by far the best educational advantages to be obtained within the Province. In this way we may hope to secure a largely increased patronage and an ever widening opportunity. Perhaps we cannot do better in the short time at our disposal than to discuss the true function of a University, what a University should stand for and the object it should set before itself. In the University of Athens founded in the early ages of the Christian era, by the Emperor Adrian, the oldest of which we have any record, rhetoric, philosophy, and political eloquence were the subjects of instruction. In the University of Constantinople founded three hundred years later, A. D. 425, we find the Greek and Roman languages and literature, philosophy and law taught. In mediaeval times, great Universities were founded in Paris, Prague, Vienna and Heidelberg, etc. in which theology, philosophy and canonical law were chiefly studied. Gradually, however, the four faculties, of theology, medicine, canonical law and arts were evolved, and acquired corporate rights, the last, as now being considered as preparatory to the rest. The hand of tradition, however, was upon those seats of learning, restraining freedom of thought, and discouraging a free spirit of inquiry. With the Renaissance came the dawn of a brighter day for Europe, when the study of the Humanities, introduced by Plutarch, emancipated men's minds from their intellectual thralldom and brought in a new and higher order of thought. The effect of the renaissance was like an intellectual birth or a resuscitation from death-like torpor. It was the beginning of a new era in the world of thought. It shows us the folly of seeking to place limitations upon the powers of the human mind. Sooner or later they would burst forth like the pent up waters of some Niagara, and help to enrich the world. In the sixteenth century came another great movement, the Reformation, which gave a strong impetus to the revival of learning alluded to, and inaugurated an advanced system of study which continued virtually unchanged until the nineteenth century.

In recent years, however, there has been manifested a disposition on the part of some old Universities, stimulated possibly by the unparalleled advancement in mechanical invention, and in art, to depart from the old paths. In Harvard, for example, we are told that forty-five per cent, of the graduates have not studied classics, and twenty-five per cent, are without mathematics. Its sister University of Yale, has, on the other hand, remodelled its arts’ course in a literary direction. An entirely new departure has been announced from the old German city of Hamburg where it is in contemplation to found and equip a purely commercial university. Again, in other universities optional studies are allowed after following the regular course for two years. All this reminds us that we are in an age of change, that the traditions of the past are no longer considered binding, that the unfettered minds of men are reaching outward and onward, desirous of finding the best attainable standards of education, those which are most adapted to man's intellectual and material progress and comfort. We may be wrong, but we must frankly state our opinion that it would seem as if our highest seats of learning were coming under the fascinating spell of the utilitarian spirit of our age. The endowments which have been pouring into the coffers of many universities have been phenomenal. Seven American institutions report, benefactions of twenty-two millions, the largest being $11,000,000 to the Leland Stanford University; the smallest, half a million, to the University of Pennsylvania. These are over and above income. Benefactors with such public spirit deserve to have their names inscribed in mural tablets in the universities they have helped to enrich. We are not without striking examples of liberality in our country, but I fear that the inspiration of such magnanimity has not yet moved our wealthy fellow-citizens of this province. Perhaps some of them are infected, we hope they are, and will step forth some day into the ranks of the great educational benefactors of our age and enable this old University to take a mighty stride forward and find a place beside her sturdier sister institutions. It would be highly satisfactory to themselves to be the executors of their fortunes and the dispensers of their own bounty. It would further constitute a monument to their memory nobler and more enduring than marble, an example of wealth wisely used for the benefit of their fellow-men, which many might follow. Is this princely beneficence inclining the institutions it affects from a high standard of culture to a lower? There is no reason why it should, provided no conditions are attached thereto. But all the same there are not wanting signs that some institutions are showing favor to studies of a mere professional type, encouraging students to follow such courses as will enable them merely to make a living, to amass wealth. Their chief aim is no longer to furnish a liberal education, leading to an advancing culture, but mainly such as has a direct and practical bearing on the craft or trade they intend to follow. Is this the true aim of a University? Has a University no higher function than this? If not, it cannot rank in the honorable category of the great Universities of the past. It is of another order, and occupying a lower platform. But a month since at the convocation of McGill University its learned Principal called attention to this matter. "McGill University seeks to turn out scholars and leaders of men who will influence and elevate society. No University is in a healthy condition unless it spends much of its time on subjects which have no commercial value. It is more and more recognized as of incalculable importance to fix the mind of the student during the time when it is most plastic, upon courses which do not entirely lead to money making. History, the philosophy of history, poetry, literature, the fine arts and the elements of ethics are such subjects. For no class can permanently contribute to the greatness of a country unless they have not only ideas, but ideals as well."

