It was such manhood as this on which the prophet had his eye when he said: "A man shall be as a hiding-place from the wind and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place; as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." His words become luminous to us in the career of the men of fifty years ago whom we revere to-day. The bonds of society are relaxed in a new country. The miner with his many generous qualities is a reckless fellow who drinks deep and whose knife is drawn on the slightest provocation. The restraints of religion lose their power with an emigrant for whom no church bell marks the difference of days. The eager rush for the farms and water privileges of a fair territory may become a selfish and demoralizing scramble. Respect for law may be forgotten where there are no organized courts of justice, and the administration of law must at best be irregular. Amid the winds and tempests of this exposed life, strong, calm, Christian manhood must be the hiding place and the covert. It was the men whom I have named, and how many others, their worthy peers, farmers, miners, merchants, lawyers, clergymen, physicians, manufacturers, who gave coherence to the elements of civic life and made this an orderly Christian commonwealth.

But it is not enough that life be secure. It must amount to something, it must come to something, it must have output. For the productiveness of life in a new region there must be men of clear thought and strong conviction to guide the mental processes of a new people, to encourage and direct its reading, to plan and administer the schools and colleges for the younger generation. This work these men attempted and wrought successfully. They became rivers of water in a dry place, and the greenness which came to the land through them has not been local like the fringing of a deep and quiet pool. Their river has had an unresting current; it has literally flowed around the world. Forty

other colleges have been fed from Beloit's stream, its life imparted to their life. The harvests reaped along its banks, what man can measure?

Another need of a new community as of all communities is the re-creation of the ideals and the refreshment of the vital powers of the people. "A weary land;" how expressive the phrase is of the aspect of life again and again, when we are worn with its struggles, disheartened at its failures, depressed at the low standards of living that prevail and by our own ineffective attempts to surpass them. "A great rock" resting closely upon the foundations of the earth and drawing coolness from its vast interior, how fitly its shadow represents the influence of the men who are in vital touch with the Eternal and who impart its vitality to those drawing near to them when spent of strength and hope. Aaron L. Chapin, Joseph Emerson, William Porter, J. J. Blaisdell; have not these been for many years as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, and does not that shadow still fall upon the grateful spirits of wearied strugglers?

All civilization is built up on manhood. Every new continent of truth must have its Cabots and its Columbus. Every campaign waits on great generals for victory. In vain the combination of the allies against Napoleon and the subsidies poured forth, until a Wellington was trained and put forward; in vain the costly sacrifices of our war until a Grant was prepared to lead on to Richmond; in vain the Greeks defy the Turk in the Hellenic cause without wise and devoted leaders. Every moral campaign must have like leadership. It is the John Brights, the Gladstones, the Garrisons who insure the triumph of great causes. And leaders must have a devoted rank and file, or their valor and skill becomes a splendid but unavailing sacrifice.

Not less important is the truth that civilization depends upon manhood for its permanence. The sudden downfall of civilizations has been the amazement of mankind. But when

they totter and drop to pieces it is always and only when manhood has gone out of them. When self-indulgence rules, some hardy stock supplants the degenerate one. When a covetous and venal spirit prevails it shall heap up treasure in vain. Some new might will be disclosed, some tremendous gathering of moral indignation, some power that shall not regard silver nor delight in gold, and the rich accumulations are scattered like dust. There is absolutely no security except in an empowered manhood, clear-eyed, stronghearted, loving God and loving men with profound and intelligent love.

This, then, is the truth that both memory and prophecy unite to utter, that both gratitude and responsibility press home upon us. For each coming year as for the fifty years

now ended, manhood is the decisive word. If we have not to contend with the difficulties of pioneer life, we have to grapple with the problems of an intricate civilization, the soil in which materialism strikes deep its roots. A prosperous people forget God or worship him with a superficial self-satisfaction. Knowledge forgets its dependence on faith and grows arrogant in its very impotence. Civic trust becomes the plunder of the enterprising and unscrupulous. Vices fester in indolent lives. Wrong becomes intrenched in social custom. Is there and shall there be manhood ready to form the battle-line and lead the forlorn hope against such masterful and inveterate evils?

Manhood is not self-creative. It is a divine gift. It was God who gave us these founders and to Him we would offer our reverent gratitude today. And manhood may be sought from God and he will not withhold the gift. Manhood may be fostered and trained by right surroundings, by worthy discipline. It is for the training of masterful manhood, and high-visioned womanhood without which the future will wait in vain for its men fitly trained and inspired, that Beloit College enters into the inheritance of the half-century,

and girds itself for the years that are to be. Let memory, love, and imagination build in the soul of each of us a Westminister Abbey dedicated to the men of our commonwealths and of our College, where their true lives and heroic deeds shall be sculptured, where the mellow past shall enwrap them in softened light beautiful as that which steals through painted windows, where grateful thoughts shall be the organ music rolling and whispering through the consecrated places.

"Be mine in hours of fear

Or grovelling thought, to seek a refuge here;
Where bubbles burst and folly's dancing foam
Melts if it cross the threshold."

But as often as we tarry in these sacred places of the heart let it be that their lives may re-inspire us, their faith reanimate us, their immortal throng of witnesses encompass us as we go forth to plant, to reap, to think, to write, to plead, to smite, to bear, for God and Christ, for truth and liberty.

Brothers of the Graduating Class:

A unique privilege is yours. The time of graduation from college is a marked epoch in any thoughtful life, when the heart beats high and yet when reflection tempers enthusiasm. But yours is placed in the rich setting of fifty years. The circle of a half-century is now completed, and you join. hands with those who were the first students of the infant college. You are brought face to face with the founders and feel the touch of their faith and courage, like a prophet's cloak thrown upon your shoulders. Some of them, thank God, are still here in bodily presence, and can represent the rest to our constructive thought, as we try to bring those early scenes before us. The whole life of the college is thus in a sense gathered into your field of vision. You behold the men of fifty years ago, conferring, praying, planning upon this hill, and you enter into their faith, their

courage, their costly sacrifices. You see the early classes gathered, and note the fine quality of their manhood and the high type of instruction given them. You see the early buildings rising, with what infinite struggle, but with such sagacious and conscientious workmanship that no crack has yet been disclosed in the walls of Middle College. You hear the drum-beat of a free nation aroused to defend its heritage, and you are stirred with the sight of the college boys drilling upon the campus when recitations are over, and presently shouldering their guns and marching to the front, boys as they were, many of them younger than the youngest of you; yes, young as you were when you were freshmen; leaving the college crippled in numbers, but on its altar the fires of patriotic faith and devotion flaming in the darkest night of national disaster. That so many of them fell "foeward as fits a man," attests the stuff of their young manhood. You see survivors returning to college life, laying off their shoulder straps and submitting loyally to college discipline. You see sons of the college, an increasing company, valiant upon a hundred battle fields of service, romantic or prosaic. You come to your own college days. Some of you, who were academy students, have felt the thrill of great gifts to the college, have heard the sound of hammer and trowel upon the walls of Pearsons Hall, and of this Chapel, where you stand now for your last college service, and which is to abide, I trust, the altar of your hearts, whither you will return to re-dedicate your manhood to all that you revere and love in Beloit.

The College and you have passed through deep experiences together. It was in the opening weeks of your senior year that the chariot of God swept suddenly close to us, and rapt away one more beloved than we trust ourselves to tell. Then it was that we learned something of the quality of your manhood. How firmly the senior class stood under the shock. Not a man of you faltered or dropped out of his place; your