86 THE ALUMNI JOURNAL 



Lire and honor in presenting as speaker, Provost Carpenter of Colum- 

 bia University. 



Dr. Carpenter: Mr. President, Trustees of the College, Faculty. 

 Members of the Graduating Class and Friends : 



I have selected a text in orthodox fashion for a sermon, but I am 

 not going to preach a sermon, but merely intend to put together some 

 thoughts that have been suggested to me by the text that I have in 

 mind, and that I now will pass on to you for such consideration — and 

 1 hope such careful consideration — as you may be inclined to give 

 them. My text was written ages ago for an entirely different audi- 

 ence than is possible or is conceivable to-day. It was addressed to 

 men who had an entirely different historical background and present 

 environment ; who had different social responsibilities ; who had a 

 different code of social and business ethics — but with all this it is as 

 applicable and potent to-day as on the day when it fell from the 

 inspired pen of the wise man who wrote it, and it is still as, fitting, 

 I think, for this occasion and under these circumstances as it was on 

 the immediate occa'Sion and under the immediate circumstances that 

 called it forth. 



My text then is a familiar one and a simple one ; it should be easy 

 to remember and hard to forget. It is this : "And ye shall know the 

 truth, and the truth shall make you free." 



Human life — the life at least of a thoughtful man and a thought- 

 ful woman — is a search for truth. It begins with the first reaching 

 cut of an infant's hand for the object that it desires to grasp, and it 

 only ends when life's active interests are over. It has always been 

 so from the beginning of civilization among the human race and 

 even beyond it. In the earliest periods it has of necessity been a 

 groping after reality, which is the counterpart of truth, and often it 

 has been but dimly apprehended. There has always been, however, 

 from the beginning a search for the true significance of things that 

 has led at least to their partial understanding. Truth looked at in 

 this way from the point of view of the historical progress of man- 

 kind from no civilization to civilization, or from a lower to a higher 

 civilization, has sometimes seemed like a shifting concept, as if the 

 truth at one time is one thing and at another time another. But it is 

 not so. Truth is constant ; more constant than the magnet to the 

 pole, from which under circumstances it varies. It is only the appre- 

 hension of truth that changes from generation to generation, as the 



