THE ALUMNI JOURNAL 95 



in mind, however, at all times, that it is, after all is said, not the 

 profession that a man has learned that is paramount, but the man who 

 has learned the profession. And what I said of an inherent attitude 

 toward the affairs of life is true in still greater measure of your 

 attitude toward your profession. Make your profession a living inter- 

 est and not a dead issue as if it were something you had learned 

 once for all and then put behind you. To stand still is to deteriorate 

 professionally, as well as physically and mentally. Yours is a profes- 

 sion that has not only a past and a present of development, but it has 

 a vastly extended future of growth and usefulness. 



And now, when I look back over what I have said, I find that I 

 have really preached a sermon without having intended it. This is 

 a time pre-eminently for congratulation and good cheer, and if I have 

 not spoken it, I have meant it in all sincerity, for it is no little thing 

 to have come successfully through to the end of the labor that has 

 been a necessary part of your professional study. This is a time, 

 however, almost more than any other to pause for a moment, at least, 

 and to take a personal inventory before starting out on what is to a 

 superlative degree the real business of life. There is so much to say 

 at this time and so little time to say it, and what I have said is only 

 in a single direction, but a direction, still, that has seemed to me para- 

 mount and essential — the search for truth as the guide to human 

 action and its apprehension as the greatest fact of life. For what a 

 man is, is dependent wholly upon it in the part he plays in the drama 

 of existence as the plot is unravelled and the scenes are shifted and 

 until the curtain is finally rung down at the end and the play is done. 

 "And ye shall know the truth," says my text, "and the truth shall 

 make you free." And so it is, and so it always w'ill be. Free from 

 the pitfalls of ignorance and the trammels of temptation. Free from 

 the malign influence of the little and the mean, and ready to recognize 

 and to approve those things that are great and worthy. Free to 

 work out your individuality in the direction of your own happiness 

 and welfare. Free to lead in the affairs of men and not blindly to 

 follow. Free from the wiles of the plausible charlatan, whatever his 

 guise may be. Free from the lure of the political demagogue, who 

 promises with no intention to perform. Free in all things of the soul, 

 the body and the estate that together make up the great sum total of 

 our complex human life. "The truth shall make you free!" 



Dr. Schieffelin : It has been intimated to me that the audience might 

 like to hear two or more songs from the Hampton Quartet. 



(Song.) 