These words have the right ring about them and indicate that the institution in question is not willing to depart without cause from the estimable traditions of the past. Rather should the aim be to use the past as a guide, striving in our new environment to apply what is helpful to enquiring minds, while ever ready and eager to utilize every new discovery. Newman says the aim of a university is to impart liberal knowledge. Virchow, "to impart general scientific and moral culture together with a mastery of one special department." The former is too general. It all depends by what is meant by liberal knowledge. The latter is clearer and better, provided moral culture be properly emphasized. For who can doubt that culture, in its broadest and highest sense, the training of all the faculties of the student, is the true and serious business of a University. "No doubt," observes Bishop Spalding, it is the business of a University to educate the intellect, to make mental culture its direct scope; but knowledge should not be separate from wisdom, nor moral from intellectual excellence. The primary and essential aim is to form men, not scholars. The scholar, like the author or artist, is an inferior being, unless he is also a noble character, brave loving, pure, upright." And he adds significantly: "organization, buildings endowments and privileges cannot make a school. There must be an inspiring idea, a lofty aim, a living purpose animating both teachers and pupils. All else is idle if it is lacking. One cannot help recalling, in this connection, the fact that Edward Turing, Head Master of Uppingham, probably after Arnold the most distinguished educationalist in England during the last century, whose life and work have been so well written by a distinguished graduate of this University, lived and wrought with this aim steadily before him. It was a burning, consuming conviction—an inspiration which throbbed with every pulse of his being. He delighted in scholarship, rejoiced at the success of his young men at the University, but more than scholarship, he prized true manliness. In other words, his consistent aim was the culture of a student's soul, as well as of his intellect.

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In the last analysis, all men have ideals and follow them. Some of them are high, some low and unworthy. Some are material and selfish, some spiritual and unselfish. The duty of a University is to embrace the highest ideal, to hold it before the student, and inspire him to adopt it as his own.

Two ideas of culture are widely current in our day, which have greatly influenced men. The one is the scientific, the other the literary. One of the greatest exponents of the former was the late Prof. Huxley, whose name was a household word in English speaking world, and whose opinions were very influential. The scientific idea of culture is to make the last and highest results of knowledge the aim of the student, to substitute these for religion and bring down religion from its supremacy. This ideal has been more or less prevalent ever since the revival of learning in the fifteenth century. Before that time the great minds of the Universities were occupied with a dry-as-dust and profitless scholasticism. When the new day was born, and the new learning came from the East, to
Florence first, through the fall of Constantinople in 1452, this together with the invention of the press and the discovery of a new continent, all within fifty years, produced a wonderful reaction in the minds of thoughtful scholars. It has been likened to emerging "from a musty prison into a fresh world of light." Like the pendulum which swings from one extreme to the other, so the scholars of that age went to the other extreme. They were so overcome by the fascinations of the new world into which they were introduced that they were fain to believe every aspiration of man's nature would find its highest satisfaction therein. Similarly in Germany and in England a recoil has been observed since the beginning of the eighteenth century, in the direction of a standard of purely scientific culture. There has been going on quietly but surely a battle in the world of thought, the aim being to dethrone religion and replace it by knowledge. This is the way in which Huxley states it. "Education, in its largest and highest sense, from birth to death, consists solely in learning the laws of nature, physical and moral, and training one's self to obey them." This is good so far as it goes. One should have a general acquaintance with the laws of nature, and every average student has. It is one duty of a University to unfold to the student the results of the researches of great minds down to the present time, in the various departments of knowledge. But to say to its new fledged graduate: "Remember the laws of nature. We have told you all we know about them, find out more if you can, and be sure to obey them. Adieu!" What a fine inspiration! What a noble ideal! What a high goal! A great incentive truly to a young man! It serves to illustrate the fact, however, that a man of science may be so bound by the tyranny of fact, as to take a very inadequate view of human life that a man who devotes himself to the study of physics, may quite forget that there is a world of metaphysics, which takes account of facts too, but facts which are neither material nor sensuous. Mr. Huxley and his disciples would be content with earth, without its complement of heaven—with man without a soul. The theory of scientific culture fails to take account of the highest part of man's nature. It would train him to take a purely selfish, one sided and therefore defective view of life. Strange as it may seem, while professing to be scientific, and therefore to rest on all the facts, it ignores some of the most vital considerations, and lays itself open to merited rebuke.

