TENDENCY OF THE AGE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1630, 8 August 1887, Page 2

TENDENCY OF THE AGE

*r __ Bacca'auerate sermons were preached on Jane 27th at Yale, Amherst, Williams, Wesleyan, Pennsylvania, Trinity, Hamilton, and Dartmouth Colleges. President Dwlght, of Yale, delivered his first baccalaureate. ,He eald : "It is certainly a critical period In the experience of the world, and enpeoially of out own nation, at which the young men of those passing yeara are entering upon their life's work. In material things onr people are moving, as it m an hour, out of the limitations and moderations of the past into all the re'ourcesand wealth of the moat luxurious nations. The temptations to get money and spend It, to view it as "a means of all good and the end of all deßiro ; to make what it brings the essential thing In the Idea of earthly happiness, to. subordinate for Ub sake Inward life to outward, is beoomlng strong and seemingly more irresistible. The continual demoralisation of oharaoter which follows yielding to thiß temptation ia more olosely manifesting itself. Closely bordering upon the sudden and wonderful lnorease of wealth and the de* ire for it, there has come upon as what threatens to be a serious and prolonged oonfllot between the classes m aoolety, and an inroad upon the theories of State, which would overthrow what haß been founded upon the thought and wisdom of ages. And no . leaa dearly bordering upon it, doubt and questioning of a most cUngerous order are pressing m npon as, and the best and highest put of man la forgotten. The danger of the honr la that even the educated classes will lose out of themselves the most ennobllDg element of Hfoj and will satiafy themselves with knowing the seen and Ignoring the unseen . The university docß not send forth, my friends, and the oall of duly at this hoar does not aammon yoa to be doubters, but to be men of conviotion, to believe something m your own souls, and therefore, as by impulses of a resistless force, to ugeak and to do Bon?ething m the world."