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C. U. C. p. ALUMNI JOURNAL 



THE KINGDOM OF LIGHT* 



* 



It is our good fortune that there are 

 in America men who do not permit the 

 pressure of public service or of private 

 business wholly to separate them from 

 the intellectual life. About a quarter of 

 a century ago, a group of such men 

 made a visit to a farm near Phantom 

 Lake in Wisconsin. The attraction of 

 the lake proved so alluring and the oc- 

 casion so enjoyable that the visit was 

 repeated year after year. At each of 

 these annual reunions some one of the 

 company read a paper for the inspiration 

 and to the delight of his associates. Some 

 twenty years ago an eloquent and 

 scholarly leader of the American bar, who 

 was weighted heavily with professional 

 responsibilities and who constantly ren- 

 dered notable public service, took as the 

 subject for one of these Phantom Club 

 papers the Kingdom of Light. The 

 little-known essay which he then read 

 is a priceless contribution to American 

 literature. Like the almost equally un- 

 known essay of John J. Ingalls on the 

 Blue Grass, it makes a sincere, a power 

 ful and a gracious expression of what 

 is best and most natural in the thought 

 of the unspoiled American. 



The Kingdom of Light, as the writer 

 of that paper described it, is an invisible 

 commonwealth which outlives the storms 

 of ages. It is a state whose armaments 

 are thoughts, whose weapons are ideas, 

 and whose trophies are the pages of the 

 world's great masters. Toward this 

 kingdom the steps of his associates were 

 directed with subtly guiding thought and 

 with singularly beautiful expression. 



Today a company of yoUng men and 

 young women, numbered by hundreds 



*The President's address to the graduating 

 classes, Commencement, 1916. 



and almost by thousands, is about to 

 march out from this great fortress of the 

 mind and soul to undertake the invasion 

 and the conquest of life. I beg of you 

 in that march to turn your footsteps 

 constantly and untiringly toward the 

 Kingdom of Light. The world abounds 

 in great cities, in broad plains, in rich • 

 mines, in ample opportunities for what 

 we call personal and professional suc- 

 cess ; but all these are as Dead Sea 

 fruit, if we have not found our way, 

 each one of us, into the Kingdom of 

 Light. It is doubly hard just now to 

 seek the protection and the seclusion 

 of that kingdom. The world is roar 

 ing round about us ; the noise and 

 the darkness of the great tempest fill 

 our ears and blind our eyes. It needs 

 patience, it needs courage, it needs real 

 character, at such a time even to re- 

 member that there is a Kingdom of 

 Light and that we wish to possess it. 



Every possible excuse is always ready 

 to offer itself for leaving undone those 

 things that ought to be done. Lack of 

 time, pressure of practical life, the needs 

 of the moment, are all urged as reasons 

 why we cannot make our way to the 

 Kingdom of Light and enjoy it as we 

 should like to do. After granting all 

 that may be justly claimed for lack of 

 time, after granting all that may be 

 urged on behalf of the practical needs | 

 of the moment, it remains true that the 

 man who allows his mental and spiritual I 

 nature to stagnate and to decay does not 

 do so from lack of time or from the 

 pressure of other things, but from lack 

 of inclination. To enter into the Kinof- 

 dom of Light, to live with great 

 thoughts, to enjoy the beauty of letters 



