Two Baccalaureate Sermons Hearten Present Generation

The problems of the present generation as opposed to those of the past generation were the common subjects of two baccalaureate addresses last Sunday to the graduating classes of Cornell and Brown Universities.

The Reverend C. R. Brown, D.D., Dean of the Yale Divinity School, spoke at Cornell, while at Brown, the baccalaureate address was given by President W. H. P. Faunce.

Dr. Brown chose for his text the words of God to Moses, commanding him to prepare for Mt. Sinai on the morrow.

"The day of judgment" Dr. Brown said, "is not a far away event in the future. Every day is judgment day. Each morning passes sentence on the night before."

Therefore, he urged the graduates to conserve their energies of mind and body alike to be ready for each tomorrow.

He called on them to be ready for opportunity, saying that "the rewards, of competition and character were never so great as they are today. But at the same time the twentieth century is more exacting in its requirements than any period in history."

Face Crisis in History

Dr. Brown then said: "Caps and gowns have their significance and impressiveness, but remember that the greater part of the world's work is being done by men and women in their shirt sleeves, or what corresponds to their shirt sleeves in their particular profession.

"You are no different from students on any campus in the country. There are some who come to college under their own steam. There are others who were sent to college. These latter people have been exposed to learning, but it never took. Many of them pass, as we call it, and leave college no better educated than when they entered. The difference between those who come and those who were sent is as between chalk and cheese.

"The problems brought by the war utter the same summons to all of us. This are is one of the crises of history. Future generations will see its importance more clearly than we do. A certain measured peace has been obtained. Now we must attain spiritual peace in the world. The problems resulting from the war are so vast, so intricate as to well nigh stagger the civilization which has to cope with them.

World Is Torn to Pieces

"But what great days to be alive in, to be alive and young. The whole world has been torn to pieces and must be rebuilt. It is a time of social rebuilding. The very sight of the opportunity is enough to waken laggards and parasites. Sinai is in sight. Mental and moral preparedness are imperative.

"The solving of problems in government, education, religion, and society can not be done with the emotions or with eloquent outbursts of feeling, but must be done by competent, fit men and women if industry is to be humanized, if education is to train the spirit, if Democracy is not to go down in defeat, we need not merely conspicuous statesmen and leaders, but ranks upon ranks of common people in every community with mental and moral preparedness.

Not Over, Over There

"It isn't over, over there, and it isn't over, over here. The problem remaining involves the old struggle of the exploited against the exploiters. Against those who have fallen into the disgraceful habit of eating bread won by the sweat of other men's brows, a voice is calling out to be ready to give the best you have to the highest you see, which is the very essence of religion."

Home Causes Disasters

"The one great cause of disaster in college life today is tension and misunderstanding at home," was the substance of President Faunce's address.

"We are told by many timorous writers that 'flaming youth' is to blame for most of the woes of the modern world: that our young people are without reverence for the past, regardless of law and order, brutally frank, destitute of reticence and modesty and humility, crass and coarse in manners and in speech," said Dr. Faunce.

Does Not Despair

"I can only say for myself that I have not found them so, and that I know too many things about the former generation to indulge in despair over the present one.

"Would any historian wish to exchange the worst traits of the Twentieth Century for the scandalous doings of the Eighteenth century? Bradford's history of the Pilgrim Fathers shows us within ten years after the Mayflower cast anchor at Plymouth such vices as are unknown to civilization today.

"Any graduate who has been out of college forty years will tell you there was far more intoxication among students in his day than now. The college comic of forty years ago was thrust under the door in the darkness of the night and burned by the janitor in the morning. The older generation was not angelic, but it rigorously suppressed or carefully concealed conditions which were not sanctioned by its code. Its goodness consisted largely in restraint and repression.

"Today, in our, honor courses, competent college students are invited to forage for themselves, and to discuss as well as to listen. In our seminaries they sit around a table in high intellectual companionship with the advanced student that we call the professor. In the laboratory the student with his own hands and eyes and brain must find out th truth or retire in defeat. Slowly we are learning that the only training that lasts is selftraining, and that unless the student educates himself, his remains forever a closed and darkened mind."