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Show Graduates Hear Baccalaureate Rev. P. A. Slmpkin Talks to Students on the Ultimate Purpose of Education. Phillips Congregational church was filled with an audience of tho students nnd friends of Gordon academy last evening, even-ing, when the Rev. P. A. Slmpkin preached tho baccalaureate sermon for the grnduutcs of tho academy. The church was decorated with palms and reees Miss Judith Evans sang tho solo Of the evening, "Rest." Tho quartette rendered an anthem and Mr. Paul Sohmitt gave a beautiful violin rendition for tho offertory National Life and Training. The sermon of the evening was based on the Injunction of lesus, "Learn of Me ' Mr. Slmpkin saB. 'One has but to tuftl to history to ser how largely wo aro l(fcbted to the passion pas-sion for learning that has marked the life of the republic. Tho school has ren a prime factor In tho development of that order, advance nnd power Which have been chara b ristle In oar life. Too often th.- remoter, tho final purpose of eilu. i-tlon, i-tlon, Is missed by the main' Brain-training Brain-training Is good, for brains nro worth moro than over In the world's marketplace. market-place. Every owner of brain back of the cyi s of Columbia's children ought to bo developed to its best and highest. Value of Culture. "But that, after all, Is only primary, ein remembering in that tho lnst half- Century has brought from laboratory and workshop The culture Of the mind, tho arousing of the soul to that state where easily it may take its place and Keep step with the souls that think great thoughts and enjoy the flowers the human hu-man soul has produced In tho centuries. Is a thing to i" ordi ntlv desired and possessed, pos-sessed, provided It be tho culture of polish pol-ish and not veneering Hut an auite brain, a lip glowing with mental culture even to the point of brilliance is not the highest end An education which thrills only the Industrial, economic, literary or artistic faculties Is a failure In that It does not leach tho highest, for whllo the 1 1( r line between the line things of culture and the essentially spiritual be narrow, and the root of one and the bloom of the other again and again cross tho line of djist,,n, they are un divided. Highest Mornl Culture. "Tho highest moral culture is essential to the true happiness and success Intellectual In-tellectual power and culture curtain at best only lesaer elements of cither. Upon the practical plane, the demand of our time Is mado upon the school lor clean life rather than cleverness, for a dearth Of the latter has never been witnessed In the later jours of our nation's life. More character rather than more culture; more fidelity rather than mure flowering of Cam y. more goodness rather than greatness. great-ness. Mlnd-perfectlng is primal. ess a-tlul, a-tlul, but It Is :i jiiochuh Incomplete till by learning the lesson of the world's su-H' su-H' me life it Is perfected hx the relation of truth within to truth vAhout In the awakening of the spiritual. Jeus in himself presents the ld.-ul whoso following follow-ing brings the highest culture. As Increasingly In-creasingly in the centuries he has been the dynamic for the world's life, the In-Bpirer In-Bpirer of Its SUbllmest thought and emblem em-blem in art. literature and music no less than that altruistic service which has been the characteristic of Christianity, it has been because of his lmpartailon of an Ideal ami a power which Is above and be-yond be-yond the power of the schools to Impart' Im-part' The Call of the Highest. Mr. Slmpkin then trnced for his hcar-ew hcar-ew tho root of tho supreme education In the self-estimate of Jesus and Its revelation revela-tion of the value of tho human swul bv which life finds possible the threo things which made the ".ain.-un the age's Ideal. Spirituality, the life finding Its joy In tho call of the highest, service inspired by the certitude that the spent selfhood meets not only the debtorhood of life ami the need f men, but alike finds it abldlngness, and that self-effacement In nilnlstrj- holds alone an end worthy ot ourtelves, b. neilc nt for our fellows. This demand of Jesus Ls not for pale hermits her-mits and cells, but for the world of common com-mon things to which we go. 'where t'ruit has been scon In every life worth the while and the white beauty of It should remain not a phenomenon, as purl of. an experience segregated and unique, but rather tho law of all your being, that In j-our lives may be that which shall fulfill ful-fill tho proph.-cy Of the far-off day of the si . 1 s dreaming by making "tho days of earth as the days of heaven." |
