"The Christian religion is at the basis of our civil as well as educational institutions - Christ and His church are necessarily and essentially the patrons of culture, the inspirers of education and the founders of colleges. There have been times when the church has been recreant to her trust. But history has shown that in the long run and considering the contemporary conditions she has been faithful. The past has shown that with religion at the basis of our civilization, culture will be sustained, sound learning encouraged and character upbuilt. But we have had no assuring evidence from history or from modern life that without Christ and character will remain true and strong, sound learning be upheld, or culture sustained, fine, deep and ennobling.

"Possibly this sounds commonplace and conventionally sermonic. But it is a commonplace which occasionally needs repetition, for one hears now and again from men whose whole lineage is full of Christian saints and whose character is saturated with the Christian prayers, hopes and theologies of their fathers, that Christ and His Church, having done their work, must now give way to the ascendancy of culture and reason and ethics. To repeat the words of James Russell Lowell, they are 'degenerate sons of heroic ancestors, who, having been trained in a society educated in schools, the foundations of which were laid by men of faith and piety, now turn and kick down the ladder by which they have climbed up and persuade men to live without God and leave them to die without hope.'

"Granted, however, that such men are not representative, but rather the results of an over-ripe culture, there are many men of education, true, high-minded and of Christian ideals, who believe that Christ and His church are at the basis of our civilization, who sympathize with Christian truth, who feel that ideally the church is the stronghold of the highest types of character, but who do not practically turn hand, voice or life to the sustaining of the Christian church of today.

"We hear that theology is out of date, that the average religion is Philistine, that the worship is crude, that the ethics are out of perspective, and that the church lacks in intelligence, in force and in character.

"Perhaps it is so. It may be that the critics are right; but I know of no more ignorant critic than a busy man who gets his theology from the newspapers and reviews his Christian ethics from the reading of ecclesiastical controversies, and his knowledge of the work from emotional exhorters, and who never goes to the original sources of Christ and the church itself.

"What, then, the church needs, even if the criticism be only partially true, is the loyalty and devotion of men of culture - men who, by refinement, will keep the church from Philistianism, by openness of mind will save her from narrowness, and by singleness of purpose will keep her true to her high aims.

"Do not understand this as an appeal for more ministers - not that; I simply want to say that when you leave college and get to work in your calling and settle in your home, there will be various other interests that will claim you - clubs, professional and social, and political duties; but there will be one institution in the town that has somehow outlived all others, an institution that has sustained the ideal of the Christian family, that encourages education, inspires character, upholds the brotherhood of man, and has the charm of charity - the Christian church. It needs you - your personal interest, your sympathy, your correction, your life; and you need it, for without it and what it represents you will be in danger of sinking into professional Philistinism yourself, into the heavy commercial spirit or the ordinary educated machine that makes money, turns it over, spends some, and leaves the rest, without having felt the uplifting spirit that Christ reveals to us. One can speak of this with greater confidence in the shadow of Harvard, for by her charter and traditions the church stands with open face and clean eye towards the truth.

"The founders of this college had their deep convictions; much of their theology is not our theology, but they had such confidence in Christ as the truth and in his church as the interpreter and friend of truth that they bade this college go on in the search for the truth, knowing that rightly conceived, every discovery of truth in every department of Knowledge would lead to the glory of Christ and his church.

"Men have sometimes tried to set the final interpretation of Christian Truth in one or another century, in the day of Athanasius or Luther or Calvin and to close the interpretation of the scriptures then. Our fathers in the college seal laid the Bible wide open to the light of the all centuries and across it wrote the legend 'Veritas.'

"The Truth is the best of thought and life here. Whatever faults Harvard may have, she is sensitive to the spirit of truth. With patient, unflagging devotion and the keenest enthusiasm the student reaches out for the truth.

"That same spirit follows the son of Harvard through life if he be true to his college.

"In the interpretation of the law and the defence of his client, the advocate seeks no mean or technical success, but the truth; in the church the minister desires not first to defend his own position, but to know what is the truth; in politics the legislator or the voter thinks not first of party success and popular legislation, but what is, on the whole, in the name of and for the cause of the truth; in the intricate social problems the citizen's chief concern is not the protection of his own interests, the strengthening of his own prejudices or the defence of his own class, but what on the whole will lead men to the truth. Of you as well as of those whose names are written in yonder Hall, Lowell speaks in his Commemoration Ode:

" 'Those love truth best who to themselves are true,

And what they dare to dream of dare to do.'

"Another characteristic stands out from the legend with which I began this sermon and from the history of the college. 'Founded by act of the people,' The college was the creation of the whole community. From the General Court she received her charter and financial aid; through it she was governed. The college never has been nor can be separate and distinct from the people and their dearest interests. Public spirit moves through her as the winds from the surrounding country sweep through her elms. The pulse of the people can be felt and the movements of the nation anticipated.