Alumni Oration

"Alumni Oration by Rev. Canon R. A. Armstrong, M.A." University Monthly 40, 7 (May 1921): 211-217. (UA Case 67a, Box 1)

"New occasions teach new duties." So sang the poet Lowell and on that theme I would speak to you today. As graduates you are passing through the college portal into the great world and it is indeed for you a new occasion. Besides this aftermath of the greatest war in history lays peculiar burdens on us all. You will not forget also that you are privileged people. A full quarter if not more of your life has passed ere you are educated. At your age your childhood's playmate has been at his life work for some years. Your education has cost four times as much as his education. You have had the benefit of the higher branches of learning, your course then will be marked by intelligence. You have known moral discipline and good examples have been constantly before you. These classic halls are redolent of great men, whose memory lingers. You, then, will be men of principle. What religious advantages have been yours, thinking God's thoughts after Him and seeing the wonders of His works. You have had ample chance to choose the better part and you are, I trust, full of faith. What then are you going to do with your intelligence and principle and faith? Are they to influence your generation? Is your academic year going to deepen the mark you have on your fellows? Without doubt they will look to you for a lead. Will you be silent, or will you lead them well? I trust that you will so order your lives that you may ever reflect credit upon your Alma Mater.

In this day your paramount duty is to make for peace. The Armistice and the Treaty of Versailles proclaimed peace but what means this seething discontent, this clash of arms and rattling musketry? "Blessed are the peacemakers," said Jesus. You will observe He has nothing to say about the peace wishers, the peace hopers, the peace lovers, the peace eulogizers, the peace sentimentalists—the blessing is promised simply to those who make peace, who work for it, who promote it, who by sacrifice and effort establish it in human hearts and political institutions. Peace is not a gift, it is an achievement. It is not something to be sung about but something to be wrought out by the sweat and the prowess and the indefatigable labor of man. It is possible to make mischief in the world. Some men like to make it; they have made it; they are making it now. It is possible to make hate, to fan the flames of enmity and to increase the volume of the notes of discord. Many men like to do that—they are doing it today. In a world so full of passion and prejudice and hate as this one is, it is not difficult to make strife and dissension. Christianity calls on men to make peace, to antagonize the forces that make for discord, to say by their lips and by their lives that the ideals of Jesus can be wrought out in civilization. Blessed are the peacemakers, the men who struggle and labor and sacrifice and suffer for peace, for they shall be called the sons of God.

As graduates of this University, stepping out full of hope and aspiration into this troubled world, make your lives tell for peace. We are in a peculiar position in Canada and we of the Maritime Provinces have a wondrous opportunity along this line. We have been reared amidst Loyalist traditions, where the marks of the past are very deep and we are side by side with the New England States where the deep feelings of the past still run strong. It is therefore your peculiar opportunity as leaders of public thought in these parts to advance by all the means at your command the friendship of the United States and Canada. I suppose there is not one of us that would willfully say or do anything to scatter that cordiality but we are so often thoughtless. We think a speech is funny or smart and we utter it, little thinking of the sting it leaves and how it means that our influence is not for peace but for strife. Or perhaps it is not thoughtlessness on our part, we may be goaded to it. Some citizen of the United States makes a speech more noted for zeal than culture and we forsooth answer in like kind and fall to the same level. One who has been a school teacher in a land where immigrants were numerous, told me how the instruction to the band of teachers was that they should ever inculcate the love of the new land in their pupils, its glories and its greatness, but never, never should they reflect in a less degree upon the Fatherland of their pupils. It was wondrous advice and I give it you today. Some of you may become teachers and this whole question will lie largely in your hands. Laud Canada and the Empire to the utmost, but pray, don't run down any one else's country. Every country has its part to play in God's great world. It is a godless thing to run down your own country. It is almost as godless to run down another man's and especially so our near relatives in the family of nations. In the friendship of the English speaking nations lies the hope and peace of the world. See to it then that you make peace in that quarter.

