erty. Hence it does not abandon men, as if they were to live alone; nor does it drive them, as if their freedom were a fiction and delusion. It respects manhood, and pays its homage to the imperial gift which makes a man the child of God, partaking of his nature, with his will incarnate in the life. It sees before him a possible destiny of honor and wealth, and offers him, not compulsion that he must secure this, but opportunity that he may possess it. It places before him an open door which neither he nor his fellows could have opened, ❝and no man can shut it." The picture is dignified and simple. Whatever shuts a man out from his true career, from the high estate for which he was created, has heard the commanding voice of the Most High: "Lift up your heads, O ye gates: and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors." To man He saith, "Enter ye in." Thus liberty is matched with opportunity. Our glory waits upon our will.

He

It was so when Christ was here. He was in the greatness of his strength, yet He did not compel men to hear Him and to yield to his sway. met them with invitation, promise, instruction. "Never man spake like this man," but it was speaking. He came into the world as the Word, and not as the earthquake or the fire. He did not force those who labored to take his rest. "Come unto me," He said. He did not drag men in his

train. "Follow me," He said. Light was for those who would have it; life for those who would receive it. He said, "I am the way;" "I am the door; "Strive to enter in." Sow your seed in good

ground; this is the good ground. Cast your net where there are fish; this is the right side of the boat. Build your house where it will stand. All this is opportunity, which each man must improve for himself. The Lord never forgets who we are. He does not destroy in the act of saving. He preserves the manhood in its integrity, and lets it prove itself. With the earth at the feet of men, and heaven above them, He made both possible, but neither sure. "Behold," He saith, "Behold, I have set before thee a door opened." So much was certain. The uncertainty was all in this, whether a man would pass through the open door, inheriting the earth, the citizen of heaven.

We shall find this principle of life wherever we go. It is inwrought with the constitution of the world and its affairs. Every man is glad that it is SO. The one thing which we ask is an opportunity commensurate with our ability, and this we have. Certainly we who are here have it in ample measure. By the labors and gifts, the sacrifices, the prayers of good men in many generations, the University opens and holds open the door before the whole wide world of knowledge. Before we

were born the doors were opened, and never have they been closed. We cannot tell how much this means, nor know how vain and baffled were our endeavors, how hopeless our ambition, how fettered our aspiration, were it not for that which other hearts have desired, and other hands than ours have wrought. The University can do little more than to broaden the doors, and keep them open day and night. This she will do, and nothing shall hinder the willing feet from crossing the threshold, the willing mind from gathering the treasure beyond. She does not bestow learning; she grants the opportunity of acquiring it. She points to her beaten path which leads among the stars, and bids men mount up and dwell with truth. The University is not a shop for selling knowledge, nor a factory for weaving it into cloth which can be cut in pieces and fashioned into garments; knowledge is not a commodity which can be so dealt with. It is the door, the opened, open door through which desire and diligence can pass. In the enlargement of these later years this has been made more true, as there has come to be less content with the transmitting of information from memory to memory, less belief in the impartation of facts, and a larger purpose to let every man work out his own education; and now the chief thing which is offered is the opportunity to get what we ought to have.

The words of the open door are to be taken in the broadest sense. Special schools may open the way to special departments of truth. More than that must be done here. The name we bear requires it. University is a very large term. It is not an angle, but a circle. Its circumference touches the universe of truth, and is broken into doors. The word of which we are fondest and proudest, setting it at the centre of the seal, stands in its wholeness, an undivided, unbounded Veritas,

a word so large that it takes three books to hold it, and the three stand for the whole. To this liberal plan of work every department is devoted; with how high spirit and generous effort and scholarly purpose need not be told here. The present is not more indebted to the past than the past to the present. No instructor draws a line around his teaching, to shut it in from the greater world of truth, or to shut out the truth which has a right to enter his domain. The breadth of learning finds its expression in the correlation of studies and in the genial fellowship of scholars. Oldest and youngest, we stand together upon an untraversed field, whose lines are lost in the distant and boundless heavens. It is this which gives dignity to our common work, and warrants the belief that we shall move on with the process of the centuries. If these things are true, it is clear that there must

be a place within, or beside, or beyond every department of the University, in which the most serious themes of life can be studied, as well as others, and the most sacred interests regarded: in which a man can seek and find the highest truths which concern him; can know God, his Father, who. desires to be known; and himself, the child of God; in which divinity and humanity, time and eternity, life and immortality, duty and conscience, can be thought upon reverently, faithfully, as doth become a man. These are not the special studies of a theological school alone, but the studies for every school and for every scholar. What were thought which does not think of God; knowledge which does not know Him; life which does not live in the life and light of the world? How can we respect the science of mind which leaves out the one mind which is perfect and supreme; or the science of things which does not reach beyond everything which we can handle to Him whose hands fashioned the heavens and the earth? How shall we revere the study which stops while there are grave questions which can be answered, and larger truths which can be known? If it be impracticable for every lecture-room and laboratory to teach the name and method and purpose of Him by whom all things consist, then is it imperative, for the sake of liberal learning, that there be some