ng the libraries and
lecture-rooms and begin the experiments of the new day. And always
their college motto meets the eyes that are raised to its penetrating
message, "Not to be ministered unto, but to minister." How many a
young heart has loyally responded, "And to give life a ransom for
many." That is the "Wellesley spirit;" and the same sweet spirit of
devout service has gone forth from all our college halls. In any of
them one may catch the echo of Whittier's noble psalm,--

"O Lord and Master of us all
Whate'er our name or sign,
We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call,
We test our lives by Thine."

That is the supreme test of life,--its consecrated serviceableness. The
Master of Balliol was right; the brave men and women who founded our
schools and colleges were not wrong. "For Christ and the Church"
universities were set up in the wilderness of New England; for the
large service of the State they have been founded and maintained at
public cost in every section of the country where men have settled,
from the Alleghanies across the prairies and Rocky Mountains down to
the Golden Gate. Founded primarily as seats of learning, their
teachers have been not only scientists and linguists, philosophers and
historians, but men and women of holy purposes, sound patriotism,
courageous convictions, refined and noble tastes. Set as these
teachers have been upon a hill, their light has at no period of our
country's history been hid. They have formed a large factor in our
civilization, and in their own beautiful characters have continually
shown us how to combine religion and life, the ideal and practical, the
human and the divine.

Such are some of the larger influences to be had from college life. It
is true all the good gifts I have named may be secured without the aid
of the college. We all know young men and women who have had no
college training, who are as cultivated, rational, resourceful, and
happy as any people we know, who excel in every one of these
particulars the college graduates about them. I believe they often
bitterly regret the lack of a college education. And we see young men
and women going through college deaf and blind to their great chances
there, and afterwards curiously careless and wasteful of the best
things in life. While all this is true, it is true too that to the
open-minded and ambitious boy or girl of moderate health, ability,
self-control, and studiousness, a college course of