Let us now look at the student on another side of his nature - the religious side, and here we will attempt to trace briefly his evolution and his growth. Founded, as our college was by the stern Puritan, for the purpose largely of educating men for the Christian ministry, we should naturally expect that the spiritual needs of the student would receive the most careful attention. Presidents and professors were chosen with regard to their theological views: the curriculum was shaped to meet the religious wants of the student; religious exercises were frequent and compulsory. Prayers were held twice a day, and absence from service was punished by a fine. At the morning service, held in winter by candle light, the student was obliged to read a portion of the Old Testament out of the Hebrew into the Greek; and at evening prayers a portion of the New Testament out of the English into the Greek. One marvels that under such a stultifying system of worship, a student emerged from college with a spark of religious fervor in him. But, like prescribed Latin and Greek, prescribed religion was slowly abandoned, until, at the beginning of this memorable year in Harvard's annals, the last vestiges of an antiquated and unnatural system have disappeared. These changes, which we choose to call growth, are trumpeted abroad by hostile critics as a departure which brings with it the decay of religious life at Harvard. It is the death-blow to compulsory religion, but it is the signal for the re-awakening of true religion. To-day there is in this college a greater respect for religion, a purer and nobler religious life, than there was two hundred years ago, when religion was secondary to theology; than one hundred years ago, when religion was tempered by fear; than fifty years ago, when religion was subservient to policy; than yesterday, when religion by reason of its compulsion was fast losing its hold upon the students. The attitude of the religious papers upon this question is deserving of the severest censure. Their utterances are maliciously false; they display a temper becoming the bigoted sectarian but, not the humble Christian. Let them know, and all the world besides, that religion is not dead at Harvard; that on the contrary, under a voluntary system, it is entering upon a new and purer life.

But we have not yet considered the student in the light in which he is usually regarded by the outside world, that is, as a cultivated, learned and wise man. Let us then see in what ways he has acquired this culture, learning and wisdom at different periods in the history of the college. In the laws of the college, printed in 1646, we find the following, referring to the qualifications for admission: - "When any scholar is able to read Tully, or such like classical Latin author, extempore, and make and speak true Latin in verse and prose, and decline the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue, then may he be admitted into the college, nor shall any claim admission before such qualifications." Thus, during almost the entire first century of our college's existence, a student need only talk gibberish Latin, write doggerel Latin verse, show some familiarity with Greek grammar, in order to gain admission to the first institution of learning of the land! But woe unto the student who found himself here without a pretty thorough training in those meagre requirements. Once under the authority of the college he could not, by a vigorously enforced statute, use his mother tongue except in public declamation. If he could not give in choice Latin a reasonable excuse for failure at recitation, he suffered double penalties; if he failed to ask in Latin for food at the commons, he went away hungry. But the students had the satisfaction of knowing that the inflictors of this refined torture were themselves sometimes put to the test. It is related that an honored president of this University, once desiring the ejection of a dog which had strayed into evening prayers, called out in angry tone, "Exclude canem, et-shut the door!"

After four years spent in learning a few cant conversational Latin phrases, and in acquiring a smattering of Greek and of Hebrew, the student was ready to receive his first degree. If, upon examination, it were found that he could "read the original of the Old and New Testament into the Latin tongue and resolve them logically," he became by the authority of the college a Bachelor of Arts.

What can be said in defense of a curriculum so narrow, so ill-suited to make men educated, much less useful? This - that at a time when natural phenomena were just beginning to be investigated with intelligence, when our literature was but in its infancy, when philosophy had hardly emerged from scholasticism, when history was yet unwritten, our college offered to her children the best that the age could give. And we are proud to say that this is a policy which our Alma Mater has ever followed. As science advanced, as philosophy became infused with an interest more human, as literature was written, and history recorded, she gladly opened her doors to the new light and gave her children a glimpse of a world of learning hitherto unknown. Gradually the ancient requirements were modified and broadened, until now the college offers to the student a course of study, the best calculated of any in the land to make her graduates educated, intelligent and useful men. Those who leave her doors now are not pedantic mincers of elegant Latin phrases, nor dilettante and captious lookers-on in a world of action, but men possessed of a knowledge which can rectify wrong and accomplish results; men who become powers in the religious, the social, and the political worlds.

But the question suggests itself - may not our college in thus broadening its curriculum and in giving almost absolute freedom of choice in the selection of studies, have gone too far? This is not the time to criticise flippantly, or to air personal whims, but I know that I voice the sentiments of hundreds of undergraduates and of graduates when I say that our college has made some serious mistakes. If it be the chief purpose of a college course to give a liberal education - and that I conceive is its purpose - there must be certain studies essential to such an education. Latin, as an indispensable aid to the study of law, of medicine, and of science, as the basis of almost all modern languages, as the very sap of the English language, should be required of every scholar seeking admission to college. But the elements of the language once mastered, I confess it seems like mere pedantry to pursue the study further; for the discipline which Latin gives has already been largely acquired, and as to its literature - see to it that you have first become familiar with the infinitely grander literature of your own language. Relegate Latin to the preparatory schools, but insist upon it there.

Again, there are studies universally admitted as essential to a liberal education which should be pursued after the student has entered college. In the place formerly occupied by prescribed Greek, Latin, and mathematics, let us have prescribed philosophy, political economy, and English literature, and also history and science, if the elements of these studies cannot be required for admission. In answer to these criticisms I know it can be said that where the option lies between Greek and Latin, Latin will almost invariably be chosen; and that those studies which we would prescribe are now, as a matter of fact, pursued by a large majority of students. But there will be those who will know nothing of Latin, and there will be those who will be ignorant of those other essential subjects; and then there will be men graduated from this college who will not be liberally educated.

But perhaps we criticise too severely, when we consider what stupendous strides our college has made towards attaining an ideal system of education; she has outstripped all rivals, who, while criticising her vehemently for every advance, are finally compelled to follow tardily in her footsteps

A word to close. With all this advance in methods of discipline; with this quickening and enlarging of the religious life; with this tremendous progress in the curriculum work, with all this, has there been a corresponding advance in the manhood of the student. For this, after all, is the test of the efficiency of every educational system. If self-reliance, sincerity, earnestness, are elements of manhood, then there has been advance; for there never was a time when students were more self-reliant, more sincere, more earnest, than they are to-day; and this year will go down to posterity as a year memorable not so much because it marks the quarter millennial of the existence of the college, but because it marks the culmination of an educational policy, the equal of which to produce true manhood, cannot be found in this land, or in any other land.

At the conclusion of this address Lloyd McKim Garrison, amidst loud and prolonged applause, came forward and spoke the ode in a manner well calculated to bring out its duties.

ODE.Mother, peerless, immortal, our lips but repeat

The words spoken so often before,

As we timidly, rev'rently, kneel at thy feet

And ask for thy blessing once more.

Our fathers rejoiced at thy dawn overcast;