354 ANDREW PRESTON PEABODY. 



be called the matter-of-course or commonplace conditions of the oc- 

 casion. These are not simply earnest addresses to young men who 

 are his friends, to consider in general how great the change is from 

 a college where they have studied to a world in which they must 

 act. It will rather be found that he always puts himself in the place 

 of some thoughtful, conscientious, eager young fellow in the Senior 

 Class, who has faced some critical question among the infinite prob- 

 lems. He puts himself fairly in that man's place, asks that critical 

 question aloud, and addresses himself to the answer. He does not 

 attempt to conceal the difficulty by any blur of rhetoric. He owns 

 that it is difficult. He states it carefully and clearly. And then he 

 compels every man who hears him to help him out, as they work out 

 the solution. What you are sure of is that, for after life, there is one 

 position in the essentials of morals which in that day's farewell has 

 been diligently considered. To have done that, if a man never did 

 anything more, twenty times, for twenty classes, would be an achieve- 

 ment of which any man might be proud. 



It is to be hoped that some Harvard man really interested in the 

 history of America in the last half-century, will give us a monograph 

 on the advance made in American life, as it can be shown — indeed, 

 as it was largely led — by the pulpit of Harvard College between 

 the days of Dr. Kirkland, in 1810, and the end of Dr. Peabody's 

 active career. His own connection with Cambridge covers that 

 period. He would have said, and the men of his time would say, 

 that that was the moment when the College changed from a high 

 school, and what we should call a poor high school at that, to a 

 University. It will prove, when such a monograph is written, that 

 the change can be traced all along in the words spoken from time to 

 time in the College pulpit. To name Dr. Kirkland himself, both the 

 Wares, Dr. Palfrey, Dr. Walker, among men who are dead, and Dr. 

 Peabody in his longer line of service, is to name a line of leaders of 

 men, all of whom were in touch with their times. In those sermons, 

 so far as they can now be read, there will be found no cloister habit 

 of counting jots and tittles. In the series of their instructions to 

 three generations of men, may be found much of the inspiration 

 under which these generations acted. Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson 

 said, in an address which I heard on a critical occasion, that he owed 

 more to Harvard College from what he heard in the College Chapel 

 than to any of her other instructions in his academic life. 



Dr. Peabody was a fit successor in such work to James Walker, 

 for so long a time an honored member of the Academy. It was not 