The literary theory of ideal of culture has had a famous exponent, in the person of the late Matthew Arnold, "the apostle of sweetness and light." According to his view, the aim of culture is, not to render an intelligent being more intelligent, to improve our capacities to the utmost, but to make reason and the Kingdom of God prevail—a view previously enunciated by Bishop Wilson. "In this," adds Mr. Arnold, "is seen the moral, social and beneficent nature of culture, that while it seeks the best knowledge, the highest science that is to be had, it seeks them in order to make them tell on human life and character. Thus the aim of culture is the perfection of our human nature on all its sides, in all its capacities." One cannot help being struck by the comprehensive statement of this ideal. One feels as if one were bid gaze afar upon a lofty peak of that high tableland, "to which our God himself is moon and sun." Does the clear far-reaching eye of the great Galilean prophet discern a grander goal for the human soul? To make reason and the Kingdom of God prevail among men? Surely it is the loftiest and noblest possible ideal. Hence it is not surprising to hear Mr. Arnold affirm that the aim of culture coincides with the aim of religion. 1. Because it places perfection, not in any external good, but in an internal condition of the soul. "The Kingdom of God is within you" 2. It sets before men the condition not of having and resting, but of growing and becoming, as the true aim. "Forgetting the things which are behind and pressing on to those which are before." 3. It holds that a man's perfection cannot be self-contained, but must embrace the good of others equally with his own. "Look not every man on his own things, but every man on the things of others also."

Certainly if the literary theory of culture does not coincide with the religion of the Bible, the similarity is very striking. They would seem to resemble, not parallel straight lines, which being produced ever so far never meet; but rather the converging radii of a circle, which meet sooner or later and coalesce in a common centre.

One attraction this idea: has is that it is a high one, and it is absolutely necessary for a student to have a high ideal, if he is to rise above the monotonous common places of his time, and, like the magnet, which attracts the iron filings from the dust and grime in which they lie, magnetize the dull, aimless, sordid minds around him, and lift them up, if only a little, in the scale of life.

Another reason I like it is, that it appeals to me as an exceedingly worthy one. And what kind of an ideal should a college young man or woman set out in life with, if not the worthiest, he can find? How reasonable it is, so it seems to me, to appeal to them to do the very best with their divinely given powers! In a young country like our own, so large and inviting, whose vast resources of soil and mine, of forest and sea, are only beginning to be known, requiring all the energies of our people to develop—a country which is only just learning to know and appreciate its own strength, and to be seized with the idea of the great future in store for it. We can quite under stand how slow and difficult all progress in true culture will be. And yet what is life apart from it? Far better to have the chariot wheels of material progress move slowly that men may realize their high destiny, and claim their spiritual birth-right.

Again, the literary theory of culture, as expounded above, elaborates a distinctly moral and spiritual ideal, and is as far above the scientific ideal as man with his fine powers is above the snail which crawls at his feet. This is it which distinguishes man from the lower order of creation. He has a moral nature which, in its normal condition answers to moral excellence as a beautiful face mirrors itself in the glass. And he has a spiritual nature which finds its satisfaction only in things spiritual and its supreme delight in the fellowship and service of Christ. This ideal alone will lead man to the highest summit of true greatness, develop all his faculties, and make him the peer of the wisest and best of all the ages.

