present offer to its students such temporary homes as college
halls could supply. The time for this is coming, I hope soon. But most
of you have those at home who look on your residence here with
solicitude and longing, who will rejoice in your successes, and perhaps
be heartbroken should any evil befall you. It is customary to say that
young people at college are removed from the restraints of home and its
influences for good. But this need not be. To the truly loyal, absence
should make these influences more powerful, and the thought of those who
are watching you with loving hearts, in distant homes, should be a
strong impelling motive in the students' life.

"Next to home is heaven, and let me now add, loyalty to Him who reigns
there, and to the Captain of our salvation made perfect through
suffering for us. Many of you, I know, are earnest Christians and
growing in spiritual life, as you advance in learning. To those who are
not, let me say,--read, as a serious study, the life of Jesus Christ as
given in the Gospels. Read it in the light of His own sayings, that 'He
came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for
many,' and that 'God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal
life.' Read of His life as the Man of Sorrows, of His agony in
Gethsemane, of His death on the Cross, crushed not merely by physical
agony, but by the weight of our iniquities--and you may then judge, if
there is any obligations so great as that under which we lie to Him, any
loyal service so blessed as that of the Saviour. The gate may be strait,
and we may have to leave some things outside, but it is held open
lovingly by the pierced hand of our Redeemer, and it leads through a
happy and fruitful life to eternal joys--to that land which the Scottish
poet, whose religious ideal was so much higher than his own life, or the
current theology of his time, calls the 'land o' the leal.' That happy
country is near to me, but I hope separated from you by a long, useful
and happy life; but let us all alike look forward to meeting beyond the
River of Death, in that promised land where He reigns who said 'Him that
confesseth Me before men will I confess before My Father that is in
Heaven.'

"In the meantime you remain here to pursue useful work; I go to seek
restored health elsewhere, and can only remember you in my prayers. Let
us hope that when the w