Graduating at this time you must strive to achieve and help your generation to achieve that most difficult task of beating the swords into ploughshares and the spears into pruning hooks. That was indeed a great vision the poet saw—a world transformed by religion and common sense, the nations instead of flying at each others' throats taking their cases to Zion for arbitration or as we would say submitting them to Jesus Christ and the principles of justice and humanity. The vision was, as you see, a foregleam of the League of Nations. An intensely interesting feature of the vision is that spear is to be transformed into a pruning hook. The wondrous courage, the glowing heroism, the touching sacrifice of self, all these magnificent qualities of the human heart called out by the war, and still there in the human heart, are to be called forth once more in the works of peace. One of life's greatest tasks is just to turn the spear into a pruning hook. Everywhere round about us and within us are forces that can work great harm. But we have to transform them and compel the deadly things to bless us. The passions and the appetites often plunge life onto confusion and sometimes into ruin, but we can curb them and even transform them. How hateful a thing for example, is passion, but how beautiful is love. They may seem to the cynic not to lie far apart but like the spear and the pruning hook they belong to different worlds. The one creates waste and desolation—the other floods the world with gladness and peace. Now all our gifts and capacities may be deadly or beneficent as we let them. What a cruel instrument the spoken or written word has been—sharper than a two-edged sword. It has been used to stab reputations and it has torn many a sensitive heart. It has been used to distort the truth and poison the imagination. If the pen or tongue charged with malice and satire will learn to frame words that will help and encourage we would all be nearer the golden days.

Undoubtedly one of the most powerful weapons in the world for good or evil is education. Often indeed the claim for it that it is a good thing in itself but it is in reality a neutral instrument which may be employed by the man who possesses it, either for the blessing or the bane of society. The man with ample knowledge and trained mind could do more mischief should he be so inclined than one whose resources and training are more limited. If he be selfish and unscrupulous, he can use his powers to deadly purpose. They will be in his hands spears, not pruning hooks. Knowledge alone will never make a man good or a benefactor of society. He must have not only his mind but his affections cultivated and his heart set upon whatsoever things are honourable and of good report. So now that you have reached graduation and you step into your share of the world's work, see that you use your powers for the good of society, for peace. This is not easy. You observe that you are to "beat" their spears into pruning hooks, the process of transformation requires hard work. Put it is well worth the effort. If only we learn to care more for the pruning hook than the spear, if only we prefer peace to strife and so shape our lives as to promote good will among men, then we at least have done our part to achieve that grand consummation of the poet :

"When man to man the world o'er
Shall brothers be for a' that"
"When the war drum beats no longer
and the battle flag is furled,
In the parliament of man, the federation of the world."

In the second place I would urge you to be sober-minded; not sad, mark you, but sensible, having poise. Some people seem to lose the balance of things, perhaps the dance craze will suffice as an illustration. Soberminded is a negative word. It means first, not drunk, and second, not crazy. Affirmatively it means poised, sane. The Statute of Justice with her even scales is an illustration of the virtue. It is remarkable how frequently the exhortation to be soberminded occurs in the pastoral epistles to Titus and Timothy. Old men are bidden to be soberminded and so are the young men. Older women are asked to see to it that the younger women are soberminded. It would seem as though St. Paul felt that a true leader of his fellows should make it his aim that all ages and conditions of men acquire this desirable trait. And certainly university graduates should be among the sane members of a community. The amazing irony of life is that by far the largest share of men's eagerness, enthusiasm and vigor is spent for things that are not worth while. We do not like to confess this to ourselves but to the value of all our struggle and purpose we may bring a simple test : What will it do for us at the last? Nothing is more certain than that death lies at the end of the journey called life; that within its solemn shades the noise of all our struggles shall cease, and every aim to which we sacrifice ourselves should be looked at in the light of the darkness if you will—of that inexorable certainty.

We are striving to be rich, are we? Glad if the years see growing gains; and in the struggle we are selling our strength, our peace, it may be our honor. Yes! But [alas]; my soul; remember, across the threshold of death thou shalt carry neither gold nor silver nor goodly raiment, nor precious stones. "How much did he leave?" asked a friend of a rich man who had died. "Everything," was the answer. Everything. Or are our hearts set on pleasure—whether the cruel pleasures that cost so dear, that waste our strength and burden our hearts and drag down womanhood to hell, or pleasures that are, if not so guilty, yet idle and empty? The sphere of pleasure is great. I might dilate upon the value of a sense of humor in these trying times. The longing of joy is implanted of God and religion believes in recreation. Every sane man delights to have playgrounds in cities for children and to have amusement provided for the mature. As the Apostle John is reported to have said, "the bent bow must be unstrung at times, else it will lose all its spring." It is the craze for excessive pleasure, however, that is to be seriously pondered. There are men and women everywhere who in pleasure are burning out the fire of their life early and they will have nothing left for their later years. The sweetness of family life is destroyed in many a home when the sentiment prevails that the supreme purpose of existence is amusement and that only as people are giving themselves to such amusement are they realizing the true opportunity of life. The time they are thus wasting, the money they are thus diverting, the ideals they are thus lowering and the public welfare they are thus vitiating are matters of very serious moment.

