expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained-and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people. Besides the ordinary objects submitted to your care, it will remain with your judgment to decide how far an exercise of the occasional power delegated by the fifth article of the Constitution is rendered expedient, at the present juncture, by the nature of objections which have been urged against the system, or by the degree of inquietude which has given birth to them. Instead of undertaking particular recommendations on this subject, in which I could be guided by no lights derived from official opportunities, I shall again give way to my entire confidence in your discernment and pursuit of the public good. For I assure myself that, while you carefully avoided every alteration which might endanger the benefits of a united and effective government, or which ought to await the future lessons of experience, a reverence for the characteristic rights of freemen and a regard for the public harmony will sufficiently influence your deliberations on the question how far the former can be more impregnably fortified, or the latter be safely and more advantageously promoted.

To the preceding observations I have one to add, which will be most properly addrest to the House of Representatives. It concerns myself, and will, therefore, be as brief as possible.

When I was first honored with a call into the service of my country, then on the eve of an arduous struggle for its liberties, the light in which I contemplated my duty required that I should renounce every pecuniary compensation. From this resolution I have in no instance departed. And being still under the impressions which produced it, I must decline, as inapplicable to myself, any share in the personal emoluments which may be indispensably included in a permanent provision for the Executive

Department; and must accordingly pray that the pecuniary estimates for the station in which I am placed may, during my continuation in it, be limited to such actual expenditures as the public good may be thought to require.

Having thus imparted to you my sentiments, as they have been awakened by the occasion which brings us together, I shall take my present leave, but not without resorting once more to the benign Parent of the human race, in humble supplication, that, since He has been pleased to favor the American people with opportunities for deliberating in perfect tranquillity, and dispositions for deciding with unparalleled unanimity, on a form of government for the security of their union and the advancement of their happiness, so His divine blessing may be equally conspicuous in the enlarged views, the temperate consultations, and the wise measures on which the success of this government must depend.

A TALK TO GRADUATES*

One of the greatest figures of mythology, you remember, was Prometheus, who brought fire from heaven that men of skill and industry might begin their long journey toward truth and power. He was the fire-bringer. Every great or useful man and woman since his time has been a light-bearer; and the rank of a man depends on the clarity and power of light which shines from him on his fellows and his time. As we look back over the long course of history, we are able to see the way by which we have come, because so many men and women have lighted the darkness of ignorance. As you approach a great city, there is first a faint glow on the horizon, then a kindling brightness; then long lines of fire rise into view, and presently the splendor of the city is before you. Looking back from the brightness of to-day, we can trace the waxing light to its far beginnings, as the long lines recede and grow fainter

* By kind permission of The Outlook, New York.

against the darkness. We can see the lamps lighted in the valley of the Euphrates thousands of years ago; the kindling of the lights in the valley of the Nile; the glory of the Light of the World as it revealed itself in Judea; the splendor that streamed from Athens across half the globe, across our time, shining to the very end of the ages; the powerful ray that fell from Rome; the flaming of the torches of Florence and Venice; the lighting of the lamps at the earliest universities, at Salamanca, Salerno, Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Cambridge. The first intimation of the New World to its discoverer was a faint point of light on its shore; now, from Cambridge, on the Atlantic, to the University of California, at the Golden Gate, the torch of knowledge has passed until there is a line of fire across the continent.

These lights have been kindled with infinite toil and selfdenial; they have been fed with sacrifice, aspiration, heroic work, with beautiful and unfailing courage. Many torches have been kindled by them, and in turn have augmented their splendor. This it is which gives the famous schools their hold on the imagination of the world, and makes lesser schools dear to our hearts-they are all homes of light. Every school is a torch from which other torches are to be fired. Generation after generation dips its torches in the fire and goes its way down to the future to make the highway brighter for those who come after.

To-day there are lamps in all our hands; but some are faint and intermittent, like the glowworms on a summer night, and others shine like the stars. The great and beautiful spirits have very radiant spirits. Dante was "a spiritual splendor;" and there are many over whose ashes might well be written that greatest of epitaphs which marks the grave of Fichte, in the cemetery at Berlin: "The wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars, for ever and ever. The prophets, saints, martyrs, poets, and teachers, heroes of science, makers of states, men of genius and character in affairs, helpers of their kind-these are the torch-bearers of the past. You have been lighting and

feeding your lamps. Shall they flicker faintly in the wind of destiny, or shall they shine with a steady glow, fanned into a clearer flame by the adverse winds of the world? These lamps in your hands are not to be filled with knowledge alone; they are to be fed by the most precious things of life; and each age pours in its own oil, beaten out of its innermost life as the oil is beaten out of the olive.

Soft and clear shines the lamp of childhood, fed by obedience and joy, the one distilled from the other; for it is out of obedience that joy comes, not, as so many people think to their tragic loss, from doing as one chooses and having one's way. Every joy has its source in obedience. The greatest torch-bearer in the world of the last century was, perhaps, Charles Darwin; the light which he held aloft shone farther and brought more new fields of knowledge into view than any other light held by any other man. Charles Darwin was obedient to his task; a half-invalid, self-denyingly, with the utmost concentration, treading that lonely path of observation, meditation, and study which enabled him at last, feeding his torch with the very substance of his life, to hold it aloft until it became one of the splendid flames of the world. So Father Damien, one of the great company of priests who at the ends of the world are laying down their lives with gladness and joy, feeding the light with sacrifice, gave himself to the service of lepers, to become a leper himself; to whom fame came, as it always comes most beautifully to those who do not seek it. There is not an artist, a statesman, a preacher, or a prophet of our time who has not trod the pathway of obedience.

The lamp of obedience burns low to-day, and especially in this country. The noble movement toward freedom of the last century which has liberated half the world from political oppression, and is fast liberating the other half, has delivered us from slavery to unreal and superstitious ideas of God and nature, and has lifted from the race the shadow of that distorted image of the Infinite Father which rested like a cloud over so many generations, like every great movement, has been carried so far that some

of us have come to think that our will is the only law, and have forgotten that noble text of Tennyson's, "Our wills are ours to make them thine."

The old path of obedience and submission for the sake of the higher and finer things is the only pathway to joy. The lawbreakers who put their impulses in place of the will of the Infinite always make ready for some tragedy. Read the modern novel or the drama of the last twenty years, and you will see how the pursuit of happiness without regard to the higher law or to the rights of others always bears its fruits in tragedy! The other day a distinguished and venerable painter, in answer to the question whether he waited for the happy mood, said: "Never. I always keep at work, and when the impulse comes, it finds me ready and obedient." Ready and obedient! How many times it happens that a young man starting out in some profession feels that for the present he will give himself freedom from hard work, but that when the critical moment comes and his hand is on the door of opportunity, then he will make himself ready! A man's hand is never on the door of opportunity unless it is a hand already made strong to push back that door, and enter and take possession. Opportunity is never used save by the man who is ready and obedient. This is the secret of joy : Keep your wills in subjection to the higher will; subject yourselves to the law of self-sacrifice and self-control in order that out of that apprenticeship which we are all serving in this world there may be born that mastery the prophecy of which is on every faculty of man's nature. So far as genius brings out fully its wonderful treasures, it is always by obedience to the laws of health and life. So far as sweetness and strength flower in human character, it is always out of the soil of obedience.