COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES 373 



life for yourselves and for all about you than others will, but we also 

 know that no one can yet tell which of your number they will be. 



God has created the world in equipoise, and that life will become the 

 richest, will reach the farthest and accomplish the most, which obeys the 

 laws of the Almighty and stands in harmonious relations with the uni- 

 versal plan. The sun and the planets and their moons, the star-suns 

 of other systems, all balance one another in eternal and infinite space. 

 And as in illimitable distance and with other worlds, so with the globe 

 on which we live. The days and the seasons alternate steadily. Tem- 

 perature and precipitation average alike. The tides rise and fall. The 

 rivers run to the sea but "unto the place from whence the rivers come 

 thither they return again." "The wind whirleth about continually and 

 the wind returneth again according to his circuits.'' The soils are decay- 

 ing as well as producing. The paths of nature run into themselves again. 

 Matter moves in cycles and under the law of equipoise. 



And the great movements of matter, the great periodic forces of 

 nature, seem to bear strong relations with the greatest phenomena in life. 

 The turning of the earth upon its axis, the circuits of the earth about 

 the sun and of the moon about the earth, seem to fix the periodicity of 

 the most vital changes in the world's life. 



And as with matter and with motion and with life, so with thought. 

 The history of our race, which has been made and written by the world's 

 thought, is but the record of affairs moving in great cycles of time. There 

 has been an ebb and flow in the great tide of human thought. Civiliza- 

 tions have come and gone. Governments have arisen and perished. 

 Marked advances in knowledge and skill have been followed by marked 

 depressions. Great waves of human sympathy and great outbursts of 

 human passion have alternated. Peace and war have followed each 

 other. 



• The world is at peace if the nations are in equipoise. When the white 

 squadron is manoeuvring for holiday show, the merchantmen are giving 

 reward to thrift, and plenty to millions, by equalizing the distribution of 

 the products of the world. When the armies are idle the arts and 

 sciences are promoting the higher physical and intellectual life of 

 Christendom. But the periodical renew-al of the Eastern question, a 

 faint clash of arms which can scarcely be heard across the blue waters 

 of the Mediterranean, threatens the national equilibrium of Europe and 

 leaves a mark upon the stock board of every market in the w'orld. I am 

 not saying, for I do not think, that wars are not in the eternal plan. 

 Disturbances of equilibrium work disaster and destruction in the world 

 of matter, and sorrow and suffering in the world of thought. The ap- 

 parent irregularity of a planet indicated the presence and led to the 

 discovery of another planet, however, and so proved the inviolability of 

 the universal law. 



But there is something stupendously grand and awfully solemn about 

 this unceasing, onward, balanced, periodic, rythmic motion of every- 

 thing in matter and every energy of life. We are fools if we do not see 

 that it is all under the control of a power above and outside of ourselves, 

 and all pursuant to the dictates of an universal law. If it is grand and 

 solemn w^hen w^e see that all created things are obedient to a law that is 

 broader and higher than the universe, it is still more so to realize that 

 w^e sjiould face chaos and abandon hope in the absence of such law. In 