At the end of every hope we cherish and every scheme on which we spend our strength lie Death and the Judgment. They are like great mountain peaks which no traveller can miss who lifts up his eyes from the ground if but for a moment. And one glance every day at these massive certainties should be enough to purify a man's purpose, sober his activity and touch him to sympathy with things eternal. Would any man in his senses deliberately pursue a purpose now, the memory of which would trouble or torment his last conscious hours? Would any man who had but the ordinary business capacity for forecasting the future and counting the cost, so live that when he appears for final judgment he would long for the mountains to cover him and the hills to fall upon him? It is possible for us to stand in His presence on that day, humble indeed yet unafraid; possible, however, only if all our life we have been standing in that presence, walking in His light and talking with Him by the way, till His Spirit has passed into our spirit and we are altogether content with the things that are well pleasing in His sight.

The last duty I would mention is service. It is not a new duty but it is laid on us in our day with a new instance that would spur us to activity. Ruskin in a New Year's message to a class (not graduating) said: "If you care to give your class a word directly from me, say to them that they will find it well, throughout life, never to trouble themselves about what they ought not to do but about what they ought to do. The condemnation given from the judgment throne—most solemnly described—is all for the undones and not for the dones. People are perpetually afraid of doing wrong but unless they are doing its reverse energetically, they do it all day long and the degree does not matter." The service to which we are called is a moral and spiritual influence, a passing of life sacrificially upon life and it is the greatest and strongest thing in the world. Furthermore it is within the reach of everyone. No quality of Christian character can be essential that is not possible to every man. There are some who think that they can de nothing but the service of which I speak is within the reach and duty of all. Some of the most eminent servants have begun in failure. I was quite struck in reading that while at Harvard Phillips Brooks was not a leader of the way. When he was graduated he was not connected with the church and had no profession in view, he took up school teaching as temporary means of livelihood and he failed. What should he do now? He had certain powers of imagination and of composition. He was loved by the men who knew him and he was respected too. There came to him at this time a resolution. He deliberately, fully and irrevocably consecrated his life to God. What happened? The powers of his life began to expand, irridiate, grew dominant. He who could not speak at college became one of the greatest preachers of the ages. He who failed to control a class room of boys developed such powerful influence over all ranks and ages of life that he grew to be the most forceful leader among men of all his contemporaries.

Of course I hope that some of you are going to serve in the sacred ministry of the church to which you may belong, for I believe the ministry of the church offers to men the finest opportunity open to any man to make his whole life tell in distinctly spiritual service. And next after the ministry I would place the teacher for these two professions with the least incumbrance and hindrance release the whole of a man's moral force upon the moral character of men and women round about him and give him the opportunity to make his Whole self felt for the good and upbuilding of the world. Yet it is possible in any walk of life. Chinese Gordon attained it preeminently and he was a soldier. It was this quality of service which gave zest and glory to his most attractive character. Huxley used to speak of him as one of the two greatest men he ever met, a man of a sort of divine and superhuman unselfishness. Service made him great. There are three monuments to him. There is the statue that stands in Trafalgar Square with the poor sad face turned toward the help that was not to come. There is that magnificent inscription on the stone in St. Paul's:

"Major General Charles George Gordon, C.B.,
Who at all times
and everywhere gave his strength to the weak,
His substance to the poor,
His sympathy to the suffering,
His heart to God."

And there is one other monument finer still. It is a life figure of Chinese Gordon seated on a dromedary, planted in what will some day be the centre of the city of Khartoum. And in that statue the face of Gordon is not turned toward the Nile by which he might have escaped; it is not turned toward Egypt through which help too late was on its way; it is turned out toward the great desert, whose voice he alone heard, whose opportunities he alone saw. That, as Newbolt puts it in his lines on Gordon, was the real greatness of the man :

"For this man was not great by gold or Royal state,
By sharp sword or knowledge of earth's wonder;
But more than all his race he saw life face to face
And heard the still small voice above its thunder."

Rising from those black throats there in the Soudan, Chinese Gordon heard the voice of Jesus Christ calling. He will stand at last among those who in giving to the thirsty, gave water to Christ; in giving to the hungry, gave bread to Christ; in grasping the great unselfish opportunities of his life, served Jesus Christ his Lord. And so I appeal to you who graduate today as you step out into life, put your force into the great moral and spiritual movements that are transforming the world. Spend yourselves for others and for God. Service is the sacrificial use of life; that is the divine use. The fact that such service as this is the divinest thing in the world is surely enough to persuade us to it.

I close with the words of Professor Simpson, uttered to a graduating class in Scotland. In eloquent words he pictured them looking back on the scene long years after and pondering his message. "He told us," so he forehears them say, "that the great lessons he had learned on his way through life was the same that the disciple who leaned on Jesus' breast at supper taught to the fathers, the young women and the little children of his time, when he said, "The world passeth away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever."