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THE COLLEGE AND THE STATE.

ALEXANDER E. MATHESON, L. L. B., CLASS OF 1890.

JANESVILLE.

I have been asked to say something from the standpoint of the lawyer. I shall speak with courage and with freedom to-day, for I see before me many loyal sons of Beloit College who have chosen the legal profession as a life work, and who are making this influence felt in the communities where they are putting forth their efforts. In what I shall say today I mean to divide my allegiance between my profession and the alumni of the College.

I need not, in such a gathering as this oue, call attention to the predominance of lawyers in the Continental Congresses, in the Constitutional Convention, and among the signers of the Declaration of Independence. From the beginnings of our national existence to the present time the members of the legal profession have been most numerous and most influential in all departments of our national government. It is the lawyer's duty to improve the laws as they now are, and to bring men into sympathy with the highest and noblest principles of equity and justice. The lawyer should not attempt to set aside the law, but he should strive to cause honor and righteousness to prevail between man and man.

It should be the purpose of every institution of learning to prepare its students for wise and useful leadership in the State. Leaders there must be to guide the destinies of men

and to use most successfully the opportunities and advantages that arise out of our social and governmental relations. Many problems confront us to-day, demanding the noblest sacrifices on the part of the scholar, the lawyer, and all who have something to give for the good of the State.

But, mere intellectual training is not sufficient to prepare men for the best leadership. An educated rogue is the most dangerous rogue. One of the gravest dangers in our nation to-day is the fact that able men, with well-stored minds and intellectual faculties of the very highest order, are manipulating politics, controlling and corrupting men in our larger cities, and cajoling voters for their own personal gain and glory. These men must be met and overcome by leaders of equal calibre, who also have hearts that beat for the happiness and liberties of the masses of men. The normal, useful, and most grandly successful man is the one who, in addition to the equipment of vigorous and well-developed intellectual powers, possesses a heart that has developed and strengthened with loving, unselfish service for the people and the State.

This is the service-again I say it-this is the service that Beloit College has now given to her sons for a well-rounded half century. For fifty years she has, through her noble professors and instructors, and by the aid of those who have provided funds for her endowment and equipment, instilled into the hearts of her alumni and students those Christian principles which are at the sources of all true progress and liberty and happiness. And herein is the greatest glory of our alma mater, that her sons have gone out into the world to mingle with men, to solve their problems, share their joys and sorrows, and bear their burdens, with the idea firmly imbedded in their minds that the College has stood not alone for a true science," but also for a "pure faith.”

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We rejoice, to-day, in the splendid educatienal advantages in our own land. We rejoice in the intellectual achieve

ments of Beloit College, and no less, aye, more, do we glory in the moral achievements of our alma mater. We wish the best things for all institutions of learning, wishing for them the very largest success, and hoping that they, like Beloit, may send out men (and we are now at liberty to add, women too) not alone strong and keen in mind, but who are actuated by the hopes of large, wholesome, noble and exalted service and self-sacrifice in the interests of the State and its people, of the wide world and the tribes and nations thereof.

We here renew our devotion and loyalty to Beloit, with her fifty years of splendid service, hoping that she may round out many periods of fifty years each, and that each succeeding Golden Jubilee may find her glory brighter, her fame wider, and her history richer in blessed memories and in the accomplishment of mighty works for Christ's kingdom.

We are happy, upon this occasion, in the thought that so many of those who have woven into their lives the principles and ideals of Beloit are doing valiant service in our own land, making themselves felt as leaders of men. They are at work not merely as lawyers, but as physicians and ministers of the Gospel and men in various callings. It does not matter what the calling or profession is, so that one obeys the voice of God in his chosen life work; and all have placed upon them the obligations of wise leadership.

And, we are also happy that such is the record of Beloit College not only in our own land, but that her sons have carried the doctrines of equality and freedom and the teachings of Christ to Mexico, to Turkey, to Asia Minor, to India, fo China, to Japan, and to the the Islands of the Sea.

A GLANCE AT THE INTELLECTUAL

ATTITUDES OF THE COLLEGE.

PROF. T. C. CHAMBERLIN, PH. D., LL. D., CLASS OF 1886. CHICAGO.

The truest index of an institution is its attitude; its intellectual and moral attitude. The largeness or smallness of an institution may be more or less the expression of circumstances. Its richness or its poverty may be more or less the accident of personal friendship. Opulence and patronage may be indeed a true index of merit and may be the legitimate reward of industry, skill, and true worthiness,—indeed for the most part they doubtless are so, but they are not uniformly and necessarily so, and we may not judge by these things if we would pass righteous judgment. But the attitude of an institution is a thing of its own creation. Circumstances cannot control it unless it is the servile subject of circumstances. Riches and poverty cannot control it unless it is the slave of monetary considerations. Public opinion cannot control it unless it is the creature of public opinion. Even if its attitude be controlled by such influences, that attitude is none the less its truest index. It correctly portrays the moral character of the institution in the very face of exhibiting the causes that dominate it.

During the past half-century Beloit College has been called upon to take its attitude upon questions of profound importance. These have lain alike in the intellectual, the moral and the spiritual fields. During the half-century

progressive scholarship has unveiled vast stores of truth. It is doubtless far within limits to affirm that no previous halfcentury has made greater revelations of truth or has developed therewith more strenuous questions of appropriate collegiate attitude. These revelations are chiefly associated with the newer studies. A great group of these marshal themselves under the name science and the attitude of the college toward science may be taken to typify its attitude toward these questions and toward the newer fields of education that are rising into recognition.

To show by tangible facts that the attitude of the College has been one of increasing sympathy and progressive hospitality to the younger studies there is need to cite the apportionments made to these in the earlier days. The smallness of these apportionments may not seem to bear a tribute of honor to the fathers whom we especially delight to honor today. But we must remember that the fathers are honored not in the dimensions and proportions of the tree they planted, but in the amplitude and symmetry into which that tree by its vitality and inherent virtue has grown. The earlier curriculum of the College was a reflection of the educational ideas of those times, improved upon indeed by the wisdom of the fathers, but none the less a reflection of the times. Its full merit can only be judged by those who knew that out of which it had grown, as I do not; who knew the conditions under which it took form, and who also knew, as we do, that into which it has grown. But to measure this growth, to determine the recent trend and the present outlook we must note the limitations of the earlier days. I trust that in this closing moment you will permit me to turn from grateful retrospect to frank comparisons for their prospective values. The day calls for thought of the future as well as of the past.

We of the 50s and 60s recall the recognition which the fields of science had in the second decade of the College.

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