THE LATEST LIVING GRADUATE OF '95

151 died in September, '93, and to John Myers, jr., who died in July, '94,-you have given the irrevocable farewell. Forty-six men began the work of your class four years ago, twenty-nine men complete the roll now. Never, after this week, will so many of you gather under one roof! In groups you will return to the dear hillside of your common love: but little by little your ranks will gather closer, until, perhaps in 1955, you will hold your last class meeting-of one! He will come, the relic of you all. He will ride up the hill he can then no longer climb. He will, with some young guide, not to be born for thirty years yet, observe the stately new buildings, and people the old with you and your comrades of the moss-grown 19th century. Perhaps he will say a kindly word at the mound where one shall be resting who for three years (under whatever college vicissitudes) was a good friend of '95. He will look out upon the lovely slopes, and beyond the curving hills the boys will gather in their caps and gowns, and cheer,— Boom Rah! Boom Rah! Who is he?

Vive La! Vive La! XCV!

- and then he will go down into the valley!

But in between this day and that work lies--your real standing is to be registered. It is a good time to live! Live well! Live boldly! We shall watch you from this signal station. You will be welcomed back, with your honors new and old. The white spire and its far-flashing point will guide you home again. The bell will greet you. The old well will bubble for you. You will send on your boys for the nineteentwenties. All good to you in the strenuous years upon which Be Christ's men! Accept every one of you His you enter. name, His present guerdon of self-sacrifice, and graduate having at last "having obtained the good degree," and all of you with high honor!

And this be our goodby.

Creeds

THE ANNUAL SERMON BEFORE THE ALUMNI OF AUBURN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY MAY 9, 1895

"For we know in part."-1 Corinthians 13:9.

We at once know

NEITHER agnosticism nor omniscience! and do not know; we know something, not everything. According to our knowledge we are to "prophecy," or proclaim. Our present degree is at once a mighty incentive to speech, and a limitation to make reason modest. We are not to be irresolute, and neither are we to assume to be infallible. Energy is our duty, but finality belongs to God.

The Apostle Peter left this catholic admonition: "Grow in grace and in knowledge." These growths, if they are genuine, are coincident. Growth is the proof of life. But growth means outgrowth-not by loss but by gain, by comprehension. The measure of every spiritual soul must be followed by the plus sign. While the present is stated, it is already past. The links of life are an endless and increasing series. "Tomorrow shall (under God) be as today and more abundantly;" the latest the largest; the best wine last. God's "increasing purpose" leads the ductile mind into ever 'more stately mansions.' "For we know in part." And to know that we know in part is the condition of knowing more. It puts us safe from both immobility and confusion.

With the hope that you will open your hearts to this quickening thought, I ask you to reckon with its bearings upon the unclosed question of Creeds.

Fellow Alumni of Auburn, we are children of a school whose genius is that of both conservatism and freedom. This place

STOLIDITY IS HERESY

153 is not noted either for toadstools or for trilobites. We stand solidly for truth and for valid tests of it and for all of both truth and test that we can get. You will hear me patiently and candidly, as I submit my thesis to your sober and devout consideration.

I, for my part, am sure that one who would appreciate "the law of the spirit of life in Jesus Christ" as a law of progress in both appreciation and affirmation, must renounce that mental inertia and laziness whose indulgence dishonors "the abundance of revelations." Lazy thought is always sleazy thought.

Every man must earn his theological assets, and in his own idiom declare his own conviction. Faith and the hope it nourishes are what none can lend and none borrow. Love's intuitions come at love's price. "Sayest thou this of thyself, or did some others tell it thee of me?" "It is the heart," said Henry B. Smith, "that makes the theologian," and the heart is never satisfied with "the things that are behind." And so it yearns toward the unretracted pledge of our Lord: "Ye shall see greater things than these." Expectancy is cardinal. To regard the tuition of the Eternal Spirit as a closed canon denies the immanence of Christ and regards revelation as a mathematical crystal, rather than as a palpitating heart.

The

To "know as we ought to know," is to watch the bearings of the figures upon that growing web, upon whose unbroken warp manifold wisdom smites home the woof of the present. These nineteen centuries are not fringe; they are part of the pattern. Providence is the interpreter. Deeper and deeper strike the roots, as the boughs spread wider and wider. perpetual Leader "takes the things of Christ" and shows their unremitting increase. Far from being orthodox, it is not even devout not to expect new demonstrations of Christ in the application of His exhaustless precepts to new problems. So far we have seen "but a part of his ways, and many such things are with Him." Discipleship can never be stationary. Living Revelation is not a pond but a stream.

waters run.

No one transcript says the last word concerning the disclosures of God. Eternity will be forever new with discoveries. Not only are we now, but we will always be under the dawn. Time and Earth speed to their afternoon; but knowledge is a morning whose sun shall rise while God lives. The desiring heart bounds with joy to know that holy and ardent curiosity shall never weary or want, and that love shall never climb its last summit nor utter its last surprised rapture of adoration.

These holy books are not only supremely important history, they are also specimens of God's method of His continuity of increase.

Everything that is here was first written upon human souls. The book is the corollary of that. The inspiration preceded the record. The parchments were memoranda of God's personal imprimatur upon persons - spirit answering to spirit, the deep within calling to the deep above.

Progress of teaching is displayed from the earliest leaf of scripture to the latest, and the history of doctrine in the church is full of new and newer apprehension of this living oracle. That the book is God's book is shown in that we never learn the last of it. And that the real church is God's church is shown in that it is a school whence no true pupil ever graduates. The 'songs of degrees' will have no end.

Theology is man's philosophy about God. It takes this book of the ages and rearranges its materials into other octavos. It fuses these ores and coins them under its own date. It is an excellent, indeed an indispensable process and result; but not being infallible, it cannot be final. Each new volume grows out of, and is, more or less consciously, educed by the special exigencies and needs of that time that writes it.

Each age is a crucible, and while the mold is provisional and transitional, the material is the main thing. The book is needed, is written, is read and goes to its quiet shelf. It does its work for its own period and whatever is essential has its

BETTER HEED, BETTER CREED

155

vital result in the souls of men, there and nowhere else to live. Every statement of truth is good, when it makes the way for one that is better.

I am well aware of its perverse use by some, but nevertheless, I am willing to say with emphasis those lines of England's greatest laureate:

"Our little systems have their day,

They have their day and cease to be,
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they."

At once with the systematization of our present, and therefore partial, knowledge, we have introduced a new arrangement. The scientific method has displaced the natural and vital. The sphere has become a cube. It is the problem of squaring the circle. Each new pen adds new figures to the statement. They may and should increase the approximation; but the fraction, however far extended from the decimal point, can never be completed. The scientific method is of indisputable value, but only when its limitations are recognized, when the evidential never usurps the intuitional. It is corroborative, but it is indirect. Fallible hands always wield fallible instruments. Theology is, I gladly consent, "the queen of sciences," but knowledge is the king. He who really knows a thing,

knows more than he can scientifically demonstrate.

The inherent danger of systematic theology is rationalism. I do not say the vice, I say the danger. The danger only becomes a vice when we deny or forget it. Rationalism is the vanity of human logic, declaring itself independent and allsufficing. Orthodox speculation may be, and so far as its manner goes, often is just as rationalistic as heretical speculation.

Our tools are not exact enough so to square the ends of our propositions that we can pile them indefinitely. Just because of our confidence in Biblical premises, we must take as tentative, the conclusions that mix them with our minor premises.