William Miller

“ Not for itself but for every being that drinks in life and beauty from its beams, does the light return each morning on the earth. Not to rejoice in their own array do the lily and the rose deck themselves in splendour. Not to be an end unto themselves do the fruits of the valley spring. Not for its own sake does the patient ox labour in the furrow. Service and subordination are the life of the universe ”

“ You, who have chosen it as your noble function to study, to preserve, and, when need be, to cure the dwelling with which man's spirit is endued:—you who are to have it as your high vocation to subdue the stubborn forces round us to our common use, and to render this earth an increasingly commodious residence for mankind,—you must be ever watchful of what is new and ever labouring to extend the limits of your knowledge, if you would even arrive at or maintain proficiency in your special callings. ”

“ As the seed is cast into the bosom of nature in order that its energies may be called forth and its destinies accomplished, so do you cast yourselves into active life, determined in it to exercise, and by exercise to increase those mental powers that the training of the past has given you—determined that by continual accessions to your knowledge, the stream of thought shall be kept flowing constantly within you and bearing health, activity and growth into the very recesses of your being. ”

“ Draw in and make your own the fruit of the minds of others, and thus keep yourselves ever moving with the stream of human thought that has flowed on, and shall flow on through all the ages. Yet even more, be students of men and of the facts of life. It is in no dreamland of fancy, and in no retirement of studious seclusion, that man's mind and character are fitted to arrive at their due expansion. ”

“ In the exercise of the healing art, fix all your thoughts upon your immediate task of preserving health or life to those who trust to you for aid. And, graduates in Engineering, let your conscious aim be this,—that the structures of any kind that you erect, or the canals, let us say, that you may dig, shall be a convenience and a joy to the struggling lives of those who are in the world already, and of such a kind that they shall continue to serve their purpose in the midst of generations that are still to come. ”

“ And whatever be the profession you may choose, you may all in the exercise alike of it and of your personal influence, do much to awaken in others that desire for knowledge which this University trusts that she has been the means of awakening in you. If you are in the least worthy of the position in which you stand, you need not me to tell you that by doing so you will confer on them a greater boon than the very greatest that is merely material in its character. ”

“ With regard to yourselves, remember that your work as seekers after truth is not ended. We say indeed, Your duty as seekers after truth. and it is rightly said, that you have completed your education; but there are different kinds of completeness, and the sense in which you can deem yourselves completely educated requires to be attentively considered. There is a completeness like that of the giant tree, around whose blossoms myriad tribes of insects sport and whose pyramid of leaves spreads wide a welcome shade from the fierceness of noonday sun. ”

“ And though my theme at present be mainly that intellectual character, the growth of which a University must always make its first concern, I may be permitted to point out before passing on, one noble result of a different kind which will have a tendency to flow from your faithfully pursuing wisdom and knowledge in whatever department of human thought. He that gives himself to this pursuit is raised above the power of some at least of the allurements with which the world is crowded. ”

“ The men that you meet with in all their variety of intellectual and moral nature, the political and social forces at work around you, the tendencies and aims of current speculation, will furnish to the well-trained mind, food for constant thought—for such thought as may elevate and brace the whole inner life by keeping it in perpetual contact with what is real and enduring beneath the shows of the fleeting hour. ”

“ If thus you act, then, unless the plainest teaching of nature be a lie, you will not lose by it even in the lowest view, while your moral nature will be ennobled, and you will enjoy what must surely be the satisfaction of believing that, so far at least, you are obedient to the law by which all existence is bound together into this one glorious universe. ”

“ Ideals, it is true, are attained but seldom, and with you as with us all, mental training is far from perfect, and zeal for knowledge far from pure. Yet we trust that in no inconsiderable measure you have a sense of the dignity of wisdom a sense of your own need of it, and a power at the same time of gathering it henceforward for yourselves. Thus you are complete with the completeness of a seed. ”

“ Now We know that according to the plan of this universe, our planet could receive in no such way as this the light and heat that it requires. It can obtain them only by obedience to the attracting power of the distant sun. It is not only served; it is itself a servant in the first place. And so of all the other bodies of our system, and apparently of every system that the telescope of the astronomer has revealed. The well-being of each and the stability of the whole are secured by a constant regard in each to a centre and an aim beyond itself. ”

“ There you have met with men that have contended for freedom and for truth at the danger of life or at the cost of it : with those too that amidst perplexity and peril, unsupported by any breath of popular applause, have toiled on in some righteous cause until its worth grew clear to all, and empires ennobled became the memorials of their lives. ”

“ To you has been unlocked that treasury of invigorating thought of which Shakespeare and Milton stand the guardians. The very tongue that they and their fellows have ennobled, is a channel whereby moral life must flow into those who study it with sympathy. ”

“ These perplexities and doubts are but the shaking which makes truth beam forth more clearly before long. Meet them manfully. Labour on till certainty is reached. Be sure of this, that a fuller insight into any fact whether great or small, but most of all if it be into one of the eternities of human speculation, is by itself a rich return for all the toil and danger of the search, at least to those in whom the sacred thirst for truth has been once effectually awakened. ”

