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He shall bruise Satan under our feet, and by and by we shall be ready to say with brave Walter Scott (great for his genius, but greater yet for his indomitable honor), that which he so simply penned as his mortal chapter drew to its ending, "I think that next week I shall be in the secret."

The Stewardship of knowledge

AN ADDRESS AT THE OPENING OF

THE BROOKLYN INSTITUTE

SEPTEMBER 30, 1895

Mr. President, Members of the Brooklyn Institute, and all Good Friends-The invitation under which I am to speak to you, while it confers a great honor, also imposes a severe responsibility. The best reasoned conclusions, the most compelling sympathy, could not be too much for this earnest assembly and alert hour. I cannot hope to disguise the limitations, which, as I begin, are so uncomfortably real to me. I can only ask of your associated censorship,' Portia's quality of mercy.

Only in wakening your self-realization, and in touching, however poorly, your enthusiasms for what this Institute is and purposes, shall I at all avoid the penalty of that temerity of mine which is just now our common misfortune.

So far, then, my unfeigned condolence: but for all else my admiring congratulations, tempered only by that note of sorrow which you all must sound as you miss the hoped-for presence of one whom you have so long loved and trusted as a leader in the best life of this community. This city is at once the richer and the poorer because the Rev. Dr. Charles H. Hall is tonight the guest of God!

It is a privilege to which I am deeply sensitive that I have been introduced to you by one whose station as the Nestor of all learned and Christian utterance in this good town, there are none to dispute and myriads to recognize. Long may Dr. Storrs, as your most representative citizen, receive your ready acclaim.

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I spoke of self-realization. By that I mean the realization of what this Institute is and is able to become.

An unconscious sagacity ruled the efforts of Augustus Graham in 1823 and thenceon. He builded (as do all true architects) better than he knew. Your augmenting constituency, now four-thousand, with its still wider influence and stimulation, is the present fruitage of what he planted in hope. The capitoline edifice that is to adorn your park will be his outward monument: but even its amplitude will be but promise and symbol of what none of you can now measure.

Halls, libraries, conservatories, galleries, platforms, chairs, apparatus-what breadth and uplift does your program bespeak! Your scope is naught less than to articulate the whole mental aesthetic, ethical life of this fourth city of the nation.

If you build as high as you are planning wide, and if this community shall at all realize and avail itself of the opportunity which it is your ambition to make ever more ample and more inviting, then this work will have recognition as the most commanding feature of your civic life, and those (if there are any) who have questioned your peerage will praise your supremacy.

I for one wonder that any are to be found in such a population, and a population of such a quality, to hold lightly or wilingly to forego the autonomy of a corporation of such high omens, or to wish to merge its individuality of ideas into the mere bulk of commercial unity with a neighbor which, however great, need not desire to swallow you whole and alive!

Were I a citizen here, far rather would I plead for another star in the flag, for the erection of Long Island into an independent state with Brooklyn as its capital! Between Tioga County and Manhattan Island Albany would still be busy!

But, letting all that pass, I turn toward the things more immediately belonging to my present permission, and crave your sympathetic hearing.

This Brooklyn is not only a "city of churches," but also a city of high-minded men and women, of strong domesticity, of

fearless and cogent journalism, of noble schools-a city of thoughtful and representative American life.

You have no need of imported teaching or exhortation. Your Newcastle needs neither to bring in coals nor fire!

The best that one can offer to this municipal intelligence and zeal, can only reflect, not enlarge, your own considerate determinations.

I should be embarassed and restrained in this presence of so many whose peer I cannot hope and will not pretend to be, did I not know that the most competent are always the most gentle.

I have no discoveries, no panaceas, no surprises to propound: but can only seek to be the echo of your own good sense, the voice of sober conclusions that must accord with your own desires for the reasoned good and true gain of this great city, and of all our cities and our land in this decade that runs so fast and in that century whose imminent issues shall be so terrific or so august.

For thoughtful souls must feel that "God's balances by angels watched" were never 'hung across the skies' to measure more potent results than now are to be weighed. The accelerating pace of the world commands our awe. The step of Providence rocks the round Earth.

Esau and Jacob struggle again in the womb of time. Empires verge to the day of Armageddon !

Transient adjustments, and compromises of expediency, must give way to the authority of the Son of Man, and to the arbitration of the peace of God.

I do not deplore, I welcome, an age that puts all questions to the proof, and exacts righteous relations to the two fundamental propositions of God's sovereignty and man's unity.

There are no surds, or shall be none, in the demonstration of His wisdom, who ordained this planet to be a very Bethlehem among the stars!

The whining cowardice of pessimism, and the coarse and

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brutal optimism of self-idolatry, with its two insanities of covetousness and carnal pleasure, are alike repugnant to those who both hear the murmur of man's great unrest and listen to the bird song of God's dawn!

The only Healer comes !

"The healing of His seamless dress

Is by our beds of pain,

We touch Him in life's throng and press

And we are whole again."

The crisis of this fevered world is momentous, but under Him "to whom all power is given" it shall not be a collapse but a convalescence!

The song of time is not a lullaby nor a ballad, but it is not a dirge. It shall be an anthem, even the Gloria in Excelsis Deo, et in terra pax !

A child on Mt. Washington watched with his father a glorious sunset as it shot the clouds with unspeakable splendors, and exclaimed-"Oh papa, I see the Doxology." Let us seek the heights where solar power interprets the horizons! today's Sun go down-tomorrow's shall rise!

Let

With that acumen which was an inspired instinct the Apostle Paul struck for the cities. The city is the fulcrum of opportunity. Taught truly its cities shall tutor the land. Their salvation shall make all good dominant.

And so in this instant which we call now-which is always the accepted time, and in this vocal city I try to affirm a truth which has in it 'the potency and promise of every form of life'-this-"THE STEWARDSHIP OF KNOWLEDGE."

I am sure that all your hearts are keyed to that theme, and I am thankful to speak to those who already believe.

I stand here as an inadaquate but loyal representative of one of what Holmes once playfully characterized as 'the freshwater colleges.'

For some purposes, friends, salt water is not the best. Truly it is an element in which the heirs of the Mayflower and the Guerriere have proyed staunch and sturdy down to the other