is not always greeted with acclamations from the crowd, nor are palm-branches strewn before him as he advances. But if you choose the path in which I tread, your way will be lit by the light of divine ideals. You will be confronted as you proceed by many obstacles. At times the sun will hide its face, and the moon will no longer send down its beams, and you will be compelled to struggle forward in the darkness, unaided and alone. But as you proceed the darkness will be relieved from time to time by the light of the hearts which you have gladdened by the way, and if you continue on your course the path will grow ever smoother and the light ever brighter unto the perfect day." I would invite you to this way of service as the only way to fulness of life, the way to the achievement of true manhood and womanhood, to the attainment of life's choicest pleasures and life's richest rewards. And upon the attention of some of you at least, I wish I might say many of you, I would urge the ministry of religion, not as the only way of service, but as one of the avenues of service which is worthy of consideration by the best and bravest of our American youth. Has some thought come to you, as thoughts used to come to the prophets of old, from out of the depths of your experience, in one of those mysterious ways in which God works upon the human soul; some thought which makes the horizon of your life broader, its mountain peak more majestic, its duties more commanding? This thought was given you not for your private delectation. It was given as a trust to hold for the benefit of your fellowmen. Paul, the Apostle, after he had become convinced of the truth of the gospel of Jesus, saw in his imagination a man from Macedonia holding out to him mute hands of entreaty and seeming to beg him to come to that distant land as a messenger of the new faith. To become conscious of the need even on the part of people in a foreign land meant for him to resolve at once, whatever personal hardship it might involve, to go to their relief. To-day it is not from foreign lands alone that the cry comes to our ears for preachers of the glorious gospel of the blessed God. The church of Jesus Christ needs leaders in the land in which we live needs them as she has rarely needed them before, needs more men and better men for the inspiring work of emancipation that confronts her, in the new era which we are entering. God grant that the cry may come with increasing power to those whose ears it ought to reach, and that, more and more, as there dawns upon the mind of any earnest man, an uplifting idea or illuminating thought, there may come into his heart at the same time a consuming desire to incarnate that thought in the ever changing, ever growing life of his fellowmen. This privilege is in a measure that of every child of God. It is the special privilege of him to whom it has been permitted to become a minister of the Christian Church. |