“ And here I am reminded that, in the case of some, the necessity is very clamant that they should thus maintain and increase their knowledge.
Graduates in Law, in Medicine and Engineering, the sciences to which you have devoted yourselves obviously demand the labour of a lifetime. In the case of law, the field is so wide and the possible application of its principles so varied, as to make it very plain that no one should enter on its study who is not content to be ever learning, and ever to confess himself but a learner still. ”

“ Every addition that is made to our knowledge of the plan of nature—and how numerous and startling are such additions now-a-days—is capable of being pressed into the service of one or other, or of both. ”

“ Listen therefore to the parable which nature daily teaches to those who have penetrated but a little way into her mysteries. The road to glory and happiness. Listen and learn that it is in the path of usefulness that you can arrive at, I say not merely the highest glory, but even the only happiness. ”

“ Imagine for a moment this globe breaking away from the order of ministration and dependence in which it is now embraced. How soon would all its beauty perish, how soon would its varied tribes of abounding life sink back into the cheerless chaos out of which they have arisen. ”

“ And doubt not that in the active life before you, you will find abundant opportunity for such service to your fellowmen as the plan of all creation thus summons you to render. Those who have chosen their profession can easily discern the particular benefit that in its exercise they can confer on others. Make the doing of that good your main design. True, it is by your labour you must live, and it would not be right or wise to forget this aspect of the case. ”

“ And now, in conclusion, what are the considerations by which I can best urge you to discharge the duties that have been so imperfectly pointed out? Some helps you feel that you require, for he knows little of himself who has not learnt by sad experience that man's moral weakness is so great, that, without some powerful aid, the clearest demonstration of what duty is, goes but a little way towards securing that duty shall be done. ”

“ But in the very want of memories like these, is there not a summons to us all to labour together in order that our successors may enjoy them? And for their absence, has not your University something of a recompense in the hopefulness, the buoyancy, and the glorious possibilities of her youth? She may yet be all that her elder sisters are. She may yet effect as much of solid good, and that in a far wider field than almost any of them can boast. ”

“ But there is a completeness too like that of the seed, which, whatever it may become hereafter, is far from having realized the ideal of its being. Yet in its own fashion, the seed too is complete It has so drawn in the life of its parent stem that it is fitted to become in the common course of nature such in all respects as that parent is. The germ of all is already in it. Every organ that is needed to make it complete even in the fullest sense, may now be developed out of it. ”

“ Inasmuch as you are subjects, inasmuch as you are citizens, inasmuch as you are men, there are countless claims upon you such as you cannot safely or honourably neglect; but these lie beyond the scope of my present task, except in so far as all duty is from its very nature linked indissolubly together. ”

“ On the other hand, very little consideration is needed to convince you that if you live and labour only for yourselves, you will run counter to the plan on which the whole world is beneficently ruled. ”

“ But powerful, yes and effectual aids there are, nor are they far away from those who seek them in earnestness with patience and humility. When I think of you, standing as you do with all the hope and strength of youth about you, coming into the world as you have done in a country like this that is beginning to sweep forward along new paths towards unthought-of destinies, the considerations that might be here adduced seem almost infinite in number. ”

“ Labour for the benefit of others. This briefly above all—that you use this knowledge, and all the power that in greater or less degree it is certain to bring with it, for the benefit of men, not for the attainment of any personal ends. That you should employ your knowledge thus is the design with which it has been given you. It is the design in so far as regards this University and her subordinate colleges which have been the instruments of your education. ”

“ And, gentlemen, for those who have acquainted themselves at all with the facts of physical science, I need not add how in every department of every natural kingdom the same law of helpful service holds. ”

“ Thus we would have you live, for whether your influence be great or small, and even if little success attend your most devoted efforts, you will thus in inmost spirit "claim kindred with the great of old." ”

“ On the one hand, you cannot imagine even for a moment that all the expenditure of wealth and time and strength on the part of those who have contributed directly or indirectly to your training, will have attained its end if you arrive at distinction or at power:—you so few, and when considered merely by yourselves, so utterly insignificant compared with the teeming millions around you. ”

“ But let such personal results of effort be ever with you the second thing and not the first. In the practice of the law let the securing of justice and the setting right of wrong be the object on which your heart is set;—not the mere pocketing of your fee. ”

“ There was a time when the nations of Europe, too ignorant even now, were sunk in ignorance of the very densest kind. It was by the individual effort of those who had been themselves enlightened, that the darkness began in any measure to be rolled away. ”

“ But once let it be found by proof that those whom she stamps with her approval are men of high-toned principle and lofty purpose, to whose influence and guidance their countrymen joyfully submit, and soon will your Alma Mater gain for herself far-spread renown, and gain thereby a power unimagined hitherto to carry on successfully the mighty work that has been entrusted to her. ”

“ Some of you—and I hope not a very few—will endeavour to obtain still higher honours at her hand after another period of submission to her guidance; but most of you in any case have completed the portion of your lives that you can afford to devote to academic pursuits, and even those who seek for a higher place in the rolls of the University must henceforth be much less than hitherto under her direct control. ”

“ If indeed there be among you any whose only care has been to keep in mind the bare facts they have been instructed to attend to, and who are satisfied now to let study drop, because their trials have been sustained and their position is secure, for such these bye-gone years have been, at all events in the highest sense, useless if they have not been worse. ”