But this ideal of life has another charm for me. It enunciates that noble altruism, which alas is far too rare, but which enters into every truly good character—an altruism which was unfolded nineteen hundred years ago, in the unique and lofty teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, who also was its most illustrious example. It is to the character what the fragrance is to the flower, the fruit is to the tree, what the cope stone is to the arch. It is the fairest crown that ever adorned the brow of man. As the finest trunk of a tree is disfigured by some knotty outgrowth upon it, so an ideal which is self-centred destroys the symmetry of the finest character... A life self-centred is ignoble, sordid, and repulsive. The lives that are writ highest in the bead roll of fame are those who not only thought of others but who have had an enthusiasm for humanity, a love for their fellows, and who have not considered life itself too great a sacrifice to offer to save them from loss and failure.

This theory of culture then, is that which a University should set before its students, as the highest and most desirable ideal of life.

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The work of moulding men after the most perfect ideal is pressing upon every true educationist. The time is come, or coming when, if we cannot have scholarship and culture together, we must have culture. We must have true men at whatever cost of heart and brain. We are in the presence of a national peril. The spirit of greed is eating out the spirit of righteousness. There is a startling manifestation of political corruption on the part of the men of our land, which would be impossible were they not supported by a considerable portion of the electorate. Bribery and covetousness, dishonesty and lack of public faith are not uncommon, and the country seems to be ruled in the interest of the individual, instead of that of the State. How shall we deal with this growing power of Mammon? Can the University send her graduates forth with an unconquerable enthusiasm for right thinking and right living? Can it say to them, as Spartan mothers to their sons: "Return with your shield or upon it." Come back to your Alma Mater with honor unsullied, with principle obeyed, with righteousness unmarred, an example of the high ideal we set before you or come not at all.

This University has its noble teachers and its high-minded graduates, after a hundred years, who are striving to hold aloft the banner of that righteousness which alone exalteth a nation. But we are only a small contingent among more than three hundred thousand souls in this province. We want the co-operation of every graduate to help us, to go into all the communities of our land and stand there for true culture, to take the young in hand and seek to imbue them with the ideal within our breasts. This is true patriotism and the genius of true religion.

The influence of the Universities of our land is growing. Where young men used to come in scores, they are now coming in hundreds to drink from the fountain of learning, to be inspired with the freshest thought. It is matter for just pride to all its graduates, that this old seat of learning is taking on new life with the beginning of a new century. It is an interesting question how to enlarge its influence. Why should there not be an intelligent and determined effort to have a University Board for the Maritime Provinces, whose duty it would be to arrange the curricula of studies and the granting of degrees? All students then would have the advantage of one common standard, which might equal that of larger Universities, and so give the graduate an equal standing with that of the graduates of the leading Universities of this continent. In any case however the work of this University will be here, and here its teachers will teach.

In conclusion, let me appeal for a more generous and fitting support for the staff of this University. Wordsworth complained that the good old days of plain living and high thinking were past. The thinking is, I feel sure, high here, but the emoluments are unworthy and should be increased without delay. We appeal to our large-hearted fellow citizens to come to our aid—to make it worth while for brawny, large-souled men to give their lives to the building up of our University, to the enlargement of its usefulness. We need new chairs erected and endowed, new buildings erected, so this may come the McGill of our fair Province. A fair vision comes before me. It is the completion of another fifty years of time. An old graduate, whose face is set in a wreath of silver hair, visits these halls. He sees a wonderful change. New buildings have sprung up on every hand. There is one devoted to chemistry, beside it another to physics, still another to medicine, another to law. There is a library, with its tens of thousands of volumes, while here and there clustering around are affiliated theological colleges and dormitories, making possible the best conditions of college life. It is Encoenial day. Thousands of undergraduates and friends fill the Convocation hall, with scores of professors and lecturers who file in upon the platform, some of whom, by their researches and inventions, have extended the name and fame of the great University of New Brunswick throughout the world. The graduating class numbers scores of bright students, ready to go forth and follow and grace the high ideal of culture they have received from their noble teachers May the vision be a prophecy!